A False Alarm

It is only during the last day of the conference that we learn that most of the objections concerning the positive relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ADD and ADHA were bogus. For example, Dr. Rapin, on page 200, notes that all children in the study were below age 6 and ADD and ADHD are very difficult to diagnose in pre-schoolers. She also notes that some children were followed for only a short period.

In fact, the average age for diagnosis of ADHD was 4 years and 1 month, Dr. Stein adds, and a very difficult diagnosis to make because guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics limit diagnoses to 6 to 12-year-olds.

Of course, Dr. Stein was implying that too many were diagnosed as ADHD. Yet, a recent study found that the famous Denmark study that led to the announcement by the Institute of Medicine that there was no relationship between autism and the MMR vaccine, used the same tactic. They cut off the age of follow-up at age 6. It is known that many cases appear after this age group, especially with ADD and ADHD. In fact, most learning problems appear as the child is called on to handle more involved intellectual material.

Therefore, the chances are they failed to diagnose a number of cases by stopping the study too early.

Several of the participants tried to imply autism was a genetic disorder and therefore could have nothing to do with vaccines. Dr. Weil put that to rest with this comment, "We don't see that kind of genetic change in 30 years." In other words, how can we suddenly see a 300 percent increase in a genetically related disorder over such a short period?

It is also known that there are two forms of autism, one that is apparent at birth and one that develops later in childhood. The former has not changed in incidence since statistics have been kept. The other is epidemic.

The Fish Connection

One interesting exchange ends up being their justification for the view that vaccines containing thimerosal pose no danger to children. It involves two studies in children born to mothers who consumed large amounts of mercury-contaminated fish. One study reported in the journal Neurotoxicology, examined children living in the Republic of Seychelles. In this study, they examined the effect of prenatal exposure to mercury through the mother's consumption of fish high in methylmercury,

A battery of developmental milestone tests were done and no adverse effects were reported in the study reported by Dr. Clarkson and co-workers, the very same person in this conference. He never mentions, however, that a follow-up study of these same children did find a positive correlation between methylmercury exposure and poor performance on a memory test.

In a subsequent study of children living on the Faroe Islands exposed to methylmercury, researchers did find impairments of neurodevelopment. This experiment was done by Japanese scientists.

Throughout the remainder of this discussion, Dr. Clarkson and others refer to these two studies. When they are reminded that the Faroe study did find neurological injury to the children, they counter by saying that this was prenatal exposure to mercury and not after birth as would be seen with vaccination. The idea being that, prenatally, the brain is undergoing neural formation and development, making it more vulnerable. As I have mentioned, this rapid brain growth and development continues for two years after birth. Even at age 6, the brain is only 80 percent formed.

Limited To The Basics

Dr. Clarkson keeps referring to the Seychelles study, which demonstrated that children reached normal neurodevelopmental milestones as shown by a number of tests. Dr Weil points out, on page 216, that this tells us little about these children's future brain function.

He says, "I have taken a lot of histories of kids who are in trouble in school. The history is that developmental milestones were normal or advanced and they can't read at second grade, they can't write at third grade, they can't do math in the fourth grade and it has no relationship as far as I can tell to the history we get of the developmental milestones. So I think this is a very crude measure of neurodevelopment."

Simply, both of these studies tell us nothing about the actual development of these children's brain function except that they reached the most basic of milestones.

Put another way, your child may be able to stack blocks, recognize shapes and have basic language skills but, later in life, they could be significantly impaired when it came to higher math, more advanced language skills (comprehension) and the ability to compete in a very competitive intellectual environment, like college or advanced schooling. Their future would be limited to the more mundane and intellectually limited jobs.

Post-natal brain development -- from birth to age 6 or 7 -- involves the fine tuning of synaptic connections, dendritic development and pathway refinement, all of which prepare the brain for more complex thinking. These brain elements are very sensitive to toxins and excessive immune stimulation during this period.

This is never mentioned in this conference.

In addition, it must be remembered that the children in these two studies were exposed only to methylmercury and not the combined neurotoxic effect of mercury, aluminum and excessive and chronic activation of the brain's immune system (microgia).

This is what makes it so incredible, that several of these "vaccinologists" and so-called experts would express doubt about the "biological plausibility" of thimerosal or any vaccine component causing neurodevelopmental problems. The medical literature is exploding with such studies. The biological plausibility is very powerful.

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