Latest news with #federal
The Independent
21 hours ago
- Health
- The Independent
What is thimerosal? The rarely-used vaccine preservative targeted by RFK Jr
A federal vaccine panel, recently reshaped by the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has voted to discourage the use of flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative. The decision marks a dramatic shift in vaccine policy, as thimerosal has long been considered safe by health agencies worldwide, with its use already limited to a few multi-dose flu shots. RFK Jr. has long linked thimerosal to autism – a connection that extensive scientific research has thoroughly debunked. Thimerosal is an organic chemical containing mercury, used as a preservative in vaccines since the 1930s. Its effect comes from the mercury that disrupts the function of enzymes in microbes, such as bacteria and fungi. This prevents contamination of vaccines while they are stored in vials. Mercury, however, is also well-known as a potent toxin acting on cells in the brain. Much of mercury's toxicity to brain cells stems from the same attributes that make thimerosal such a useful preservative. It disrupts the basic biological function of cells by changing the structure of proteins and enzymes. In the brain, this can lead neurons to become excessively active, can impair the way they use energy, it can increase inflammation and lead to the death of neurons. While mercury poisoning can damage brain function in adults, babies are even more vulnerable. People have long understood that mercury is toxic. But in the latter half of the 20th century, scientists discovered that industrial mercury entered rivers and seas, accumulating in the tissues of fish and shellfish. The neurological consequences of consuming too much contaminated seafood could be severe. This led environmental scientists to determine safe levels of mercury exposure. Anxiety about mercury in vaccines intensified when it was noticed that some children receiving multiple vaccines could exceed established safety limits for mercury exposure. These limits were based on environmental toxicity studies. How mercury affects the brain, though, depends very much on the chemical form in which it is ingested. Methylmercury v ethylmercury The form of mercury that contaminates the environment as a consequence of industrial processes is methylmercury. The form that is part of thimerosal is ethylmercury. The structure of these molecules differs in subtle but important ways. Methylmercury has one more carbon atom and two more hydrogen atoms than ethylmercury. These small differences significantly affect how each compound behaves in the body, particularly in how easily they dissolve in fats. Fat solubility is a key consideration in pharmacokinetics – the science of how drugs and other molecules travel through the body. Briefly, because cell membranes are made of fatty substances, a molecule's ability to dissolve in fats strongly influences how it crosses these membranes and moves through the body. It affects how a molecule is absorbed into the blood, how it is distributed to different tissues, how it is broken down by the body into other chemicals and how it is excreted. Methylmercury from environmental contamination is more fat-soluble than ethylmercury from thimerosal. This means that it accumulates more easily in tissues and is excreted from the body more slowly. It also means that it can more easily cross into the brain and accumulate at greater concentrations for longer. For this reason, the safety guidelines that were established for methylmercury were unlikely to accurately predict the safety of ethylmercury. Global policy shift amid public fear Nevertheless, concerns about vaccine hesitancy, rising autism diagnoses and fears of a potential link to childhood vaccines led to thimerosal being almost entirely removed from childhood vaccines in the US by 2001 and in the UK between 2003 and 2005. Beyond biological considerations, policymakers were also responding to concerns about how vaccine fears could undermine immunisation efforts and fuel the spread of infectious diseases. Denmark, which removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines in 1992, provided an early opportunity to study the issue. Researchers compared the rates of autism before and after thimerosal's removal, as well as compared with similar countries still using it. Several large studies demonstrated conclusively that thimerosal was not causing autism or neurodevelopmental harm. Despite the overwhelming evidence that thimerosal is safe, it is no longer widely used in childhood vaccines in high-income countries, replaced by preservative-free vaccines, which must be stored as a single dose per vial. Storing multiple doses of a vaccine in the same vial, however, is still an extremely useful approach in resource-limited settings, in pandemics and where diseases require rapid, large-scale vaccination campaigns, common with influenza. International health bodies, including the World Health Organization, continue to support thimerosal's use. They emphasise that the benefits of immunisation far outweigh the theoretical risks from low-dose ethylmercury exposure.
