Don’t let vaccine critics disrupt supply to world’s poor

One of the greatest medical achievements of our time is at imminent risk of being undermined by bad science. Thanks to a herculean effort by health advocates, 78 percent of children in low-income countries receive the basic set of childhood vaccines, covering diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenzae. This campaign will be disrupted, and lives lost, if immunization critics win their latest battle for an international ban on a vaccine component that has proved to be safe time and time again. Groups such as the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs and the Coalition for SafeMinds are pressing their case before the United Nations Environmental Program meets on Jan. 13 to prepare a global treaty reducing mercury use. One draft of the treaty bans the vaccine preservative thimerosol, a compound containing ethyl mercury. Vaccine critics have continued to link thimerosol to autism and other disorders, though the researcher who posited that connection...