A deep-dive into RFK Jr.’s claims in “Deadly Immunity”

I had originally written this as a guest post for sensible medicine. Unfortunately, the editors decided not to publish, so I am posting it here.

When I watched the Who is Bobby Kennedy video, I was intrigued by the claim that his “Deadly Immunity” article (published in July 2005) was taken down. What did the article say, and was it taken down solely due to factual inaccuracies? I began an investigation into its content and the reasons for its removal.

Locating the original article was challenging, as it had been completely wiped from existence. I eventually tracked down a copy from a congressional hearing, but it was a corrected version with some of his original claims removed. Further digging led me to a stub article on Salon, which contained all of the corrections.

I focused on the quantifiable claim that babies received 187 times the daily limit of thimerosal (also known as ethylmercury). Where did this number come from, and why was it corrected to “40 percent [1.4 times], not 187 times, greater than the EPA’s limit for daily exposure to methylmercury”?

Interestingly, the EPA does not have a limit for daily exposure of thimerosal – only a limit for methylmercury: 0.1 µg/kg-day. It was concerning to me (as someone who had accepted the science was settled) that a similar chemical was being used rather than the exact one found in vaccines (more on this later).

The article which is widely accepted to have debunked Kennedy’s claims fortunately had many of the numbers needed to make the calculations. I was bewildered that this article stated that the EPA limit was 0.7 µg bodyweight/week – the EPA limits are very clearly stated as per day. Why had this article converted it to a weekly quantity? It contains no explanation as to why this was done.

The mercury dose given to a child 6 weeks of age was 62.5 µg. Divided by the daily limit of an average 6-week-old, .52 µg/day (for an average 5.2 kg child), we arrive at 120 times the daily limit. Girls, weighing less on average, would be getting 136 times the daily limit. A Mother Jones article comes to this same conclusion (118 times). Remember that this is for the average weight, and below-average-weight babies would be getting far more.

I was aghast – this was not Kennedy’s 187 number, but it was certainly closer to it than the “settled science” of 40 percent. I felt like this was deceit; I now wanted to understand how the data had been fudged to reach this “only 40 percent higher” claim.

I had a difficult time finding the exact calculation and source of the “40 percent” number. It is mentioned in various articles, from the Salon corrections to a Scientific American article, which are then used as a source. But none indicate how this number was calculated.

The fudging, as far as I can tell, was done through amortization. Take the sum of the mercury in all vaccines given to a child in their first 14 weeks (187.5 µg), divided by the sum of the daily limit over 14 weeks (though they don’t explain what numbers they use), and you arrive at an upper limit of 159 µg. This gets us to 20 percent over the limit, which is close to that 40 percent number.

But this of course is nonsense – would anyone give a 150-lb (68 kg) 30-year-old 74 mg of mercury (68 * 0.1 * 30 * 365 / 1000) and claim it is safe? A daily limit cannot be amortized over a lifetime when taken in a single day.

You may be thinking “those limits are for chronic exposure, not acute exposure” – but if that’s the case, where are those acute exposure numbers? Where are they published? As far as I can tell, the 0.1 µg/kg-day is the only value published.

Coming back to why the EPA does not publish limits for thimerosal, as this again seemed unscientific for something that was “settled science.” There are various articles (such as this one from NBC), published in 2005 concluding that a study found that thimerosal is less dangerous than methylmercury. But if you actually look at the conclusions of the study, it states:

Knowledge of the biotransformation of thimerosal… and the neurotoxic potential of intact thimerosal… is urgently needed to afford a meaningful interpretation of the potential developmental effects of immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines in newborns and infants.

That conclusion would be enough to do further studies to establish a quantitative, numerical limit for thimerosal. And yet, to this day, the EPA does not have one published. We know that it is toxic; afterall, it is mercury. We simply do not know how toxic it is.

Various studies were soon published concretely establishing that there was no link between vaccination and autism, all of which are listed on the CDC page about thimerosal. Interestingly one of these studies concludes:

Girls with higher thimerosal intake had lower mean scores in the finger-tapping test with the dominant hand and in the Boston Naming Test… [but that] the few associations found between thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological development might be attributable to chance

Suspiciously, this lines up with the fact that girls (having a lower average weight) would receive a higher amount comparative to body weight. The same would be true for any baby which was below or far-below average weight.

And then, radio silence. No more studies, no more introspection. Thimerosal was removed from vaccines, and it became “settled science” that thimerosal was safe. Nobody bothered to answer the questions that remained: What is the numerical daily limit for thimerosal? Is the body able to flush out over 100 times the daily limit for thimerosal with no long-term effects to the brain? What are the outcomes for below-average-weight babies who were getting above 150 times the limit?

I invite the reader to consider whether the science on this matter is truly settled.