Does mercury cause Autism?

The study is a joke.

The CDC is a joke.

They knew the answer they must find before they started the study.

Mercury is poison.

They know it and you know it.

You are seeing a giant CYA operation in full mode and fully funded by billion dollar vaccine producing pharmaceutical corporations and our government.

You really are not guessing about vaccinating causing big problems-you know it is true.

What stops most people from believing it is they just can't believe our government would have a hand in hiding it.

I don't think aliens are visiting earth and the government is hiding it.

I don't believe JFK was killed by the CIA and it is being covered up.

I do believe vaccines are damaging thousands of children and adults for that matter and the government is helping to cover it up.

The poster blackdoggietoes below is an example of the spin big pharma has been able to sell to many otherwise logical intellegent people. Somewhow the relationship of cause and effect is suspended. There are hundreds of scientists and mountains of data that dispute the conclusions of the studies he sites. Some of the studies supposedly showing vaccines are safe and thermasol is harmless actually have data inside the study that suggests it is neither safe or harmless. In other words the conclusion of the study does not match what the data in the study supports! I didn't see where it said in his post that vaccines are safe. That is because that would be an outright lie.

They wish to mire people down in the thermasol debate when the vaccine safety crowd like myself contend there are numerous dangerous substances in vaccines not just thermasol. We don't accept the premise that you must sacrafice thousands of childrens futures based on the threat that the boggie man will get you if you don't play russian roullette with your childrens lives. We believe SAFER vaccines can be created and a SAFER vaccination schedule should be implemented.

The age range was 7-11 years old. I.Q. stabilizes at 7 yrs.

I learned this from a workshop on cognitive and mental abilities. You would have to be mentally impaired not to do well on the tests given. I did not see them include any autistic kids either. My autistic son is 5 and can pass those tests that were shown. One of the first things they teach in school are colors and shapes. By the time they reach 3 grade, most children would pass the tests.

This study was designed to mislead the public. Any study can be manipulated to reach a certain conclusion.

I do not believe in studies from government agencies anymore. They took out thimersol but added 2 more vaccines to the already overzealous schedule. This is one of the reasons why the autism rates are going up.

First came the reports that ADHD is rising.

Next came the reports that autism is rising.

ADHD is in the same category of symptoms as autism.

Thimerisol is still in flu shots which they are campaigning heavily for. The CDC is recommending that pregnant women get the flu shots. Why would you give a pregnant woman any vaccines or drugs?

Does anybody else see the correlation between increasing the number of childhood vaccines and development disorders

It is possible that some kids react negatively to the immunization, whereas most kids turn out just fine. However, there are many theories about autism, including a drug often given to a mother during delivery called Pitocin. The truth is, nobody really knows. When you read a study, you have to read it critically to see if it's valid. To figure out which of the two studies was the best, look at sample size and methods. All studies have flaws (which is why there are so many conflicting studies), especially medical ones where a flawless study would be unethical (ie, injecting a bunch of kids with high mercury immunizations to see the results). Also, look to see if the study is a correlation. Correlations do NOT prove cause. It just means that two things are related. An example of a correlation is eight legs and spiders. All spiders have 8 legs, but spiders do not cause 8 legs. Plus, there are other creatures with 8 legs. So a study that says all kids with autism have had immunizations does not prove that immunizations cause autism. I hope that makes sense. It is kind of hard to explain online.

Just because they removed the thimerisol does not mean the they are safe! There are other dangerous chemicals in vaccines! Look Why don't we just test our children before they get these vaccines to make sure if they are healthy. That there are no health problems! Then if something does happen they can't say it's a coincidence, that they hade some other health problem that just so happened to appear at the time of the vaccine!( Which I think is Bull, and a way to get out of paying compensation). I quess that is why they don't test kids before hand, huh! the parent would have proof they were healthy and had no conditions!

There definitely needs to be more 3rd party studies done. But either way, vaccines should not be required by law to attend school. It doesn't give parents a choice in their kids health. I would like the option to refuse, especially if later it is widely accepted in the medical community that certain ingredients or a combination there of causes autism. And I had no choice and was a part of doing this to my child by taking them to get this done?! The Guilt! It's a parents responsibility to make these decisions for their children NOT the governments.

Don't be fooled by anyone who says there aren't people lobbying for vacines, and don't believe anything anyone tells you if they do say so, because they are likely to be one of them.

How long did it take for the tobacco industry to come out and admit that cigarettes cause cancer DIRECTLY. They were paying doctors to lie about it for years. Don't think the same thing isn't happening with mercury or any other aspect of vacines, its all about money. Our children are only statistics on paper to them.

Mercury is a poison. The term "Mad Hatter" was coined because they used to use mercury in the process of hat making, to paint the inner lining. The hatters would lick their paint brushes to keep the mercury from drying out, slowly poisoning themselves in the process, but it was so slow it was first mistaken for dementia. They have stopped using mercury to make thermometers, they warn people to eat small amounts of large breed fish like shark because of the high content of mercury that builds up over time in their systems, and yet they have no heartache over pumping children whose brains haven't fully developed yet and pregnant women full of the stuff. There is something that is just not right about that.

I do agree that it is possibly not a direct cause of a disease, unlike cigarettes, but genetics or not, it is a known trigger. There have been so many accounts of children never being the same, you have to take it into account. I mean, really, raise your hand if you think its not a bad thing to inject poison into your system on purpose? Hello! I wouldn't want polio, but I wouldn't want autism, either. There has to be an alternate route to keeping our kids healthy. But it seems to not be worth the cost to some folks.

