I occasionally get emails or blog comments along the general lines of:
Why do you do this? These people [Wakefield, DAN, whomever] are trying to help autistic kids!
The (il)logic train is very simple to these people: X listened to their ideas about vaccines and autism, X tries out never-seen-before-treatments on autistic patients therefore X is a hero. When X gets examined with disdain from mainstream medicine X becomes a martyr.
There is a bizarre disconnect at work here. Somehow we have progressed from an idea that scientific enquiry adds to the general body of scientific knowledge to the idea that its just about OK to do anything to patients irrespective of what’s actually ‘wrong’ with them in order to advance a poorly supported hypothesis.
Here’s why this matters to me and why Andrew Wakefield is a prime example of all that has gone bad in the small but very vocal subset of autism parents who believe MMR/thiomersal/vaccines in general causes/triggers autism.
First and foremost is the basic injury done to the scientific objective truth. This is, I agree, an entirely abstract concept but it has implications in our every day real-world lives. Science is what brought us the nice cubes of ice in our whisky and also brought us the Nuclear bomb. Whatever we personally think of these results, science has prevailed in both cases. The _truth_ has prevailed.
The people I and others refer to as the Mercury Militia (referring to the anti-vaccine/autism/parent activists) are not interested in the truth. This is not an opinion, it simply is. From the National Autism Associations deliberate and outright lies about what science has revealed about autism, to their supporters attempts to silence the debate via threats of violence and encompassing Lenny Schafer’s admission that there is not enough science to support the idea of a vaccine hypthesis and their only chance of ‘winning’ is via a legal route with vastly lower standards of evidentiray proof as well as David Kirby’s refusal to fess up to the terms of the hypothesis he himself set.
What people need to grasp is that this basic dishonesty permeates the entire autism/vaccine hypothesis. Time after time, when presented with more attempts to establish the truth, they never fail to act dishonestly and lie to support their beliefs.
As far as scientific objectivity and a search for the _actual_ truth is concerned – forget it. This is a set of people who are simply uninterested. If a story/hypothesis emerges that doesn’t embrace vaccines as causative agents then they will attack it. And what they will attack it with is mostly lies.
I have a question for them and people who believe and trust them – and I know they read this blog. The question is this: how good do you think the quality of any information/data is that emerges from the mouths of people who lie, evade and threaten? How good do you think the science is that originates from people who plagiarise other peoples work? How accurate do you think advocacy groups that lie to the media about what they believe are?
At some point there has to be a time when even self-denial cannot support these people. As we have seen, recent attempts to coerce the media have resulted in humiliating climbdown after climbdown. How far can denial continue to power the majority of the new soccer-mom, middle-class powered anti-vaccine movement of the naughty noughties?
Let’s take an example that touches on the title of this blog – Andrew Wakefield. His hypothesis regarding MMR and autism was discussed at length during the recent Autism Omnibus hearings (Cedillo, June 2007).
Andrew Wakefield is seen as a pretty much a demigod amongst the Mercury Militia. His word is taken on pure faith. Why? Because he agrees with certain parents that the MMR jab caused/triggered their child’s autism. The basic hypothesis is as follows:
1) Child is injected with MMR
2) Measles virus (MV) travels to gut causing various gastro issues
3) MV carries on travelling to the brain causing autism symptoms
ergo – MMR causes autism with associated gastro issues.
The whole hypothesis stands or falls on finding vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic children. Wakefield (and others) claim they have. However, the facts tell a different story.
Wakefield (and all others) used a technique called PCR to ‘find’ MV in their subjects. During the afore-referenced Cedillo hearing, Dr Stephen Bustin gave testimony. Bustin is possibly _the_ world expert on PCR. Not only does Bustin use PCR every day, he has 14 papers in the peer reviewed literature on PCR, over 8 book chapters and is personally the author of the A to Z of Quantitative PCR. which is considered ‘the bible’ of PCR. One of his papers has been cited over 1,000 times. Another has been cited over 500 times. He both organises and speaks at international PCR conferences.
Basically, when it comes to PCR, the technique Wakefield (and others) used to ‘find’ MV – this is the guy.
NB – this whole section of evidence I blogged extensively, including quotes. Please read for more detail.
Bustin was first and foremost concerned that:
1) The technique that utilised PCR and employed by Wakefield (and others) was essentially useless. No controls were used. This is a serious scientific omission and makes comparing the data accurately impossible.
2) The technique failed to outline procedures for dealing with contamination of data
3) There were mismatched and misrepresented data designs
These items raise very grave questions over the _methodology_ used. The next set of concerns reveal the full extent of the scientific shambles of the entire MMR/autism industry.
This is a vital point to understand before we discuss these things. It is vital that we remember that, aside from one unpublished poster presentation (Walker 2006), _all_ , I repeat _all_ science that has claimed to find vaccine strain MV in the guts of autistic patients used the same lab to get its results – Unigentics, the lab of Professor John O’Leary. It is also vital to remember that Stephen Bustin did not just examine for afar. He spent over 1,5000 hours in the O’Leary lab before coming to his conclusions.
His conclusions were devastating.
1) The O’Leary lab had failed to take necessary steps. This omission made it impossible they were detecting MV.
2) The O’Leary lab was contaminated.
3) It was the contamination that O’Leary’s lab was detecting, not MV. Its worth quoting Bustin at this point:
So all of this evidence suggests very, very strongly that what they are detecting is DNA and not RNA. Because measles virus doesn’t exist as a DNA molecule in nature, they cannot be detecting measles virus RNA. They are detecting a contaminant.
