Mercury-free vaccines debated in
MN Legislature: sensible but not easy

BY LEO CASHMAN

A bill introduced in the state Legislature would require that a mercury-free version of a vaccine be given whenever it is available to health care practitioners. If not available, then a vaccine containing mercury could be given. But if the vaccine contains more than a trace of mercury (more than one microgram), the practitioner must disclose that “this vaccine contains more than a trace amount of the mercury compound, thimerosal.” Thimerosal is a highly toxic substance.
At first glance, the proposal is disarmingly sensible and noncontroversial: It would simply establish a preference for mercury-free vaccines, when such an alternative is available.

Mercury is found in “trace” amounts in most vaccines and currently about 90 percent of the flu shots given in Minnesota have a substantial amount of mercury—25 micrograms—in them; yet the Minnesota Department of Health promotes flu shots to pregnant women, the elderly, people with weakened immune systems and now even children, without a warning to anyone about the mercury lurking in the shots.

Leading scientific researchers are appalled at the continued use of the thimerosal in vaccines and there is a consensus among leading independent mercury researchers that mercury in medicine (e.g. thimerosal) and in dentistry (e.g. the dental amalgam fillings) should be banned. Many of them have testified before Congress. But their statements have not been fully conveyed to the public by national or local media. Therefore the public and the Legislature remain ignorant of the menace posed by mercury in medicine and have been all too easily soothed by the reassurances of the Department of Health regarding the vaccine safety issues. Like the departments of health in every other state, the Minnesota Department of Health is tethered to its federal funding source, which is primarily the Center for Disease Control (CDC), based in Atlanta, Ga.

As a result, state health department priorities (and thinking) closely follows that of the CDC. And that is a big problem because, as a number of exposés reveal, the CDC has been found to have an overly cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, transcripts of secret meetings held between CDC officials, a vaccine safety researcher under contract with the CDC, and a drug company representative reveal that all of these players fully understood that it was the grand escalation of mandated childhood vaccinations that started in 1990 that gave rise to the explosive (ten-fold) increase of childhood autism during the 1990s. The entire public health establishment seems to be scripted to deny what the CDC clearly, but secretly, knew about the American autism scandal. The book “Evidence of Harm,” by New York Times health writer David Kirby, documents the CDC/drug company collusion and cover-up in a nonfictional work that centers around the lives of parents of autistic children who formed a nonprofit group called SafeMinds (www.SafeMinds.org).

Spearheading the mercury-free vaccine bill in Minnesota are citizen lobbyists such as Tim Kasemodel, a father of an autistic boy, and Jerri Johnson, a homeopath. They are backed by the Minnesota Natural Health Legal Reform Project, (MNHLRP) a non-profit civic group that lobbies for health freedom and natural health issues. “The pharmaceutical companies now provide some mercury-free version for almost every type of vaccine,” Jerri Johnson explains. “Now it is up to practitioners to stop using the mercury version. This legislation will insure that the practitioners will not give a mercury containing vaccine when a mercury free version is available.” Since our state health department is incapable of driving the change, it remains for the Legislature—which can be more receptive to the voices of the vaccine-injured public—to drive the change. “I’m just a parent,” Tim Kasemodel adds, “but some of the people lobbying against our bill haven’t read as much as I have. There is no safe mercury in vaccines, even at what are called the “trace’ amounts. But the Department of Health continues to stand behind their old science.”

The citizen reformers found a strong author in the House, Rep. Shelly Madore, a mother of an autistic son. She expected her bill, HF 1917, to be heard in the Public Health Committee, chaired by Rep. Karen Clark (DFL, South Minneapolis—Phillips, Whittier) who enthusiastically supports the bill. Support for the bill in her committee is very strong. But another Minneapolis DFLer, Rep. Paul Thissen (Hale-Page-Diamond Lake) pulled Madore’s bill into his Health Policy Committee; Thissen has refused to give the bill a hearing and also refuses to let the bill out of his committee to be heard by Karen Clark in her committee. Thissen did not return phone calls from this reporter.

The anti-mercury reformers faced a more promising situation in the Senate, where the Health Committee is chaired by Sen. John Marty, who himself is a mercury foe and who believes it’s important to give the legislation a hearing. The reformers found their senate champion in Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, (DFL, South Minneapolis— Longfellow, Nokomis). But after Torres Ray introduced her copy of the bill, SF 1780, she was blitzed by state health department messages stating that her bill would harm the public by threatening public confidence in the entire vaccination program in Minnesota. She was also told that “several mercury containing vaccines are being moved out of the market in the next couple of years” so there is no need for a law, and was assured “there is no science” linking mercury in vaccines to health harm.” Torres Ray, who is admittedly new to the vaccine controversy, has agreed to meet with the Department of Health to hear out their many “concerns” about the anti-mercury legislation; Torres Ray realizes that that tactic of delay may make it too late for her bill to be heard in the Senate by the deadline.

The Goliath lurking behind this Minnesota struggle is the pharmaceutical drug industry. The drug industry pours substantial money into campaign committees, public relations, lobbyists, and helps orchestrate directly or indirectly the marketing boost that vaccination programs get from our state health department. The health department doesn’t welcome scrutiny of this or of the peculiar and remarkable tendency of our health department to side with the industry even at the expense of public health. The desperate tactics of the state health department —designed to forestall legislative committee hearings on the bill at all costs—likely reflects its desire to avoid the embarrassment of a legislative rebuke on the mercury safety issue.

The worst nightmare of Chris Ehresman, who heads the department’s vaccination program, is surely that a more curious public will start to surf the internet and discover the fact that mercury in vaccines has severely impacted a shocking number of children (autism, seizures, ADHD, learning disabilities) and has also harmed many of our most vulnerable adults (worsening the problem of dementia and other neurological and auto immune disor