Anti vax liars
The title was first used by Peter bowditch who has the Ratbags site. I just stole it for awhile. Below is a letter I sent to someone who wrote me raising hell about vaccinating children against deadly childhood disease
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The arguments that you use, which are the ones heard most from the activist community are not only wrong, they are dangerously wrong.
No one denies that mercury is an environmental concern, and has been since the early 1800s since the British recognized “Mad Hatter” disease. However, on the list of environmental concerns, thimerisol mercury falls somewhere toward the bottom of the list, if not at the very bottom.
To a physician the symptoms presented by mercury poisoning and diseases attributed to mercury, such as autism, as so different as to be from different planets. There is absolutely no confusing the two. Not only that, but mercury, as encountered in the environment, has varying degrees of toxicity. Elemental mercury is pretty non-toxic, as evidenced by the fact that children used to break thermometers in their mouths and swallow the mercury at the rate of several thousand a year. There was never a case of mercury poisoning and the treating physicians were far more concerned with the broken glass than the mercury. A typical thermometer contained 100,000 times as much mercury as a vaccination.
Mercury vapor is moderately toxic. If you were to inhale the contents of a broken mercury bulb it would be wise to obtain prompt medical treatment.
Methyl mercury, formed by the anaerobic metabolism of certain bacteria in (mostly) marine sediments is highly toxic, and there have been numerous deaths, however, it can be treated medically, with a very good chance of success, if diagnosed early. (All of the arguments used in the arguments against vaccines are using the toxicity data from methyl mercury.)
The metabolic end of ethyl mercury (which is what happens with thimerisol) is not particularly toxic at all. In fact, it is excreted from the body so quickly that until very recently it had not even been measured accurately.
In our community, two small coal fired power plants are estimated to release 75 pounds of mercury per year – almost all as a vapor. This alone is sufficient to produce 500 billion doses of thimerisol per year … and this is only a small source – and there are no reported health effects, although there is concern that low-level effects might be there at rates where they cannot be separated from the background noise.
This is a site that you should read, written by a physician http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flushes-its-credibility-down.html … there are many, many others out there available to you, which not only disprove the idea of thimerisol/disease links, but large scale experiments have actually been carried out. Canada and Denmark for instance removed the preservative before the US. In both those countries there has been no change in disease rates. On the other hand, when the Japanese vaccination rate of vaccination for pertussis (whooping cough) fell because of unfounded fears of the vaccine, rates of both morbidity and mortality from pertussis increased back to pre-1950s levels within two years.
So while I agree that environmental toxins should be addressed, the use of thimerisol in vaccines is not a problem that needs addressing. The time and energy of those in the activist community could be far better spent on one of many other issues.
The Missouri Law, which you read about in Missouri Leadership, was both silly and unneeded, and potentially dangerous, because there are vaccines, where substitutes for thimerisol are not appropriate. Some single dose vaccines are available, but at greatly increased cost.
=======================================
The arguments that you use, which are the ones heard most from the activist community are not only wrong, they are dangerously wrong.
No one denies that mercury is an environmental concern, and has been since the early 1800s since the British recognized “Mad Hatter” disease. However, on the list of environmental concerns, thimerisol mercury falls somewhere toward the bottom of the list, if not at the very bottom.
To a physician the symptoms presented by mercury poisoning and diseases attributed to mercury, such as autism, as so different as to be from different planets. There is absolutely no confusing the two. Not only that, but mercury, as encountered in the environment, has varying degrees of toxicity. Elemental mercury is pretty non-toxic, as evidenced by the fact that children used to break thermometers in their mouths and swallow the mercury at the rate of several thousand a year. There was never a case of mercury poisoning and the treating physicians were far more concerned with the broken glass than the mercury. A typical thermometer contained 100,000 times as much mercury as a vaccination.
Mercury vapor is moderately toxic. If you were to inhale the contents of a broken mercury bulb it would be wise to obtain prompt medical treatment.
Methyl mercury, formed by the anaerobic metabolism of certain bacteria in (mostly) marine sediments is highly toxic, and there have been numerous deaths, however, it can be treated medically, with a very good chance of success, if diagnosed early. (All of the arguments used in the arguments against vaccines are using the toxicity data from methyl mercury.)
The metabolic end of ethyl mercury (which is what happens with thimerisol) is not particularly toxic at all. In fact, it is excreted from the body so quickly that until very recently it had not even been measured accurately.
In our community, two small coal fired power plants are estimated to release 75 pounds of mercury per year – almost all as a vapor. This alone is sufficient to produce 500 billion doses of thimerisol per year … and this is only a small source – and there are no reported health effects, although there is concern that low-level effects might be there at rates where they cannot be separated from the background noise.
This is a site that you should read, written by a physician http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flushes-its-credibility-down.html … there are many, many others out there available to you, which not only disprove the idea of thimerisol/disease links, but large scale experiments have actually been carried out. Canada and Denmark for instance removed the preservative before the US. In both those countries there has been no change in disease rates. On the other hand, when the Japanese vaccination rate of vaccination for pertussis (whooping cough) fell because of unfounded fears of the vaccine, rates of both morbidity and mortality from pertussis increased back to pre-1950s levels within two years.
So while I agree that environmental toxins should be addressed, the use of thimerisol in vaccines is not a problem that needs addressing. The time and energy of those in the activist community could be far better spent on one of many other issues.
The Missouri Law, which you read about in Missouri Leadership, was both silly and unneeded, and potentially dangerous, because there are vaccines, where substitutes for thimerisol are not appropriate. Some single dose vaccines are available, but at greatly increased cost.
posted by John Stone at 3:36 AM
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