Mercury, Vaccines, and Autism

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Regarding the column Did mercury in vaccines cause autism? Do vaccines cause autism?

Boy, is Cecil going to draw the nuts out of the woodwork with this one. I thought the column had some shortcomings, although I realize that treating a complex issue in 500 words necessitates that you skip some important details.

First is that the 2002 Danish study of the MMR vaccine can have nothing to do with Thimerosal or mercury, because MMR has never contained it. Europe, and especially the UK, has had their own vaccines/autism scare concerning the MMR, and this study pretty much disproved any link there.

It was also not nearly damning enough of Bobby Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone, and his blatant dishonesty in writing it. He should be severely criticized for that.

Finally, your menion of the father/son team, the Geiers, didn’t mention their sleazeball background of being paid “expert” witnesses in court cases, despite having courts that actually cared, not allow them to testify because they most certainly are not experts.

Exposing sleazeballs for what they are is what we expect from The Straight Dope. Kennedy and the Geiers got a free pass.

2

Me, I’m just shocked that this is only the second post on that column. I, too, expected an onslaught of nutters. Could this urban legend have finally run its course?

Of course not! Urban legends NEVER die!

3

I’m curious what the anti-vaccination crowd has to say about the new HPV vaccines. I was hoping that Cecil’s column would provoke a response that might encompass this, but maybe the tempest isn’t going to materialize…

4

That could quite possibly be a good thing.

5

Ha! Innocent soul. In fact, the first of a series of several thousand lawsuits concerning the alleged vaccination-autism link is just now headed to court. You haven’t heard the last of these nutters–not by a long shot.

6

One of my jobs is screening Cecil’s incoming e-mail, and there have been a couple of notes of interest. My favorite is the guy who says that it’s not vaccines that cause autism, it’s fluoridation of water.

7

From Sophistry’s article:

AARGGGGH!

Precise, clear-thinking researchers who hear the words “control group” and “statistical significance” in their sleep will heal the children, not parents who are at long last able to express their angry feelings after being empowered and validated by third-rate ambulance chasers.

Hey, the courts have nothing better to do, and the cost of this lawsuit will just get passed on as higher vaccine prices. Health care’s cheap. :rolleyes:

8

General Jack D. Ripper spoke well and had lots of friends.

9

The anti-vaccinationists are not going away anytime soon, science be damned.

For one thing, many have too much emotionally invested in the discredited thimerosal-autism connection. Robert Kennedy and other conspiracy theorists will never admit they were wrong, for fear of looking more foolish than they do already. Then there is the potential for lawsuit winnings. In addition we have the many fringe practitioners who are making money with chelation therapy (to supposedly remove mercury from the bodies of autistic childen) and other useless and potentially dangerous treatments:

I agree that the Cecil column, while presenting useful information, lets Robert Kennedy and the Geier junk science team off the hook too easily. And the column unfortunately does not take note of the more recent studies which also devastate the autism-is-caused-by-vaccination theory:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060705/autism_vaccine_060507/20060705?hub=Health

"Fombonne’s study found:

After thimerosal was eliminated (from vaccines), the autism rate rose from 59.5 per 10,000 to 82.7 per 10,000. The findings also reveal that after MMR immunizations declined in the late 1990s, the rate climbed to 102.5 per 10,000 compared to 40.6 in the late 1980s.
“And that is consistent with many studies which have been done in the UK and in the U.S. showing (no) relationship between MMR and autism,” Fombonne told CTV Montreal.

But Mario Provost, a Montreal parent of a seven-year-old severely autistic child, said no study will convince him that his son’s autism was not caused by a vaccine."

And that’s a big part of what will be a continued “controversy” - parents looking for something to blame and the people who prey on them will not be convinced by any scientific evidence whatsoever.

10

Oh, great! Two of our favorite group of guests in this forum–the vaccination/autism nuts and the fluoridation nuts–combined in one person! It’s like Reese’s peanut butter cups, only with stupidity + ignorance, instead of peanut butter + chocolate. Yummy!

