Saturday, February 11, 2012

How Safe Is Thimerosal As Used in Vaccines?

In his book The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy (which I admit I haven't read, only synopses and reviews) , author Jim Marrs makes the claim that a vast cabal of global financiers and corporatists, hidden 'New World Order' elites and monied greedheads is effectively poisoning all of us by enabling assorted toxic detritus to flow deliberately into our foods, water, and even meds. The ostensible purpose is to compromise our health to such an extent we emerge as little better than walking zombies ....unable to even perceive how they're stealing the world around us, far less defend ourselves. While Marrs makes what seems to be a compelling case, he ultimately falls on his own hubris by somehow linking this matrix to the designs of "leftists, Socialists" and even Obama. In the end, like so many, he falls into the trap of failing to parse distinctions between Socialism, National Socialism (e.g. of the Nazis) and Liberalism. This is one major reason I never bothered to read the book, since I can't stomach such conflations, nor historical ineptitude (despite the fact Marrs did a very respectable job in his Kennedy assassination book, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy)

One of Marrs' claims does seem to hold true, from my own investigations, and that is the collusion of assorted government agencies in writing off threats to health via toxic chemicals, and even allowing many of these to be used for our own health "benefits". The classic example is the use of fluoride in municipal water systems all across the country, ostensibly to "fight tooth decay".

Some years back, while perusing The Project Censored Yearbook (1999, p. 74) I encountered a piece by Joel Griffiths and Chris Byron entitled: 'Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb.' This well-documented essay kind of shattered my illusions, one could say, especially regarding trusting the pronouncements of government on anything. This is not to say I am "anti-government" - only that I am a government skeptic. I am not convinced in all instances that it will do the right thing, if by doing so it inveighs against their own interests and agendas. Look no further here than their 50 -year long formal claim that the Kennedy Assassination is a closed book and "Lee Oswald done it". Yeah, right! And human virgins can have babies too!

So my experience with the Kennedy assassination alone, leading me to write the book, The JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis, at once puts me in the government skeptic camp, though I might have been less hardened on it- at least in terms of general citizen welfare, before I discovered the Project Censored Yearbook article on fluoride.

Anyway, in that article the authors note that the original safety arguments for fluoride were "developed by scientists working with the Manhattan Project" - as a ruse to counter possible litigation for atomic workers (since fluoride came off as a byproduct). This despite the fact the original atomic bomb scientists had confirmed that fluoride was "one of the most toxic substances known".

They also added that if litigation was to be suppressed, PR had to be confected to blunt any alarm by the public. To that end, government misinformation campaigns began in earnest in the 1950s (around the same time as "duck and cover" gibberish emerged) to deflect the public's toxicity concerns by referring to flouride's "benefits in fighting tooth decay". This brainwashing has since been sounded so often and convincingly that it's become part and parcel of that vast constellation of accepted national verities, and embedded in public consciousness to the extent that only anti-science whackos, rabid anti-tech neo-Luddites or John Birchers dispute it! (So don't ever openly admit to your dentist that you are "anti-fluoride"!)

The success of the PR campaign, meanwhile, paved the way for the concerted work of many thousands of other atomic workers - who were told the radiation from the plutonium they had to work with (e.g. for triggers used on nuclear warheads) was "harmless" and who as a result, haven't been able to collect a red cent though they are dying like flies from some 22 varieties of cancer. See more at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1632228,00.html

Meanwhile, on the "health" front, propaganda was pumped non-stop to the effect that "fluoridation re-minerals tooth enamel" while denying any negatives. This was used to claim that it was essential to fight dental caries (cavities) now widespread in youngsters, by putting fluoride in drinking water. But it wasn't just any fluoride but an industrial waste byproduct called "hydrofluorosilic acid" which has been linked to:

- bone cancer in male children was between two and seven times greater than for non-fluoridated areas

- pre-natal deaths 15% higher than in neighboring non-fluoridated areas.

-impairment of immune system function

- skeletal fluorosis, from chronic exposure, including: severe joint and bone pain, sensations of burning, pricking in the limbs, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders

- lowering of IQs, in children exposed to fluoride over prolonged time, and animal studies disclose shrinkage of brains of rats exposed to the equivalent of 8 glasses of water per day (See, e.g. Brain Research, Vol. 784, pp. 284-298)

As I noted in a blog from three years ago, the $50 question has been why the CDC not come out and warned us of these risks? I gave at least two plausible reasons: 1) CDC as an arm of government that has actively pursued propaganda (as for the atomic workers, and more recently giving short shrift to toxic chemicals in terms of carcinogenic effects- see 'The Secret History of the War on Cancer') is unlikely to overturn more than 50 years of carefully crafted spin on fluoride. And (2), to do so would invite thousands of suits or actions by communities already using it- and vast extra cost to the government!

