A review on the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines slated to be presented on Thursday to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s outside vaccine committee cites a study that does not exist, the scientist listed as the study’s author said.
The report, called “Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative” published on the CDC website on Tuesday, is to be presented by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense.
It makes reference to a study called “Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain,” published in the journal Neurotoxicology in 2008, and co-authored by UC Davis Professor Emeritus Robert Berman.
But according to Berman, “it’s not making reference to a study I published or carried out.”
Berman said he co-authored a similarly named study in a different journal – Toxicological Sciences – that came to different conclusions than those suggested by Redwood.
“We did not examine the effects of thimerosal in microglia… I do not endorse this misrepresentation of the research,” he said.