To all nurses planning to give the H1N1 vaccine to pregnant women

allnurses Guide · Oct 1, 2009

in 2005, brubacher proved the ethylmercury in thimerasol collected in the brains of monkeys at 37x the rate of the methylmercury found in fish....37x...god, that is staggering.
yesterdays publication has now proven that that accumulation causes developmental delays.
kennedy krieger institute is involved in a study of autistic children & mitochondrial dysfunction, in the beginning, we thought maybe, 20% of the kids would pop positive........it's more like 88%.
go to google scholar & search mitochondrial dysfunction + autism....or mitochondrial dysfunction + mercury. go to pub med & enter any one of the 30 trade names for thimerasol & you'll pull up half a million pages in studies, in 15 languages testifying to it's toxicity.
some of these kids wil be getting 3 or 4 mercury laden shots. 12.5mcg of thimerasol is 12 thousand million ions of mercury. multiply that times 4.
as a parent, wouldn't you think that information should be made available to you?
lead paint poisoned children for years, because all the studies were funded by the paint industry......same with tobacco.
thimerasol is no exception.
everyone of the 14 studies our cdc holds up as proof of thimerasol's benign nature were funded by pharma, or the cdc itself.
the danish study that everyone remembers was so riddled with corruption, it took the cdc 6 months & half a million $$$ just to find a journal willing to risk their reputation publishing it.
read the lister hill transcripts, then read the simpsonwood transcripts.
the only reason we are finally getting the truth is because we have parents of affected children that are scientists, and they are funding the studies that the fda ordered the cdc to do 30 years ago.
you need to remember, hannah poling's case never went to trial, in fact, the dept of hhs never even requested her medical records. they already had them.
when confronted with a parent who had the resources to prove thimerasol permanently disabled their daughter, the department of justice folded like a cheap lawn chair.
the doj also sealed hannah's records as part of the settlement agreement.
30 years ago pregnant women were told to smoke, it 'calms a nervous mother'
today, we can only shake our heads in disbelief.
a fact is only a fact
until another fact comes along
and proves that that fact,
was in fact,
not a fact.

my kids are 39 & 41 years old.

not only was there no encouragement to smoke all of us in the prenatal clinic were instructed not to smoke. our printed instructions also stated that smoking was not safe for the baby.

in 1964 smoking and health: report of the advisory committee to the surgeon general held cigarette smoking responsible for a 70 percent increase in the mortality rate of smokers over non-smokers.
it noted that smoking during pregnancy reduced the average weight of newborns.
in 1965, congress required all cigarette packages distributed in the united states to carry a health warning.
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/nn/views/exhibit/narrative/smoking.html

sample warnings:
"warning: cigarette smoking is dangerous to
health and may cause death from cancer and other
diseases."
surgeon general's warning: smoking by
pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature
birth, and low birth weight.

http://www.tobaccowall.ucsf.edu/pdf/warninglabel.pdf

ps: i cannot access the scientific articles you suggest. the link has no information regarding vaccination.

RuRnurse? · Oct 1, 2009

1964...you may be a bit young to remember the real heyday of advertising, you have to go back about 20 more years to find the real gems. I used to collect old cigarette ads, the ones that ran in popular magazines, some featured guys in white with stethoscopes around their necks...and my own mother was warned against quitting while pregnant lest she "gain too much weight". They knew it wasn't good for you, but judged the possible negative effects to be less of a risk compared to whatever it was they were treating you for, pregnancy weight gain, nerves, fatigue, etc.

