REVIEWS:
Michael Fitzpatrick

Evidence of Harm. Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: Medical Controversy
BMJ 2005; 330: 1154 [Full text]

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Re: Patronising tone, but where is the science?
 

Where is the science here? The disdain was exemplified by the title of Michael Fitzpatrick's book 'MMR and Autism: what parent's need to know', or just perhaps what he wants to tell us. But in this article he tells us nothing about why we should believe the IOM and no one should believe its critics: it is all done at the level of assertion: big science is good science. The doctors who were not there are better witnesses than the parents who were. Or could it just possibly be the case that the doctors were taking unacceptable risks with our children and cannot bear to have it pointed out to them? Since when, after all, did the medical profession own up to its errors?

In Fitzpatrick's universe everyone else are knaves and fools: we are directed to bow before the Pharma and US Government science and no ordinary citizen should have the temeritiy to think for themselves - it is all apparently to be done for us. We should continue to accept uncritically that the medical profession stick needles into our children and inject substances that no one fully understands and virtually all of which are toxic. Well I certainly disagree with Michael Fitzpatrick about medical ethics but I cannot help thinking there are even wider philosophical issues here as well.

It is fair to point out given the furore of Andrew Wakefield's alleged competing interests that Michael Fitzpatrick is a trustee of the science lobby organisation Sense About Science [1]. The website used to disclose that it was funded by vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline [2], and this fact is also recorded by Richard Horton in his book on the MMR controversy [3].

[1]http://senseaboutscience.org.uk/about.htm

[2]http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7455/1571#64919

[3] Richard Horton, 'MMR Sience and Fiction - Exploring the Vaccine Crisis' p. 155.

Competing interests: Parent of an autistic child

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Re: Toxic metals, mineral deficiencies and the autism epidemic
 

General practitioner Dr Michael Fitzpatrick writes that, “The same parents are pursuing a range of esoteric investigations and treatments for their children, including chelation therapy to eliminate mercury, injections of vitamin B-12, and various dietary exclusions and supplements”. The BMJ considers that the subject of toxic metal exposures, in particular mercury in vaccines, and autism increases is controversial. Why is the subject not being treated with impartiality based on scientific knowledge rather than merely relying on the blunt tool of epidemiology to denigrate the experience of parents and their affected children?1

Mineral and vitamin and essential fatty acid deficiencies are real causes of impaired brain function, especially zinc and copper imbalance. High levels of toxic metals in blood, urine, hair and sweat are real causes of impaired brain function. Food and chemical allergies are real as are the effects of a high allergy and therefore of poorly nutritious diet causing headaches and poor concentration.2-4

Lymphocyte sensitivities to raised toxic metal levels are real, as are confirmable improvements with monitored chelation using vitamin C, chlorella and nutritional supplements. I have already detailed the normalisation of an extensive range of toxic metal sensitivities and the highest levels were for dental mercury. Lymphocyte sensitivity tests (results below 100 are regarded as normal) are more sensitive than serum levels for detecting harmful effects of metals. The mother of two dyslexic children had definite sensitivities to inorganic (dental) mercury and nickel (380 and 220) and mild sensitivities to vitallium (dental Cr/Co) silver, cobalt, and tin (165, 160, 155, 115) before the removal of all dental metals. Organic mercury (from fish) lymphocyte sensitivity was 90 but fell to 17 after chelation. All the metals retested for lymphocyte sensitivity produced low normal results (86 -1) after chelation. 5,6

The damaging effect of dental amalgam fillings in early pregnancy is potentially a real cause of severe irreversible brain damage to children. This dental practise is now being discontinued hopefully.

The commonest toxic metal in autistic children causing DNA-adducts in a screening study of 61 autistic children was cadmium, presumably from parental smoking. Three children had DNA-adducts in leucocytes to mercury, 16 to malondialdehyde, 12 to cadmium, 9 to nickel and one to lead.7

There are now thousands of research papers confirming the importance of basic investigations and fundamental treatment for an extensive range of conditions.

1 Grant ECG. Limits of epidemiological studies in autism without clinical tests. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/325/7373/1134/a#78315, 14 Oct 2004

2 Grant ECG. Increases in childhood allergies and asthma may relate to an increasing prevalence of zinc deficiency http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7464/489#72482, 29 Aug 2004

3 Grant ECG. Psychologists ignore treatable biochemical abnormalities in dyslexia. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/313/7065/1096#102157, 31 Mar 2005

4 Grant ECG. Children with psychiatric disorders and learning disabilities have biochemical abnormalities http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/330/7494/742#102754, 5 Apr 2005

5 Grant ECG. Mercury damage to IQs and lives is incalculable

http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#98780, 3 Mar 2005

6 Grant ECG. Dental mercury is too toxic. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#99309, 6 Mar 2005

7 Grant ECG. McLaren-Howard J. Re: The effects of toxic metals in autistic children http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#74117, 13 Sep 2004.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Excellent summation
 

As the parent of an autistic daughter I'd just like to say that not all of us are gullible enough to fall for the latest round of quack cures and litigation led conspiracy theories.

I wrote a lengthy article here (http://www.kevinleitch.co.uk/wp/index.php?p=174) on the fallacies involved in EoH (Evidence of Harm) and the thimerosal link as well as the very profitable chelation industry which you may find interesting.

Thank you for writing this article and making the position of the BMJ clear. This is a clear victory for science and even more importantly a notable step in the aim to rid the world of autism research of quacks.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Fitzpatrick ignores the MEAT in Kirby's EOH book
 

While Dr. Fitzpatrick picks on the surface strata of the book, he ignores the meat of the science chronicled therein. I received the impression that he merely "skimmed" through its contents and never took the time to fully digest the "Evidence of Harm" detailed throughout, or has taken any time whatsoever investigating any of the source material referenced by Kirby.

If I may, I would recommend he visit the following website and watch a few video interviews of the very doctors (researchers & clinicians) Kirby writes about and who are on the front lines of treating autism biomedically. Many of these kids are getting BETTER, with a number of them RECOVERING from their Autism. I have personally met six or seven children who have recovered from a severe state of autism to losing their diagnosis and being mainstreamed in the educational system.

http://www.autismmedia.org/media2.html

Competing interests: Erik Nanstiel has a child who was injured by her vaccines and is now Autistic

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Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm”
 

How I came to be involved in “Evidence of Harm”

I was doing some research for freelance magazine articles and someone had told me about some mothers in Los Angeles who were researching alternative treatments for their children with autism. I was writing for women’s magazines and thought it sounded interesting. So, I talked to some of the women out in Los Angeles. One of them rather casually mentioned that she thought, or some people thought, that the cause of autism might be the mercury in vaccines, and I had never heard of such a thing. I thought maybe she was a little, not crazy, but mistaken, and I put it in back of my mind. Still, I thought it was interesting, and then a week later, the Homeland Security Bill passed and I found out there was a secret rider in there to dismiss lawsuits against Eli Lilly. And that’s when the journalist in me said, “I think there is more to this story.”

I had never met a person with autism in my life and I had never heard of Thimerosal. And I had certainly never heard of any connection between any form of mercury and autism, although I did know mercury was not good for you. But I don’t think I realized the extent to which it could do damage in your body. So, I was 100% unfamiliar with this story right up until November of 2002.

In school I had not know any autistic children

People who insist or say that there is no autism epidemic—that it is just better reporting and better diagnostics—I really would like to pose the question to them that Mark Blaxill, from Safe Minds, asks: Where are all those people in my generation, in my school, with autism? Where are the 1 in 166 autistic adults? We can’t find them. So, they have either been institutionalized, or they passed away, or they somehow had a miraculous recovery because they don’t seem to be around. And Mark calls that the “hidden horde” and I think it’s a really good point.

On July 9th of 1999 when the Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a joint statement announcing that they had added up mercury burden in children’s vaccines and found out they were over the EPA limit. Up until that time, parents were certainly researching alleged connections between vaccines themselves—particularly MMR, but also DTP—but not necessarily mercury. With one notable exception, a man named Albert Enayati out of New Jersey. He was the head of Cure Autism Now in New Jersey. And he started researching this on his own—even before the joint statement was issued. But he was not entirely convinced, and couldn’t get a lot of information on it at the time. But then when the joint statement was issued, he put it all together.

Rates of Autism in the U.S. and Denmark

The rate of autism in the U.S. is about 60 per 10,000 children, or 1 in 166. Now, that is for ASD, not full-blown autism. However, in other countries in Europe where they have done extensive studies, and where Thimerosal use has not been a common practice for the last decade or so, the autism rates are considerably lower—particularly in Denmark because that’s where it has been studied, probably, more than anywhere in Europe. I believe the rates are about 7 per 10,000 children.

In the U.S. mercury exposure exceeded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines

At the peak of exposure, if a child had received all mercury- containing vaccines, that is, vaccine brands that contained mercury, they would have received many, many times over the EPA limit on those particular days of the visit to the doctor. That would be a ‘bolus’ exposure—a peak, intermittent exposure, as opposed a chronic, low-dose exposure. So, these children would have received at birth 12.5 micrograms of mercury and, depending upon how much they weighed, for an 8 pound child that would be about 35 times over the EPA limit, but for a 4 pound child it would be double that—so, it would be 70 times over the limit. At 2 months the children were brought back, that’s when they were still relatively small and when many important systems inside the body are still developing. And that’s when they received the most amounts of mercury, 3 shots, 62.5 micrograms of mercury. For a 10 pound kid, it’s about 137 times over the EPA limit. And then of course, at 4 months they came back, at 6 months, and then a year. So, in that first year most kids who were receiving mercury got about 212 micrograms.

The FDA realized bolus exposures were occurring in 1999

It would appear the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) never looked at the issue of bolus exposures until 1999, when they were ordered by Congress to do so. We know that company officials at Merck did the math way back in 1991, thanks to an excellent report in the Los Angeles Times about two weeks ago. The company never bothered to tell the government or the public that they had done this math. When I talk about the ‘math,’ I mean the simple conversion of percentage of volume into actual micrograms of weight. And no one at the FDA as far as we know did that until 1999. When they did do that, that’s when they got the statement out and urged companies to start removing mercury from the childhood shots.

The public health insititutions did some very clever mathematical footwork, I would say. They took the first six months of exposures—so, that’s 4 bolus exposures—birth, 2 months, 4 months, 6 months—added them up, computing it was 162.5 micrograms of mercury exposure over a period of 180 days. So, they simply averaged that out and came up with a figure of 0.9 micrograms of exposure per day—on average. That completely discounts the days of exposure where the bolus dose is obviously much higher.

The analogy I use—there are a couple of them. I quote Lyn Redwood, who is of course one of the lead, if not the lead characters in the book and went to great lengths to try to prove this theory. You can take two Tylenol® a day for 60 days and you will be fine. But if you took 120 Tylenol® in one day, that’s a lethal dose and you’ll probably die.

Symptoms of mercury poisoning vs. symptoms of autism

There are many, many similar symptoms that cross over and they are quite remarkable, broken down into various different categories. Again Safe Minds were the first people to really pioneer this work looking into these similarities. They published a paper, authored by Sallie Bernard, et al., called Autism: A novel form of mercury poisoning. And in it, they literally went down and compared symptom by symptom, and found in the literature references to behaviors and neurological problems, speech disorders and sensory problems and the list goes on and on, that were virtually identical between mercury poisoning and autism. But then also, we must remember that mercury poisoning does not always manifest itself in the same way nor does autism. So, that then left them open to attack by their opponents who said you can’t make that comparison.

Probably most famous historical case of mercury poisoning is Mad Hatter’s disease. And of course, people who made hats up until not too long ago, were exposed to large amounts of mercury vapor used in the making of the felt. Mad Hatters were prone to outbursts of emotion, at the same time they would withdraw from social venues. They would have lack of eye contact, they would be very irritable, huge bouts of depression. And of course, it was exposure to mercury that made them “mad.”

Pink disease is even more interesting, probably less known in this country. It appeared in the western world, mostly in Europe, Canada, and Australia, in the 1930’s up until about the 1950’s. And for a long time people suspected that it was inorganic mercury in the teething powder that was put in the teething rings for their children. And indeed, in the end, it did turn out that was the cause. The symptoms, the reason it was called Pink’s disease, is the peeling of the skin, a rash that was red in color, and that’s how the word came about. Now, autistic children generally don’t have that symptom. So, Pink disease obviously is not the same thing as autism. But many, many of the other symptoms overlap remarkably. And I discuss them in the book. There is an actual adult survivor of Pink disease who describes her symptoms from the inside out. And they are identical. I think any parent of an autistic child reading what this woman went through, or reading the general symptoms of Pink disease, (knows) they equally match autism. And of course, finally, industry very reluctantly in the 1950’s, did not want to remove the mercury but thought they might have a problem and potential law suits on their hands, so they did. And within years, Pink disease disappeared, and today it’s virtually unheard of.

American and European agencies begin to assess the risks of Thimerosal in pharmaceutical products

European agencies, I think, got a head start on the U.S. And if you go even a little further east to the Soviet Union, Russia, they took mercury out of vaccines apparently back in 1982. There is a paper that was published that’s in my book, it was published saying mercury was completely inappropriate for use of this kind and it was toxic. Scandinavia removed mercury from vaccines in 1992. And the Europeans started looking at this issue. Well, actually, back in 1985 also there was a paper published by, basically, the equivalent of the head of the FDA in the United Kingdom saying the same thing, “Thimerosal is not safe and should not be used.” That document, one has to assume, was in the library of the FDA, but they never bothered to look at it. Right around 1998, the European Union started moving to propose banning Thimerosal in vaccines in Europe. And of course in this country it started in 1999.

FDA thinks there might be a cause for concern with Thimerosal in vaccines

Dr. Patriarca, just before the joint statement was issued—so, back in July of 1999 when he knew this was coming out and he had seen the math—updated his colleagues and sent out a couple of e-mails to them. The first one saying, “How did this happen? This is 9th grade algebra. Anybody could have sat down and done these conversions—why didn’t we?” In the second e-mail he writes that he is afraid that “the perception when this all comes out will be that the FDA, CDC, and others were asleep at the switch.” Which seems like that’s what they were. As far as recall is concerned, Safe Minds attempted repeatedly, over and over again, both in person and in letter form, to have the FDA recall these Thimerosal- containing vaccines, as did Dan Burton, chairman of the Government Reform Committee, several times, and the FDA simply refused.

Joint Statement recommends delaying the birth Hep B vaccine?

One of the recommendations in the Joint Statement in 1999, was to move the birth dose of Hepatitis B back at least until 4 to 6 months. And they did in the statement say that the schedule allowed that flexibility.

There was resistance apparently in a Hepatitis Control Report published on the part of the CDC. They were afraid that if people didn’t get the birth dose, they might not start the Hepatitis B series at all. The American Academy of Pediatrics, to their credit, fought very hard to have the recommendation included to postpone the birth dose.

Was Thimerosal ever studied for safety by the FDA or anyone else?

Thimerosal safety studies not conducted by the FDA

The only safety study on record and on file at the FDA actually predates the FDA. It concerns a 1929 trial by Eli Lilly & Company, shortly after Thimerosal was first invented. They decided to test it on a group of 22 patients who were dying of acute meningitis. So, they injected the patients and followed them for about 3 days, after which time most of the patients had died from meningitis. And in that period they noted no adverse effects from the Thimerosal. So, that was the safety study and that, to this day, sits in the FDA as the only proof of safety of the substance.

Warning to Eli Lilly

Warnings were issued to Eli Lilly over the decades, beginning in the 1930’s and going right up to 1990’s from scientists, from medical academies, and even from their own employees. And this has all been produced through the discovery process by Andy Waters, the main attorney in a lot of the civil cases.

A lot of parents all started on their own, I think without even knowing that other parents were doing the same thing—just looking into this all over the country. My book follows the story of mostly, but not entirely, the Safe Minds parents, in particular Lyn Redwood, Sallie Bernard, Liz Birt, Albert Enayati, Heidi Roger, and Mark Blaxill. And of course more parents come into the story as it progresses. Safe Minds I think gets credit for really spearheading this and really taking on the government and the drug companies. They’re the ones, a group of parents, with the exception of Lyn a nurse practitioner, with very little medical experience. They wrote their paper and they got it out there and they banged down the doors of government to get in, to get meetings, to talk to these officials to present what they found. And they really thought that, once they had done that, the government would take their concerns seriously and get on the ball and try to figure this out. And that’s not the response that they received at all—which I think is very disheartening for them.

“It just won’t go away.”

At one point I actually toyed with the idea of making that the title of my book, because “evidence of harm” of course occurs many, many times as a phrase in my book. But so does the term, “It won’t go away.” Thomas Verstraeten, who was hired by the CDC, came over from Belgium and his first assignment was to sort through the Federal Vaccine Safety Datalink database and look for adverse outcomes among children who were vaccinated with mercury – to see if there was a higher rate among children who had higher levels of exposure. At his first run of the numbers, he came up with some extremely high and very statistically significant associations, including autism outcomes and Thimerosal exposures. He then went back and re-cut the numbers—literally. He stratified them.

In the first round, basically there was this large group of kids broken down into exposure/no exposure. Then he broke them down by different ages and by different exposure rates, and really started to break them down. And the relative risk for autism and other disorders came down considerably, but they did not come down all the way. Many of them were still extremely elevated—alarmingly elevated—and many of them were statistically significant. At this time, when he wrote the memo, the relative risk of autism was at 2.48. Anything over 2.0 is considered causation in a court of law, however it was not completely statistically significant—it is a little complicated to explain the reason why—but it was still high and it was close to statistically significant.

The CDC still won’t admit that it has a grave problem. I think they knew they had a PR problem. At the same time, they were fully informed by the people of the FDA what was going on in 1999 as the e-mails will attest. I think when Thomas Verstraeten, then in November/December of 1999, first ran the numbers, that’s when the NIP, the National Immunization Program officials, I think must have known they had a problem. But they will not to this date admit that there was a problem

Generations 0 through 4

Generation 0 is so-called because it was sort of discovered after the first 4 generations were discovered. Of these 5 generations, by the way, the only generations that were ever meant to see the light of day were generations 3 and 4, the last two. The last one being published in the Journal Pediatrics. What is called ‘Generation 0,’ again was the first run of the numbers. I am not a biostatistician, so, I don’t know how valuable this data is, but it does exist, it is CDC data. And Verstraeten basically took kids at 1 month of age who had received more than 25 micrograms, and then kids who had received 0 micrograms at 1 month of age, and compared them. And he found out that for the kids in the exposure group, the rates were astounding. For autism it was 7.62, for ADHD it was even a little bit higher, for ADD it was a little bit lower—but they were all way up there and statistically significant. That’s when he cut the numbers again and came out with what is now referred to as the ‘Generation 1’ numbers, when autism fell to 2.48.

VSD Phase 1 study

The VSD Phase 1 study is also referred to as ‘2/2000.’ There was a paper that Verstraeten wrote for his colleagues in February, 2000—so, it was his second run of the numbers, and that document, which was produced for it, is stamped, every single page, “Confidential. Do not distribute.” That was never meant to see the light of day. That then became ‘Generation 1.’ Only people inside the CDC knew about it.

