Saturday Quack – Mercury and Autism

For some years there’s been a number of physicians and other scientists promoting the idea that the mercury content of childhood vaccines is a cause of autism. These vaccines contained thimerosal, a mercury -containing preservative that is no longer used in most vaccines given to children. However, there have been lawsuits, and the campaign continues unabated. For every study published showing that mercury levels are not raised to any relevant degree in children given a thimerosal-containing vaccine, counter arguments appear decrying the study design or its interpretation.

A new large study of 28,000 children in Quebec has provided what, for me at least, is a definitive, irrefutable answer. Quebec changed its vaccine formula 10 years ago, Dr Eric Fombonne, chief of pediatric psychiatry at McGill University, explained that since 1996, Quebec children have received vaccines without the thimerosal. The study compared autism rates among children before the vaccine changed and after. The study clearly shows that there is no relationship between the level of exposure to thimerosal in vaccine and autism. "In fact”, says Dr Fombonne, “the incidence of autism is higher in the years when there was no mercury."

Sometimes desperate parents, convinced that thimerosal is responsible for their child's condition, have turned to chelation therapy, an unproven treatment that aims to remove mercury from the body, hoping it will cure the condition. At least one child has died because of the process, Dr Fombonne said.

All my sympathy goes to the parents of autistic children. But they should move on – and support research into the likely cause of the condition, which is clearly not mercury.