Hi,

I didn't realize what a heated debate was going on regarding vaccines. Not until the other day when someone criticised me for posting an article about the lack of autism amongst the Amish community. The article was suggesting that it was because the Amish do not vaccinate their children. I was told there was no link between vaccines and autism and I should stop reading crank sites.

I thought F*CK THAT, actually. So set out to get to know what the debate was about. He said he wanted scientific sources. I found them for him. He didn't care, said it had all been done and dusted. Some people just want their bias confirmed, and don't actually want to be shown to be wrong. But what had been done and dusted??

It turns out that, when it comes to the dangers of vaccines, everyone refers to six studies commissioned by the CDC regarding the harmfulness of Thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines. No world organisation refers to anything else when discussing the studies into their potential harm. The NHS takes its stance directly from the results of these six studies, as does the WHO.

Even though it has been phased out, since 1999, Thimerosal is still contained in vaccines sent to the third world countries, and also it is given to all babies via the influenza jab, which I read on the FDA website. The official line is that there is no evidence that it is harmful or has led to autism.

Am I being naive and it is actually common knowledge that there were in fact over 165 independant and peer reviewed scientific studies into the harmfulness of Thimerosal? I'm not making any judgments, but would love to know why they were overriden by the CDC, and not even referred to, as far as I know. I recommend having a look at some of these papers.

This link gives access to the 165 papers, with further links to each of the independant studies. Get acquainted.

Abstract

There are over 165 studies that have focused on Thimerosal, an organic-mercury (Hg) based compound, used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, and found it to be harmful. Of these, 16 were conducted to specifically examine the effects of Thimerosal on human infants or children with reported outcomes of death; acrodynia; poisoning; allergic reaction; malformations; auto-immune reaction; Well’s syndrome; developmental delay; and neurodevelopmental disorders, including tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism. In contrast, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that Thimerosal is safe and there is “no relationship between [T]himerosal[-]containing vaccines and autism rates in children.” This is puzzling because, in a study conducted directly by CDC epidemiologists, a 7.6-fold increased risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy was found. The CDC’s current stance that Thimerosal is safe and that there is no relationship between Thimerosal and autism is based on six specific published epidemiological studies coauthored and sponsored by the CDC. The purpose of this review is to examine these six publications and analyze possible reasons why their published outcomes are so different from the results of investigations by multiple independent research groups over the past 75+ years.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/247218/