Thimerosal, which contains the organic
compound ethyl mercury, is a known neurotoxin and used to be a major
ingredient in childhood vaccines. There are over 15,000 articles in
the medical literature describing the adverse health effects on the
human body with exposure to varying amounts and forms of mercury.
In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urged
government agencies to work rapidly toward reducing children's exposure
to mercury from all sources. Because any potential risk was of concern,
the AAP and the USPHS (United States Public Health Service) agreed that
the use of thimerosal-containing vaccines should be reduced or eliminated.[1]
The AAP recommended that it would be a good idea to remove thimerosal
from vaccines, even though according to them, there was no evidence
linking childhood health issues to thimerosal exposure from vaccines.
In 2008, children are still being injected with thimerosal-containing
vaccines, and old stocks of thimerosal-containing vaccines manufactured
by 1999 continued to be administered to children up to 2003.
However, a growing number of physicians, scientists
and parents maintain that thimerosal has played, and continues to play
a large role in contributing to the emergence of multiple chronic illnesses
in children and adults, including the neurological spectrum disorders.
Aluminum, which is present in the environment and in many childhood
vaccines, may be affecting the health of our children in ways that we
have yet to understand.
Aluminum is a heavy metal with known neurotoxic effects
on human and animal nervous systems. It can be found in the following
childhood vaccines – DTaP, Pediarix (DTaP-Hepatitis B-Polio combination),
Pentacel (DTaP-HIB-Polio combination), Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Haemophilus
influenzae B (HIB), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and Pneumococcal vaccines.[2]
In 1996, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued
a position paper on Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children
which stated in the first paragraph, “Aluminum is now being implicated
as interfering with a variety of cellular and metabolic processes in
the nervous system and in other tissues.[3]
A review of the medical literature on aluminum reveals
a surprising lack of scientific evidence that injected aluminum is safe.
There is limited understanding of what happens to children when aluminum
is injected into their bodies, including whether or not it accumulates
in tissues and organs or is properly eliminated from the body. It is
also unknown if genetic factors affect long term adverse health outcomes
for those injected with aluminum containing vaccines.
One in 6 children under the age of 18 in this country
has developmental/learning disabilities, although the numbers may be
higher since this 1994 report was published.[4]
Ten percent of all children have asthma.[5]
Growing numbers of children are living with different types of allergies.
That means they have impairment, or even irreversible damage to their
nervous and immune systems. Isn’t it possible that injected aluminum
plays a role in affecting the health of our children’s nervous and immune
systems, as the science we do have seems to suggest?
What is even more concerning is the lack of accepted
scientific data explaining whether injected aluminum interacts with
other vaccine ingredients to cause harm to our children. Boyd Haley,
PhD, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky completed
lab experiments showing the damaging effects on nerve cells when he
exposed them to aluminum, especially in the presence of other vaccine
ingredients like mercury, formaldehyde, and the antibiotic neomycin.[6]
[7] His
data, however, have been ignored by the scientific, medical and governmental
institutions making vaccine policies.[8]
The scientific community needs to be doing these experiments in the
lab before shooting kids with these ingredients and declaring unequivocal
vaccine safety for all children.
Aluminum is added to vaccines as an adjuvant so vaccines
will produce a stronger antibody response and be more protective. It
is this role as an adjuvant that may reveal to us the most significant
relationship between aluminum in vaccines and the damage it imparts
on the long term health of our children’s nervous and immune systems.
A Little Science Review
Children are born with a cellular mediated immune system (TH1 cells
– T-helper 1), a humoral immune system (TH2 cells – T-helper 2), and
a regulator immune system (TH3 cells – T-helper 3) as major pieces of
their overall immune systems. These three arms are immature when babies
are born, and begin to mature as children are exposed to their environments
through their nervous systems, skin, airways and intestines. Antibiotics,
poor nutrition, stress, exposure to heavy metals and other environmental
toxins, and the use of vaccines, may interfere with the proper maturing
process of these three arms of children’s immune systems. In theory,
if the TH system is allowed to mature, and is not interfered with, children
will develop a mature, balanced TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune system by age
three.
TH1 and TH2 develop to protect children from the outside
world, producing inflammation and anti-inflammation responses to foreign
particles from the natural environment. TH3 immune cells develop to
keep the TH1/TH2 arms of the immune system in check so the body only
produces the amount of inflammation and anti-inflammation that is needed
to protect itself from exposures in the natural environment.
When TH2 cells are activated properly, either directly
via the natural environment, or through a direct signal from the TH1
system, the B cell arm of the immune system is then stimulated, leading
to the production of the desired protective antibodies.[9] [10]
It’s important for the reader to know that
the hallmark of a healthy, mature immune system in children is demonstrated
by an equal and balanced TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune response to the natural
environment. TH1, TH2 & TH3 do not work independently, and require
a very important synergistic relationship to function properly in our
bodies. As soon as one or more of these three arms begins to over or
under work in relation to the other, chronic illness begins to express
itself.
More on Aluminum
Aluminum is placed in the vaccines to selectively
target the up-regulation of the humoral arm (TH2 cells) of children’s
immune systems, to drive the production of antibodies. The medical community
leads us to believe that this production of antibodies is what imparts
for children a protective nature against vaccine-preventable illnesses.
Yet, this outcome may come at a cost.
There are multiple articles in the medical literature
demonstrating how chronic illnesses like allergies,[11]
[12]
asthma, [13] [14]
[15] eczema,[16]
lupus, [17] inflammatory
bowel disease, [18] ADD/ADHD[19]
and autism[20]
all exhibit a skewed production and over-activity
of the TH2 arm of the immune system.
