I'm sorry, I missed the part where the government is depriving a citizen of any liberty.

Where hospitals or other medical facilities have instituted public health policies aimed at reducing infection risks for both their patients and staff, they have acted as private employers.

If you feel that your personal safety or liberty is somehow compromised by required vaccinations, and you can't stomach such draconian policies, no one - not the state, not the hospital - is requiring you to stay at that job. Walk away with your personal liberty intact.

Given that the article was about a U.S. hospital, and the bulk of the concerns in the comments were about U.S. vaccination policy, the fact that adjuvants are allowed in Europe really didn't warrant comment. Those vaccines aren't coming here unless the pandemic worsens significantly and there is no way to manufacture additional adjuvant-free vaccine.

The FDA lists the mean methylmercury content of canned albacore tuna to be .353ppm. That means 6 ounces (170g) of tuna contains approximately 59.5mcg of methylmercury, or slightly more than a 1mg dose of flu vaccine.

The point IS salient becuase despite that level, the FDA has indicated that tuna is safe for children to eat up to 6 ounces per week.

Kind of. What you're quoting is a reference dose, and it's a rate with a time component, not just a simple level. The RfD that you're quoting is the EPA's reference dose, and yes, it's .01mcg/kg body weight per day. So on one day, your 68kg person would ingest a higher than recommended amount, but if the person avoid tuna melts for the next week, his reference dose is back within the EPA's recommendation.

It's also worth noting that there are several reference doses issued by different agencies; the EPA's is the most conservative. The World Health Organization has the highest reference dose of 1.6mcg/kg/week of body weight.

As a point of clarification, vaccines are injected into the muscle, not directly into the blood stream.

Of course, that concern is why they also make the vaccine available in preservative-free doses. It's also why pediatricians will discuss the risks and benefits with parents.

With the exception of broken lightbulbs, thermometers, and dental fillings, you've just outlined the major vectors for ingesting mercury. And again, the rates you keep referring to are rates over time, not absolute numbers, so as long as those vectors and seafood are avoided, it's simple to get children's levels back down.

According to the FDA, pregnant women can have 12oz of tuna per week. Since we've already seen that those 12 ounces have more mercury than two doses of vaccine, it's probably just as well that you don't go into how the h1n1 vaccine is any more harmful to pregnant women. But just in case, the H1N1 vaccine is also available in single-dose, preservative-free vials.

Finally, it should be noted that all guidelines relating to thimerosal are based on guidelines developed for methyl mercury. Thimerosal is actually a derivative of ethyl mercury, and since there have been fewer comprehensive studies done on ethyl mercury, the FDA has taken the caution to treat them as equivalent. However, initial studies have indicated that ethylmercury is less toxic than methylmercury and that it has a significantly shorter half-life. In addition, a recent study in Pediatrics indicated that "Because of the differing pharmacokinetics of ethyl and methyl mercury, exposure guidelines based on oral methyl mercury in adults may not be accurate for risk assessments in children who receive thimerosal-containing vaccines."

Well, I know that they don't prescribe medicine.

I have no beef with nurses; in fact, i respect and appreciate their role in the medical profession. But seeing as how they don't prescribe medicine and don't undergo the same training as physicians, the fact that one RN notes that pharmaceutical companies contribute to textbook production is an interesting anecdote and nothing more. It is just as meaningful as my observation that I know a lot of doctors who refuse any sort of drug rep gifts on the grounds that it might influence their decision to prescribe.

What neither anecdote indicates is that there is just as much skepticism within medical colleges to the relationship between funding sources and conclusions as there are outside of the walls; that there are ethics courses focused on the critical analysis of pharmaceutical claims; that, in general, no serious text can get around scientific fact just to present and position their own product. (The faculty, after all, have to approve the referenced texts, and precious few of them desire to be perceived as corporate shills.)

The hospitals I am familiar with have exceptions for people who cannot take the vaccine because of health reasons like egg allergies or compromised immune systems. They are required to provide appropriate documentation from their personal physician.

Nice try, but squalene and other adjuvants are forbidden in U.S. vaccines by the FDA. With regards to the mercury, if it's that big of a concern to you, I hope you are on a tuna-free diet because there is more mercury in a tuna sandwich than in the thiomersal of any vaccine available in the U.S..

As for your scary-sounding list, yes, it's a list of possible adverse effects that a person may experience - but it is not an indication of likelihood. No medication is without risk, but in general, people take the medication because the benefits outweigh the risks by a significant margin.

To put it in a grossly exaggerated, probably flawed slashdot-style analogy, the documented possible side effects of flying in a plane are motion sickness, legionnaire's disease, food poisoning, lice infestation, mental anguish, deep vein thrombosis, alcohol abuse, insomnia, halitosis, delayed departure, poverty, or becoming part of a suicide mission that turns your plane into a bomb. But more likely than any of those you'll get to your destination with very little lasting impact on your personal health or safety - as long as you remember that stupid 4-1-1 rule.

I'm glad to know your mom went through medical school and saw this influence first-hand and not just through drug rep lunches at the office.

Oh wait, she didn't? Sorry. My bad.

It is true that the flu mist is an attenuated vaccine. But it is also NOT given to all healthcare workers.

The major medical center with which I am most familiar is giving flu vaccine injections (NOT flu mist) to caregivers who work in the clinics with severely immuno-compromised patients - hematology/oncology, bone marrow transplant, critical care, etc. Flu mist is given to those who either have little patient contact (IT employees, maintenance, lab researchers, etc.) or who work with otherwise healthy patients (psychiatry, community clinics, etc.)

I also understand that this is the standard procedure for most medical facilities, from small private practices to major medical centers.

Of course not. By all means, we should use what we need to get us through to the move away from a finite fuel source.

Bad analogy. Paper is essentially renewable, and producing it is, all things considered, probably as energy intensive as producing the electricity that keeps that digital "stuff" flipping its ones and zeros.

Producing fuel from burning dead dino juice is less expensive than, say, farming algae to burn it, but only for the short term. In the long term, dino juice goes away and we get the gnashing of teeth that comes with $23 gallons of gas, the realization that our entire economy is based on cheap dino juice, and utter amazement that we don't have an alternative energy source in place.

Agreed :)

You haven't met my father-in-law.

The latter. Remember, in the 80s we had fairly fuel-efficient cars as a direct result of the oil crises in the 70s, in sharp contrast to the gas guzzlers from the 60s and 70s. But once fuel went back to being cheap, in the popular view there was no reason NOT to build big cars on truck frames that got gas mileage in the mid- and low-teens. There was no regard for change in demand that might come from other corners of the world, and certainly very little thought put towards what would happen if/when oil started to get too expensive.

It's that mistake I don't care to repeat.