Are health agencies such as the CDC and the FDA covering up evidence
that a mercury preservative in children’s vaccines resulted
in an epidemic of autism?
Rita Shreffler of Nixa, Missouri sent her son’s baby tooth
to a lab back in August 2001. A nine-year-old boy, Andy had been
diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a type of autism, just
one year earlier.
Shreffler had just read a report in the journal of Medical Hypotheses
implying that mercury poisoning linked to an additive in children’s
vaccines could be the cause of such neurological disorders.
A test showed that Andy’s tooth contained a mercury level
of 3,040 parts per billion compared to the limit for mercury in
drinking water of 2 ppb and the limit for mercury amounts of waste
going into a landfill is 200 ppb according to the Environmental
Testing Laboratory.
When Shreffler was asked how Andy was exposed to so much mercury,
she explained that babies had been exposed to excess levels of mercury
from a vaccine preservative called thimerosal.
Some scientists claimed that the vaccine had been discontinued
for cattle back in the early 1990s and couldn’t understand
how it was still being used.
Scientists continued to claim that they were sure this wasn’t
being allowed in the use of children’s vaccines, but they were
wrong.
The questions that resulted from these
studies:
-
Was the use of a mercury preservative in vaccines directly
responsible for the outbreak of autism that is now plaguing
our country?
-
Were the health of millions of infants compromised because
federal health officials feared liability issues regarding their
agencies, vaccine manufacturers and loss of compliance with
the federal vaccine program?
-
Are studies showing a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines
and autism being discounted as a result of conflicts of interest
and data manipulation?
-
Are parents, researchers and members of Congress seeking conspiracies
when none exist making such claims?
An estimated one in 250 American children was diagnosed with autism
in 2002. This was a significant increase from the one in 500 in
2000 and one in 5,000 in the 1980s. Currently, approximately 3,500
families of autistic children are required by Congress to go through
an extra step of going to a special federal vaccine court, before
they engage in any civil litigation.
Mother Jones News March/April
2004
