Could autism be caused by mercury poisoning?

Answer 1

While excessive exposure to Mercury can cause brain damage and psychiatric problems, the symptoms of are usually much different from those of autism. The amount of mercury that was present in MMR vaccine was never great enough to cause this in most individuals, and the mercury has been since been removed all together.

To put it in proper perspective:The trace amount of mercury in current flu vaccines from the thimerosal used as a preservative is approximately equal to the amount you get from a single meal of fish.

There are also many other types of brain damage which can lead to autistic-type symptoms and a diagnosis of autism. For instance, head trauma or being deprived of oxygen to the brain can cause autism symptoms. Hundreds of chemicals in addition to mercury can cause symptoms of autism. In the modern world, there has been a great deal of urban legend speculation that mercury from vaccines could possibly cause autism. This speculation has been demonstrated to be false in the case of Cedillo v. HHS, decided in the Federal Vaccine Court in Feb. 2009. What really has been happening is that autism generally starts when children are of the age when they receive vaccinations. Not knowing the cause, as even scientists don't know the cause of autism, parents tend to blame anything that was happening by coincidence during the time of vaccinations, as if vaccination were the cause of the autism that happened for other unknown reasons at about the same time. It's as if a million people watched TV today, a small proportion died in car crashes later in the week, and somebody tried to blame the car crashes on watching TV several days earlier.

Actually, if mercury from vaccines caused autism, autism would have been more common when mercury was in vaccines. But autism wasn't more common then. Also, mercury has been out of vaccines for several years now and autism is still occurring and even increasing. So, whether you look at mercury formerly being present and most kids not getting autism, or you look at mercury being gone and kids still getting autism anyway, either instance (and especially both put together), along with Cedillo v. HHS, clearly demonstrate that the tiny amount of mercury that used to be in vaccines wasn't causing autism.

As a matter of fact, there is more mercury in an average banana than there is in a vaccine. The bottom line is that no one knows the cause of autism, and until medical research solves this riddle it will be difficult to help afflicted children or prevent autism from hurting more kids. But, until the true cause of autism is discovered, meanwhile falsely blaming innocent vaccines and their removed tiny traces of mercury only interferes with finding the true cause and finding the alleviation of a real cure.

ANSWER:

There is no one true cause, although most cases are probably genetic in origin and not due to external factors. The vaccine courts conceded in the cases of Hanna Poling and Baily Banks that the mercury in vaccines helped contribute to their autism; these were rare, isolated instances of a rare genetic condition that was affected by such minuscule amounts of mercury. All the other cases that have come before the court, many thousands of them, have been rejected.

ADDENDUM 12-30-2009: Post hoc ergo propter hoc is well established as a false argument. Neither do correlations prove cause and effect. If it can somehow be demonstrated that children with reduced ability to detoxify have a higher rate of autism or vice versa, the defect is in their detoxification ability and not in the vaccines. In other words, it would be important to pre-screen children for detoxification enzyme deficiencies rather than deny vaccines to the many who are not adversely influenced by them. By way of analogy, just because a few people run down little old ladies with cars doesn't mean cars should be banned. If there is an established pattern of testable defect conferring a high statistical probability of autism, the liability accrues to the physician who does not test for it. The liability does not accrue to the vaccines which are predominantly innocent of any offense whatsoever unless used in a way that would constitute medical malpractice, assuming your referenced findings are accurate in the first place and not caused by other factors as yet overlooked and undiscovered. Speaking from personal experience, I as a human guinea pig have received a dozen tetanus shots bearing standard mercury loads, all within a six-month period, and I experienced no adverse effects-- much less autism.