What then became ‘Generation 2’ was in June of 2000, at a top-secret meeting outside of Atlanta, held at a resort called Simpsonwood, where the CDC invited people from the FDA, other government agencies, the medical academies, and the vaccine-producing drug companies to come review the data that Verstraeten had analyzed. By this time, when Verstraeten presented, he was now on ‘Generation 2,’ and the relative risk for autism had since dropped to 1.69. The other risks had dropped, although there were some that were still elevated, particularly speech and language delay. And an umbrella category that they did—they took all of the disorders, including autism, and put them into something called NDDs, neurological developmental disorders. And they took them and grouped them together and looked at them. They were elevated, and they were statistically significant, and there was a dose response curve. In other words, for every increment—for every increase—in mercury exposure, there was a relative increase in risk for one of these outcomes. That got presented.

Shortly thereafter Verstraeten presented more or less the same numbers in a public meeting—at a CDC meeting in Atlanta, a vaccine committee meeting. That was entered onto the record, however to this day his report is not posted online. The only way I got to see it was because Lyn Redwood was there and somehow got an early transcript.

Verstraeten did present findings where the risks were lower than in the Phase 1 study, but they were still elevated and many of them were still significant. At that point, I think the drug companies were aware that there was potentially at least a PR problem out there, and that did eventually start lobbying activities on Capitol Hill to protect the companies from liability.

Eli Lilly is connected with legislators, political appointees, and pending legislation

In terms of the Bush administration, and at the time of, particularly, the Homeland Security Bill, Bush had installed Eli Lilly vice-president for corporate strategy, Mitch Daniels, as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget—a highly powerful position within the White House. He also named Mitch Daniels to the National Security Council and the National Homeland Security Advisory Counsel. The CEO and President of Eli Lilly, Sidney Taurel, was likewise named to the president’s Homeland Security Advisory Counsel. Only, I think, 13 positions were made open—highly coveted spots for people in industry because, as the government started to formulate its terrorism response after 9/11, it needed to incorporate the private sector into its plan. And for a pharmaceutical company to be in there was very beneficial for them. The list goes on.

Of course George Bush Sr. sat on the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly for many years, and other Eli Lilly company officials have been appointed to different Homeland Security advisory panels within the bureaucracy. And of course, Eli Lilly is a very generous donor to political campaigns—historically, about 80% of which has gone to Republican candidates. In the 2000 election they were one of the most generous donors of all, and they have also donated to the campaigns of Senator Bill Frist and also the Republican Senate Campaign Committee.

Washington has looked into the influence of large industries on Congress, and also in the bureaucracy, as a matter of fact, in terms of writing regulations. And again the pharmaceutical industry is among the most generous of donors. Now the soft money ban has reduced that somewhat and large contributions are not as large as they use to be. But the amount of influence that drug companies and others seem to get in return for their investment is well documented.

So, tell us about the different bills that have been introduced and the Homeland Security Bill riders. How did that get in there and what do disabled kids have to do with Homeland Security anyway?

Dan Burton ran to the House floor to ask how Eli Lilly got into the Homeland Security Bill rider as soon as he found out that the rider had been inserted. This is a very complicated web of intrigue, in terms of all those different bills, and also the Homeland Security Bill. As far as the Homeland Security Bill is concerned, that was inserted by Representative Richard Armey, Republican of Texas. He was the House Majority Leader at the time and about to retire. He retired at the end of the year. At first he said that the order to do it had come from the White House. The White House denied this, I believe. The White House said it may have come from Senator Frist’s office. Senator Frist denied that, and later Dick Armey retracted his statement that it had come from the White House. He insisted he had acted alone to protect the nation and our bioterrorism response system. It’s hard to know if Dick Armey himself would have known exactly which passages from a many, many page bill of Senator Frist, to cut and paste into the Homeland Security Bill. Either he knew exactly which language, or someone in his office knew which language, or of course it was furnished to them by sources unknown.

That provision, which was inserted into the bill and passed in November and signed by the President, was then rescinded when Congress came back in 2003. The new Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist, to his credit, honored a pledge made by the outgoing Majority Leader of the Senate, Trent Lot, to revisit the issue— and he indeed did. And the unsettling language was removed—I say unsettling in terms of the way it was put into the bill—but he vowed and Eli Lilly vowed, and others vowed to fight to get most of that language back in. Now, the language basically gets very complicated and technical and is explained in the book. The language of the Homeland Bill was basically to proclaim Thimerosal a vaccine ingredient and therefore Eli Lilly would be a vaccine maker and therefore protected under the Federal Vaccine Compensation Program. In other words, plaintiffs could not file private cases in private court, they would have to go into the Federal program, which happens to have a 3 year statute of limitations. So, if your child was injured more than 3 years ago, you’re not eligible—leaving most parents in a terrible “catch 22”—they couldn’t file in civil court, and yet they can’t file in the vaccine court either.

Ever since then, Frist and others have introduced several different versions of similar bills, and none of these passed, obviously. Most recently Senate Bill 3, which is rather Draconian in its reach. Not only would it prevent families from filing in state courts—it does not include the Homeland Security Bill provision of proclaiming Thimerosal as an ingredient, however—there is now a version in the House that does do that. And eventually if these pass, they’re going to have to work together as one bill.

But some of the other things that the Senate bill does that are really quite alarming and possibly unconstitutional includes things like prohibiting the states from passing their own individual bans against mercury in vaccines. And, as we know, this is already happening in Iowa and California. It is not clear if the Senate and Federal government can tell the states what laws they can pass in terms of federal health policy. So, that will be an interesting debate if the Senate bill were to pass. I can assure you that parents are out there right now, from Safe Minds and other groups... And particularly, I want to give note to Laura Bono, at the National Autism Association, because she has really led the fight against Frist. But there are many, many people in the fight, and they all contribute equally.

The Mercury in Medicine Report

This report showed reasonably there might be collusion between the drug companies and the federal health bureaucracy. It showed varying conflicts of interest among people who sit on these panels and decide which vaccines get approved by the FDA, and which vaccines get put on the childhood list by the CDC. And incidentally, there is an astounding article in the New York Times today (February 28, 2005)—well there are two. One concerns the National Vaccine Program and Thimerosal—I urge everybody to read it. And the other one concerns the Vioxx® scandal. And last week an FDA panel rather controversially voted to basically give the green light to Vioxx® and other cox-inhibitor drugs to go back on the shelf. The vote was close. There were several votes—there were, I think, two to three votes on each drug and The Times did the math. They did a great job, and they looked into these people and what kind of ties they had to Merck and other drug companies. And sure enough, all the people voting to re-approve the drug, or approve its sale back on the market, were the ones receiving contributions and funding from the drug companies. Those panelists who were not receiving funding, tended to vote against these drugs. When they finally did the math, and they looked at how many times that the money-receiving people had voted for the drugs compared to people who weren’t receiving money, the ratio was 10 to 1. So, if you were receiving money and you sat on this panel, you were 10 times more likely to vote in favor of the drug companies than if you weren’t.

It appears that when it comes to drug safety, ‘Just give me my check and tell me what to do.’ It’s pretty blatant. That could not possibly happen by chance. So, I’m hoping that this Times article really sparks some further investigation—not just for what’s going on at the FDA, but what’s going on at CDC. So, anyway, the Burton report also categorized and catalogued these conflicts. It was a far-reaching report. I encourage everyone to read it—it’s an excellent document, worked on very hard by people like Beth Clay, Elizabeth Birt, and others, and of course, Chairman Burton. It looked into the history of Thimerosal, everything that went on at the FDA in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and of course the entire CDC study with the vaccine data, access to the vaccine data, which is what the other New York Times article is about today.

Getting into the VSD is like getting into nuclear secrets—the most heavily guarded data, certainly in the public health realm, I would think, and still fairly off limits to outside researchers, although that seems to be changing. And what the Times is reporting on today, is that a new panel set up by the IOM (Institute of Medicine) to review access to Federal data, especially this vaccine data, and also the preservation of data that has already been analyzed, datasets that have already been constructed. And the report is a scathing rebuke of the CDC by this IOM panel, which basically advises the CDC to seek legal counsel, because they did not properly maintain datasets. The language they used is that they were ‘not archived in a standard manner’—meaning they were lost or destroyed. And now, nobody can try to replicate what Thomas Verstraeten and his colleagues did. Nobody knows where these datasets are. The technicians were ordered to remove them from the computers at the CDC center, put them on to CD-ROMs and send them back to headquarters in Atlanta. So, we don’t know where those datasets are. They were supposed to be preserved; they were supposed to be made available to other researchers that could come in and then replicate the work of the government scientists—as any hallmark of good science would allow. And the fact that they were lost or destroyed is a violation of the Federal Data Quality Act. That is a federal law, and if someone is responsible for the loss or destruction of these datasets, they could conceivably face criminal prosecution.

The IOM is not a government agency, it’s an independent agency. It’s a quasi-government agency in that it is hired by the government and does work for the government, but it is actually independent. If you go back to 2001, when the IOM issued its first report on this issue, they came down pretty much in the middle. They said there was not enough evidence one way or the other; that it was biologically plausible; and that experimental treatments, like chelation therapy, should probably be looked into. So, I would say at least in 2001, the IOM was taking a more open-minded view than say the CDC or pediatrics’ academies. Leaving the IOM aside for a minute, if you look at FDA, CDC, the American Academy, and certainly the drug companies, they all have a very strong interest in proving this theory wrong. So, for many, many different complicated reasons, it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the parents to extract any kind of confessions out of them—or any kind of admission of wrongdoing, or guilt, or even just simple human error.

The IOM more recently says there was no causal relationship

There was the second report issued in May of 2004, based on a hearing held in February, 2004 which the IOM panel, the immunization panel, listened to evidence of data presented basically from both sides of the controversy. The data presented to refute the Thimerosal theory was almost exclusively large population studies—epidemiology.

IOM’s epidemiological proof is based on study authors being connected to the Statens Serum Institut

Mark Blaxill and Sallie Bernard really investigated the tangled web. The Statens Serum Institut supposedly call themselves a non-profit, quasi- government agency out of Denmark, responsible for developing, producing, and selling vaccines, not only in that country, but overseas. They still claim that they’re non-profit, although there might be evidence to suggest otherwise. People who were on staff at that institute, or consulting with that institute, and who worked on several of the major studies that were done in Denmark, do have ties to drug companies and they certainly have ties to the CDC.

And there is now evidence surfacing showing that a lot of these overseas studies done in Denmark and the U.K., even though they didn’t officially receive CDC funding to be conducted, it would appear the CDC was calling a lot of the shots. I just now saw some information that Brian Hooker out of Washington just received a few days ago—very revealing e- mails between the head of the study in the U.K. and Robert Chen and Thomas Verstraeten here in Atlanta, indicating that the CDC was basically deciding whether this study should proceed or not and deciding who at the World Health Organization (WHO) should give its funding to and worrying that because they found out that exposures in the U.K. were lower than they thought they were, they thought they might not have enough exposure to show a significant number of outcomes—which also would suggest that they knew that with higher exposure you do get outcomes. Anyway, Elizabeth Miller the head of the U.K. wrote to Bob Chen and was so upset she wrote, “Do I have to give my grant back to WHO?” In other words, she was asking the CDC, “Do I have to give my money back to the World Health Organization?” And in another e-mail Vertraeten wrote to Chen and said, “I don’t think this is a good study; I don’t think we should do this. I think the money should go to researchers in Sweden.” So, the CDC was obviously having influence over the funding of these studies that, in theory, they had nothing to do with. CDC also wrote letters in support of some of these studies to be published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The science substantiating the link between Thimerosal and the autism epidemic

When I mentioned the IOM meeting, which I was at in February of 2004, the evidence presented to refute the theory was all epidemiology, for the most part. And most of the evidence presented to support the theory was biological evidence, done in the clinic, in animal models, in the test tube, and in children themselves. This was given a lot less emphasis and importance by the IOM panel than the epidemiology—they themselves admit that. And a lot of these studies had not yet been published when they were presented in February. Of course now, many now have been published, but because they weren’t published at the time, the IOM decided to discount them even further.

The most important ones among them are the work of Jeff Bradstreet, Jill James, and Dr. Richard Deth, who was on NBC news last night, and others looking into this: Boyd Haley, of course, from the University of Kentucky. Mark and David Geier have looked more into the epidemiology than the biology of this. The bottom line of what their studies are showing is that autistic kids retain heavy metals at a much greater rate than normal kids; that they seem unable, in fact, to actually excrete it. Following chelation, autistic children excrete far higher levels of mercury than normal kids. And yet, in their baby haircuts, we’re finding that normal kids have much higher levels of mercury in their hair than the autistic kids. And that would then make sense, because they were excreting it properly; the autistic kids were holding onto it.

What Jill James and Richard Deth have found are mechanisms by which mercury exposure can interrupt very important processes in the body, and particularly in susceptible individuals, and the effect this can have on the production of ‘thiols,’ sulfur-based proteins, also referred to as ‘mercaptans’ or ‘mercury capturers.’

Jill James has shown that autistic children have much lower rates of these proteins—glutathione, cysteine, things like that— in their system, which would naturally chelate the body, that would naturally bind with the heavy metals and help eliminate them from the system. So, working with the theories of Richard Deth about what is interrupting this process, she and others are trying to restore the process, particularly through the use of Methyl B-12. Once she started giving a cocktail that included Methyl B-12 to these children, she noticed that their levels of thiols, their sulfur- based proteins, their ‘mercury capturers,’ if you will, returned to normal levels. And now, she is at least anecdotally seeing clinical improvement, as are other people who have given their children or their patients this therapy.

The work of Mady Hornig, at Columbia [University], basically took different strains of mice—one strain which was genetically predisposed to have auto-immune disorders—and exposed them all to the same level of vaccines, at the same schedule, roughly, that children would have received. In the sensitive group of mice, then, she noticed autistic-like behavior. She noticed physiological development such as increased brain size that you see in autistic children. Of course, she has been attacked for the study. And people said, ‘How can you tell if a mouse has autism or not?’ And I’m not quite sure that was the point of the study. I think the point of the study was to show that certain members of the same species, with a genetic difference, will react differently to the same level of mercury exposure due to a genetic variance.

But there’s never been reported a genetic epidemic. This could then implicate an environmental factor (a trigger), probably on top of a genetic predisposition.

One thing I neglected to mention about Pink’s disease: only 1 in 500 children exposed to the mercury developed the disease. So, that would therefore indicate a minority of children were genetically predisposed to develop hypersensitivity to the metal.

Scientific progress is being made

I think there is cause for tremendous optimism. Despite the obstacles these parents have, I have seen kids get better with my own eyes and with my own ears, and heard them get better, and speak more clearly, and be more attentive, and have better eye contact. I have to say whether it turns out that Thimerosal is absolutely fingered as the culprit or not, the mere fact that some kids, when you remove heavy metals from their body, seem to improve clinically—that in itself is wonderful and in a way, again I am not a lawyer and have no personal interest in these lawsuits, who cares what the cause is? If the kids are getting better, the kids are getting better—or at least some of them. And I don’t mean to be flip about that, but I think people need to keep their eye on the goal—which is these children getting better, and perhaps even recovering some, if not all their cognitive abilities. So, I think that everyone deserves to take 5 minutes off and pat themselves on the back and look at how far they’ve come since even I started reporting this book 2 or 3 years ago. Particularly in terms of public awareness of Thimerosal and mercury; in terms of legislation in Congress; in terms of the investigations; and in terms of the media coverage. Even if you were upset at what NBC was doing, NBC did the autism community a service, because the debate has begun. Even if you were opposed to what Bob Bazell or anybody said, this was not being said on national television even a year ago. Some people would say, ‘No publicity is bad publicity.’ And there is a certain amount of wisdom in that.

An interview with David Kirby is available in Medical Veritas 2(1):447–445 [Manuscript #00059; doi: 10.1588/medver.2005.02.00059, www.vaccineveritas.com/pages/6/index.htm].

Competing interests: Author of "Evidence of Harm"

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Re: Excerpt from EOH, references from government, and children's medical tests
 

Mr. Fitzpatrick's review said more about himself than the book Evidence Of Harm. Review readers deserve fact, not emotionalism.

Read this excerpt from pages 281-282 of EVIDENCE OF HARM by David Kirby (130 words, reprinted with permission). It describes the October 2003 visit by Dr. Mark Geier, David Geier and Vale Krenik to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Vaccine Safety Datalink in Atlanta, Georgia. The VSD monitor gave the Geiers access to more data than her superiors intended:

"The risk for autism increased significantly with each additional 25 micrograms of mercury. When they finally calculated the relative risk for autism at each exposure level, the Geiers were shocked to find that children who received three mercury-containing DTaP shots had an increased risk of autism nearly 27 times that of children who got three preservative -free vaccines.

"The woman did not seem surprised. She told the Geiers that she had been running VSD data on thimerosal for quite some time. She knew these numbers inside out. ...

"She was assigned to look at the most recent data, checking to see what the rates for autism were doing. She was asked to determine if the numbers of diagnoses had begun to decline, especially in the younger children. If so, this would implicate thimerosal, which began to be phased out in 2000.

"'The autism numbers are going down,' she said. 'We're watching them drop.'" _____

Imagine my surprise when in November 2002 my little boy's medical tests showed toxic levels of mercury.

Imagine my dismay when I learned that his routine childhood vaccines had contained bolus doses of Thimerosal, a vaccine sterilizer that is 49.6% mercury.

Understand my profound disappointment that some in the medical community have written off children like my son as collateral damage in the war on disease.

Because I accepted the unthinkable concept that a vaccine ingredient had caused harm, my son received prompt medical treatment and his mood, behavior and abilities improved drastically. He has lost most of his autistic symptoms, but an attention deficit remains. Other children deserve this chance at a near-normal life.

In September 2004 William Egan of the U.S. Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research stated before a government committee, "Prior to this initiative to reduce or eliminate thimerosal from childhood vaccines, the maximum cumulative exposure to mercury as ethylmercury via routine childhood vaccinations during the first 6 months of life was approximately 187.5 micrograms." http://www.fda.gov/ola/2004/vaccine0908.html

For an 11-pound infant, 187.5 micrograms is 125 times the EPA’s “safe” level of mercury.

Study after study shows that damage occurs at nanomolar levels, where the toxic heavy metal strips myelin sheathing off neurons, sets off autoimmune disorders and intestinal dysbiosis, and lodges in brain tissue where it disrupts cognitive processing and motor activity. http://www.altcorp.com/DentalInformation/thimstudys.htm

A recent NIEHS primate study by Thomas Burbacher et al showed that ethylmercury from vaccines binds to brain tissue 2 to 4 times more than methylmercury found in fish. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/7712/7712.pdf

The 2001 study “Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning” describes about 100 shared symptoms. http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/Bernard-et-al-2001.pdf

Emerging research by Jill James, Richard Deth, Richard Baskin, Mady Hornig, Boyd Haley and many others shows that a genetic subset of the population is less able to excrete toxic heavy metals. Testosterone and aluminum worsen the effects of mercury. http://www.ewg.org/reports/autism/execsumm.php Overloaded? New science, new insights about mercury and autism in susceptible children

The American public would feel far more reassured if vaccine policymakers were open to parental reports of vaccine problems, and made quick changes to accommodate genetic diversity.

