Labos: Canada needs to ignore whatever the Trump administration says about vaccines
If you haven't been paying attention, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine policy. Kennedy replaced them with eight individuals more closely aligned with his anti-vaccine philosophy. (One has since stepped down.) Many rose to prominence during the pandemic for views that were critical of the COVID response, and Kennedy mentioned some of them by name in his 2021 book attacking Anthony Fauci. As a group, they do not have much experience with vaccines, pediatrics or health policy. The first meeting of the freshly minted ACIP was held last week, to discuss a long-standing bugbear in anti-vaccine circles: the preservative thimerosal.
The meeting was problematic for several reasons. Normally, CDC staff make a formal presentation summarizing the scientific evidence. This time the presentation was made not by government officials, but by the former head of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy chaired for a six-figure salary. It rehashed a long-worn argument about mercury, vaccines and autism.
The anti-vaccine crowd has been linking heavy metals, like mercury, to autism ever since Andrew Wakefield's now-discredited research linking the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) to autism. They have spent decades taking issue with thimerosal.
Let me explicitly state that there is no mercury in any vaccine. Thimerosal does not contain mercury. It contains ethylmercury, a mercury atom bound to two carbon atoms. Ethylmercury is metabolized and excreted by the body in stool and therefore does not accumulate in your tissues. Concerns about mercury toxicity are related to methylmercury, a mercury atom bound to a single carbon atom.
While subtle, the one-letter difference matters a great deal. Case in point: methanol and ethanol also differ by one single carbon atom. Ethanol is common serve-it-at-a-dinner-party alcohol. Methanol is in antifreeze, windshield washer fluid and illicit moonshine. Drink ethanol and you might get drunk. Drink methanol and you might go blind.
Thimerosal is not dangerous. The anti-vaccine crowd conflates ethylmercury with methylmercury, perhaps hoping no one will notice. Decades of research has failed to show any danger from the thimerosal in vaccines. But mercury is to anti-vaxxers what a red cape is to a bull. Kennedy's reconstituted ACIP voted to recommend that Americans not receive flu vaccines containing thimerosal. Interestingly, the vote was not unanimous even within Kennedy's hand-picked committee. The only pediatrician on the committee, Cody Meissner, cast a dissenting vote and one other member abstained.
But the point is moot, as few vaccines use thimerosal anymore. In Canada and the U.S., only about four per cent of flu vaccines use thimerosal and no pediatric vaccines use it anymore. Even if Kennedy accepts the ACIP recommendation, which he almost certainly will, it will have little impact on people, as thimerosal has not been commonly used for decades. The reason to target thimerosal was political and symbolic. It allowed Kennedy to show his supporters that he is prepared to implement the anti-vaccine agenda he has long espoused.
What comes next remains to be seen. Despite his assurances during his Senate confirmation, Kennedy is not pro-vaccine. He promotes falsehoods that are dangerous. Though thoroughly discredited, the MMR/autism myth has led directly to the recent measles outbreaks in the U.S. If we start chipping away at public health one committee meeting at a time, we will almost certainly see the resurgence of once-forgotten diseases. So as U.S. authorities continue to debate and embrace vaccine misinformation, we have one clear path forward: We must ignore them.
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