Battling Misinformaiton

Battling Misinformation

As you can see for yourself in our Published Studies section, there is a growing body of published science pointing incontrovertibly to several truths:

•	Neurological Disorders (NDs) in children are growing at a rate well in excess of population growth and are not the result of better diagnosis or widening diagnostic criteria.
•	Children with NDs exhibit much higher levels of toxicity in their bodies.
•	The ingredients in vaccines are neurotoxic and are capable of creating many of the medical issues children with NDs are suffering from.

And, yet, the popular press is constantly spreading the same tired myths about autism and other NDs. Namely:

•	There is no known cause and no known cure
•	The link between vaccines and NDs has been disproven
•	Recovered children are almost never acknowledged despite their growing numbers

It’s important for parents to look below the rhetoric of public health officials to understand what is actually true and not true and what has and has not been proven. (Please note that considerably more detail on the controversy surrounding vaccines and autism is available through our sister website, Put Children First.) Specifically:

1.	In the case of autism, it has been proven that we are indeed experiencing a real rise in the number of cases, which means that some external factor must be involved in the case load.

	Commentary:

	The Department of Developmental Services in California is considered to have the best data on the number of autism cases. Their 2002 report slammed the door on the theory that the rise in autism cases is the result of better diagnosis. Excerpt:

		"There is no evidence that a loosening in the diagnostic criteria has contributed to increased number of autism clients...we conclude that some, if not all, of the observed increase represents a true increase in cases of autism in California...a purely genetic basis for autism does not fully explain the increasing autism prevalence. Other theories that attempt to better explain the observed increase in autism cases include environmental exposures to substances such as mercury; viral exposures; autoimmune disorders; and childhood vaccinations."

2.	It has NEVER been shown that the tripling of mercury in the U.S. vaccine schedule and the rise in autism cases in the U.S. are unrelated.

	Commentary:

	There has only been one study ever done analyzing U.S. children and the U.S. vaccine schedule (a schedule far more aggressive than any other country’s). The study was done by the CDC and the results were published in Pediatrics. The conclusion of the study was NEUTRAL. Neutral means that they could neither prove nor disprove the theory that the mercury in vaccines was causing a rise in the cases of autism. Soon after the release of the study, the press began reporting that the study "disproved" the mercury-autism theory. This caused the author of the study to write Pediatrics and explain the results of the study:

	Further, in 2006 the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, at the request of Senator Joseph Lieberman, issued this report which effectively conceded that both the VSD study from Pediatrics and the "Danish Studies" were of poor study design and not reliable in determining whether or not Thimerosal causes autism. As this article from UPI reporter Dan Olmsted noted following the report’s release: "For three years, the CDC has used a study conducted on its own Vaccine Safety Datalink to reassure parents that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism. Now a panel of government-appointed experts says there are "serious problems" with exactly the approach the CDC took." Olmsted interviewed the Chairperson of the NIEHS Committee who was quoted as saying:

		"It's an 'open question' whether anything about vaccines -- timing, dose, preservative -- is related to the rise in diagnoses [of autism]. Some studies are stronger than others. The Verstraeten [Pediatrics] study was an improvement on other studies including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs that limit what we can learn from them.

	Where does that leave us?

	-	The study most often cited "disproving" the Thimerosal-autism connection did no such thing, it had a neutral outcome
	-	That study and the "Danish Studies" have both had their credibility and usefulness recently questioned by the branch of our government in the best position to render a judgment, the NIEHS.

3.	Mercury has NEVER been removed from the National Immunization schedule.

	Commentary:

	Just as the level of mercury in vaccines for children was starting to decline, the CDC added the flu vaccine to its schedule as a mandatory annual shot. Worse, they recommend the shot for pregnant women and children as young as six months old. Because more than 90% of the flu vaccine supply contains Thimerosal and because the flu shot is now a mandatory vaccine on the schedule given every year, a child born today and following the CDC’s schedule could receive 50% or more of the mercury from vaccines that children received at the mid-1990s peak, as UPI chronicles in this recent story, Mercury Creeps Back in.

