The recent series of stories on alternative medical approaches to treating autism caused quite a stir in the online autism community. Somehow, the groups that responded negatively appear to have failed in preventing other outlets from picking these stories up.
Chelation based on faulty premise
The risky treatment for autism that removes metals from patients’ bodies is often prompted by results from an uncertain test.
This article discusses chelation and how it is often justified using “challenge” testing. Challenge testing is not accepted by actual toxicologists. The story quotes an expert in environmental toxicology on
“That is exactly the wrong way to do it,” said Dr. Carl R. Baum, director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Toxicology at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital.
Also, they note that the American Collenge of Medical Toxicology has issued a statement that challenge testing is not valid:
Alarmed by the rise in the use of this test to justify chelation, the American College of Medical Toxicology this summer criticized its use as “fraught with many misunderstandings, pitfalls and risks.”
The story also notes that there is ecidence, both animal research and anecdotal, indicating that chelation therapy is not always safe. They refer to one of the Autism Omnibus Proceeding test cases, that of young Colten Snyder:
Colten Snyder, another child whose case was evaluated in vaccine court, underwent chelation after tests on his blood and hair over six years came back normal for mercury, court records state.
Given that the boy was immunized with vaccines containing thimerosal, “his hair mercury was exceptionally low,” said his physician, Dr. J. Jeff Bradstreet of Florida. “That’s pathological.”
Colten went “berserk” after being given a chelator, according to a nurse whose notes were cited in court records. He also had incontinence, night sweats, headaches and back pain. Bradstreet testified that the boy did not do well with chelation but later said it is “impossible to know” what caused the problems.
In her decision, special master Denise Vowell criticized Bradstreet: “The more disturbing question is why chelation was performed at all, in view of the normal levels of mercury found in the hair, blood and urine, its apparent lack of efficacy in treating Colten’s symptoms and the adverse side effects it apparently caused.”
They note the recent study indicating where rats without real heavy metal poisoning were given a chelator. The chelation therapy resulted in a reduction in intelligence to the rats. The implication is clear: challenge testing may be used to justify chelating non-poisoned children. There is a serious question of whether this is resulting in harm.
When rats with no lead exposure were treated with succimer, a common chelator given to children with autism, the animals showed lasting impairments of cognitive function and emotional regulation, said the study’s lead researcher, Barbara Strupp at Cornell University.
She said that finding raises concerns about administering chelators to children with autism unless they clearly have elevated levels of heavy metals. “I was just astounded and concerned for these kids,” she said.
After she learned that the National Institutes of Health planned to conduct a clinical trial of chelation in children with autism, she alerted the researchers to her findings. The study was later canceled.
“Really,” Baum said, “[parents] are putting their children at serious risk.”
Other stories echoing the recent Tribune stories:
Autism therapies can get undeserved credit
Four autism treatments that worry physicians
On shaky ground with alternative treatments to autism
Doctors and others who support experimental therapies such as hyperbaric chambers cite validity of the science. But the misuse of studies, lack of clinical trials and safety issues tell another story.
In a bit of irony, Google ads keeps linking chelationists, HBOT clinics and other alt-med groups to these stories.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Of course it would, both the LA Times and Chicago Tribune are owned by the same near-bankrupt Tribune Company.
yes Jake–the Times and the Trib are in the same group–
http://www.tribune.com/about/index.html
and the Times has a larger circulation:
LA times circulation is over 700,000 (about 7,000,000 unique visitors)
the Trib is about 540,000
does any of this take away from the fact that your group failed your efforts to convince the editors that the stories were incorrect?
I await the “they are losing money so they will print anything” type of comments. Until AoA apologizes for the thanksgiving baby-feast post, you will have no credibility in the “publish anything to increase readership” category.
sorry Jake, I didn’t read your whole comment. I see you made the comment about the Trib’s finances.
You do realize that the Trib’s stories cost a lot more money to produce than the standard “ther’s a controversy” type stories, right? A lot more in-depth research. Probably a lot more editor time.
The LA Times is under the same ownership as the Chicago Tribune.