Instead, the U.S. vaccination program has not always been forthcoming with the public. Read through the minutes of a closed door 2000 meeting of 52 vaccine policymakers at the Simpsonwood resort in Georgia. http://www.autismhelpforyou.com/Simpsonwood_And_Puerto%20%20Rico.htm http://www.autismhelpforyou.com/simpsonwood.pdf

But the vaccine injury statistics read at Simpsonwood had actually been watered down by CDC researchers Thomas Verstraeten, Robert Chen and Frank DeStefano. http://www.safeminds.org/Generation%20Zero%20Syn.pdf

Many people working for the CDC erroneously cite the May 2004 Institute of Medicine report on autism and mercury as reason to stop investigating the issue. However the IOM admitted that “the committee cannot rule out, based on the epidemiological evidence, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset or very unusual circumstance.”

U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, MD has criticized the CDC and IOM for weakening the nation’s vaccine program by mishandling the autism/mercury issue. http://www.ewg.org/reports/autism/statement_weldon.php

In February 2005 the U.S. National Academies of Science's IOM Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention issued a report, “Vaccine Safety Research, Data Access, and Public Trust.” The report was made after a committee review of the National Immunization Program's Research Procedures and Data Sharing Program. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309095913/html/index.html

The day after the NAS report came out, the CDC reassigned Robert Chen to the HIV/AIDS department. Also, vaccine program was split so that the people promoting vaccines were not the same ones monitoring safety. Health Agency Splits Program Amid Vaccination Dispute By ANAHAD O'CONNOR and GARDINER HARRIS, New York Times - February 25, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/politics/25vaccine.html?ex=1112673600&en=5de8c6c7deb972ba&ei=5070&pagewanted=print&p&oref=login

U.S. Congress has investigated the issue of mercury in vaccines and tooth fillings. Here is testimony from June & December 2002 House Government Reform Committee hearings on mercury-based vaccine preservative Thimerosal. Chaired by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana), whose grandchildren suffered neurological injury after vaccination. http://www.house.gov/burton/autism.htm

Maternal body burden of mercury contributes to in utero exposures via RhoGam shots and outgassing mercury amalgam tooth fillings. With each round of mercury-laden vaccines a child’s mercury level reaches the toxic tipping point. http://www.altcorp.com/DentalInformation/amalgam.htm http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/CRNR_notices/pdf_zip/hgbayer1.pdf

No children should be needlessly brain-injured by mercury. In 1991 a warning about mercury by the late vaccine researcher Dr. Maurice Hilleman went unheeded, and a generation of children was overdosed on mercury. http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2005-02/16191308.pdf 1991 Merck Memo Describes High Mercury from Vaccines

In the U.S.’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, $1.5 billion has been paid out since its inception, and currently 4,800 cases are waiting. http://www.hrsa.gov/osp/vicp/ganda.htm

Most vaccine injuries can be prevented by removing the toxic ingredient mercury, and by adjusting the administration schedule. http://www.drjaygordon.com/faqs/vaccschedule.htm

Parents also need to learn that most cases of autism are treatable.

DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) is a project of the Autism Research Institute, California and its founder, Bernard Rimland, PhD, has researched autism for more than 50 years. Last year Rimland kicked off his “Autism Is Treatable” campaign, but only a small percentage of the mercury -damaged population is being treated. http://www.autism.com/ari/

Please consider the words of Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, pediatric neurologist, Harvard Medical School: “That human actions, rather than genetics, might be responsible for compromising the health of a significant proportion of a whole generation is so painful as to be, for many, unthinkable. … To cling to a purely genetic explanation of autism is a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that one lives in a comfortable and rational world where new chemicals and technologies always mean progress, experts are always objective and thorough, corporations are honest, and authorities can be trusted.”

The autism/mercury issue may seem incredibly complicated, but when a child’s medical tests indicate mercury toxicity, the concept suddenly becomes very, very clear.

We now need to create a followup phrase to “primum non nocere” – a translation into Latin for “repair what you have damaged.” If Ford Motor Company can take responsibility for exploding Pinto gas tanks, then perhaps the American Medical Association and Federal Emergency Management Administration can tackle a generation of children overdosed on mercury.

###

Competing interests: Parent of a child recovering from mercury-induced autism.

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Re: Definition of the word "quack" Mr. Fitzpatrick
 

Mr. Fitzpartick..... Its funny you use the word "quack" in your reveiw on mercury poisoning... I think you need to realize one thing, and that is the definition of where the word "quack" came from.

Quack originated during the Renaissance when quicksilver or mercury was a popular remedy for syphilis. Wandering peddlers known as "quacksalvers" sold mercury ointment. They would claim that their agents would cure all diseases. The term was later shortened to "quacks," who became a symbol of evil medical practice. In 1984, the late Congressman Claude Pepper and his staff defined "quack" as "anyone who promotes medical schemes or remedies known to be false, or which are unproven, for a profit."

Yes, the word "quack" came from those who use mercury as a remedy. I agree with this 100% anyone who uses MERCURY in medicine is a "quack". And this includes mercury compounds.

[1]OEHHA (Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assesment) reports;

"The scientific evidence that PMA and Thimerosal cause reproductive toxcitity is CLEAR and VOLUMINOUS.

The evidence for its reproductive toxcitity includes severe mental retardation or malformations in human offspring who were poisoned when thier mothers were exposed to ethylmercury or thimerosal while pregnant."

Yes, I am one of the moms that was injected with mercury while I was pregnant, And let me tell you Mr. Fitzpatrick, Im not too happy with any person in the medical field that can say injecting mercury into pregnant women and infants is safe. [2]We recently had a 18 year old child bring mercury to school, they had to shut all the schools down in the district and have enviromental people come in to clean it up. The 18 year old boy, If charged, he'll be charged as an adult.. I wonder how they are going to decide punishment on the ones who injected mercury into my body while I was pregnant??? Oh, Thats right Big Pharma has a "legal" right to inject mercury into pregnant women and infants.

[3] NIH-funded

Burbacher and his colleagues

show that more inorganic mercury accumulates in the brain after thimerosal exposure

through injection than after exposure to methylmercury in food. The accumulation of

mercury in the brain after injection with thimerosal occurred even though ethylmercury is

cleared from the blood faster than methylmercury.

[4]Thimerosal inhibits DNA methylation.

The ethylmercury-containing preservative thimerosal inhibited both IGF-1- and dopamine-stimulated methylation with an IC(50) of 1 nM and eliminated MS activity. Our findings outline a novel growth factor signaling pathway that regulates MS activity and thereby modulates methylation reactions, including DNA methylation.

[1]http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/CRNR_notices/pdf_zip/hgbayer1.pdf

[2]http://www.wzzm13.com/news/grmetro_article.aspx?storyid=39762

[3]http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/7712/7712.pdf

[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14745455&dopt=Abstract

Competing interests: Mother to a mercury poisoned child

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Re: Evidence of Harm
 

Dear Readers: I am the mother who is referred to in the above article. Every word in Evidence of Harm is true; I had a completely normal child who had 30 words of language and after the MMR/Hib shot my child was lost. Within a few hours my son had a fever and developed a rash on his body; shortly after he developed a persistent, chronic diarrhea and stopped sleeping through the night for three years. He lost all of his language and didn't know who I was from a doorknob. I am an educated woman and took him to the very best specialists in Chicago. Until I met Dr. Andrew Wakefield at a conference in Chicago I did not know that my child could be helped. Dr. Wakefield examined my child and told me as a physician that he thought that he could help my son. I took my son to London and found out at the Royal Free Hospital that he was and is very sick. He had a fecal impaction the size of a melon and had colitis. The progression of my son's disease has been stopped through the use of a drug called 6MP; this drug is used with individuals who have organ transplants; I am thankful for the work done at the Royal Free and by Dr. Wakefield; thimerosal is not only neurotoxic but it causes damage to the immune system. This has been known for years. What is going on is a smear campaign by those individuals and companies that have the most to lose financially. Parents are angry because they have been lied to. The truth will come out and eventually the families will get compensation in financial terms; this said, nothing will make them whole for the loss of the child that they once had; there is no greater loss than this. No parent is in this for money only; it is for the truth and for justice. Sincerely, Elizabeth Birt, Matthew's mother.

Competing interests: Founder, Medical Interventions for Autism; Founder SAFEMINDS; former Staff Attorney Government Reform Committee

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Re: Would Michael Fitzpatrick like to dispute the following?
 

In the recently abandoned UK DPT programme each child received 25 micrograms of ethyl mercury at 2, 3 and 4 months. Against the US Environmental Protection Agency figure (the only available point of comparison at the time) this, according to my computations, was 40-66 the reference dose for a 2 month old, 35-56 for a 3 month old, and 30-48 for a month old? [1]. Can he explain what possible justification there could have been for this? And can he explain why we should believe that the people who did this - without telling anyone - really had the best interests of our children at heart?

[1] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/114/3/577#1346

Competing interests: Parent of an autistic child

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Re: Where's the Evidence?
 

There is no consensus from epidemiological studies as one cannot evidence cause that way, and all the studies so far published have been criticised scientifically leading to yet another epidemiological study. None have stood the test of time. The US IOM did not confirm that the vaccines are safe, they left the matter open as they could not reconcile the biological plausibilities with epidemiological evidence.

To evidence his lack of objectivity, or perhaps his lack of knowledge about autism, the following statement by Fitzpatrick is clearly untrue..

"Mercury poisoning causes ataxia and dysarthria, visual field disturbances, and peripheral neuropathy. In mild cases it produces a non- specific anxiety and depression; in more severe cases, a toxic psychosis can result. None of these features is characteristic of autism".

All of these features are characteristic of some autistic persons; my son suffers several of these at various times -sometimes initiated by dietary triggers - and ASDs manifest extreme diversity amongst sufferers.

This diversity in manifestation of ASD characteristics is one reason why epidemiological studies tend to fail as none can confound for that great diversity, epidemiology is incapable of addressing so diverse a population so studies tend to depend on the vague generalisations created by psychiatric pigeon-holing of a very diverse population of people.

I am perplexed as to how a physician, having an autistic child, seems so out of touch with how ASDs manifest although I know from my own experience that a parent of one autistic child may have little experience of the diversity amongst the population of autistic children. I would suggest, as I have done, he speaks to a variety of carers of autistic persons as they tend to be nearest to that diversity on a day to day basis; all the carers I ever spoke to on this aspect say that every autistic person is different, some very different, from every other though there are certain characteristics that can be pronounced amongst many autistics such as aloofness, lack of empathy, mild to severe anxiety, visual and audio field distortion either fixed or intermittent, psychotic episodes (autism used to be referred to as juvenile schizophrenia), fine motor problems (either physically or visually driven) and awkward gait or ataxia.

One can see that mercury poisoning might clearly be one of the causes of some ASDs.

Regards

John H.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Evidence of Harm
 

"He seems to take at face value every claim made by campainging parents..." Funny that this was said. Couldn't the same be true of everyone else who just believes what people say about the vaccines being safe and not causing autism. We all hear what we want to hear, that is true. I was fine with the vaccines until I realized that my very normal son was gone. Gone into a world of autism. After doing many hours of research I found other parents who have children who had they same experience. Normal until vaccinated. We get blamed for taking things at face value but since that shoe can fit both sides. Others just blindly believe everything pro-vaccine because there is an authority behind it. Sure there is someone with authority-also someone who owns stock in the company. Someone who is essentially selling his own product! Would people accept a study done by a big tabacco company telling everyone that their products only have trace amounts of dangerous chemicals in them and that it is completely safe to smoke? Well by blindly accepting what everyone says you are doing exactly that. These companies are for profit. That should tell you something right there. They have their own behinds to protect. The fall out from the vaccine makers admitting they knew about the mercury and that the shots could be doing all of this to our children would be massive. Lawyers would all be dancing in the streets as everyone would be filing lawsuits. The companies would be bankrupt. And then it would be known to all the third world nations what we allowed to be injected into babies in their countries. That is something we should all think about. Nothing is more dangerous than a parent who finds out someone hurt their baby.

As far as the symptoms of autism not matching the symptoms of mercury poisioning...I suspect you had not actually looked at the full list. No, not everything is an exact match, only like what 85% or more. And really, not every person gets every symptom. That is true of every disorder or disease. But every symptom my son has is also on the list of symptoms of mercury poisioning. That isn't something to just dismiss.

And of course noone wants us to think that chelation works. We aren't stupid. If the process to eliminate metals is sucessful in eliminating autistic symptoms as well...it doesn't take a scientist to know that one caused the other. That is the last thing they want us to know. We do know it works though. There are thousands of us either doing it or getting ready to. And we are talking to anyone who will listen. It is only a matter of time until everyone knows. And as far as efficacy...just look at the thousands of children who are losing their diagnosis. That speaks for itself.

Melissa

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm”
 

I would like to know what proportion of children who are diagnosed with autism are autistic because of supposed damage by mercury. What proportion of those children actually have "milder" cases of autism (or perhaps Asperger's syndrome) and have no mental retardation?

Mr. Kirby implies that all cases of autism are caused by mercury when he brings up the supposed cost of "taking care" of all of them.

"We are looking at trillions and trillions of dollars in the care of these children"

The majority of the increase in diagnosed children (not necessarily an increase in cases) is found in the milder cases of autism spectrum disorders. Truly "severe" autism is still fairly rare. It's the cases which before would have been called something else that are increasing. One must also realize that in the United States, according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act statistics, the numbers of Mentally Retarded and "Specific Learning Disability" kids are dropping significantly in the past few years.

It used to be that anti-thimerosol people looked into the future and said, "When the year 2005 rolls around and we see that taking the thimerosol out has lowered the skyrocketing rates of autism, that will prove we are right. Autism is really mercury poisoning."

Now, they cover the fact that the rates haven't gone down, by saying it must be the mercury from elsewhere, or maybe it's the PCBs (PolyChlorinated Biphenyls).

But mercury from elsewhere has been in the environment for many decades and in some cases eons. People who live near areas that are naturally high in mercury don't seem to have had any increases in rates of autism. People who bathe in hot springs or drink mineral water from those hot springs, which sometimes contain mercury, don't seem to be complaining of terrible rates of autism. People who live near historically contaminated lakes, such as are found in California, polluted from gold mining in the 1850's, don't seem to have increased rates of autism. People who used mercurochrome and merthiolate on their wounds, some of whom must have been pregant and some of whom were toddlers don't seem have become autistic at higher rates. Everyone had a bottle of mercurochrome or merthiolate in their drug cabinet when I was a child.

Apparently, some brands of Epsom salts currently for sale in the U.S. have mercury in them, people have been taking Epsom salts internally for years, as well as soaking in it. Are those ones more likely to have autistic children?

One imagines that it can't be the PCBs, if one follows Mr. Kirby's logic that the way we can counter good studies on the lack of linkage between autism and thimerosol is that when one chelates a child he becomes normal, some of the time.

Chelation can't pull PCBs out of a child.

If chelation is truly pulling mercury from the child's brain and body, then how is the brain able to rewire itself? There is no evidence that truly autistic children (or adults), those whose brains show significant differences in morphology and function, in well crafted experiments, can entirely recreate their brains. More than mere "plasticity" would have to occur in order for severe brain damage caused by mercury to be undone. In studies of children who become learning disabled because of lead exposure, the children did not improve in their learning abilities. No, the damage has been done. It is not reversible.

What is seen in the cases of children with autism is development. The children are developing and improving, a possiblity intrinsic to autism, they are not improving because of chelation. The mechanism for such a miraculous brain restructuring due to chelation has never been accounted for.

Mr. Kirby's book would no doubt make a interesting movie, but it's terrifically slanted and the case he makes on behalf of the "Mercury Moms" is not based on good statistics or good science.

Camille Clark (1)http://evidenceofharm.com/Imus-KirbyII.mp3 (2)Dietrich et al., Effect of chelation therapy on the neuropsychological and behavioral development of lead-exposed children after school entry. Pediatrics. 2004 Jul;114(1):19-26.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm” (Camille Clark)
 

It tells you something about the vaccine culture that for decades its proponents were happy to inject our children with ever increasing and ultimately definably gigantic doses of mercury. It is an evasion to mention that there are other sources of environmental mercury if you are not prepared to acknowledge the extraordinary levels that were attained in the US (which dwarf even the amounts in the UK) mentioned by David Kirby and myself above, and an evasion to bury the damning Burbacher study [1,2].

For this reason it is not my expectation that this will end with mercury. A programme which operates by systematic denial - not least of anyone who questions it from personal experience - and with an ever larger load of toxic substances being unloaded into the population, is inherently hazardous and unsafe. The first resort is always denial. We are told to ignore even "severe" adverse events [3]. The persecution of Andrew Wakefield stands as a marker for anyone who has the temerity to question the policy, or even medically examine the children. In this very issue of BMJ we have a study refuting a link between MMR and Crohn's disease [4], although no such claim has ever been made by Wakefield or anyone else. This, nevertheless, has been reported widely in the media with the implication that it is a further disproof of Wakefield (which of course it is not).

Against this background we are enjoined to continued blind belief. But the more aggressively dismissive and hostile the system is to those who report or investigate adverse events the more inherently unsafe it becomes. Dr Fitzpatrick can scarcely contain his blistering contempt for us all but the reality is that we have left any kind of humane or cautiously conducted science behind.

I find this desperately sad.

[1]Thomas M. Burbacher, Danny D. Shen, Noelle Liberato, Kimberly S. Grant, Elsa Cernichiari, and Thomas Clarkson, 'Comparison of Blood and Brain Mercury Levels in Infant Monkeys Exposed to Methylmercury or Vaccines Containing Thimerosal': http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/7712/7712.pdf

[2] John Heptonstall: 'Re: No report of the Burbacher study': http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#106608

[3] http://www.mmrthefacts.nhs.uk/questions/question.php?id=79

[4] Valerie Seagroatt, 'MMR vaccine and Crohn's disease: ecological study of hospital admissions in England, 1991 to 2002',http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7500/1120

Competing interests: Parent of an autistic child

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Re: Facts, not personal agendas, will resolve the autism-vaccine issue
 

Dear BMJ Editors,

As the author of a book about my son's autism onset and treatment[1], I am in the unique position of having answered over 40,000 letters from other parents. I have heard again and again what I witnessed with my own eyes: a child who developed normally until the second year of life, had adverse reactions to his vaccines, slid into autism, and then responded to treatments targeting the child's immune and metabolic systems.

Even after this experience, am I certain that there is an autism- vaccine connection? No. A correlation has not been proven or disproven to any scientific level of satisfaction. As it says in the Institute of Medicine’s report[2], large epidemiological studies would not detect a relationship between autism and vaccinations in a subset of the population with a genetic predisposition to autism. The biological models for an association between vaccines and autism were not estabilished, but nevertheless were not disproved.

