As one dives ever deeper into the science (or lack thereof) between the two camps of the autism/thimerosal debate, the questions become more and more interesting.
It occurred to me awhile ago to wonder how, if we agree that thiomersal in vaccines causes autism, the UK and the US have such very similar rates of autism but very dissimilar rates of thiomersal. The main stance I’m challenging (as ever) is that of Generation Rescue who make it clear they believe thiomersal to be the main culprit (60% of the ‘mercury facts’ page is devoted to thiomersal related questions and thiomersal has its own dedicated section on the GR site). Lets have a look at mercury intake at the height of both countries thiiomersal use:
UK
..a substantial proportion of children in the GPRD cohort will have had a cumulative Hg exposure of *75 µg* of Hg.
US
the maximum cumulative exposure in some US children was *187.5 µg* Hg.
Thats quite some disparity. It raises a few questions almost immediately.
Firstly, are US children more ‘severely’ autistic than UK children? If not, why not? Surely if they’ve received more than twice what UK kids have via vaccines we should see vastly more severely (or low functioning, pick your pejorative) affected autistic people. Is there any evidence this is the case? Well, if IQ is anything to go by (which I fully accept is questionable and I’m only using because thats how the diagnostic criteria work) then the latest stats as quoted by Joseph indicate it is not the case:
Why is the prevalence of CDDS clients without mental retardation (presumably based on IQ testing) going up quickly?
Are there any other indicators that ‘full’ or ‘classic’ or ‘kanners’ or ‘full spectrum’ or ‘low functioning’ (again pick your pejorative) autism is increasing in the US compared to the UK at a ratio of 2:1 whilst ‘high functioning’ or ‘Aspergers Syndrome’ cases are not? I can’t think of any.
Secondly, where are all the dead autistic US children compared to still living UK children?
We hear all the time that autistic people are poor excretors of mercury and yet I find it incredible that given this supposed poor excretion, American autistic kids aren’t dying much earlier than their UK counterparts. Isn’t mercury ingestion eventually fatal? At what level is it necessary for someone to excrete mercury in order to maintain life? There seems to be no evidence to suggest more autistic people die from illnesses close in appearance to fatal mercury exposure than non-autistics and yet not only do they have this inability to excrete mercury, they have a huge mercury burden to start life with and exactly the same exposure to other forms of environmental mercury as non-autistics.
And the inverse is also true. If we accept by virtue of the fact that autistic people are not dying of mercury poisoning that they *must* be excreting it then why do their symptoms not improve? According to proponents of chelation, chelation not only removes the mercury it actually recovers/cures the patient. Is there some aspect to chelation that there isn’t to normal excretion paths? How does chelation reverse the alleged neuro damage when ordinary excretion apparently cannot?
No answers here, only questions.
Left Brain Right Brain 
I saw this news article yesterday and I’m not sure what to make of it. A woman had very high levels of mercury in her hair, and the levels fell to nearly half when she cut back on sushi.
They went on to say:
“We examined several possible sources [of mercury], including dental amalgams and flu vaccines,†said Patch. “We found little relationship between these sources and higher-than-average levels. But we did find a very strong relationship between fish consumption and elevated mercury.â€
I suppose it’s possible that the folks at Greenpeace have been bribed by Big-Pharma, the CDC, FDA, etc.
The prevalence relationship to thimerosal in other countries is another good question for the FABNAQ.
I should say that it’s not that clear what the CDDS calls ‘mental retardation’. Maybe it’s based on IQ testing but maybe it’s a subjective ‘diagnosis’ of sorts. If it is a diagnosis, then there’s probably a ‘misdianosis’ component to the numbers as time goes by. That is, 10 years ago it was probably much more likely for an autistic kid to be misdiagnosed as mentally retarded. I think it should be possible to calculate precisely how much of it is ‘misdiagnosis’ and how much of it is ‘broadening criteria’ – by using epilepsy as a baseline. (Epilepsy is very stable in the CDDS data, and I propose it can be used as a baseline to study autistic trait changes as the definition of autism is broadened).
I can’t speak for the US but over here, mental retardation is adjudged to apply where IQ is 70 or less.
Also, people have to realize that a lot of children who are now considered “low functioning” or “full spectrum autism” are going to grow up into people who would be considered “high functioning”.
So looking around for adults with “full spectrum autism” and expecting them to look the same as autistic children is ridiculous, and ignores the fact that this shift (which is often mainly in other people’s perception, where this categorizing occurs) exists.
Also, people have to realize that a lot of children who are now considered “low functioning†or “full spectrum autism†are going to grow up into people who would be considered “high functioningâ€.
That’s right. Parents often assume that the way the child behaves at the age of 3 is going to be exactly the same at the age of 30, unless drastic measures are taken. And researchers are to blame for this. When they say ‘autism is life-long’ without qualifying what this means, parents translate that as: ‘the way my child is now will not change at all in his entire lifetime’. Besides, there’s very little data on outcome for autistics, and whatever there is is extremely outdated. Autism is so heterogeneous now, that any ‘average’ prevalence of a trait is almost useless information.
