Wampum

Tell Me Why

Today is my younger son, Bobby’s, tenth birthday. This morning was my turn to change Bobby’s diaper. Bobby is autistic and despite Herculean effort on his part and ours, he has not yet been toilet trained. As I changed his diaper, I noticed that our diaper supply was low. Off I went to the drug store to purchase a new supply.

While I was gone, Bobby broke one of his favorite CDs. He snapped it into several pieces. That particular disc was very precious to Bobby. As Bobby’s autism prevents him from talking, he communicated in the only way available to him. He took the pieces to his 11 year old brother and held them out hoping that my older son could fix the problem. Bobby's brother took the pieces and, not unreasonably, threw them in the trash can.

Bobby fished the pieces out of the trash and again presented them to his brother. The older boy patiently tried to explain that the CD was broken and could not be fixed. He suggested that because it was Bobby’s birthday, perhaps he would get a replacement as a present. He then threw the pieces away again.

When Bobby presented the pieces a third time, his brother, quickly losing patience, raised his voice in explaining that he could not fix the CD.

That caused Bobby to go into a tantrum. He hit, kicked, scratched, and pinched his brother while wailing loudly.

My older son is experienced at dealing with extreme autistic behaviors. He is under strict and difficult rules of engagement. He is permitted to defend himself but he is not to hurt Bobby in the process.

As I walked in the door carrying diapers, I heard Deb’s footsteps on the stairs heading for the trouble and also heard my older son screaming at Bobby. He was holding Bobby by the wrists while trying to dodge Bobby’s kicks.

I hustled Bobby off to his room to calm down, suffering only one superficial scratch in the process, and retuned downstairs to find out what happened. My older son was nursing two long red scratches on his forearm and a large bruise on his leg. He was not in a mood to be understanding of his brother.

My older son has had to live with his brother’s autism for most of his life. While he is generally accepting of the situation, he has a number of ways to express frustration. “Why do I have to live in the United States of Bobby?” is one of his favorites. “I am tired of Bobby being the sun while I am just a planet orbiting him,” is another. Today, he simply asked, “Why did I have to have an autistic brother?”

The answer to that question is not simple. I have never known how to answer it. Perhaps part of the answer is below.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Salon, suggests that much of the autism epidemic is caused by mercury in vaccines. He argues that the epidemic was preventable but that government agencies were asleep at the switch. In addition, he argues that those same government agencies, along with Big Pharma, and the vaccination community hid the fact that mercury in vaccines has caused tens of thousands of children to suffer brain damage. ( Seeing the Forest and Susie are also writing about the Kenney article).

In the early 1990s, additional vaccinations were added to the normal childhood regimen. Kennedy writes:

Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines.

Various governmental bodies have established different standards for the level of mercury exposure that is considered safe.

The EPA standard is 0.1 micrograms of mercury per kilogram of body weight per day. The FDA set its standard at 0.3 micrograms per kilogram per day. The CDC set the bar at 0.4.

In 1991, the Hepatitis B vaccine was added to the schedule. Each of those shots (a total of three injections) contained 12.5 micrograms of mercury. The first of those shots was given within 24 hours of birth. Thus, a newborn baby weighing 4 kilograms (almost 9 pounds) had more than than 31 times the EPA mercury limit, 10 times the FDA limit, and 7 times the CDC limit of mercury injected into his or her body on their first day of life.

It was even worse when a baby was two months old. A combination of vaccines exposed each two-month old baby to 62.5 micrograms of mercury. If the baby weighed 5 kilograms (11 pounds) at two months, he or she received 125 times the EPA limit, 41 times the FDA limit, and 31 times the CDC limit in one day. Forty million American infants were exposed to those doses of mercury. Kennedy notes:

Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.

Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

There is ample evidence that exposure to mercury is related to autism. Laboratory science by Dr. Richard Deth of Northeastern University has identified the mechanism by which mercury causes autism. The full study is here (pdf).

