The Sunday Times reports vaccine outcry.

March 13, 2006

Print this page Vaccine outcryBy LOUISE PEMBLE12mar06CHILD autism rates have fallen in the US since mercury was removed from childhood vaccines, a breakthrough medical study has found.The controversial finding – published recently in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons – has reignited debate about whether a sharp rise in childhood neurological disorders in the 1990s was triggered by some new vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative

(thimerosal). But the US Centre for Disease Control has rejected the findings of medical expert Mark Geier, president of the Genetic Centres of America. It denied thimerosal had caused an increase in autism and learning difficulties. Yet for years devastated parents have been telling how children suddenly developed autism after a vaccination. They've been lobbying the government to investigate whether mercury exposure in the first 18 months of life causes brain damage. When Dr Geier's team examined figures from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, the US Department of Education and the Vaccine Safety Data Link, they found strong evidence to support this. In some cases, children exposed to mercury had an eight-fold risk of developing a neurological disorder. Thimerosal was phased out of US vaccines by 2003. In Australia, it had been removed from nearly all vaccines on the Australian childhood immunisation schedule by 2000. "Today, all

vaccines used in the Australian Childhood Immunisation Schedule are thimerosal-free, with the exception of one, a hepatitis B vaccine that still contains a trace." privacy terms © Sunday Times "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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