Conspiracy With a Side of Haste

Freedom of the press took another nose dive today. Good thing, I was otherwise going to have to get my daily jolt of paranoia from a recycled source.

Speaking of compromises and the press, maybe my Biased Much post below was reaching a bit, as Ep pointed out. She is correct in that, in my fervor, I slipped into a Republican-style technique of using shoddy evidence to light fireworks. People then focus on the fireworks. I apologize.

However, the NY Times article on parents vs. Thimerosal is far from faultless. Here is what an acquaintance, Carolyn Weissberg, had to say about it:

The article has many factual errors.

For example, in RFK's 66 page research paper referred to below, and which probably prompted this piece trying to indirectly discredit it, there is a lengthy discussion of Merck and how they claimed they had taken thimerosal out of the newborn infant vaccine in September 1999, but did not until October 2001. This article pretends that thimerosal was out of vaccines by 2001 except in miniscule amounts.

This New York Times article trivializes the congressional hearings that said the CDC was "asleep at the switch." Please read this 66-page research paper with 120 footnotes for details. It refutes every spurious point. Unlike the New York Times article, this research paper goes into great detail about science, instead of relying on attempts to discredit people personally and to make the parents of autistic children seem to be a bunch of idiot lemmings following chelating doctors off a cliff because they canÂ’t accept that "maybe cell phones or diet soda did this to these children."

http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/AutismHgPolitics_6_23.pdf

The research paper has over 120 footnotes. It covers everything, including the Danish studies and others that have been manipulated. For example, the Danish in 1992 only counted autism cases that were HOSPITALIZED! About 16 percent? How many autism cases do you know that are hospitalized? They then banned or reduced thimerosal. Then, in the mid 90's, they counted ALL autism cases, not just those that were hospitalized. All of a sudden, they had 4 times as many autism cases! But less thimerosal. Thus, less thimerosal=more autism! Talk about Junk Science! This article sounds like it was written by the pharmaceutical industry.

I'm about ready to emigrate from a country that could continue to poison children around the world rather than face facts and start working toward prevention and cure. Of course, thimerosal and environmental mercury do not cause ALL autism. Of course there are charlatans out there preying on the hopes of parents by coming up with outlandish treatments. No wonder. When mainstream medicine won't acknowledge results, some of us have seen with our own eyes, we are going to go out of the mainstream.

The research shows that thimerosal injection rates highly correlated with autism rates. And the NY Times' article reminds me of whitewashes on tobacco 40 years ago. When are we going to catch on? These scientists know this is true, but they think that 1 in 150 people, and 1 in 80 boys getting autism is WORTH it to prevent the deaths that might occur without the vaccines. They think people are too stupid to get vaccinated if they find out that some vaccines have problems. Instead of just getting the thimerosal out of the vaccines!

I personally feel indebted to all the parents who have fought to bring this issue to the forefront in the last decade, for I'm sure my son's case would be much more severe had some of his vaccines not had thimerosal, only due to their efforts.

Again, I don't necessarily think Thimerosal caused Leelo's autism, because I've been reviewing videos of him as a baby and he seems slightly odd from birth. But it couldn't have helped, either, if he has a genetic predispositions exacerbated by mercury exposure. Who knows how I'd feel if he'd experienced a dramatic regression at 15-18 months, as is so common. To paraphrase an immunologist friend-of-friend, I don't think thimerosal is the cause, but I also can't believe that some idiots decided to use mercury as a preservative for childhood vaccines. It was probably someone in marketing.