Thimerosal
2009

Autism Drug Lupron: Father-and-son team's crusade shows cracks
Chicago Tribune
By Steve Mills and Tim Jones
May 21, 2009
"Dr. Mark Geier has, he says, solved the riddle of autism. He says he has identified its cause and, in the powerful drug Lupron, found an effective treatment — what he calls a 'major discovery.' But behind Geier's bold assertion is a troubling paper trail that undercuts his portrayal of himself as a pioneer tilting against a medical establishment that refuses to embrace his novel ideas. Time and again, reputable scientists have dismissed autism research by Geier and his son, David, as seriously flawed. Judges who have heard Mark Geier testify about vaccines' harmful effects have repeatedly called him unqualified, with one describing his statements as 'intellectually dishonest'..."

Another Nail in the Coffin for the Thimerosal-Autism Thesis
PointofLaw.com
May 14, 2009
"Maryland's High Court confirmed its intermediate appellate court and made it more difficult for plaintiffs to qualify as expert witnesses in vaccine cases. In a suit against vaccine maker Wyeth, the Blackwell family claimed that their son's autism and mental retardation were caused by thimerosal-containing vaccines given when the boy was young. However, attorneys for Wyeth asserted that the scientific community generally does not accept the causal connection between thimerosal and autism and said the family's five experts were not qualified to testify under the state's version of the 'Frye rule.' The court held that none of the five expert witnesses had sufficient "knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, primarily in the field of epidemiology, to proffer reliable expert testimony on matters of complex and novel scientific inquiry. ..."
Vaccine Bill Has Passions Flaring: A face-off over a measure once believed to be dead
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL)
April 22, 2009
"Florida pediatricians are doing battle in the final days of the state's annual lawmaking session, trying to head off the passage of a law they say will create the least protective immunization standard in the country. 'If this thing goes we'll be the laughingstock of the nation,' said Dr. Jerome Isaac, a Sarasota pediatrician and the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Florida chapter. 'It's simple. If we do this, children will die.' The proposed law would ban the ingredient thimerosal, a mercury-derived preservative some people believe causes autism, from vaccines given to pregnant women and children 4 and under. It would also allow parents to delay giving children vaccines until they enter school. Federal standards call for vaccinations beginning at birth..."
Vaccine Study Backs Safety of Chemical
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 26, 2009
"A new study of about 1,400 children exposed to thimerosal in routine vaccinations during the 1990s adds further evidence to the safety of the mercury-based preservative for children. Brain-function tests of the children who received two different levels of the preservative via routine inoculations revealed only one case of autism 10 years later, and that was in the group that received a lower level of thimerosal. The study, published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..."
2008
Blog: Autism and vaccines, Chapter 10,000
Los Angeles Times Blog: Booster Shots
October 1, 2008
"Haven't read enough about autism lately? Even if you have -- and we're betting that you have -- you might nonetheless head on over to Scienceblogs.com for their ScienceBlogs Book Club, which right now is a multi-blogger review of a new book on the vaccine-autism brouhaha. 'Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure' by Dr. Paul A. Offit (Columbia University Press, 2008) examines the rise of the autism-vaccine theory after the (later-debunked) research of the British surgeon Dr. Andrew Wakefield (you can read a summary of that research here) and a second assertion, by parent advocacy groups, that use of the mercury preservative thimerosal in vaccines was to blame for a rise in autism cases. Offit, who is chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says that he was driven to write the book after study upon study failed to find an autism-vaccine link -- and yet, as a result of those studies, the press took the matter up and continues to present the issue as if it were a controversy. It's not, he says -- at least not a scientific one..."
The Risks of Skipping Kids' Vaccines
MSN Health & Fitness
September 2008
"Before the days of vaccinations and antibiotics, early childhood used to be an especially risky time. Today, as many deadly or permanently debilitating diseases slip into the realm of forgotten history, many parents seem more concerned about the potential dangers of vaccinations than about the diseases themselves. In previous decades, the biggest concern was vaccination-related mercury exposure from the preservative thimerosal, which has since been removed from the pediatric version of most vaccinations..."
Not More, Just Different
Economist
April 10, 2008
"Fashion is a strange thing, and many fields are susceptible to it—not least, medicine. There has, for example, been a vogue (among commentators, if not among doctors) to ascribe the rising number of cases of autism diagnosed over the past couple of decades to childhood vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella. That this is fashion rather than reality is suggested by the fact that the explanation proffered in Britain has been that such vaccines provoke an immune response that damages the nervous system, whereas Americans have blamed residual mercury in the same vaccines..."
 
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