What is notable here is that a much larger newspaper picked up a story from a smaller publication several weeks later; this is rarely seen in the media and it just goes to show that the Chicago reporters did an amazing investigative job, which was recognized on a national scale. Congratulations to the two journalists.
I think Los Angeles is fertile ground for DAN-type quacks not only for autism. At least two celebs recently gave interviews saying they had mercury poisoning themselves (Jeremy Piven and Tiffani Thiessen). The LA Times editors have probably been aware of this problem for a while.
Indeed, Leila. The Times (UK) and the The Sun are owned by the same company, yet are tailored to radically different readerships. It doesn’t follow, despite Jakes insistance, that co-owned papers will ‘of course’ run similar stories, although in his defence papers can share sub-contracted journalists or editorial members.
That the LA Times has decided to run a series of follow ons from a paper with a different readership is a sign that the editors think it is worth it.
I’m curious. What is the proper way to treat a child that has been injected with large quantities of a short-chain alkyl mercury compound at birth and again at 2,4,6,12, and 18 months of age? Do you just do what Dr.’s Braum, Strupp and Brent would do and declare them as somewhere on the spectrum and refuse to do any other intervention?
David21,
Nice try. Vaccines don’t now, and never have, contained “large” amounts of mercury. Packaging that in the phrase “short-chain alkyl mercury compound” is a nice cover, makes it sound official.
As Toxicologists, people like Dr. Brent woundn’t “declare” anyone to be on the spectrum. More accurately, they woudn’t diagnose anyone with an ASD.
Also, they would be the first to tell you that autism and mercury poisoning are completely distinct conditions. Much to the dismay of armchair scientists like Mark Blaxill, Lyn Redwood and others, the symptoms are not the same.
The “Refuse to do any other intervention” phrase is yet another talking point of groups who pretend that no one cares about autistics except those who try to cure them biomedically.
All in all, you packed a lot of nonsense into a short comment.
I’ll add.
The proper way to treat the child who was actually exposed to large amounts of mercury would be to first do an accurate test for mercury intoxication. This would be a urine test, not a “challenge” test. Then, a short term chelation therapy would be applied, if my information is correct.
Challenge chelation tests are not valid. From the case reports I have read, long term chelation (months or years) is not at all a standard treatment.
What they wouldn’t do is say, “This kid is autistic. Let’s do a fake test to ‘prove’ mercury intoxication. Then lets chelate the kid for a few years, changing from one type of chelation to another as time goes on”. That is the DAN approach.
If I suspected actual mercury intoxication for my child, tell me a good reason to not bring my child to an actual toxicologist? Whey wouldn’t I bring my child to a person who has devoted his/her life to treating cases of poisoning? Why would I bring my child to a person who has never treated a real case of mercury intoxication in her/his life?
David21, The first step really is testing by a competent health care provider. This is quite important because even very large doses of short-chain alkyl mercury compounds don’t have any prompt effects, as for example in this poor woman
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/338/23/1672
She received a lethal dose of dimethyl mercury by accident. It went though her latex glove. It was estimated that she was exposed to ~1,344,000 micrograms, about 100,000 times more than is present in a vaccination.
She had no symptoms until some 5 months after exposure. A retrospective analysis of her hair showed that shortly after exposure she had a hair mercury level of over 1,000 ppm. When first diagnosed she had a blood level of ~4,000 micrograms/L (hard to tell because the first measurement was off scale at more than 1,000 micrograms/L and they started chelation immediately, before the next test. This is about a thousand times above “normal”.
Even for quite large doses, the first step is testing because there are no symptoms.
Trick question. If they were truly large quantities, the baby would’ve been dead probably after the first injection. The baby should’ve been hospitalized and treated for mercury poisoning then, right after birth. Survival of all of those mercury injections is improbable.
“If they were truly large quantities, the baby would’ve been dead probably after the first injection.”
Thanks Joseph. The concentraion of mercury in the thimerosal preserved Hepititis B vaccine multi-dose vial was 25,000 ug/l. The concentration in the HIB and DTaP was 50,000 ug/l. These were administered 11 times. Kids did die. They call it SIDS and/or unexplained seizures (epilepsy).
I know it’s getting late, but please try to remain coherent and sensible when posting.
