Updated at 9:34 a.m. on June 25, 2025
于2025年6月25日上午9:34更新
Vaccine experts in the United States have long considered the case on thimerosal closed. A chemical preservative that stamps out contamination in vaccine vials, thimerosal was removed from most U.S. shots more than two decades ago over worries that its mercury content could trigger developmental delays. But those concerns—as well as baseless claims that thimerosal causes autism—have been proved unfounded, many times over. “We took care of this 20 years ago,” Kathryn Edwards, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University, told me.
美国的疫苗专家长期以来一直认为有关硫柳汞的案件已关闭。一种在疫苗小瓶中造成污染的化学防腐剂，在二十年前，大多数美国镜头都从大多数美国拍摄中删除了硫镁，因为它的汞含量可能会引发发育延迟。但是，这些担忧（以及毫无根据的硫柳汞会导致自闭症的说法）已被证明是毫无根据的。范德比尔特大学的儿科医生和疫苗专家凯瑟琳·爱德华兹（Kathryn Edwards）告诉我：“我们照顾了20年前。”
That’s not how anti-vaccine activists see the compound. Even the strongest data supporting thimerosal’s safety have not quelled the concerns of those who insist on the chemical’s harms. And now the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, has signaled that thimerosal’s presence in vaccines should remain open for debate. The panel is scheduled on Thursday to discuss the compound, which is present in a minority of flu shots in low or trace amounts, and vote on how vaccines containing it should be used.
这不是反疫苗活动家看到该化合物的方式。即使是支持Thimerosal安全性的最强大的数据也没有平息那些坚持这种化学物质危害的人的担忧。现在，CDC免疫实践咨询委员会或ACIP咨询委员会表明，硫梅罗斯在疫苗中的存在应保持开放式辩论。该小组计划于周四讨论该化合物，该化合物以低或微量的少数流感量出现，并对应如何使用含有疫苗的疫苗进行投票。
The panel that will meet this week is more skeptical of vaccines than any version in ACIP history. Earlier this month, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly dismissed all 17 existing members of the panel—among them, some of the nation’s foremost experts in vaccinology, infectious disease, pediatrics, and public health—and replaced them with eight new members who largely lack expertise in vaccines and, in several cases, have espoused anti-vaccine viewpoints. This new panel will hear a presentation on thimerosal not from a career vaccine scientist—as is usual ACIP practice—but from Lyn Redwood, one of the first vocal advocates of the false notion that thimerosal causes autism and the former president of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy chaired until 2023.
本周将与之相遇的面板比ACIP历史上的任何版本都对疫苗更加怀疑。本月初，小部长罗伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.这个新小组将听到关于硫汞的演讲，而不是从职业疫苗科学家那里（通常是ACIP实践），而是来自Lyn Redwood，这是Thimerosal导致自闭症和前儿童健康辩护总裁的第一个虚假观念的倡导者之一，直到2023年，肯尼迪的抗Vaccine组织。
ACIP’s charter is to evaluate the data and guide the country’s approach to vaccines. By reopening the case on thimerosal, Kennedy’s handpicked committee has already chosen to entertain a classic anti-vaccine talking point. If the new ACIP’s vote further limits the use of vaccines containing the compound, it will also show, from the get-go, how willing it is to disregard evidence.
ACIP的宪章是评估数据并指导该国的疫苗方法。通过重新审理有关硫柳汞的案件，肯尼迪精心挑选的委员会已经选择了一个经典的反疫苗谈话点。如果新ACIP的投票进一步限制了使用含有该化合物的疫苗的使用，它也将表明，从一开始就愿意无视证据。
A multitude of studies, going back more than 20 years, have shown that thimerosal has no link to autism. Children who have received thimerosal-containing vaccines aren’t at higher risk of developing autism. Nor has removing the compound from much of the vaccine supply in multiple countries—including the U.S.—decreased autism rates. Instead, autism rates have gone up. (Experts who study autism attribute that rise largely to more awareness and more sensitive diagnostics; Kennedy, meanwhile, insists, without evidence, that the uptick is the work of an “environmental toxin” that “somebody made a profit” on.)
