Just Say No To Mercury

Say 'No' to Mercury in Flu Shots
Opinion | Editorial
Savannah Morning News
greg powell | Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 12:30 am


Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in most flu vaccines in our country.

You are filled with thoughts of joy as you sit down and roll up your sleeve. You want the very best for the new life that's growing inside you.

You want to do everything possible to ensure the health and safety of that precious child.

Then you feel a little stick in your arm. Good, now you've done one more thing to protect your baby.

Or have you?

You have no idea that you were just injected with one of the most toxic substances in the world.

This may sound like a cruel joke or just a science-fiction story, but I can assure you that this is a very real nightmare.

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in most flu vaccines in our country.

When injected into the human body, it quickly converts to a form of organic mercury, known as ethyl-mercury.

This form of mercury, like all forms of mercury, is extremely dangerous.

Numerous animal studies have proven the extreme toxicity of thimerosal.

Some studies have shown that thimerosal dramatically increases fetal deaths in rabbits and rats.

In pigs, ethyl-mercury was shown to cause neurological, urological, and digestive toxicity.

Other rat studies have shown that ethyl-mercury causes pathological lesions of the ovaries, uterus, testes, seminal vesicles, vas deferens and prostate.

In monkeys, injection of thimerosal was shown to cause mercury to deposit in the brain and stay there indefinitely.

Once in the brain, mercury can set in motion a cascade of events leading to a chronic state of inflammation in the brain and resulting in destruction of neurons.

As a pharmacist, I can tell you with absolute certainty that if we had these kinds of animal studies with any other drug, that drug would be recalled by the government immediately because of public safety.

The amount of mercury in one flu shot is 25 micrograms.

According to federal guidelines, a person would have to weigh about 550 pounds for this amount of mercury to be considered safe.

The heavy use of several thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines in the 1990s has been linked by some researchers to the epidemic levels of autism in our country.

I believe, like many parents of autistic children, that the large amounts of mercury these children received, when they were just tiny infants, caused brain damage leading to autism.

I also believe that there is a good chance that mercury from vaccines and other sources is a factor in many various other neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

This information leads one to ask: Why is thimerosal still being used in flu shots, and why hasn't the government removed it?

I don't know the answer to that question.

What I can say is that, in my opinion, thimerosal is an extremely dangerous substance and has absolutely no place in any vaccine or in any other product that is used in or on the human body.

Contrary to this logic, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, being fully aware of the dangers associated with mercury, aggressively promotes flu shots for pregnant women, children, the elderly and people with chronic health conditions.

Ironically, these are the very people who are most vulnerable to mercury toxicity.

Flu shots without mercury are available.

I encourage all people who are planning to get a flu shot, especially pregnant women, to request a flu shot which is free of mercury.

I also encourage health care providers to provide verbal informed consent to all patients to whom they are giving a thimerosal-containing influenza vaccine.

As health-care providers, we have a duty to ensure the safety and well-being of our patients.

Injecting patients with mercury is not a way to do that. This is not a chance we should take.

We should err on the side of caution.

Greg Powell is a Savannah pharmacist.