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ous - -and wholly unnecessary -- use of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in vaccines
being given to millions of children and pregnant women here and around the world.” Since he
did not state that thimerosal causes autism in this introduction, it would be fair to say that his role
on the vaccine panel would be for the good of the people and their safety. But, later on he goes
to say that “Thompson, who is still employed at CDC, says that for the past decade his superiors
have pressured him and his fellow scientists to lie and manipulate data about the safety of the
mercury-based preservative thimerosal to conceal its causative link to a suite of brain injuries,
including autism.” Even after this he says that the “best science suggests that thimerosal’s complete
removal from vaccines is likely to prompt a significant decline in autism.” This is what
raises concerns about what effect Kennedy could have if the panel were created under the Trump
administration.
This source is helpful and will be used to look at what the Trump administration is possibly
doing and what that means for the public. It is also helpful as it looks at what Andrew Wakefield
is doing, and the role that he could possibly play in shaping the vaccine debate for a second
time. We also get to see what role Robert Kennedy could play in this debate if he were indeed to
chair a new federal panel on vaccine safety which would be about a dozen people, seeing as he
is a vaccine skeptic, that would raise public concern. If this subject were to advance more, it is
possible that I could follow up and look at, in depth, what the panel would do and the effect on
vaccines it would have.
Schuchat, Anne. “Science Summary: CDC Studies on Thimerosal in Vaccines.” Center for Disease Control and
Prevention. Accessed 14 Mar. 2017.
In this source from CDC that is a summary of the studies on thimerosal in vaccines. This is a
compilation of nine studies that each, in some way, show that thimerosal is non toxic in vaccines
and is instead just a preservative that has been used for decades to prevent contamination. They
look at thimerosal exposure in the womb, infancy, early life, and longtime exposure, as well as
the effects within children’s flu shots, neurodevelopmental disorders, certain health outcomes,
and the outcomes with and without thimerosal. The last case in the table compared the outcomes
with and without thimerosal in 1992 in Denmark and Sweden, when they stopped giving thimerosal
vaccines. In comparison with the autism rates in both countries before removal, they found
an increase in autism rates in the years between 1987 and 1999. If the claim that the vaccines are
the cause of autism were true, then the rates in the study should have gone down, which they did
48 TIME May 31, 2017