What other explanation could there be when millions of readers of national newspapers and similar media have read my articles claiming there are no unvaccinated autistic people and have felt disinclined to put me right? Actually one Harley Street doctor did but oddly he lost the evidence.

Bring out your unvaccinated autistic kids, let’s see one then I might believe there is some inconceivable other reason that mystically affects 99.999% of vaccinated kids but only 00.001% of unvaccinated kids.

Tony Bateson

Mercury poisoning is nothing like autism, people with real mercury poisoning have elevated levels of mercury, people with autism do not.

75 years ago mercury was used in teething powder, a grain of calomel per dose. That is 65 mg HgCl, or about 55,000 micrograms of mercury. About 4,000 times the dose of mercury in a single vaccination. Many millions of doses of teething powder containing 55,000 micrograms of mercury were sold, one company sold 30 million doses in one year. Over 1,000 children died of what was called “pink disease” which is now known as mercury poisoning.

Many millions of children were exposed to many thousands of times more mercury from teething powders than any child has received from vaccines. Over a thousand children died from mercury poisoning with what are now known as classic signs of mercury poisoning. How many children developed any symptoms of mercury poisoning from vaccines? None at all. Not surprising because the amount of mercury in a vaccination (12 micrograms) about the same as the mercury in a tuna sandwich (0.35 ppm times 40 grams ~ 14 micrograms). Methyl mercury (the kind in tuna) is better absorbed from the gut than thimerosal is absorbed by injection. Oral methyl mercury gives higher blood and brain levels of mercury than does injected thimerosal.

In the Faroe Islands 996 children were tested at birth for mercury in cord blood. 747 had cord blood mercury levels above 65 nM/L. 249 had cord blood mercury levels above 200 nM/L. In the two years including the 996 child cohort, 1404 children were born. In that group there were 2 cases of autism and 3 cases of Asperger’s.

The only people pushing the “mercury causes autism” idea are those who profit from it, including you trying to sell useless crap to treat non-existent mercury poisoning.

I definitely think there’s more than a little, and even a lot, of magical thinking—of associative thinking assuming a connection between things because of their happening in close succession—going on in discussions about autism causation.

It’s not terribly surprising, though, that magical thinking can continue to co-exist in a scientific age—-this was the case among the ancient Greeks, among whom myth (with all of its irrationalities) and the logical and reason of science co-existed together.

And it’s the “common sense” explanations (about vaccines and autism, for instance) that seem so obvious and irrefutable, whereas it seems too often that scientific explanations are complicated and limited.

1) Their is an obvious conflict of interest with autism studies funded by drug companies which puts said research on the “suspect list” and thus should be given the same weight as the tobacco company studies that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
2) The sharp increase in autism started with the onset of more and more vaccinations.
3) Both autism and thimerosal poisoning symptoms are the same:
http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/thimerosal.php

Given these indisputable facts and the obvious conflict of interest that exist between the drug companies and the medical establishment, one must err on the side of caution and seek alternative health methods and prevention vs drugs and vaccines. Don’t you all agree?

I don’t think you understand the foundation of what you term “the neurodiversity debate”; please see this, for clarification, when you have a moment:

http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=312

Thank-you.

When it comes to autism, though, a big part of it has to do with errors in its social construction. For example, it is generally believed, for unclear reasons, that autism is developmental stasis.

For a long time, I’ve had the sense that many people associated with autism seem to be stuck in a “magical thinking” mode. That is – a mode in which cause and effect can be “proved,” not by testing in the scientific sense, but through simple observation and an ASSUMED cause and effect.

In other words – “I wanted to get rid of the cold weather. So in January I placed three yew branches in front of door. By March, it was warm. Hence, the yew branches caused the world to become warmer.” Or… “my 3 year old child couldn’t talk. So I tried treatment ABC. Six months later he could talk. Thus, ABC made it possible for him to talk.”

This is, of course, a very old way of thinking… and it’s a common “naive misconception” in the science education world (I do a great deal of writing for museums and science education organizations).

The up side is – it really does make “common sense.” Seeing, after all, SHOULD be believing. The down side, of course, is that it is absolutely incorrect…

Your thoughts?

Lisa (About.com Guide to Autism)

I have read some of the white papers on DSMV they are available to download.

DSMV has many difficult choices to make as the nosologies fail to fit what research is coming up with.

I guess the clinically significant criteria will be ditched altogether to keep in line with ICD and diagnosis in physical medicine, where ones ability to funtion with a particular condition has no bearing on whether the indicators are there or not, e.g well controlled diabetes, where one has an underlying disorder, but with medication and diet it does not impinge upon ones abilities.

If they go for a really radical solution, many of the current “lables” will go and be replaced with multi axial diagnoses, it rather depends upon how much the conservative psychiatric community can take of change.