From the August 2001 Idaho Observer:

Lawsuits indicate growing national movement to hold vaccine producers liable for mercury poisoning epidemic

by The Idaho Observer

Dallas law firm Waters & Kraus, LLP, announced April 17 that it filed the first known mercury poisoning civil lawsuit against vaccine manufacturer Abbott Laboratories, et al, on behalf of Counter, et al (The Idaho Observer, May, 2001).

Four Oregon families filed a class action in Multnomah County Court against 12 drug companies July 10, 2001. The complainants claim that six million children in the U.S. have received potentially toxic levels of mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines.

Boyd Haley, Professor and Chair of the University of Kentucky's Department of Chemistry, published comments that support claims linking mercury poisoning to epidemic neurological dysfunction in America's children. “I have tested vaccines with and without thimerosal with regards to their ability to inhibit important enzymes in brain tissue and in a series of purified mammalian enzymes critical for normal cell metabolism. The vaccines containing thimerosal were much more toxic than the vaccines without added thimerosal. Thimerosal breaks down into ethyl-mercury, a well known neurotoxic compound. The amount given a six-pound infant in one vaccination would be the equivalent of giving a 180 pound adult 30 vaccinations in one day.

“My comment on this issue is as follows. If indeed the correlations that I have been presented on the increase in diagnosis of autism with increased vaccinations of infants is correct, then I would be of the opinion that the agent in vaccinations most likely to cause the illness would be thimerosal, a known neurotoxin that has been removed from many across-the-counter medicines such as merthiolate and contact lens solutions. Furthermore, infants do not make copious amounts of bile and mercury is removed through the bilary transport system.

“Therefore, they are being subjected to mercury in the form of ethyl-mercury before they can effectively clear it from their bodies. The ethyl-mercury is also given with high levels of aluminum (also neurotoxic) in some vaccines which could act synergistically with the mercury to enhance its toxicity. I have so testified in front of a USA Congressional Committee.”

The lawsuits and comments such as those made by Dr. Haley indicate that growing numbers of citizens, attorneys and physicians are discovering the link between thimerosal and epidemic neurological disorders such as autism in our children.