Experts stress vaccine safety

As questions resurface about thimerosal's link to autism, the CDC's director urges parents to continue to immunize their children.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Aug. 8, 2005.

Washington -- Childhood vaccines are safe, and they remain vitally important to children's health, federal officials and physician groups reiterated at a Capitol Hill briefing July 19, even as a rally was readied for the next day by groups concerned about a long-feared link between autism and the vaccine preservative thimerosal.

For most children with autism, the cause is still a mystery, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH. However, studies of thousands of children have not turned up any evidence that thimerosal is the cause, she said. "The best evidence we have is that vaccines save lives."

Dr. Gerberding urged parents to have their children immunized. People may have forgotten the devastation such diseases as polio, measles, mumps or rubella caused because those diseases have been virtually eliminated through widespread use of vaccines, she said.

However, if enough parents decline to immunize their children, those diseases could return, she warned.

In addition, thimerosal has been virtually eliminated from most childhood vaccines and is only found in some flu vaccine and in trace amounts picked up from the cleaning of vaccine manufacturing equipment, she said.