By Dr. Matsen
My update for this month was to have been on Alzheimer’s Disease but several very interesting articles, many of which were sent to me by patients, have compelled me to instead revisit my October 2002 update on mercury in order to add to it.
The Whitaker Wellness Institute Report (Vol.12, No.11, p.3-6) refers to an Italian study (published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 1999, 33:1578-83) which found that, in Idiopathic Congestive Heart Failure (idiopathic means the cause is unknown), the damaged heart muscle had mercury levels up to 22,000 times above normal. As I said in October’s update, virtually every patient tests positive for mercury because of mercury amalgam fillings or vaccinations containing the mercury preservative “thimerosal.” However, while the extremely high levels of mercury seen in Idiopathic Congestive Heart Failure likely originate from these sources, there must also be some mechanism that allows such extreme concentrations to occur in the heart. One culprit capable of doing this is the Coxsackie virus, which has previously been implicated in heart disease. Of course, the ability of mercury and other heavy metals to disrupt immune function could allow the virus to be active in the first place.
For improving Idiopathic Congestive Heart Failure, The Whitaker Wellness Institute Report recommends taking Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) as a supplement at doses up to 800 milligrams per day to strengthen the heart, as well as chelation with oral DMSA capsules to remove the mercury. On page 6 of the same article they discuss their protocol on taking flu shots; while they do not recommend mass flu immunizations, they fail to mention that the thimerosal preservative in the flu shot is a major source of mercury exposure.
Consumer Reports (August 2001, p.19-20) states, “Mercury is a major constituent of thimerosal, a preservative that for the past 70 years has been added to multidose vials of vaccines to inhibit bacterial growth. There has never been a scientific study of the safety of using this product in children’s vaccines. Nevertheless, its use continued until 1999, when the FDA added up vaccine-related thimerosal exposure for the first time….”
“At the time, three vaccines routinely given to newborns and infants, hepatitis B, Hib, and DTP, contained thimerosal. An average-sized baby given vaccines containing the maximum concentration of thimerosal was being exposed to 187 micrograms of mercury, more than twice what the Environmental Protection Agency deems safe for very young children.”
“Nevertheless, the FDA and CDC allowed immunizations with thimerosal-containing vaccines to continue-while cooperating with manufacturers to create thimerosal-free versions as quickly as possible. Not until early in 2001, more than a year and a half after the issue first surfaced, were all childhood vaccines made without significant amounts of thimerosal.”
Neal Halsey is a pediatrician from Johns Hopkins University who was chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases from 1995 through June of 1999. While he too had considered thimerosal to contain an insignificant amount of mercury, this changed after the FDA study. In an article in New York Times Magazine (November 10, 2002), Halsey was quoted as saying: “In most vaccine containers, thimerosal is listed as a mercury derivative, a hundredth of a percent. And what I believed, and what everybody else believed, was that it was truly a trace, a biologically insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had had the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the calculation.”
“My first concern was that it would harm the credibility of the immunization program,” he says. “But gradually it came home to me that maybe there was some real risk to the children.”
The same article states: “On July 7, 1999, at Halsey’s urging, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service released a statement urging vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal as quickly as possible….”
This move by Halsey was criticized by the pharmaceutical industry, because this crack he had put in their dyke of denial was sure to lead to a flood of lawsuits, and by the pro-vaccination lobby, as it would lead to a loss of faith in vaccines. An independent committee to review immunization safety was created by the Institute for Medicine, which advises the U.S. government on public health. was still saying in October of 2001, it reported: “The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, ADHD and speech or language delay.” (Maclean’s magazine, October 7, 2002, p.50-52)
Health departments of various governments have been extremely lax in regulating the pharmaceutical industry and their cohorts. This continual blasé approach to the damage likely done by thimerosal to billions of children in the industrialized world, and still being done to children in the third world, is certain to end up in the courts. For example, a lawsuit out of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada was filed against Aventis-Pasteur claiming that the thimerosal-containing pertussis vaccine (the P in the DPT shot) had caused autism in children. The mercury-containing pertussis vaccine had been discontinued in Canada in 2001, but it had been banned 30 years earlier by the Swedish health department because it was determined that it was safer to give no pertussis vaccine rather than give one that had such deadly side effects (Eating Alive II, p.372).
