This post is my personal homage to Jeanne Devon, Phil Plait, PZ Myers, and anyone else who has sucked it up and read a "book" or watched a "documentary" just so that the howling masses wouldn't be able to claim that nobody had engaged with that particular item. In this case, it's the documentary Trace Amounts, released this year by Eric Gladen. For those who don't know, this documentary purports to prove a causal link between the mercury-based preservative thimerosal that was formerly used in many vaccines (and is now only used in multi-use vials, especially of seasonal flu vaccine) and autism.
Before I even watch the movie, I'm a bit disgruntled - I purchased it on Amazon for $14.99 with no rental option. I recently purchased both I Am Sam and The Princess Bride for $9.99 each and the entire current season of Doctor Who for $22.99. Not saying that Trace Amounts won't prove to have the lasting impact of The Princess Bride or the emotional pull of I Am Sam, but it did cost me 50% more.
Before I begin, a few ground rules:
- I get to drink as much Scotch as I want.
- I get to research all assertions.
- Any reference to
Dr.Andrew Wakefield will immediately discredit any connected assertion: I acknowledge that this is probably poisoning the well and I just don't care. - Any maligning of the CDC will immediately discredit any connected assertion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the CDC is like the NASA of healthcare; if you want someone to put something in space, NASA's record may not be perfect, but they do have the best experts, one of the longest histories, and a greater track record of success than any other game in town.
9:05pm
Oh, man. I've been watching a little bit and researching a lot. So far, I'm six minutes into the movie. If this rate persists, this project should be done around 6:45am tomorrow. I may have to skip some bits.
10:05pm
OH SWEET now he's calling Eli Lilly to see if anyone wants to comment on their compound's toxicity! This is tacky and transparent when you're as good as Michael Moore, and buddy, you're no Michael Moore.
midnight
Well, I've made it through thirty minutes of the movie and have read more articles than I care to count. Hopefully the second two thirds of the movie are more factual, because the first third has made 26 claims that I've researched and only one of them was unequivocally true AND had anything to do with whether vaccines/thimerosal cause autism.
I'm calling it quits for tonight. Here's my table of assertions, evidence, and commentary at this point (the score is 1 TRUE, 3 TECHNICALLY TRUE, 9 IRRELEVANT, and 1 Andrew Wakefield out of 26 assertions so far).
| Claim | Evidence | Ruling | Additional Thoughts |
| thimerosal plays no role in vaccines | preservative effective at .001-.01% concentration http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1 | FALSE | At the .01% concentration, 5 micrograms of mercury are entering the bloodstream. Vehicles on US roads emit between .3 and 11.1 nanograms per mile. Assuming the average child drives in a car emitting .5ng/mi and rides an average of 10 miles per day (reasonable in a small place like Sitka, dramatically undershooting for most places), that child will be exposed to 3.5 times the dose of mercury included in a flu vaccine from her own transportation alone, not including any other atmospheric contaminents or other vehicles. |
| thimerosal in vaccines given to children and pregnant women | given to children only for seasonal flu http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1 not routinely administered to pregnant women except for seasonal flu | TECHNICALLY TRUE | |
| Virginia S. among first eleven children diagnosed with autism | Vivian Murdock pseudonymously known as Virginia S. http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/04/her-name-was-vivian-clues-from-the-age-of-autisms-first-born-child.html | TRUE | |
| historical autism rate of 1 in 10,000 with sharp increase beginning in 1990s | historical diagnosis rate of 1 in 10,000, but surveys of adults holding them to same criteria as current studies of children indicate that rates of autism have not changed http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2012/autism-prevalence-more-affected-or-more-detected.shtml | FALSE | |
| mercury content in vaccines causes autism | inconclusive data with mixed results http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829208000142, http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=482546, http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lss/sabri/documents/JRS436.pdf | UNPROVEN, LIKELY FALSE | Claim 1: mercury causes autism (autism rates seem to parallel environmental mercury levels). Claim 2: mercury in vaccines causes autism (no direct evidence). Claim 3: decreases in mercury content in vaccines should result in decreases in autism diagnoses (exact opposite result observed) |
| Andrew Wakefield as victim | nope | BURN IN HELL | falsified data, paper retracted by Lancet, coauthors retracted paper, lost medical license due to unsafe experimental design |
| scientific consensus lacking on safety of vaccines/causes of autism | .0000097% of vaccines administered resulted in "serious adverse effects" http://francais.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5201a1.htm no single known cause of autism http://www.autism-society.org/what-is/causes/ | MOSTLY FALSE/TRUE | |
