U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced what may be one of the most important health policy decisions in decades: a full federal ban on the use of mercury-based preservative thimerosal in vaccines.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a sweeping executive order on July 23, 2025, mandating vaccine manufacturers to eliminate the mercury‑based preservative thimerosal from all influenza vaccine formulations sold in the United States.
Kennedy justified the move by citing long-held claims that prenatal exposure to even tiny doses of ethylmercury in multi‑dose vials can lead to “mild to severe mental retardation” in unborn children.
According to The Conversation:
RFK Jr. has long linked thimerosal to autism – a connection that extensive scientific research has thoroughly debunked.
Thimerosal is an organic chemical containing mercury, used as a preservative in vaccines since the 1930s. Its effect comes from the mercury that disrupts the function of enzymes in microbes, such as bacteria and fungi. This prevents contamination of vaccines while they are stored in vials. Mercury, however, is also well-known as a potent toxin acting on cells the brain.
Much of mercury’s toxicity to brain cells stems from the same attributes that make thimerosal such a useful preservative. It disrupts the basic biological function of cells by changing the structure of proteins and enzymes.
In the brain, this can lead neurons to become excessively active, can impair the way they use energy, it can increase inflammation and lead to the death of neurons. While mercury poisoning can damage brain function in adults, babies are even more vulnerable.
Kennedy revealed that flu shots laced with this toxic compound were still being administered to pregnant women and children up until last week.
WATCH:
After more than 20 years of delay, I’m proud to finally deliver on a long-overdue promise: protecting our most vulnerable from unnecessary mercury exposure. pic.twitter.com/rYF5BN8JYj
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) August 2, 2025
Transcript:
RFK Jr:
Hi, I’m Robert F. Kennedy Jr., your HHS Secretary. I’m happy to report that last week we closed the final chapter in the long history of thimerosal in the United States. Thimerosal, of course, is a mercury-based vaccine preservative. Its main component, ethylmercury, is a known and very potent neurotoxin.Until we withdrew the recommendation last week, flu shots containing thimerosal, astonishingly, were still being administered to millions of Americans, including pregnant women and children. Now, I’ve taken a lot of flak from the vaccine industry and from its allies in the press about my decision to ban it. So I want to talk a little bit about my reasons.
In early 2001, the director of the FDA Office of Vaccine Research and Review, the late William Egan, admitted under oath before Congress that ethylmercury’s safety had never been studied in human beings. Further, the CDC has no existing guidelines for safe exposures to ethylmercury.
It is therefore inexcusable that these agencies allowed neurotoxic mercury to be injected into Americans for so long. A quick search of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed and PubChem websites nets thousands of studies on search terms such as “mercury neurotoxicity,” “mercury in development,” and “mercury in the brain.” Hundreds of them identify thimerosal as a potent neurotoxin, a carcinogen, a mutagen, and an endocrine disruptor.
Let’s put all that peer-reviewed science aside and just look at what the government itself and the vaccine industry say about thimerosal. Thimerosal’s own label advises against its use during pregnancy, pointing out that thimerosal has never been shown to be safe and that it causes mutations in mammals.
Thimerosal’s material safety data sheet acknowledges that thimerosal is toxic, that it has nervous system and reproductive effects, and that it’s mutagenic in mammalian cells. Exposure to mercury and thimerosal in utero and in children could cause mild to severe mental retardation and mild to severe motor coordination impairment. The MSDS also lists a grim inventory of dozens of other devastating injuries from thimerosal exposure.
In 2001, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences warned that thimerosal is toxic by ingestion and inhalation. The California EPA recognizes thimerosal as a reproductive toxicant in the clearest possible language.
Thimerosal, it says, dissociates in the body to ethylmercury. The evidence for its reproductive toxicity includes severe mental retardation or malformations in human offspring who were poisoned when their mothers were exposed to ethylmercury or received thimerosal vaccines while pregnant. Studies in animals demonstrate developmental toxicity after exposure to either ethylmercury or thimerosal. The US EPA also identifies mercury and mercury compounds as causing reproductive toxicity.
The amount of ethylmercury in the flu shot that the CDC just banned under my order is 25,000 times the EPA’s safety level for drinking water.
Federal and state laws provide that whenever expired thimerosal vaccines are disposed of, they constitute hazardous waste. They have to be disposed of in special landfills. I have to ask again: why were we injecting this toxin into babies and pregnant women?
A year 2000 study by the National Research Council found that prenatal and infant mercury exposures cause multiple impacts to basic brain development by disrupting the division and migration of neuronal cells. According to the National Toxicology Program, ethylmercury is a neurotoxin.
Infants may be more susceptible than adults. Ethylmercury exposure from vaccines probably caused neurotoxic responses in some children.
A 2005 NIH study commissioned by the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and performed by the National Toxicology Program found that ethylmercury and thimerosal cross the blood-brain barrier, lodge in the brain, and metabolize into the most toxic form of mercury at double the rate of the heavily regulated methylmercury in fish. A subsequent study found that this highly toxic mercury remains in the brain for over 27 years.
A 2017 study by the CDC links miscarriage to flu vaccines and found that the odds of having a miscarriage within 28 days were 7.7 times greater than in women who did not receive a flu shot during pregnancy.
Another study published that same year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found an elevated risk of autism spectrum disorders in children whose mothers had received a first-trimester flu shot. Instead of immediately withdrawing thimerosal from flu shots to protect women and their babies, the CDC issued a gag order instructing its personnel not to discuss that study.
On October 1, 2001, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that the link between thimerosal and the rise of neurological injuries in American children, including autism, is—quote—“biologically plausible,” end quote, and they recommended the termination of all thimerosal-preserved vaccines.
Regulators should never have allowed mercury in any vaccine—especially those given to children. They had the science, but they chose to ignore it. For 20 years, I’ve been battling to get mercury out of vaccines.
Instead of following the science, the CDC and its allies in the industry and the pharma-funded media have marginalized, vilified, and censored parents, doctors, and scientists who questioned the wisdom of using mercury in vaccines—by calling them the pejorative “anti-vaxxer.”
I’ve been trying to get mercury out of fish for 40 years, and nobody called me any fish. That’s the pattern we’ve seen for too long: companies protect profits by suppressing the science, and regulators lie to the public and look the other way. But this pattern ends now.
Under President Trump’s new HHS, I’m happy to announce that my newly appointed CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in June to recommend a full ban on mercury-containing preservatives in all vaccines, including flu shots. I formally approved that recommendation last week.
The decision breaks decades of paralysis. It fulfills the 1999 promise by the National Academy of Sciences and finally aligns U.S. vaccine policy with that of developed countries that removed mercury additives decades ago.
Let me be clear: flu vaccines will remain available. Manufacturers have confirmed that they can shift from mercury-preserved multi-dose vials to single-dose applications, and this change ensures the uninterrupted supply for both the Vaccines for Children program and adult vaccination efforts.
Now that the U.S. has removed mercury from all vaccines, we urge global health authorities to follow suit for the protection of children around the world. We urge the World Health Organization and GAVI to stop their programs of injecting mercury into more than 100 million Black and Brown babies in developing countries annually.
This moment marks a major step toward restoring public trust in the safety of our medicines. This decision sends a clear message: the days of ignoring the science are over. The days of putting profits ahead of people are over. We are remaking the FDA and CDC—under President Trump’s leadership—your FDA and your CDC, into the vigilant public watchdogs that they were always meant to be.
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