It cannot be any clearer. According to the the man who is the recognised world expert on the technique that *all published science claiming to find MV in the guts of autistic kids* lab utilised, it is simply not possible that this lab could’ve detected MV. Without MV, there is no MMR/autism hypothesis.
And what is the response of Wakefield’s supporters to all this? I will quote John Stone, who fancies himself the cool calm voice of the MMR branch of the autism/antivax movement. When presented with Bustin’s testimony, he said:
I do not think there is much to be gained by arguing about the contents of a test tube….
This tells us all we need to know about the levels of denial that operate in this arena. Stone resorts to saying that the Cedillo case was not settled yet, which is true. However he evades the point that Bustin’s testimony is not dependant on legal justification. It is dependant on scientific accuracy. Given that it is *documented by O’Leary’s own lab procedure* that they omitted key parts of the process necessary to establish the presence of MV, I really don’t know what else there is to say on the matter.
Secondly is the effect all this anti-vaccination rhetoric has on the health and safety of public citizens. News stories that are accumulating started circulating a year or so ago on dropping immunisation rates and rising deaths and injury from vaccine-preventable illness:
In the course of 10 days, officials confirmed four pertussis cases, including the hospitalization of one child to treat respiratory symptoms. All of the cases afflicted children under 5 years old, and one in an infant just a couple of days old, according to Ravalli County Public Health Nurse Judy Griffin…..There have been more than 450 cases of pertussis in Montana so far this year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The infection rate is much higher than average years, when about 30 cases are reported….â€Parents should check immunization records and make sure they’re up to date,†Nurse Judy Griffin said.
(Columbia) The state health department said yesterday that an infant has died from whooping cough. It is the first death reported in South Carolina from the disease in nearly three years….The health agency said it’s important children receive pertussis vaccinations on schedule.
A whooping cough epidemic has hit Deschutes County. Health officials say that in the past six weeks, 18 cases of pertussis have been identified in the county. In all of 2004, there were only two cases of pertussis in Deschutes County.
An increase in cases of the highly contagious whooping cough is prompting state health officials to urge stricter compliance with childhood immunization schedules….Cases have increased annually from 22 statewide in 1996 to 120 last year…Oklahoma’s childhood immunization levels continue to lag behind those nationally, officials said.
Kids are dying again. And in some areas of the US the disease causing those deaths is at epidemic (real epidemic as oppose to autism epidemic) proportions. And thats just one disease that vaccination removed the sting from for many years. In my country (UK) we’ve recently had a Mumps epidemic.
Vaccine uptake rates of this vaccine in the UK have fallen to amongst the lowest in Europe:
Take-up rates of the jab dropped throughout the UK, down to less than 70% in some areas, after a small-scale study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested a link to autism.
In 2004, mumps cases in the England and Wales rose from 4,204 in 2003 to 16,436 in 2004, nearly a four-fold increase.
And in the first month of 2005, there were nearly 5,000 cases. Most were among young adults born before 1988 and who would, therefore, not have been offered MMR as a child. In the second paper, Dr Ravindra Gupta, from London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’, working with colleagues from King’s College London, found cases have also occurring in very young children who would have been eligible for the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine…..Dr Gupta (…) said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.
In October 2004, experts predicted that due to falling vaccination uptake, the UK would start to suffer from ‘small outbreaks’:
The medical newspaper Pulse has warned that there could be a measles epidemic this winter on a scale last seen in the 1960s. It said that lowering levels of immunity meant as many as 12% of children and 20% of adults could be hospitalised if infected by measles.
And now, last year, 18 months after these warnings, we have the UK’s first measles induced fatality in 14 years.
The 13-year-old who died last month lived in a travellers’ community. It is thought that he had a weakened immune system; he was being treated for a lung condition. The boy died of an infection of the central nervous system caused by a reaction to the measles virus. The Health Protection Agency described his death as shocking.
The Times also says that of the 72 reported measles cases in that last month, 9 required hospitalisation – this tallies almost exactly with the 2004 prediction of a hospitalisation rate of 12%.
This is real evidence of harm. Never forget it can be traced back to a man with absolutely no evidence at all to support the science of his claims.
Thirdly is the effect all of this has on autism and autistic people like my daughter. The vaccine induced blind panic that the people behind these hypotheses and their media agents at the NAA, SafeMinds, Treating Autism and Generation Rescue have done their best to inculcate is having a toll on autistic people. Here’s a passage from an email I received a few months ago:
…when I said he was autistic, they told me I shouldn’t bring him to a school, that vaccines had made him ill and that their kids could catch that illness….after all, these women reasoned that if it [autism] could be caused by vaccines, it could be caught and passed on to other kids….
This is frightening. Autism as a condition has a lot of stigma to deal with already. The fact is that any hypothesis that has gone on now for over 10 years without any scientific support, as the vaccine/autism one has, needs to shut up and move on. No good can come of creating more stigma for no benefit.
In 2004, the BBC discussed a report from the Institute of Child Health, the National Autistic Society and the Parents’ Autism Campaign for Education that looked at the state of autism research. One of its conclusions was that:
….the row over a possible link with the MMR jab has over-shadowed the fact that little is known about the behavioural disorder….
This has led to a situation wherein:
…It showed almost 60% of UK autism research only looks into the symptoms, while just 22% is dedicated to the causes, 8% to possible interventions and only 5% to the effect of family history.
So, a dwindling 8% of all autism research fundings looks into interventions. The marketing of the MMR hypothesis has meant that this pathetic 8% is all that autistic people can expect in terms of educational research, programs for adults – basically if it will have some tangible impact on the lives of autistic people then it comes out of this 8%.
This then, is the legacy of the autism/vaccine hypothesis and its supporters. Bad for the truth, bad for science, bad for public health and bad for autistic people.