Anyone who can say with certainty, such as Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick, that there is or isn't a connection, must be guilty of having an agenda. So what would be the agenda of a doctor who has personally administered thousands of doses of mercury-containing vaccines, who is given a government “bonus” for meeting his vaccine quota, and who has a severely autistic son who has not had the benefit of the biomedical treatments that are helping so many other children?

I have read Evidence of Harm, and yes, I have also found some of the arguments in the book unconvincing. It does sympathetically portray kind and dedicated parents as victims of a big bad pharmaceutical Goliath. Perhaps Mr. Kirby’s description of the Royal Free Hospital was not accurate. However, most of the facts and events in that book should raise alarm bells for any responsible member of the medical community.

There are two inter-connected issues in question here. One is whether vaccines or other environmental factors have triggered an epidemic of autism. The other is whether autistic children can benefit from biomedical treatments targeting their immune and detoxification systems. A very wise doctor once said, “when in doubt, look at the patient.” Large epidemiological studies have not helped these kids, but the courageous medical practitioners who are assessing them for mercury toxicity, immune system dysfunction, nutritional and metabolic disorders, and bowel disease are finding answers, and their patients are recovering from autism. I have met hundreds of these children, and my own son is now a healthy, well- rounded sixth-grader. Dr. Fitzpatrick needs to get his head out of the sand for the sake of his child as well as his patients.

Personally, I hope that there is no connection between autism and vaccines. I would be relieved to find out that I did not agree to a medical procedure that damaged my child. But rather than let my emotions affect my judgement, I would prefer to look at the facts:

Science: A study at the University of Arkansas[3] has found metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism, which could impair their ability to excrete mercury.

Observation: These children, when tested, appear to be retaining mercury at toxic levels. When treated with chelation therapy, many are getting better -- sometimes dramatically so.

Science: A study at Columbia University[4] showed that when strains of mice susceptible to autoimmunity were given low doses of thimerosal as infants, they displayed autistic behaviors. Resistant strains did not.

Observation: Autism rates in California rose with the increase in mercury administration to infants, and is beginning to fall in areas where it has been removed from vaccines.

If the premise is that only some children are genetically susceptible to this environmental insult, then epidemiological studies showing no connection, to date, have all been seriously flawed. And in almost every case, they have been conducted by researchers with an obvious conflict of interest.

I have seen the devastation wreaked by autism in thousands of families, and have watched the suffering endured by my son and my stepson. I would love to have somebody to blame, and I’d like to see someone besides parents suffer the financial consequences. I will confess that at times my pain and anger is so deep that I would like to have somebody to kick into a bloody heap. But revenge, blame, guilt, and personal agendas are totally meaningless. What matters is the truth.

Book reviews like Dr. Fitzpatrick’s, which ignored the essentials and resorted to calling the author a delusional man living in “an angry and paranoid universe,” are not going to help us get to the heart of the matter – but science and observation will. And regardless of the cause of the current autism epidemic (yes, there is an epidemic -- Dr. Fitzpatrick has clearly not read the studies done by the California Department of Developmental Services [5], strongly ruling out diagnostic error), it is time for the medical authorities to look at the actual research being conducted by the “junk scientists” referred to by Fitzpatrick, and ask themselves why these doctors’ patients are getting better, while their patients are not.

[1] Unraveling the Mystery of Autism by Karyn Seroussi, Simon & Schuster, 2000

[2] Immunization Safety Review: Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 2001, at http://www.iom.edu

[3] Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004 Dec;80(6):1611-7.

[4] Neurotoxic effects of postnatal thimerosal are mouse strain dependent. Mol Psychiatry. 2004 Sep;9(9):833-45.

[5] "Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Changes in the California Caseload; An Update: 1999 Through 2002"

Competing interests: Parent of a child who recovered from autism using biomedical intervention, and author of a book about this experience.

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Re: Facts will resolve the autism issue
 

Both normal brain development and function depends on an adequate zinc status.

Toxic metals, such as cadmium from tobacco smoking, lead from leaded petrol, mercury form dental amalgams or vaccines, and nickel from jewellery or stainless steel pans, can cause deficiencies of essential brain nutrients like zinc and increases in DNA-adducts and allergies. Depletion of copper stores by use of contraceptive or fertility hormones can result in both copper and zinc deficiencies in mothers. Essential fatty acid pathways, including the neurone feeding omega-3 series, are likely to be deficient if co-factors like zinc, copper and magnesium are deficient. Selenium and glutathione are needed for efficient anti-oxidant protection.

The only way I know to discover whether brain function impairments in children are permanent or treatable is to diagnose and replete any essential nutrient deficiencies and reduce the burden of toxic metals. Monitored chelation plus avoidance of the sources of the toxic metals or removal, in the case of mercury dental amalgams, is usually effective in lowering tissue concentrations, provided clearance mechanisms are also well nourished.

The chelation study by Dietrich and colleagues did not find neurodevelopmental benefits in children with blood lead levels between 20 and 44 microg/dL (0.96-2.17 micromol/L).1 The authors therefore emphasized the importance of taking environmental measures to prevent exposure to lead. However, they added a daily multivitamin supplement which does not necessarily guarantee an adequate essential nutrient status in children undergoing chelation because of very high lead levels. Chelation causes further losses of zinc and other minerals and continued severe zinc or copper deficiencies could be a reason for failure to find benefits from chelation. Unlike serum lead which is a good indicator of lead levels, serum zinc or copper levels are misleading indicators of zinc or copper deficiencies in children. The most accurate tests are of passive sweat and white blood cell zinc concentrations and red blood cell copper/zinc superoxide dismutase activity for copper stores.

Many different factors are likely to combine to cause autism. Simplistic epidemiological or scientific researches, which omit the most relevant and useful diagnostic tests of affected or normal individuals, can easily mislead and hinder progress.

1 Dietrich KN, Ware JH, Salganik M. Effect of chelation therapy on the neuropsychological and behavioral development of lead-exposed children after school entry. Effect of chelation therapy on the neuropsychological and behavioral development of lead-exposed children after school entry. Pediatrics 2004; 114:19-26.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Re: Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm” (Camille Clark)
 

If we might all go back in our minds to an impossible time, a time when there was no typical mercury exposure from things like merthiolate and mercurochrome and contact lens cleaners containing thimerosol. When there were no neighboring lakes polluted with mercury (like in California starting in the 1850s) and fish being taken from them and eaten, to a time before there were vaccines with thimerosol. A pristine time with no mercury in the environment. Now, think, lets say we start to increase the amount of mercury that is injected into babies. Let’s describe it in the most chilling terms... we start to inject babies with “gigantic doses of mercury” at the same rate as you describe, the same rate that the Uniited States health authorities allowed.

What will happen to these babies and children?

Seems like everyone these days says, “Brain damage”.

I understand from reading things written by parents like those in David Kirby’s book, that mercury is a terrible neurotoxin, some say (wrongly) that mercury is the second most toxic substance on earth, and over and over they remind us it’s a powerful neurotoxin, which is true depending on the dosage, of course.

In my proposed scenario, what will happen to all these children or just to those who aren't able to rid their bodies of the mercury in a timely fashion?

Brain damage?

Perhaps skyrocketing increases in neurodevelopmental disorders? Perhaps soaring rates of developmental disorders such as Mental Retardation, Dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome, perhaps Cerebral Palsy, perhaps seizures, .. all manner of brain disorders resulting from differently impacted and damaged brain systems. Oh, yes and autism. But all skyrocketing. Logically this would be the case.

But for some reason - as horrific these doses of thimerosol are said to be - and as sensitive as these baby’s brains are supposed to be to thimerosol, for some reason, this true historical increase in the use of thimerosol in vaccines is only said to have caused increased rates of autism.

Why has there not been an increase in mental retardation apart from autism? Why isn’t there an organization called, “Cure Mental Retardation Now”? Why aren’t there parents citing heart wrenching cases of their babies born normal and then suffering major losses in IQ and becoming “mentally retarded” following vaccines? Why are these babies then not cured with chelation?

Why has the majority of the increase in "autism" been among those with the milder cases and and in those without regression? Why does the increase in milder cases parallel the broadening of the definition of “autism”, and an better understanding of what the “autism spectrum” looks like?

I have tracked the United States’ Department of Education Individuals with Disabilities Act statistics and have seen the decrease in the number of mentally retarded children as well as the decrease in the number of “Specific Learning Disablity” (SLD) children being served under this act. I don’t know if those statistics have been isolated by anyone and put on the internet. Anyone can do what I did and compare the numbers themselves.

Whether or not some types of children are now being assigned an “autism” label who formerly received a mentally retarded label or a SLD label is not decipherable from the data, but at the very least we can see that in the past few years there has been a significant decrease in the number of “retarded” and “SLD” children being taught in the US schools. This even though the whole population of children were exposed to the same rates of mercury, essentially, if one only looks at thimerosol in vaccines.

It has somehow entered the psyche of the public that thimerosol knows how to cause autism, it somehow selects those parts of the brain which when damaged will result in autism.

But in fact, mercury is not that “evil” or that “smart”.

There seems to me to be systematic denial of the fact that societal changes have led to greater numbers of “broader autism phenotype” genes to be circulating in the gene pool. There seems to me to be a systematic denial of the fact that the parents of autistic children are genetically different and even statistically psychiatrically different than those who aren’t parents of autistic children.

There were several studies on the way the Broad(er) Autism Phenotype appears clinically and which genes seem to be involved in the phenotype presented at this years International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) conference. Parents of the type described in the book “Evidence of Harm”, get rather annoyed at any suggestion that autism might actually be genetic purely apart from anything environmental, and try to turn everyone’s attention back to the supposed demonic like effects of mercury.

In a recent study in Denmark (1) it was found that there were a few factors that were associated with autism by comparing 698 children (167 girls, 531 boys, born in 1973–1994) with autism to a larger group of children, matched by gender, birth year and age in days, without autism, “ Results suggest that prenatal environmental factors and parental psychopathology are associated with the risk of autism. These factors seem to act independently.”

Breech presentation, low Apgar score, low birth weight, gestational age at birth of less than 35 weeks, and being small for gestational age “were associated with a statistically significantly increased risk of autism.”

“Furthermore, high parental age (mother, ?30 years; father, ?35 years) was found to be statistically significantly associated with the risk of autism. No statistically significant associations were found between autism and multiple gestation, preeclampsia, number of previous pregnancies, number of antenatal visits, or smoking reported at the first antenatal visit.”

They found a “statistically increased risk of autism associated with parental history of any psychiatric disease. In addition, low parental wealth was associated with an increased risk of autism... The analyses stratified on birth year for the socioeconomic variables showed the same trends over the period before 1980 (112 cases) as for 1980–1994 (586 cases). “

If one wishes to point to environmental factors in autism apparently one might do well to look at prenatal environmental factors. Or one might look at genes which might be causing things like low birth weight, and premature birth. One might investigate why older parents are more likely to have children diagnosed as autistic.

If one wants to look at other genetic factors one might look at what genes might be causing both the mental illness in some of the parents and the autism in their children.

I don’t see any signs of Dr. Andrew Wakefield having been persecuted.

As for the supposed highly accurate system for tracking cases of autism in California which Rick Rollens claims we have and which claim appears in the book "Evidence of Harm" by David Kirby, the very agency (the Department of Developmental Services) which is supposedly collecting these accurate numbers says that their data is not to be used for epidemiological purposes. To be precise representative wrote, " The numbers can not be used to report the incidence of autism,.." (3)

Camille Clark undergraduate student psychology major UC Davis

(1) http://www.eurekalert.org/images/release_graphics/pdf/imfar- abstracts.pdf

(2) Larsson, et al. Risk Factors for Autism: Perinatal Factors, Parental Psychiatric History, and Socioeconomic Status. American Journal of Epidemiology 2005 161(10):916-925

(3) http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2005/04/california-dds-responds- very.html

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Less Speculation - More Investigation - Please
 

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm” (Camille Clark)
 

One comment:

Camille Clark cites one factor in autism as being low birth weight. There is an obvious connection here with dose size of thimerosal. A low- birth weight infant will get a much larger dose in relation to body weight than a full-term, full size baby.

This point is clearly mentioned in David Kirby's book and backed up with citations.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: David Kirby concerning “Evidence of Harm” (Camille Clark)
 

"What will happen to these babies and children?" asks Camille Clark...those injected with "gigantic doses of mercury".

Of course, according to knowledge gained by the US EPA and other researchers, those babies and children will suffer death and serious damage depending on their genetic predisposition to heavy metal poisoning, their weight, their immunity, their diet, the maternal diet, whether breast fed or not, their environment etc. etc. Each an individual they will succumb in different ways at different times from probably mild cognitive and physical damage, including various modes of retardation, to more severe intractable damage to body and mind.

The results could be very much like current experience; so-called "normal" kids running amock within society, losing or having lost empathy with their peers and fellow citizens, incapable of being educated, incapable of reasoned and reasonable behaviour, attracted by monotonous repetitive sounds, many incapable of surviving without chemical stimulants, dyslexic, autistic, psychotic, hyperactive, cognitively impaired, diabetic, arthritic, asthmatic, allergic, etc. etc. that's where these kids are, they're visible in every street, every school and every hospital in the land - the most severely impaired lose the right, often the ability and any desire to socialise; they exist at home with their families all of whom may be restricted from societies normal process and daily activities or are locked away in special schools and institutions away from their families who grieve for their 'lost' children. Those damaged children are all around us.

Instead of the organisation Camille looks for "cure mental retardation now" we have "provide remedial education" now, "distribute thousands of anti social behaviour orders" now, "exclude thousands of kids from school" now, "medicate hundreds of thousands of children" now, "set up boot camps and return to National Service" now and "open new child detention centres" now organisations as millions of kids display typical ASD tendencies - repetitive, anti-social, anti-empathic, uncommunicative, obsessive, dyslexic, dyspraxic, obsessive, compulsive behaviours in every town and city.

"Mentally retarded" as a diagnosis probably went out as political correctness arrived - replaced with "conduct disorder", ADHD, "school phobia" and many other efforts to remain in denial about true origins, such as vaccines, and to facilitate a psychiatric pigeon-hole through which further toxins can be distributed to "treat".

Camille misquotes Larsson et al - which actually says "genetic inheritence might be related to high parental age (39+). However, our adjusted results showed no increased risk of autsim associated with high parental age"....and "The number of affected parents was limited in this study, so we were unable to consider parental differences related to the risk of autsim in the offspring"....and "Although our findings indicate associations betwen itrauterine disturbances and autiasm, it is unknown whether the disturbances may directly compromise the fetus and result in autism or whethere they reflect the effects of a fetus compromised by other factors"...and " differences in the associations between the risk factors and autism by diagnostic subgroups within the autism spectrum were not considered in this study"...

With only 698 children to study epidemiologically what hope had the research team of generating any meaningful understanding of the depth and breadth of autism - only 698 children yet born between 1973 and 1999, a spread of over 25 years and myriad alterations in diagnostic criteria and status since well before "ASD" was uttered?

David Kirby gives us the facts - the unpalatable political and commercial facts of how a monster was created in our societies through vaccinating with mercury preservative. Why must we continue to be affronted with epidemiology that ignores the individual, makes little sense of senselessly tiny cohorts, and ignores almost every discrete manifestation of toxicity one might expect to see in mercury-vaccine damaged children?

Regards

John H.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: More investigation of parents before conception to prevent autism?
 

The findings of Larsson and colleagues, that prenatal environmental factors and parental psychopathology may be independently associated with the risk of autism, are very interesting.1

The sex ratio found of 167/898, or about one girl to four boys, may reflect the fact that boys have a greater requirement for zinc than girls.

Older age of parents, a parental history of psychiatric disease, a low parental income are all factors likely to be associated with parental zinc and essential fatty acid deficiencies. The results of thousands of analyses performed at Biolab Medical Unit clearly show toxic minerals concentrations increase with age, whereas essential minerals levels tend to decrease with age.

Prematurity and low birth weight are mostly caused by maternal zinc and magnesium deficiencies and are preventable with careful preconception and pregnancy care in my experience.2

Cadmium was the commonest toxic metal cause of DNA-adducts in autistic children which suggests that parental smoking is likely to be associated with autism in children.3 However, smoking also increases the risk of infertility, miscarriages, prematurity and congenital abnormalities. Such a combination of important factors could have confounded the results of the Danish epidemiological study.

1 Larsson HJ, Eaton WW, Madsen KM, et al. Risk Factors for Autism: Perinatal Factors, Parental Psychiatric History, and Socioeconomic Status. Am. J. Epidemiol. May 2005; 161: 916-925.

2 Grant ECG. Nutritional supplements to prevent pregnancy complications. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7458/152#67502, 16 Jul 2004

3 Grant ECG. McLaren-Howard J. Re: The effects of toxic metals in autistic children http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#74117, 13 Sep 2004.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: The background to this article
 

It should be of evident interest to readers that an expanded version of this article appears in the on-line journal 'Spiked' [1]. 'Spiked' is an overtly political journal. It declares as its aim:

"the modest ambition of making history as well as reporting it. Spiked stands for liberty, enlightenment, experimentation and excellence." [2]

Michael Fitzpatrick is a mainstay contributer having published over 100 articles in it since December 2000. These tend to take the form of extended and annotated essays. It is important to see Fitzpatrick's stand on vaccine in a wider declared political context. I quote from an article 'The Price of Precaution' 4 April 2001 (a response to the BSE enquiry):

"In recent years there has been a ready audience for promoters of doomsday scenarios resulting from global warming, nuclear radiation, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, AIDS and numerous other environmental dangers. Whereas the most trivial incident - like the UK floods in autumn 2000 - can be readily incorporated into wider visions of apocalyptic gloom, no amount of scientific evidence that contradicts perceptions of imminent disaster has much impact on public opinion. In recent months, the free-floating anxieties catalysed by the mad cow panic have found new attachments in scares about mobile phones, electricity pylons, and the MMR vaccine.

"The most immediate consequence of the ratification of the precautionary principle is that it encourages a tendency to overreact to events that trigger popular anxieties. This was already apparent in the numerous spin-off scares arising from the mad cow panic: the ban on beef on the bone, the fear of contaminated polio vaccines or blood transfusions, the suspension of surgery on tonsils until disposable instruments are available.

"One train derailment led to the prolonged paralysis of the whole rail network. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has resulted in the paralysis of much of the country, and has now led to the postponement of the general election. If the economic cost of the precautionary measures far exceeds that of the problems that they are responding to, the cost in terms of the demoralisation of society is even higher." [3]

It is fair to point out that in none of these instances was, or is, public concern trivial, and yet Fitzpatrick is uniformly scathing about all of them. Also, surely, the fundamental conclusion is false. A society randomly subject to unaccountable man-made disasters and acquiescent in them would be truly "demoralised". What price, also, a vaccine damaged child against "the demoralisation of society"?

