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Exposure to thimerosal, a preservative that contains ethylmercury, during childhood is not a primary cause of autism.
This is the conclusion of a study published in the January Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 65, no. 1) by Robert Schechter, MD, MSc, Immunization Branch and California Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Research and Epidemiology, and Judith K. Grether, PhD, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, of the California Department of Public Health, Richmond. Schechter’s and Grether’s article is entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. By studying time trends in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 65, no. 1) by Robert Schechter, MD, MSc, Immunization Branch and California Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Research and Epidemiology, and Judith K. Grether, PhD, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, of the California Department of Public Health, Richmond. Schechter and Grether’s article is entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. By studying time trends in the prevalence by age and birth cohort of autistic children who were enrolled in the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) from January 1, 1995 through March 31, 2007, the authors found that
“the estimated prevalence of autism for children at each year of age from 3 to 12 years increased throughout the study period”
and that
“the DDS data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines [my emphasis]. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism [my emphasis].
Also in the January Archives of General Psychiatry is an essay, Thimerosal Disappears but Autism Remains, by Eric Fombonne, of the Department of Psychiatry, Montreal Children’s Hospital. Noting that “multiple unfounded theories of causation and corollary ‘treatments’” have arisen since autism was first described in the 1940s, Fombonne writes that “hypotheses on autism-immunization links” have had a “profound impact in the field of autism research and practice and on public health at large.” Indeed: Books claiming a link between vaccines or something in vaccines and autism—journalist David Kirby’s 2005 Evidence of Harm and Jenny McCarthy‘s 2007 Louder Than Words, to name a few—-have been bestsellers and a number of parent-founded advocacy groups have persistently lobbied in support of research about an alleged vaccine-autism link. Parents of young children routinely express fears about vaccinations; parents of autistic children seek, try, and pay for unproven alternative “treatments” based on theories about autism as “mercury poisoning.” As Fombonne writes, these therapies—including chelation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and testosterone suppression—”are of unproven efficacy, and many are dangerous.”
Schechter and Grether begin their article by noting that (1) the prevalence rate of autism diagnoses has increased in recent decades; (2) “young children receive immunizations in the period preceding the typical manifestations or diagnosis of ASD”; and (3) increased exposure to thimerosal has been “postulated to have contributed to the upswing in reported cases of ASD.” In noting (3), Schechter and Grether cite two articles that appeared in Medical Hypotheses, a 2001 article including Sallie Bernard and Lyn Redwood as co-authors, and a 2004 article listing Bernard, Redwood, and Mark Blaxill as co-authors; all three are also members of the Executive Board of Safe Minds, which claims that there is a link between the “dramatic rise in autism rates” and mercury in the form of thimerosal.
Schechter and Grether review the use of thimerosal as a preservative in vaccines. It was used to precent “microbial contamination of vaccines, especially those in multdiose vials, since the 1930s.” In 1997, they write:
“prior to any hypothesis that thimerosal might cause autism, the US Food and Drug Administration, in response to its Modernization Act of 1997, compiled and analyzed a list of vaccines and their thimerosal content. By 1999, it became recognized that, under the recommended childhood immunization schedule, infants at 6 months of age were potentially exposed to cumulative doses of ethylmercury that, using an inexact surrogate benchmark in the absence of data, exceeded safety standards (maximum values of which vary from 65-501 µg) for ingestion of another mercury compound, methylmercury. In July 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the US Public Health Service agreed as a precautionary measure that thimerosal be removed as soon as possible from childhood vaccines while maintaining high vaccination coverage levels of children. By 2000, new lots of all Hib and hepatitis B virus vaccines in the United States contained at most trace amounts of thimerosal. By March 2001, all vaccines in the recommended infant immunization schedule for the United States became available with at most trace amounts of thimerosal; the remaining lots of TCVs [thimerasol-containing vaccine] had expiration dates in 2002. [my emphasis]
The authors reference a number of studies (including the Medical Hypotheses previously noted) that have been published since 1999 that have sought to examine whether exposure to thimerosal in vaccines is associated with autism. Beginning in 2001, the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies concluded in 2003 that evidence “‘favored rejection of a causal relationship between TCVs and autism,’” following a review of epidemiologic data; it was also noted that “‘if rates of ASD continue to increase following the removal of thimerosal, however, then TCVs could not be the primary cause.’”
And an increase in rates of ASD for children born from 1989 through 2003, when exposure to thimerosal has “decreased to its lowest levels in decades,” is what Schechter and Grether have found. Further, since 2004, DDS clients aged 3 – 5 with autism were higher than DDS clients of the same age with “any eligible condition, including autism.” Two reports (a 2001 report by Blaxill and 2006 report by Mark and David Geier) that interpreted the DDS data as supporting thimerosal as a cause of autism are discussed and their limitations: Blaxill’s 2001 report “reflected incomplete ascertainment because children born in more recent years had had a briefer opportunity to e reported compared with children born in earlier years”; the Geiers 2006 study is described as “fundamentally limited because it evaluated the trend in quarterly increases in DDS autism clients” without taking into account the “age of all or new clients or of the population denominator.” In their study, Schechter and Grether specifically measured the prevalence rate according to the birth year or the age of autistic children enrolled in the DDS.
