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."
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:4, Interesting)
So far, no credible study has ever shown a link between the vaccinations and autism.
Yes, but incredible non-study has linked bobble-head medi-uh personalities with spurious claims.
A lie can run around the world while truth is still getting its boots on.
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy#Population_studies [wikipedia.org]
I didn't post a link because it's the second thing that shows up when you search for Thiomersal on Google.
Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, so in the first half of your post, you've just effectively taken the position that nobody should ever ingest anything because it may not be perfectly safe 100% of the time, and that a lack of evidence that something is perfectly safe is really evidence that we just haven't found the vanishingly small minority of people in which an adverse reaction is possible. Oh, but you for some reason only want to apply this to Thimerosal for some reason. We know for a fact that diseases, which can be contained and in some cases eradicated through vaccination, kill and incapacitate people. There is no proof, or even strong evidence that Thimerosal at the levels it's found in some vaccines has adverse effects anywhere near as bad as the diseases that the vaccines protect against.
As for anecdotal reports of "children changed pretty suddenly after getting mercury-containing vaccines, going from normal to autistic", well, I can find loads of anecdotal evidence for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and El Chupa Cabra. Doesn't mean they're real. If something is so widespread and easily identified as these stories suggest, there should be *some* scientific evidence for the phenomenon, but there's yet to be a single, credible study that shows a connection between vaccines and autism. Not one. Why is that? As for studying children, you don't need to "keep a million kids in sealed bubbles during their first 3 years to see if giving half of them mercury-containing vaccines causes a small handful of them to become autistic", you do long term studies following the health of a sampling of children and look for correlations. Been done, and guess what- found nothing.