Part 5 in the 14 Studies Series

I apologize. Originally this was going to be another nice, calmly written post like the others in this series, but given the recent H1N1 vaccine hysteria and imminent use of Thimerosal both there and in the seasonal flu shot (a total of 5 flu shots recommended for pregnant women and children), coupled with the US News and World Report article (HERE) with the AAP stating once again (yawn...) that there is no link between vaccines and Autism, that the science is qualitatively and quantitatively complete, and that it has been the most studied item regarding the cause of Autism, blah, blah, blah... I just had to write this angrily.


I have now presented the 14 studies on 3 occasions. Each and every time I do, I get more and more dismayed at the stupidity that is being called conclusive science. I used to be really polite, always professional, always giving the researchers and the nay-sayers the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't do that anymore. You have to willfully ignore and purposefully twist reality in so many directions to come to their conclusion, there's just no way to be nice about it.

So let's take a lookey, shall we? Let's copy and paste this to every yahoo group, every mommy blog, every facebook page. Let's look at what has actually been studied about Thimerosal and the context in which it has. Open the studies. Read them for yourselves. See what is being passed off as science these days.

Remember, each and every one of these studies was conducted and/or funded by someone who promotes, manufactures, endorses, profits from, patents, and/or defends in a court of law, vaccines. And also remember that we have only looked at 1 ingredient of dozens (HERE) and 1 vaccine of 36 recommended (including the prenatal flu shot) HERE.

Now, I'm no scientist, but I am quite logical, and one would think that if you were ethical and responsible and promoting or patenting vaccines you would realize your grave conflict of interest in conducting this science and step aside in the name of that science you so often tout your love for. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if you are under investigation for a crime, intended or not, YOU DON'T GET TO DO THE INVESTIGATING!

One would also think the same ethical and responsible people would acknowledge studying only 1 ingredient and 1 injection is thoroughly inadequate to make the sweeping statement vaccines don't cause Autism.

And one would certainly think that if one wanted to find out if vaccines and/or their ingredients were causing Autism, a few basic studies would be conducted immediately.

Like say, maybe you could start with a study of the vaccinated versus never vaccinated to see if there are any health outcome differences?

And then maybe, oh, I don't know, a study of kids who received none of the suspected ingredient compared to those who received different amounts of it, including the highest possible amount all the way through their childhood, including prenatally? That's what my son's 5th grade science book calls having a control group.

And hey, how about a study of the kids who actually regressed into Autism after their vaccines, examining the hypothesis that for at least some of them Thimerosal damages the immune system and mitochondria for months and then when the triple live virus vaccine (also given with the DTP and polio vaccines and sometimes more) is given at 15-18 months old, they can't process it and succumb to Autism?

Or, hey, hey, how about this? Actually study vaccines in the way they are administered in a real world setting? This whole "usually simultaneous vaccination is incompletely studied at the time of licensure" non-sense (page 33 HERE) just isn't cutting it anymore. We only give routine childhood vaccines simultaneously! How can you possibly say the combination of vaccines we are giving is not causing Autism when you have never studied it?! THIS...IS...NOT...GOOD...ENOUGH!

Or how about identifying kids who are hypersensitive to Thimerosal before injecting them with it, or at this point studying the kids who appear to have been? It says right HERE on the Material Safety Data Sheet you aren't supposed to get this stuff if you are hypersensitive to it. Who IS that? Are you hypersensitive to thimerosal? Am I? How do we know who those people are?!

Or maybe conduct a study explaining to parents how the same Material Safety Data Sheet says you can't flush Thimerosal down a toilet but you can inject it into a pregnant mom or a newborn? Not safe for the sewer system in trace amounts but safe for my baby? Explain this, please! I'd love to hear it, really.

Or what about another study explaining to parents why the same Material Safety Data sheet clearly says Thimerosal is highly reactive with Aluminum and should NEVER be mixed with it because of how toxic they become, yet on the Vaccine Excipient sheet (HERE) there are 5 vaccines given to children every day that do just that?

Or, here's an idea, produce the original data sets for the Verstraeten study (see first study below) so that independent scientists can reproduce your results? I thought good science was reproducible. Where is that data? Why have you hidden it? Locked it up? Destroyed it? Whatever you have done with it? I'm a taxpaying citizen who paid for it. He who has nothing to hide, hides nothing. WHERE IS IT?!

Or, what about getting the participants of the secret Simpsonwood meeting of June 7-8, 2000 to discuss the locked up, destroyed, hidden or who-knows-what-happened-to-them original results of that study (transcript available at Put Children First) under oath to explain exactly what they meant when they made these incriminating comments those fateful days almost 10 years ago?

"The number of dose related relationships [between mercury and autism] are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant." - Dr. William Weil, American Academy of Pediatrics. Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

"The issue is that it is impossible, unethical to leave kids unimmunized, so you will never, ever resolve that issue [regarding the impact of mercury]." - Dr. Robert Chen, Chief of Vaccine Safety and Development, Centers For Disease Control, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

"Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out at eight o'clock for an emergency call and my daughter-in-law delivered a son by c-section. Our first male in the line of the next generation and I do not want that grandson to get a Thimerosal containing vaccine until we know better what is going on. It will probably take a long time. In the meantime, and I know there are probably implications for this internationally, but in the meanwhile I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines." - Dr. Robert Johnson, Immunologist, University of Colorado, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

"But there is now the point at which the research results have to be handled, and even if this committee decides that there is no association and that information gets out, the work has been done and through the freedom of information that will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group. And I am very concerned about that as I suspect that it is already too late to do anything regardless of any professional body and what they say...My mandate as I sit here in this group is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized with DTP, Hepatitis B and if possible Hib, this year, next year and for many years to come, and that will have to be with thimerosal containing vaccines unless a miracle occurs and an alternative is found quickly and is tried and found to be safe." - Dr. John Clements, World Health Organization, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

I'd love to hear them in sworn testimony with the penalty of perjury and jail time talk their way out of this. It would be quite helpful in getting our precious research dollars directed in the most useful way when they couldn't, don't ya think? Save us all a hell of a lot of time, no, not to mention our kids lives?

