This is why armchair pseudo-intellectual posers like the mercury militia should not attempt to publish science or comment on it. The Bernard article was a classic example of picking a few common symptoms from column A and column B and saying “AHA! Mercury poisoning looks like autism!”

Nobody has yet shown that mercury can cause autism.

Nope. Nobody.

They have deflected attention from that point by their assertions that mercury is a known neurotoxin. That is true. It is so well known that the signs and symptoms of mercury poisoning have been well-documented. Strangely, autism or autistic-like traits are not seen in mercury poisoning.

What are the prominent signs of mercury poisoning, you ask?

[1] Tremor. This is such a predictable and consistent finding in even early mercury poisoning that it can be used (by examining handwriting samples) to determine when the poisoning began. It is also a key factor in many of the early-detection tests for mercury poisoning.

[2] Loss of coordination. This isn’t merely being clumsy, but is an inability to perform rapid, repetitive motions. Like flapping and spinning.

[3] Pressured speech. Talking too much and swerving wildly from one topic to another. Not perseverating on a single topic or a narrow range of topics.

Many in the mercury-causes-autism “movement” speak and act as if the connection between autism and mercury was a “done deal”, but that could not be any farther from the truth.

Don’t let them get away with pretending that they have made the connection as they try to weasel away from blaming vaccines and onto blaming “mercury exposure”. Until they can show that mercury can cause autism – at a high dose, low dose or intermediate dose – they haven’t got a leg to stand on.

Prometheus

Ms. Clark,

If you don’t go by the pseudonym, “Ghrelin” then you didn’t post anything about me that I know of. If indeed that is the case, I sincerely apologize.

Brian

What is the best way to share them – email?

In the advent of post-genomic, point-of-care medicine, the best thing to do for any malady is to get a full battery of laboratory tests. It’s too easy on either side of the debate to say what does or doesn’t cause “autism” rather than finding the issues that are pertinent for that particular child or adult.

Those cautious people might want to do a study…maybe compare whether people who have been exposed to thimerosal more commonly develop autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders than people who were never exposed to it.

Is there another way to determine whether it’s actually injurious to have this speck of inorganic mercury resident in the brain? You would think that taking out half a person’s brain would be inconsistent with life – but actually, hemispherectomies are done quite successfully. You would think shooting a laser into the brain would be catastrophic, but it’s actually an elegant way of doing surgery. The point is, even if you assume mercury is resident in the brain, there’s no reason to jump to the conclusion that autism is the result. We have plenty of human subjects on which this question has, in effect, been tested. More thimerosal just doesn’t turn out to make for more autism. Otherwise we’d be seeing much less autism in the population today.

I don’t imagine you’re going to change your stance, but it’s been oddly nice having this exchange.