Debate grows on vaccine-autism link

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...e_autism_link/

Debate grows on vaccine-autism link
Stakes are high as panel reviews risk from mercury
By Scott Allen, Boston Globe Staff, 2/8/2004

The new vaccines kept coming, each containing a tiny amount of mercury as a
preservative. For nearly a decade, until regulators realized the problem in
1999, children who received all the recommended vaccinations could have
absorbed an elevated amount of the toxin by the time they were 6 months old.

"I feel badly that I didn't pick it up," acknowledged an adviser to the
National Immunization Program, Dr. Neal Halsey of Johns Hopkins University,
at a hearing in Cambridge three years ago.

The preservative, called thimerosal, is used only in trace amounts or not at
all in today's US vaccines, but the debate over the human cost of that
public health miscalculation is growing.
....
US Representative Dave Weldon of Florida, one of the few doctors serving in
Congress, is pressing the CDC to give outside researchers access to the
study data and calling for an independent review. ...