可以追溯到20多年的许多研究表明，硫柳汞与自闭症没有联系。接受含硫毛脂蛋白的疫苗的儿童并没有更高的自闭症患者风险。在包括美国在内的多个国家的大部分疫苗供应中，也没有将这种化合物从自闭症率降低。相反，自闭症率上升了。（研究自闭症的专家归因于更多的意识和更敏感的诊断；与此同时，肯尼迪坚持没有证据表明上升是“环境毒素”的工作，“有人赚钱”。）
But around the turn of the millennium, experts felt pressured to remove thimerosal from vaccines, especially those targeted to young children. After studies had linked chronic exposure to high levels of mercury found in fish and whale blubber to developmental delays, scientists began to worry about the element’s effects on the young brain. The FDA kick-started a campaign to suss out the mercury content of the products it oversaw. By 1999, researchers had pinpointed thimerosal as suspect: The levels of the type of mercury found in vaccines containing the compound seemed, at the time, worryingly high, Walter Orenstein, who directed the U.S.’s National Immunization Program from 1988 through 2004, told me. “So there were concerns that it might be harmful to children.” (Autism, notably, wasn’t a consideration.)
但是在千年之交，专家们感到迫切要从疫苗，尤其是针对幼儿的疫苗中去除硫柳汞。在研究将长期暴露与鱼类和鲸鱼泡沫中发现的高水平的汞与发育延迟联系起来之后，科学家开始担心该元素对年轻大脑的影响。FDA启动了一项运动，以吸引其监督产品的汞含量。到1999年，研究人员将硫柳汞视为嫌疑人：沃尔特·奥伦斯坦（Walter Orenstein）指挥美国从1988年到2004年的国家免疫计划，当时含有该化合物的疫苗的水平水平似乎令人担忧。“因此，人们担心它可能对儿童有害。”（尤其是自闭症不是考虑因素。）
No research proved that harm, but the fears seemed theoretically legitimate. “It put us in a very difficult position,” Orenstein said. The studies necessary to thoroughly test whether the thimerosal in vaccines was toxic could take years; in the meantime, kids could suffer unnecessarily. Some experts argued that keeping thimerosal in the vaccine supply wasn’t worth the risk to children’s health—and to public trust in immunization. If the FDA publicized its findings on mercury and the government didn’t take action, “we would look pretty stupid or unconcerned,” Neal Halsey, who was at the time the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, told me. Plus, thimerosal’s role in vaccines wasn’t technically essential: Its main use was to stave off harmful contamination in multidose vaccine vials, which clinicians repeatedly dip into; with some tinkering, many manufacturers would likely be able to sub in other preservatives, or switch to pricier single-dose containers.
没有研究证明危害，但是从理论上讲，恐惧似乎是合法的。奥伦斯坦说：“这使我们处于非常困难的位置。”彻底测试疫苗中硫汞是否有毒所必需的研究可能需要数年。同时，孩子可能不必要地遭受痛苦。一些专家认为，在疫苗供应中保持硫汞不值得对儿童健康和公众对免疫的信任的风险。如果FDA公布了关于水星的发现，而政府没有采取任何行动，“我们看起来很愚蠢或不关心，”当时是美国儿科学会传染病委员会主席的尼尔·哈尔西（Neal Halsey）告诉我。另外，硫柳汞在疫苗中的作用在技术上并不是必不可少的：其主要用途是避免在多蛋白疫苗小瓶中避免有害污染，临床医生反复浸入该疫苗；有了一些修补，许多制造商可能能够在其他防腐剂中取代，或者改用价格较高的单剂量容器。
So in 1999, the government and the AAP asked pharmaceutical companies to get rid of the thimerosal in their vaccines as quickly as they could—and advised health-care providers to delay giving the hepatitis B vaccine, which contained the compound, to low-risk newborns.
因此，在1999年，政府和AAP要求制药公司尽快摆脱疫苗中的硫汞含量，并建议医疗保健提供者推迟将含有该化合物的乙型肝炎B疫苗延迟到低风险的新生儿。
As it turned out, the compound never posed serious danger. The form of mercury in thimerosal is different from the one found in fish; scientists soon determined that it was excreted from the body faster—which meant that it didn’t pose equivalent risk. No major problems in childhood development could be linked to thimerosal-containing vaccines. At the time of the original decision, “if we’d had full knowledge, we wouldn’t have done it,” Orenstein told me. Thimerosal was, and is, safe.
事实证明，该化合物从未构成严重的危险。硫汞中汞的形式与鱼类中的汞不同。科学家很快确定它已经更快地从身体中排出，这意味着它并没有构成同等风险。儿童发展中没有主要问题与含硫胺的疫苗有关。在最初的决定时，“如果我们有充分的知识，我们就不会做到，”奥伦斯坦告诉我。硫柳汞曾经是和安全的。
But that wasn’t the message that anti-vaccine activists took away. Instead, they seized upon the government’s decision as an admission of guilt; multiple mercury-focused anti-vaccine activist groups sprang up. Some of them began to insist, without evidence, that thimerosal caused autism; among the most prominent advocates for that claim was Kennedy himself. The fervor around autism “caught us all by surprise,” Halsey told me. “That’s not what our concern was in 1999.”
