E1012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks May 21, 2003
MERCURY IN MEDICINE—TAKING UNNECESSARY RISKS I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
‘…FDA will allow a product to present more of a risk when its potential benefit is great—especially for products used to treat serious, life-threatening conditions.’’ This argument—that the known risks of infectious diseases outweigh a potential risk of neurological damage from exposure to thimerosal in vaccines, is one that has continuously been presented to the Committee by government officials. FDA officials have stressed that any possible risk from thimerosal was theoretical: that no proof of harm existed. Upon a thorough review of the scientific literature and internal documents from government and industry, the Committee did in fact find evidence that thimerosal posed a risk. The possible risk for harm from either low dose chronic or one time high level (bolus dose) exposure to thimerosal is not ‘‘theoretical,’’ but very real and documented in the medical literature. Congress has long been concerned about the human exposure to mercury through medical applications. As a result of these concerns, in 1997, Congress instructed the FDA to evaluate the human exposure to mercury through drugs and foods. Through this Congressionally mandated evaluation, the FDA realized that the amount of ethylmercury infants were exposed to in the first six months of life through their mandatory vaccinations exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) limit for a closely associated compound methylmercury. The FDA and other Federal agencies determined that in the absence of a specific standard for ethylmercury, the limits for ingested methylmercury should be used for injected ethylmercury. The Institute of Medicine, in 2000, evaluated the EPA’s methylmercury standard and determined that based upon scientific data that it, rather than the FDA’s, was the scientifically validated safe exposure standard. Rather than acting aggressively to remove thimerosal from children’s vaccines, the FDA and other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted an incremental approach that allowed children to continue to be exposed to ethylmercury from vaccines for more than two additional years. In fact, in 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refused even to express a preference for thimerosal-free vaccines, despite the fact that thimerosal had been removed from almost every childhood vaccine produced for use in the United States. On three occasions in the last 15 years, changes have been made to vaccine policies to reduce the risk of serious adverse effects. First, a transition from oral polio vaccine to injected polio was accomplished in the United States to reduce the transmission of vaccine-induced polio. Second, an acellular pertussis vaccine was developed and a transition from DTP to DTaP was accomplished to reduce the risk of pertussis—induced seizures in children. And third, when the Rotashield vaccine for rotavirus was linked to a serious bowel condition (intersucception), it was removed from the U.S. market. Ethylmercury has been largely removed from every major childhood vaccine manufactured for use in the United States, except the influenza vaccine, which continues to contain trace amounts. This success, however, does not change the fact that millions of American children were exposed to levels of mercury through vaccines that exceeded comparable federal guidelines. Many parents, and a growing number of scientists, believe that this mercury exposure may have contributed to the explosive growth in autism spectrum disorders, and neurological and behavioral disorders that this country has experienced…’
From that excerpt from a report to Congress, it is clear that Mercury is dangerous, and the CDC has played around dangerously with children’s lives, and that the mercury/Autism/ASD link is certainly not settled.
You know yourself the majority of ‘Scientific Papers’ are financed in one way or another by Big Pharma, and the bias in them is to be expected (as Ben Goldacre might say).
It happened with cigarettes, lead, mercury, Bisphenol A etc. A number of chemicals banned in Europe are still allowed in the US, thanks to the Corporations lobbyists.
In the case of vaccines, the government is also backing the same horse as Big Pharma, and mostly backed also by the MSM (you explained how there was a time the MSM backed the dissidents).
