Mercury, Vaccines and SIDS, Oh My!

This post relates to three articles I read on Monday, but didn't have the energy to blog about Monday.

First: Mercury. My favorite Roman god and neurotoxic heavy metal. Mercury has been found in high fructose corn syrup.

Let's see, I was already not a fan of HFCS before this story, and did my best to keep it out of the boys' diets, but am not so good with my own diet. After reading this, I'm tossing the Hershey's syrup I was adding to my lattes every now and then. I think I've got some AhLaska in the fridge to use instead.

Also HFCS related, the Corn Refiners Association, the ones responsible for that corn syrup propaganda you may have seen in print and TV ads, is probably not very happy about this news. I just went to "Sweet Surprise," their website. Yes, really. The name makes me want to barf. The "sweet surprise," (apart from the way corn syrup messes with your metabolism and isn't processed by the body the way natural sweeteners are, instead having to go through the liver like other toxins and not allowing the body to be satiated the way it would with natural foods) may be the potent neurotoxin! However those corn folks want us to know: "This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance." Appears? Dubious? My, get all scientific on us, why don't you! Do you have anything to say to back up your, er, opinions? OK. Well, I'll "appear" to keep far away from your toxic crap. I will have to get over my Dr Pepper thing at restaurants, and if I want a soda, stick to the Mexican Coke at home. (It's at Costco in glass bottles - the Coca Cola made with sugar, the way it used to be before subsidized corn took over the country.)

Check out this parody of those horrible corn syrup ads. Really funny, and even more pertinent with this mercury news. There are a lot more that are equally funny on youtube, as well.

Second: Vaccines. This study claims that the mercury-based thimerosal used in vaccines isn't harmful. Oh wait, according to this article, "once used in many vaccines". Yeah, it's still in many vaccines. Try again. The first thing I thought about when reading about this study, was why did the US CDC fund a study of vaccines in children in Italy? How about studying children in say, oh, the United States? Then I thought, giving them the benefit of the doubt, well, if the Italians had already done the first part of the study in the 90s, the CDC was trying to save doing the work again, plus there's that ten years head start the Italians had.

But, I thought more about it, and more issues came to mind. Do you think Italy's children have a similar genetic background to children in the US? Don't you think the children of the "Great American Melting Pot" might have a bit more diversity? Also, were children in the US being given the same vaccines, on the same schedules, as Italian children? Or, were say, the money-making pharmaceutical companies in the US already pushing more vaccines, more frequently in the US than Italy? I don't know, but I bet US children got more vaccines (and thimerosal) than they're Italian counterparts. Also, were the children who would be more likely to have adverse effects from thimerosal excluded from this study? For instance, sick children or those with weak immune systems? Let's see: "thousands of healthy Italian babies". I guess that's a yes.

While looking for a link to this study, I found this fascinating blog post.
Read this link. I have to read it more carefully, but so far it only reinforced my initial feelings that this study was specially designed so the results could be twisted around to good effect by the CDC.

Third: SIDS This article from Monday is about the number of infant suffocation deaths rising. Apparently there's a difference between suffocation and SIDS, though they are both placed under the heading of SUIDs, or sudden unexpected infant deaths. A bit confusing. What's odd is that suffocation deaths are "most common among black boy babies younger than 4 months". That really doesn't make sense to me. Why would black boy babies be more likely to die accidentally from suffocation? And though suffocation is not the same as SIDS, it seems the two were used interchangeably for many years. The article itself didn't really get me too worked up, it was the "discussion" of the article I found, that involved lots of bashing of co-sleeping as being the dangerous cause of infant deaths, versus the many parents who co-slept with their babies, as the majority of the world has done since the dawn of man. If you couldn't guess, I co-slept with Hutton and Harrison. I don't think it's dangerous, as I wasn't drinking or taking drugs, legal or illegal, while doing so. I didn't put pillows or blankets near them. Often, they would start in my bed, then I'd move them to a bassinet beside the bed. I still can wake up from a deep sleep if I hear one of the boys cough in their bedroom downstairs, and when Fergus, my dog baby, was alive I often had a sixth sense, and would jump out of bed in the middle of the night to find him circling around, about to pee on the floor (which is why he moved downstairs to sleep in his final months, so he'd be closer to the door, and make accident cleanup easier). Anyway, I think it's important to distinguish between accidental suffocation and SIDS, though I don't think anyone is willing to study the "real" cause of SIDS. Is there a relation between SIDS and vaccination? How about toxic crib mattresses and children's flame-retardant doused pajamas? Oh, for more on that, read this. I will leave antimony for another day (though it was very high on my and Hutton's hair tests).