Left Brain Right Brain 
There you have it, Kev. The scientific evidence, the impact on autistic individuals, the effect on the health of the overall population. If there were a textbook summary of one side of the debate, then this is it. Thanks for taking the time (by that I mean like 4 or 5 years, not just the couple of days it took to write this post) to sum this up so neatly.
Excellent summation Kev. Thanks very much, I’ll be pointing people here.
And, chilling, this:
_This is real evidence of harm. Never forget it can be traced back to a man [Wakefield] with absolutely no evidence at all to support the science of his claims._
Thank you from me, too.
It’s amazing to me the way the mercury malicia can point and scream about conflicts of interest while having massive conflicts of interest of their own, and no compunctions about lying at all.
A mom posted to the EoHam group that the NIMH was doing a study on autistic kids that required lumbar punctures. She asked why is it that Wakefield does it and gets in trouble but the NIMH can do it and it not be unethical.
Well, she hit the nail on the head. What Wakefiled did was unconscienable, and what the NIMH is doing is likewise, because the NIMH study (led by Sue Swedo, a DAN! believer of some kind from what I’ve seen of her) However, the NIMH has received complaints about this study and there are channels through which people can complain about unethical research to the NIMH. Swedo has no scientific reason to be doing the spinal taps looking for cytokines in autistic children (as young as 3) and who knows what their IRB was thinking when they approved it, but I expect the study could be shut down because there are no scientific or ethical reasons to be doing it at all.
I hope the GMC punishes Wakefileld, Murch and Walker-Smith. They ran rough shod over public health, over the lives of autistic children and adults, and over scientific method. The Lancet needs a good whipping for their part in it, too.
The US autism/antivax/mercury thing is almost totally based on this one man, Wakefield, his hideous lies. The mercury parents started out as antivax through exposure to Bernie Rimland and other quacks speaking on the autism quacker circuit back then, the parents then discovered that mercury was in vaccines and focused on it. Look who adopted (hired) Wakers when Wakers left the UK, one of the most awful DAN! docs there is, the one who used to recommend that his autistic and Down Syndrome patients (even) get exorcised, the one who did a bait and switch with cheap Secretin! And then other hideous specimens of quackdom flocked to join Wakers at Thoughtful House.
None of the DAN! dox question Wakefield’s bogus measles-causes-damage-that-is-treated-by-the-GFCF diet, nor do they question the autistic kids are just stoned on opiods hypothesis. None of them has flinched at the information brought to light by Bustin and Chadwick. But that’s just part of their habit of not criticizing each other’s hype no matter how bad it is. They are so appalling, but are so good at making themselves look good and the parents almost never turn on these creeps and expose them, preferring to lick their wounds out of the public eye and pretend they weren’t ripped off by charlatans.
Also, I’d guess that the parents’ lawyers in the Cedillo case knew that there was no evidence of anyone ever finding real measles in biopsies from the O’Leary lab. No one bothered to call O’Leary to see if he could say that Bustin was wrong. No, because O’Leary must know that Bustin was right. The lab didn’t even qualify to be called a lab. They didn’t do anything that scientists would do, right down to not getting their key lab equipment serviced properly.
I can say I’m one of the fortunate few who has actually seen the Cedillo family videos. There is no question whatsoever that Michelle Cedillo showed clear evidence of autism before her MMR. This was apparent to everyone in the court, including her parents, and no effort was made to rebut the suggestion.
In fact, the Cedillo parents seemed to me to spend most of their free moments, as well as court sessions themselves, laughing and having a great old time over the proceedings.
These were people who knew they had nothing invested in the proceedings, were not going to win, and handled matters accordingly. If you could have seen Ms Cedillo, arms spread along the back of her bench, you might easily have thought that Kanner et al were onto something when they commented on something about the mothers of some autistic children.
Scam from gavel to gavel (not that there was a gavel, mind).
Thanks Kev. You are a good person doing good work.
I often wonder about the videotape question. Almost all parents I know of children born in the last decade have lots of tapes or DVDs of their kids. Where is all the irrefutable video proof of children being absolutely “normal” and then “becoming” autistic after a vaccine? Out of the thousands involved in the Omnibus proceedings? Shouldn’t it be incredibly easy to demonstrate this vaccine causation theory by comparing vaccination records with videos of the children involved? Why did the only test case so far demonstrate exactly the opposite? It will be interesting to see what tapes are shown as the proceedings continue next year.
You know what you should do instead of flapping your gums? Look on Pubmed for articles about mercury and neuronal death, autism, etc, etc…
Mercury is not only in vaccines. It is also a by product of cigarettes, combustion engine exhaust and many other things. Look on Time Magazines site for mercury and you’ll find an article about how the levels of mercury are rising in the air, water and soil.
There are also studies on Pubmed that show some people are defficient in an enzyme that reduces mercury. So if levels creep up high enough then the child gets the vaccine, this could be the trigger.
What you fail to realize is that mercury causes neuronal death. Once this is done the damage is severe and sometimes permanent, but there is a possibility that the neurons will grow back. The reason i say this is because if the child does not respond to DAN treatment it may be because it is permanent.
Did you actually know that mercury can stay in your body for up to 18 years? Look it up.
You are a coward! Only posting the negative and not the positive. Do you have a child that has autism? Why don’t you post any of the positive correlations? There are many.
I challenge you to post some articles that show the correlations between mercury and autism. If you can’t find them let me know and i’ll post the links. I’ve gathered many articles from “real” doctors showing how mercury can effect the body.
Oh good, the anonymous commenter from my blog pastes his wisdom here as well. Dan, is it?
