Quite a bit has been made of Robert Kennedy Jr’s article in Salon about the possible cover up of a link between mercury and autism. Majikthise, who does not think there is a link, has a very good round up of the issues.
I am agnostic on this matter, primarily because it wasn’t much of a concern when our kids had their shots — they were largely mercury free. It does, however, bring a lot of heat. Many defenders of the vaccines accuse people with questions of being quacks and anti-vaccination. Some are quacks and anti-vaccinations, but many — like Dwight Meredith of Wampum, someone I have a great deal of respect for — have raised legitimate questions. Right now, to my eye, it appears that the statistical studies are inconclusive (one purporting to show a link is flawed, and one purporting to show that the removal of mercury from vaccines in the Netherlands is even more flawed).
But autism rates appear to be higher in countries with heavy use of mercury loaded vaccines, rates are going up in countries that are using more mercury preserved vaccines, and the CDC refuses to let outsiders look at its vaccination/autism related information. Right now, there are more questions in my mind than answers. I doubt that mercury is solely responsible for the increase in autism in this country, but neither am I sure that the government and pharmaceutical companies have been entirely upfront with the country
Which brings us to Evidence of Harm
I can tell you this, however; the introduction reads as if it was written by an angry man. The question now is how justified is that anger?
leanleft
Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
All one needs to do is look at the autism rates in countries like Canada or Denmark that allowed thimerosal before banning it a number of years ago. If there was a causitive effect, discontinuing the use of thimerosal would have led to a drop in autism rates in kids born after the ban. In both cases, autism continued to increase.
The thimerosal controversy is just the anti-corporate left’s doppleganger to the anti-government right’s paranoia about flouridation.
SD
Well, no — the Danish study was the one I was refering to. It apparently has some serious flaws. I have heard that the Canadian study is flawed becasue Canada never allowed as much mercury in the preservatives as the US did, making the reductions almost nil to begin with, but I cannot even find a copy of that study, much less an overview or critique of it.
And then you have the situations in China and Russia — very low autism rates until the introduction of large scale mercury preserved vaccines.
Like I said, I don’t know right now one way or the other — but I don’t think things are as cut and dried as they are sometimes made out to be. Not everything a corporation does is good Stormy, and people don’t always tell the truth. You have no trouble believing that when its about the government — I am a bit surprised you would have trouble seeing it when it involves companies.
You mean China and Russia had low rates of identified autism. Both of these countries are ones that very recently went from very low standards of living to much improved ones. So is it a case that the incidence of autism actually increased, or just the detection rate increased?
Which, based of what I’ve read, is the most likely explanation: much of the increase in autism rates is just the fact that as the definition of autism has expanded and testing for it has improved, children who would have previously been just considered weird are being diagnosed as high functioning autistics.
The thimerosal explanation is the one I consider least compelling. Considering the strong correlation between autism and head circumference at birth, it’s pretty clear to me htat the biological cause of autism begins well before the child reaches vacinating age. The vacination link is largely a case of ‘cum hoc ergo propter hoc’–since symptoms tend to first appear at vacination age, emotionally distraught parents jump to the conclusion that the vacines must be the cause of the symptoms. And some people are more than happy to feed into that in order to make a buck.
SD
You could be right. In fact, I will go so far to say that I would be extremely surprised if better diagnostic methodlogy didn’t play a noticeable role in the increase.
But then we have the question of why countires in Europe that banned mercury a long time ago have lower rates than countries that did not.
My point isn’t that there is a definite link. My point is that it looks as if they the CDC, the FDA, and pharmaceutical compnaies have not always acted apprprpriately. Not opening their data to the public, some compnaies ignoring information about the cumulative totals of mercury in the vaccination schedule, and publically claiming that some studies prove ther eis no lonk when they do not, in fact, have the data to say that. All of those things raise alram bells in my head.
Again, they could be misplaced alarm bells. But I think its importantto spend the time trying to find out if they are.
RFK Jr. distorted and exaggerated the evidence that there even was a coverup. See: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/06/robert_f_kenned.html
Hey, we are on the same wavelength! Watch Montel today (http://rocknrollplanet.blogspot.com/2005/06/be-sure-to-watch-montel-today.html) for a discussion of the issue.
Also, SD, who are you saying is making a buck off of the thimerosal-autism link?
It seems your comment applies more accurately to drug companies. Look at legislation sponsored by legislators backed by GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, and the others.
Here is a quote on this thread by Prof. Haley of U. Kentucky:
Aluminum, also found in vaccines, or the presence of certain antibiotics, such as neomyacin, make the thimerosal much more toxic. And the male sex hormone, testosterone, exacerbates the toxicity of thimerosal a hundred-fold. Haley believes that it is because of the synergy between testosterone and thimerosal that the most severely autistic infants are boys. “There is a subset of the population that is unable to detoxify mercury in the brain and excrete it from the body. It is this subset, exposed to thimerosal, testosterone and perhaps other risk factors, that are the ones likely to be stricken with autism.”
If better diagnosis is behind higher frequencies of autism, there should also be a huge increase in diagnosed cases of adult autism that were just ‘missed’ before. No one seems to be able to verify the existence of a previously undiagnosed population of adult autistics.
I believe that vaccines may contribute to autism or its severity, but the answer doesn’t end there. I am the mother of an unvaccinated child with autism. It appears to me that the rates of autism have increased with the rates of cell phone and wireless internet use. I believe that this is one of the key factors in my daughter’s case and something that needs more attention. All of the focus is on mercury but when you look at EMFs and the prevelence of autism it seems to be just as likely a factor.