See: Eli Lilly  Mercury

[2009 Nov] Rat On a Hot Tin Plate: New Evidence Shows Ethyl Mercury from Vaccines Causes Abnormal Brain Development in Infants By Mark Blaxill  As we enter the heart of flu season, industry pressure to rehabilitate thimerosal (the ethyl mercury-based vaccine preservative) has been escalating. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece blaming swine flu vaccine shortages on the demand for mercury-free formulations. According to the author, venture capitalist Scott Gottlieb, one of the main reasons you can’t get the swine flu vaccine is that the Obama administration has been “too cautious” in managing vaccine safety. He blamed three “fateful policy decisions” for restricting swine flu production, one of which was that “the government demanded single-dose syringes because they contain smaller amounts of thimerosal than multi-dose vials.” According to Gottlieb, “This mercury-containing vaccine preservative continues to stir concern it can trigger childhood autism, even though this has been firmly disproven.”
    Coming from Gottlieb, this argument should be taken with a grain of salt (Gottlieb has acknowledged relevant conflicts. As a former FDA official in the Bush administration, see (HERE), he had to recuse himself from decisions involving Eli Lilly drug approvals; Eli Lilly sponsored research led to the invention of thimerosal). But Gottlieb was merely the point man for a commonly held view in the vaccine and medical industries. And over the last few months the vaccine industry has shifted their promotional activities into overdrive, eagerly exploiting the opportunity to market the novel threat of the swine flu. In the process they have bundled their full throttle marketing of flu vaccines with a renewed push to eliminate what they see as unnecessary obstacles to flu vaccine production (what others might call prudent product safety measures).