Madison Area Lyme Support Group

The U.S. government has long told the public that thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine preservative ingredient, poses no harm to children, but that out of an abundance of caution, the ingredient hasn’t been used in childhood vaccines since at least 2001.

According to a special investigation by journalist Sharyl Attkisson, both these claims are false. Attkisson described them as part of a “a concerted propaganda campaign to mislead the public” about thimerosal and the science linking it to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Attkisson’s investigation outlines how government agencies and the mainstream medical establishment for decades promoted a contradictory narrative about the toxic chemical.

On the one hand, they misled the public about thimerosal’s known and possible harms and actively worked to discredit anyone who questioned its safety. On the other hand, they also falsely assured the public that it had been removed from vaccines.

Thimerosal is still used in some vaccines today, including some “thimerosal-free vaccines,” Attkisson said.

Her investigation shows that evidence linking thimerosal in vaccines to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, has existed for decades. It also exposes an intentional project to rewrite the scientific narrative around the toxin to hide that link from the public.

Thimerosal is still present in vaccines

Websites for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — a key source for vaccine industry propaganda promoted by Google — and others have long posted statements leading the public to believe thimerosal has been removed from children’s vaccines.

For example, although in recent weeks some changes have been made to the CDC website, the site still contains statements like this one: “Fact: Thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines in the United States in 2001.”

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia states on its website that thimerosal “was removed from vaccines after an amendment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act was signed into law on Nov. 21, 1997.”

“These claims would receive five outrageous Pinocchios from any neutral fact-checking organization,” Attkisson wrote.

In her report, Attkisson shows a series of screenshots from websites and vaccine labels — many removed from the internet but archived on the Wayback Machine — from 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025.

The screenshots all show thimerosal as an ingredient in vaccines available to children in the U.S., including in flu shots and some tetanus shots.

What the government and vaccine manufacturers knew, a timeline

In 1997, Congress asked the FDA to review the use of thimerosal in drugs and vaccines due to safety concerns about mercury exposure. The following year, the agency requested detailed information from manufacturers about thimerosal in their products.

By 1999, U.S. and European public health institutions had begun recognizing that cumulative exposure to mercury in all vaccines a child takes “may exceed some of the government guidelines.”

That same year, the Public Health Service, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the Inter-Agency Working Group on Vaccines all recommended that mercury be removed from vaccines licensed in the U.S.

The advisory committee thimerosal working group proposed analyzing the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) to identify vaccines with “plausible” neurologic, neurodevelopmental and renal conditions — including autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delay, stammering, epilepsy, and tics — related to mercury.

If “any hint of association” appeared, the committee would conduct follow-up studies, its members said.

In 2000, the CDC brought together vaccine makers and the public health officials who regulate, mandate and distribute vaccines for a meeting conducted behind closed doors at the Simpsonwood Retreat and Conference Center in Norcross, Georgia.

Transcripts from the Simpsonwood meeting obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests revealed attendees discussed the findings on thimerosal research — which showed a link between mercury-based thimerosal in vaccines and brain injuries, including autism — and debated strategies for keeping the information from the public.

During the meeting, immunologist and pediatrician Dr. Dick Johnston explained that mercury (in the form of thimerosal), a known toxin, is used in vaccines because it lowers rates of bacterial and fungal contamination during manufacturing process.

However, he said there was “scant data” on the safety of injecting babies with multiple metals through vaccination, Attkisson wrote. This, despite the fact that “aluminum and mercury are often simultaneously administered to infants, both at the same [injection] site and at different sites,” Johnston said.

Other experts present at the meeting agreed.

Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC’s National Immunization Program, reported that the VSD analyses “to date raise some concerns of a possible dose-response effect of increasing levels of methylmercury in vaccines and certain neurologic diseases.”

Researchers found possible associations between thimerosal-containing vaccines given to healthy babies before age 6 months and tics, attention deficit disorders, speech and language disorders.

“It was further worrisome that an association between brain disorders and thimerosal showed up in the limited sample of children mostly aged six and younger since that’s typically too young to be diagnosed with ADD and autism,” Attkisson wrote. “Those disorders are typically diagnosed from ages 6-12.”

Many doctors at the meeting expressed concern. One famously said he knew that definitive research may take some time, but in the meantime, he had a newborn grandson. “I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines.”

After the meeting, other published research also linked autism and thimerosal, including a 2001 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which found a “biologically plausible” connection between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders.