Perry, can’t you make your case without trying to intentionally deceiving? That’s 12.5µg ethylmercury/0.5ml dose for hep b and 25 µg ethylmercury/0.5ml dose for DTaP and Hib. As to your claim, surely you can cite the studies and statistics that demonstrate the rate of SIDS and epilepsy declining with the cessation of the use of thimerosal in paediatric vaccines.
That canard should have a name, like “the mercury concentration canard.” It’s not the same if you ingest, say, a glass of water with 25,000 mcg Hg / l than 0.5 cc of water with the same concentration.
Additionally, mercury poisoning has signs and symptoms that would surely be evident in a baby.
Joseph,
That canard works on many people.
To me it shows that the person stating it has either been taken in by someone else, or is knowingly attempting to deceive.
It’s an immensely attractive canard.
It not only has nano in it, but the quantitites look huge. Working in boring old micro or milli grams, or per dose just doesn’t conjure up romantic images of being cutting edge or possessing sciencey sounding knowledge.
It’s nano’s all the way down.
“They call it SIDS”
And I call it “polyphyletic”: a grab bag of things that look similar but are of independent origin and effectively non-existent.
Perry, while you’re providing the statistics that show seizure and SIDS rates falling with the reduction in mercury usage, could you also please explain why sudden infant crib deaths pre-date vaccines by thousands of years?
Hi guys. I’m confused. If you want to know how much there is of something isn’t the concentration helpfull to have?
Yes penelope. But concentration isn’t all.
Volume is far, far, far more important in the context of this discussion. Concentration is a meaningless number without it.
We’ve had numerous people come here and make a big hullaballoo about concentration, idiotically talking about EPA and toxic waste limits. Scary talk about concentration doesn’t fly here.
Yes Penelope, it is useful to refer to concentrations. Perry, like so many of his/her anti-vax propagandists however, likes to try and muddy the waters by posting ridiculously high, non-physiological concentrations (to the tune of 4 orders of magnitude). As if anyone is going to get a litre of vaccines; but hey, it sounds sexier.
Penelope.
concentration is useful, but it is only half the information.
Would you get more drunk from wine with 9% alcohol, or from a sip of whiskey at 50%? Well, if you drank a large bottle of wine, but only took a tiny sip of the Whiskey, the answer would be the wine.
You need to know the quantity, not the concentration. If you have the concentration and the volume, you can figure out what the total quantity of mercury (or alcohol, in this example) is.
Perry parrots (from one of the anti-vax websites, no doubt):
Nice use of scare tactics, that. 50,000 micrograms per liter sounds much scarier than 50 micrograms per milliliter, even though they are the same concentration. For people who have only a basic grasp of science (the majority of the population), 50,000 sounds like a big, potentially scary number.
What I can’t figure out is why they didn’t go with 50,000,000 nanograms per liter or 50,000,000,000 picograms per liter – probably because it would have started to look ridiculous at that point.
When you know that the usual dose of a vaccine is one half milliliter, the dose comes into perspective (12.5 – 25 micrograms of thimerosal per dose). How much mercury is that? Well, it’s about 6.3 – 12.5 micrograms. And how much is that, in the context of what most people experience? About what you might find in half to a quarter of a tuna salad sandwich (except that thimerosal contains ethyl mercury and the mercury in tuna is methyl mercury, which is much more toxic).
For that matter, hom many people have a good grasp of how big (or small) a microgram is? A sugar cube weighs about a gram and a few sugar crystals from that cube would weigh about a milligram. A microgram would be one thousand times smaller than those four or five sugar crystals.
The next part – about SIDS and “unexplained seizures” is also right off the website. I’m surprised Perry didn’t include “shaken baby syndrome”, but that one would have given the game away. In reality, neither SIDS nor seizures (except febrile seizures, which aren’t “unexplained”) nor “shaken baby syndrome” show any link to vaccines except the superficial one that they all occur to children at roughly the same age when they are receiving their vaccinations.
SIDS was in decline before thimerosal (mercury) was removed from vaccines, childhood seizures haven’t changed much either way and child abuse – regretably – continues to be a problem. None of them seem to be trending with the thimerosal content of vaccines.