Actually, taking a good look through popular vintage magazines can be very entertaining, it's amazing what kind of stuff used to be sold for 'health' reasons.

kids · Oct 1, 2009

September 30, 2009
Primate Study Shows Significant Harm from One Birth Dose of a Mercury-Containing Vaccine
In the first safety study of its kind of the hepatitis vaccine birth dose, the researchers showed that male macaques vaccinated at birth with a hepatitis B vaccine (HBV) took more than twice as long as unexposed macaques to acquire three standardized skills typically used to measure infant brain development. The thirteen vaccinated monkeys each received a dose of Merck’s Recombivax® hepatitis B vaccine to which a weight-adjusted amount of the ethyl mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal had been added (each dose included 2 micrograms of ethyl mercury as opposed to the human infant dose of 12.5 micrograms). Seven unexposed monkeys received either a saline placebo injection or no shot at all.
Over a two week period following birth, the researchers examined the infant macaques daily for their ability to perform nine basic reflexes (four reflexes were tested in two ways, so the paper reports thirteen performance results). Three of nine reflexes showed significant delays in vaccinated macaques while two other reflexes were delayed and “approached significance.” As for the three significant reflexes, vaccinated macaques learned more slowly to: 1) turn their head in response to a brush on the cheek (the root reflex); 2) open their mouth in response to a brush on the forehead (the snout reflex); and 3) suck on a nipple placed in their mouth (the suck reflex).

This study is so flawed and biased it should never have been published.

The test pool is too small.

Where are the adjustments for gestational age?

What maternal and environmental factors were identified?

How can it prove a problem with thimerasol when the Recombivax is thimerasol FREE and has been for more than 5 years?

Even with published proof, you remain happy with the status quo. Until individuals stand up & truly advocate for their patients, this atrocity will continue.

I have several family members who are very active in the Autism community including one who is a researcher at a major university. Just as Wakefield's "research", Thomas Verstraeten's work is generally considered junk science at best.

In July 1999, CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and vaccine companies agreed to remove mercury from all childhood vaccines "as soon as possible," but it still remains in 16 licenses vaccines, five of which are still given to infants. Contrary to its own recommendation, now a decade old, CDC is now recommending the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines for "high priority" groups of pregnant women and babies older than six months who could get four doses.

This statement is misleading and inflammatory. With the exception of the Tetorifice Toxoid (which is rarely if ever given to infants and small children) all vaccines, including the H1N1 and seasonal influenza, have a thimerasol free version.

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

In light of this study, you have a moral, ethical, & legal duty to demand the thimerasol free vaccine for all pregnant women, women of child bearing age, and all children under the age of 12 years.
It's your duty, because, as their advocate, you must protect the parents who are not aware of the danger thimerasol poses to this susceptible population.

I disagree, it is my "moral, ethical, & legal duty" to provide them with the information and let them make their own choice.

kids · Oct 1, 2009

This is an excellent study on thimerasol in vaccines. Very large study pool of children born before and after Quebec, CA removed thimerasol from the MMR vaccine in 1996.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/1/e139

The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in thimerosal-free birth cohorts was significantly higher than that in thimerosal-exposed cohorts (82.7 of 10000 vs 59.5 of 10000). Using logistic regression models of the prevalence data, we found no significant effect of thimerosal exposure used either as a continuous or a categorical variable. Thus, thimerosal exposure was unrelated to the increasing trend in pervasive developmental disorder prevalence.

Rather than pointing the finger at the evil CDC and vaccine manufacturers we, as a society need to be taking a close look at the crap we are pumping into our environment and consquently our children. I really wish there was a single agent or entity to blame but is simply is't that simple.

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

1964...you may be a bit young to remember the real heyday of advertising, you have to go back about 20 more years to find the real gems. I used to collect old cigarette ads, the ones that ran in popular magazines, some featured guys in white with stethoscopes around their necks...and my own mother was warned against quitting while pregnant lest she "gain too much weight". They knew it wasn't good for you, but judged the possible negative effects to be less of a risk compared to whatever it was they were treating you for, pregnancy weight gain, nerves, fatigue, etc.
Actually, taking a good look through popular vintage magazines can be very entertaining, it's amazing what kind of stuff used to be sold for 'health' reasons.

So true, remember Pink's disease?

Pink disease is a caused by exposure to mercury. Babies who developed pink disease were particularly sensitive to mercury.