Even Richard Horton has had words for this sort of attitude:

"Michael Fitzpatrick, a doctor whose son has autism, argues that the anti-vaccine campaign pursued by some parents of children with autism has 'nurtured self-pity, expressed in an enduring rage against the drug companies, the medical establishment, indeed anybody who defends vaccine'. While Fitzpatrick speaks with an authority I could never claim - I have no direct experience of a child who has autism - I think his generalised adverse characterization of parents seeking a cause for their child's illness is profoundly unfortunate. To label these parent as displaying 'self-pity' was a graceless and gratuitous comment. See Michael Fitzpatrick', 'George and Sam', BMJ 2004; 328: 1571' [4]

The wider theoretical context to Fitzpatrick's idiosyncratic views are by no means secret, and I am sure that he ought to be happy to discuss them. They certainly bear heavily on the content of this article. I would like to ask Michael Fitzpatrick how, if we simply disregard this or that concern or meet the reporting of examples with bare faced hostility, can we form any well founded scientific opinion at all?

[1] Michael Fitzpatrick: 'Mercury and autism: a damaging delusion', 13 May 2005, http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAB30.htm

[2] http://www.spiked-online.com/

[3][1]http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/000000005551.htm

[4] Richard Horton: 'MMR - Science and Fiction: Exploring the Vaccine Crisis', Granta Books, London 2004, p. 195.

Competing interests: Parent of an auistic child

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Re: Declining zinc levels in harmed children
 

There have been large increases in childhood illnesses like asthma, hay fever and eczema over the past 15 years.1 Similar increases seem to have occurred in dyslexia, hyperactivity and autism.

In 1979 the results of mineral analyses of 146 healthy children found the average sweat zinc level for boys was 719 ug/l and 704 ug/l for girls.2

In 1989 the average sweat zinc level of a group of dyslexic children was 358 ug/l. but the average zinc level for their “healthy” matched controls had fallen to 520 ug/l.3 These results are suggestive of a sharp decline in children’s zinc levels.

In 1971 only one in ten single women had used oral contraceptives but this had increased to nine out of ten by 1981. Hormone use lowers zinc and magnesium levels and causes copper imbalances. The effect of this change in maternal hormone use would be seen among 7 to 13 year olds during the 1980s and 1990s.

Low maternal zinc levels during early pregnancy can impair homeostatic mechanism and stress-coping mechanisms throughout future growth and development in animals. It is important to correct these abnormalities before conception to prevent unexplained infertility or recurrent miscarriages, or health problems in future children.4,5

1 Grant ECG. Increases in childhood allergies and asthma may relate to an increasing prevalence of zinc deficiency http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7464/489#72482, 29 Aug 2004

2 Grant ECG, Howard JM, Davies S, Chasty H, Hornsby B, Galbraith J. Zinc deficiency in children with dyslexia: concentrations of zinc and other minerals in sweat and hair. BMJ 1989 ; 296: 607-9.

3 Howard JM. Serum, leucocyte, sweat and hair zinc levels – a correlation study. J Nutr Environ Med 1990; 1:119-126.

4 Grant ECG. Nutritional supplements to prevent pregnancy complications. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7458/152#67502, 16 Jul 2004

5 Grant ECG. Monitored nutritional supplements to prevent pregnancy complications. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7458/152#70176, 6 Aug 2004

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: The background to this article II
 

As noted above Michael Fitzpatrick is a trustee of Sense about Science, a science lobby organisation funded by GlaxoSmithKline [1]. The founder and chair of Sense about Science is Lord Taverne who recently published the book: 'The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism'. The synopsis suggests some familiar themes:

"Our daily news bulletins bring us tales of the wonder of science, from Mars rovers and intelligent robots to developments in cancer treatment, and yet often the emphasis is on the potential threats posed by science. It appears that irrationality is on the rise in western society, and public opinion is increasingly dominated by unreflecting prejudice and unwillingness to engage with factual evidence. From genetically modified crops and food, organic farming, the MMR vaccine, environmentalism, the precautionary principle and the new anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements, the rejection of the evidence-based approach nurtures a culture of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism, and leads to dogmatic assertion and intolerance. In this compelling and timely examination of science and society, Dick Taverne argues that science, with all the benefits it brings, is an essential part of civilised and democratic society: it offers the most hopeful future for mankind." [2]

Taverne, then, would seem to be out of step with the findings of the recent House of Commons Health Committee report 'The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry'[3] which saw scant basis for trust in the industry's mode of operation or objectives. In fact I recall the words of the BMJ's editor on the occasion of its publication:

"The power of drug companies to buy influence over every key group in health care—doctors, charities, patient groups, journalists, politicians—has clearly shocked a UK parliamentary committee (p 855). It should shock us all. Can we console ourselves that companies' lavish spending on research and marketing, which far outstrips spending on independent research and drug information, leads to truly innovative treatments? No, says the committee's report. Can we rely on regulatory bodies to keep the industry in check? No, again." [4]

So it would be worrying if it was precisely such propagandistic techniques which were being used to close down all rational discussion or analysis of the safety of vaccine products. In my first response to Fitzpatrick's piece I asked where was the science [1], and I remain to be enlightened.

[1] John Stone, 'Patronising tone, but where's the science?' 13 May 2005, http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/330/7500/1154#106667

[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/- /books/0192804855/reviews/026-0069939-6003614

[3] http://www.parliament.the-stationery- office.co.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf

[4] Fiona Godlee, 'Say No to the free lunch', 16 April 2005, http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7496/0-g

Competing interests: Parent of an autistic child

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Re: Thanks to Mr. Kirby
 

An open letter to Mr. Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm.

It should go with out saying that autism has caused great suffering to many families. History tells us that publicly advocating for a cause can be of benefit for the affected families.

Unfortunately, I feel that increased public awareness is the only benefit for these families from your book.

Dr. Fitzpatrick wrote:

“In David Kirby's case, unfortunately, it appears to be true: he seems to take at face value every claim made by campaigning parents in the United States who believe that vaccines containing the mercury based preservative thiomersal caused their children to become autistic”

I have no way of knowing if this is literally true. However, I feel it is entirely fair to criticize you for not evaluating the campaigner’s claims with a little bit more skepticism.

Here are four examples taken from your public statements which demonstrate the problems with your analysis .

(1) From your website (http://www.evidenceofharm.com/introduction.htm) You state: ” Curiously, the first case of autism was not recorded until the early 1940’s, a few years after thimerosal was introduced in vaccines.”

Ignoring the basic logic error in this argument, it is also factually incorrect.

There are many recorded cases of what we today would call autism from much earlier time periods. One excellent example reviews cases from the early 1800’s in France (1).

Could you please tell us what you did to verify the assertion that the first autism cases were recorded in the early 1940’s? Or did you simply accept this assertion as true?

(2) Ms. Hokkanen quotes from your book the Greier’s claim that the VSD data showed that children vaccinated with thimerosal containing DTP vaccines had a 27-fold higher risk of autism relative to children vaccinated with thimerosal-free DTP vaccines.

The Greier’s have been criticized for not providing sufficient details so that their work could be properly evaluated. Their failure to provide details was so bad that Dr. Davis had to replicate the Greier’s work.

When the Greier’s methods were replicated, Davis found that the Greier’s had failed to control for differences in ages. This error resulted in a ~2year difference in follow-up between the thimerosal vs. no -thimerosal groups. This meant that many of the no-thimerosal exposure children had not yet had enough time to get diagnosised.

In other words, the Greier’s made the wrong comparison—their data set was biased against autism diagnosis in the children not exposed to thimerosal.

Fortunately Davis fixed this error and matched the children up by age. When the data is controlled for age—that is to say with the correct analysis--the VSD data shows that thimerosal exposure had no effect on the risk for autism.

This data can be found here—starting on slide #36: http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/18/576/0.pdf

Are we to understand Mr. Kirby that you accepted the Greier’s data without even looking at the presentations made to the IOM?

Despite your research, did you remain unaware of the criticisms of the Greier’s methods? e.g. http://www.cispimmunize.org/pro/doc/Geiersummary.doc

(3) You make many statements about mercury exposure and RfD calculations.

e.g. “So, these children would have received at birth 12.5 micrograms of mercury and, depending upon how much they weighed, for an 8 pound child that would be about 35 times over the EPA limit, but for a 4 pound child it would be double that—so, it would be 70 times over the limit. At 2 months the children were brought back, that’s when they were still relatively small and when many important systems inside the body are still developing. And that’s when they received the most amounts of mercury, 3 shots, 62.5 micrograms of mercury. For a 10 pound kid, it’s about 137 times over the EPA limit.”

Not being a toxicologist I asked one to explain to me the use of the RfD. From this explanation it was obvious that your mathematical use of the RfD—which once again mirrors the campaigner’s claims--is a complete misuse of this tool.

What exactly did you do to educate yourself so that you could understand the use of the RfD?

Here is a technical explanation of the RfD: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/report.htm

Included in this document is a description of the efforts to protect any susceptible subpopulations. It is rather curious how these details have been omitted from the discussion.

Experience tells us that many people will find the above document a bit difficult. So here is a link for the lay person: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/02vol28/dr2809ea.html

Please note in particular the following quote: “Therefore for example, it is not correct to infer from agencies' guidelines that a single dose of 12.5 µg ethylmercury from thimerosal- containing hepatitis B vaccine administered to a 2-month-old, 3 kg infant, (i.e., 4.2 µg/kg) represents a 1-day exposure to ethylmercury that is 21 times the suggested daily limit for methylmercury set by Health Canada.”

So what you criticize as “cleaver mathematical footwork” by the “public health institutions” was simply them correctly utilizing the RfD.

When the exposure limits are used correctly, one finds that--even if exposed to all possible thimerosal containing vaccines—the smallest children (less than 5th percentile in weight) still didn’t exceed the proper safety guidelines. Your calculations are off by orders of magnitude.

Once again you are repeating an argument that is simply incorrect.

{As an aside—the Canadian experience (mentioned in the above link) is rather interesting and I believe completely absent from your analysis.

Also in your incidence comparison between the US and Denmark the numbers appear wrong—you don’t happen to have a reference that you used to verify these numbers do you?)

There are now four Western countries that have removed or reduced thimerosal exposure and in each case the autism incidence has continued to rise. This is exactly what one would predict to happen if thimerosal had no effect on the risk of autism.

Before offering your campaigners explanations, please make some effort to investigate their arguments.}

(4) You write a lot about the Verstraeten VSD study. I find these statements by far the most disappointing.

Once again, they are pretty much verbatim from your campaigner’s arguments.

From your comments it appears that you don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of the statistical methods used (e.g. the risks of Type I errors, the effects of sample-size, the significance of confidence intervals).

You don’t seem to have followed the basic logic of the experimental design.

Finally, you don’t even appear to have read (or perhaps understood?) the discussion in the paper.

For example, you make the claim that the autism risk was hidden by: ” Then he broke them down by different ages and by different exposure rates, and really started to break them down.” Etc.

The reality is that breaking the groups down in size as you describe, increases the odds that one will get a significant statistical test. Your argument is exactly backwards.

I simply can’t reconcile your comments with a good-faith effort to evaluate these statements.

There are some major limitations to a study like the VSD one. Keeping these limitations in mind, it is fair to say that the data does not support the hypothesis that thimerosal exposure (or any vaccines) increases the risk of autism.

While I stopped at four examples, I am afraid Mr. Kirby that these errors are pretty representative of your case.

Given the seriousness of this issue, I feel that it is only fair to ask you to reevaluate the credibility of your sources of information.

Sincerely,

Eric Capri

PS Mr. Richard Smith (Editor BMJ) I am very sorry that I broke the club rules. I apologize for any boredom induced by this letter.

(1) Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 34(12):1655-61 1995.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Pots and Kettles
 

Eric Capri, Molecular Biologist, writes as a postscript to his Rapid Response of 22 May

‘Mr. Richard Smith (Editor BMJ) I am very sorry that I broke the club rules. I apologize for any boredom induced by this letter.’

Given that Mr Capri’s very lengthy letter was devoted to criticising David Kirby for his alleged failure to check his sources, one would expect him to have discovered that Richard Smith ceased to be editor of the BMJ rather a long time ago...

Stevie Gamble

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Thanks to Mr. Kirby
 

Eric Capri appears to be using a similar strategy to that often seen on the eBMJ from responders who have little evidence to support their criticisms of others’ opinions – in this case David Kirbys’.

Capri makes the following unsupported statements: -

1. “I feel that increased public awareness is the only benefit for these families from your book”.

2. “he seems to take at face value every claim made by campaigning parents in the United States who believe that vaccines containing the mercury based preservative thimerosal caused their children to become autistic”

3. “there are many recorded cases of what we today would call autism from much earlier time periods. One excellent example reviews cases from the early 1800’s in France (1)”.

4. “Are we to understand Mr. Kirby that you accepted the Greier’s data without even looking at the presentations made to the IOM?”

5. “….So these children would have received at birth 12.5 micrograms of mercury and, depending upon how much they weighed, for an 8 pound child that would be about 35 times over the EPA limit, but for a 4 pound child it would be double that—so, it would be 70 times over the limit. At 2 months….that’s when they received the most amounts of mercury, 3 shots, 62.5 micrograms of mercury. For a 10 pound kid, it’s about 137 times over the EPA limit.” “Not being a toxicologist I asked one to explain to me the use of the RfD. From this explanation it was obvious that your mathematical use of the RfD—which once again mirrors the campaigner’s claims--is a complete misuse of this tool.”

6. “What exactly did you do to educate yourself so that you could understand the use of the RfD? Here is a technical explanation of the RfD: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/report.htm Included in this document is a description of the efforts to protect any susceptible subpopulations. It is rather curious how these details have been omitted from the discussion.”

7. “Experience tells us that many people will find the above document a bit difficult…Please note in particular the following quote: “Therefore for example, it is not correct to infer from agencies' guidelines that a single dose of 12.5 µg ethyl mercury from thimerosal- containing hepatitis B vaccine administered to a 2-month-old, 3 kg infant, (i.e., 4.2 µg/kg) represents a 1-day exposure to ethyl mercury that is 21 times the suggested daily limit for methyl mercury set by Health Canada.”

8. “So what you criticize as “cleaver mathematical footwork” by the “public health institutions” was simply them correctly utilizing the RfD. When the exposure limits are used correctly, one finds that--even if exposed to all possible thimerosal containing vaccines—the smallest children (less than 5th percentile in weight) still didn’t exceed the proper safety guidelines. Your calculations are off by orders of magnitude.” “Once again you are repeating an argument that is simply incorrect”.

9. “Also in your incidence comparison between the US and Denmark the numbers appear wrong—you don’t happen to have a reference that you used to verify these numbers do you?”

10. “There are now four Western countries that have removed or reduced thimerosal exposure and in each case the autism incidence has continued to rise. This is exactly what one would predict to happen if thimerosal had no effect on the risk of autism”.

11. “You write a lot about the Verstraeten VSD study. I find these statements by far the most disappointing. From your comments it appears that you don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of the statistical methods used (e.g. the risks of Type I errors, the effects of sample-size, the significance of confidence intervals. You don’t seem to have followed the basic logic of the experimental design. Finally, you don’t even appear to have read (or perhaps understood?) the discussion in the paper”.

12. For example, you make the claim that the autism risk was hidden by: ”Then he broke them down by different ages and by different exposure rates, and really started to break them down.” Etc. The reality is that breaking the groups down in size as you describe, increases the odds that one will get a significant statistical test. Your argument is exactly backwards.”

The evidential support required, prior to being accepted for publication, ought at least to include: -

For

1. More than “I feel that”.

2. More than “he seems to”.

3. More than a very limited review of a 19th Century reference to the diagnosis of “mutism in wild boys” for whom symptoms are recorded not unlike those of various PDDs, bearing in mind that PDDs are by definition not autism, to claim Kirby is “factually incorrect and with basic logic error”; and a requirement for some evidence of continued identification of “autism-like” traits amongst children since the early 19th C through to the Kanner description of the 1940s – Capri provides not one iota.

4. More than “Are we to understand”

5. More than “I asked a toxicologist to explain me the use of RfD and from this explanation it was obvious that your mathematical use of the RfD is a complete misuse of this tool”. Capri requires to state how is Kirby wrong.

6. More than “What exactly did you do to educate yourself so that you could understand the use of RfD"…and ”http://www.epa.gov/mercury/report.htm". Where is Capri’s evidence of Kirby’s lack of education in that regard, neither evidence of Kirby's education nor of inaccuracy in his calculations can I find in the EPA reference? Capri should explain what and how.

7. More than “Experience tells us that” and the reference to Health Canada. The US EPA limit of 0.1ug/kgbw/day has been the reference for all discussions to date suggesting that such a child receiving 12.5ug ethyl mercury gets not 21 but 42 times daily maximum limit.

8. More than "when the exposure limits are used correctly one finds that the smallest child still didn’t exceed proper safely guidelines even if exposed to all possible thimerosal containing vaccines”. I suspect Capri cannot evidence his statement, it's so obviously incorrect.

9. More than “the numbers appear wrong – you don’t happen to have a reference do you”.

10. More than “in each case the autism incidence has continued to rise. This is exactly what one would predict to happen if thimerosal had no effect on the risk of autism”. Before one can predict the extent to which thimerosal is/was involved in autism one must quantify “rise”, “effect on autism”, and know all other causes of autism in those 4 countries; and what does Capri mean by "exactly predicting"?

11. More than “it appears that you; you don’t seem to have; you don’t even appear to have”, Capri needs to evidence his claims.

12. More than “breaking groups down in size as you describe increases the odds that one will get a significant statistical test. Your argument is exactly backwards”. Capri needs to quantify his statistical argument.

It is frustrating to have to waste time responding to accusations of misunderstanding or inaccuracy from one who fails to provide logical, reasoned or quantified argument; such an approach begs the questions does Capri have significant undisclosed competing interests or an interest in arguing for arguments sake. I hope the Editor takes note.

Regards

John H.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Evidence of Harm
 

Having had read Dr. Fitzpatrick's article and Mr. Kirby's book Evidence of Harm, both in Galley form and the final release, I have come to the conclusion that Dr. Fitzpatrick all though a doctor is wrong in all this.

Being the parent of a mercury toxic (I refuse to refer to him as autistic because that is NOT what this is) 7.5 year old son who was diagnosed 5 years ago I have read many books and papers (the Bernard et al paper is the one that really convinced me that this wasn't autism) on mercury toxicity, autism and bio-medical treatments for mercury toxicity.

I don't understand how anyone, from the insurance industry all the way up to the White House can refuse to see the writing on the wall. If we parents (the so called uneducated ones) can openly admit that there is a genetic component to this epidemic, that the mercury is childhood vaccines isn't the only source of this problem, that there is mercury being dumped into our atmosphere from the coal producing power plants (which we as a community should be addressing in unison with the vaccines) then why on earth can't these industries admit their own fault, make safe changes, compensate the families for their costs and reestablish public confidence in the governing agencies responsible for overseeing the drug industry. I am tired frankly of the politics, the dancing around the issue, and the rubbish that is being fed to us by a government that is supposed to protect its people but would rather turn a blind eye.

