Autism's Theoretical Causes: Mercury and Vaccines--An Editorial

This article is so wrong on so many levels. One major problem is that the author seems to have neglected the mountain of work that has been done in the last 5-10 years.

The references make it look like the research she is citing is recent. The JPANDS/Bradstreet article, for example, is from 2004, not 2011. So much has happened since then.

The MMR/Wakefield theory is over. Andrew Wakefield's work was shown to be fraudulent. No one has ever replicated his work, and people have tried. Hard.

"Autism symptoms and mercury poisoning symptoms are virtually identical. The Journal of Immunotoxicology wrote:"

No. they aren't. The idea that autism and mercury poisoning have the same symptoms was put together by a group of non-medical professionals. People who really understand both autism and mercury poisoning have made it very clear that the symptoms are not the same. Not even close.

Seriously, this would have been a poor article 5 years ago. Now it's just downright embarrassing. Much more--it is irresponsible.

Please, Michele Blacksberg R.N.. Do some research before you allow such a poor article as this to go live.

The sources have September on them because that's when I accessed them and that's what I was told to put.

Andrew Wakefield's original case paper was exactly that, a case paper, not a study. It was a case paper of 12 children that presented with autism and gastrointestinal disease, 8 of which after MMR. All Andrew Wakefield said was that the situation should be investigated and he concluded that it DIDN'T prove an association with MMR. He later did do follow up studies (as have others), but the initial case paper was never a study.

And actually his findings of enterocolitis in autistic children has been repeated by others, here for instance:

http://www.la-press.com/clinical-presentation-and-histologic-findings-at...

And here's one about the possible causative role of vaccinations in autistic children with an underlying mitochondrial cytopathy:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003815

And this one:

HgCl2 stimulates VEGF and IL-6 release from human mast cells. This phenomenon could disrupt the blood-brain-barrier and permit brain inflammation. As a result, the findings of the present study provide a biological mechanism for how low levels of mercury may contribute to ASD pathogenesis.
http://www.jneuroinflammation.com/content/7/1/20/abstract

That was from March 2010.

The severity of autism associated with toxic metal body burden:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2809421/

Brain specific auto-antibodies in austistic children:

http://pubget.com/paper/19135624

Positive association between childhood vaccination uptake and autism prevelance in the US:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535

That was in January 2011, so it's not true to say that the case paper was years ago and everything has been proven safe since then. Scientists are still studying the issue repeatedly.

http://www.naturalnews.com/031116_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield_British_Medical_Jo...
Big pharma are losing. :)

"Autism symptoms and mercury poisoning symptoms are virtually identical. "
Not even remotely true .This myth comes from a 2000 paper in "Medical Hypothesis", a vanity journal, by non-scientists.

http://autism-news-beat.com/archives/27

You certainly managed to cram a great deal of misinformation into a single article: You included virtually all the anti-vaccine talking points in an effort that might well confuse the naïve parents in your audience.

A minor point: Wakefield did not, as you indicated, write a “case paper.” Perhaps you simply repeated or misinterpreted something you read on an anti-vaccine website; you must mean a “case study.” More importantly, though, it is quite clear that Wakefield was wrong, whether or not (as stated by the editors of the British Medical Journal) his work was fraudulent and whether or not you agree with the UK General Medical Council that he was repeatedly dishonest.
For example, the PCR primers that Wakefield used to detect “measles” in his gut and CSF samples clearly react to normal human DNA, and the reaction results cannot be distinguished as false positives unless additional careful work is performed, which Wakefield simply did not do but which was done in this emphatic take-down of Wakefield’s PCR work: http://pediatrics.aapublications.org/cgi/reprint/118/4/1664. In a.ddition, of course, Wakefield’s work also included the production of “positive” results even when there was no sample at all in the reaction, as shown in this unusually pointed analysis by a PCR expert who devoted 1,500 hours to analyzing the equipment, protocols, and original laboratory notebooks related to Wakefield’s PCR work: http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/erp_mmr.pdf. In addition, the ONLY attempt to replicate his results suggesting a temporal link between MMR vaccination and the onset of ASD and GI symptoms showed conclusively that Wakefield was wrong; the authors of this careful case-control study, which included Wakefield’s former business partner and co-author, concluded: “The work reported here eliminates the remaining support for the hypothesis that ASD with GI complaints is related to MMR exposure." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526159/?tool=pubmed

BTW, your support for the recent paper that suggests an increase in the risk of ASD associated with hepatitis B vaccination is also surprising. Given that the apparent prevalence of ASD has undeniably increased in recent decades, you might think that the authors would have stratified the data by age since the odds of ASD diagnosis clearly increase in later birth cohorts. The authors did not do this. Skewing the age distribution in their two groups could in itself account for their results, but we simply cannot tell since the authors did make even the most rudimentary efforts to provide that critical information: not only did they fail to include that analysis, they didn’t even include such basic information as basic age-related parameters of the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. That's weird.

