dogman6126
Community Member
- MBTI
- ENFJ-wasINFJ
Here was some interesting information.One of the most contentious vaccine controversies to date is the proposed causal relationship between the receipt of the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist in the UK, was the first to postulate the so-called 'leaky-gut' theory. Wakefield's theory was supported by studies that identified measles virus nucleic acid sequences in the blood cells and intestinal tissue of some children who had experienced severe behavioral regression.[12,13] A similar investigation with a larger sample failed to reveal persistence of measles virus nucleic acids in the peripheral blood of children with autism-spectrum disorder.[14] Subsequently, results of several large population- and ecologic-based studies have failed to provide any support for Wakefield's theory.[15] In light of the compelling evidence refuting Wakefield's contention, most of his coauthors have published a formal retraction of the findings of the original article and the journal Lancet has recently fully retracted the original publication based on several elements of the paper being proven to be false.[16,17] Further details about this controversy and autism research have been published in a recent book.[18] The Institute of Medicine (IOM) in a report on vaccine safety has stated that "the committee concludes that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between MMR vaccine and autism".[19] Although there are rare side effects such as immediate hypersensitivity reactions and febrile seizures, as well as mild fever and rash that occur relatively commonly in association with its use, the MMR vaccine continues to be safe, efficacious and recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the US CDC, and endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP).
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722174_2
I want to point out a few parts of this.Thimerosal is another hot button issue that has been debated in relationship to the onset of autism. Thimerosal has served as a preservative in vaccines since the 1930s. It is added to multidose vaccine vials for its bactericidal properties to preserve the sterility of the contents. In the late 1990s, the government became aware of and concerned about mercury exposure in the general population and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published standards of safe limits of methylmercury exposure.[20] Thimerosal contains 49.6% mercury by weight and metabolizes into ethylymercury and thiosalicylate.[15] The use of thimerosal came under fire as more thimerosal-containing vaccines were added to the recommended infant and child immunization schedule. The possibility of subsequent neurodevelopmental problems related to the cumulative amounts of thimerosal that a child was receiving in the first 2 years of life, the total amount of mercury being administered at a single clinic visit, especially for the very smallest of infants (including premature infants in whom safety data were unavailable at the time) were raised as concerns.[20,21]
In 1999, the AAP and the US Public Health Service (USPHS) took a cautionary stance and issued a joint statement calling for the removal of thimerosal from pediatric vaccines.[22] At that time, the risks of low-dose ethylmercury in vaccines were unknown, although there was no evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines contributed to toxic mercury levels. Studies conducted subsequently suggest that ethylmercury behaves very differently to the more concerning environmental neurotoxin methylmercury.[21] The action taken by the AAP and USPHS had a significant ripple effect on the general public's acceptance of vaccine safety. The birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, which at the time contained thimerosal, was subsequently withheld by many healthcare providers and the hepatitis B vaccination campaign experienced a serious setback. The removal of thimerosal from vaccine vials has also increased production costs, which are ultimately passed on to the consumer. At present, with the exception of some influenza vaccines, none of the routinely recommended pediatric vaccines contain thimerosal as a preservative.
This is where the media and a panicked public grasped onto and formed a bad opinion of thimerosal.At that time, the risks of low-dose ethylmercury in vaccines were unknown, although there was no evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines contributed to toxic mercury levels.
This is very true by common sense if you are aware of basic chemistry principles. These two chemical compounds are very different. Just because they contain elemental mercury does not mean it will have the same chemical properties and effects of elemental mercury. This is also true to the different compounds. Just because they both contain mercury does not mean that they are both harmful, or at least harmful in the same way.Studies conducted subsequently suggest that ethylmercury behaves very differently to the more concerning environmental neurotoxin methylmercury.
Here is a quote from a scientific periodical (a much more reliable source with actual evidence *please read ahead in the article for evidence, this is a quote from the conclusion* and not full of conjecture like media sources) that talks about this.