In the last week of November 2002, a patient who just had a flu shot came to see me. When she had asked about the thimerosal mercury preservative in the flu shot, the doctor had quickly dismissed her by stating that it was an insignificant amount.
I’ve just shown that the quantity of mercury in vaccines was misinterpreted, and that the true quantity is higher than was once thought and is admittedly dangerous for children. Is it safe for adults?
There are two other errors that have also been overlooked that will show it is not safe for adults either.
First, the safety levels of mercury were based on the levels in children of the Faeroe Islands born to women who are known to have accumulated high levels of methylmercury; much of their diet consisted of methylmercury-tainted whale meat. While most people don’t eat whale meat, some ocean fish (large, long-lived fish such as swordfish, shark, and marlin) are also known to be a source of mercury. Smaller, short-lived fish, such as the albacore tuna sold in cans, contain mercury levels far below the amount considered unsafe by the FDA. Swedish studies have shown that “eating ocean fish increases the person’s intake of selenium, and the selenium from fish has been shown to reduce the toxicity of methylmercury from fish.” (Eating Alive II, page 305, references given.) Studies of mothers and their children in the Republic of Seychelles, where 85 percent of the population consumes ocean fish daily, showed no adverse effects on the development of the children up to age 66 months (Journal of the American Medical Association, 1998, 280(8):701-7).
So while the toxicity of methylmercury from ocean fish is debatable, the mercury in thimerosal is ethylmercury, not the methylmercury found in fish, and until recently, few studies have been done on the toxicity of ethylmercury. “A new study just being published (August 2002) makes a definitive, mechanistic link between thimerosal and cell damage or death in the exposed individual. Makani, Gupta, and colleagues subjected cultured human T cells to thimerosal. They found thimerosal’s mercury ingredient (ethylmercury) specifically caused apoptosis [death] of these cells.” (Alternative Medicine Review, Vol.7, No.4, p.310) This study (Genes and Immunity, 2002; in press [August]) shows that low levels of mercury exposure, as seen in vaccines, were enough to kill the human immune cells.
Not only is there much more mercury in thimerosal than once thought but the type of mercury has also turned out to be much more toxic than expected. While probably not capable of inducing immediate death and brain damage in adults as in children, it should be pointed out that mercury is not completely eliminated from the body as was once believed. Swedish autopsies showed that some dentists had up to 200 hundred times more mercury in their pituitary glands than normal, even though some of them had retired decades earlier (British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1991, 48:729-734). From studies like these, Sweden determined that the safe levels of mercury in people are zero and therefore mercury was banned in dental fillings, vaccinations and even mercury thermometers in 1998. This was one year before the North American governments began to even recognize that their vaccination programs had likely done grievous harm to their children.
In summary, studies have shown that virtually the entire population of industrialized society has received exposure to mercury from a number of sources.
- Exposure begins before birth with mercury accumulating in your liver and kidneys if your mother had a number of mercury fillings (European Journal of Pediatrics, 1994, 153:607-610).
- Exposure increases with the first childhood vaccinations that contain thimerosal mercury preservative. This could affect the brain, nerves and immune system as well as the liver and kidneys (Eating Alive II, Chapter 2).
- Exposure further increases with the introduction of mercury amalgam fillings. Some mercury can be swallowed in the saliva where the kidneys and liver would accumulate much of it. Vapours from fillings absorbed through the nose can travel along the nerves of smell into the pituitary gland. Release of mercury from fillings can be dramatically increased by: other metals nearby, such as nickel braces or gold fillings; chewing gum; consumption of foods or beverages that are acidic or salty (Eating Alive II, Chapter 1).
If you’ve been exposed to any or all of the above sources of mercury, then your body has been struggling to adapt to it. Mercury that binds to selenium is neutralized. If you had insufficient selenium, you might have died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Since you are alive, then you had adequate selenium to make it this far. However, mercury that isn’t neutralized by selenium will bind to sulfur. Since sulfur is found in your body’s key detoxification enzyme, glutathione peroxidase, weakening of this enzyme can contribute to virtually any chronic disease, as is explained in Eating Alive II.
So we’re the tough ones who have survived our mercury exposure, but maybe we’re a little wounded to some degree or another. If thimerosal-containing vaccines are not safe for a child, why, then, is it considered to be safe for an adult? We may be able to withstand the dangers more, but isn’t it still unsafe? Do you think there’s room for any more mercury in your body?