Mercury and autism 'linked'

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/fileon4/index_20030624_mercury.shtml

Tuesday 24 June



Mercury and autism 'linked' Read the transcript of this programme While attention has been focused on the MMR controversy, concern is now emerging over the safety of other childhood vaccines. Gerry Northam investigates claims that the mercury in some injections given to babies is linked to the rise in autism, and asks why Britain is refusing to follow the United States' lead in phasing out mercury-based immunisations. Autism rates have risen significantly in Britain and internationally. Experts believe that the most severe forms of the disorder are now diagnosed in 1 in 500 UK children, a fivefold rise over 20 years. The government insists that no proof of a casual link has been established, and the NHS continues to use vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative for babies' three immunisations against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough at 2, 3 and 4 months. But a London GP, Dr Richard Halvorsen of Holborn Medical Centre, has calculated that these three injections give children many more times the recommended maximum intake of mercury by body weight which their mothers are currently told is safe to eat in fish in advice from the Food Standards Agency. A similar calculation four years ago led authorities in the US to remove mercury from childhood vaccines as a precaution. Dr Halvorsen claims that the first shot contains 43 times the recommended level, the second 38 times and the third 34 times. Together, the three injections give babies almost double the maximum cumulative dose of mercury their mothers are advised to eat over the two-month period of their injections. Dr Halvorsen tells File On 4 that he has decided to give only mercury-free vaccines at his clinic from now on. "I would be acting irresponsibly as a doctor if I were to continue to offer children vaccines containing a known poison, mercury. The ethos of medicine is ‘First do no harm’. However the Department of Health stubbornly and persistently refuses to accept that mercury may be dangerous. With the information we have today this is indefensible." The programme also examines recent evidence from America linking mercury in vaccines to the dramatic increase in diagnoses of autism among children of primary school age over the past decade. A Congressional Sub-Committee reported this year that no level of mercury should be considered appropriate in any childhood vaccine. The Committee Chairman, Republican Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana, tells File On 4: "Children anywhere in the world in their developmental stages are at grave risk if you are injecting them with mercury. If I were a British MP I would be raising hell about it just like we have been in the United States. You should err on the side of safety." In a statement, the Department of Health said that it is wrong to compare the effect of vaccines with eating fish and shellfish, since they contain diofferent compounds of mercury. But this was the very comparison which four years ago persuaded the US government and Europe's medicines agency to decide that mercury should be eliminated as soon as possible.

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