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 It seems that after the mercury-based vaccine preservative was withdrawn from use in 1999, no drop in autism rates has been observed in a large California study.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

Conspiracy nutters won't be discouraged

[KublaiKhan]

Given that the folks shrieking the loudest about the thimerosal-autism 'link' (as if a single study that's since been discredited many, many times can be called a 'link') tend to be parents of autistic children who also tend to go in for bogus new-age nonsense like 'chelation' and 'collodial silver' treatments, I don't think the whole nonsense is quite over yet. It's definitely a nice step in the right direction, but no amount of proof will really convince conspiracy theorists that their pet paranoia is without merit--they merely will claim that the 'truth' is being 'covered up' by the Big Pharmaceutical companies, and that the government is out to poison your children with the evil vaccinations that 'confuse your immune system' leaving you 'open to illness.' Most of them would benefit from a good solid course in basic logic (to overturn the fallacies they base their 'theories' on) and in basic biology and chemistry. The best we can hope for, I suppose, is that they'll select themselves out of the gene pool by applying nonsensical and hazardous treatments to themselves and their offspring.

Re:Conspiracy nutters won't be discouraged

[solar_blitz]

Dear God, I would like to file a bug report.

They'll just blame something else in vaccines

[tgibbs]

After all, other countries have eliminated or dramatically reduced mercury in vaccines with zero effect on autism rates, and the mercury fanatics never batted an eye. Nor are they troubled by the fact that the neurological effects of actual mercury poisoning don't resemble autism.

It's a bit like homeopathy in reverse. Many of these guys have a superstitious fear of "toxins," and no matter how low the level might be, they will be convinced that it is poisoning their kids.

Of course, the real problem is that the age at which autism symptoms develop is about the same as the age when kids normally get their shots. A reasoned explanation of the difference between correlation and causality is often beyond the grasp of parents who are desperate for an explanation, or better yet, somebody to blame.

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?

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:Any contradictory beliefs must be beaten down

[Dachannien]

Global Warming.
Increasing gas mileage and alternate energy
Voting machine fraud, WMD's, Kennedy, John Lennon, Ghandi, Tim Leary,
GM vs. Organic food. Smoking causing or not causing cancer, Marijuana
Tesla, Laithwaite, Hutchinson, Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, Columbus
Perendev, Searl, Cold Fusion, The Earth Being round, String Theory, E8,Quantum Physics , Roswell
Jesus, Moses, Noah, The Ark of the covenant, the chalice, Troy, 12/12/2012, the holocaust, revelations. Everybody now! We didn't start the fire....