但这并不是反疫苗激进主义者带走的信息。取而代之的是，他们抓住了政府的决定作为罪恶感。多个以汞为中心的反疫苗激进主义者群体出现。他们中的一些人开始坚持没有证据表明硫柳汞引起自闭症。肯尼迪本人是最杰出的倡导者之一。哈尔西告诉我，对自闭症的热情“使我们所有人感到惊讶”。“这不是我们1999年的关注。”
And yet, those fears ballooned. In the mid-aughts, several states restricted thimerosal-containing vaccines for children and pregnant women. In some parts of the country, the misinformation yielded misguided treatments: In 2005, a family in Pennsylvania had their 5-year-old autistic son injected with a mercury-chelating chemical in hopes of curing his condition; less than an hour later, the boy died of a heart attack.
然而，这些恐惧激怒了。在中型的情况下，几个州限制了儿童和孕妇的含硫胺疫苗。在该国某些地区，错误信息产生了错误的治疗方法：2005年，宾夕法尼亚州的一个家庭将其5岁的自闭症儿子注入了汞的化学物质，希望能够治愈他的病情；不到一个小时后，男孩死于心脏病。
By 2001, thimerosal had been removed from most vaccines for Americans under 6. But the compound’s disappearance had costs. Multidose vials are an especially cheap, efficient way to package vaccines; blacklisting thimerosal made many shots more expensive, Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me. The speed of the decision spurred confusion too. Shaken by the call to remove thimerosal, some hospitals stopped offering the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns entirely; shortly after, a Michigan baby on a delayed vaccination schedule, born to a mother infected with the virus, died.
到2001年，已经从大多数6岁以下的美国人中清除了大多数疫苗。但是该化合物的失踪成本。多剂量小瓶是一种包装疫苗的特别便宜，有效的方法。费城儿童医院的一名儿科医生保罗·奥菲特（Paul Offit）告诉我，黑名单的硫柳汞造成了许多镜头。决定的速度也引发了混乱。被呼吁去除硫柳汞的呼吁动摇，一些医院停止向新生儿提供乙型肝炎疫苗。不久之后，密歇根州的婴儿按照感染了该病毒的母亲出生的延迟疫苗接种时间表死亡。
Certain scientists, including Offit, still consider the removal of thimerosal a mistake, not least because it made vaccines appear more suspicious. In a press release at the time, the AAP noted that “the current levels of thimerosal will not hurt children, but reducing those levels will make safe vaccines even safer”—a statement that appeared to validate thimerosal’s dangers. In an attempt to preserve public trust, the government instead broke it, Offit said. “They were meeting the anti-vaccine activists halfway.”
某些科学家，包括OFFIT，仍然认为将硫柳汞的去除是错误，尤其是因为它使疫苗看起来更可疑。在当时的新闻稿中，AAP指出：“目前的硫汞水平不会伤害儿童，但是降低这些水平将使安全的疫苗甚至更安全” - 这一说法似乎可以验证锡玛莎莎莎尔的危险。奥菲特说，为了维护公共信任，政府却将其违反了。“他们正在与一半的反疫苗活动人士见面。”
Now ACIP seems poised to make a concession to those same anti-vaccine groups. “The fact that it’s come up again is reason for some people to say, ‘Well, there was an issue,’” Edwards told me.
现在，ACIP似乎准备对那些反疫苗群体做出让步。爱德华兹告诉我：“它再次出现的事实是某些人说，‘好吧，有一个问题。”
In response to a request for comment, an HHS spokesperson said, “The new ACIP committee is committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense. Its recommendations will be grounded in data, not ideology or opinion.” The spokesperson did not address questions about thimerosal specifically or the evidence for once again bringing it under scrutiny.
HHS发言人在回应置评请求时说：“新的ACIP委员会致力于循证医学，金标准的科学和常识。其建议将基于数据，而不是意识形态或意见。”发言人没有特别解决有关硫柳汞的问题，也没有解决再次对其进行审查的证据。
But the experts I spoke with weren’t optimistic about the forthcoming discussion. In the past, any question the committee voted on was usually published weeks in advance, and subcommittees including ACIP members, CDC officials, and independent subject-matter experts vetted evidence and discussed policy options in advance of meetings, Grace Lee, a Stanford pediatrician who formerly chaired ACIP, told me. The new ACIP panel has had no time for that level of preparation. At least one new member, Vicky Pebsworth, has also argued that thimerosal-containing vaccines are dangerous for children and pregnant people in an article published by Children’s Health Defense. And on Tuesday, the night before the meeting began, Kennedy shared a lengthy post on X about thimerosal, citing outdated research, denying the existence of sound studies confirming the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines, and criticizing “pharma-financed mainstream media’s mantric ritual of dutifully parroting the propaganda tropes spoon-fed them by vaccine makers and their captive regulators.”
