This guy was once telling me about how older men/younger women relationships are the natural order of things because men can father children at any age without any problems. "Well, except schizophrenia," I told him. He was completely taken aback. He had to fall back on the argument about how women are just "more mature."

There are also a lot of very promising studies that say that autism has little genetic basis, but is often caused by mercury intoxication [the primary culprit is vaccination]. My ex-boss [who's clinic I left because I had to go away to college after the summer] is actually treating two kids [ages 3 and 5] for autism by removing the mercury from their bodies via chelation. Last I heard from them, they were improving.

http://www.ewg.org/reports/autism
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1904.html

Also, while it may be healthy for WOMEN to have children at an older age, you cannot discount the fact that the rates of chromosomal abnormalities increase RAPIDLY [meaning, by the time a woman is 49, her chances of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality are 1/7] after the age of 35/40. This has been heavily documented. Of course, that's not to say that nobody over 35 should have babies, they should just get screened if they would rather not carry a baby with a chromosomal abnormality to term. Also, the study that you cited about waiting to have children being advantageous does not say that this is more biologically advantageous or healthier, just that older women are more mature and capable of raising and caring for children.

Laina, that's pretty much been proven false by almost every reputable study out there. I would need to look around for exact citations, but the link between the MMR and autism is not accepted by most credible organizations at this point. Autism is sort of a passion if mine, my youngest sister has it (and was actually diagnosed before she had any vaccines, my mom doesn't believe in vaccinating infants) and I have worked for several agencies that serve people with autism, as well as volunteering with the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, so I've researched it quite a bit.

jmcchesney,

While it may not be the cause of all types of autism, I cannot discount the physical evidence that I have seen in the children that my ex-boss had been treating. After two months of treatment, one patient was able to start associating words with each other, and started to make eye contact for short periods of time, which he did not do before treatment had started. Treatment is supposed to last for a year, but after two months an improvement was already visible. Even if chelation therapy doesn't cure these children totally, it definitely does improve their condition and bring them a little bit closer to functioning and interacting as normal children would, but I have high hopes because of the start that I've seen.

I do not know if it's the MMR specifically, because my boss and I only spoke about the cause briefly, but she did mention vaccinations and possibly the preservatives in them. Environmental factors are also a big target, specifically the consumption of fish that have high levels of mercury in their bodies. No matter what the source of the mercury, I have seen removing it starting to help autistic children. I do not have any studies to prove this, but when I next speak to my former employer, I will ask for some. Do you want me to keep your e-mail address on hand in case I find anything that may be of interest to you and your family?

Sure thing Laina! I would love to see anything you have on it. I know my sister made fantastic strides from ABA therapy, which I'm a huge proponent of. I worked with a little boy whose mom was trying the mercury detox thing and had some limited success with it but nothing like I saw with my sister after years of ABA. I'm always open for new things to read about autism though!

Actually, if you find anything, please post it. I'd like to see it as well.

jmcchesney, what is your e-mail address?

Laina, you're absolutely right. Actually, the entire germ theory of disease is a corporate myth meant to convince you that the cause of illness isn't capitalist-induced suffering. The drugs you buy at the pharmacy are generally what causes disease, in fact; doctors, scientists, and corporations are just exploiting you.

And if you disagree with me, it just shows you're part of the oppressive system.

Alon:

I think you were trying to be funny, but that just came across as sarcastic and hostile.

No, actually I was trying to come across as sarcastic. I ventured a guess that explaining exactly why alternative medicine is bunk and the mercury-autism link is a myth would fall on deaf ears.

Alon:

In that case, I find your attitude remarkably unhelpful, and your dismissal premature.

My understanding of the history of this issue is that it began with a number of studies that showed a positive correlation between mercury-laden Thimerosal vaccines and autism, as well as a very large number of studies relating heavy metal poisoning (including mercury poisoning) to tissue death and neurological damage. I'm going to discuss the Thimerosal specific case first, as it's what got the most news time, and thus is what most people remember. The CDC and IoM reviewed a small subset of Thimerosal studies (four European studies involving children who received much smaller doses than US children) and announced in 2004 that there was no proven link. A conflict of interest was noted in that case, in that four of the eight people involved in the review were found to benefit financially if Thimerosal vaccines remained on the market.

I reviewed a couple of the Thimerosal studies a long time ago, myself, (different ones than in the IoM review) and the ones I looked at were, in fact, heavily flawed (contamination issues in one, and I forget the problems with the other); I note, however, that there were a large number of related studies, and have been more in the mean time, and I didn't have enough interest to go read them all. I've been comfortable until now assuming that the Thimerosal-specific studies were all weak, and not thinking too much about them.

However, absence of strong evidence for a case does not constitute evidence against a case, and I know of no studies whatsoever that have demonstrated a negative correlation between Thimerosal. Actually, as there have been publications showing a strong correlation between depletion of glutathione (which aids in binding and removing mercury from the body) and autism, what is needed is a study demonstrating whether or not there is a link between Thimerosal and autism in glutathione-deficient infants, as if that's the only vulnerable subset of the population (and it's small, as I understand it), it will be too easy for it to be swamped by negative results from the remainder in a general study.

