London: Britain’s stockpile of swine flu vaccines will contain an additive that has been removed from other childhood jabs.
Mercury-based Thiomersal has caused a health scare in America, where it was removed from vaccines as a “precautionary measure”. But there is no evidence it is harmful. It has not been used in childhood inoculations in Britain since 2004. But it will be used in most of the country’s swine flu vaccines because of its properties as a preservative.
Professor David Salisbury, the department of health’s director of immunisation, said: “There is a very clear view in the scientific community that there is no risk from the inclusion of Thiomersal. The medical community is not divided on this. The only place where people say there is a problem is outside the scientific community.”
Fears were raised that Thiomersal could be linked to autism when the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Public Health Service called for it to be removed from vaccines in 1999 as a precaution.
But this led to a health scare, with parents claiming it must be harmful if it was being removed.
In 2004, the British government began using childhood vaccines that did not contain the preservative.
Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at Bristol University, said the decision to remove the preservative from vaccines in America made “everyone concerned that there must have been a problem — this gave a lot of impetus to the whole idea”.
Referring to the government’s decision to use Thiomersal-free jabs, he added: “They thought people would be pleased to know Thiomersal had gone, even though they didn’t think there was a problem in the first place.
“They sleepwalked into the same situation as the US did. But if you try to find any evidence this stuff does any harm, you can’t find it. It is not there.”
A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, which is making most of Britain’s vaccine supply, said: “For every new medicine we do a benefit risk profile. In terms of bodies of evidence, studies have shown there is no causal link between Thiomersal and autism.”
But professor Nikolai Petrovsky, chairman of the Australian company Vaxine that is producing a Thiomersal-free vaccine, said he would not give his children a jab that contained the preservative.
The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organisation’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety have approved the use of Thiomersal in pandemic vaccines. A spokeswoman for the department of health said: “Vaccines in the current childhood schedule are single-dose for immediate use, which means no preservative is needed. The flu jab is multi-dose, so a preservative is required.” - London Evening Standard