Mr. Kirby’s last paragraph (page 418) In Evidence of Harm is the one that remains in my mind and most likely always will. And I quote:

“The United States, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, is not exactly the most beloved nation on earth. What if the profitable export of our much vaunted medical technology has led to the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of children? What then?”

It is a very real problem and if the drug industry is left to run amuck I have no doubt what will ensue will make the 9-11 tragedy look like a day at the beach. AND those countries will have EVERY right to rain down on us like the wrath of God himself.

Competing interests: Parent of a child that is mercury posioned.

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Re: Re: Thanks to Mr. Kirby
 

I have been traveling quite a bit on book tour and have not had the opportunity to respond to the critical pieces published on this site. I welcome the debate heartily, and greatly encourage any and all criticism of the book, as it will only help to carry this subject matter into the realm of public discourse, where it belongs.

Interestingly, most of the public criticism to date has come from across the ocean, either from British doctors or researchers, or published in highly respected UK journals such as BMJ. I note with interest that the style of discourse and criticism in the UK has been quite harsher, more personal, vitriolic, and at times more emotional than in the United States. I expected it to be the other way around. But then I remembered watching your Parliament in action, as compared to our slumberous Congress, and realized that the British argue with more gusto and even, some would say, theatrics, than do the Americans. This is an observation, not a complaint.

In fact, I am rather disappointed that the book has not sparked more public debate in my own country, where the response has been either curiously muted, or else quite positive. Reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Bloomberg News, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and others have been remarkably supportive and unquestioning of the basic theory in my book.

While I am not an agent provocateur, I was ready for a good fight, and I thank the BMJ for FINALLY providing a badly needed forum to debate these highly controversial matters in such an informed and respectful fashion.

In a future correspondence, I will respond to the original review in the BMJ and the various posts on this site that have questioned my methods, intent and even my integrity. Some good points were raised, and I am more than happy to address them. For now, I wish to respond to the most recent post, by Mr. Eric Capri, of Cheney, Nebraska. It would appear that Mr. Capri did not read much, if any, of “Evidence of Harm,” for most of his criticism is rebutted by a cursory examination of the book. I do encourage all critics to read the text thoroughly before lobbing a salvo my way.

Mr. Capri lists four examples taken from my “public statements” (but not the book itself) that reveal the problems of my analysis.

1) On my website (http://www.evidenceofharm.com/introduction.htm), I wrote that the first cases of autism were not “recorded” until the early 1940’s, a few years after thimerosal was introduced in vaccines. I took this information from ample references in the literature and from respected organizations, who credit Dr. Leo Kanner and Dr. Hans Asperger for coining the term “autism” in 1943 and 1944, respectively.

However, the word “recorded” might not be the best choice. It would be more appropriate to say that the first cases were “described as a specific condition” in the 1940s, and I will change the wording on the website, and in the paperback edition. I will also note that other cases that would appear to be similar to autism had been described earlier.

In any case, the book makes it clear that thimerosal is not the only cause of autism. I mention Kanner and Asperger only once, in the introduction, when I describe the history of autism, and I don’t offer it as “evidence” elsewhere in the text. Indeed, I refer to it “curiously” as a historical artifact, and then move on: It is hardly a pillar of the thimerosal-autism theory.

(2) A Ms. Hokkanen (perhaps in an interview, though this is not made clear) quotes from the book about “the Greier’s” (sic, -- I assume Mr. Capri means Mark and David Geier) claim that the VSD data showed a 27-fold higher risk of autism among thimerosal exposed children. He mentions that the Geiers’ work was critiqued by Dr. Robert Davis at the IOM meeting in Washington on February 9, 2004, and asks: “Are we to understand Mr. Kirby that you accepted the Greier’s data without even looking at the presentations made to the IOM?”

As a matter of fact, I was at the IOM (Institute of Medicine) presentation myself, and listened intently as Dr. Davis made his fascinating critique. I am surprised, Mr. Capri, that you did not see this explained in detail (some would say excruciating detail) on pages 313-316 of the book.

Mr. Capri also asks: “Despite your research, did you remain unaware of the criticisms of the Greier’s methods? (http://www.cispimmunize.org/pro/doc/Geiersummary.doc)”

I am very aware of the criticisms made of the Geiers, Mr. Capri, and quote extensively from the document you reference on pages 259-260 of “Evidence of Harm.” Again, it is curious that you did not see this. Also, as you must know, very few people in the book who refute the thimerosal theory (and I make it very clear that this is a theory ONLY) would agree to be interviewed. Among those that did, none were willing to criticize the Geiers on the record. In fact, the document cited was an unsigned bulletin in the journal “Pediatrics.”

(3) Mr. Capri says that I “make many statements about mercury exposure and RfD calculations,” which are erroneous. These statements come from my website and from interview transcripts, and not from the book itself.

Mr. Capri infers that I did not “educate” myself about the use of the RfD (the mercury reference dose). He offers a “technical explanation of the RfD” at http://www.epa.gov/mercury/report.htm. I assume (though he does not specify) that he is referring to the fact that the US Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury levels (RfD = 0.1mcg Hg/kg/day) were calculated at ten times lower than the actual estimated level, in order to provide a margin of safety that takes into account the most susceptible members of the population. This is all clearly spelled out on page 49 of the book.

However, Mr. Capri must surely know that the document to which he refers is now eight years old, having been published in 1997. The report itself cautions: “As the state-of-the-science for mercury is continuously and rapidly evolving, this Report should be viewed as a ‘snapshot’ of our understanding of mercury when published in 1997.” Since that time, our understanding of mercury neurotoxicity has improved considerably. Indeed, in 2000, the National Academy of Sciences issued a lengthy report on the subject, and concluded that the 0.1 microgram dose was entirely appropriate for calculating mercury toxicity. In fact, it suggested that the level might still be too high for certain sensitive subpopulations, especially children, and left open the possibility that the RfD might have to be adjusted downward to reflect this risk. This is all discussed on pages 119-120 of “Evidence of Harm.”

I find it odd that Mr. Capri would take issue with the National Academy of Sciences. Using their own conclusions as a measurement, a 5 kilogram child receiving 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury at two months of age would indeed be exposed to mercury – on that day – at 125 times over the EPA standard.

Mr. Capri also quotes me speaking in an interview in which I refer to “cleaver (sic) mathematical footwork” by the “public health institutions.” This had nothing at all to do with calculating the RfD, which anyone who read the book would know. What I was referring to here was the US Food and Drug Administration’s averaging out of mercury exposures over the first six months of life. The agency took the total exposures in the six months (12.5mcg at birth, 62.5mcg at 2 months, 50mcg at 4 months and 50mcg at 6 months), or 162.5mcg, and divided that by 180 days, for an average daily exposure of 0.9mcg. Mr. Capri also raises the issue of autism in Canada, which I will address in a future post.

Mr. Capri asks for references on my “incidence comparison between the US and Denmark” and says that “the numbers appear wrong.” Again, if he had read the book carefully, he would have found this information among the text’s 436 endnotes.

Specifically, the US numbers are found in endnote #5 (the 1-in-166 number comes from the CDC, Medical Home Initiatives and First Signs “Autism A.L.A.R.M.” which may be found at www.medicalhomeinfo.org). The numbers for Denmark are found in endnote #8 (the figure comes from: K.M. Madsen et al., “A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism,” New England Journal of Medicine 347, no. 19, November 7, 2002).

Mr. Capri refers to “four Western countries that have removed or reduced thimerosal exposure and in each case the autism incidence has continued to rise. This is exactly what one would predict to happen if thimerosal had no effect on the risk of autism.” I think he is referring to Sweden, Denmark and the UK, though I am not aware of the fourth country. These studies are all discussed in the book, including methodological limitations put forth by the authors themselves. Please read these sections carefully and get back with your comments, as this reply is already getting quite lengthy.

(4) Mr. Capri says that my coverage of the Verstraeten VSD study is “by far the most disappointing.” He implies that the stratification of data will always increase the statistical power of any study. In other words, by comparing fewer subjects, one increases one’s ability to achieve statistical significance in reporting the risk of adverse outcomes. I would ask Mr. Capri to supply the evidence of that statement before I respond to it. He must surely also know that I do explain sample size, 95% confidence intervals and other related methodological issues at many places in my book, which is admittedly written for laypersons, and not for those accustomed to reading such prestigious publications as the BMJ.

Mr. Capri notes that “there are some major limitations to a study like the VSD one,” but concludes that the “data does not (sic) support the hypothesis that thimerosal exposure (or any vaccines) increases the risk of autism.” What he fails to note is that the VSD study likewise “did not state that we found evidence against an association, as a negative study would,” according to lead author Thomas Verstraeten, in a letter published in April 2004 in “Pediatrics.” Indeed, Verstraeten wrote, the VSD study was “neutral.” It proved nothing.

I have maintained an open mind on this controversy, and have no personal interest in its outcome. I accept the possibility that mercury in general -- and thimerosal in particular – may not be a contributing factor to autism and other childhood disorders. But I don’t think that anyone can, or should say with certainty that it is not a factor. Like it or not, the scientific jury is still out on this question. Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, has stated repeatedly that she has an “open mind” about the possible association between thimerosal and autism. And the agency, when it issued a statement on my book on April 1, 2005, noted that “CDC continues to support research related to autism, including studies designed to examine the possible causal association between autism and other possible environmental causes, including thimerosal-containing vaccines.” (See www.cdc.gov)

One hopes that all detractors of the thimerosal theory will take the same reasoned and rational approach to this controversy as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sincerely,

David Kirby

Competing interests: Author: Evidence of Harm (St. Martin's Press)

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Re: Re: Re: Thanks to Mr. Kirby
 

I have seen some very good criticisms of the autism-equals-mercury poisoning argument coming from Americans. I have seen good criticisms made on the listserv associated with Quackwatch.com. Mr. Kirby has monitored this list apparently as he quotes one of the e-mails posted to that list on his web site. I have sent e-mails to various media outlets in response to reviews of his book and in response to statements made by Mr. Kirby, and others have, as well. Sometimes they get printed or put online, and sometimes they don’t. It horrifies me to see some of his statements go unchallenged, but they do.

The cynic in me believes that Mr. Kirby wishes there was more of an uproar over the mercury-autism supposed linkage because it would mean greater sales of his book. If Mr. Kirby wishes to take the word of “experts”, such as those in his book, who do not have as much expertise as they are portrayed as having, over the word of real experts, then really what is the point of real experts bothering to address him and his statements regarding science.

One of the first things I'd like to point out, and that I hope everyone can see, is the heavy use of emotionalism and gut wrenching pathos in his book. Being a rather analytical sort of person, I find it all rather off-putting and it makes me wonder why is it there? Can the argument not stand on it’s own without all the lavender (nearly purple) prose?

Adults with autism spectrum disorders are able to craft equally compelling tales about how they are made to feel like refuse by the Mercury Mom crowd. How we are reduced to being victims of poisoning, that our gifts are nothing and our deficits are devastating to everyone and even threaten national welfare (because autistics are such ungodly burdens). But no one seems to care too much about what autistic adults have to say in all of this.

It seems to be imperative for the “Evidence of Harm” supporters to minimize the existence and the voices of autistic adults. We don’t fit into the picture of autism being exclusively caused by mercury poisoning, which is an argument made by several key voices in their movement. Two who say this quite plainly are featured in Mr. Kirby’s book. If they do recognize our existence, then they mourn the fact that we weren’t chelated in time or they marvel at the fact that we don’t want to be chelated now. The chelation crew are not happy to hear us say, “We don’t believe your conspiracy theory”, and so ignore us.

Besides the perhaps unusual reliance on descriptions of tears and diarrhea in his book, and the heavy handed way he profiles the good guys and the bad guys, with all the good guys being on the side of the Mercury Moms, he makes some unsupportable statements, like the one he says now he will modify, that basically autism began with the use of thimerosol in the United States, that there was no autism before thimerosol.

Another main proof he points to is that children who are chelated become normal, leaving the "hell" of autism behind. But, before I could become excited over transdermal “2,3, dimercapto-propane sulfonate” (TD DMPS) a chelation therapy that is highly praised in this book as having the ability to cure autistic children, I would need to see evidence of how it actually works. Does it actually cross the skin barrier into the body to any significant degree? (3). A double blind study on this by a neutral party using known hospital or university testing equipment to check for urine output of mercury would be a wonderful thing.

I think it is safe to say that Mr. Kirby is overzealous in citing the California Department of Developmental Services as a provider of the “gold standard of American autism epidemiology”, especially when the agency itself does not want their numbers to be used for epidemiological purposes. The California DDS is not the provider of a "gold standard of American autism epidemiology."

The following was written to me by a representative of that very agency after I inquired about the use of their statistics for epidemiology:

“...Although the source of information for many reports on autism for California is the Department of Developmental Services (DDS)' "Quarterly Client Characteristics Report", the numbers reported by DDS are often misunderstood and misrepresented by others. ... The numbers can not be used to report the incidence of autism, for example.”

Anyone can similarly write to the California DDS and get his or her own response to verify this. One assumes that Mr. Kirby did not. Mr. Kirby told me in an e-mail that he had not yet contacted the University of California, Davis, Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute’s own epidemiologist, Dr. Irva Hertz-Piccioto before submitting his book for publication. I know that also from speaking with Dr. Hertz-Piccioto.

His book also takes advantage of the popular misuse of the statistics coming from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The reason why it looks like autism shot through the ceiling in 1992 is that the data on autism was not collected before 1992, essentially. The year that the IDEA data gatherers added autism, they also added "Traumatic Brain Injury", that shows an even steeper increase than autism, a vertible tsunami of TBI cases has hit the United States, either that, or it takes time for all the cases to get tabulated properly , until that time there are large yearly increases. Numbers of TBI will level off, as will numbers of autism.

I look forward to a time when all the thimerosol controversy can be lain to rest. If numbers of children with autism diagnoses don’t fall of soon, then we can assume that taking thimerosol out of most vaccines hasn’t done anything to change the numbers of autistic children. The UCD MIND Institute has a large epidemiological study going that is looking at environmental influences in autism. When it is completed it may be enough to compel people to see if there is a connection between thimerosol and autism. I believe that more parents will find that “chelation” or sham chelation is not curing their children, they will become disenchanted with the whole Mercury Mom world of suspected conspiracy, dietary changes and chelation. And hopefully, if there is fraud going on in the sales of autism treatments, this will be revealed.

If there is conclusive proof that some children have, through poisoning, developed into phenocopies of idiopathic autism then I will accept that, though I don’t see any reason to believe it now. I will believe that children with real brain damage from mercury poisoning can be made normal by chelation when I see empirical evidence of that is even possible.

Camille Clark

(1)Kirby, D. (2005) Evidence of Harm:... St. Martin's Press (pp 11, 26 -29,33,34, 40, 74, 86, 90, 92, 98, 348) (2) http://www.drhirani.com/TD-DMPS-1.pdf#search='DMPStd (3) Kirby, D. (2005) Evidence of Harm:... (pp 413-414)

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Similarity between symptoms does not necessarily indicate same cause
 

I have researched Pink Disease, and I found no mention of autistic traits. However, even if two conditions do share features, they do not necessarily have the same cause. There are piles of conditions, most of them rare, which cause autistic traits in some people. Quite a lot of chromosome disorders cause autistic traits, as does Congenital Rubella Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Thalidomide embryopathy(note that not all people with these conditions have autistic traits, just more than the general population). Even Traumatic Brain Injury can sometimes resemble autism. Since those have very different causes, not all can share a cause with autism unless it's multifactoral(many different causes). Another example is that both Down Syndrome and Edwards Syndrome cause heart defects. Down Syndrome is trisomy 21 and Edwards Syndrome is trisomy 18, so they do not have the same cause.

Competing interests: I have a diagnosis of PDD NOS

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Re: 1 out of 6 children disabled in America
 

Im writing this in regards to Ms. Clark's post asking where are all the disabled children in America.

"Perhaps skyrocketing increases in neurodevelopmental disorders? Perhaps soaring rates of developmental disorders such as Mental Retardation, Dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome, perhaps Cerebral Palsy, perhaps seizures, .. all manner of brain disorders resulting from differently impacted and damaged brain systems. Oh, yes and autism. But all skyrocketing. Logically this would be the case.

But for some reason - as horrific these doses of thimerosol are said to be - and as sensitive as these baby’s brains are supposed to be to thimerosol, for some reason, this true historical increase in the use of thimerosol in vaccines is only said to have caused increased rates of autism."

[1]1 out of 6 children in America has some form of developmental or behavioral problem. This does not include the children who have kidney,liver,cancer heart disease asthma, ect.....

Ms. Clark, My son does not have autism. My son's diagnose is progressive microcephaly, spastic quad cp, lennox gastaut seizures, profound mental retardation, completely non verbal. My son was tested at a CAP approved lab for mercury poisoning, His levels were toxic for an adult, Yet this was for a 17 lb infant. (progressive microcephaly, means he developed microcephaly over the first two years of his life)[2] I was injected with 35 mcg of mercury while I was 6 months pregnant, Then another 35 mcg after giving birth while breastfeeding, Then my son had all his vaccines on time.

No I can not chelate my son, He has life threatening seizures and I can not take the chance of him going into status seizures. A lot of the Vaccine injured children have these same seizures and also can not be chelated.

Why do some who smoke develop throat cancer while others develop lung cancer? Why do some who smoke never develop cancer but land up with enphezema?

Ms Clark, There is an epidemic of sick children in America. What has happened that could cause all of these children to be disabled?? First of all mothers were NOT injected with mercury years ago, Second why in the world would anyone inject 12.5mcg of mercury into a newborn infant that is only a few hours old? [3] How much mercury do you think it takes to cause damage? Would you INJECT Lead into a newborn infant?

How many sleepless nights I have spent in the hospital watching my son is convulsive status, ( A year and a half) How many nights I have cried myself to sleep for knowing there is nothing I can do to make my son better...How angry I am for knowing someone thought it was safe to inject mercury into my body while I was pregnant! Yes, I am angry.

[4]Please read up on Congential Minamata Disease. And learn what happens to babies that are poisoned in utero from mercury.

[1] http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org/screening/Autism%20downloads/AutismAlarm.pdf

[2] http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/CRNR_notices/pdf_zip/hgbayer1.pdf

[3] http://www.nupr.neu.edu/2-04/deth_article.pdf

[4] http://www.mclaughlincentre.ca/programs/child/Ch5,%20Mercury%20evidence%20Mercury%20Dec%2027%202004.pdf

Competing interests: Mother to a mercury poisoned child

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Re: Dear Ms Clark
 

Dear Ms Clark,

I greatly sympathize with your desire to see unscientific opinions like the thimerosal-autism belief laid to rest. I have gathered from reading your perspicacious and interesting contributions that you have an autism-spectrum condition yourself. You also know some psychology, and therefore understand that people can hold their opinions in the face of all the evidence.

