In article ,
john wrote:

"Peter Bowditch" wrote in message
Note also that the statement "Thimerosal is 49.6% ethylmercury" is
contrary to the teachings of His Holiness Professor Boyd Haley, who in
a personal communication with me said "mercury is 49.59% of the weight
of thimerosal". He was talking about elemental mercury at the time,
not the chemical compound ethylmercury.

Unless, of course, the writer was referring to a claim made elsewhere
by Dr Haley where he contradicted himself.


it is sad you pharma morons are reduced to claiming thimerosol is somehow
safe by barfing about the mercury content and toxicity.

http://www.nomercury.org/Is_Mercury_Dangerous.htm
Specific Toxicities of Thimerosal

After years of medical practice, many physicians and other health
professionals were indeed shocked to learn that most vaccines used over the
years actually contained up to 25 micrograms of ethyl mercury. Ethyl
mercury, despite what some have professed, has a very similar toxicological
profile as the dreaded methyl mercury found in water, fish, and soil.

As a physician, I was recently shocked by the comments of a neighboring
state's chief epidemiologist who informed a state legislator (who was
considering a "ban Thimerosal" bill) that ethyl mercury, compared to methyl
mercury, was safe because ethyl alcohol was safe and methyl alcohol wasn't.
Of course, any high school chemistry student knows better. Would this same
epidemiologist take an injection of ethyl plutonium?

In fact, there have been many peer-reviewed studies that addressed
Thimerosal specifically. Here are just a few highlights:

The comparative toxicology of ethyl- and methyl mercury by Magos, Brown,
Sparrow, Bailey, et al published in the Archives of Toxicology (1985) 57:
260-267., has stated:

"There was little difference in the neurotoxicities of methylmercury and
ethylmercury when effects on the dorsal root ganglia or coordination
disorders were compared."

As a person who can read and then comprehend what he reads, I was not
at all shocked that Scudamore would screw up again and post this
nearly meaningless study as if it were some sort of evidence against
the use of thimerosal in vaccines.

Here's one good quote from the abstract:

Based on both criteria, an equimolar dose of ethylmercury was less
neurotoxic than methylmercury

So we're off to a fine start. But more importantly, and this is not
at all surprising when you consider what a scientific illiterate
Scudamore is, the usefulness of this study (for applicability to
vaccines) is near zero. Here's why:

1) The study was done in rats, not humans.
2) The rats were being administered 8.0 or 9.6 *milligrams* (per
kilogram of body weight) of mercury compounds five times per day.
(The abstract does not say how long this went on.)
3) The compound administered was ethylmercuric chloride or
methylmercuric chloride.

But it's point 2 in the list above that really makes the difference.
If you translate the dosage to, say, a 5 kg (11 lb) infant, that
infant would be getting at least 40 milligrams of mercury PER DAY.

In order to get that much from a thimerosal-containing vaccine, the
infant would have to receive 1600 vaccine injections PER DAY. (Well,
that's approximate, since the rats weren't getting that sort of
injection, but close enough.)

The fact that the rats were taking some nerve damage, but not just
dropping dead on the spot, shows that the mercury is less toxic than I
would have expected.

What's more important is that other studies have shown that mercury in
vaccines is not the horror that the anti-vac/angy-Hg loons attempt to
portray. For example, Pichichero et al, "Mercury concentrations and
metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing thiomersal: a
descriptive study." (Lancet Nov 30 2002) has this:

FINDINGS: Mean mercury doses in infants exposed to thiomersal were
45.6 microg (range 37.5-62.5) for 2-month-olds and 111.3 microg
(range 87.5-175.0) for 6-month-olds. Blood mercury in
thiomersal-exposed 2-month-olds ranged from less than 3.75 to 20.55
nmol/L (parts per billion); in 6-month-olds all values were lower
than 7.50 nmol/L. Only one of 15 blood samples from controls
contained quantifiable mercury. Concentrations of mercury were low
in urine after vaccination but were high in stools of
thiomersal-exposed 2-month-olds (mean 82 ng/g dry weight) and in
6-month-olds (mean 58 ng/g dry weight). Estimated blood half-life of
ethylmercury was 7 days (95% CI 4-10 days). INTERPRETATION:
Administration of vaccines containing thiomersal does not seem to
raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in
infants. Ethylmercury seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via
the stools after parenteral administration of thiomersal in
vaccines.

Meanwhile, here's a 2003 J. Appl Toxicol. paper by Magos:

The decomposition rate of organomercurials and the potency of the
blood-brain barrier increase with the size of the organic
radical. Thus methylmercury damages the brain more than thimerosal
does, and when intake limits set for methylmercury are applied to
thimerosal the safety margin is increased even if the clearances
were the same. However, the clearance half-time of ethylmercury in
adults is about one-third of the 50 days' clearance half-time of
methylmercury given for 60 kg body weight. Moreover, because
metabolic rates (e.g. basal metabolism, daily loss of mercury in per
cent of body burden) in different weight groups are related to the
fractional power of body weight (rule of allometry), mercury clears
from the infant body faster than from the adult body. Blood mercury
concentrations observed after vaccination showed agreement with
allometrically extrapolated concentrations. Copyright 2003 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


-- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net
These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants
were standing on my shoulders." (Hal Abelson, MIT)