The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on June 24 said there is no link between vaccines containing a preservative called thimerosal and autism. The statement comes two days before a meeting in which new advisers to the agency will consider whether to recommend restricting thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines.
Thimerosal is a preservative that is 50 percent mercury, by weight, It began being used in vaccines in the 1930s.
Data, including from the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink system, show no association between exposure to thimerosal and autism spectrum disorder, CDC staffers wrote in a 17-page document.
While other papers have found an increased risk of autism and neurodevelopment disorders from vaccines with thimerosal, those studies “have significant methodological limitations including unmeasured confounding, inaccurate assessment of exposures, differences in control and case groups, unverified diagnoses, and other potential biases that threaten the validity and reliability of the findings,” the document states….