11

I’m not willing to give up on mercury totally, just not the blaming vaccinations. I’m not actively researching or trying to lay blame for my daughters autism, spending all that time on behavioral therapies etc.
In our case it could be ultrasounds as our daughter had about four times the amount of ultrasounds as the typical child due to conditions the OB/GYN wanted to monitor. And mercury, where we live in the mountains of central PA there is a lot of mercury, one of the highest concentrations in the USA due to the coal power plants.
Then again it can be a totally random event not able to lay blame on any one cause or multiple causes. I’d love for them to find a cause to stop it from happening, but for me it’s already happened, time just to help her.

12

Well, my older son MAY HAVE gotten vaccines with thimerosol (born in 1999) and my younger son didn’t (born in 2002), and the younger one is autistic.

I have educated myself in this area (duh) and one of my PhD. in-laws (there are three, scientists all) has dedicated her practice to the diagnosis & treatment of autism.

I have never been convinced of a link. Then again, I am much more interested in serious scientific research then in shameless emotional arguments, flawed studies, hysterical parents, blame, or class action lawsuits.

YMMV, of course.

13

Thimerosal is an amazing molecule to be ingesting in this day and age, I wonder if those who dismiss conspiracy theorists and ‘nuts’ appreciate the chemistry inherent to taking a chelate of mercury II into the body - it is easy to see how it has become the basis for such child health scares, spurious or not. Especially given that it is ethylated, rendering it more lipophilic and bioavailable.

Any cysteine residue in a protein, or cellular glutathione, could exchange the mercury from thimerosal and thus mercurate the cellular machinery. Such mercuration of proteins is commonly put forward as the route cause of mercury toxicity. It must come down to the dose making the poison, as Paracelsus says, and thimerosal being employed in tiny dosages. No way would you want to take it onboard in any sort of quantity.

14

"The Cocky Watchman said, "Thimerosal is an amazing molecule to be ingesting in this day and age . . . "

Thimerosal isn’t ingested. In vaccines it was (and still is) INJECTED.

How much research has been done on the difference between mercury which is INGESTED by eating fish, and mercury which is INJECTED right into the bloodstream?

15

Cecil said, “In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service determined that standard childhood vaccinations could lead to a dangerous accumulation of mercury. They called for thimerosal’s elimination from vaccines, and within a few years it was mostly gone.”

This myth that “vaccine makers removed thimerosal from vaccines routinely given to young infants about six years ago” isn’t at all true.

First of all, the “removal” was only a recommendation or suggestion in the beginning. Vaccines makers were 'encouraged to remove the thimerosal. Did they? Why don’t you check on that . . .

Second, doctors were free to use up the stock of mercury-containing vaccines sitting on their shelves. And some of them (one that I know of boasted about it) continued to buy, and use, mercury-containing vaccines as long as they possibly could.

And third, from the L.A. Times:

Merck Misled on Vaccines, Some Say The firm supplied shots containing a mercury compound after saying it had halted its use.
By Myron Levin Times Staff Writer
March 7, 2005

Drug maker Merck & Co. continued to supply infant vaccine containing a mercury-based preservative for two years after declaring that it had eliminated the chemical.

In September 1999, amid rising concern about the risks of mercury in childhood vaccines, Merck announced that the Food and Drug Administration had approved a preservative-free version of its hepatitis B vaccine. “Now, Merck’s infant vaccine line,” the company’s press release said, "is free of all preservatives.

But Merck continued to distribute vaccine containing the chemical known as thimerosal, along with the new product, until October 2001, according to an FDA letter sent in response to a congressional inquiry. The thimerosal-containing supplies had expiration dates in 2002.

Merck executives confirmed the details in the FDA letter but defended the accuracy of Merck’s announcement in 1999, saying the company had indeed begun to produce preservative-free vaccine.