Kev,
Depends on the specific IQ test, but generally it is held at (70).
However, clinical practice and most education diagnosticians also require low performance on adaptive ability tests such as the Vineland.
The problem was we had kids who scored (70) and received mild mental retardations services at school, but you would never know it at home. So diagnosticians realized IQ wasn’t enough.
Kids in that situation were called (I apologize for the offensive language) “7 hour retardates”, as they were only considered/treated as mentally impaired during their time at school.
I pointed this out in another thread as a question to Sue.
Basically, the entire premise of the thimerosal-autism hypothesis is that autism increased in parallel to the use of thimerosal in vaccines. That’s what Blaxill’s chart purported to show.
So if children in the UK are receiving (or received) roughly half the amount of thimerosal children in the US received, then incidence of autism – as Kev pointed out – should be half as great. There should be very little autism in Denmark.
We know that’s not the case.
That, in my opinion, is the biggest blow to the autism-mercury hypothesis. Nobody has ever been able to logically illustrate that reducing or eliminating thimerosal or mercury exposure reduces ones chance of autism. Not by population-based research, not by biomedical research. Nothing.
It doesn’t mean that mercury is good for you or that vaccines shouldn’t be produced without thimerosal when possible. What it DOES mean is that the theory which is the linchpin of an entire cottage industry and billions of dollars in lawsuits lacks a fundamental, logical base.
For at least five years (probably more) in the US, any time there was a newspaper story about autism, it seemed it was “required” that the word “devastating” be included in the description of autism. I can recall reading this word sometimes several times a week while simply reading the items in the top of the news. Many here may recall the phrase, it as something like, “autism is a devasating neurological disorder that is a life long condition” or something like that. I hesitate to say where the origin of the wording came from, because I may certainly be incorrect, but I think it was an autism org.
That one word: “devastating” got picked up into the zeitgeist. I can recall, when telling people about my child’s diagnosis, they nearly ALL replied: “You must be devastated.” What was devastating is the harm that one, single word did. It made a lot of parents rush into treatments they might not otherwise have tried. Many professionals were just as guilty, btw, they picked up on that single word (“devastating”) and used it, in some ways to perhaps leverage and convince parents to go in a certain treatment direction.
For a long time now , the rhetoric has outweighed the science, in terms of some making treatment decisions. It’s very understandable to see why parents may choose alternative-type treatment modalities when trying to combat “devastation.” There really is some responsibility that the media, the autism professionals, and others must take over their misuse of that single word. I think that “devastation” phrase really propelled the alt-bio-med movement. I often wonder if the description of autism had been more true/valid/scientific and not contained such devastating wording, if we would then not have even entered into this whole McScience realm. Would we even be discussing thimerosal, chelation and having to even explain what burden of proof means.
I had a filling done yesterday afternoon, and was informed that they no longer do silver fillings because people might get mercury poisoning. Which I thought was interesting.
“According to proponents of chelation, chelation not only removes the mercury it actually recovers/cures the patient. Is there some aspect to chelation that there isn’t to normal excretion paths? How does chelation reverse the alleged neuro damage when ordinary excretion apparently cannot?”
This is the biggest problem I’ve had with these so-called “cures”. Even if autism were curable, the child would require help learning the skills they missed out on while autistic. And I feel perfectly well qualified to say that, because as an adult newly-diagnosed with ADHD, I am having to learn skills I missed out on when I was younger due to having untreated ADHD. Meds don’t magically give me those skills, they actually make me more aware that I’m missing them – and more able to attend to the learning thereof.
people have to realize that a lot of children who are now considered “low functioning†or “full spectrum autism†are going to grow up into people who would be considered “high functioningâ€.
It should also be noted that the spectrum extends into the general population. So just as someone can move up across the low-functioning/high-functioning boundary, it’s possible for a portion of children to cross the abnormal/normal boundary – in a behavioral sense. You’ll never move out of your genes, of course. Doctors and researchers often times don’t admit this because they don’t want to provide “false hope”. I sometimes don’t admit that myself. I find the need to qualify “recovery” for what it really is: “development”. So it’s not surprising to find many “recovered” autistics in the world (kind of like “ex-gay”) and this seemingly contradicts the doctor dictum: ‘autism is life-long’.
Every time I hear the word “recovered”, I think of sofa re-upholstering. Which then reminds me of a bridesmaid’s dress I once had to wear that was covered in giant roses, like so much sofa upholstery. If I can “pass for normal” for periods at a time, does that mean I’m “recovered”, with or without the Normal costuming?
And furthermore, do I even care?
andrea
As an adult, I can chose an environment that best suits my needs. I can avoid team sports, stay away from social cliques and find groups with interests similar to mine. Within those limits, I seem normal. Put me back in the high school-type environment, I would stand out as an awkward geek once again.