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Originally Posted by willravel
So you (and apparently most other people in this thread) believe there's no research available that shows a causal relationship between mercury and autism/dementia?
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Please link to the research that you claim exists to show this link. What is the considered opinion of reputable medical agencies and organizations?
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Originally Posted by willravel
You aren't aware that the effects of mercury are cumulative, or in other words it builds up over time?
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That's common knowledge. Mercury is dangerous stuff. No doubt about it.
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Originally Posted by willravel
There is mercury in vaccines and flu shots.
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By and large, there isn't. There was some concern that the amount of thimerosal in vaccines could lead to children getting more than the recommended maximum amount of mercury from childhood vaccines. Mercury poisoning is obviously something to be avoided, so the FDA determined that thimerisol should be removed wherever possible. Note that the worry was *mercury poisoning* and *not* autism.
http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm
There. Every vaccine on the list except for one version of the DTaP vaccine and the flu vaccine is thimerisol free. The DTaP has less than a microgram per dose. If you are concerned about mercury in vaccinations for your children, you can just make sure your doctor doesn't use the one containing *trace* amounts of mercury. If you're in the recommended group for flu vaccination, you can use the nasal spray flu vaccine instead of the injected ones - it isn't as effective, though.
The thimerosal issue is an excellent case study in how actual medicine works. Vaccines are invented. Yah. However, there's a problem - they can become contaminated, especially in large multi-dose vials. So a preservative/anti-microbial agent is added - thimerosal. However, in the 90s, the AMA (I think) realized that the amount of thimerosal in standard vaccinations was higher than we would like. So thimerosal is being phased out. They're safer now. Medicine has advanced.
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Originally Posted by willravel
Mercury has been shown repeatedly to cause autism. That is of course the correlation, and it's established biological scientific fact.
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No it hasn't. You have been misinformed. The only people who claim that mercury is definately related to autism are quacks and angry, frightened parents looking for someone to blame for their child's disease.
http://www.autism-society.org/site/P..._whatis_causes
That page also discusses a *possible link* between the MMR vaccine and autism, but that current evidence shows no link...and that there needs to be more research. I agree 100%...more research is probably a good idea. However, based upon the available research to date, neither mercury nor vaccines are prime suspects for the cause of autism. Either could still be shown to be related, but hasn't yet.
(By the way, I don't know much about the site in question, so I hesitate to link to it...but the page seems pretty accurate to me)
Autism is generally believed to be caused (most directly) by abnormalities in the structure of the brain. What causes those abnormalities is still under debate. It could be that mercury is a factor, but that hasn't been scientifically proven, and most research to date seems to point to no relationship. Even so, your kids aren't getting mercury from their vaccines...they're getting it from their fish sticks:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html
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Originally Posted by willravel
While I appreciate that some of you trust your doctors implicitly, it's not wrong to question the experts if you find reasonable fault in their logic. There absolutely is fault in believing, or more importantly purporting as an expert that mercury cannot lead to autism. It can and it has.
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Of course you shouldn't blindly trust anyone. But why do you listen to the quacks over the advice of your doctor, the FDA, the AMA, and established medical fact?
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Originally Posted by willravel
The real question, though, shouldn't be "Can vaccines cause autism?", to which the answer is yes. The real question should be, "Statistically speaking, is one more likely to be exposed to the disease covered by the inoculation, or is one more likely to get autism?" Statistics *seem* to suggest that autism is impossible, but I've demonstrated that's not true. This would suggest that either the pool measured was too small, the test was give poorly, or it was purposefully incorrect (unlikely). A variable statistic on how the mercury in a vaccine can effect someone is not something I'm willing to gamble with.
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I don't really understand what you're arguing here. You seem to be suggesting that:
1: Vaccines cause an X% increase in the risk of your kid getting autism (This hasn't been shown to be true, at all)
2: Not getting a vaccine causes a Y% increase in the risk of your kid getting the disease in question.
3: X > Y
Therefore, you should not vaccinate you kids. There are lots of problems with this. First, there's no established evidence that X is greater than 0. Second, you have to compare the severity of the diseases in question. Autism is certainly scary, but it doesn't cause death, which many of the diseases kids are vaccinated against can and do. Third, vaccinations are a shared immunity - the more people immunized, the less disease there is to go around and infect unvaccinated people. Remember Polio? It's practically extinct, thanks to the vaccine.
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Originally Posted by willravel
Even beyond that, there's no guarantee that a vaccine will render you immune, and if one can develop an immunity from a shot, one could also develop one naturally.
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Sure, you can develop a natural immunity to a disease by catching it. Assuming it doesn't kill you, that is. The whole point of vaccines is to get the immunity *without* having to experience the actual disease. It doesn't always work, of course, and occasionally a person will get the disease despite being vaccinated. However, their immune system usually does a much better job of fighting off the disease. There's also the possibility of 'booster' shots, which is another topic.
The diseases vaccines are meant to protect us against are *nasty* things, that *kill people*. Even chicken pox and the flu, though of course to a lesser degree than the really bad ones.
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Originally Posted by willravel
But I digress; if you wish to be immunized, do research and make your decision. I've done mine and I'm satisfied that I am not incorrect, so there's no need to preach. I am fortunate that it doesn't take a degree in biology to understand that mercury can cause autism. For more complex questions, I must trust that the experts aren't fucking up.
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Ok, let me sum up my points:
o Mercury exposure has not been show to cause autism. It hasn't even been proven to have a significant correlation.
o Autism is associated with physical abnormalities in the brain. What causes those abnormalities is not known at this time. Mercury is on the list of possible causes that are being investigated, but most researchers think it isn't a very likely cause.
o Most modern vaccines contain no mercury. If you're concerned, then ask your doctor not to give you or your child any vaccine with thimerosal or mercury.
o Vaccines are safe, and effective. However, they are neither 100% safe nor 100% effective. Bad reactions are rare, but can occur. You should be informed as to what they are before getting vaccinations. Autism is *not* one of the known side effects of vaccination.
o You get more mercury from eating fish regularly than you would from getting vaccinated regularly. If you're concerned about mercury (and you should be), you should check the fish you eat against mercury contamination charts freely available on the internet, and consider changing your diet to safer fish. You might also consider supporting organizations and politicians who will work to reduce the amount of mercury being released in our environment.
o Science works. Use it. Don't listen to the quacks.
o I can't spell thimerosal correctly.