Epidemiological evidence also exists. Kennedy writes:

Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

The dramatic rise in the number of autistic kids has been documented by reams of anecdotal reports (ask any elementary special ed teacher or school administrator) as well as by a number of studies. The California study by the Mind Institute at UC Davis, , the CDC study of Metro Atlanta, and other studies all support the notion that the incidence of autism has increased dramatically.

Some argue that the apparent increase in the prevalence of autism is not the result of an actual increase in incidence, but, rather, is the result of changing definitions and better diagnosis. That argument, however, fails to answer one obvious question. With the current definition of the spectrum and the current diagnostic criteria, where are all the autistics born before we increased the mercury exposure in vaccines? Kennedy writes:

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?"

The fact is that regardless of whether we use old or new definitions of the autism spectrum, and regardless of whether new or old diagnostic criteria are used, the incidence of autism is much higher in the age cohort that received the most mercury than in any other cohort. In addition, some European countries that eliminated thimerosal from vaccines before the number of mercury containing shots increased have not had the dramatic growth in autism rates experienced in the US and the UK.

Kennedy summarizes some of the other evidence of causation:

Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

I await the study that shows declining rates. Declining rates of autism are a good thing in and of themselves. Any such decline will be strong evidence that mercury was part of the problem.
Perhaps the most interesting evidence comes not from a scientist but from a reporter:

In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

Kennedy makes a compelling case that mercury in vaccines caused a vast increase in the incidence of autism. He also argues that that link has been covered up by public health officials, Big Pharma, and the vaccination community. A more complete account of both points is contained in David Kirby’s book Evidence of Harm. Kennedy:

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed.

On some level, it is understandable that those groups would want to keep the truth hidden. Big Pharma, and its political allies such as Bill Frist, do not want the drug companies to pay for the damaged caused by putting mercury in vaccines. The CDC and the FDA do not want the blame for increasing infant’s exposure to mercury without first determining the safety. Vaccine advocates fear that admitting that any vaccine harmed a lot of children will cause parents to not vaccinate their kids, thereby reducing or eliminating herd immunity and setting the stage for outbreaks of various diseases.

There is no doubt that vaccines are one of the great advances of modern medicine and that the development of vaccines has eliminated an untold amount of illness, death and suffering from the world. I am very pro-vaccination.

Nonetheless, truth carries its own reward. The fear caused by admitting that vaccines caused autism but noting that the mercury has now been removed from the shots is nothing compared to what will happen if the public learns that the public health community caused brain damage to our kids and then tried to cover it up. Credibility is a fragile commodity.

The damage has already been done. My son, and tens of thousands like him, are autistic and will remain so. If mercury exposure in vaccines causes autism, the public health community should simply admit it, note that it has removed the mercury, and try to help those kids who have suffered brain damage.

Why does my older son have to have an autistic brother? I do not think I will tell him just yet. Eleven years old is a bit young to learn that he his brother's autism might have been caused because we were conscientious in taking Bobby to the Doctor to get all of his shots but the government was not conscientious in protecting Bobby from brain damage caused by injecting large amounts of poison into his small body.

If that is the case, I expect that such a revelation will cause him, like his mother and me, to alternate between being very, very angry and being very, very sad. No eleven year old boy should have to go through that.

Note: This post has been edited since it was originally posted. Thanks Eric for posting it when I could not. Thanks also for fixing the site.

Update:

Salon has issued some corrections to its article. The paragraph concerning infants receiving 187 times the EPA limits has been corrected to read:

Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 40 percent greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.

As I consider it, neither the original not the correction make a lot of sense. The EPA limit on mercury is stated as 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day.

With regard to mercury in infant vaccines, it makes little sense to average the exposures across a long period of time. If mercury exposure from vaccines causes autism, it will likely be the result of bolus doses.

Consider, for instance, a person who drinks 180 glasses of wine over a six month period. If that wine is consumed one glass per day, the person is a moderate drinker and the wine is likely to have beneficial health effects. If the drinker consumes all 180 glasses in one night, he is a binge drinker and is likely to die from alcohol poisoning.

Averaging mercury exposure acquired in a few large doses over an extended period of time may well miss the harmful effects.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at June 16, 2005 06:15 PM | TrackBack