Global Justice and the Proposed Ban on Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines
Bibliographic record
Abstract
* Abbreviations: HICs — : high-income countries LMICs — : low- and middle-income countries Thimerosal is an ethyl mercury–containing compound that has been used safely for >60 years as a preservative in multidose vials of vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination of those vials when they are repeatedly entered to withdraw doses.1,2 In the late 1990s, preservative-free single-dose vials were widely introduced into high-income countries (HICs). This was a precautionary move in response to theoretical concerns, now known to be unfounded, that ethyl mercury in thimerosal could build up in vaccine recipients’ bodies at a rate to similar methylmercury (a known toxin) causing toxicity.3 For low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where the burdens of vaccine-preventable deaths are most profound, multidose vials of thimerosal-preserved vaccines are a critical part of immunization programs. Extensive additional resources associated with increased manufacturing, shipping, cold-chain storage, administration, and waste-handling infrastructure would be required by a move away from multidose vaccines; for example, a shift to single-dose vials would increase the annual cost of Pan American Health Organization– or UNICEF–supplied vaccines by >$300 million.4 In January 2013, governments are set to finalize the products and processes that will be prohibited in a multilateral environmental treaty, backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, which aims to restrict human and environmental exposure to mercury.5 As a mercury derivative, thimerosal could potentially be included within the treaty. Although supportive of the objectives of reducing human and environmental exposure to mercury, the World … Address correspondence to Shane K. Green, PhD, Sandra Rotman Centre, MaRS Building, South Tower, 101 College St, Suite 406, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5G1L7. E-mail: shane.green{at}srcglobal.org
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.021 | 0.016 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".