YES: Thimerosal CAN induce autism
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2014/08/27
Again through Celia Farber’s blog I was able to find the published article that show s a statistically significant higher rate of autism from vaccines containing thimerosal than from vaccines without it:
David A Geier, Brian S Hooker, Janet K Kern, Paul G King, Lisa K Sykes & Mark R Geier, “A two-phase study evaluating the relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccine administration and the risk for an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States”, Translational Neurodegeneration , 2 (2013) 25
“Conclusions: Routine childhood vaccination is an important public health tool to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases, but the present study provides new epidemiological evidence supporting an association between increasing organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and the subsequent risk of an ASD diagnosis.”
Skepticism about science and medicine 
Dan Kegel said
It seems one of the authors, Hooker, has an autistic son. For a bit more background from the mainstream point of view, see e.g.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/did-a-high-ranking-whistleblower-really-reveal-that-the-cdc-covered-up-proof-that-vaccines-cause-autism-in-african-american-boys/
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/great-cdc-coverup-suppressing-evidence-mmr-vaccines-autism/
http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2014/08/the-cdc-the-mmr-vaccine-and-allegations-of-whistleblowing-and-malfeasance-the-backstory.html
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Henry Bauer said
Dan Kegel:
I’m sorry to see you descend to ad hominem accusations instead of addressing the published evidence.
Brian Hooker is one of 6 co-authors, and he is not even the senior one:
“Authors ’ contributions
DG was the main writer and analyzed data, BH was the main computer programmer and reviewed the manuscript structure, ideas and science, JK
reviewed the manuscript structure, ideas and science, PG reviewed manuscript structure, ideas, and science, LK edited manuscript structure, and
MG evaluated and reviewed manuscript ideas and science. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
Do you question the data cited from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is run by CDC and FDA?
Thimerosal-Containing DTaP Vaccine, 38 adverse events from 16,335,650 doses (1998-2000)
by contrast to Thimerosal-Free DTaP Vaccine, 17 adverse events from 14,794,210 doses (1998-2000)
Or do you question that the odds ratio is 2.02, confidence interval (1.15 – 3.56) for p < 0.02?
And do you question the similar data for hepatitis B vaccines with odds ratio of 2.18 (1.74-2.73)for 12.5 micrograms Hg, ratio of 2.11 (1.68-2.64) for 25 micrograms Hg, and 3.39 (1.60-7.18) ratio for micrograms Hg?
The only reason for going ad hominem is if one cannot win an argument on substantive grounds. Shame on you.
Having an autistic child is an excellent stimulus to being interested in the phenomenon of autism and in doing research on it.
IF and only IF you can first show something to be definitely wrong with the data, then researchers’ possible motives might be looked to for possible explanations.
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Dan Kegel said
Hi Dr. Bauer,
thanks as always for your reply.
I mentioned his family experience with autism simply because it means he has a personal connection to the issue, and may have bearing on his objectivity. I don’t think it’s a definite red flag, just something to be aware of.
Interestingly, http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16/abstract now has a notice saying
“This article has been removed from the public domain because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. The journal and publisher believe that its continued availability may not be in the public interest. Definitive editorial action will be pending further investigation.”
I wonder what’s going on. Are they thinking of retracting it?
One more bit of (snarky) mainstream commentary on the episode:
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/fictional-cdc-coverup-vaccines-autism-still-fictional/
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Henry Bauer said
Dan Kegel:
“I mentioned his family experience with autism simply because it means he has a personal connection to the issue, and may have bearing on his objectivity. I don’t think it’s a definite red flag, just something to be aware of.”
Let’s pursue that line to consider what benefit such awareness might bring.
Hooker has a personal conflict of interest.
To speculate whether that might have influenced the article, one would need to look into the conflicts of interest of his 5 co-authors, especially the leading corresponding author.
Then one would need to speculate about the relative influences that the several authors and their conflicts of interest might have had — subconsciously or consciously/conspiratorially.
Finally, to try to decide whether those conflicts of interest had an actual effect on the article, one would have to…. what? Look at the evidence, of course.