Similarly, this statement is false: ““Autism” symptoms and mercury poisoning symptoms are virtually identical.” Nope. You might want to check the testimony of Dr. Patricia Rodier, one of the very few people in the world who is expert on both autism and mercury toxicity: "My conclusion is that the allegation has no scientific support and is highly improbable.” Dr. Rodier’s expert report for the Omnibus Autism Proceedings is available here: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/autism/Expert%20Report.... You may also be interested in this thorough refutation of that failed hypothesis: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/674.long.

Of course, you should also understand that dramatic decreases in exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines in several countries have been shown by independent groups of investigators to have been followed, even years later, by continuing increases in the prevalence of autism, as shown in this recent article: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/674.long.

Honestly, you should consider refraining from commenting on subjects that you do not understand.

Case paper and case study isthe same thing, but neither are a double-blinded, controlled trial, they are simply when a doctor writes up case notes about his patients and publishs them. All Dr. Wakefield did was say he had these patients and he had observed that autistic patients had colitis and that when the colitis was treated, frequently the autistic symptoms would improve. The thing that made it controversial was the fact that eight of the patient's autism came on after MMR and the parents felt it was related so Dr. Wakefield suggested doing some research into MMR, although he said that his observations DIDN'T prove an association with MMR. Despite this, medical establishments and the media have repeatedly mis-quoted and called it an anti-vaccine study and made out he said MMR was causing autism when he concluded nothing of the kind. All he said was, I think this should be looked into and it isn't politically correct to even question vaccines. The retraction of that initial case paper was political because he had concluded that he hadn't enough evidence to prove an association with MMR...so what's to retract, that MMR doesn't cause autism? You can't retract a possibility and a request for research. It was merely a political move to discourage other doctors from looking at vaccines and certainly from mentioning them in public.

I too would like a study that looks at totally vaccinated and totally unvaccinated but they haven't done this. I would certainly volunteer my children if such a study were in place. Parents have been asking the CDC for years, and other organisations.

There are many other studies that show colitis in regressive autism, which is what Andrew Wakefield was reporting:

http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/18791817/reload=0;jsessionid=EBB5E776A2A...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19214283 (from 2009).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19564647 (from 2009).

http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/54/10/987.short (2005).

Those are just a few. Some criticize the fact that there were only 12 children in his case notes and you need more than that to diagnose a new illness, well, Dr. Hans Asperger only had 11 patients in his case notes when he diagnosed Asperger's syndrome.

Mercury was reduced in vaccines, but not removed, and at the same time they added in routine flu vaccines with thimerosal in them, and it's in the Hep B vaccine. Here is the schedule for 2001:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5001a3.htm

And here's the schedule for 2004 with flu vaccine added in:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5316-Immunizationa1.htm

In the UK we also supposedly removed most of the thimerosal but then they added it into other vaccines, like H1N1. It is still present in amounts of 3mcg or less per shot but there many vaccines at frequent intervals and thimerosal has a cumulative effect.

There's nothing wrong with medical hypothises journal. The point of science is that hypothises are discussed and debated constantly, that's the nature of science. If it were to stand still with one viewpoint and refuse to look at opposing evidence, that is not science. The title hypothises suggests that it is a journal that discusses possible theoretical ideas in science, not things that have been 'proven'. If people can't even discuss an issue because it isn't popular, that isn't science.

When Sir Issac Newton discovered gravity, everyone thought he was a nut job.

Likewise, smoking was considered safe and even beneficial for your health a few years ago and people who published anti-smoking studies were called crackpots and there was the same yo-yo effect seen with MMR, studies showing safety, studies showing it's not safe, before the lung cancer/cigarette connection was proven.

I will continue to report on the medical studies on this issue. Maybe in the end they will conclude MMR isn't a concern, maybe they won't. There are all sorts of other issues too, such as pollution, diet, ultrasound scans etc that I am reporting on. (I started with genetics and metabolism and will be continuing on other areas). I won't shy away from vaccines because it isn't PC.