To the editor:

Thanks for your recent articles on thimerosal, vaccines and the autism epidemic. I realize such stories are not easy to run. Vaccines damaging children is so improbable, so distasteful and so disruptive that nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to believe it. But Dr. Mark Geier’s research has confirmed the unthinkable: An over-zealous vaccine policy has caused an autism epidemic. Millions of American children’s lives have been destroyed by the reckless use of mercury-based thimerosal in vaccines.

But all thimerosal is out of vaccines today, right? No. Absolutely not.

Flu, RhoGAM, diphtheria-tetanus shots contain thimerosal. Thimerosal also is a sterilization agent and trace amounts are in many other vaccines.

These are the facts, but they are not well-known. Unfortunately, the high financial and political stakes surrounding this vaccine-induced epidemic means straight talk is hard to come by. Our health officials instead spew misleading half-truths like “thimerosal is not in childhood vaccines” (the flu, DT, etc., aren’t considered childhood vaccines), or “there is no proof linking thimerosal with autism.” (Excuse me, but shouldn’t we prove a known neurotoxin is safe before injecting it into babies?)

Let’s help stop the insanity. Let’s have public health be about public health. Let’s pass a Kansas law to ban mercury from vaccines. This will force vaccine manufacturers to deliver a safe product and it will allow our citizens recourse if they do not.

Ben Price,

Lawrence