More on vaccines and mercury

I’m still getting quite a few responses to last week’s e-Alert (“Protection Money” 12/2/02) about the vaccines for children that contain the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. One of the concerns that many of these e-mails address is the question about protecting the makers of smallpox vaccines from litigation. But comparing the smallpox issue with the thimerosal issue is an “apples and oranges” comparison.

The congressional provision that derails 150 lawsuits against Eli Lilly & Company (the maker of thimerosal) was added to the recently passed Homeland Security Act. Judging from the e-mails I’ve received, there is still a misconception that this provision was intended to protect the makers of smallpox vaccines from litigation. This misconception holds that the thimerosal fallout was simply an unavoidable sacrifice that had to be made in order to help protect Americans from a smallpox bioterrorist attack.

Discussing the dire side effects that some will suffer from a smallpox vaccine, Bill Frist, a Republican senator from Tennessee and the author of “When Every Moment Counts,” a book on bioterrorism, stated, “Of every million people who receive the vaccine, two to four people will die from its complications. Five times that number will become seriously ill from the vaccine.”

Because these risks have been well understood for some time now, the President has already issued an executive order that grants smallpox vaccine manufacturers immunity from liability. Furthermore, the smallpox vaccine does not contain thimerosal. So the Homeland Security Act provision that protects the maker of thimerosal from litigation is entirely unrelated to the smallpox vaccine issue.

Did vaccines containing thimerosal cause autism in some children? That question has raised a heated debate, with both sides offering evidence to support their positions. But whatever the answer to that question may be, the law provides the parents of those autistic children their day in court. That law has been subverted now by the 11th hour provision to the Homeland Security Act. And without question, the one and only winner from that provision is Eli Lilly.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute