Friday, October 28, 2005

Response to Watertown's toxicity

Opinions & Letters
Watertown TAB online

The article [about] Watertown 12th most toxic city in state, points to an association between toxic chemicals and autism. While consciousness of environmental toxins is growing, there is an area of serious exposure that goes unnoticed. For over 70 years, vaccine makers have used mercury (thimerosal) as a cheap preservative in vaccines.

Six years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the EPA, the CDC and the FDA all recommended that vaccine makers eliminate mercury because of the "potential for neurological damage." Amazingly, it is still used in the flu vaccine, and the AAP recommends it for babies whose delicate brains are still developing. There is a mercury-free flu shot available, but the pharmaceutical industry tells us that they make most flu vaccines with mercury because there is no demand for the mercury-free ones. However, most people are unaware of the mercury in these vaccines.

Starting in the late 1980s, more and more mercury-containing vaccines were added to the required list for children and coincidentally, the autism rate exploded. Twenty years ago, autism affected one in 10,000 children, and today it's one in 166. Furthermore, one in every six children has a diagnosis of attention deficit or some other neurological disorder. The government says it's due to better diagnosing.

The CDC points to easily flawed and manipulated population studies to show no link between mercury and neurological disorders. Introduced by Eli Lilly in 1930, thimerosal was tested only once, on 22 adult patients suffering from meningitis. There was no chance for follow-up as all of the patients in this study died. Thimerosal was pronounced safe and later grandfathered in when the FDA was created. The first 11 cases of autism ever documented in 1943, were in children who were among the first to be vaccinated with mercury. The government has never conducted tests on the neurotoxicity of thimerosal, although hundreds of studies show its extreme toxicity.

Recently, many angry parents from national autism organizations came to Washington to ask Congress why the federal government has failed to take action in the face of this epidemic increase in autism. Participants at the Capitol listened to legislators who believe the pharmaceutical industry has undue influence in Congress, making some Congressmen more concerned with the interests of the vaccine makers than in protecting our children against unsafe vaccines.

Anne McElroy Dachel
Media Relations Coordinator
National Autism Association
Chippewa Falls, Wisc.

Posted by Becca

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