We now know they had a genetic predisposition, this is why some children have problems with thimerasol, some don't, thank you 'HonestRN', you emphasized my point.

Russian roulette? Anyone? The odds are 1 in 150

http://www.cdc.gov/features/countingautism/

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Mercury was a common additive in teething powders and other baby products like worm medicines and nappy rinses in the first half of the 20th century. Pink disease is named after the symptom that causes bright pink colour of the hands and feet. People who survived pink disease when they were babies may be prone to ongoing health problems.

(Yes, survived....many did not).

Other names for pink disease include acrodynia, erythroedema, Feer's disease, infantile mercury (Hg) poisoning and Swift's disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16079072

Dr. Brubacher gave monkeys weight/dose equivalent the exact vaccine schedule children were exposed to in the 1990's. He compared the brains of those monkeys with those fed fish with a know concentration of methylmercury.

The vaccinated monkeys cleared the mercury faster from the blood stream, but accumulated greater amounts in the brain than the monkeys fed methylmercury by mouth.

Now we have proof of the damage done

The article has officially been released by Neurotoxicology, but there appears to be a delay in the Elsevier data operation.

I have an advanced copy, but I do not have permission to link or copy, so you'll just have to wait.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts46.html

http://autismmedia.org/papers/jamespaper.pdf

http://jcn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/2/170

There are literally hundreds of papers citing the toxic effects of ethylmercury. Our CDC will only acknowledge the papers that were originally published in English, though you can find them at pubmed if you just take the time to look.

Here's my point.

As a health care professional, I have given sub lingual procardia more times than I can remember, we now know this can precipitate a CVA.

So, we don't do it any more.

The most comprehensive website, with easy to follow links on the subject is http://www.nomercury.org/science.htm

Genetics has loaded the gun for these kids.

Our government folded in the Poling case.

Why did they fold?

Because the mercury in thimerasol pulled the trigger.

Before you pull the trigger, have the decency to to inform the parents. Give the mercury free vaccine to women & children.

Please.

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

This is an excellent study on thimerasol in vaccines. Very large study pool of children born before and after Quebec, CA removed thimerasol from the MMR vaccine in 1996.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/1/e139
Rather than pointing the finger at the evil CDC and vaccine manufacturers we, as a society need to be taking a close look at the crap we are pumping into our environment and consquently our children. I really wish there was a single agent or entity to blame but is simply is't that simple.

The MMR is a live vaccine & never contained thimerasol to begin with.

The Quebec study........ Eric Fombonne, MD

Fombonne is a psychiatrist.

The Cochrane Collaboration had this to say about Fombonne's paper regarding a review of the safety of the mmr:

"The number and possible impact of biases in this study is so high that interpretation of the results is impossible."

The study is only epidemiological, not clinical. No children were examined.

The UK GP Research Database, the basis for this study, was not designed to be used for a study such as this.

There may have been some misclassification of cases (the authors admitted this flaw). In fact, it is understood that no fewer than 73 "controls" were discovered during the course of the study to be "cases", illustrating the difficulty of relying on the GPRD database.

Insufficient controls were used. Although the study, which used 1,294 cases and 4,469 controls, had initially indicated that there would be ten controls per autism case, 594 cases had fewer than three controls, 72 cases had only one control and 25 had none at all. It was not explained why the study's original protocols had been apparently disregarded.

Only 62% of the children had received MMR before 18 months. Yet the focus of concern needed to be on infants younger than this, 15 months or less. This makes the study less relevant to the core area of concern.

Methodological flaws in the study were pointed out to the study team at early stages of the study, but do not seem to have been taken into account.

The study deliberately excluded children who did not have a record of seeing their GP in the 12 months prior to the "index date", which was the date at which the children received a diagnosis of PDD. This could have increased the risk of excluding children who had undergone definite regression after MMR.

Fombonne had been a paid adviser to the manufacturers of MMR in the then-impending 1,500-strong class action High Court case in the UK that alleged that MMR had precipitated childhood degeneration into autism.

