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Triumph of the anti-vaccination movement: Measles outbreak.

Friday 02 May 2008 at 09:13 am
In the past decade or so, a worrisome movement has cropped up that seems hell-bent on using bad science to try to protect their children: People who refuse to have their children vaccinated for various childhood diseases out of fear that their children will wind up brain damaged, or worse. It seems that they've triumphed: seven US states have reported an outbreak of measles to the Centers for Disease Control. Figures released by the CDC state that 64 cases of full-blown measles have been reported to doctors, with more expected to appear as the year continues. Slightly over one fifth of the patients have been hospitalized for complications of same, usually pneumonia on top of the measles, though to be fair thirteen of the children were too young to be safely vaccinated (under one year) and one person actually had received the standard two doses of vaccine.

The movement got its start when someone discovered that a preservative used in vaccines, thimerosol, contains as part of its molecular structure the element mercury, which is known to have neurotoxic effects in humans. Their reasoning goes that since mercury is toxic to humans it's toxic to children, and someone along the way conflated exposure to mercury containing compounds with autism, which seems to be a condition that sparks faux compassion in far too many people.. but I digress. However, thimerosol hasn't been used in pediatric vaccines for years. Moreover, most vaccines don't even use thimerosol as a preservative, and haven't since the early 1980's. The movement also makes the fragmentary claim that thimerosol is comprised of almost half mercury.. by weight.

Let's look at the molecular structure of thimerosol and do a little arithmetic. The chemical formula for Ethyl(2-mercaptobenzoato-(2-)-O,S) mercurate(1-) sodium is C9H9HgNaO2S. The atomic weight of Carbon is 12.01; of hydrogen 1.00; of mercury 200.59; of sodium 22.99; of oxygen 16.00; of sulfur 32.07. (12.01 * 9) + (1.00 * 9) + 200.59 + 22.99 + (16.00 * 2) + 32.07 results in a sum molecular mass of 404.74. Hefty, but what they aren't telling you is that a) mercury is a massive metal, and b) there is only one atom of mercury in an molecule of thimerosol. What we have here is someone tailoring the facts so that they sound much more scary, and thus credible in today's "if you're not for us, you're against us" social climate. On top of this, babies and children seem to excrete thimerosol metabolites much more rapidly than people think they do. Some vaccines, like the measles-mumps-rubella complex never contained mercury compounds, not that they'll tell you that. The mercury/vaccination/autism studies of the past few years also fail to find a causal link between vaccination of children and autism. What they do suggest, however, is that the first appearance of autism does tend to happen around the time that kids are vaccinated anyway. Please let me direct you to the following medical studies that aren't part of rense.com:


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two comments recorded.

The overall lack of scientific literacy and inability to discern between propoganda and science is exceptionally worrisome.

The thing about thimerosol is, if you know anything about chemistry, you know that just because an element is toxic doesn’t mean compounds containing it are toxic, or even dangerous. Take, for example, sodium chloride: Here you have something which is comprised of sodium – an element which combusts in the presence of oxygen and chlorine – which was used as a weapon in WWI. Together they make table salt, a substance which not only isn’t toxic but which we will die without. Meaning, obviously, that that instead of loking at the toxicity of the components, we need to look at the compound itself.(Of course, I know you know all that…)

Bah, I rant.

I think what it comes to is, people right now are very desperate to find a magic bullet – the one substance or compound which is causing all their problems – because the alternative is too big and scary to think about. Which would you rather do? Eliminate high fructose corn syrup, non-organic foods, and and a handful of preservatives from your diet? Or admit that as time goes on we’ll continue to find that everythign interacts in very complex ways and you can’t really remove all risk from your world, you can just try to keep from exposing yourself to too much of it?

Hasufin - 02 05 08 - 10:21 - Reply to comment?

The quality of scientific education in this country is worrisome – most students have no interest at all in how things work, and are sufficiently enamoured by the mass media that they’ll accept pretty much whatever anyone tells them that is couched in terms of authority. Authority does no wrong.

That’s precisely my point – the outermost orbitals of the mercury atoms are fully occupied by a sulfur atom and a carbon atom, and thus are nonreactive.

People are desperate for any reasons that things are going so horribly wrong, and by blaming things they don’t understand they think that they’ll find some peace of mind, and possibly some leverage that they can use to force things to be more to their liking (a.k.a., lawsuits, which are the preferred martial art in this country). They also probably don’t want things to change too much, in any way that they’ll have to take a direct hand in.

The Doctor (URL) - 03 05 08 - 01:08 - Reply to comment?


  
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