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
If old school white-anting Sussan Ley on gender quotas works, the Liberals may pay a heavy political price
A day after the Labor party first voted to implement gender quotas to promote the representation of women in federal politics, five female Liberal MPs condemned the decision in a statement. Labor's national conference in Hobart in September 1994 featured heated debate about rules requiring that women be preselected for 35% of winnable seats by 2002. At the time, blokes made up more than 85% of Labor's parliamentary ranks. The five women in then opposition leader Alexander Downer's shadow cabinet – Bronwyn Bishop, Jocelyn Newman, Amanda Vanstone, Judi Moylan and Chris Gallus – signed a statement saying quotas demeaned women and would further institutionalise their minority status in frontline politics. 'It is effectively a vote of no confidence in women's own abilities and it is a reverse form of discrimination,' it read. 'It only treats the symptoms, not the cause of the problem.' The statement came just a few weeks after Downer had apologised for making light of domestic violence, joking that the opposition's policy on women's safety would be titled 'the things that batter'. Fast forward 30 years and the Liberals, emphatically rejected by voters at the 3 May federal election, are asking why just six of their 28 lower house MPs in the new parliament will be women. In contrast, Labor will have 50. An assessment by the outgoing Liberal senator Linda Reynolds found the Liberals will have their lowest number of women in parliament since 1993, a year before Labor adopted its first quotas. Charged with picking up the election defeat pieces, the party's first female leader, Sussan Ley, this week promised to be a 'zealot' on actions to get more diversity in Liberal ranks, but said she was agnostic about the right approach to do so. Ley reminded journalists that her party works as a federated organisation, and power over preselection rules rests with state and territory branches. Ley's appearance at the National Press Club in Canberra was impressive. Ending Peter Dutton's three-year boycott of the club, Ley outlined two formal reviews into the dire political state of the Coalition, and said she wanted new processes for policy design. She has a compelling personal backstory and resisted any risky captain's calls on policy or symbolism – recognition of deep divisions within her party. Previous reviews, including after the 2022 loss to Labor, recommended the Liberal federal executive adopt a target of 50% female representation within 10 years or three parliamentary terms. The recommendations were all but ignored by state branches. Challenged over just how many seats the Coalition would need to win at the next election to prevent Anthony Albanese securing a third term for Labor, Ley said she was prepared to work hard and remained optimistic about the Liberal party's future. She showed a successful rebuilding effort could be part of her legacy, even if victory itself would prove too difficult in 2028. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email But Ley's unwillingness to take a position on the best mechanism to boost female representation meant the question quickly fell to other Liberals speaking in the media this week. The former prime minister Tony Abbott was quick out of the blocks. Despite finding just one woman with sufficient talent or aptitude to be appointed to his cabinet line-up in 2013, Abbott rejected quota systems because such a move would contravene 'the merit principle that should be at the heart of our party'. He described quotas as 'fundamentally illiberal'. On Friday, the senior conservative Angus Taylor spoke out against quotas, arguing they 'subvert democratic processes'. After promising to 'crusade' to get more Liberal women elected, Taylor's prescription was mentoring, recruitment and support of potential candidates and staff. He correctly said the Liberals also needed to do better at other measures of diversity, including recruiting more multicultural candidates. Taylor pointed to branch level plebiscites in the New South Wales Liberal party, but neglected to mention the feral factionalism and branch stacking which often helps push men to the top of candidate selection lists, especially in winnable seats. Not all Liberals are opposed, however. The former finance minister Simon Birmingham called for 'hard, fast and ambitious' quotas after the election drubbing and Maria Kovacic, the NSW senator, has acknowledged current settings aren't working. She has called for quotas as a short-term circuit breaker. Reynolds used an opinion piece in the Australian on Friday to warn the Liberals were becoming increasingly irrelevant due to declining voter support, suggesting the prospects of the party surviving to its 90th anniversary in 2034 were slim without action on gender. One Liberal MP rubbished Taylor and Abbott's contributions, accusing them of 'white anting' Ley. 'Ultimately their attempts to destabilise Sussan have come very early,' they told Guardian Australia. 'They want to rule over the rubble. It's sad.' A frontbencher warned against quotas becoming an 'all consuming' fight for the party, like the civil war under way in the Victorian state opposition. 'We don't want it to be the defining issue of this term,' they said. Perhaps the post-election review being led by party elders Nick Minchin and Pru Goward, or a separate structural assessment by the Queensland senator and experienced strategist James McGrath, will recommend quotas, but the usual rearguard action against them is already under way. The problem for those opposing a new system is that quotas are the only method shown to have worked. Labor stuck to its original rules until 2012, when it moved to a '40:40:20' quota system, designed to ensure at least 40% of Labor's seats were filled by women, and not fewer than 40% were filled by men. The remaining 20% were open to any candidate. New goals adopted in 2015 required the party to hit gender equity by 2025, a milestone it achieved early, hitting 53% after the 2022 election. The former party strategist turned pollster Tony Barry said it best this week, when he observed drastic changes in approach usually come when opposition MPs reach a point 'where they just cannot stand losing any more'. There is apparently some way to go in Canberra. Bronwyn Bishop, Amanda Vanstone and their colleagues were wrong in 1994 when they belittled action to give more women a seat at the decision-making table. How much longer ideological opposition to smart strategies persists might just determine how long Labor stays in power.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
