While doing a little bedtime reading I came across a recent post by Orac that deconstructs some anti-vaccination nonsense spouted by a blogger (writing about some upcoming H1N1 flu vaccines) in the US. I don’t want to repeat it all – pop over to Orac’s place for the whole post. But one bit of foolishness made me laugh out loud:
Potassium chloride (30), calcium chloride (31), and sodium chloride (32) are also listed as ingredients for CSL. All three are considered mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells.
In large doses these common chemicals may well be problematic – but they are present in vaccines in concentrations several orders of magnitude lower. Good grief – those of us who love bananas (a good source of potassium chloride), or a sprinkling of table salt (sodium chloride) on our food, or who drink ‘sports’ drinks after a workout at the gym (calcium chloride) would be in serious trouble if that blogger was correct. And so would the very many hospital patients who’ve received saline solution intravenously.
Just as well that blogger is very very wrong, then…