The famous Oprah taping where the blonde mother throws out her argument against vaccines, warning other parents of the possible danger, have you seen that? The woman's father was a heavily rich CEO, who had vaccine lobbyists bringing him in money, and when his daugher let the bomb drop on Oprah, she was quickly disowned. This man's grandson, for christ sake, not just any statistic, and just like that, it was as if he and his mother no longer existed.

Bottom line, its a poison. Too much of it can cause death.

they only reviewed one drug, what do you mean "cascade"? Autism is definantely not caused by mercury, its a heritable aquired disease that is onset before birth. The CDC is concerned with health, not lobbying nonsense. Be more specific as to what you want to know.

I'm going to lean to the conspiracy theory on this one.

Though to their credit, they did do a "prevalence" report on autism which said it could be related to environmental factors:

http://www.safeminds.org/pressroom/press_releases/...

Thimerosal is an organic compound of mercury and is non-toxic to humans. Used in some cosmetic products, Thimerosal was introduced in the 1930s as a way to keep products from being contaminated by fungus and bacteria (Canada Communicable Disease Report, 2007). On the other hand, mercury is known to be toxic to humans and does cause neurological problems – especially in large doses – but mostly in its organic form called methylmercury and also in its inorganic form that is made of up salts, chlorine, sulphur or oxygen (Pichichero, Cernichiari, Lopreiato, Treanor, 2002). Methylmercury exposure may come from eating contaminated fish containing high levels of the inorganic form of mercury, usually these fish come from areas near pulp or paper mills. Making the conclusion that thimerosal is poisonous to humans on the basis of demonstrable evidence that mercury is poisonous to humans is simply incorrect. The reason is that the human body has a very different way of eliminating these compounds, which just cannot be compared. If you need further proof of this you can research animal (mostly primate) trials that have been done in this area.

Once a vaccine has gone through the purification process in the final stages of manufacturing, the final concentration of thimerosal is extremely small (measured in micrograms) and is then further diluted in the human body once the vaccine has been given and finally excreted in the stool. One of the reasons that this area continues to be studied is that it has been shown through epidemiological studies that one of the characteristics of people who are suspicious of vaccine safety often have concerns about thimerosal.

The link between Autism and vaccines is a whole different story altogether, which is probably why the CDC did not study this area. The Autism-vaccine link, specifically the combination Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) vaccine, can be traced to one piece of research published in 1998 in the Lancet. I am going to try to keep this section of my answer as objective as I can but I find it incredibly difficult. The research itself was poorly done, by poorly I mean wrong and also unethical. Currently Dr. Wakefield, the researcher who did this study, is being investigated by the UK General Medical Council to see if his research was indeed unethical enough to warrant the revoking of his medical license. At any rate, the research investigated the cases of 12 children who were:

[R}eferred to the gastroenterology clinic of the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, United Kingdom, with what was described as chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder. Following a description of the extensive investigation of the cause of these children’s medical illness, the authors hypothesized that the administration of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine could precipitate chronic inflammatory bowel disease that would then lead to autism. This hypothesis was announced to the medical and scientific worlds and the general public via a press conference, at which time, warnings were given that the combination MMR vaccine should not be given to young children because of the risk of development of this condition. Public and scientific controversy ensued. As a result, the number of children receiving measles immunization in the United Kingdom plummeted from 92% to 95% before the announcement to estimates of 60% to 80% coverage

Dr Wakefield had received a relatively large amount of money to find evidence of an association between receipt of immunization and the development of autism in a significant proportion of the children described in the manuscript as part of legal action being taken by the parents of those children against the company that manufactured the MMR vaccine. . . . Dr Wakefield’s hypothesis had not stood the tests of time because other scientists did not confirm his results. Some of his original collaborators had already begun to express doubt concerning the conclusions and his hypothesis had generally been discounted before this story broke in the news . . .

[A]nother manuscript detailing the results of research concerning the cause of autism has generated extensive press coverage in Canada . . . Dr RC Deth clearly indicated his belief that his research supports the argument that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism . . . The manuscript describes a very complex study involving many basic science experiments using neurological cancer cell lines. Generalization of these laboratory results as an explanation of events in the human central nervous system of a child is tenuous at best. They are not sufficient to support the statements made related to thimerosal as the cause of autism” (Embree, 2004)

Part of the problem of the immunization area is that the public, especially parents, do not really get to hear about all of the post marketing studies. Post market studies are conducted on every single pharmaceutical product on the market. Vaccines, however, are marketed more closely because they are so widely used and governments spend so much money on them.

The specific vaccine schedules have been recommended for children at certain ages because longitudinal research has shown how different diseases – diphtheria, polio, measles for example – impact children in terms of the severity and frequency of complications and death. The reason why vaccines are recommended at certain ages is that children are at greater risk of a particular disease at a specific age. There are many, many reasons for this. Another reason why specific diseases are vaccinated against are that they are extremely expensive to treat by way of health care and they are incredibly contagious. Some vaccines are continued to be used in the hope of global eradication of a disease like in the case of smallpox. The next disease that public health agencies are trying to eradicate globally is polio, which is still endemic in developing countries and is imported to developed countries like Canada and the US by international travel. International travel brings the vaccine debate to another issue. We all know how the US sub-prime mortgage fiasco has impacted the global market. Think of diseases in this way. Currently Canada is experiencing an outbreak of mumps on the east coast and also had an outbreak of measles in Ontario – the latter was an imported case of measles. Many of the diseases that we now immunize against are still very much everywhere in poor parts of the world. If we were to stop immunizing or less people immunized themselves and their children it would only be a matter of time before these diseases, which haven’t been seen in any large amount since the introduction of specific vaccines, would start to crop up.