Well Dan, care to cite specific PubMed articles? One at a time if you post links or you’ll be caught in the Spam trap.
btw, internal combustion engines only release mercury if they run on coal gas and I’m pretty sure there are worse things than mercury in cigarettes. That’s why I don’t let my kids near them, etc, etc.
Autism and Neurodiverse blogs *do* often print positive corrolations, the anonymous poster would know this if he/she frequented them. It’s just that they always have their rather huge holes pointed out.
Can’t say Mercury Militia sites do the same.
Newbie asking if Kev has an autistic child. Let me put it this way. In this thread, Kev, Steve D, hj, and Ms. Clark have one autistic kid each. Notmercury has two. I have an autistic boy. I don’t know about A Non or Bink.
Further, everyone here is extremely familiar with anything you can pull out of PubMed, the merits of those studies and existing rebuttals. Where do you get the idea that we’d be clueless?
What you fail to realize is that mercury causes neuronal death.
Oh really? My, all this time I thought mercury was a food source. /sarcasm
How about this one? …
Thimerosal induces neuronal cell apoptosis by causing cytochrome c and
apoptosis-inducing factor release from mitochondria.Yel L, Brown LE, Su
K, Gollapudi S, Gupta S.
Department of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
lyel@uci.edu
There is a worldwide increasing concern over the neurological risks of
thimerosal (ethylmercury thiosalicylate) which is an organic mercury
compound that is commonly used as an antimicrobial preservative. In this
study, we show that thimerosal, at nanomolar concentrations, induces
neuronal cell death through the mitochondrial pathway. Thimerosal, in a
concentration- and time-dependent manner, decreased cell viability as
assessed by calcein-ethidium staining and caused apoptosis detected by
Hoechst 33258 dye. Thimerosal-induced apoptosis was associated with
depolarization of mitochondrial membrane, generation of reactive oxygen
species, and release of cytochrome c and apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF)
from mitochondria to cytosol. Although thimerosal did not affect
cellular expression of Bax at the protein level, we observed
translocation of Bax from cytosol to mitochondria. Finally, caspase-9
and caspase-3 were activated in the absence of caspase-8 activation. Our
data suggest that thimerosal causes apoptosis in neuroblastoma cells by
changing the mitochondrial microenvironment.
PMID: 16273274 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Seems pretty definative to me.
I’ll keep going…
I just don’t know what to say. I think more than anything i’m horrified at the realization that so many people could be so dense as to fall for the mercury militia’s load of crap. How do people live to adulthood with so little common sense as to believe the wildly implausible over the directly observable?
How about this one…
Thimerosal distribution and metabolism in neonatal mice: comparison with
methyl mercury.Zareba G, Cernichiari E, Hojo R, Nitt SM, Weiss B, Mumtaz
MM, Jones DE, Clarkson TW.
Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester, School of
Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY, USA.
Thimerosal, which releases the ethyl mercury radical as the active
species, has been used as a preservative in many currently marketed
vaccines throughout the world. Because of concerns that its toxicity
could be similar to that of methyl mercury, it is no longer incorporated
in many vaccines in the United States. There are reasons to believe,
however, that the disposition and toxicity of ethyl mercury compounds,
including thimerosal, may differ substantially from those of the methyl
form. The current study sought to compare, in neonatal mice, the tissue
concentrations, disposition and metabolism of thimerosal with that of
methyl mercury. ICR mice were given single intramuscular injections of
thimerosal or methyl mercury (1.4 mg Hg kg(-1)) on postnatal day 10 (PND
10). Tissue samples were collected daily on PND 11-14. Most analysed
tissues demonstrated different patterns of tissue distribution and a
different rate of mercury decomposition. The mean organic mercury in the
brain and kidneys was significantly lower in mice treated with
thimerosal than in the methyl mercury-treated group. In the brain,
thimerosal-exposed mice showed a steady decrease of organic mercury
levels following the initial peak, whereas in the methyl mercury-exposed
mice, concentrations peaked on day 2 after exposure. In the kidneys,
thimerosal-exposed mice retained significantly higher inorganic mercury
levels than methyl mercury-treated mice. In the liver both organic and
inorganic mercury concentrations were significantly higher in
thimerosal-exposed mice than in the methyl mercury group. Ethyl mercury
was incorporated into growing hair in a similar manner to methyl
mercury. The data showing significant kinetic differences in tissue
distribution and metabolism of mercury species challenge the assumption
that ethyl mercury is toxicologically identical to methyl mercury.
Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Anonymous with the study,
You can show pretty much whatever you want in a test tube. What matters is the observable effect in human beings. People exposed to thimerosal-containing vaccines have never been shown, despite many large and careful studies, to be more likely to become autistic than those not exposed.
I think you’ll need to read that paragraph a couple times through. Please read for comprehension.
This one shows that glutathione helps prevents Thimerosal toxicity. This is along the lines of the enzyme i was talking about above.
Thimerosal neurotoxicity is associated with glutathione depletion: protection with glutathione precursors.James SJ, Slikker W, Melnyk S, New E, Pogribna M, Jernigan S.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Little Rock, AR 72202, USA. jamesjill@uams.edu
Thimerosol is an antiseptic containing 49.5% ethyl mercury that has been used for years as a preservative in many infant vaccines and in flu vaccines. Environmental methyl mercury has been shown to be highly neurotoxic, especially to the developing brain. Because mercury has a high affinity for thiol (sulfhydryl (-SH)) groups, the thiol-containing antioxidant, glutathione (GSH), provides the major intracellular defense against mercury-induced neurotoxicity. Cultured neuroblastoma cells were found to have lower levels of GSH and increased sensitivity to thimerosol toxicity compared to glioblastoma cells that have higher basal levels of intracellular GSH. Thimerosal-induced cytotoxicity was associated with depletion of intracellular GSH in both cell lines. Pretreatment with 100 microM glutathione ethyl ester or N-acetylcysteine (NAC), but not methionine, resulted in a significant increase in intracellular GSH in both cell types. Further, pretreatment of the cells with glutathione ethyl ester or NAC prevented cytotoxicity with exposure to 15 microM Thimerosal. Although Thimerosal has been recently removed from most children’s vaccines, it is still present in flu vaccines given to pregnant women, the elderly, and to children in developing countries. The potential protective effect of GSH or NAC against mercury toxicity warrants further research as possible adjunct therapy to individuals still receiving Thimerosal-containing vaccinations.
