Kennedy defended the article insisting no one has shown “one mistake” he made in the article
That's not how fact works. I can make some statement but that statement doesn't pass into "fact" just because no one has yet to provide a list of where I got it wrong. One is required to provide evidence to establish fact.
Here's an excerpt from RFK's paper.
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal
And here's the deal. Thimerosal is a preservative in vaccines. It's used to keep bacteria from growing in vaccines. However, the US goes through so much so quickly in terms of those vaccines that they give you at birth, that we just simply do not need to add a preservative in them. So the claim here is just baseless to begin with. The preservative just simply is not present in childhood vaccines. Where you will likely find it, is in vaccines that need to be shelf stable for long periods of time. Such as things like the flu vaccine. And absolutely NOT the COVID vaccine that needs refrigeration. There's literally no need for a preservative there because we keep it cool.
The component that likely triggers fears is the breakdown of Thimerosal into Ethylmercury C₂H₅Mg⁺ which has been shown to be toxic and indeed Thimerosal does indeed get eventually processed into this compound. However, the body DOES indeed expel ethylmercury in three to seven days. So, NO, it does not stay inside your body. We have thousands of studies that indicate this.
What one might have heard is something called methylmercury, which is very bad for humans but there is no means chemically to convert thimerosal into methylmercury in vivo. We've done studies on that too.
So with that said, does the ethylmercury in vaccines raise a cause for concern? Absolutely not. The amount required to keep a vaccine fresh is orders of magnitude smaller than what you'll likely find in your everyday food, especially fish. You will likely get thousands of times more ethylmercury in a single can of tuna than you will in a single childhood vaccine. So if vaccines prose a problem for a person, literally ALL FOOD on the planet Earth poses a much higher risk by massive values. And this is the thing that RFK's paper completely avoids if you ignore the inaccuracies of the chemical composition of childhood vaccines that he routinely makes.
So:
- One, childhood vaccines DO NOT have the chemical that is routinely cited as the cause for autism.
- Two, the chemical that is routinely cited is found in the vast majority of food being ingested.
- Three, no person has put forward a model that accurately presents a lab repeatable process by which this chemical would cause such a condition.
- Four, evidence suggests that autism is a genetic disorder and is indeed NOT an environmental disease.
- And five, and most importantly, the vast majority of "doctors" hocking the vaccine-autism connection are doing so for finical gains, so literally they're just wanting to use people's ignorance for monetary gain.
RFK is no different in this regards. This paper was a precursor to his book (which I will not link here, but you can easily find it) and he commonly thumps his paper as a commercial for his book. And some might point to pharmaceuticals as just big "ad machines" and the difference is that the claims made in drug ads is peer reviewed. The claims in RFK's book are backed up by: The College of Shit Mr. Kennedy Just Pulled Out His Ass™. I fail to understand how the same people that fear "big pharma" trying to fleece the public is also the same people who gladly get fleeced by people who are distinctly "not doctors". I grant anyone that the way modern medicine is marketed is shitty. That is less a problem with science and more a problem with capitalism, but that is as far as I will open that Pandora's box. So if anyone has beef with medicine, it's likely you have more an issue with something distinctly NOT SCIENCE.
The only thing that has been proven that vaccines cause is less dead children. There are too many studies with millions of points of evidence that back this unifying claim up, for alternatives claiming the opposite to even remotely hold a candle to. Simple fact, childhood vaccines save lives and the vast ocean of evidence backing that claim up is overwhelming in comparison to the paltry offering of anecdotal conjecture offered by the opposition.