From the same scientific article:Central to the public story of thimerosal has been a battle over the meaning of “mercury.” Those in the scientific community take it as axiomatic that all forms of mercury are not created equal; in particular, there are good reasons to believe that the ethylmercury used in vaccines is very different from the methylmercury studied in environmental science. In public discourse, however, such distinctions are subsumed under a single entity, mercury, with a long and very public history. Perhaps unfairly, history has endowed mercury in all of its forms with a notoriety that is not easy to erase, as will quickly be discovered by any pediatrician trying to convince an anxious mother that a “trace” of mercury in a vaccine is safe. One cannot simply brush aside this perception in constructing policy.
This is supported by earlier reading. I feel it necessary to directly point this out:The first is directed at the insinuation prevalent on the Internet that thimerosal was a dubious product smuggled into vaccines by avaricious drug companies bent on profits rather than the welfare of children. A more sober assessment would suggest that thimerosal was the result of ethical scientific and corporate research in the 1920s and 1930s, specifically to improve vaccine safety. Despite questions regarding its efficacy, it has performed well in practice and posed toxicity so low as to be considered negligible until recent years.
Also:Understanding why mercury was first incorporated into childhood vaccines leads back to the preantibiotic era, a time when physicians employed a variety of compounds known as “germicides” to combat bacteria. Perhaps the best known was Joseph Lister’s carbolic acid, developed in the 1860s for surgical antisepsis and later employed as a germicide and preservative known as phenol.5 Yet a variety of mercury compounds were also used for the same purpose. No less an authority than Robert Koch championed the use of mercury chloride as an antiseptic, although the product’s propensity to cause tissue irritation limited its use. In the early 20th century, investigators synthesized a new class of compounds they claimed to be both more effective and less toxic, the organomercurials. Often brilliantly colored, these products soon found widespread usage, from operating suites to home medicine cabinets.6
Thimerosal was one of the most promising new organomercurials that excited the pharmaceutical industry after World War I. It was a white, crystalline powder, approximately 50% mercury by weight, in the form of ethylmercury bound to thiosalicylate. The emerging pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company provided grant support for its synthesis at the University of Chicago and in 1928 patented it under the trade name Merthiolate.7 Over the next several years, Lilly’s investigators H.M. Powell and W.A. Jamieson conducted extensive in vitro testing, showing that thimerosal was 40 to 50 times as effective as phenol against Staphylococcus aureus. The two men evaluated toxicity by injecting the compound into over 300 rabbits and a variety of other animals observed for a week’s time. The animals appeared to tolerate significant doses—up to 20 mg per kg body weight in rabbits and still higher in rats—without apparent injury.8
These encouraging results prompted the Lilly team in 1929 to offer their product to the Indiana General Hospital during an epidemic of meningococcal meningitis. Hospital physicians gave 22 patients as much as 180 mL of a 1% solution of thimerosal intravenously divided over five doses. From a therapeutic standpoint, the trial was a failure, but investigators were struck by how well the patients seemed to tolerate such high doses.9 Combined with the animal studies, the data further reinforced the impression that thimerosal was far more benign than earlier mercurials, preparing the way for its incorporation at low concentrations into a wide range of biological products as a preservative. Vaccines would become an especially important niche.