Similarly, chronic illnesses like juvenile diabetes
mellitus[21] [22] and
rheumatoid arthritis,[23]
multiple sclerosis,[24]
uveits,[25]
inflammatory bowel disease,[26]
and autism[27] [28]
all exhibit skewed production and over-activity
of the TH1 arm of the immune system.
While aluminum in the vaccines is specifically targeting
the over-activation of TH2 to encourage the body to produce antibodies,
any direct or indirect effect of aluminum on the health or maturation
of the TH1 or TH3 system is unknown. Yet, in many of these TH2 dominant
chronic illnesses, TH1 and TH3 have also been shown to exhibit an impaired
immune response to the environment.[29]
Any direct or indirect effect on the health or maturation
of the TH1, TH2 and TH3 arms of children’s immune systems from any
of the injected vaccine ingredients, either due to their individual
action, or due to their combined interaction, is unknown as well.
The important synergistic, balanced activity
of TH1, TH2 and TH3, in response to the environment is dysfunctional
and impaired in all chronic illnesses. Children are not necessarily
born with this dysfunction or impairment, although they may inherit
the susceptibility from their parents. How then, do children develop
the expression of these TH1, TH2, TH3 impairments, into what we describe
as chronic illness?
What is clear is aluminum pushes the TH2
immune system to over perform, and multiple chronic illnesses in children
show immune systems where the TH2 immune response over performs, while
TH1 and TH3 responses are also impaired. Is there a connection? By having
this type of effect on the TH2 system, is aluminum in any way contributing
to the development of these chronic illnesses in children; especially
in those children from families with a genetic history of the above
mentioned chronic illnesses?
Does aluminum also affect the TH1 immune response,
unbeknownst to scientists, clinicians and parents? Does aluminum play
a role in impairing the overall synergistic, balanced activity of TH1,
TH2 and TH3, which is a requirement for a healthy immune system response
to the natural environment? There is no scientific evidence to clarify
our understanding one way or the other, but the evidence may be right
in front of us to conclude otherwise.
Aluminum forces the undeveloped and immature immune
system of infants and children to produce greater amounts of humoral
immune cells (TH2) and antibodies, before their immune systems have
a chance to adapt to the world in which they’ve barely had a chance
to live in.
Under these circumstances, the activity of
aluminum appears to play a vital role in disrupting the maturation of
the immune system in infants and children through its effects on TH2
and therefore, on TH1 and TH3.
What effect this has on their overall health in the
short or long term is unknown, but this model appears to help us understand
how we may be contributing to the development of chronic illness in
infants and children with the use of aluminum in vaccines. We also have
little understanding of what might happen to the overall health of their
immune systems if parents wait until later in life to expose them to
vaccines containing aluminum, or if they’re exposed in smaller doses
one at a time.
How much of a role does injected aluminum play, either
acting alone, or in conjunction with other vaccine ingredients and environmental
toxins, in the selection and subsequent development of chronic illnesses,
in a susceptible population of children, through the disruption of TH1,
TH2, TH3? There is no science to answer this question because no one
has investigated this issue.
We have no scientific studies in infants,
children or adults to help us understand the nature of the progression
of TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune responses to any of the injected materials
in vaccines.
You cannot do research on questions that enough people
don’t believe is worth asking, or are afraid of what the answers might
show if the proper studies were done.
It is unfortunate that we continue to drag out this
dialogue by singling out each individual vaccine ingredient as a detriment
to the health of our children. First thimerosal needed to be removed,
despite contentions from the medical community that there were any real
medical reasons to do so, and now aluminum. According to Environmental
Defense[30]
(formerly known as the Environmental Defense fund), all
the vaccine ingredients are poisonous, carcinogenic or potentially harmful
to the skin, gastrointestinal, pulmonary, immune and neurological systems
in our bodies.
What about formaldehyde? Are we going to wait until
another brave physician or scientist writes about the damaging effects
of injected vaccine-containing formaldehyde on our children’s brains
before we are called to demand that formaldehyde be removed? Or about
the problems associated with having Polysorbate-80 in the vaccines?
Polysorbate-80 is used in pharmacology to assist in
the delivery of certain drugs or chemotherapeutic agents across the
blood-brain-barrier. What viral, bacterial, yeast, heavy metal or other
vaccine containing ingredient need to pass into the brains of our children?
Do they belong in the brain? Is that part of the needed immune response
to protect our children from disease? Do vaccine materials pass across
the blood-brain barrier with the help of Polysorbate-80? If so, are
there complications from being in the brains of our children? Is this
another connection to help us get an understanding of why 1 in 150[31]
children have autism, or 1 in 6 children has developmental/learning
disabilities?
If we’re going to do justice to the topic of vaccine
ingredients, we need to look at the potential harm of all
the vaccine ingredients at once, and examine their individual effects
on our children’s immune and nervous systems. Then, we can examine the
interactive effects of the vaccine ingredients on human tissue, and
evaluate the potential for harm, as Dr. Haley has already successfully
done.
How many more children need to be potentially harmed
before we invoke the precautionary principle and the Hippocratic Oath
– First, Do No Harm? If there’s no adequate science, and we have positive
evidence of toxicity from aluminum, injected alone or in conjunction
with other ingredients, and we have a potential model to understand
why certain chronic conditions may be developing in a susceptible population
of children, then injecting aluminum containing vaccines into anyone
should stop right now until we have the proper scientific proof we need
to say otherwise. We need the same scientific proof of safety for
all vaccine ingredients and their interactions, and we
need parents, scientists and practitioners to stand up and demand nothing
less before we make matters worse.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP
Pediatrician
_______________________________________________________________________
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