EVERYONE has conflicts of interest. The people who invent and produce and market vaccines do. Every mainstream researcher has conflicts of interest. Careers, patents, profits are at stake.
No one does anything unless they have an interest in doing so, either an endogenous (personal) one or an exogenous one through being induced or forced to do something.
The only way to reach an informed opinion about the “SCIENTIFIC” facts of the matter is to assess the evidence directly.
Personalities and conflicts of interest are proper material for discussion of ethics, but they are irrelevant to what the substantive reality might be, the SCIENTIFIC merits of the case. Nasty, self-interested, biased people have stimulated major advances. Indeed, some of the most celebrated geniuses have been people that one might not care to have as friends or to trust as associates.
Commentary about matters of science ought to be free of ad hominem innuendo, whether promulgated as red flags or just “awareness”.
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“Interestingly, http://www.translationalneurodegeneration.com/content/3/1/16/abstract now has a notice saying
‘This article has been removed from the public domain because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. The journal and publisher believe that its continued availability may not be in the public interest. Definitive editorial action will be pending further investigation.”
I wonder what’s going on. Are they thinking of retracting it?’
I’m reminded of Elsevier’s scandalous retraction of Duesberg and Ruggiero articles about HIV/AIDS, see Chapter 3 in my Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth, McFarland 2012.
Decisions about publication are made for political, social, financial reasons, as the Elsevier episode among many others demonstrates.
Mainstream researchers and vaccine producers and federal agencies have a vested interest in maintaining that their activities are beneficial and not harmful, and dissidents are censored and persecuted nowadays as in the past. As my cited book shows, illustrated by numerous examples, the suppression of minority views has become demonstrably damaging to public policies. The progressive institutionalization of science, its increasingly central control, its increasingly bureaucratic character, have led to a suppression of dissidence in purportedly open democratic societies that begins to approach the suppression exerted by authoritarian regimes.
Translational Neurodegeneration is published by BioMed Central, part of Springer, a conglomerate bureaucracy quite comparable in size and virtue to Elsevier. Pending further information, I don’t take the announced withdrawal as meaning that the cited data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System are incorrect. In that connection, I should have pointed out that the cited adverse events are the REPORTED numbers. Such informed insiders as Ben Goldacre (Bad Pharma), Peter Gøtzsche (Deadly Medicines . . .) or David Healy (Pharmageddon) have estimated that the actual rates of adverse events probably exceed the reported rates by an order of magnitude, because there is no required systematic reporting as well as the difficulty for individual physicians to be sure that any given event results from a drug or a vaccine rather than from any number of other possible sources. Under-reporting might not affect the ratio of adverse events with vaccines to that with placebo, but it would make the actual danger of adverse events much greater.
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Leading Autism Expert said
Excellent replies from HB here, even though his knowledge of autism science is rather wobbly. As for starting off by citing as support the quacks at “sciencebasedmedicine” – lol.
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Leading Autism Expert said
Hang on!, I was commenting on another (similar) study these same peope have just published in IJERPH. I suspect this one has the same fault but not in a position to check just now – meanwhile best not release that comment above or I will start libel action against the entire Bauer clan’s secret zillions in bank vaults.
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Leading Autism Expert said
{Updated comment] The heading of this page is seriously unwarranted. This new study (in Phase 2, hypothesis testing) is fundamentally flawed by reason of extreme lack of matching of the controls on year of birth. That completely confounds the results in a way that I find completely predictable given that the true cause of the autism increase was rapidly increasing during exactly those years.
The phase 1 finding of a 2fold ratio looks impressive, as did the Simpsonwood secret ratio of 7-fold. But these can be shown to be artifacts, and not least if there really were a 2-fold or 7-fold effect of Thimerosal then it would be obvious in the time-series relationships but no such relation is seen. Hence all the evidence points to thimerosal NOT being a major cause of autism (if at all). An identical error of faulty controls is made in a later paper from these authors in IJEHRP 2014.
I will try to post more detailed explanations as soon as time permits.
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