One of the most troublesome safety issues afflicting early 20th-century child immunization was that of bacterial contamination. This could easily occur on a sporadic basis, when general practitioners might have to draw vaccines from multidose vials under poor hygienic conditions. Contamination of entire lots could be much more spectacular. In Columbia, South Carolina, in 1916, a tainted batch of typhoid vaccine stored at room temperature caused 68 severe reactions, 26 abscesses, and 4 deaths. A still more disturbing incident took place in 1928 in Queensland, Australia, where 12 of 21 children inoculated with contaminated diphtheria vaccine died of multiple staphylococcal abscesses and toxemia. The need for effective preservatives was readily apparent and represented one of the most important safety issues for the promoters of new vaccines.10
In this context, Powell and Jamieson’s studies suggested that Merthiolate had an unexpected advantage. The problem with existing preservatives such as phenol and cresol was that they often reduced the potency of the biological products they were intended to protect. By contrast, thimerosal not only inhibited bacterial growth in vaccines and antisera at concentrations as low as 1:10000 but also had no such deleterious effects.11 A series of other investigators confirmed these findings over the next several years, and by 1940 thimerosal was incorporated into diphtheria toxoid, meningococcal serum, pertussis vaccine, and a host of other biological products.12 Indeed, in 1938 Lilly’s assistant director of research listed Merthiolate along with insulin as one of the five most important drugs ever developed by the company.13
This makes it quite obvious that it was not some conspiracy of the pharmicutical companies or the government as you suggested [MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION] in your comment:In 1999, the AAP and the US Public Health Service (USPHS) took a cautionary stance and issued a joint statement calling for the removal of thimerosal from pediatric vaccines.
This is an example of you only seeing what you want to see and reaching false conclusions as I have pointed out in another thread. Please, try to see more than just what agrees with your own perspective.The CDC and FDA who are the people you are supposed to trust were feeding you thimerosal STRAIGHT INTO YOUR BLOODSTREAM until a PUBLIC OUTCRY STOPPED THEM
Do you understand? The only thing that has lessened the poisoning that the authorities were knowingly and willfully carrying out was an outcry from the public
Do you understand? Public=right, lying authorities=wrong
In reality, they thought it would do good, which it was the best at doing the job they made it for. And it was not a public outcry, rather a cautionary stance in case something was wrong with it. In this case, yes, there are some worries of thimersal in vaccines given to young children, that's why in the end, after further study, they kept thimersal out of the vaccines (with the acception of influenza).
To directly address your comment about an overwhelmed immune system in young children, please read the following:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/722174_6Maturation of the immune response occurs in an orderly fashion from approximately 16 weeks gestation and slowly gains momentum in the first year of life. This, along with the presence of maternal antibodies provided passively, may account for the need for multiple injections to complete the primary series of several vaccines.[49,50] Data suggest that, theoretically, the intact immune system could respond to 10^9–10^11 different antigens.[51] Today's vaccines contain far fewer antigens than the immune system is designed to respond to. Medical advances in vaccinology have contributed to the decline in the number of antigens in modern vaccines. For example, the whole-cell pertussis vaccine contained approximately 3000 proteins compared with the two to five proteins found in the current acellular pertussis vaccines.[51]
Thus, parents and caregivers should be reassured based on these data that vaccines will not overwhelm or weaken the infant immune system.
Yes, there could be some variation as you suggested muir, but enough variation that the minimal number of proteins in actual vaccines is greater than the child's capacity to deal with when the average is 10^10 antigens? The child would have to have near complete immune suppression BEFORE receiving all of those vaccines over the course of two years for the 10^10 average to be lowered to the 10^3 needed for it to reach immune overload as you suggested. The numbers are there. Its almost impossible.
From the scientific article, I would also like to point out the following:
If you continue to read the IOM report by following the citation in that article, you will see that there is no evidence of autism being caused by vaccines. Case studies are NOT causational. That video you posted muir is an example of a case study.the IOM has already determined over the course of two reviews that available evidence fails to support such a conclusion.
Here is a site that summarizes the report:
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/iom-reports/iom-report-vaccines-and-autism
Here is a site where you can find the original text:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309076366
On page 65 in the causality argument part, this report discusses how there is no evidence to show a causation between autism and vaccines. On other pages, you can see where they reached such a conclusion.
Anyone who will give honest consideration to what I have pointed out, and continues to look at the evidence in the reading I did not point out shows that there is nothing to worry about from vaccines. Most of the media sources and articles arguing otherwise are paranoia of the public and misinformation from media sources.. The fact is, vaccines are safe. The data is there, the evidence, the proof. If anyone wishes to ignore that proof, well then I suppose there's nothing that can be done for them.