There may, of course, be methodological problems with the studies I have provided; as there may be with population based studies generally used to ‘prove’ that mercury is not associated with autism. However, in one case the argument being made is that one of the most toxic substances known to man is safe to inject into infants; in the other the argument being made is the opposite…..

Which side of the science to believe in indeed?

- pD”

When I was a lab technician in cancer research in 1963 nobody in the institute believed either side.

As working theories were developed: the useful or promising ones were trialled and then they were used by teaching hospitals reasonably quickly and by the rest of them 10 or 20 years later.

In the lab new papers were read constantly to look for new facets of research. Theories were constantly improved and tested to see if the improvement was effective; safe or deadly.

At the same time we all knew that pollution was an important cause of cancer; but all of us were afraid to talk about it in public.

Why?

If pollution had been attacked with a tenth of the ferocity of WW11: cancer rates would have fallen. If nutrition and detox as cancer therapy had been investigated too, rates would have fallen again.

So would oncologists’ rates of pay…; medical equipment makers might have gone bankrupt…; pharma would have had a hard time.

Some of the pollution and effects in the body is similar to autism, some quite different. The economic engine may be similar or just another coincidence. The dentists’ argument that mercury is safe in amalgam fillings may have stupified all of us over the last 140 years?

Thanks pD! and all…

Makes you wonder more when you look at my family….

My great-grandpa was raised in Ireland. He came to American and became a cobbler. My grandpa was raised as the son of a cobbler, and he was a lot like I am. He didn’t really do anything regularly, and mostly was a disable WWII vet. My father was raised as the son of a disabled vet. He and I are very much a like. My father worked in real estate, when he worked that is. The rest of the time he dreamed of being a successful bussiness man. He was not around when I was growing up.

Now I have a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. And anyone who thinks that having AS is easy should have been here yesterday to see what happened when someone turned on a florescent light that shined in my face all day.

But I suspect that if Olmsted had talked to me, he would have discarded all the data and would not have used it in his study.

This argument always seems to have some shortfalls depending on who is doing the arguing.

There are certainly many epidemiological studies that seem to show with confidence that exposure to mercury in various vaccine schedules are not associated with autism rates. The argument seems to be that there is a safe level of mercury for infants; the proof is that epidemiological studies have failed to show an association with vaccination schedules and neurological diseases.

Simply making correlations between autism rates and increased vaccination schedules and concluding the two are associated, as shown, has serious flaws.

This, argument, however is hardly the complete view of how mercury toxicity MAY be implicated in the features of autism. For whatever reason, however, it is held up as a strawman and knocked down with glee.

If you begin to look for physiological studies involving mercury levels and some of the known issues with autism, the choice of which science to believe becomes much more complicated.

By way of example, researchers in China recently found that children diagnosed with ADHD have more mercury in their blood than non diagnosed controls; and that the levels of detectable blood mercury were very, very small.

“Children with blood mercury level above 29 nmol/L had 9.69 times (95 % CI 2.57 – 36.5) higher risk of having ADHD after adjustment for confounding variables. CONCLUSION: High blood mercury level was associated with ADHD. Whether the relationship is causal requires further studies.”

Full Abstract

This of course, doesn’t prove that mercury causes adhd, as noted, but the likelyhood that this association is random is very, very small. Should we discount the findings of this study simply because they do not agree with population studies that show getting more vaccines doesn’t lead to more autism?

Here is another paper, again using low levels of mercury which was found to cause disruptions in the auto immune system of animals.
Abstract on Pubmed

There is plenty of research showing that in many cases, an abnormal immune system response is occuring in autistics.

Here is a study that tracked mercury levels in cord blood and meconium; then tracked the patients five years later. From the conclusions:

“CONCLUSION: The study suggests that prenatal Hg exposure is correlated with lower scores in neurodevelopmental screening, but more so in the linguistic pathway. Other confounding factors cannot be eliminated.”

Pubmed Abstract

Many, many other papers are available that can document associations, or mechanisms of action between heavy metal exposure and the behavioral or biological factors known to exist in autism.

There may, of course, be methodological problems with the studies I have provided; as there may be with population based studies generally used to ‘prove’ that mercury is not associated with autism. However, in one case the argument being made is that one of the most toxic substances known to man is safe to inject into infants; in the other the argument being made is the opposite.

Which side of the science to believe in indeed?

- pD