Quote from Rearden Metal:
NO, this is one issue where ratboy has a solid point.
Thimerosal containing vaccines are just one of three main possible ways for a person to become contaminated with mercury, causing symptoms that are indistinguishable from autism. Large fish (like tuna), and 'silver' dental fillings are the other two.
Bottom line is that by chelating (removing) the mercury from the body of an autistic child, he/she (usually he) can be completely cured of autism. There have been many such cases, fully documented, including the son of 90's hottie Jenny McCarthy.
Unlike some of ratboy's other claims, the mercury-autism connection is 100% legit.
Apparently I am a prisoner of my education; consequently, I am bothered by these facts:
The incidence of diagnosed autism has continued to increase after thimerosal was eliminated or drastically reduced in concentration in vaccines 7 years ago.
Contrary to all pop science and page after page of anecdotal crap on the internet, organic mercurials, unlike lead, are not a cumulative poison. If you don't get a large enough dose to kill you or cause permanent damage, you will in fact recover as mercury is eliminated via the kidneys.
The concentration of thimerosal in vaccines has never been very high, and it was used for many years in vaccines, but only in recent years have the number of autism cases diagnosed increased. Some think this is mainly because the symptoms are now widely known and thus children are being diagnosed at a younger and younger age.
There is not a single credible study in any reputable journal with valid controls and peer reviewed that shows a connection between mercury and autism. But there are hundreds of invalid studies and anecdotal accounts purporting a connection. This fact, of course, has furnished much fuel for the conspiracy advocates.
There surely are well over a billion people in the world that have mercury amalgam fillings, and yet since dentists began to fill teeth with amalgam more than a century ago, the health of populations with filings has improved dramatically.
We don't know what causes autism. We will undoubtedly find out, and it is highly unlikely to be thimerosal in vaccines or mercury in fillings, or mercury from eating fish, for that matter.
It could be that the recent rise in autism is simply due to a combination of earlier diagnoses and more accurate statistics.
As an aside, i might mention that if you search the internet you will find all sorts of pages purporting that aluminum causes Alzheimer's disease, even though it is now known that aluminum has nothing to do with alzheimers and the immediate cause is beta-folding of protein in the brain. A current hypothesis is that this incorrect folding is catalysed by a prion. But regardless, aluminum does not cause it. If you happen to be someone who believes that, than you had better not eat anything with baking powder in it.
P.S. I would be astounded and flabbergasted if you could point me to a single peer reviewed report in a mainstream journal of anyone being cured of autism, let alone being cured by chelation.
http://www.autism-watch.org/about/bio2.shtml