“This sounded alarm bells with some in public health since the number of recommended vaccines and, thus, cumulative mercury exposure had exploded in the 80s and 90s, along with autism cases,” Attkisson wrote.

In 2001, the government urged the removal of thimerosal from vaccines while officially denying that it caused any harm.

Why remove it, Attkisson asked, “if it’s unquestioningly harmless?”

‘A powerful propaganda campaign’

After the meeting in Simpsonwood, the pharmaceutical industry, government and scientific establishment “launched a powerful propaganda campaign designed to discredit the scientists and studies unearthing vaccine-autism links, or investigating vaccine safety, in general,” Attkisson wrote.

This included “flooding the scientific landscape with industry-friendly counterstudies” claiming that thimerosal was safe, exerting pressure on the media, politicians and medical organizations like the IOM, and funding nonprofits to misdirect the public.

The 2003 publication of the final version of the VSD study discussed at the clandestine Simpsonwood meeting was key to this campaign, Attkisson wrote.

The final version reported that phase one of the study had found significant positive associations between the cumulative effects of thimerosal in vaccines with tics and language delay at three and seven months. However, it also stated, “In no analyses were significant increased risks found for autism or attention-deficit disorder.”

This was misleading because the report didn’t also state that the children studied were too young for these diagnoses, Attkisson said.

The final version also used “word play” to downplay significant findings of increased neurodevelopmental risks, saying things like “no consistent significant associations” were found, even though different types of significant associations of elevated risk had been identified.

Earlier drafts of the report later obtained by Congress showed how the authors played with language to minimize the appearance of risk, she said.

The study also failed to reveal that its lead author was hired away from the CDC during the study by vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKlein, whose vaccines were being studied.

The study concluded there were “conflicting findings” and called for more research — yet it was “peddled to the media as proof that vaccines don’t cause autism,” according to Attkisson.

The following year, in 2004, as researchers were publicizing evidence and calling for more research into the autism-thimerosal link, the IOM issued a reversal of its 2001 conclusions.

Attkisson wrote:

“Three years earlier it had found a ‘biologically plausible’ connection between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders. But the organization now took the position that, while it could not rule out a thimerosal-autism link, the scientific establishment should not waste money studying the issue further.

“This proclamation by the IOM was largely a death knell for any taxpayer-funded research honestly attempting to uncover vaccine safety issues involving thimerosal. The IOM report was then widely misrepresented in the media as having disproven or debunked any link between vaccines and autism.”

From that point on, all of the previous science that had shown safety risks of thimerosal was “magically wiped away” and replaced by “the scientific consensus,” Attkisson said.

Thimerosal continues to be used in many shots, although its presence is effectively hidden by proclamations that no vaccines contain the toxin and by deceptive labeling practices — vaccines with trace amounts of the toxin can be marketed as “thimerosal-free.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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**Comment**

Go here for Attkisson’s report:  https://sharylattkisson.com/2025/03/special-investigation-govt-deception-over-thimerosal-in-vaccines-linked-to-neurodevelopmental-harm-in-children/

Please notice the deceptive government “page not found” and “we no longer support this file” headings forcing Attkisson to use the way back machine to uncover truth the government is covering up.

Roughly 12 hours after 1-year-old Sa’Niya was given six shots for 12 vaccines during a wellness visit, the little girl died. Sa’Niya — who had just turned 1 year old on March 11 — received the shots on March 26 at about 4 p.m., at Golisano Children’s Hospital Pediatric Practice in Rochester, New York, according to the baby’s mother, Shanticia Nelson.

Nelson, her husband Kayon Carter and Sa’Niya’s grandmother Latricia Hanley shared the story of Sa’Niya’s death in an interview with CHD.TV Program Director Polly Tommey.

“Sa’Niya was a happy baby,” Nelson said. “She was happy and she loved her dad. Everything was ‘dada.’”

According to the visit notes, Sa’Niya was given six shots containing 12 vaccines, including: “DTap/Hep B/IPV (Pediarix), HiB/Acthib/Hiberix, Pneumococcal 20-valent Conj vaccine, Varicella (known commonly as Chickenpox), MMR, and Hepatitis A.”

She also received sodium fluoride as a teeth treatment.

Nelson said she told the nurse she was uncomfortable having Sa’Niya receive so many shots at once. According to Hanley, the nurse became angry and told Nelson, “She needs these shots. You got to give her these shots.”

