Also, Protein Sciences Corp. of Meriden, Conn., landed a five-year, $147 million contract to develop a vaccine using its recombinant technology — flu proteins grown in insect cells. The hope is that the first doses would be available within 12 weeks of the beginning of a pandemic. That is about twice as fast as flu vaccine produced from eggs.

"We've been baking this bread for 60 years, and we're pretty good at it, buddy," said Kenneth Alexander, an infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago.

"I continue to be amazed that people bring this issue up," said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and noted University of Pennsylvania vaccine researcher. "There have been six exhaustive studies (of a possible link between thimerosal and autism). ... They each came back with a definitive answer: No. Three other studies were done to see if thimerosal caused any signs of mercury poisoning. All three answered: No."

HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease — between 75 percent and 80 percent of females and males in the United States will be infected at some point in their lives. Most will overcome the infection with no ill effects. But in some people, infections lead to cellular changes that cause warts or cancer, including cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in women and anal cancers in men and women. A growing body of evidence suggests that HPV also causes throat cancers in men and women as a result of oral sex. HPV infections cause about 15,000 cancers in women and 7,000 cancers in men each year. And while cervical cancer rates have plunged over the past four decades because of widespread screening, anal cancer rates in men and women have been increasing. Head and neck cancers have also been increasing, with the share associated with HPV infection increasing rapidly — perhaps because oral sex has increased in popularity.