Merck continued to supply the preservative-containing version “during the transition period to ensure an adequate supply of vaccine to help protect the nation’s children,” said spokeswoman Mary Elizabeth Blake. She said package labels disclosed which lots of vaccine were preservative-free. < snip >

[ . . . and therefore parents of infants were supposed to demand labels from doctors? I have it on good authority, from a few actual parents who did that, and who said that indeed there was thimerosal in the vaccine which was being proposed for their child. ]

16

Cecil said, “So far, evidence for a connection between thimerosal and neurological problems is unpersuasive.”

Well, if you inject enough mercury into a tiny infant, isn’t it possible that neurological problems could ensue?

What about conditions at the height of the many-vaccines-injected + many-of-them-contained-thimerosal era?

Not only is it being INJECTED (and free to travel throughout the bloodstream, and do YOU know where it does?) instead of INGESTED, but the amounts were not necessarily trivial.

How about 87 times the amount that would be considered acceptable from eating fish?
87 TIMES THE AMOUNT.

'91 Memo Warned of Mercury in Shots
By Myron Levin, Times Staff Writer February 8, 2005

A memo from Merck & Co. shows that, nearly a decade before the first public disclosure, senior executives were concerned that infants were getting an elevated dose of mercury in vaccinations containing a widely used sterilizing agent.

The March 1991 memo, obtained by The Times, said that 6-month-old children who received their shots on schedule would get a mercury dose up to 87 times higher than guidelines for the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish.

17

Cecil said, " . . . the question may soon be moot." The question of whether thimerosal-containing vaccines caused autism and autism-spectrum disorders? That question?

Even if it were never to happen again, it won’t be moot to the parents of those thousands of children who were damaged by vaccines. The ones who managed to get in a claim to the VAER program are only the tip of the iceberg.

Do you think all of those other parents are supposed to spend their life savings, mortage their houses, and give up their own semblance of an ordinary life . . . just because it may not be happening any more?

18

Cecil said, “A 2001 California study appeared to show a clear link between cumulative thimerosal exposure and autism diagnosis, but a similar comparison using the Danish study data found the opposite.”

The Danish study was children who went to, and were in, the HOSPITAL. Children in the hospital only.

Completely different ‘population’ from the California study.

Perhaps you could read up on some of this stuff, instead of just repeating the party line?

19

Aaaaand here they come!

20

Here’s some more reading for you.

First, the differences between the mercury preservative (thimerosal) previously used in small amounts in common childhood vaccines and mercury compounds found in the environment have been studied. The metabolism of thimerosal in infants has also been studied. Cite.

Here are two more recent studies (not mentioned in Cecil’s column) that refute the vaccine-thimerosal-autism theory: First, the Rh study just released:

"It has been suggested that children born to mothers who are given injections of the Rh protein during pregnancy may be at increased risk for autism because thimerosal was used in the Rh protein injection until 2001.

“We hypothesized that if thimerosal were associated with the development of autism, we would find a higher proportion of Rh negative mothers of children with autism born before 2002,” University of Missouri researchers Judith H. Miles, M.D., Ph.D., and T. Nicole Takahashi write in the May issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

To test the theory, the two researchers determined the Rh status of 214 mothers who had children with an autism spectrum disorder and reviewed medical records to determine if the Rh-negative women had received the Rh protein vaccine late in pregnancy.

Rh-negative status was found to be no higher in the mothers of the autistic children than in the general population, nor was there more exposure to thimerosal-containing Rh vaccine in autistic children prior to birth.

Though she knows the findings won’t change the minds of those convinced that thimerosal exposure causes autism, Miles tells WebMD that there is still no credible scientific proof of a link.

In 2004, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine to review the data on vaccines and autism came to the same conclusion.

“It is time to move on and focus our research dollars and efforts on avenues that will be more productive,” Miles says."

And a 2005 Japanese study provides more evidence against the alleged MMR vaccination link to autism.

By any measure, the amount of exposure to thimerosal in vaccines for children has declined dramatically in recent years (the preservative has been absent for years from the common early childhood vaccines) - but autism rates are still climbing.

Thankfully, public confidence in vaccines appears to be rebounding after the scares of years past (including the MMR phobia in Britain that caused measles outbreaks), and more parents are recognizing the need to protect their children from these diseases.