The article buries at the end that it’s present in only 5% of all the vaccines including the multi-dose flu vaccines (aka a bulk bottle that would be used to dose a large number of people, more cost effective than smaller doses that don’t need as many preservatives) and that the biggest concern is that they’re disputing “settled science” (on a preservative that was removed from the majority of child and adult vaccines for what the article attempts to portray as unnecessary safety/precaution back in the early 2000s) that other countries rely on, and that if the global perception of the ethylmercury preservative shifts toward negative, it will mean more countries will use vaccines with less preservatives which could make them more expensive or harder to get.

There's neurological damage somewhere — just not where the panel expects to find it.

Why does anyone even care about thi…

> the preservative has been a talking point of anti-vaccine advocates for decades

Ahh, that makes sense. Is the best way to get policy made over the next four years gonna be to seed it to fringe conspiracy groups?

The larger problem is it's dangerous and unscientific to switch or remove preservatives without studies collecting evidence for safety. It's entirely possible uncountable hundreds to thousands of people will be injured from infections due to a lack of preservatives. Of course, knowing how these people operate, they will cover up the evidence so we will never know without a whistleblower.