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A Link Between Autism and Thimerosal?
tessellation writes "Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has just published a review of evidence for the link between thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative added to vaccines until 2003) and the autism epidemic. It also details attempts by the FDA and CDC to protect the drug industry from litigation by producing favorable results rather than objective studies: '"Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks." How often are studies successfully altered by funding agencies to conceal negative results?"
Then some counterpoints to the article:
And finally, as was posted earlier, the MetaFilter thread is well worth reading before making up your mind one way or another.
It's called the Expectancy effect and was discovered by Rosenthal and Fode in 1963. Obviously it is not something that can be proven, but it is something that can be observed and has been time and time again since.
How we know is more important than what we know.
First of all, I should say that I don't believe the hypothesis to be true based on the data presented.
However, while observer bias is an issue in many studies, it probably wasn't one here: it did not involve an experiment in which experimenters could have shown bias; the hypothesis ("thimerosal causes autism") wasn't even known or stated during data collection.
Even a layman could have guessed that autism is often (if not always) the result of environmental factors.
Except that there's a lot of evidence that shows that autism is the result of genetic factors.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Part of the drug price in the US goes to subsidise the lower profit in Canada.
IAAP (Psychologist), and I've worked with hundreds of children with all sorts of neuropsychological problems, many of these being Autistic-Aspergerish in nature.
I am not commenting directly on your son's friend's case, as I haven't even met them, and all sorts of things happen to cause problems for children. Heavy metals do cause massive neurological problems in children, and I have seen the effects. Having said that:
It is extremely common in the Autism-Asperger's communities for families to come up with all sorts of explanations, and to be victims of all sorts of charlatanry. These families love their children, and are deeply troubled by the problems they and their children have due to Autism-Asperger's spectrum problems. The children are generally wonderful and normal in more ways than not, but wrestle with serious social and emotional difficulties that pain the families to watch. These families will do anything that might work, and because they often have the money, can do anything that might work. As a result, they become the victim of all sorts of wild speculation and hoodwinkery.
In my experience, one of the most common examples of this charlantry is heavy metal testing. It's not uncommon that parents will hear about some place to do heavy metal testing. They'll do the test, and some "expert" will send a report to them on it. Generally these reports always claim that there's elevated levels of some heavy metal in the child. However, if you go to some independent source, and have them review the report, they'll tell you that the levels are well within--even well below average levels for children. Often the elevated "heavy metals" listed won't just be well below average levels, but won't be heavy metals at all, or will be metals that are actually beneficial medically or, at least, unrelated in any sense to any documented illness.
Nevertheless, because they have this "report" to hold onto, parents will explain to others how their child was "tested and found to have elevated sensitivity to/levels of/exposure to heavy metals." These parents aren't stupid, or irresponsible, they're just victims of people who are taking advantage of their distress and desparation.
You don't have to be a large greedy corporation to make money off of people's misery without scientific data to back you up.
Here is the brunt of the IOM study/panel:
Skeptism is how science progresses. If you have read the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (had to do it for a class), you would see this is how science is forwarded. That said, studies has been published in both Europe and the U.S. clearly showing no link. Skeptism, when shown to be unfounded needs to be put to rest. Literally millions of lives have been saved by vaccination programs worldwide.
The current theory favored by many experts is that autism is a genetically-based disorder that occurs before birth.
Studies of persons with autism are finding abnormalities in brain structures that develop in the first few weeks of fetal development.
The original report, published in the Lancet in 1995 included a editorial piece criticizing it, partly due to its very small study population (12 patients). Another facet of the story that is oft left out of the discussion is that the hypothesis, which had no data associated with it, was that perhaps the MMR vaccination prevents gut absorption of minerals and vitamins which caused the autism.
Anyway, there is alot of data involving this, which I have referenced below. I would like to note that I have been taking this primarily from a piece written by Dr. Barrett. The collection is quite complete and slightly longish. Have a go at it.
References
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
I'm sorry to hear that your son's development has been set back by something. However, I doubt it has anything to do with thimerosal, seeing that the MMR vaccine used in the US, MMR II from Merck, has never contained thimerosal. Thimerosal was used in DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis), hepatitis B, and influenza vaccines.
Thimerosal contains ethylmercury(a flu shot contains about 25 micrograms mercury). The federal guidelines are directed mainly at methylmercury(<0.1 micrograms/per kg bodyweight/day) because that is what shows up in the food and water supply, and is where most people get the bulk of their mercury intake from. Hence, that is where most research has been directed. On the other hand, not much is known about the effects of ethylmercury because people don't take in very much of it. (On a side note, Tor's 90% vs. 10% absorption ratio for ethyl vs. methyl mercury is wrong even after correcting his mixing up of the two compounds.)
If you look behind who is offering all of this criticism of thimerosal you are likely to find lobbyists(like Safe Minds), or profiteers(like the Geiers, a father-son duo who appear to be nothing more than shills for attorneys hoping to bilk the pharmaceutical companies for lots of $$$), or parents who think they have a chance at a slice of the pie. Some faction of the Republican party seems to turn up behind this shit as well. I have no clue how that happened. I thought trial lawyers were supposed to be in bed with the Democrats. At any rate, there isn't any good research yet showing a link between thimerosal and autistic spectrum disorders, and there is bunch of research that seems to indicate that the link just ain't there.
Assortative mating + selective pressure. Thanks to the computer age, suddenly Asperger's isn't such a bad thing any more. So you have all these bright people moving to Silicon Valley and other tech meccas, marrying each other, and giving birth to a surprisingly large proportion of Autistic and Asperger's kids.
Not just my opinion. There've been studies on this.