但是，我与之交谈的专家对即将举行的讨论并不乐观。过去，委员会投票的任何问题通常都是提前几周发布的，包括ACIP成员，CDC官员和独立主题专家在内的小组委员会审查了证据，并在会议之前讨论了政策选择。新的ACIP面板没有时间进行这种水平的准备。至少有一名新成员Vicky Pebsworth还认为，在儿童健康辩护中发表的一篇文章中，含硫胺的疫苗对儿童和孕妇很危险。在会议开始的前一天晚上，星期二，肯尼迪（Kennedy）在X上分享了一篇关于硫柳汞的冗长帖子，引用了过时的研究，否认存在声音研究的存在，证实了含硫胺的疫苗的安全性，并批评“ Pharma-Farmagencenced主流媒体的手掌式的私人派系人为竞选者的竞选者的竞选者曾被造成竞选，并被造成了责任。
The exact proposal that ACIP will vote on hasn’t yet been made public, either. But materials now posted to the CDC’s website hint at the question the group might consider. Redwood’s presentation, which was officially added to the agenda only on Tuesday, includes a series of slides that largely ignores the strong evidence supporting thimerosal-containing vaccines’ safety, misrepresents at least one study, and concludes that “removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable populations is a good place to start with Making America Healthy Again.” In an unusual move, though, the materials pertaining to Redwood’s presentation also include a CDC report—flagged as “CDC background briefing material,” flanked with asterisks—that reiterates thimerosal’s safety, and the evidence that debunks a link to autism. (Redwood, Pebsworth, and the CDC did not respond to a request for comment.)
ACIP将投票的确切提议尚未公开。但是现在发布到CDC网站上的材料暗示了该小组可能会考虑的问题。Redwood的演讲仅在周二才正式添加到议程中，其中包括一系列幻灯片，这些幻灯片在很大程度上忽略了支持含Thimerosalsosal疫苗的安全性的强有力的证据，至少陈述了一项研究，并得出结论，“消除了将已知的神经毒素注入我们最脆弱的人群中，这是使我们成为我们最脆弱的人群的良好位置，这使得既适合美国的健康，又使人健康。”但是，与Redwood的演示有关的材料不寻常的举动还包括一份CDC报告，即“ CDC背景简报材料”，两侧是星号，它重申了Thimerosal的安全性，以及揭露与自闭症的链接的证据。（Redwood，Pebsworth和CDC没有回应置评请求。）
Even Senator Bill Cassidy—the chair of the Senate’s health committee, who helped secure Kennedy’s confirmation—seems to be having doubts about these developments. On Monday, he wrote on social media that the new ACIP lacked the expertise to make sound decisions about vaccines, and called for the meeting to be delayed “until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation.” (A spokesperson for Cassidy did not respond to a request for comment.)
甚至参议员比尔·卡西迪（Bill Cassidy）也是参议院卫生委员会主席，他帮助确保肯尼迪的确认是对这些事态发展的怀疑。周一，他在社交媒体上写道，新的ACIP缺乏对疫苗做出合理决定的专业知识，并呼吁延迟会议“直到小组满足更加强大，更平衡的代表”。（卡西迪（Cassidy）发言人没有回应置评请求。）
If ACIP does vote to remove recommendations for remaining thimerosal-containing vaccines, it could create practical problems, Halsey told me. Even though only a minority of flu vaccines would be affected, forcing manufacturers to alter their products on a tight timeline could make it harder to prepare for annual vaccination campaigns. Lower-resourced regions might also struggle to afford single-dose vials.
Halsey告诉我，如果ACIP确实投票决定删除剩余的含硫胺疫苗的建议，则可能会造成实际问题。即使只有少数流感疫苗会受到影响，但迫使制造商在紧密的时间表上更改其产品可能会使为年度疫苗接种运动做准备变得更加困难。资源较低的地区也可能难以负担得起单剂量小瓶。
But the bigger issue with that decision would be this new committee’s brazen disregard for decades of evidence on thimerosal’s safety. The original discussion to remove thimerosal was contentious but understandable: a precaution taken in a vacuum of information. This time around, though, the experts have long had the knowledge they need—enough of it that there should be no discussion or vote at all.
但是，这一决定的更大问题是这个新委员会在数十年来证明了泰米尔萨尔斯安全的证据。去除硫柳汞的最初讨论是有争议的，但可以理解的：一系列信息采取的预防措施。但是，这次专家长期以来一直拥有他们所需的知识 - 不应该进行讨论或投票。
