Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Today is Wednesday, July 20th, 2005.

With me today are Evan Bernstein.

Hello.

Perry DeAngeles.

Good evening.

And Bob Novella.

Hello everyone.

A quick item in the news before we start.

Yesterday, officials from the CDC, that's the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA,

the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health NIH, how the joint

news conference where they announced that there is in fact no link between vaccines and

autism.

There are parent groups and some scientists and some commentators like Robert F. Kennedy,

Jr., not a scientist, he's an environmental lawyer, who are claiming that there's a link

between mercury preserves and some vaccines, which are actually no longer present in childhood

vaccines, and autism, although the scientific evidence shows that there is in fact no link.

We will probably be dealing with this issue in more depth in a future podcast, and I have

an article coming out within the next week or two in the New Haven Advocate covering this

issue in depth, but thought I would mention the joint press conference, essentially announcing

that the scientific evidence does not support a link and that vaccines are in fact a safe

public health measure.

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