Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are set to vote on June 26 on whether to recommend that the CDC act to remove thimerosal from influenza vaccines, raising hopes from people who have advocated eliminating the preservative.
“We are hopeful that the consideration of thimerosal will spark a thorough discussion that it deserves, hopefully leading to its removal from all vaccines,” Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.
Thimerosal, approximately 50 percent mercury by weight, has been used in vaccines since the 1930s.
Concerns that the preservative could cause health problems resulted in a congressionally mandated 1999 review that concluded that some infants might be exposed to levels of mercury above recommended guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency.
A House of Representatives subcommittee in 2003, following the review, said that “mercury is hazardous to humans” and that it “should be minimized or eliminated entirely” from medicinal products.
The Food and Drug Administration, which has worked with companies to reduce or eliminate thimerosal from vaccines, says that the use of thimerosal has subsequently declined, but it maintains that studies “support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”
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