Excellent article by News Target

You have probably seen your nurse insert a syringe into a large vial, extract some liquid, and then leave a substantial amount of vaccine in the original container. If you've witnessed this seemingly benign procedure, you've seen how vaccine manufacturers are saving money at the expense of public health. In order to store larger amounts of vaccine at a lower cost, companies began offering "multi-dose units" while adding preservatives to prevent contaminations. That way doctors can open and close a vaccine container, inviting germs into the once-sterile solution, while assuring the public that those contaminants are quickly killed by the preservative.

Sound familiar? It's the same story of corporate America's love affair with preservatives. It saves them money, while posing an undue risk to your health. But like many toxic preservatives found in food, a vaccine preservative kills more than just bacteria and fungi; it can lead to extensive neurological damage in your children, and has even been implicated in autism.

Thimerosal is the preservative of choice for vaccine manufacturers. First introduced by Eli Lilly and Company in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the company began selling it as a preservative in vaccines in the 1940s. Thimerosal contains 49.6 percent mercury by weight and is metabolized or degraded into ethylmercury and thiosalicylate. Mercury, or more precisely, ethylmercury, is the principle agent that kills contaminants. Unfortunately, mercury also kills much more than that.

The Department of Defense classifies mercury as a hazardous material that could cause death if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Studies indicate that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines. Mercury poisoning has been linked to cardiovascular disease, autism, seizures, mental retardation, hyperactivity, dyslexia and many other nervous system conditions. That's why the FDA rigorously limits exposure to mercury in foods and drugs. Some common sources of mercury include dental amalgam fillings, various vaccines and certain fish contaminated by polluted ocean waters.

The toxicity of mercury has never been in question. The real question is precisely how much mercury-laced thimerosal is toxic, and what are the possible consequences for our children at low doses?

Eli Lilly and Co. supposedly answered this question for us back in 1930. Concluding thimerosal to be of "a very low order of toxicity . . . for man," the company hired its own doctors to perform thimerosal experiments in Indianapolis City Hospital on meningitis patients during a severe outbreak in 1929. This 60-year-old evidence was still quoted on the company's brochures as recently as 1990. Andrew Waters, who is involved in a lawsuit against Eli Lilly, claims that most critical studies on the toxicity of thimerosal were suppressed by the company until now.

Read the rest of it here.

Posted by Becca

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