Re: Autism - In the Genes not in vaccines

dquixote1217,

There is NO link between mercury and autism, or vaccines and autism. At least two large, well-controlled scientific studies have compared thousands of children who were vaccinated with thousands who were not, and found that the rates of autism were identical. This means that vaccines are irrelevant to autism. We do not yet know what causes autism, but the Autism Genome Project has found two suspect genes so far. It is likely that other genes will be found, as well as other contributing factors, but vaccines and mercury have been effectively ruled out as causes. It’s time for us to move on, and abandon the mercury and vaccine hypotheses.

Thimerosal (mercury) has been removed from 95% of all vaccines since 1999. If this form of mercury caused autism, then autism rates should have gone down significantly by now, but the rates have stayed the same. This strongly implies that thimerosol has nothing to do with autism either. Thimerosol is poorly absorbed by the human body and is excreted easily. One of the few vaccines that still contain mercury is the flu vaccine. The amount of thimerosol in a flu shot is 25 mcg, which is a little more than what is in an average can of tuna (18 mcg), except that the mercury in tuna is much more dangerous, because it is methylmercury, the toxic kind. Methylmercury is readily absorbed by the body and eliminated slowly. Even so, we can eat a can of tuna a week and still be safe from mercury poisoning. So the thimerosol in the flu shot is a trivial and non-toxic amount.

Vaccines in general are very, very safe—far safer than the diseases they prevent us from catching, but a few people do have very serious complications from vaccination. For example, the smallpox vaccine has a mortality rate of 1 or 2 people per 1,000,000 people vaccinated. Considering that the disease of smallpox has a mortality rate of 30%, the risks of vaccination are far outweighed by the benefits. All of our other common vaccines have excellent benefit-to-risk ratios as well.

Regarding the recent monetary award that was given to the family of the unfortunate girl with the rare mitochondrial disease, the NIH did NOT state that vaccines cause autism, but rather that the vaccines the girl received MAY have exacerbated her rare condition, and MAY have contributed to “autism-like symptoms” she developed. This fits with what we know about vaccines: they are very safe for most people, and they rarely harm someone.

references:

http://www.nih.gov