[This letter was not published by the Globe and Mail. That's not unusual for me. But what was interesting is that no letters were published in response to an extremist pro-vaccination op-ed by one Timothy Caulfield, which illustrates that mainstream media have indeed become propagandists for the vaccine industry.]


Dear Editors;


I don’t know on what basis Timothy Caulfield (“Stop those naturopaths who spread anti-vaxxer myths”) was criticizing BC naturopaths for criticizing thimerosal, the vaccine preservative. Was he trying to say that it is no longer used in vaccines? It still is, in multi-dose flu vaccines, for example. That it doesn’t contain mercury? It is about 50% mercury by weight. That there’s no evidence that the form of mercury it contains, ethyl-mercury, is not toxic? There’s lots of evidence.

If we are going to have an adult conversation about vaccines we cannot pretend that all vaccines, under all circumstances, no matter what ingredients they contain, are safe, effective and necessary, and we need to stop using the childish pejorative, “anti-vaxxer”, to describe all their critics, whether they are parents who have seen adverse reactions with their own eyes, doctors who have seen patterns of damage from vaccines and changed their opinion, or scientists researching vaccine additives, such as mercury or aluminum.

- David Crowe