PMID: 15527868 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
You guys got to remember my viewpoint. And that is that i am not saying that thimerosal is the only cause of autism. I’m saying mercury in the environment seems to be causing autism, and autoimmune disorders.
BTW my name is really Daniel B…cc…c……i I just wanted to post that in case some thought i was an advocate of DAN. I am not. I don’t care about DAN either way, but i do know that there is a huge correlation with mercury and autism/autoimmune disorders and that mercury can exist in many forms.
I have more articles, should i keep posting?
Those two studies could be completely correct. I’m really not that interested. Yet, they tell us nothing about an association between mercury exposure and autism or any neurological disorder for that matter.
I’m sure Plutonium can cause cell death. It would be far fetched to claim Plutonium causes autism, however. It would also be far fetched to claim that Plutonium is harmful at any dose.
What do those studies tell us exactly?
I don’t understand why you can’t see the connection?
I don’t understand why you can’t see the connection?
Maybe because it’s far-fetched and there’s no evidence of a connection? Look, epidemiological studies have been done. The ones that show a positive association are not peer-reviewed and have glaring errors (and, frankly, are authored by non other than Geier & Geier). The ones that show a non-association are not necessarily perfect. All correlation studies have potential confounds. But they are many, are peer-reviewed, done by independent teams of researchers in many different countries, and they agree with reality (i.e. thimerosal largely removed and incidence of autism not affected).
The association between thimerosal and autism is a dead horse. Really, try to keep up with the times.
I have an autistic child fwiw
isles, i understand what you are saying about in vitro testing and humans, but who the hell is going to voluteer for a study to test to see if mercury causes autism? Are you?
There is no way that a study to test to see if mercury causes autism in vivo/humans will ever happen. There is noone on earth that would fund to test mercury an autism in humans or children. Its unethical.
Its been done in mice. Here’s a study.
——————————————————————
————————————————————————
A review of experimental methylmercury toxicity in rats: neuropathology and evidence for apoptosis.Nagashima K.
Department of Pathology, Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan. knagasi@med.hokudai.ac.jp
As an animal model for examining the pathogenicity of human organic mercury intoxication, rats have been used for the reproduction of human neurologic diseases. Rats experimentally exposed to methylmercury chloride showed clinical signs of neurologic dysfunction characterized by ataxic behavior. Neuropathology of the diseased animals consisted of lesions such as: (a) degeneration of the peripheral nerve and sensory root nerve with preservation of the motor root nerve; (b) degeneration of the posterior funiculus of the spinal cord; and (c) degeneration of cerebellar granule cells with preservation of Purkinje cells. These findings suggest the human neuropathology of this toxicity. The degeneration was characterized by nerve fiber damage or neuronal cell death accompanied by astrocytic gliosis and activated macrophages or microglias. For the cerebellar granule cells, the mechanism of neuronal cell death was shown to be apoptosis. This fact was verified by histologic and ultrastructural findings as well as by in situ nick-end labeling and electrophoretic methods. Evidence of apoptosis involvement in cerebellar degeneration would provide a new viewpoint from which to analyze the selected degeneration of the nervous system in neurotoxicology.
PMID: 9437808 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
———————————————————————-
But you’ll probably say that i’m comparing apples to oranges right? Well there is no way we can tell if a mouse is autistic only that it suffers on motor skills. You see the loop developing yet?
Thimerosal distribution and metabolism in neonatal mice: comparison with methyl mercury.Zareba G, Cernichiari E, Hojo R, Nitt SM, Weiss B, Mumtaz MM, Jones DE, Clarkson TW.
Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY, USA.
Thimerosal, which releases the ethyl mercury radical as the active species, has been used as a preservative in many currently marketed vaccines throughout the world. Because of concerns that its toxicity could be similar to that of methyl mercury, it is no longer incorporated in many vaccines in the United States. There are reasons to believe, however, that the disposition and toxicity of ethyl mercury compounds, including thimerosal, may differ substantially from those of the methyl form. The current study sought to compare, in neonatal mice, the tissue concentrations, disposition and metabolism of thimerosal with that of methyl mercury. ICR mice were given single intramuscular injections of thimerosal or methyl mercury (1.4 mg Hg kg(-1)) on postnatal day 10 (PND 10). Tissue samples were collected daily on PND 11-14. Most analysed tissues demonstrated different patterns of tissue distribution and a different rate of mercury decomposition. The mean organic mercury in the brain and kidneys was significantly lower in mice treated with thimerosal than in the methyl mercury-treated group. In the brain, thimerosal-exposed mice showed a steady decrease of organic mercury levels following the initial peak, whereas in the methyl mercury-exposed mice, concentrations peaked on day 2 after exposure.
READ THIS….
In the kidneys, thimerosal-exposed mice retained significantly higher inorganic mercury levels than methyl mercury-treated mice. In the liver both organic and inorganic mercury concentrations were significantly higher in thimerosal-exposed mice than in the methyl mercury group.
DID YOU READ IT?