Diddy trial live updates: Defense to make closing arguments in Sean Combs's case
Sean 'Diddy' Combs could be sent to prison for life if convicted at his trial on federal sex-trafficking and racketeering charges.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Diddy Trial Prosecutors Argue Transportation for Prostitution Charges to Jury
Prosecutors in Diddy's criminal trial are telling jurors the Mann Act charges against Diddy are a slam dunk ... the feds say it's painfully obvious Diddy is guilty of interstate transportation for prostitution. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik is taking the reins on the government's closing argument and she told jurors Thursday the prostitution counts are super simple. Slavik told jurors the charge does not require force, fraud, coercion, or even consent to find Diddy guilty ... she says Diddy committed a crime if the jury finds he transported people across state lines for the purpose of having sex at freak-offs. Diddy's defense team has said the male entertainers hired for the freak-offs were paid for their time and discretion ... but Slavik slammed that as "a ridiculous argument." Slavik showed jurors tables and charts of multiple examples prosecutors say show Diddy arranged for male escorts to travel across state lines to be paid for prostitution with both Cassie Ventura and "Jane" (who testified under a pseudonym). The prosecutor told jurors they only needed to find one instance of Diddy paying for male escorts to travel for sexual encounters in order to convict him ... and Slavik added, "It couldn't be clearer."
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
RFK Jr's new vaccine committee issues bombshell decision on flu shots after previous panel was fired en masse
RFK Jr.'s newly-appointed vaccine advisory panel voted to recommend Americans take flu shots without a chemical that conspiracy theorists believe causes autism. The dramatic reversal in federal vaccine guidance follows Kennedy's sweeping removal of all 17 members of the previous Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) earlier this month. Their replacements, handpicked by Kennedy and including several vaccine skeptics, cast their first major vote by a margin of 5–1 to discourage use of thimerosal-containing flu shots - a formulation used in less than 5% of doses in the U.S. Scientists have determine that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal poses no health risk and is already absent from the vast majority of vaccines. The panel's decision ignores decades of scientific consensus and comes despite the Food and Drug Administration stating clearly that thimerosal is safe and that its removal from most vaccines was a precautionary move, not one based on evidence of harm. A CDC report affirming that conclusion was removed from the committee's website ahead of Thursday's vote after Kennedy's office reportedly blocked its release. Anti-vaccine groups have for decades linked thimerosal to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and Kennedy wrote a book in 2014 in which he advocated for 'the immediate removal of mercury' from vaccines. Study after study has found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism or other harm. Yet since 2001, all vaccines routinely used for US children age 6 years or younger have come in thimerosal-free formulas - including single-dose flu shots that account for the vast majority of influenza vaccinations. Anti-vaccine groups have for decades linked thimerosal to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and Kennedy wrote a book in 2014 in which he advocated for 'the immediate removal of mercury' from vaccines 'There is still no demonstrable evidence of harm,' one panelist, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist formerly with the National Institutes of Health, said in acknowledging the committee wasn't following its usual practice of acting on evidence. But he added that 'whether the actual molecule is a risk or not, we have to respect the fear of mercury' that might dissuade some people from getting vaccinated. In recent days, Kennedy has posted on X about its alleged dangers. The FDA on its website says 'there was no evidence that thimerosal in vaccines was dangerous,' and that the decision to remove it previously was a precautionary measure to decrease overall exposure to mercury among young infants. Multi-dose forms of CSL's Afluria and Flucelvax as well as Sanofi's Fluzone use thimerosal as a preservative, according to the FDA's website. Sanofi said it will have sufficient supply of its flu vaccine to support customer preference for this season. CSL said it supplies a very low number of multi-dose vials of flu vaccine in response to demand. Medical groups decried the panel´s lack of transparency in blocking a CDC analysis of thimerosal that concluded there was no link between the preservative and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. The data had been posted on the committee's website Tuesday, but was later removed - because, according to ACIP member Dr. Robert Malone, the report hadn't been authorized by Kennedy´s office. Panel members said they had read it. The panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted 5-1 in three separate votes to recommend thimerosal-free shots. The now 7-person panel was installed by Kennedy earlier this month after he abruptly fired all 17 members of the the influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and handpicked replacements that include several vaccine skeptics. The ACIP panel advises the CDC determine who should be vaccinated against a long list of diseases, and when. Those recommendations have a big impact on whether insurance covers vaccinations and where they're available. It typically meets three times a year and intends to conduct its next meeting in the third quarter, CDC said. 