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So this is interesting...last night I was watching the Daily Show. They had a guest on who is an environmental lawyer, and usually works to stop corporations from dumping mercury in the water supply.
Lately however, he has had a new cause. It seems that up until 1988, 1 in 10,000 American children had some form of autism. Suddenly, in 1989, the number started skyrocketing. Now 1 in 166 children have some form of autism. (These are figures quoted on the show mind you)
So what changed? What caused this massive growth in the number of autistic children? Well, funny thing...in 1989 the pharmecutical companies started including a preservative chemical in their immunization/vaccination medication. This preservative can be broken down by the human body into, you guessed it...mercury! So this chemical was introduced, and the cases of autism skyrocketed.
Now by itself, this would not be much proof. But here's the thing. Up until 1999, autism was virtually unknown in China. But in 1999, they started importing vaccination medication from the U.S. End result? Today there are 1.6 million autistic children in China.
The guy on the show was saying that there has been a lot of scientific research done, and that the scientific evidence for the link is pretty overwhelming. I am going to look into it some more, and hopefully come up with some more data. He was -also- saying that people in the FDA and Congress (Republicans even) have said that they know this to be true. But the FDA is keeping it very quiet because "they don't want the American people to lose faith in vaccinations, as it would be a huge health scare". Gee, ya think? Well I wonder what the reaction will be for national health and the economy when people realize that the FDA has been keeping quiet information that their children may have been fucking poisoned.
July 21 2005, 19:19:11 UTC 6 years ago
We have looked into this at some length, and there are studies that show that there is no difference in the incidence of autism between a control group and a group exposed to mercury. The study was double-blind and spanned several years.
However there are also studies and PHDs all over the internet that swear up and down that mercury is the culprit.
We vaccinated our child, and feel we did the right thing. Not vaccinating your child is a danger in itself, and a more tangible one than all this hand-wringing about mercury. Believe me, if the scientific/research establishment were even reasonably suspicious about mercury, there wouldn't be the tons of research being done on the causes - because we'd already know why. Please visit http:/www.cureautismnow.org for more information.
Also, visit http://www.sftrilogy.org while you're at it. Laszlo and I will be at this event and we're trying to get everyone we can to come and support the cause :D It's for Cure Autism Now!
July 21 2005, 21:03:36 UTC 6 years ago
The introduction of thimerosal does seem to mirror an awfully large rise in the incidence of autism though, both here and in China. While I know that information is anecdotal rather than scientific, it still seems very suspicious.
Of course I don't think that not vaccinating children is a good answer. But I do think that taking what we know to be deadly chemicals out of vaccinations is a good step. I heard that the use of thimerosal has been discontinued in children's vaccinations? If so, one might ask why the companies would have discontinued it if they thought it staged no real risk, if it was for some reason important enough to put into the drugs in the first place. It will also be interesting to see whether the number of autism cases start decreasing over the next couple years now that most children are no longer receiving the chemical.