Ethyl mercury was incorporated into growing hair in a similar manner to methyl mercury. The data showing significant kinetic differences in tissue distribution and metabolism of mercury species challenge the assumption that ethyl mercury is toxicologically identical to methyl mercury. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
————————————————————————
I want to apologize for being a jerk in this thread. I’m just a little upset. I’ll try to calm down and not have such a mean tone.
I don’t want to make enemies i just want people to see the relationship.
I’m sorry Anon/Dan – I’ve read these papers before. Interesting stuff. Maybe you can point out the bits that state the connection to autism? And yes, I do have an autistic child but you just scored No. 11, well done.
And please do me a personal favour – quote the bits that you think are relevant and then link to the abstracts. No one wants to plough through a whole abstract in a comment.
You are trying very hard to forge a link that simply isn’t there. You’re not alone in this and I understand that you truly believe it but I’m afraid all you have here is a series of unrelated material. Unless you care to explain _exactly_ what your hypothesis is?
Here’s one reason many of us can’t see the connection, Daniel. Once thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines, there was no drop in autism prevalence, as measured by the CDDS.
I live in California, my son is included in those numbers. My son did not receive any TCV’s, as thimerosal was removed prior to his first round of shots. He is autistic. I know of another person whose son did not receive any vaccines at all and is autistic. In order to continue to support the mercury/autism theory, some continuing epidemiological trend – the same trend that originally prompted people to look at the possible association between the two – should exist. It does not.
What you may not realize, Daniel, is that you are communicating with a group of people here who are highly truth-oriented. If there was convincing scientific evidence that Thimerosal does cause autism, I would be the first one to change my position on the issue. I think many people here would agree with me on that, based on my experience with them. The point is – there is no such scientific evidence.
And that goes for me too, Steve. I would love to change my position on the issue once presented with convincing evidence. I know that seems hard to believe but I really wish life was that simple.
Here’s the cause, here’s the evidence, remove the cause, problem solved. Simple.
If you think that life works that way you are either easily convinced, in denial, or a combination of the two.
Ok i should probably come up with a more concise idea of what it is that i’m trying to communicate.
Again i want to apologize to anyone i may have upset.
I have this idea about how mercury, autism and autoimmune works but I guess its not easy to see from the material i posted.
I still believe that there is a connection, just that it uncompases more than just vaccines.
Can you guys show me the studies the conclude that mercury does not cause autism in humans? I am not picking a fight here i would just like to read the articles
Thanks.
Hi-
My name is Sara and I work for Random House- sorry to leave you a note on your comments but you don’t have an email address that I could find. We have a book coming out called Look Me in the Eye (My life with Aspergers) by John Elder Robinson who is the brother of Austen Burroughs-the author of Running with Scissors and we would like to send you a copy. If you are interested please email me at SSmyth@RandomHouse.com.
Thanks,
Sara
Anonymous, those studies that you say no one would ever volunteer for have been done. They compare kids in England, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and the US who received thimerosal-containing vaccines with those who did not, and in some cases an intermediate lower-exposure group is analyzed as well. In no case did thimerosal make any difference: kids were just as likely to be autistic whether their vaccines did or did not contain thimerosal.
Most of the studies are profiled here: http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=75751
You can find them easily via PubMed.
Of course, if you are making an argument about mercury other than the form which is metabolized from thimerosal, you are talking about something else entirely, and should be prepared to present evidence before making assertions.
Sara, email sent…
Anonymous,
I don’t think you got anyone upset. You are keeping a pretty level head compared to what is normally seen from people who believe the mercury/autism hypothosis.
The people who respond to this blog tend to be people who read both sides of the debate and look at the research on both sides.
1) Can mercury cause damage to cells in test-tubes? Yes, depending on dose
2) Can mercury cause damage in the body? Yes, depending on dose.
3) are people exposed to mercury? Yes.
You can show that methyl mercury and ethyl mercury act differently in the body. You can show lots of things. What no one has shown is the linchpin in the argument
4) does mercury cause autism?
There was indirect evidence in the correlation between the mercury in vaccines and the rise in autism “rates”. The mercury came out, the “rates” didn’t go down.
Keep in mind–the average child with an autism diagnosis today looks little like the average child with an autism diagnosis 20 years ago. Mental retardation rates are down (a lot), the fraction with siezures is down (a lot), the fraction with severe behaviors is down (a lot). The standards are not even uniform across a single region–take a look at the Autism Diva blog, it shows this clearly.
Why does this matter? Because you can’t really say that the number of kids with “autism” has really increased.
Matt
Hi-
Sorry for the misunderstanding. My post was for the author of this blog- there is no general contact email.
Sorry for the confusion.
Sara
I wonder if Dan has read the Cedillo transcripts. I wonder if he could add something that the Cedillo’s expert witnesses missed. Seriously. They offered the best of the best of the anti-mercury evidence and nothing added up, even partially. The studies didn’t add up in theory and the theory or whatever was not shown to be the case in Michelle Cedillo.
It’s too bad there isn’t video of the Cedillo’s laughing and relaxing in the vaccine court.
Dr. Fombonne pointed out that in one video that he picked out Michelle was looking at her hand, “hand regard” is something that autistic people do. They will look at their hands for long periods of time. Hands are cool, why not? Anyway, Mrs. Cedillo’s responses was that the reason Michelle was looking at her hand was that it was wet with saliva and so was shiny.
Dude! All the more reason for an autistic kid to look at his/her hand! Now it’s not only a hand, it’s a SHINY hand. That’s how we think.
Dan, I have an adult child on the spectrum and I have an ASD myself.