| thimerosal (any preservative) used in vaccines because pharma companies are lazy/want to operate in unsterile conditions | preservatives used to protect sterility with multi-use vials between injections http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm#preservatives | FALSE | Unsterile pharmaceutical operations don't stay in business long. |
| thimerosal in vaccines above mercury exposure threshold | threshold at 5ng/mL blood, 20ng/mL urine - significantly lower than quantities in vaccines | TECHNICALLY TRUE | Bodily absorption rates are not the same as percentages in ingested/injected compounds. 40% alcohol by volume is commonly consumed in 1.5oz quantities. |
| thimerosal damages paid to plaintiff, records sealed, plaintiff removed from federal case | legal proceedings are not scientific | IRRELEVANT | |
| Eric Gladen tetanus shot resulted in illness, woke up as "a different person" | no concrete claim made, cannot verify | ||
| thimerosal administered to 22 Indianapolis bacterial meningitis patients at 1% dose, all of whom died | thimerosal included in vaccines at .01% or less, Lilly administered doses of up to 50ccs http://arch.neicon.ru/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/1443357/amjepid_amjepid_13_1.13-1-296.pdf?sequence=1 | IRRELEVANT | Seriously? Take anything that is safe at a .01% dose, make it ten times stronger, and then administer it at ten times the quantity. These people were getting 100x the amount of thimerosal that's in a flu vaccine and it was in its unadulterated form. Also still not causing autism. |
| thimerosal toxic even at ng concentrations | not even gonna bother looking it up | IRRELEVANT | Toxic does not indicate that it causes autism. |
| increased vaccination (thimerosal intake) rates in 1980s correlated to increased autism diagnoses | IRRELEVANT | Correlation does not imply causation. As previously noted, studies indicate that autism has been historically underdiagnosed | |
| autism does not exist among the Amish, who do not vaccinate | autism does exist among the Amish http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707000110 and seems universal regardless of vaccine exposure https://spectrumnews.org/news/researchers-track-down-autism-rates-across-the-globe/ | FALSE | Autism rates correlate best to the ability of practitioners to diagnose autism. |
| Mayer Eisenstein (anything the man says) | not an expert in any field related to autism, treats autism with drug not approved for such use http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-autism-doctor-eisenstein-may22-story.html | IRRELEVANT | |
| Bernadine Healy dismayed that medical scientists have not looked into causality | career in medical scientific research (cardiologist), valid scientific viewpoint | IRRELEVANT | Scientists always love finding a new question to pursue. A good scientist wants to see more research done any time a question arises. Still does not link vaccines to autism. |
| Eric Gladen hearing and vision anomalies, lack of sleep, psychological disturbances | no concrete claim made, cannot verify | ||
| Geiers treat autism with Lupron | same treatment used by Mayer Eisenstein, drug developed for chemical castration of sex offenders and never approved for autism, medical license suspended or removed in many states http://www.casewatch.org/civil/geier.shtml | These treatments are worse than the condition. | |
| Bill Thompson: CDC is suppressing autism-related results | http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/08/05/the-cdc-whistleblower-william-thompson-appears-to-have-gone-full-antivaccine/ | FALSE | Why would the CDC choose to do that? |
| Karima Hirani "show me the 30/40 year old autistics" | previously did find those, also not a doctor nor medically-qualified as an expert on autism http://www.drhirani.com/ http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2012/autism-prevalence-more-affected-or-more-detected.shtml | FALSE and IRRELEVANT | |
| Carolyn Hansen, special education teacher, asserts increase in uncontrollable symptoms over long career | difficult to verify source, but anecdotal observations cannot be confirmed and a Carolyn Hansen with similar service dates was lapsed in Special Education as of 1994, though still employed until 2011 http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/oah/TLDecisions/2011031098.169.pdf | IRRELEVANT | |
| mercury causes disintegration of neuron | numerous articles and scholarly papers; mercury has been known as a neurotoxin for decades | IRRELEVANT | Still does not link thimerosal to autism. |
| vaccines administered at birth and in early months contain extremely higher quantities of mercury than would be safe | Hepatitis B vaccine administered at birth includes no thimerosal, and no other vaccines administered in the first year do either except the flu http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_newborn/medical_care/immunization_chart.html | FALSE | |
| Andy Cutler: different mercury exposures result in different absorption rates | absorption rates do differ based on exposure type and mercury type http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651303000605 | TECHNICALLY TRUE | Andy Cutler profits off of a non-scientific treatment for mercury exposure: http://www.curezone.org/faq/q.asp?a=3,76&q=102 |
| injected ethyl mercury is more dangerous than oral methyl mercury | Thimerosal accumulates less mercury in the brain than MeHg, but generates significantly more inorganic Hg, study encourages further research but falls short of identifying brain damage caused by thimerosal http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280342/ | EQUIVOCAL | still doesn't connect to autism |
