Proposed Mercury Ban Threatens Vaccines 383
T Murphy writes "Although in the draft stages, a treaty being pushed by the United Nations Environment Programme has a blanket ban on mercury. While the ban would stop the use of mercury in paints or pesticides, it currently has no exemptions to allow for other small uses, such as in thermisol, which is used as a preservative in vaccines. The next meeting to discuss this treaty will be at the end of October."
Summmary (Score:5, Insightful)
To summarize: A draft treaty (with only 2 of 5 planned meetings to draft the treaty having been completed) and not expected to become final for 2 years, is not complete. Is there any reason to believe that the exception for vaccine preservatives won't be present in the final treaty?
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point, which I thought was obvious, is that the chlorine is salt is not toxic. Similar to how the mercury in vaccines is not toxic. It is silly to try to extrapolate the chemical behavior of a molecule based on the behavior of the elements that make it up. Otherwise we could all breath water (plenty of oxygen in there right?) or use it to inflate a blimp (with all that hydrogen). Not to mention the fact that even if the mercury in vaccines were bioavailable and had a long half life, the amounts we are talking about are so tiny that you can easily ingest more mercury from a can of tuna than from a years worth of vaccines.
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:5, Insightful)
IAMNAC....A lot of autism cases have been traced to use of Mercury in vaccines during early childhood. Since Mercury was retired from Baby/Toddlers, cases have started to recede. What makes you believe that mercury would be FORCIBLY injected in bloodstrems of our nation? Mercury makes you more stupid, doesn't have any benefit, stays in the bloodstream for ever. It's also been found that most people have more mercury in their blood than is normal, and today, many are even advising avoiding things like Tuna for this very same reason: the seas have more mercury floating, so fish that lives linger, accumulates more mercury. This is the reason many people look for Fish Oil supplements that have a process for removing most of the mercury, or look for produce from seas that don't (yet) suffer largerly from this problem.
There should be an alternative to Vaccines. We are getting vaccines every year, and the numbers is steadily going up. I don't like injecting Mercury in my blood to avoid a flu once every few years.
Mercury in vaccines and the relationship to autism has been one of the most studied medical items in the past two decades and the results, shown over and over again is that there is 0 link between the two. Better reporting of autism statistics is one of the reason. Another is the definition of autism has been expanded.
Linking autism to mercury in vaccines is just bad math (statistics). There is a very strong relationship to the increase in reported autism cases since the 1960s and the increased consumption of McDonalds french fries over the same period. Both grew at a large rate over the same time period, but nobody claims that french fries cause autism.
It is basic human nature to want to blame somebody else when your child is sick or diagnosed with something like autism. While understandable, blaming the vaccine only discourages others from getting immunized which has a much greater health risk for the population.
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy#Scientific_consensus [wikipedia.org]
"Further evidence of the scientific consensus includes the rejection of a causal link between thiomersal and autism by multiple national and international scientific and medical bodies including the American Medical Association,[45] the American Academy of Pediatrics,[46] the American College of Medical Toxicology,[47] the Canadian Paediatric Society,[48] the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,[2] the Food and Drug Administration,[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,[8] the World Health Organization,[7] the Public Health Agency of Canada,[49] and the European Medicines Agency.[50]"
Referenced and everything. You skip over that and reference the editor of a Wikipedia page as a source proving your point?