Thimerosal Does Not Cause Autism

jamie found an article over at Washington Monthly discussing the recent finding that there is no link between thimerosal and autism. It seems that after the mercury-based vaccine preservative was withdrawn from use in 1999, no drop in autism rates has been observed in a large California study. Here's the Science Daily writeup on the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Comments

Re:Inaccurate

[Mordac]

Thimerasol includes Mercury in the way that Water includes Hydrogen.

The link to autism has never been there, every study has shown it. Its time to spend money looking for the real culprit and not blaming vaccines.

A more likely route is look at the age of the fathers, there seems to be evidence pointing to parental age having to be a likely cause of autism rates rising (that and the mass over diagnosis, and more mental illnesses being classified as Autism.)

This is not a simple issue. And the mercury = autism people are just trying to make it easier, and instead make it harder for everyone.

This is established

[Otter]

The link between thimerosal and autism has already been pretty thoroughly disproven. (Link to a blog rather than the paper because 1) it's a good summary and 2) I'm not sure whether the link is freely readable.) Whatever merit this hypothesis had in the past, any future work on it that "activists" manage to force clearly comes at the expense of projects that might be genuinely useful.

Re:Mercury

[Dr.Enormous]

Sodium(0) catches fire/explodes on contact with water.
Sodium(I) is critical for sustaining life.

Just because Mercury is toxic, and organomercury compounds will kill you stone dead, doesn't mean every single compound with mercury in it isn't safe. Oxidation state and ligands make all the difference. Linking to "Mercury hazards" is meaningless.

Re:Conspiracy nutters won't be discouraged

[Stormcrow309]

Cite or get off the pot. Speaking of which, I would suggest this paper and this paper as a good start. There is major concern from Thimerosal toxicity in long term treatments, such as blood plasma programs, due to the introduction of more Thimerosal to the system then ethylmercury, the type of mercury that Thimerosal becomes, can be cleared. However, there seems to be more risk from dental amalgam then a single vaccination. Concern should be for long term series, such as a long term gamma globulin series, which is becoming rare.

Re:They'll just blame something else in vaccines

[tgibbs]

Autism symptoms don't develop at 2 months, the time when the first vaccine is mandated.

Or, heck, even at birth, now that Hep-B shots before leaving the hospital are all the rage.

And you are presenting this in favor of the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism? Seriously?

With "factual analysis" by morons like you backing them up, it's little wonder crap statistical analyses like "this doesn't cause Autism" is the major focus, when spending the money on finding out what *does* cause it would be real science, but that ain't happenin'.

And who told you this? The guys selling "vaccines cause autism" books and quack chelation therapy? I was at the Neuroscience meeting in San Diego last year, and I saw row on row of posters describing work on the causes of autism. Try this: go to PubMed and type "autism" into the search box. There have been some important recent breakthroughs indicating a genetic basis for autism. Identifying the genes is an important step toward figuring out what goes wrong and developing a therapy. What doesn't contribute is investing yet more time and money pursuing the long-rejected notion that mercury or vaccines causes autism.

If you had half a brain cell to rub together, you might also be interested in this article, which has not been refuted by anyone.

Oh wow, an article in the respected scientific journal Rolling Stone. And it has not been refuted by anyone? Not even here? Or here? Or here? Or here?