A full generation of children in America was exposed to dangerous doses of highly toxic ethyl mercury from 1990 through 2000. Children were injected with toxic mercury that was a major ingredient in a chemical product called thimerosal, an additive and biological preservative packaged into multi-dose vials of many childhood vaccines. With each dose of vaccine that contained thimerosal, a child would also get an injection of toxic mercury. Each one of those mercury injections exposed the child to levels of toxic mercury in excess of the federal government’s own safety guidelines.

Mercury is widely known to cause neurological damage, often permanent. Current clinical and epidemiological research suggests that the mercury-laden thimerosal so widely given to children by the drug companies in the 1990′s might cause a range of neurological and neurodevelopmental injuries, including autism. Compounding this public health disaster is that the toxic exposure was entirely avoidable. The thimerosal was added merely as product packaging for the multi-dose vials, and is not needed as a preservative when the vaccines are packaged in single-dose vials or single-use syringes. Thimerosal had nothing to do with vaccine safety, and everything to do with the profits and convenience of packaging for the pharmaceutical companies.

Ashcraft & Gerel has participated in the early stages of legal activities seeking to have Thimerosal removed from childhood vaccinations but has not yet committed to representing individual claimants for injuries alleged to have been caused by by Thimerosal. This web page will be updated at such time as we decide to become involved in litigating individual claims.