The wisdom of using a paid witness to the manufacturers, as defendants, in a central authorship role in a supposedly independent research paper......

might be questioned....ya think?.

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

Thomas Verstraeten, where do you begin with this piece of work?

He had to massage his data for 4 years to get the relative risk below 2.

http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/ThimerosalVSDstudy_2-29-00.pdf

http://www.nomercury.org/science.htm

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

"all vaccines, including the H1N1 and seasonal influenza, have a thimerasol free version."

Call around & see if you can find one.

Even though the FDA concluded that Thimerasol should be 'recalled' in 1999, they still do not push for all vaccines to be mercury free.

Logic would dictate caution when dealing with something as toxic as mercury.

Mercury in the air....................bad

Mercury in the oceans............bad

Mercury in fish.....so bad they tell you to limit consumption

Mercury in vaccines................good for you!

If you read the Danish study, that's what you'd have to deduce.

How many times did they change horses during that study?

Study only inpatient cases.....no, wait....study only outpatient cases........oops, we lost 25% of our cases.

Wow, look, take out thimerasol & autism rates skyrocket!!!

If that's the case, Thimerasol was protecting kids from autism.

So, why didn't they put it back in?

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

the test pool is too small.

the sample is sufficiently large for a study of this type, especially since only two exposure groups were studied. in addition, all 20 macaques described were male, eliminating any confounding effect of gender and further raising the statistical power of the sample.

where are the adjustments for gestational age?

the authors are careful to point out several limitations of their analysis. according to the paper, "our study design does not enable us to determine whether it is the vaccine per se, the exposure to [thimerosal], or a combination of both that is causing the observed effects. " in addition, the effects appear in some reflexes to be mediated by other risk factors such as birth weight and gestational age, suggesting that vaccinating premature and/or low birth weight infants may create especially high risk. "infants of lower birth weight and gestational age were at greater risk" explained dr. laura hewitson of the university of pittsburgh, one of the principal investigators of the study. "the reflexes affected in this study are controlled by the brainstem, which regulates functions like heart rate, breathing, and intestinal activity, so these findings give us cause for concern, especially for low birth weight and pre-term infants who might be more susceptible to functional brain injury from this vaccine."

what maternal and environmental factors were identified?

the macaques were bred and housed at the primate nursery of the pittsburgh development center (pdc) at the university of pittsburgh, where the research team's principal investigator, dr. laura hewitson, is a member of the faculty. the pdc is a part of the magee women's research institute of the university of pittsburgh's school of medicine

how can it prove a problem with thimerasol when the recombivax is thimerasol free and has been for more than 5 years?

while hepatitis b vaccines currently produced in the united states no longer contain thimerosal, the vast majority of american infants born during the 1990s received a vaccine formulation similar to the one the thirteen vaccinated macaques received. in addition, thimerosal-containing hbvs are still routinely administered to newborn infants in developing countries such as brazil. consequently, the finding that early exposure to potentially toxic vaccine formulations can cause significant neuro-developmental delays in primates has serious implications for vaccine safety management. these implications go far beyond the domestic hbv program and raise concerns about hbv formulations sold abroad as well as the domestic influenza vaccine program. most influenza vaccines, including the vaccines in the upcoming swine flu program, contain thimerosal and are routinely administered to pregnant women and infants.

allnurses Guide · Oct 2, 2009

1964...you may be a bit young to remember the real heyday of advertising, you have to go back about 20 more years to find the real gems. I used to collect old cigarette ads, the ones that ran in popular magazines, some featured guys in white with stethoscopes around their necks...and my own mother was warned against quitting while pregnant lest she "gain too much weight". They knew it wasn't good for you, but judged the possible negative effects to be less of a risk compared to whatever it was they were treating you for, pregnancy weight gain, nerves, fatigue, etc.
Actually, taking a good look through popular vintage magazines can be very entertaining, it's amazing what kind of stuff used to be sold for 'health' reasons.

I'm old enough for Medicare.