Schechter and Grether further note the limitations of the DDS database: It was designed not to measure the “occurrence of developmental disabilities in the population,” but to keep track of clients’ data. The database does not include all autistic children in California, but only those autistic children “served by the DDS.” And, the resarchers note the lack of “actual data on the maximum or average thimerosal exposure in California for comparison with trends in autism”; a child can be exposed, for instance, be exposed to thimerosal in utero if his or her mother is exposed to vaccines or Rho(D) immune globulin. As Schechter and Grether note, “these limitations and strengths are shared by other analyses of time trends” that use the DDS data—including studies that have concluded that there is a link between thimerosal and autism. As Fombonne writes in his commentary in the Archives of General Psychiatry, the results of Schechter’s and Grether’s study are all the more significant because the DDS data has been “systematically used by proponents of the thimerasol hypothesis to argue that the rising number of children accessing these services—or the “epidemic” of autism—was linked to the increasing exposure to ethylmercury of US children occurring in the 1990s through the changes in the immunization schedule.” Schechter and Grether provide a “clear and unambiguous test” that shows that the decline in autism rates predicted by proponents of the thimerosal hypothesis did not occur.
Just to repeat: Exposure to thimerosal during childhood is not a primary cause of autism.
83 days ago
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I am curious…which government entity oversees the amount, or lack thereof, of thimerosal in vaccines?
1228 days ago
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1357 days ago
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1393 days ago
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1442 days ago
[...] British Peer, Lord Hodgson, who is sponsoring Kirby’s visits, has a particular interest in thimerosal/thiomersal, the mercury-based preservative that has been pointed to (contrary to the scientific evidence) as a [...]
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-07-05-oppose_x.htm
http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_deadlyimmunity.html
1 Immunization Safety Review, Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorder, IOM 2001, pp. 31-37 viewed at: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309076366/html/ and Autism A.L.A.R.M. by the AAP and CDC
http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org/screening/Autism%20downloads/AutismAlarm.pdf.
2 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Telephone Interview with Boyd Haley, April 9, 2005. See also Leo Trasande, Public health and economic consequences of methyl mercury toxicity to the developing brain, Environ Health Perspect 113:590-596 (2005) (The research found the IQ losses linked to mercury range from one-fifth of an IQ point to as much as 24 points. The study showed about 4 percent of babies, or about 180,000, are born each year with blood mercury levels between 7.13 and 15 micrograms per liter. That level of mercury, the researchers concluded, causes a loss of 1.6 IQ points. The study found that between 316,588 and 637,233 children each year have cord blood mercury levels > 5.8 μg/L, a level associated with loss of IQ. The resulting loss of intelligence causes diminished economic productivity that persists over the entire lifetime of these children. This lost productivity amounts to $8.7 billion annually (range, $2.2-43.8 billion; all costs are in 2000 US$). See also Grandjean P, Cognitive deficit in 7-year-old children with prenatal exposure to methylmercury, Neurotoxicol Teratol. 19(6):417-28 (1997) (“[m]ercury-related neuropsychological dysfunctions were most pronounced in the domains of language, attention, and memory, and to a lesser extent in visuospatial and motor functions. The effects on brain function associated with prenatal methylmercury exposure therefore appear widespread, and early dysfunction is detectable at exposure levels currently considered safe”). See also, CBS News, Study: IQ Loss From Mercury Costly, March 1, 2005. Accessed online June 15, 2005 at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/01/health/main677206.shtml.
The people that blindly believe what is told to them!! The tobacco companies did the same thing when damning evidence came out about the deadly dangers of cigarettes. Hired scientists to come up and out with BOGUS reports to create doubt and confusion but the proof is in the pudding people, deny it if it makes you feel better. The fact of the matter is, there is a cause and effect to everything, I’ve read some comments above that were quite rude and made to suggest that anyone concerned with their child’s well being and this “autism vaccine thing” was “crazy”. Read REAL reports not paid for by the people whose pockets have the greatest interest in this matter! Oh and thank GOD that “your” child didn’t have to suffer the consequences of greed.
Maybe its not thimerisol, but its still the vaccine.
Maybe the doses of the vaccine are sometimes
higher in some vaccines, maybe kids are exposed
to environmental toxins that when mixed with
the vaccines, its just too much. I think we should
still focus on the vaccine, since these kids are getting sick like the day after they get vaccinated
and before that they are perfectly healthy. Im not one of those people that thinks you should discount anectodal evidence. Usually where theres smoke theres fire. The normal reaction to something like this would be to pick apart the scenarios I mention until theyve been exhausted.