But that's Thimerosal specifically. I could forgive a Thimerosal-specific skepticism easily enough... but to deny a link between heavy metal poisoning (specifically, mercury) and neurological damage? If you have access to peer-reviewed studies with that conclusion, please post, as it goes contrary to everything I know about the topic. In fact, I don't even know how you'd set up a study like that, since mercury is so damn toxic it will cause localized tissue death on injection in even tiny amounts, and is still the subject of massive warnings in chemistry labs because of its toxicity. (I received perhaps my most sobering warning about it when receiving basic safety training at Los Alamos Labs in 1994 prior to a joint presentation of a poster there -- a story of a woman who was working with a mercury compound, I forget which, and had opted for lighter environmental gloves than was recommended because the thick ones restricted her mobility to the point where she couldn't manipulate her experiment the way she needed to. She spilled a single drop, which hit her glove and appparently rolled off. Enough of it went straight through the glove and into her bloodstream to kill her shortly thereafter.)

As to the question of whether or not heavy metal chelation actually helps cure autism in children, I've never seen any studies done at all either way. I know that it's been used successfully in adults to partially counteract mild heavy metal poisoning. If you have links to studies showing that it is ineffective, I'd be quite interested to read them.

There's a lot of research still ongoing on this topic. I suspect that it is very heavily premature to be dismissive, and feel strongly that it is completely inappropriate to be contemptuous of those looking into the matter.

Zed, you seem very well-informed indeed, so may I ask your thoughts on vaccinations? I have been very distressed by the move against vaccination, myself, as it seems to me only a matter of time until illnesses that we thought had been taken care of, like mumps or rubella or whooping cough rear their ugly heads again, and it has been my understanding that thimerosol has been removed from vaccinations. It is something I am concerned about--doctors I have worked with and spoken to have talked about seeing the results of polio and whooping cough while working in countries that do not have widespread vaccination, and it sound terrible. Is it your opinion that metal poisoning can be linked to vaccinations at this point?

I'm not sure about mercury in general. I've seen some flamewars about that, but nothing with someone who knew anything about the subject; Orac generally focuses on Thimerosal.

The conflict of interest in that case, I should add, is overstated. The Danish government faced no liability even if it found evidence of a link, which it didn't, and the case of autism not declining in the country even after Thimerosal was banned is well-known.

EG:

Zed, you seem very well-informed indeed, so may I ask your thoughts on vaccinations?

Well, I'm actually a bit out of date on the matter, since I haven't been keeping up with the research well, but you can always ask. I'm still absorbing some of the study links I'm picking up from Orac's blog that Alon pointed me at.

Is it your opinion that metal poisoning can be linked to vaccinations at this point?

After having reviewed some of the recent studies, I'd say that if Thimerosal is causing heavy metal poisoning, it's doing so at a rate lower than other environmental factors. There has been both a 2003 study in Denmark and a 2006 study in Quebec that concluded no correlation of child personality disorders with Thimerosal vaccinations in a general population, with the Quebec study reaching US dosage levels. Notably, autism rates have continued to rise even past the point where Thimerosal was discontinued. Between those two studies, I'd say the burden is very firmly on those supporting a Thimerosal-autism link to come up with a study that hasn't been shown to be seriously flawed.

In the U.S., a number of states have already implemented local Thimerosal bans, and most vaccines have low- or no-Thimerosal versions available that you may be able to specially request, though they may be more expensive (I would, just on general principle, but I also wouldn't refuse a vaccine that wasn't).

Alon:

Thanks for the links to Orac's page. Though I feel he's suffering from bad confirmation bias with respect to heavy metal poisoning and chelation in general (he's claiming some things that the papers he links to don't actually say, and is deriving from failures of notably incompetent chelation therapy an unwarranted conclusion that chelation has no effect), I was able to search through and find links to the two recent studies I mentioned above that seem to pretty solidly demonstrate a lack of correlation between vaccinations and autism, which is good to know.

I'm still quite curious about heavy metal poisoning in general, though, particularly with respect to prenatal or infant deficiencies in glutathione. What I'd really like to see is a study of hair tests for heavy metal poisoning correlated to autism rates, in both directions, and then also a long term study of the effectiveness of chelation on autistic children to see how much of a real improvement it is providing over the natural improvement that often comes with age with or without treatment. While vaccinations may not be an issue, environmental poisoning may well be (prenatal mercury contamination from fish consumption, for instance).

I'm on the Autism Spectrum - Asperger's Syndrome. I was actually born to a young father.

The mercury argument pretty much has little power now. While investigating all possible causes, researchers now have little doubt in it. The genetic mutation that increases the chances is one of the more plausable causes. It's still too soon to determine anything.

I recently assigned my brain to be donated to the Autism Tissue Program, hoping it will be purposeful.

And the rates may be more associated with better screening measures than with actual increases in onset.