Oh, I don't know, these are just suggestions that seem to make the most sense if you actually do want to find out the role of vaccines in Autism and other health outcomes. These are just the studies that would seem to answer the question the quickliest and most accurately, but no, these are not the studies we have.

Instead, we have these gems (all of which are accessible at Fourteen Studies along with the post-publication criticism):

With regard to Thimerosal...

1. Do US children receiving some Thimerosal in their vaccines only up to age 7 months (not including prenatal Thimerosal containing vaccines or flu shots) have different health outcomes than those children who received more?

Published answer: We have no idea, but it might cause tics and speech delay.(Verstraeten, Pediatrics, November 2003)

2. Did the discontinuation of Thimerosal in vaccines in Denmark lead to a decrease in Autism?

Published answer: No, rates skyrocketed. Thimerosal must prevent Autism. (That or we changed the diagnostic criteria in 1995, half-way through the study period. Take your pick.)(Madsen, Pediatrics, September 2003)

3. Has the rate of Autism in California decreased since thimerosal was removed from vaccines?

Published answer: No. Again, rates went up. (Too bad there was never a time during this study that thimerosal actually was removed from vaccines. Oops.)(Schecter, AGP, January 2008)

4. Are the rates of Autism different for Italian children who received 62.5 micrograms of Thimerosal versus 137.5 micrograms?

Published answer: No. Shocking, I know. (Tozzi, Pediatrics, February 2009)

5. Did the discontinuation of Thimerosal use in vaccines in Denmark, Sweden and the US lead to a decrease in Autism?

Published answer: No, rates went up, again. Still using faulty Denmark and California data, so study has no basis in reality. (Stehr-Green, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2003)

6. Did children in the UK who all received Thimerosal containing DTP vaccine have different rates of developmental disorders based on when they got the shot (at 3, 4 or 6 months) and how much Thimerosal they contained? (Sorry, this is a personal comment, but WHAT THE HELL?!)

Published answer: No, higher mercury exposure was beneficial in 8 of 9 health outcomes. Seriously. Oh, and they quietly mention it was assoicated with those pesky tics again. (Heron, Pediatrics, September 2004)

7. Did exposure to Thimerosal only up until 7 months of age impact certain neurological outcomes, but not Autism?

Published answer: Yes, but positive and negative health outcomes were reported, like higher IQ performance, but speech delay and tics. (Mercury makes you smart! Who knew?! And now that 3 studies have identified speech delay and tics, do you think maybe that's enough reason to get rid of it?) (Thompson, New England Journal of Medicine, 2007).

8. Did the discontinuation of Thimerosal use in vaccines in Denmark lead to a decrease in Autism? (Didn't we see this already?)

Published answer: No. Rate of Autism increased, again! (This is now 3 studies that show when Thimerosal is reduced, Autism rates go up. It's a freakin neurotoxin! It doesn't HELP prevent Autism! Duh!) It's worth mentioning a re-running of the numbers by SafeMinds indeed did show the rate of Autism went down from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1500. (Hviid, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2004).

9. Do ethyl mercury containing vaccines administered to children raise blood mercury blood levels above safe standards for methyl mercury? (See, we don't know the safe level of ethyl mercury, so we're using methyl mercury standards hoping they're the same. Oops, again.)

Published answer: No, well, except for that 1 baby who got less Thimerosal injected into him and had a significantly high blood level of mercury, which seems to fit the hypothesis that not all babies metabolize mercury at the same rate. (Hey, maybe this could be a hypersensitive baby, eh?) (Pichichero, The Lancet, November 2002).

10. Are Thimerosal and Autism related based on the available studies thus far?

Published answer: No, it appears there are subtle differences between ethyl mercury poisoning via ingestion and injection, so they can't be the same. Oh, but hey, we don't know what ethyl mercury poisoning looks like via injection. Huh. Well, time will tell. Gee, thanks. That's what we parents of children of Autism have a lot of, right? (Nelson, Pediatrics).

11. Does the use of Rhogam shots during pregnancy have a correlation with Autism?

Published answer: No, but this study was funded by the maker of the Rhogam shot, Johnson and Johnson, and a recalculation of the data showed a 71% higher rate of Rh Immune globulin exposure in children with Autism. (Miles, American Journal of Mecial Genetics, April 2007)

And there you have it my friends. Those are the studies that supposedly prove Thimerosal doesn't cause Autism, none of which ever compared the total amount of Thimerosal that children are exposed to both prenatally and throughout their early childhood to those children who never received any. Only 4 of which used kids from the US exclusively, the most vaccinated kids in the world. 3 of which show even in their crappy methodology it is associated with tics and speech delay. 3 of which show the less you use, the higher the rate of Autism, and 2 of which show it's good for you...gives you a better IQ and better fine motor skills.

I said it before and I'll say it again. The science we have thus far is the equivalent of Phillip Morris studying if smoking causes lung cancer by looking only at people who smoke 1, 2 or 3 packs a day and then reporting the less you smoke the more likely you are to get cancer or that the more you smoke, the healthier you are, or better yet that as people stopped smoking altogether, lung cancer rates skyrocketed.

To call these studies pathetic is being too kind. They are fraudulant, and given the fact that they are the reason millions of swine flu and seasonal flu vaccines that will have Thimerosal are now going to be injected into millions of kids and pregnant moms around the world, they are criminal.

Enough is enough! Stop the lies!

Julie Obradovic is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.