To the editor:

I am pleased to see that a government agency that is to protect its citizens is doing its job even if it is the British government protecting Americans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known of this manufacturing error with the Chiron flu vaccine since August but were not making plans to halt the tainted vaccines from reaching the American consumer.

“The FDA were generally comfortable,” but the British agency “has come to a different conclusion,” Howard Pien, president and chief executive of the California-based company, said.

Pien again refused to identify the contaminant in Chiron’s vaccine but said, “It relates to what amounted to human error in a relatively late step in a fairly complicated series of manufacturing procedures.”

Read between the lines. Thimerosal is added late in the process of vaccine manufacturing to sterilize unsafe production practices that have contaminated vaccines. Thimerosal was outlawed on Sept. 1, 2004, in the United Kingdom but has only been outlawed in Iowa and California in the United States.

Maybe we better think twice about what the FDA approves as safe!

Linda Weinmaster,

Lawrence