Thursday, December 27, 2007

Comment-Grateful Viewer

This item was emailed to this blog.-AR

Thank you, KOMU TV and news team for having the integrity and courage to cover the controversial issues surrounding our children's afflictions. I have been following your coverage closely. I am but another parent of a child with the autism label. Our son also has mercury toxicity. They are one in the same. So thank you Ashley Reynolds and support team for you earnest efforts on our children's behalf!!

May stories and coverage such as this enhance the truth behind the controversy that we may one day end the madness and recover the already injured children and their families.
In all sincerity and with much appreciation,

Lin Wessels
Sam's MAMA (Mom on A Mission for Autism)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

If mercury poisoning and autism are "one in the same", then why are the symptoms of autism so different from mercury poisoning?

Anonymous said...

Getting old ANB.
All others, read through as many posts as you can and ask your docotrs some of the questions I am asking here in this forum.
EFFIIIMD

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but make sure your doctor isn't a paper-pushing radiologist.

Anonymous said...

There's that negativity again. Fence sitters on the issues are really getting to know you. Maybe you can humanize yourself with a little story about what your day job is and why you have such a passion for this issue?

Anonymous said...

What's so negative about being rewarded with a department chairmanship that keeps you 300 miles away from the medical college? If no one else wanted the job, it speaks highly that you took it.

On the other hand, what I do for a living is irrelevant to the informed comment that I have been invited to offer here on KOMU's blog.

Anonymous said...

Yeah actually a little under 300 miles and it makes for one free thinking academic, part of the problem in this debate is the great conditioning of most US physicians by pharma-too sheepish to engage a debate like this even if they knew I was right.

Surely, understanding your station in life is helpful to the debate. Glad you have taken such an interest in me-you're a real info broker as well as attack dog.


Let's see what you have to say about this smarty pants:

Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2005 Apr 15;204(2):109-21.
Immunosuppressive and autoimmune effects of thimerosal in mice.

Havarinasab S, Häggqvist B, Björn E, Pollard KM, Hultman P.

Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Molecular and Immunological Pathology (AIR), Linköping University, SE-581 85 Linköping, Sweden.
The possible health effects of the organic mercury compound thimerosal (ethylmercurithiosalicylate), which is rapidly metabolized to ethylmercury (EtHg), have recently been much debated and the effect of this compound on the immune system is largely unknown. We therefore studied the effect of thimerosal by treating A.SW (H-2s) mice, susceptible to induction of autoimmunity by heavy metals, with 10 mg thimerosal/L drinking water (internal dose ca 590 microg Hg/kg body weight/day) for up to 30 days. The lymph node expression of IL-2 and IL-15 mRNA was increased after 2 days, and of IL-4 and IFN-gamma mRNA after 6 and 14 days. During the first 14 days treatment, the number of splenocytes, including T and B cells as well as Ig-secreting cells decreased. A strong immunostimulation superseded after 30 days treatment with increase in splenic weight, number of splenocytes including T and B cells and Ig-secreting cells, and Th2- as well as Th-1-dependent serum immunoglobulins. Antinucleolar antibodies (ANoA) targeting the 34-kDa nucleolar protein fibrillarin, and systemic immune-complex deposits developed. The H-2s strains SJL and B10.S also responded to thimerosal treatment with ANoA. The A.TL and B10.TL strain, sharing background genes with the A.SW and B10.S strain, respectively, but with a different H-2 haplotype (t1), did not develop ANoA, linking the susceptibility to H-2. Thimerosal-treated H-2s mice homozygous for the nu mutation (SJL-nu/nu), or lacking the T-cell co-stimulatory molecule CD28 (B10.S-CD28-/-), did not develop ANoA, which showed that the autoimmune response is T-cell dependent. Using H-2s strains with targeted mutations, we found that IFN-gamma and IL-6, but not IL-4, is important for induction of ANoA by thimerosal. The maximum added renal concentration of thimerosal (EtHg) and inorganic mercury occurred after 14 days treatment and was 81 microg Hg/g. EtHg made up 59% and inorganic mercury 41% of the renal mercury. In conclusion, the organic mercury compound thimerosal (EtHg) has initial immunosuppressive effects similar to those of MeHg. However, in contrast to MeHg, thimerosal treatment leads in genetically susceptible mice to a second phase with strong immunostimulation and autoimmunity, which is T-cell dependent, H-2 linked and may at least partly be due to the inorganic mercury derived from the metabolism of ethyl mercury.