Nice try, but no wicket.
Penelope asks:
The answer to that question is “maybe”. The concentration of a solution – like a vaccine – lets you use volume (which is often easier to measure) to calculate the mass (or weight) of the substance of interest.
Or, in the case of Perry’s parroting, it allows you to use large numbers to make something sound extra scary.
For example:
If you want to put four grams of iron sulfate on your rose bushes, it helps to know that the solution you are using has a concentration of two grams per milliliter. The concentration is given in this form (grams per milliliter) because you would normally (unless you want to kill your roses) use only a few milliliters per rose bush.
Imagine that someone – perhaps trying to frighten people about the dangers of iron toxicity – said that your garden iron solution had 2,000 grams per liter of iron sulfate. To the uninitiated, this might sound like an awful lot of iron sulfate – but those concentrations are exactly the same!
Yes, knowing the concentration is useful, but it can also be used in a deceptive way, as Perry tried to. Children (and adults) do not receive vaccine injections in volumes of one or more liters (just picture how the doctors surgeries would look if they did!), so giving the concentration in micrograms per liter is a plain attempt at deception.
Prometheus
Unfortunately, I don’t have to imagine. The surgeries would look like the IV suites used by chelationists.
Isn’t mercury monitored by concentration in ug/liter (part per billion) for drinking water and hazardous waste disposal and ug/kilogram (part per billion) for mercury contaminated fish? It seems Perry is just comparing apples to apples rather than the opposite of what he is accused of. This is so confusing for little o’l me. Thanks to all you scientists here who help me understand. Mercury isn’t so bad.
Penelope,
if this were a blog about toxic waste, Perry would have some validity to his comparison. Still, given the quantities involved it wouldn’t be worth talking about.
When it comes to health science, it is the total quantity of mercury that counts.
If we are talking about very small amounts, yes, that is true. There is mercury everywhere. People who say we should not allow any mercury exposure are making an unrealistic request.
Perry is using scare tactics. They are quite effective–they do scare people. They are also quite obvious to people who have taken the time to understand the question.
In the end, it is all a clever smokescreen. Since autism is not mercury poisoning, there is no value in this discussion on an autism blog. Unfortunately, we are forced to repeat this discussion over and over since some very irresponsible people can’t accept that the science has proven them wrong (and in fact was never in their favor)
Penelope, that is a different kind of mercury molecule. There is a big difference, something like the difference between methanol and ethanol (one that is in wine and you can drink, the other is poison). Plus, do you really think vaccines are given in similar quantities as drinking water?
Penelope, water and food concentrations are based on estimated consumption during standard (i.e. non-medical) dietary intake. We already have reasonable estimates of volume and RDI/RDA, so it’s perfectly reasonable to impose recommended maximum concentrations.
You can work out reasonable yearly consumption for the average person and therefore impose restrictions to keep this below (well well below) estimated unsafe levels. You are, in effect, working to keep the yearly and life-long dosage below a certain level.
The dosage is reasonably estimated, and provides the context to concentration. Just like in vaccines.
Concentration without context is meaningless.
Penelope asks:
Yes and No.
Drinking water standards in the US (USEPA) set a maximum limit of 2 micrograms of mercury per liter (although the regulations express it in milligrams per liter). The EPA standards are a bit more confusing when it comes to waste, as they classify anything with more than 25 micrograms per liter (parts per billion – ppb) and less than 260 milligrams per liter (parts per million – ppm) as “low level mercury waste” unless it comes from mercury production processes, where it has to have 200 micrograms per liter to reach the “low level mercury waste” classification.
The USFDA sets a limit of 1 milligram per kilogram for mercury in commercial fish, which would be 1 part per million (ppm).
However, if you like, you can express the USFDA’s mercury limit in fish as parts per billion – that would be 1,000 ppb.
The reasons for the differences in limits should be obvious, but let me state them anyway:
The average person consumes several liters of water (in various forms, such as coffee, tea, soda, etc.) each week. The average person consumes tuna or other commercial fish in far lower amounts. Fish (and other aquatic organisms) live in the rivers, lakes and oceans (where waste water is dumped) 24/7/365.
