Vaccine Compound is Harmless, Study Says, as Autism Debate Rages

(excerpted from The New York Times, September 27, 2007)

  "In this study, published yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the CDC and several managed-care organizations subjected 1,047 children to 42 neurological and psychological exams, which included I.Q. tests, how well the children recalled a list of names and whether they could repeat the names backward, their manual dexterity, and whether they stuttered or had tics.

   The researchers also took detailed medical histories to determine whether the subjects' mothers were exposed to thimerosal while pregnant, and how much thimerosal the children were exposed to in the first seven months of life.

   After subjecting the data to nearly 400 different statistical measures, researchers found 19 different possible associations between thimerosal and various mental outcomes -- most of which suggested that thimerosal was actually beneficial.

   Dr. Jeffrey Baker, a pediatrician and vaccine expert who is the director of the history of medicine program and Duke University, said that the study's findings should be reassuring for parents.  "This study will further strengthen a growing consensus among researchers that there is no real evidence that thimerosal in vaccines led to any actual harm."...

   Since thimerosal's removal from vaccines, there has been no evidence that autism is on the decline."