The only thing in my mind keeping people from doing that, especially when childrens lives are at stake, is usually other competing agendas. LIKE MONEY. Money usually makes people lose all perspective on life and whats really important, LIKE OUR CHILDRENS HEALTH. CORPORATIONS, GOVERNMENT, LAWSUITS, etc. always have agendas that dont take into account the individual. They lose sight of whats really important, and they start saying things like if you cant prove it, then shut up. Or if all kids arent getting sick then its not the vaccine. Instead of looking for excuses not to do anything, lets just do the obvious, rule out the vaccine first, it would be alot cheaper to do that, then to have a 2 billion dollar slush fund laying around just for lawsuits.
1465 days ago
[...] do TV, ultrasounds, insufficient vitamin D, air pollution, a mother having the flu while pregnant, mercury, have to do with each [...]
My take said: “He’d still be on meds, if I had listened to the doctors.”
Then My Take wrote: “A last note, I find your use of the title “PhD” after your name a little misleading and irresponsible considering the purposes of this blog. I thought it would surely be relevant to children or health issues in some way. Some others may be assuming this and not going all the way to read your profile to understand you are no expert in these fields. Besides in literature, which I am not belittling, I just think you should perhaps make that clear when voicing your opinions to millions on line.”
Sounds inconsistent to me. First you state you didn’t listen to some MD’s (because they didn’t understand your child). Then you state that someone with a PhD should be more demonstrative about they’re lack of formal education in certain fields because it could mislead.
I’m not sure based on your conflicting statements, whether you understand the inconsistency of those statements. You didn’t listen to those with the “proper” formal training, and then complain about another person for lack of former training. Which is it?
One thing typically found in folks who have earned a PhD is that they have learned to be critical thinkers. Thus, the reason I find your logic inconsistent.
signed,
CS, PhD (Economics)
They never removed Thimerasol!! Check the package insert.
1473 days ago
[...] several months, more and more scientific studies have added evidence that disputes a link between thimerosal and rising autism rates, and that link autism to mercury. Concurrently, a number of studies offer further evidence about [...]
1482 days ago
[...] have been more and more studies refuting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and also between thimerosal and rising autism rates. More and more studies are being done that point to a complex web of genetic factors in autism. [...]
I don’t believe the government always tells the truth (wmds anyone?)…a lot of these “studies” are performed by government agencies.
I know pharmaceuticals are huge business (largest lobbying group, no?).
Also, do you think they would easily admit to vaccines causing neurological problems? That would just result in a lack of vaccinations and more problems. They wouldn’t want that, and who knows how far they’d got to prevent it.
The government, CDC, and FDA look at large numbers, not the individual. I consider two numbers: both of my boys.
I know something happened to my perfect baby way back between 1997-2000. (when he received too much exposure to mercury in vaccines…of course any, to me would be too much). I also know now – he’s ten and has Aspergers and major Sensory processing issues. And I’ve learned the hard way, that the doctors and hospitals don’t have the answers…they medicate, which was the worst thing for my son. He’s doing SO much better now on physical activity, social activity, OT, PT, and something to help him sleep. He’d still be on meds, if I had listened to the doctors.
All people have different sensitivities to different things depending on their body composition, so it would make sense that vaccines should not be a “one size fits all” . The CDC does this and then allows for a limited compensation program for when they don’t. Why not alter the vaccination schedule to make it safer? They should not contain mercury EVER (when they don’t need to). They should be given on a more conservative, safer schedule (not to save trips to the doctors office).
Really, the US is so full of healthy people…we must be doing everything right following these fully supported health guidelines the government feeds us. (please note the sarcasm)
I do not understand why people feel the need to defend the “vaccines are not linked to Autism” theory so vehemently, like you are. I could understand it better if you were a medical professional that performed studies that supported such information…where are they? Vaccines and toxins aren’t officially linked by the government “yet”. Reports are inconclusive. Of course parents are desperate to figure out what happened to make their child change…like I am. I am new getting into this debate, but it’s pretty obvious to me from the faulty, incomplete evidence…it really is unclear what vaccines could do to different people with different genetics. Perhaps for your child it wasn’t the some causation…which is why it doesn’t make sense to make the connection, when it may to others.
Currently, I am not for either “side”. I am for valid, thorough, unbiased evaluations to be completed and significant actions to be taken accordingly.
A last note, I find your use of the title “PhD” after your name a little misleading and irresponsible considering the purposes of this blog. I thought it would surely be relevant to children or health issues in some way. Some others may be assuming this and not going all the way to read your profile to understand you are no expert in these fields. Besides in literature, which I am not belittling, I just think you should perhaps make that clear when voicing your opinions to millions on line.
1501 days ago
[...] Health and Environment in the March 30th Denver Post. Read the rest here. I’ll also note that Exposure to thimerosal during childhood is not a primary cause of autism—-and that, when it comes to autism, it’s not the vaccines. Tags: asd, asperger, autism, [...]
1505 days ago
[...] the final say. Just in the past year, there has been more and more evidence refuting a link between thimerosal and rising autism rates, and more and more studies pointing to a complex web of genetic factors in autism. And yet, again [...]