An Epidemic of FearHow Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us AllAll Related Stories »You’re right. Thimerosal is still present in some forms of the flu vaccine. And in others, it’s not.
But when fact-checking the statement, “thimerosal, a preservative containing ethylmercury that was used in vaccines until 2001” we also had to take into account how it’s framed. This statement—the first of its kind in the article—occurs in a section discussing the childhood vaccination schedule. Since 2001, all vaccines used to protect preschool-aged children became either completely free of thimerosal or available with trace amounts (more on that in a minute).
The influenza vaccine was added to the childhood vaccination schedule in 2002. At that point there was a version of the vaccine that contained only trace amounts of thimerosal. (Imagine one vaccine dose is a pool containing a million drops of water. If less than one drop out of the million contains thimerosal, that’s what is meant by ‘trace.’) And beyond that, the flu shot is not among the vaccines routinely “mandated” by states for entry into school; concerned parents can opt out.
So perhaps we should have added a caveat… one that we are fixing in the story.
But frankly none of this matters, because thimerosal does not cause autism. In trace amounts, or the 0.01% found in some formulations of the flu shot, the preservative has not been proven toxic. If thimerosal in vaccines really caused autism, you would expect rates of autism to fall once the preservative was removed from vaccines. Instead, in the years since the preservative was removed, autism rates have risen dramatically.
By the way, many vaccines never contained thimerosal to begin with. Here’s a chart the FDA has put together with the preservative concentration in childhood vaccines.