I just quoted an article regarding the fact that since 1964 cigarette packages have had warnings such as:

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking by Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.

When pregnant with my 41 year old daughter it was known that smoking could harm the baby.

That was more than thirty years ago.

My mother quit smoking when pregnant with me and my sisters. This was more than sixty years ago.

Women may have been told this but it was definitely more than thirty years ago.

I have been a nurse longer than that and we learned to encourage all people not to smoke.

THAT is a FACT.

Laidback Al · Oct 2, 2009

I am always concerned when someone appeals to authority to justify a particular position or point of view, in this case ozoneranger's crusade against mercury. There is no doubt that mercury is toxic in its many forms. But justifying a tirade against H1N1 vaccinations for pregnant women by obliquely referencing a scientific paper is misleading, especially one dealing with a reconstituted HB vaccine. The title of the paper is "DELAYED ACQUISITION OF NEONATAL REFLEXES IN NEWBORN PRIMATES RECEIVING A THIMEROSAL-CONTAINING HEPATITIS B VACCINE: INFLUENCE OF GESTATIONAL AGE AND BIRTH WEIGHT". The emphasis of this study is on the variation of gestational age and birth weight in relation to three neonatal reflexes among rhesus macaques. Link to full article: http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/pr/hep-b-study.pdf

Perhaps the most important statement in the article is:

Our study design does not enable us to determine whether it is the vaccine per se, the exposure to Th [Thimerosal], or a combination of both, that is causing the observed effects.

This thread ought to be about weighing the pros and cons of administering a novel H1N1 influenza vaccine to pregnant women in light of the high risks associated with novel H1N1 infection. It should not be a soap box for the anti-mercury crowd to foment arguments here in the pandemic forum when the focus should be on helping nurses and other health care workers prepare for the growing second wave of this pandemic.

ozoneranger · Oct 2, 2009

I am always concerned when someone appeals to authority to justify a particular position or point of view, in this case ozoneranger's crusade against mercury. There is no doubt that mercury is toxic in its many forms. But justifying a tirade against H1N1 vaccinations for pregnant women by obliquely referencing a scientific paper is misleading, especially one dealing with a reconstituted HB vaccine. The title of the paper is "DELAYED ACQUISITION OF NEONATAL REFLEXES IN NEWBORN PRIMATES RECEIVING A THIMEROSAL-CONTAINING HEPATITIS B VACCINE: INFLUENCE OF GESTATIONAL AGE AND BIRTH WEIGHT". The emphasis of this study is on the variation of gestational age and birth weight in relation to three neonatal reflexes among rhesus macaques. Link to full article: http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/pr/hep-b-study.pdf
Perhaps the most important statement in the article is:
This thread ought to be about weighing the pros and cons of administering a novel H1N1 influenza vaccine to pregnant women in light of the high risks associated with novel H1N1 infection. It should not be a soap box for the anti-mercury crowd to foment arguments here in the pandemic forum when the focus should be on helping nurses and other health care workers prepare for the growing second wave of this pandemic.

I apologize. When I started this thread, the issue of informed consent was weighing heavy on my mind.

Like the poster 'kids' I also have family members in the field of medical research, both in drug development & in environmental toxicology.

As healthcare professionals, the vaccine debate is not new to us, we have access to information (and the clinical background) that most people simply don't have regarding these issues. Should you stand on a busy street & ask the general public if they were aware that most flu vaccines contain levels of mercury higher than the EPA deems acceptable, most, if not all of them would be quite surprised.

Yes, we are in the middle of a pandemic, my intention was, and remains, to get this information out to fellow nurses, so that they might in turn, seek out vaccines that are thimerasol free, and administer them to pregnant women, & infants first. Without a blood/brain barrier, a genetically predisposed fetus is a sitting duck.

People won't know they have a choice, unless we tell them.

I think they have a right to know what they are being given. It's not my place to make that decision for them.

I also remember all the cigarette ads in magazines, so here's to you, RuRnurse?