Global Mercury Treaty May Include Ban
on Mercury in Medicine
SILVER SPRING, Md., August 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/
– CoMeD – On Friday, July
22, 2011, the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) distributed a
revised text for its comprehensive global treaty on
mercury. Advocates for mercury-free drugs were gratified to see
pharmaceuticals listed in “Annex C (Mercury-added
product not allowed)” of the proposed treaty.
The
Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD)
helped
initiate this addition through its advocacy efforts
at the United Nations (UN) negotiations held in
Chiba, Japan in January 2011.
CoMeD
President Rev. Lisa Sykes, the mother of a son
diagnosed with vaccine-related mercury poisoning,
described to representatives of over 150
participating nations how:
“… unnecessarily injecting mercury into pregnant
women and children, as part of a vaccine or other
drug, is an ongoing and often unrecognized crisis.”
Thimerosal (49.6% mercury by weight),
still used as a vaccine preservative and in-process
sterilizing agent,
is an unnecessary, and sometimes undisclosed,
component in many vaccines. Its use is associated
with
neurodevelopmental
disorders,
cancer,
birth defects
and
miscarriage.
Those harmed most by Thimerosal in vaccines are the
unborn and newborn.
Addressing the diplomats attending the UN meeting in
Chiba, Dr. Mark R. Geier of CoMeD observed: “For this treaty to be fully effective, it must
make clear that the intentional exposure of humans,
especially pregnant women and young children, to
mercury, will not be tolerated.”
Dr. Geier’s comments were especially well-received
by the diplomats from developing nations. CoMeD
representatives met with regional working groups in
closed-door sessions and
explained the feasibility of using 2-phenoxyethanol, a much less
toxic alternative to Thimerosal, in vaccines and
other drugs.
Dr. Geier challenged the inequity of providing
wealthy nations with vaccines having reduced levels
of mercury while poor nations still receive vaccines
containing dangerously high levels of mercury: “Children around the
world, no matter their place of birth or their
income level, deserve safe mercury-free vaccines.
The practice of providing mercury-reduced and
mercury-free vaccines to developed countries while
insisting that developing nations take
mercury-containing ones is wrong.”
By the end of negotiations in Chiba, diplomats from
developing countries requested the Secretariat to
assess the safety of mercury in drugs.
A team of scientists and advocates from CoMeD will
attend the next
treaty negotiation in Nairobi, Kenya from October 31
through November 4, 2011,
to support keeping this global ban on
mercury-containing drugs in the finalized UN treaty.