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Autism, mercury, and politics


chomerics

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Pretty disturbing article here. . .

MOUNTING EVIDENCE suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays, and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.

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Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations (polio, measles-mumps-rubella, and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis). In the early 1990s, public health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains.

In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned his bosses that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standards. He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued and complained that the US Food and Drug Administration, which has a notoriously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, could not be counted on to take appropriate action as its European counterparts had. Merck ignored Hilleman's warning, and for eight years government officials added seven more shots for children containing Thimerosal.

Mercury is a known brain poison, and autism rates began rising dramatically in children who were administered the new vaccine regimens. A decade ago the American Academy of Pediatrics estimated the autism rate among American children to be 1 in 2,500. Today, the CDC places the rate at 1 in 166, or 1 in 80 boys. Additionally, one in six children is now diagnosed with a related neurological disorder.

It continues on. . .

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/01/autism_mercury_and_politics/

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I've read a bit about this and it's rather disturbing. However, isn't there a chance that this spike in autism is due, at least partially, to an increased likelihood of diagnosis? It seems like it wasn't that long ago that autism was considered to be grossly under-diagnosed. Just my 2 cents.

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I asked about this before vaccinating my daughter and was told by the military immunization clinic that the chance of catching one of the diseases being vaccinated against is more likely than any of the side affects. Sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't. Is this preservative still being used in the vaccines today? My wife almost had my little boy today and I might think twice about the vaccines if so.

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Yeah, these charges have been around for a while (I didn't know about "since 91").

But the things I've heard lately are things like:

  • The preservative has been banned in Europe for years, and autism rates haven't gone down.
  • And the claim that it's not more prevalent, it's just more often diagnosed.

Haven't seen enough to swear that either of those statements are true, but it at least seems logical.

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Guest Gichin13
My cousin's son was diagnosed with autism about 7 years ago due to mercury poisoning from his vaccines. It's real and it happens.

There actually is a pretty vigorous scientific debate on this question. The latest studies I have read about tend to disprove a connection, but there are weakeness in the epidemiology of all the studies so far.

Anecdotally, it seems to make sense -- someone I know has a child with autisim and they believe it comes from the mercury. Not only that, but Blue Cross is messing with him and denying his health claims all over the place.

Ultimately, this is something that even if it appears statistically true, would have serious problems of cogent proof if it was tried in court and subjected rules of evidence, Daubert, et c

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Anecdotally, it seems to make sense -- someone I know has a child with autisim and they believe it comes from the mercury. Not only that, but Blue Cross is messing with him and denying his health claims all over the place.

That's terrible, and I'm sorry to hear that. There's a lot of evidence to support the link between vaccines and autism, but the government doesn't want anyone to know about it. Which, in a way, makes sense -- would you want to vaccinate your child if you knew you it meant putting your kids at risk of developing autism?

But to hear doctors and the medical community and the government essentially call my cousin a liar -- the kid's been undergoing chelation for several years now and has improved, but is still clearly different from the average child -- really gets under my skin.

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Guest Gichin13
That's terrible, and I'm sorry to hear that. There's a lot of evidence to support the link between vaccines and autism, but the government doesn't want anyone to know about it. Which, in a way, makes sense -- would you want to vaccinate your child if you knew you it meant putting your kids at risk of developing autism?

But to hear doctors and the medical community and the government essentially call my cousin a liar -- the kid's been undergoing chelation for several years now and has improved, but is still clearly different from the average child -- really gets under my skin.

When these things come up, it is not anyone calling anyone else a liar ... it is more a question of what type of modeling needs to be done to demonstrate "causation" definitively.

Case in point -- mold claims. If you search on the web, you will find literally millions of links, documents, reports claiming that exposure to mold causes a huge variety of problems. The only problem is after years of looking at the issues, the overwhelming data now points to mold being tied to allergy style impacts, but not long term claimed damages (like cancer, birth defects, et c.). Nevertheless, plaintiffs are regularly suing on those claims and can easily find experts to support their claims.

I am not saying one way or the other on the autism issue. I do know that when I was looking for a referral for my friend's case to a plaintiff's lawyer, the so-called vaccine guru in Virginia was no longer taking the autism cases. His refusal to take those cases now was directly tied to changes in the reporting and scientific information and the increasing difficulty to demonstrate causation.

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I am not saying one way or the other on the autism issue. I do know that when I was looking for a referral for my friend's case to a plaintiff's lawyer, the so-called vaccine guru in Virginia was no longer taking the autism cases. His refusal to take those cases now was directly tied to changes in the reporting and scientific information and the increasing difficulty to demonstrate causation.

Yeah, I understand. And like you said earlier, anecdotally, it makes sense. It's just frustrating hearing the MSM act like there's no link.

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