Please, do look through the transcripts of the Cedillo caes. It will take a while, but you’ll get a good idea of how autism is not caused by vaccines or by heavy metals. Seriously. I know it’s easy to get caught up in what people say is true, after all they chelate their kids and they get “better” and all.
Mady Hornig injected mice with thimerosal and got no autistic like behavior. So she had to lie and say that the mice were made into killer monster mice that mindlessly chewed through their cage-mate’s skull. She or someone in her lab video taped these mice and now Hornig et al are being investigated for this by a couple of investigative bodies, one within Columbia and one outside of Columbia U. Apparently, they found that Hornig was likely to be guilty, because these investigative bodies didn’t dismiss the accusation outright, but have been investigating for months now.
Autism isn’t caused by cell death, and mercury poisoning caused cell death does not look like autism. Period.
isles, yes i understand this. I’ll repeat, my view is that i believe that mercury, wether in thimerosal or the environment, is causing the autism and autoimmune disorders.
This is the third time i have typed my viewpoint.
Your saying that people have volunteered but they haven’t. The study in Denmark is a cohort retrospective study. It doesn’t analyze specifically giving someone mercury to see if it causes autism. The mice studies show this. I believe that cohort studies should not be considred because it does not take into consideration that some of those children may have been deficient in the glutathione antioxidant or other reductase enzymes which have been shown to protect against mercury or that the children may be in an environment that is high in mercury in the soil, air or water. Please see the Time Magazine article about how mercury is increasing in water, air and soil.
I believe that the glutathione is helping expel the mercury. If a child is deficient in it then it would put them at risk for problems with mercury. If the child isn’t deficient then their body would expel the mercury.
Plus in the study above, in mice it was shown that the thimerosal exposed mice trapped more inorganic mercury in their kidneys and liver than those mice that weren’t exposed to thimerosal. One can take from this that it seems the thimerosal is not directly the cause but triggers the body to keep more mercury than it would without the thimerosal.
I believe that because autism continues to rise while thimerosal is not used anymore, is because of the mercury in our environment coupled with the nutritional deficiency allows the mercury to build up in the body. And while its not a toxic load it can cause problems. Just think if it is a toxic load they would be on their death bed. But if it is a small dose it won’t show up in tests because the tests are calibrated to detect toxic levels.
One point i want to make is that articles show that with non toxic doses of mercury it induces autoimmune disorders like MS, Lupus, RA, etc.
We shouldn’t clump everyone into one catagory. Everyone is different and their bodies react differently to different substances.
Ms Clark, ok i will look this up. Thank you for the tip.
Sara, ok no problem.
There will be no study to prove that Thimerosal does not cause autism because it’s impossible to prove a negative. The best that can be hoped for is that epidemiological data are generated that either supports or doesn’t support the assertion that thimerosal is not associated with autism.
If one reads the in vitro papers and the animal model papers that were cited two points shine through: 1) It is folly to compare different species of mercury in generating a point about the behavior of Thimerosal in vivo; and 2) application of Thimerosal and other metal-containing compounds can inhibit particular enzymatic pathways either in vitro or in cell culture.
These papers simply do not support any connection between thimerosal and autism in any way, shape, or form.
Parental problem, secretin, and now chelation for an elusive metallic antagonist – what’s next, pesticides? Oh… wait.
Who wants to prove a negative? I’m talking about proving a positive.
Why is it a “folly to compare different species of mercury in generating a point about the behavior of Thimerosal in vivo”. What the study shows is that when treated with thimerosal the mice held onto other forms of mercury longer. Which would seem to me a bad thing.
Please state why you say this: “application of Thimerosal and other metal-containing compounds can inhibit particular enzymatic pathways either in vitro or in cell culture”. In the study themerosal was shown to do this, and so has mercury in other studies.
Anonymous: You’re asking for a very large study that would be unethical to do, albeit with a methodology that would be less prone to criticism. The studies that exist are very conclussive, though, when you take them together. Note that Denmark is only one country where such studies have been conducted.
When in doubt, check with reality, e.g. a graph of 3-5 year olds registered with California DDS. Try to pinpoint the effect of thimerosal removal in the graph.
Anonymous–
hanging on to mercury is probably not a good thing. Mercury can be bad. Yes yes yes. We can all go and download David Kirby’s power point slides and throw out “science” about mercury. What is missing there and everywhere is the key question, does mercury cause autism?
You can say “glutathione”, you can talk about how much mercury is in mouse brains after being fed methyl vs. ethyl mercury, but it is all chaff.
There has to be a reason to say “mercury causes autism”. I can cite a bunch of things that are bad for you and that are probably in your body. It doesn’t make them causes of autism
The whole mess got going with the idea that there was some dose-response correlation between mercury in vaccines and autism rates. It wasn’t true. Now, even though the little shred of evidence is gone, the hypothesis doesn’t die.
Matt
That only shows that thimerosal is probably not be the cause.
I keep saying that personally i think its mercuryl. Ok? Can everyone understand that? Nowhere do i state that i believe that ONLY thimerosal is the cause of autism.
Show me a graph that shows mercury levels in our environment is decreasing.
I had real, gods-honest mercury poisoning.
It was treated by a real doctor.
Still autistic. In fact, there are public videos of me being, like, publicly autistic available (and a podcast…and writings…and other stuff)…both before and after.
Since y’all mercury people are into N=1 cases and all. There. I just proved mercury doesn’t cause autism.
(If we’re going to be ridiculous about it, and saying mouse kidneys=human brains is pretty ridiculous).
Anonymous
There are lots of studies that examine the effects of mercury exposure. None of the studies find any suggestion that autism is an outcome of those exposures. Your personal belief and the science are not in agreement.
“Show me a graph that shows mercury levels in our environment is decreasing.”