Hazardous waste disposal laws generally require that the pollutant be reduced in concentration to ten or so times the maximum allowed in drinking water. This is a compromise between the ideal (waste water should not increase the pollutants in our rivers, lakes and oceans) and the practical. Although the thimerosal alarmists like to point out the EPA limits, they never seem to get around to mentioning what those limits mean – probably because they don’t know.
Although thimerosal-containing vaccines were over the “EPA limit” for mercury-containing waste (20 mcg/L), they are used in very small amounts (fraction of a milliliter) and are not generally disposed of in large amounts. In fact, you could legally dispose of thimerosal-containing vaccines by diluting them below the EPA limit with tap water (about 2 – 3 liters per milliliter of vaccine) and then simply pouring them down the drain. This is a time when concentration does matter.
It may surprise you to hear that many people consume – voluntarily – products that they have concentrations of known toxic substances that would place them well inside the “hazardous waste” classification. One such substance is ethanol (also known as “booze”, “hooch”, “wine”, “beer”, “spirits” or “liquor”). Although not specifically regulated by the EPA, it is covered under the “substances toxic to fish or other aquatic life” category. Even the weaker American beers exceed the EPA limit for alcohol in industrial effluent.
Does that help put it in perspective?
Prometheus
It seems like what people are refering to as science is really nothing more than the juggling of statistics. Is this what they refer to as epidemiology?
Prometheus. What a bunch of crap (can I say bull-shit here?). Stay off my side! You are right about one thing and one thing only, the regulators do monitor mercury in hazardous waste as ppm. The standard is 0.2 ppm. I converted it to (200) ppb so we are comparing the same units.
Perry,
As you see, you can use the word BS on this blog. You can also disseminate BS in the comments, as you have ably demonstrated.
Of course, if you continue to do so without really adding information to the conversation, your privilege to do so will end.
“I converted it to (200) ppb so we are comparing the same units”
Even if true, it’s irrelevant.
Not only did you fail to state any actual arguement, instead leaving it up to insinuation, you failed to link the concept of monitoring environmental concentration to concentration in vaccines. You were successfully called out on your ‘confusion’.
Please state your actual arguement clearly and honestly or leave.
“It seems like what people are refering to as science is really nothing more than the juggling of statistics.”
Not even close. Exposure is reliant on concentration AND volume. Deal with it.
“Is this what they refer to as epidemiology?”
No.
Your concern trolling has been clear and obvious since the start. You have fooled no-one but yourself.
Many people have given Penelope the benefit of the doubt and courteously responded with examples and discussion to answer her questions. She ignores all those efforts with blanket statements like “juggling of statistics”. That is somewhat suspicious of a person who perhaps has no intention of really participating in the conversation. A concern troll, as you put it.
The fact of the matter is–this is all a sideshow. The toxicity threshold for mercury has nothing to do with autism. IEven if the amounts used in vaccines were high enough to be toxic, it still has nothing to do with autism. Concern trolls like Penelope are annoying, and they help to spread the misinformation which confuses honest parents trying to get answers for what to do to help their children. She isn’t on the level of, say, a Mark Blaxill who promotes the idea heavily and publicly, but she is still a good example of the problems we face as we leave the mercury question behind.
Penelope:
Knowing how to not compare apples and oranges is not a juggling of statistics. Knowing what is meant by an actual dose is not a juggling of statistics.
And as Dedj said, we now know you are a concern troll.
Perry complains:
Could you be specific about where and why I was wrong? Or is it just that what I wrote conflicts with the websites you like?
Proemtheus
Yes, and it makes sense to do so. That’s because people routinely drink water and eat fish, in relatively large quantities. There’s no control over how much water people drink or how much fish they eat.
With vaccines it makes more sense to know what dose you’re getting with every shot.
I sincerely doubt Prometheus is ‘on your side’ given the inflammatory rhetoric you chose to engage in. Furthermore, perhaps you would like to actually address what is ‘crap’ instead of digressing into the predictable ad hominem attack when you clearly have no argument.
Penelope, if that is what you have gleaned from the thoughtful and accurate responses to your questions, you are spending way too much time in the wrong and woefully miseducated company.