'The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent - as far as we know - risk from thimerosal. So I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only available preparation contains thimerosal,' Dr. Cody Meissner, the only panel member who voted against the recommendation, said in explaining his vote. Lyn Redwood, formerly of the Kennedy-founded anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, gave the presentation on thimerosal, arguing that it was a neurotoxin. Redwood's presentation posted on the CDC's website earlier this week initially included a reference to a study that does not exist. The report she gave to the committee was significantly shorter, removing a slide that made a reference to that study and another saying she did not have any conflicts of interest. 'With the vote on thimerosal this afternoon, the new committee has turned the ACIP process into a farce,' said former CDC vaccine adviser Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned last week over Kennedy's changes to vaccine policy. She said it is unprecedented to have an outside speaker present and then move immediately to a vote. Evidence is usually compiled formally by CDC and reviewed by a work group. She noted that CDC experts did not present their data publicly to refute Redwood. xCBS and The New York Times have reported that the agency hired Redwood to work in its vaccine safety office. An HHS spokesman declined to comment on whether Redwood had been hired by the CDC. While Thursday's debate involved only a small fraction of flu vaccines, some public health experts contend the discussion unnecessarily raised doubt about vaccine safety. Already, fewer than half of Americans get their yearly flu vaccinations, and mistrust in vaccines overall is growing. 'Selective use of data and omission of established science undermines public trust and fuels misinformation,' said Dr. Sean O´Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He said of the new panelists, 'Nothing about their recent actions have been science-based or transparent.' The flu votes marked the final step of a two-day meeting that alarmed pediatricians and other doctors' groups, who pointed to new panelists' lack of expertise in how to properly track vaccine safety - and a shift in focus to some longtime messages of antivaccine groups. 'What should have been a rigorous, evidence-based discussion on the national vaccine schedule instead appeared to be a predetermined exercise orchestrated to undermine the well-established safety and efficacy of vaccines and fundamental basics of science,' said Dr. Jason Goldman of the American College of Physicians. Of special concern was the announcement by panel chairman Martin Kulldorff to reevaluate the 'cumulative effect' of the children's vaccine schedule - the list of immunizations given at different times throughout childhood. That reflects the scientifically debunked notion that children today get too many vaccinations, somehow overwhelming their immune system. Doctors say improved vaccine technology means kids today are exposed to fewer antigens - substances that the immune system reacts to - than their grandparents despite getting more doses. US Rep. Kim Schrier, a pediatrician and Democrat from Washington state, told reporters on Thursday that children are exposed to more antigens 'in one day of day care' than in all their vaccinations. Earlier on Thursday, the committee voted 5-2 to recommend use of Merck's recently approved RSV antibody drug Enflonsia for infants 8 months or younger whose mothers did not receive a preventive shot during pregnancy. ACIP panel member Retsef Levi raised safety concerns about the antibody drug, which were addressed by experts at the FDA and CDC. He said he would be concerned about giving the product to one of his healthy children and was one of the two votes against the recommendation. The panel's recommendations need to be adopted by either the CDC director or the Health and Human Services Secretary before becoming final. There is currently no CDC director. President Donald Trump's nominee for the post, Susan Monarez, spoke to a Senate committee on Wednesday as part of the confirmation process. Also at the ACIP meeting: The panel backed a new option to protect infants against RSV, a virus especially dangerous to babies. It voted 5-2 that a newly approved antibody shot from Merck could be used alongside two existing options. Kulldorff said the panel may look into whether hepatitis B vaccination of newborns is appropriate if the mother doesn't carry the liver-destroying virus. Pediatricians counter that babies can catch the virus in other ways, such as from other caregivers who don't know they're infected. Kennedy already sidestepped the advisory group and announced the COVID-19 vaccine will no longer be recommended for healthy children or pregnant women. But CDC scientists told the panel that vaccination is 'the best protection' during pregnancy and that most children hospitalized for COVID-19 over the past year were unvaccinated. Some advisers questioned if the CDC´s extensive tracking of vaccine safety is trustworthy.