	Unfortunately, reporters continually write stories assuring parents that mercury has been removed from childhood vaccines. It has not been removed, the source of mercury has simply moved. For a fascinating survey that demonstrates Americans do not realize mercury is still in vaccines, check out PutChildrenFirst’s flu shot survey.

4.	Mercury in vaccines is the only component of vaccines ever studied (See #2 above). No studies whatsoever have ever been done to consider if the growth in total vaccines given to children from 10 in the mid-1980s to 36 today is responsible for the rise in NDs. To say that the "vaccine-autism" theory has been disproven has no basis in fact.

	Commentary:

	Thimerosal has always seemed an obvious culprit for causing NDs because it is made from mercury, a well-known neurotoxin. However, vaccines have many potent ingredients that could harm children neurologically including aluminum, formaldehyde, MSG, and live viruses, to name a few. To ONLY consider thimerosal from vaccines in causing NDs is like only considering sugar from a cupcake in causing weight gain without considering transfats or other sources of calories. Consider the following:

	•	Before vaccines are added to the CDC’s schedule, they are tested individually and children are typically tracked for 6 weeks. Using this methodology, conditions like autism, ADHD, or autism, which are typically delayed onset, would never be captured.
	•	Worse, vaccines are never tested in combination, which means the practice of giving six vaccines at once has never been tested for safety.
	•	Because the number of vaccines on the schedule grew simultaneously with the amount of mercury in vaccines, saying "a mercury-free vaccine is safe" is not a proven truth, we simply do not know.

5.	Because mercury is still in vaccines for children and because children today receive 260% more vaccines (36 vs. 10) than children in the mid-1980s (when rates of NDs were far lower), the only reasonable way to prove whether or not vaccines are a primary driver of ND growth is to compare the rates of NDs between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

	Commentary:

	This has never been done, don’t ask us why. Until now. The results of our recent survey comparing rates of NDs between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is available here.

Published science is confusing. Epidemiology is a fancy word meaning statistical analysis of population level data. Biological science is the study of the body and what’s in the body. Biological science to date overwhelmingly supports the position that NDs are caused by toxins and the environment.

Consider this recently published letter by Michael Wagnitz, a scientist and father of an autistic child:

By Michael Wagnitz

It was reported repeatedly in 2006 that the link between mercury-containing vaccines and autism has been disproven. Yet if one looks at the most recent research coming from some of our major universities, one may draw the opposite conclusion.

What we have learned in the last couple of years is that the underlying medical condition of autism is neuroinflammatory disease. In a study conducted at John Hopkins University, brain tissue from deceased autistic patients was examined. The tissue showed an active neuroinflammatory process and marked activation of microglia cells. Neuroinflammatory disease is synonymous with an activation of microglia cells.

A study done at the University of Washington showed that baby primates exposed to injected thimerosal (50 percent mercury), at a rate equal to the 1990s childhood vaccine schedule, retained twice as much inorganic mercury in their brains as primates exposed to equal amounts of ingested methylmercury. We know from autometallographic determination that inorganic mercury present in the brain, following the dealkylation of organic mercury, is the toxic agent responsible for changes in the microglial population and leads to neuroinflammation.

Recently it was shown that in more than 250 examined patients, atypical urinary porphyrins were almost three times higher in autistic patients than controls. Porphyrins are precursors to heme, the oxygen-carrying component of blood. Mercury inhibits the conversion of porphyrins to heme. When the patients were treated to remove mercury, urinary porphyrins returned to normal levels.

In a study done at the University of Arkansas, autistic children were found to have significantly lower levels of the antioxidant glutathione. Glutathione is the major antioxidant needed for the elimination of mercury at the cellular level. This may explain why some children are more severely affected by thimerosal in vaccines than others.

While all the government-conducted epidemiological (statistical) studies show no link between thimerosal and autism, the clinical studies examining brain tissue, blood, urine and human cells show a completely different picture.

Michael Wagnitz is a Madison resident with more than 20 years of experience as a chemist working with trace metal analysis.

Published: February 27, 2007

Site Map | Privacy Policy