Rich Tucker writes about the link between vaccines and autism in children, and subsequently recommends that we slow down the rate of vaccination for young children. Not being that well versed in the vaccine/autism link, I thought I might have misremembered, but I didn't - the area of conflict is over the use of thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine preservative. It has little to do with how rapidly the vaccines are administered, but instead whether or not they include a dangerous preservative. If cars get in crashes (to borrow his analogy), you don't ban cars - you make driving safer. Vaccines (presumably) existed without mercury preservatives, and (presumably) can exist without them again - just as the potential to crash your car doesn't require you to ram it into something. -Jesse Taylor
