As much as vaccines have proven to save lives time and time again, there will always be skeptics. Recently, I discussed vaccine hesitancy in detail (check out that blog post!). The reason for hesitancy basically comes down to the fact that some people think vaccines have a higher chance of doing bad than good. The fabricated study of Andrew Wakefield raised the notion that vaccines may be positively correlated to autism. Other studies later on showed this correlation to be very insignificant aka super duper unlikely; nevertheless, anti-vaxers stand their ground.
The controversy behind Thimerosal-containing vaccines is no different than what I’ve been discussing thus far. Thimerosal, according to the Center for Disease Control‘s website, is an ingredient in many vaccines and other medicine; Thimerosal works by preserving the vaccine and preventing the growth of harmful bacteria and fungi. Imagine getting vaccine contaminated with tons of bacteria. Yikes. That is exactly what Thimerosal helps prevent- which sounds great, right? But the reason why some people are against vaccines with Thimerosal is because Thimerosal contains a type of Mercury called ethylmercury; the most common routine vaccines don’t contain Thimesosal, but the ones that do (like some flu vaccines) are being resisted. Mercury has a bad reputation for being toxic to the body (in high amounts) so it’s understandable why many people don’t want to be injected with a vaccine that contains mercury. The thing to understand is that ethylmercury is much less likely to cause any harm to the human body because its essentially eliminated by the immune response very quickly- much more quickly than the commonly-known harmful mercury found in fish. Another page on the CDC‘s website mentions that Thimerosal does not cause autism, a concern by many anti-vaxers. For example, a peer-reviewed article published on NCBI‘s website concluded that there is not a strong correlation between autism and Thimerosal, in fact there really is not correlation. The article references a few studies, all of which conclude that Thimersosal is safe to use in vaccines. The article also discusses that the ethylmercury in Thimerosal has different pharmacokinetic properties than the kidney and cognitive-impairing methylmercury found in fish. However, this article and the CDC mention that this lack of correlation between Thimersosal and cognitive damage is not 100% certain to be true. As with all things in the medical field, there are uncertainties and exceptions seen in all cases. I think further testing needs to be conducted because as of right now, there does not seem to be enough convincing evidence for the skeptics.
Haters gonna hate but I don’t see anything wrong with Thimerosal. I understand the controversy behind it and why some people don’t want to take any chances with Thimerosal-containing vaccines, but this is a matter of weighting costs versus benefits. The benefits of preventing a possibly lethal infection through vaccination heavily out weights the costs of possibly maybe not really developing autism or any other developmental issue.
Microbiology for Smarties 