But fluoride is merely the tip of the iceberg. We're all swimming in a veritable sea of toxic industrial chemicals - for which recent studies have now shown that more than 20,000 have been kept concealed from us in terms of their effects. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/america-toxic-1.html

It is quite obvious, as it has been for the fluoride (and as it was for the atomic workers poisoned by radiation) that it is a sacrifice foisted on citizens to preserve industrial capacity in areas related to war expansion, or intense industry. Preservation of that capacity also means not having to pay out enormous sums for cleanups, or cancers, or terrible iillnesses that arise on account of contact with toxins or radioactive materials. Meanwhile, people get told over and over that "too much fat" is causing their cancers - whether of lungs, bladders, prostate gland or breasts. Never mind the evidence from more than 80 years of cumulative data which discloses it's chemicals in the environment that contribute more than fifty times as much! (See 'The Secret History of the War on Cancer', by Devra Davis, Chapters 1-4).

The issue of thimerosal, such as used as a mercury -based preservative, seems to be similar in some respects but not all. For one thing, not all citizens need to get vaccines every year, for another thimerosal has been effectively phased out for such use since around 2001, according to the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm

Note specifically the section therein under: Is Thimerosal Used in Other Vaccines?

"Since 2001, no new vaccine licensed by FDA for use in children has contained thimerosal as a preservative, and all vaccines routinely recommended by CDC for children younger than 6 years of age have been thimerosal–free, or contain only trace amounts of thimerosal, except for multi–dose formulations of influenza vaccine"

Of course, this may be little consolation for the millions of parents who unknowlingly subjected their toddlers to thimerosal - generally from 1980 through 2000, and have expressed fears of an autism connection. To be sure, such speculation has been repeatedly smacked down by the medical -industrial complex and their drug-supported "journals" - as has the notion that environmental carcinogens cause hundreds of times more cancers than foods. However, background research doesn't appear to support such a stance, which in that regard, resembles the one that fluoride was perfectly okay.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. for example, in his article, Deadly Immunity (Rolling Stone, June, 2005)observes that Eli Lilly, the first pharmaceutical company to use thimerosal, "knew from the start its products could cause death or even damage in animals and humans". Kennedy goes on to write that in 1935, Pittman-Moore (another vaccine manufacturer at the time) "warned Eli Lilly that half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal -based vaccines became sick, leading researchers to declare the preservative 'unsatisfactory as a serum for use on dogs'."

Kennedy then goes on to write how, during World War II, the "Defense Department used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers" but reuqired Lilly to label it "poison". Kennedy then cites a 1967 study reported in Applied Microbiology, which "found thimerosal killed mice when added to vaccines". Kennedy avers that "four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was 'toxic to tissue cells' in concentrations as low as 1 part per million, 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine".

Despite this, according to Kennedy, "the company continued to promote thimerosal as 'nontoxic' and also incorporated it into disinfectants".

Kennedy follows up by writing that (ibid.):

"In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over the counter products that contained thimerosal and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, the same year the CDC recommended infants be injected with a new series of mercury -laced vaccines continaing thimerosal"

How much mercury was typically in these vaccines? Author Loretta Schwarz-Nobel in her book, Poisoned Nation (p. 88) cites a San Jose, Calif. medical examiner who took the time to document the concentrations for assorted infantile vaccines:

- Hepatitis B: 12 mcg of mercury or 30x the safe level

- DTaP and Hib: 50 mcg of mercury or 50 x safe level

-Hep B and Polio: 62.5 mcg of mercury, or 78x the safe level

Each of these examples was described as "bolus dose".

According to the author (ibid.)

"When the issue was finally studied it turned out that mercury in the form of thimerosal was fifty times more toxic to susceptible infants than mercury from the consumption of fish was to young children."

Schwarz-Nobel, based on medical experts consulted for her book, conjectures that the reason for this disparity is that (p. 89): "there is no blood-brain barrier in infants so that mercury accumulates in brain cells and nerves."

She then cites Dr. Tim O'Shea, who in his own book, The Sanctity of Human Blood, quotes Dr. Amy Holmes, a biochemist, who states that while "most mercury clears from the blood very soon, mercury in thimerosal is stored in the gut, liver and brain and becomes tightly bound to the cells. Once inside those cells...the mercury is converted back to its inorganic form...it can then either do immediate cell damage or become latent and cause the onset of autism, brain disorders or digetive chaos years later."

Sobering, but the question remains, why do it? The first answer that comes to mind, as in the case of crap like hydrofluorosilic acid (for fluoridate water supplies) and high fructose corn syrup (now in most of our foods) is MONEY! Rather than lose profits from production spinoffs or efficiencies (again based on evil Pareto distribution economics) the crap is used to preserve profits, so fed back to us. If we get cancers, or diabetes or whatever, who gives a shit? Evidently not the powers charged with protecting our interests, as opposed to the corporate vermin.

And author Schwarz-Nobel doesn't disappoint, writing (top of page 88):

"The reason was money. Thimerosal allowed drug companies to package vaccines in multiple doses and that was more important to them than the health risks".

Ah yes, profits over people, where have we seen that before?

All I can say is that if the trope that "The Business of America is Business" is really true, then we are all well and truly fucked, and Jim Marrs may at least be half onto something in his New World Order conspiracy speculations. At the very least, when the global financiers and their banker friends, and corporations (as "persons" with "rights' - to hear Mitt Romney) take over at last, when Greece falls as well as the rest of Europe with the U.S. next, the choice of name for the parasites that effected it won't really matter.

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