Show me evidence that this is tied to autism.
Otherwise, I could say that rising CO2 levels cause autism. You know, CO2 levels are indeed rising. The brain doesn’t do well with too much CO2. There are studies that show when mice brain cells are exposed to pure CO2, they die…
Sorry to be flippant, but it isn’t thimerosal, methyl mercury, elemental mercury–it is whether mercury of any type can be tied to autism. There was evidence that pointed at thimerosal–not environmental mercury. Thimerosal has been shot down, and instead of moving on to some new area of potentially useful research on autism, we are still stuck with this whole mercury discussion.
Matt
I think the emphasis on ‘contamination’ is a bit unfair – contamination is a natural part of any lab – the question is how you deal with it – if O’Leary’s lab really failed to do an RT step in amplifying the measles RNA then that is breathtaking incompetence that I can scarcely believe from a Trinity Dublin scientist, if true, questions of contamination are irrelevant as PCR can be made to detect anything if you tweak it enough.
The science does not prove it yet. But i do not believe mercury should be discarded as a causative factor.
Here’s an interesting study. Again doesn’t prove it but shows strong correlations…
Environmental mercury release, special education rates, and autism disorder: an ecological study of Texas.Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C.
University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
The association between environmentally released mercury, special education and autism rates in Texas was investigated using data from the Texas Education Department and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. A Poisson regression analysis adjusted for school district population size, economic and demographic factors was used. There was a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism. The association between environmentally released mercury and special education rates were fully mediated by increased autism rates. This ecological study suggests the need for further research regarding the association between environmentally released mercury and developmental disorders such as autism. These results have implications for policy planning and cost analysis.
Kev said, ” ….the row over a possible link with the MMR jab has over-shadowed the fact that little is known about the behavioural disorder….
This has led to a situation wherein:
…It showed almost 60% of UK autism research only looks into the symptoms, while just 22% is dedicated to the causes, 8% to possible interventions and only 5% to the effect of family history.
So, a dwindling 8% of all autism research fundings looks into interventions. The marketing of the MMR hypothesis has meant that this pathetic 8% is all that autistic people can expect in terms of educational research, programs for adults – basically if it will have some tangible impact on the lives of autistic people then it comes out of this 8%.”
This is the moneymaker for me.
Addressing symptoms, and if that is purely medical and not examining the effects of environment (and by environment I mean the situation that one is placed in and the contributions therein), is missing the point in seeking to medicate behavior away, accepting that there are some coexisting conditions that are important.
Looking for a “cause”, as in a single pinpoint, I believe will turn out to be incorrect and also besides the point, since this is a spectrum with great diversity and some additional controversy currently on diagnosis and prevalence.
Currently intervention is somewhat a shambles with mixed comparisons, metaanalyses, a certain amount of vested business and bureaucratic interests and some important ethical questions and yet only 8% is devoted to that.
If no magic bullet is discovered and no villain to blame is found, as Kev has pointed out, that 8% is the one that will count…does count. While the arguments continue, the kids walking around continue to grow and need respectful and ethical intervention and appropriate social supports for future quality of life. That is where I want the money to go, rather than to a search for the outcome to a lawsuit, into the pockets of charlatans or to further answer questions where the outcomes will never be accepted.
My little rant.
Anonymous,
the Palmer/Texas study was bad on many fronts. The rebuttal to this was published by Lewandowski as:
Health & Place 12 (2006) 749–750
Questions regarding environmental mercury release, special
education rates, and autism disorder: An ecological study of
Texas by Palmer et al.
First, using educational data is not a good starting point. Educational data are not prevalence data. The criteria for an educational diagnosis is different–much lower–and can be much more easily skewed by socioeconomic factors. Second, the correlation was very strong between rural vs. urban–even stronger than that for mercury. Not surprisingly, pollution, including mercury, is correlated with population density. There are more criticisms in the Lewandowski paper. There is a response to the Lewandowski paper by Palmer that you can look up as well.
A study with somewhat better methodology was done by Windham, et al. in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. They used actual medical records, together with CDDS data to look at prevalence by county. They then correlated this with HAPS (Hazardous Air Pollution) data from the US government and claimed that mercury exposure (and other pollutants) was correlated with autism prevalence.
One of the big problems with that study lies in the fact that the HAPS data for mercury are very spread out. San Fransisco itself has about 10x the mercury pollution of any other county considered. If they are doing a strait linear correlation study, what happens in San Franscisco basically dominates. If SF is higher than the other counties (or just most of them), then the correlation appears. I.e. it really isn’t a comparison of six counties as described.
Matt
PJ,
take a look at day 10 of the Cedillo hearing.
ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day10.pdf
Chadwick was in Walker’s lab and notes the problems with contamination and how it led to false positives. Chadwick retested without contaminants and got negatives for all the samples Walker had.
Then check day 8, where Ward and Bustin talked:
ftp://autism.uscfc.uscourts.gov/autism/transcripts/day08.pdf
The results from O’Leary’s lab were false positives due to contamination. There were temperature control issues and other problems which led Bustin to determine that the O’Leary lab data were useless.
Matt
PJ – you’re right that simply saying the word ‘contamination’ without context is unfair but Bustin didn’t. He made it clear in his testimony that most labs have to deal with contamination but they can deal with it through use of proper controls. Unigentics had no controls in their PCR testing.
I quoted the relevant bits of Bustin’s testimony regarding controls and contamination in a previous post. There is more on the missing RT step on that page also.
Here is one video of Kassiane speaking on October 27 , 2006, at Fordham University in New York city, at the “Autism and Advocacy” conference.
http://www.fordham.edu/media/cacs/Autism/First05.ram