When our kids were born in 2002, we quickly learned of a commonly held suspicion that some of the childhood vaccines, the most notable one being the “MMR” (Measles, Mumps and Rubella), that use thimerosal (a mercury compound) as a preservative are causing autism in young children. 

As a parent, I can think of few tougher trials a family can undergo than to find out that a child has autism.  To then add the knowledge that the autism might have been caused by an avoidable vaccination, must be gut-wrenching.

Thanks to DaddyTypes, we learned about an article which exposes a coverup involving drug companies, senators, the CDC and the FDA.

Thimerosal is manufactured by Eli Lilly.  The Salon article (you need to watch an ad to see it, and it’s worth the wait) draws a string of documented connections between data that was presented to Eli Lilly, actions that the drug maker took to present thimerosal as safe, and contributions made by Eli Lilly to lawmakers who then proposed legislation to protect Eli Lilly from liability.

Thoughout the history of the thimerosal debate, there are many studies and it is very difficult to interpret them without some serious medical and biochemistry training.  There were so many quotes I wanted to pull from the Salon article, but this one resonated with me the most:

“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,” says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

I encourage you to read the article on Salon and draw your own conclusions.  My wife and I are fairly conservative and often look skeptically at scare campaigns starring “evil corporation X” and “corrupt government agency Y” but some time ago we made the decision not to give our children the MMR vaccine, and now we’re going to be looking at other vaccines very closely.  Our rationale was not that we’re convinced that there’s a major government conspiracy (though the Salon piece gives us pause), but that the risk that our child might get mumps, etc. was not worth the risk of autism.  You can get past mumps, but autism is final.

And thank you to DaddyTypes for bringing this to our attention.

Watch discussion of this topic via Technorati.  I encourage you to email this one to your friends with young children of vaccination age.