The nurse never explained the 12 different vaccines and never mentioned the vaccines’ possible side effects, such as seizures and death.   (See link for article)

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Important quote:

“Specifically, some babies do not have the liver function or detoxification capacity to handle a cumulative aluminum load. Vaccines stress mitochondria — the powerhouses of the cell. Some babies do not have enough mitochondrial reserve to tolerate the oxidative stress of multiple vaccines on the same day.” ~ Dr. Liz Mumper, pediatrician

‘Catching children up’ by giving them numerous vaccines simultaneously is done frequently.  It’s important to remember that pediatric clinics often receive multiple financial incentives for giving vaccines and doctors get bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks.  It’s all a big financial scam that doesn’t have the patient’s best interest or health in mind.

• Infant deaths due to vaccines are never listed on death certificates, but are listed as SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) due to the lack of ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes, sanctioned by the CDC and the WHO.  Coroners can’t choose to list a death as due to a vaccine even if they wanted to because no code exists for it.

The CDC lists 131 causes of childhood deaths but omits vaccines.

SIDS remains the leading cause of death among infants in the U.S. claiming 3,700 lives in 2015.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sudden-infant-deaths-vaccination/

Police Detective: 50% of Sudden Infant Deaths Happened Within 48 Hours of Vaccination — But No One Is Allowed to Say It

In an interview with Steve Kirsch, a former police detective claimed that about half of the sudden infant death cases she investigated showed the child had received a vaccination in the previous 48 hours. But coroners never mentioned vaccines on the death certificates, and doctors have been trained to gaslight parents, she said.

by John-Michael Dumais

October 2, 2023

A former police detective claimed that around 50% of the 250 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases she investigated over seven years happened within 48 hours after the infant received a vaccine. About 70% happened within one week.

She argued this timing proves vaccines are behind SIDS because the correlation would not be observed if the deaths were occurring randomly.

The detective, who worked in a “major city” of over 300,000 people and identified herself simply as “Jennifer,” shared her story with Steve Kirsch in a video and Substack article published last week.

Kirsch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist and executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said he contacted the police station where Jennifer worked and verified her identity.

The detective’s information is independently verifiable in the police records “for any health authority who has any doubts,” Kirsch said, adding that he is actively working with the police department to make the statistics public.

Describing her department’s policy to “leave no stone unturned” when investigating sudden infant deaths, Jennifer wrote:

“Standard police policy was to ask about any pharmaceuticals … and ask every single thing that a person was doing in the moments, hours, days and weeks leading up to their death …

“So, with a baby: ‘When was the last time he saw a doc? Was he healthy? Any meds or shots? What has he been eating? What kind of soap do you wash them with?’ …

“The coroner we had to often report to was especially a stickler on everything that went into that kid, food- and drug-wise.”

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, president and CEO of The Rimland Center For Integrative Medicine, told The Defender, “Many parental reports about a baby dying suddenly start with the phrase, ‘He just was at the pediatrician’s office — they said he was healthy.’”  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

I highly recommend A Midwestern Doctor’s article, “The Century of Evidence Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.”

Story at a Glance:

•Since at least 1933, the medical community has known that vaccines cause infant deaths. To conceal this, those deaths were renamed “crib death” and then “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” (SIDS), eventually being attributed to infants not sleeping on their backs.

•This revisionism is not supported by the existing evidence nor the historical changes in the frequency of SIDS. Most recently, SIDS rates have had an unprecedented decrease in tandem with the COVID-19 lockdowns reducing vaccination rates.

•The vaccine most strongly associated with SIDS, DPT, was protected for decades by the government despite knowing a large body of evidence around the world showed it killed infants—particularly when an inevitable hot lot was released. Eventually, so many injury lawsuits were filed that in 1986, the government had to give blanket immunity to the vaccine manufacturers.

•This article will concisely review the vast body of evidence showing vaccines cause SIDS and reveal the mechanism modern research has now repeatedly proven causes vaccines to trigger infant death.  (See link for article)

For more:

• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2023/09/11/autopsy-confirms-infant-died-from-over-vaccination/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2025/02/13/another-baby-dead-1-hour-after-7-vaccines-flawed-models-rule-cdc-claims-sids-probably-caused-by-vaccines/
•  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2023/12/07/cdc-largest-infant-mortality-rate-in-20-years-another-baby-dead-after-vaccination/
• https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/17/kids-dying-after-vaccinations/