The IOM is an agency whose stated purpose is to provide scientific information about medicine to the government and to professionals. It previously had staunchly held the position that vaccines are completely safe. However, in an October 2001 report, the IOM stated that mercury found in vaccines may be linked to the escalating incidence of autism. It also recommends that physicians avoid administering vaccines that contain the mercury-laden preservative thimerosal. Although pharmaceutical companies have stopped using thimerosal in newly produced vaccines, significant stocks of older vaccines that contain the preservative are still available and continue to be in use.
The IOM report is based on a July 16 meeting whose full transcript is available at http://www.iom.edu. In the course of this meeting, Neil Halsey, MD of Johns Hopkins University affirmed that scientists had previously failed to recognize the toxic doses of mercury contained in vaccines because packages label thimerosal content as 0.01%. Apparently, these highly educated scientists had looked at 0.01% as a trivial amount and, until recently, had not thought to convert this percentage figure to its equivalent in micrograms and multiply it by the number of vaccines children receive. When they finally did so, they finally saw that infants were being routinely injected with amounts of mercury considered toxic for adults.
I wonder why this admission comes after manufacturers have been given ample time to substitute thimerosal in vaccine production, and why are the thimerosal-containing vaccines still legal? I also wonder to what extent mercury is the cause behind attention and behavior problems that have reached epidemic proportions in our children. If your child is scheduled for a vaccination, you can now demand that the pediatrician use only vaccines that are free of thimerosal.
Tags: Autism, Vaccines
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