I once heard a story about a man who thought he was dead. He went to his doctor, who sent him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said "I think you need to see some people who are really dead. Take this pin with you and stick it into every dead body you see. Dead people don't bleed." So the man went to mortuaries for a few weeks and stuck the pin into lots of bodies. When he returned to the psychiatrist he said, "Yes, you've convinced me. Dead men don't bleed." So the psychiatrist stuck a pin into the man's arm. The man went a funny colour and cried, "So dead men do bleed, after all!"

This story is about belief. If someone has a really fixed unmovable belief, it may be impossible to give them any evidence which will alter it. If someone believes that MMR immunisation causes autism, no one is going to convince them otherwise unless they allow themselves to be convinced.

If someone prefers to believe that the few case histories specially selected by Dr Wakefield (and now disowned by some of his co-authors) proves something, and they likewise prefer to reject the evidence of the properly-conducted epidemiological studies involving hundreds of thousands of subjects and showing that there is no relationship between MMR and autism, then that is up to them.

This controversy is not about knowledge, but about attitudes, and I think you have exposed this very well in your latest contribution. Please continue to think and write in this excellent manner.

Trevor Watts

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Emotional territorialism against science - and some recent data
 

Everyone has emotional baggage. I think it is very bad if instead of arguing about the science we end up with the "my feelings are more justified than your feelings" sort of argument. Camille Clark - to do her justice - gets nearer to stringing an argument together than does Michael Fitzpatrick, but plainly in letter after letter she intrudes the issue of her identity - yet it is not at all clear what it has to do with the scientific issue.

I recall a time in the mid 90s when our local services were being swamped with unprecedented numbers of ASD children (Michael Fitzpatrick lives in the same place so perhaps he does too). I recall a local education authority report (I apologise for not being able to cite it properly) from mid 1999 which showed an incidence of roughly seven times as many statemented children in the infant population of the borough as there were at secondary level, and I make the simple observation that the secondary population was being monitored by the same services and there had to be about 80 children missing in the borough who could only be in extreme educational and social difficulties for the static argument to work.

What really threw me at the time - because I was at best agnostic on the vaccination issue - was the absolute indifference of the Department of Health to this phenomenon. Figures emerged largely from education authorities across the country but the DH did not want to know, and became very defensive when it was mentioned. The mercury issue which has for some reason never had the attention in this country that it has had in the US did not emerge at all in the press before May 2001, when it was probably over-shadowed by the general election. For the next three years the DH blocked all intelligent questions about thiomersal before announcing its removal from DPT vaccine in August 2004. The very next month (September 04) they published studies - as it were after the event - arguing that it had all been safe.

And what puzzles me about all this above all is the nonchalance. Even if we put our trust in the IOM report of a year ago, what was the basis of Michael Fitzpatrick and Camille Clark's faith before that? Why were they predisposed to think of injecting babies with mercury was a safe or desirable practice? Why was anyone? [1]

As to the rising incidence of autism an interesting paper recently appeared in Pediatrics, without receiving much attention based on data from the US Office of Special Educational Programmes. I quote from the abstract:

"Results. Prevalences of disability category classifications for annual birth cohorts from 1975 to 1995 were calculated by using denominators from US Census Bureau estimates. For the autism classification, there were birth cohort differences, with prevalences increasing among successive (younger) cohorts. The increases were greatest for annual cohorts born from 1987 to 1992. For cohorts born after 1992, the prevalence increased with each successive year but the increases did not appear to be as great, although there were fewer data points available within cohorts. No concomitant decreases in categories of mental retardation or speech/language impairment were seen. Curves for other health impairments, the category including children with attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder, also showed strong cohort differences.

"Conclusions. Cohort curves suggest that autism prevalence has been increasing with time, as evidenced by higher prevalences among younger birth cohorts. The narrowing in vertical separation of the cohort curves in recent years may mark a slowing in the autism prevalence increase." [2]

[1] I note too that the IOM is a year on in a double-bind and according to an article this week by David Kirby in furious dispute with the CDC over the witholding and possible destruction of vaccine data. If this is the case then the interesting question arises how IOM can uphold its own findings. If the CDC does not back down the report will be even more hopelessly compromised than it already is. If they do back down then the data will be opened up for independent interpretation. David Kirby, 'Memo to the CDC: we're not getting our money's worth' May 23, 2005 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/david-kirby/memo-to-cdc-were -not-ge_1421.html

[2]Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD, Matthew D. Falb, MHS and James G. Gurney, PhD, 'National Autism Prevalence Trends From United States Special Education Data',PEDIATRICS Vol. 115 No. 3 March 2005, pp. e277-e282 (doi:10.1542/peds.2004-1958), http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/115/3/e277

Competing interests: Autistic sone

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Re: Examination of hurtful words about autistics
 

Camille Clark says: "One of the first things I'd like to point out, and that I hope everyone can see, is the heavy use of emotionalism and gut wrenching pathos in his book. Being a rather analytical sort of person, I find it all rather off- putting and it makes me wonder why is it there? Can the argument not stand on it’s own without all the lavender (nearly purple) prose? Adults with autism spectrum disorders are able to craft equally compelling tales about how they are made to feel like refuse by the Mercury Mom crowd. How we are reduced to being victims of poisoning, that our gifts are nothing and our deficits are devastating to everyone and even threaten national welfare (because autistics are such ungodly burdens)." In case it is hard for the people reading her response to figure out what kind of things make us "feel like refuse", I will give examples from this page. Firstly, Erik B Nanstiel said: "Many of these kids are getting BETTER, with a number of them RECOVERING from their Autism. I have personally met six or seven children who have recovered from a severe state of autism to losing their diagnosis and being mainstreamed in the educational system." As an autistic teen, I find it hurtful that more NT-like is seen as "getting BETTER". Autism is part of who we are. I have met some autistic people who learnt to pass for normal. Patti Shepard, at http://www.autistics.org/library/letspretend.html, was one of those people. The article I link to is her description of how it felt. Here is the last, and most chilling, paragraph: "Let's just keep pretending through all of the abuse, being lied to, the confusion of betrayal and the pain and then someday, when it's time to go home.....let me pretend one more time with a smile on my face that I'm so very happy....and after I say my goodbyes and close the door...let me enter the bathroom where the razors are kept/surely they can cut no deeper than the pain of pretending to be who I am not/ let me use them as a way to stop my pain that I have kept so secret... and pretend no more." When I was little, my teachers were constantly trying to make me act more normal. I desperately resisted it, fearing an unnamed fear. Now I know it was the fear of losing touch with my self. On another point, it is common for the outward manifestation of autism to change dramatically. Autistics getting all sorts of treatments, as well as untreated autistics, have undergone sudden catch up in language skills and become much less visibly autistic. I've met many autistic kids who seem normal to me, although maybe a bit shy, spacy or lecturing. One five-year- old I met seemed a bit clueless sometimes in the noisy gym class I met him in, but normal shy kid in one-on-one situations. I asked his therapist if he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, and she said a few years ago he was much more visibly autistic, with much poorer language. Likely other kids their age can detect that these kids are different, but many adults probably can't. "He lost all of his language and didn't know who I was from a doorknob." Elizabeth Birt, referring to her son. Here, she portrays her son as much more clueless than he probably is. Inability to distinguish a person from a doorknob is not common in autistics. Prosopagnosia(inability to recognise faces) and lack of separation anxiety are common, but people with either of those characteristics can tell people from doorknobs. And not only is this hurtful to autistics, but to people with agnosia, who may well be unable to tell people from doorknobs. It implies that this is either stupidity or lack of caring, when people with agnosia can be both caring and intelligent. "'Mercury poisoning causes ataxia and dysarthria, visual field disturbances, and peripheral neuropathy. In mild cases it produces a non- specific anxiety and depression; in more severe cases, a toxic psychosis can result. None of these features is characteristic of autism'. All of these features are characteristic of some autistic persons; my son suffers several of these at various times -sometimes initiated by dietary triggers - and ASDs manifest extreme diversity amongst sufferers ... [autistic people can have] psychotic episodes (autism used to be referred to as juvenile schizophrenia)"(John Heptonstall) Firstly, I do not suffer from who I am, but from the clash between me and my environment. The same goes for the vast majority of autistics(as you can tell from reading the pages at http://www.autistics.us/links2/Autistic_Culture/People/). Even those who do have dietary sensitivities and similar things can have those treated and remain autistic. The author of The User Guide to the GF/CF Diet for Autism, Asperger Syndrome and AD/HD, Luke Jackson(I think) is still autistic and has benefitted from the GFCF diet, in that his health(autism is NOT a health problem) has improved. Also, as an autistic person I know of said, schizophrenia is such a loosely defined condition that the diagnosis should probably be scrapped for something more precise. The basic division was first between developmentally delayed people and mentally ill people, then between those with cycling mood and normal periods and those who were always equally strange. Psychosis is usually considered to include hallucinations and/or delusions, however, which are NOT part of autism. "I was fine with the vaccines until I realized that my very normal son was gone. Gone into a world of autism."(Melissa L Bolling) Autism is often reffered to with kidnapping retoric, and this is damaging to autistic people. Amanda Baggs, in her article about becoming more autistic(http://autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html#onregression), describes how this makes her feel: "It felt like people didn't care about who I was, only who I could have been, and were determined to make me into their vision of who I could have been. It was also not pleasant to be talked about in front of me as if I had died and someone else had taken my place. I was perfectly capable of hearing this, and the implications — that I was undesirable and inferior to people's fantasy of who I could have been — came through loud and clear. It made me feel like an unwanted person who had mysteriously taken the place of a real, desirable person, or like I was being haunted by other people's fantasy-ghost of who they wished I was. The person after I lost these skills, and while I was losing these skills, was and is still undeniably me. I was aware of many things people thought I was not aware of, and being regarded by many as irrevocably damaged and inferior took its toll. It is disrespectful to a person to expect them to measure up to the standards of a fantasy-ghost of who you wish them to be. It is possible to encourage a person to learn things and regain skills without making it sound like the person they are is inferior to the person they could have been. It can be especially important because internalizing the fantasy-ghost as a superior being can be a fast track to self-hatred and emotional or physical self-destruction." Eric Capri said: "It should go with out saying that autism has caused great suffering to many families." It is not the autism which causes that suffering, but lost expectations and the beliefs the person has about what autism means.

Competing interests: I was diagnosed with PDD NOS at age 15.

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Re: Multiple causes of autism
 

Camille Clark wants proof that transdermal DMPS (dimercapto-propane sulphonate) does indeed chelate mercury in autistic children. As some mothers have pointed out, effective chelation depletes essential minerals at the same time as removing toxic minerals and is therefore potentially dangerous, particularly for epileptic children. Epileptic children are likely to be manganese deficient and should not be subject to further lowering of their manganese levels.1

There is no simple answer to complicated biochemical problems, especially as individual essential and toxic mineral profiles are seldom performed and the whole field remains unnecessarily mysterious. No one has so far remarked in their responses about the John McLaren-Howard’s results which showed that the commonest toxic metal causing DNA-adducts in 61 autistic children was cadmium, not mercury.2 Nearly all the children tested had zinc and copper deficiencies and our evidence for sharp falls in zinc levels in children is also being ignored. A fall in healthy children’s sweat zinc from 719 ug/l-704 ug/l in 1979 to 520 ug/l in 1989 and to 358 ug/l for dyslexic children should not be ignored by anyone.3,4

In 1971 only one in ten single women had used oral contraceptives but this had increased to nine out of ten by 1981. Hormone use lowers zinc and magnesium levels and causes copper imbalances. The effect of this change in maternal hormone use would be seen among 7 to 13 year olds during the 1980s and 1990s.

There is also some evidence that most women now may have omega-3 essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiencies. Also more may have omega-6 EFA deficiencies than women did 10 years ago.5

The response from academic dentist Trevor LP Watts, Head of Department of Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry Guy's, King's College and St Thomas' Dental Institute, London, UK does not add any useful scientific information. Many dentists have been running mercury- free dental practises for decades and there is a UK Society for dentists concerned about the adverse effects of dental mercury. Dentists seeking preconception screening because of infertility problems may have high mercury levels in their sweat mineral profile in my experience. Dentists frequently attend and present papers at Biolab Medical Unit meetings.

As there are multiple causes for increases in essential nutrient deficiencies in parents before conception and during pregnancy in mothers, increases in autism and other disabilities are not easily related to single causes in epidemiological studies which are bereft of illuminating biochemistry.

1 Grant ECG. Epilepsy and manganese. Lancet 2004; 363: 572.

2 Grant ECG. McLaren-Howard J. Re: The effects of toxic metals in autistic children http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/329/7466/588-b#74117, 13 Sep 2004.

3 Grant ECG, Howard JM, Davies S, Chasty H, Hornsby B, Galbraith J. Zinc deficiency in children with dyslexia: concentrations of zinc and other minerals in sweat and hair. BMJ 1989; 296: 607-9.

4 Howard JM. Serum, leucocyte, sweat and hair zinc levels – a correlation study. J Nutr Environ Med 1990; 1:119-126.

5 Grant ECG. Re: Measuring Fatty Acids - Possible increases in omega -3 and omega-6 deficiencies among women. http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/330/7498/991#108033, 27 May 2005

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: True, But belief is held by both sides.
 

Dear Sir,

Trevor Watts extols the virtues, perspicacity and brilliance of Camille Clark's exposition proving that all people who "believe" their children are damaged by MMR are deluded, and that this cannot be, because epidemiological studies have proven otherwise.

As someone who has been involved with many cases, I would like to talk about two of them. The parents have given me permission to put the bare facts here anonymously.

The first case related to the MMR. This woman's son was given MMR ostensibly because there was "going to be" a huge epidemic of measles if all children from 6 months upwards were not vaccinated.

He developed encephalopathy after the vaccine, and even though the symptoms and tests were quite clear, for whatever reasons, the diagnosing clinicians missed the blindingly obvious.

To the parents it was blindingly obvious, but as you say, Dr Watt, what do parents know? What medical school did they go to? None.

After researching the issues themselves, they took their still sick child to a pediatric neurologist (PN) who reviewed the files and the literature and came to the blindingly obvious conclusion that this child had had encephalopathy. The PN put a clear report in, and the child was then unequivocally awarded ongoing compensation.

After the acceptance of the claim ,at a review to see what medical treatment this child needs, it was also diagnosed that this child had developed autism after the encephalopathy. Another review of videos and photos showed very clear normal development until the MMR was given.

Fast forward 8 years later. Every time this mother takes her son to a paediatric review (which usually involves a different pediatrician) the primary thing the pediatrician wishes to do, is dispute with the mother, that the encephalopathy was caused by the MMR. Not because the child DID have encephalopathy, but because the child has autism.

It "cannot be" because we all KNOW that the MMR can't possible cause autism. So now, by proxy, MMR can't cause encephalopathy either. And encephalopathy, though known to progress to autism occasionally after infectious disease, couldn't possibly do the same after a vaccination could it?

People with far more expertise than her current medical clinicians evaluated the case, proved the case, yet today's clinicians will not accept it.

Even were they, too, sent to a psychiatrist and told to prick pins in dead people they too, would not "recant".

The second case is a child who also had encephalopathy after DPT, clearly evident from the records. This child also developed an autistic disorder, and has compensation. This child's mother also experiences the same type of prejudice, though somewhat muted, since she is in the medical profession herself.

The mother was recently at hospital when her son came to visit her. After they had talked some, he went on his way. A fellow staff member said to her "Is there something wrong with your son?" "Yes," she said. "He's had a traumatic brain injury." "Ah," said her colleague... "A car accident?" "No," said my friend. "A vaccine actually." The colleague, a vaccinator herself, said "Oh, but that couldn't possibly happen these days."

My friend looked at her and replied "But it can, and it does. It's just that most medical people believe it can't possibly happen, so they don't see it when it does."

Interestingly, even though this child carries with him information on his "brain injury" should he land up in hospital, which says he should not have another vaccine, not long ago he landed up in hospital with a broken arm. After permission was received to deal with the break, the medical personnel involved, took it upon themselves to assume that because the mother was a medical professional it would be fine to administer a Td shot since this child was "patently" behind in his shots!

The child, being autistic, never thought to show the doctor the information. The mother informed me that the information was in his files anyway, had anyone bothered to check, as the previous time he had been there, she had been with him, and made sure it was in the files. He had a severe reaction to that shot as well.

I agree with John Stone about the nonchalance of the medical profession. And even the dismissive attitudes of the powers that be. But what bothers me far more than nonchalance, or even dismissal by epithet, is the arrogance of ignorance and assumption.

Until the medical profession take the blinkers of their eyes that they accuse parents of vaccine damaged children from having, no-one is going to get anywhere.

Least of all the medical profession, since they will collectively lose the trust of the very people whose trust they need.

In this current "lose/lose" situation the greater losers are the doctors.

Hilary Butler.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Language: A great Divide.
 

Dear Sir,

It should be obvious from my previous letters, that I have worked with many parents of children with autistic disorders, and their children.

The use of "words" and language has two sides, and is an issue which comes up regularly; that which a speaker intends, and that which the hearer interprets. One of the hardest things for non-autistic people to understand at first, is that what autistics mostly "hear" is not always what non-autistics mean. Non-autistics who have little to do with autistics can't understand why autistics don't understand the "real" meaning of sentences.

The problem here, is that .... at times .... neither group understands that.

To use the term:

>>>>>"He lost all of his language and didn't know who I was from a doorknob." <<<<

I put this to an autistic adolescent, and yes he got offended. He didn't like the literal comparison to an inanimate object, which his mind saw as a "doorknob".

His mother, who knew what the real intent and meaning was, of the sentence, wasn't surprised, and tried to explain to her son, the real meaning of this sentence. Her son, no matter how hard she tried, said that this sentence could not possible mean anything other than that which his mind constructed.

His mother understood that far from being a judgement from Elizabeth Birt, or stating that her son was clueless, this phrase was a metaphorical emotion feeling, which was expressing the comparison between how she felt about personal interaction "before" and "after". The use of these words was at a level of comprehension which this woman's son could not comprehend, because he functions solely in a world which is "black" and "white".

Other phrases like "Keep your eyes on the road", or when told "Don't take your eyes off the bullseye" were totally confusing to him. As far as he was concerned, he kept his eyes in his head.

To him, a "right" hand is the hand on the right side of a person. We tried to explain to him that in some cultures, you have to use the "right" hand for certain functions. Which would mean in some countries, the right hand to use toilet paper would be the left hand. He could not perceive the word "right" as having a different meaning, so to him, we were daft. You either have a right hand, or a left hand, so why don't you say so, and make the meaning clear... was his response.

In dealing with autistic children, I find conversation can be very difficult over long period of time, because most of the time I have to be literally and grammatically super-correct which is a huge strain. If I lapse into the use of pronouns in certain circumstances, or colloquialisms and analogies, most autistic people I know are instantly totally lost. Mostly they don't realise why, and it is me who is stupid, not them.

I can relate to how Elizabeth Birt felt, but for another reason.

Many years ago, I had a stroke as a result of an infection. I immediately lost my speech, the use of my right arm, and my right leg was weak. I had a splitting headache for nearly six months. At all times from the beginning, I could think as clearly as before; which I found out later, is a very common experience amongst most people who have a stroke.

My family, especially my young children, found the year extremely distressing, because they had "lost" the mother they had experienced in the previous years.

I knew I had lost visible and actual capacity that I had previously had, which gave me the impetus to work hard to successfully regain those capacities, because I had a reference point between what was 'normal' before, and the difference after the stroke, and my thinking capacity and scope never changed.

I never felt less of "me" than I had before (which as an adult would be natural perhaps), and although there was a sudden clash between me and my environment, which had not been there before, I didn't feel that other's reactions to me was a slight against me personally. I also accepted that perhaps I might not regain the previous skills I had had, and had that been the case, the fault would not have rested with "normal" people.

Once the children especially, understood that my comprehension and thinking was as sharp as before, and that I was still "me", they were more cooperative. However, they were still highly frustrated at the temporarily limited abilities I had, and at the patience levels they had to learn. And yes, in frustration they would often talk over me and not to me.

This same feeling that my children had about losing me, is similar to the feeling that Elizabeth Birt had at "losing" her child. While at all times I knew my children from "doorknobs", I'm sure my children felt at the time, that I didn't, because the pain and the circumstances precluded me from telling them.

And why should my children not be frustrated at that? Yes, some hurtful things were said in the process of recovery by other people with less accurate perceptions as to my faculties than even my own children. But I never let them bother me, because I was able to put myself in their shoes, even if they couldn't put themselves in mine.

In my association with autistic children, and their parents, it is my experience that while the parents can understand both sides of the linguistic coin, just as I did in a sense from my experience, autistic children in general do not, and cannot, because their linguistic comprehension doesn't allow for correct interpretation of language subtelties of that nature.

It is therefore very hard for autistic people to understand why people who can see both sides of the issues, don't make all the "adjustments" that autistics would like them to.

Some autistics have told me that the answer is "very simple". In order for autistic people to be given the space to "fit" in and feel worthy, all non-autistic people should simply limit their use of words, emotion and humour and expression to the solely literal. That would preclude word by-play, double entendre or any other ambiguous words, which usually also rely on an understanding of subtle body language as well.... another area prone to be unobserved or misintepretted by autistic people.

Unfortunately, the majority of social functioning of the world of the non-autistic is primarily in these very areas which "black and while" comprehension overlooks. Therefore you could say that language becomes the great divide.

This raises the question about "hurtful words". Who is responsible for the effects of words? The speaker or the listener? My friend's son was adamant that his interpretation of Elizabeth Birt's words was the only possible correct one, and anyone who couldn't see that was silly.

I and his mother, knew otherwise. But whatever it was that prevented him from seeing another side to the coin, also prevented him from understanding that others could have a valid interpretation.

Exactly the same type of analagous "Divide" separates parents of vaccine damaged children from infectious disease specialists who refuse to see that vaccines can cause any damage at all. In this analogy, the infectious disease specialists are as "autistic" in their understanding of these parents, as "autistics" are, at understanding double entendre, or what Elizabeth Birt really meant.

The problem with that analogy is that whereas autistic people should not be expected to fully understand the wider context of all language used, infectious diseases specialists should be able to fully understand all possible biochemical aspects of vaccines and immunology.

Sincerely,

Hilary Butler.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: Examination of hurtful words about autistics
 

I will not debate the issues Ettina cites as they are Ettina's opinion; those Ettina disputes are experiences and opinions of others.

I will dispute Ettina's last point

"It is not the autism which causes that suffering, but lost expectations and the beliefs the person has about what autism means"

which I think is a ludicrous and condescending description of the suffering and expectations of parents and families of autistic persons, and perhaps of some of those autistic persons who, like many who are treated as "different" in our rather intolerant societies, might prefer to be "less different".

Autism does cause suffering, especially to many autistic persons who, like my son, not only suffer the potential emotions of being "different" but certainly suffer from the constant physical and emotional assaults caused by severe epilepsy, inability to communicate effectively wants and needs, life apart from close family much of the time, and during times of great stress, from for example visits to dentists to A&E let alone typical daily routines which can induce severe distress, the inability to express to people their pain and distress - thereby being almost totally reliant on others' interpretations of their wants and needs and distress at such times and subsequent handling of each situation in favour of the autistic person.

That is what autism means to many persons, their families, friends and carers. In my experience many of those hold selfless opinions of what autism means and does and act selflessley in discharging their love, care and attention in that regard. It is that love and duty of care to their autistic relations, and to society as a whole, that brings so many selfless persons to study objectively and identify scientifically wherever possible the reasons behind the dramatic rise in ASDs that blights families; and it is the people and organisations, who may have no sense of loss for humanity in this regard, who would persist in meting out any probable cause for profit.

Regards

John

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: What causes the suffering?
 

John P Heptonstall said: "Autism does cause suffering, especially to many autistic persons who, like my son, not only suffer the potential emotions of being "different" but certainly suffer from the constant physical and emotional assaults caused by severe epilepsy, inability to communicate effectively wants and needs, life apart from close family much of the time, and during times of great stress, from for example visits to dentists to A&E let alone typical daily routines which can induce severe distress, the inability to express to people their pain and distress - thereby being almost totally reliant on others' interpretations of their wants and needs and distress at such times and subsequent handling of each situation in favour of the autistic person." In response to my statement: "It is not the autism which causes that suffering, but lost expectations and the beliefs the person has about what autism means" I agree that there are aspects of autism which inherently cause suffering. I apologise for not phrasing my statement correctly. I should rephrase it as "that suffering is not entirely due to autism, but due largely to lost expectations and the beliefs the parent or other loved one has about what autism means". Epilepsy is both unpleasant and more common in autistics than in NTs, need for routine can make things quite miserable, and inability to communicate is quite frustrating, as Amanda Baggs said in her article Autism, Speech and Assistive Technology at http://autistics.org/library/spchasst.html, but those and other unpleasant things are a small part of what autism is. There are also aspects of autism that are inherently enjoyable, such as stimming and perseverating on interests. Only someone with as intense of interests as me can understand how much I enjoy researching rare chromosome abnormalities for hours on end. And most of the suffering for the parents and other loved ones of autistics is not due to watching their child suffer. I've heard many parents of autistic kids describe feeling pain about the fact that their child is not responding to them with the social reaction they expect to receive from their children (such as running to the door yelling "Daddy!") or the fact that their child's behaviour draws stares. Those things are rarely upsetting to the child, especially when they are young, and need not be upsetting to the parent. I know of parents who have demonstrated that. Also, as support groups for pregnancy loss will attest to, parents tend to fantasize about the child they will have, and broken dreams are quite painful. Jim Sinclair described this in xyr wonderful essay Don't Mourn for Us(http://autistics.org/library/dontmourn.html): "What it comes down to is that you expected something that was tremendously important to you, and you looked forward to it with great joy and excitement, and maybe for a while you thought you actually had it--and then, perhaps gradually, perhaps abruptly, you had to recognize that the thing you looked forward to hasn't happened. It isn't going to happen. No matter how many other, normal children you have, nothing will change the fact that this time, the child you waited and hoped and planned and dreamed for didn't arrive." Note: Please read the whole thing, it is a wonderful essay. I have recently realised that it appears another big part of the grief is due to the prejudices held by the parents about autism. Homophobic parents experience much more grief and pain than non-homophobic parents when their child comes out as gay, and I know of a few parents of autistic people, including my own parents, who didn't share the prejudices the vast majority of the population have about disabilities and were not very unhappy when their child was diagnosed autistic. I am not pointing this out to insult anyone, but in the hope that people will better understand how the experience of raising an autistic child can be less painful than it usually is. Homophobic people usually don't know much about the experience of being gay, and have many misconceptions about it. Likewise, most people have little understanding and many misconceptions about what it's like to be autistic. If you were of the opinion that X group of people all had Y, Z and W unpleasant(to them or others) characteristics, and then discovered someone you love was of group X, grief would be an obvious reaction. Then there are two main groups you could end up in, the ones who hold onto their misconceptions, causing much pain to the loved one of group X, and those who realise that group X aren't really that [bad/pitiable/disgusting/frightening] and usually end up trying to get others to let go of their misconceptions. Another part of the unhappiness is often fear of the reactions of others. A parent of a gay teen may worry that their child will be a victim of gay- bashing, a parent of an autistic kid may worry that the child's talents will be ignored and their weaknesses exaggerated. Or they may worry that people will blame them or that they will be embarrassed in front of others. Often the fear are realistic - gay teens are at risk for gay bashing, and many autistics are underestimated - and the solution is to fight the cause of the danger. Other times the parents are pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, a great deal of the suffering autistic people experience is due to a clash between them and society. Bullying by peers, structural barriers, difficulty getting a job because you act strange and need accomodation, well-meaning people who hurt you while trying to help, etc. All those are not inherent to autism, and should be reduced. The last one in particular is why I post articles like the ones I've posted here. This is not to deny that aspects of autism can be inherently upsetting, but to point out the more preventable causes of suffering. Trying to prevent the suffering due to societal clash by eliminating the group which clashes with society is, in my opinion, unethical. An example would be trying to stop racism by bleaching the skin of black people, or trying to stop sexism with sex changes. Anyway, thanks for responding. Writing out my point of view clarifies it for myself and also means others get to see it.

Competing interests: I am autistic, having been diagnosed with PDD NOS

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Re: TD DMPS - popular autism "cure"
 

"Camille Clark wants proof that transdermal DMPS (dimercapto-propane sulphonate) does indeed chelate mercury in autistic children. As some mothers have pointed out, effective chelation depletes essential minerals at the same time as removing toxic minerals and is therefore potentially dangerous, particularly for epileptic children. Epileptic children are likely to be manganese deficient and should not be subject to further lowering of their manganese levels.1"

Ms. Grant has missed the point of what I said. I have no doubt that chelation can strip the body of essential minerals. And I have no doubt that it can be very dangerous, and in fact many people would say that all the do-it-yourself chelation attempts by parents of autistic children are foolhardy. Tampering with the disposition of metals in the body and the levels of essential minerals is bound to harm some people.

Oral DMPS (2,3,-dimercaptopropane-1-sulfonate) and oral DMSA (dimercaptosuccinic acid) (1) contain sulfer to which mercury and apparently other minerals and metals are attracted. When a person takes either of these, that person's urine changes odor, sometimes very noticeably. This is a bit of evidence of its activity in the body, as I understand it.

Transdermal DMPS, is a very popular chelator at the moment with parents of autistic children (and a cure which is very highly praised in David Kirby's book). I have been told that when it is applied to a child's skin it does not result in the child's urine changing odor. Perhaps this is evidence that it is not entering the child's body.

Further, I understand that the structure of the DMPS molecule is such that one would not expect it to cross the skin barrier.

This is what I wish to see proven by a neutral party, also if DMPS does cross the barrier of the skin, to what degree does it do so?

Dr. Buttar, patent holder on a popular form of TD DMPS (which has other ingredients besides DMPS), apparently does not know the answer to this question. I include a link to a .pdf file (2) which contains Dr. Buttar's comments on TD DMPS. He writes that he does not know the half-life of TD DMPS but plans to tag the material with radioactivity in order to find out it's half-life. In his description of his experimental use of TD DMPS, refers to a "Hertizmer's reaction", perhaps he meant a "Herxheimer's reaction". I have looked to see if Dr. Buttar has any published studies. I can't find any.

Being a skeptical person I have to wonder about TD DMPS, its effectiveness and its safety in children. It is not enough to hear testimonials by parents, especially since the nature of autism includes regressions and developmental leaps forward. These have happened to children who are not being chelated. Autistic people who are now adults have described what it's like to be in a regression and what it's like for abilites and understanding to "come together", sometimes suddenly. These people were not being chelated.

Some parents credit Applied Behavioral Analysis (without chelation) with the same kinds of developmental victories that the parents who are chelating their kids describe.

Congential rubella syndrome can cause symptoms of autism. This is the abstract of a journal article written by Stella Chess M.D. and published in 1977, (3)
"A longitudinal study was conducted of 243 children with congenital rubella. In this sample a high rate of autism and a high rate of recovery were observed. Examination of the data suggested that the rubella virus was the primary etiologic agent. It is hypothesized that the course of autism was that of a chronic infection in which recovery, chronicity, improvement, worsening, and delayed appearance of the autistic syndrome all were found. Other rubella consequences such as blindness, deafness, and cardiac and neuromuscular defects remained present except as modified by operations and prostheses. Degree of mental retardation initially was related to the outcome of autism but shifts in mental retardation over time did not correlate significantly for the group with shift in the autistic symptoms."

It's interesting to me that the name of the publication the article was published in is, "Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia. Autism used to be called "childhood schizophrenia" and for a while the two terms were used interchangeably.

My point in sharing this abstract is that even in the case of autistic children with brain damage from prental viral exposure (rubella), there were cases of "recovery". One must assume that that recovery had nothing to do with chelation. So mere "recovery" on the part of children undergoing chelation, proves nothing. However, since so many parents believe that chelation (or possibly sham chelation) has "recovered" their children, then we need studies to show that this is the case. Until then parents, doctors, and even authors such as David Kirby, should not be so confident in attributing improvement in presumed autistic children to chelation. This is just common sense.

I highly recommend that people with the "real audio" player on their computers listen to an interview (4) which can be found on cityvisionsradio.com at http: //www.cityvisionsradio.com/archive.html . The interviewees are Dr. Bryna Siegal, of University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, of University of California at Davis, and principal investigator of a large epidemiological study on autism currently under way, and Rick Rollens a parent activist. The interview is about an hour long. In it Dr. Hertz-Picciotto reveals some concern about chelation and the lab tests that some parents produce to "prove" mercury toxicity in their children.

I am a person who is on the autism spectrum and I have a child who is likewise on the autism spectrum and who also has some serious genetically caused health problems. My child went through about 13 surgeries, 2 of them were very dangerous. Most parents of autistic children don't have to deal with surgeries. I thoroughly understand the difficulties of all parents of ill and disabled children. I also rejoice at the wonderful gifts and endlessly kind heart my autism spectrum child has.

Additionally, for the record, I believe that parents of disabled children, particularly poor and "working poor" parents, deserve whatever help they need to take care of their children. This is so obvious to me, but in the United States sometimes children suffer because it seems there is no will to provide all the services that disabled children need. Camille Clark (1) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/uspdi/202664.html
(2) http://www.drhirani.com/TD-DMPS-1.pdf#search='DMPStd (3) Chess S. Follow-up report on autism in congenital rubella. Joural of Autism and Child Schizophrenia 1977 Mar;7(1):69-81. (4) http://www.cityvisionsradio.com/archivenew/050404.ram

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: TD DMPS - popular autism "cure"
 

There is much promotion of trandermal "remedies" on the internet, such as widespread advertising of potentially- carcinogenic progesterone cream. No parent, rich or poor, should be so desperate that that they feel they have to will "Try anything" that some one advertises without proof of need, benefit or safety.

The whole issue about the autism spectrum is that it has complicated causes and needs individualised treatments according to the results of appropriate scientific investigations. There has long been evidence that either viral infections or adverse reactions to vaccines can cause encephalitis in some individuals. An important question is, “Why?” Immune system perturbations are often due essential nutritional deficiencies and poor parental preconception and pregnancy care.

The mostly likely source of toxic levels of cadmium in children is parental smoking and zinc deficiency allows cadmium to accumulate. Chelation to remove proven exceptionally high levels of toxic metals is a standard medical treatment which needs to be carried out with repeated and relevant biochemical tests and appropriate nutritional supplementation. Otherwise, toxic metals levels tend to fall when essential nutrient deficiencies have been repleted.

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Re: What causes the suffering?
 

Thanks for the clarification Ettina. I agree with virtually everything you now say. I also agree very strongly that..

"Trying to prevent the suffering due to societal clash by eliminating the group which clashes with society is, in my opinion, unethical"

..I am sure most parents/carers have no desire to "eliminate" anyone and most I know fight hard to provide as much support to their loved ones as is humanly possible, for all their children, of whatever "group"; siblings are often especially protective and loving but, there remains the desire to prevent occurrences if preventable, without harm to anyone.

If vaccines are causing these effects, those vaccines must be eliminated. I cannot believe that either you or Camille Clark - who is quite rightly vocal about some peoples' approach to autism - would wish that vaccines, that may cause severe harm, remain untouched and are allowed to continue to bestow on many more children an ASD situation no matter how exceptionally beneficial it may be to some; one cannot identify who will receive benefit and who will be damned to suffer severe handicaps, like severe intractable epilepsy with the dangers that presents, yet which is so common to classical autism and which condemn the individual to lifelong suffering?

Regards

John

Competing interests: None declared

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Re: Why the pretence?
 

In the wake of the bungled press announcement of the removal of thiomersal from infant vaccine in the UK last August Jane Feinman, writing in The Times, reported:

"Richard Mills, a research director at the National Autistic Centre, says that though there is clearly no single cause of autism, “no one can seriously suggest now that heavy metals are not implicated in some way”." [1]

Why is the medical establishment still deluding itself that injecting babies with mercury is either safe or acceptable?

Is it not an indictment of the entire vaccine culture that this outrageous policy is still being swept under the carpet here, and continued in other parts of the world?

If they will do this, why should we accept any of the rest?

[1] 'Heavy Metal Danger', 13 August 2004, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-1213581,00.html

Competing interests: Autistic son

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Re: "Immune system perturbations"
 

Ellen Grant writes:

"The whole issue about the autism spectrum is that it has complicated causes and needs individualised treatments according to the results of appropriate scientific investigations. There has long been evidence that either viral infections or adverse reactions to vaccines can cause encephalitis in some individuals. An important question is, “Why?” Immune system perturbations are often due essential nutritional deficiencies and poor parental preconception and pregnancy care."

I am not sure I would be happy if Ellen Grant was trying to identify the parents of autistic children as a social group with a particularly careless lifestyle. In fact, in a decade of rubbing shoulders with a large number of them I cannot recall meeting a single one who conspicuously smoked - nor would it explain why autism became prevalent at a time when on the whole smoking was in decline (I do not, of course, know what Ellen may have found out about the lifestyles of the parents of children John McLaren-Howard tested). However, I do entirely take the point that there may be other factors which determine why some infants react adversely vaccine or other viral exposures, and that nutrition is likely to be critical.

This is one reason why I particularly do not take Michael Fitzpatrick's point that the focus on vaccine has diverted resources from other forms of research. What all the defensiveness over vaccine has done is direct attention against those who were trying to look into the physical condition of the children at virtually any level (apart from genetic). Very typically the Autism Intervention Research Trust (to whom Richard Horton donates the royalties of his book on the MMR) [1] was launched last year with the prejudicial slogan: "Quack autism cures must end": already it was for something and against something [2]. Any parent who believes they have found a useful dietary intervention or supplement for their autistic child better watch out.

[1] Richard Horton: 'MMR: Science and Fiction - Exploring the Vaccine Crisis', Granta Books 2004, p 208. Curious, incidentally, despite the subtitle that Horton only mentions mercury once in the entire book.

[2] BBC online report: 'Quack autism cures must end', 27 June 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3840629.stm

Competing interests: Autistic son