PMID: 15808517 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Mr. Science, if you are so sure this stuff should be called vitamin "T" as your blog insinuates and your words on this site do, why don't you explain to the lay public the reason why that kind of science can't get done in human beings?

Anonymous said...

The simple answer: You would most likely need IRB approval to perform that type of experiment on live humans. If you believe that your proposed study is necessary and likely to add substantially to our knowledge of vaccines and autism, then you would need to collect data which supports that belief. Not trying to come off as a smarty pants, but really, isn't this the kind of stuff you already know?

Anonymous said...

Nice dodge ANB-sound like a politician.

For the lay public and our public servants around the country and those in the Great State of Missouri, no IRB in America would allow this study to happen after seeing all the dirt on thimerosal.

Future generations are going to realize what malfeasance went on in keeping this stuff on the market for so long that the present Gen Xer's and younger are discovering by their informatics skills. I have a hard time believe the scientific genius of this country couldn't have found a better preservative decades ago if it weren't for corporate greed.

Time and vaccine protocol comparisons are on the side of those who see this connection, not too long now before more of us wake up to this and show the relationships, epidemiology is still the weakest leg of science. Just got to take the at risk population and compare rates of ASD as expected by current epidemiology versus the much lower rate that will show in the at risk population that didn't get pumped full of adjuvants unnecessarily because titer checks were used to prevent wasteful and harmful over-use of vaccines in this population.

Individually practiced evidence based medicine on this is simple-if you already have evidence that you are immune to a virus by titer checks you can keep following that evidence until it is evident you need a booster.

Edward F. Fogarty, M.D.
Chair of Radiology
University of North Dakota
School of Medicine

Anonymous said...

"10 mg thimerosal/L drinking water" is a huge dose. That's heavily contaminated water. To put it in perspective, an adult human consumes about 2 liters of water per day. An adult would be getting 20 mg of thimerosal from each day's worth of water. That's about 1000 times the equivalent of one vaccine, every day. At these doses I'm not surprised you'd begin to see some effects in mice or humans.

Anonymous said...

That's probably why an IRB wouldn't approve Dr. Fogarty's study. And then there's the part about excising and weighing spleens. Would you have to euthanize the children like they did with the mice?

Anonymous said...

Hum, seems like some others though this stuff could be replaced all the way back in 1980:

Contact Dermatitis. 1980 Jun;6(4):241-5.
Merthiolate hypersensitivity and vaccination.

Förström L, Hannuksela M, Kousa M, Lehmuskallio E.

Epicutaneous tests with 0.1% merthiolate in petrolatum showed hypersensitivity in 96 of 4647 eczema patients (2.0%) and in seven of 105 healthy recruits (7%). There was a marked preponderance of young age classes in the eczema group. Twelve of 41 merthiolate-positive patients tested reacted to mercury alone, three to thiosalicylic acid alone and one to both. The remaining 25 patients reacted to neither of the individual components although the merthiolate complex as a whole gave a positive test result. Forty-five of the merthiolate-positive patients were tested subcutaneously with 0.5 ml of a 0.01% merthiolate solution, i.e. a dose equal to that contained in one shot of tetanus toxoid, for example. Nine patients developed a local reaction at the site of the injection, and the area became eczematous in four cases. In one of the patients the eczema spread over the body, causing fever. Since merthiolate-sensitive patients also react to merthiolate administered intracutaneously, the vaccinator should avoid the use of a needle whose outer surface has been contaminated when the vaccine was aspirated from the bottle. However, even when this precautionary measure is taken, local reactions can be expected in such a high percentage of merthiolate-sensitive persons that merthiolate in vaccines should be replaced by another antibacterial agent.

MeSH Terms:

* Adolescent
* Adult
* Benzoates/adverse effects
* Drug Hypersensitivity/etiology*
* Ethylmercury Compounds/adverse effects*
* Humans
* Hypersensitivity, Delayed/chemically induced
* Mercuric Chloride
* Mercury/adverse effects
* Middle Aged
* Skin Tests
* Sulfhydryl Compounds/adverse effects
* Tetanus Toxoid/administration & dosage
* Thimerosal/administration & dosage
* Thimerosal/adverse effects*
* Vaccination*/adverse effects


Substances:

* Benzoates
* Ethylmercury Compounds
* Sulfhydryl Compounds
* Tetanus Toxoid


Oh, yea then there is that Simpsonwood document that really shows who knew what and when, then one guy who called his family to avoid thimerosal in his first grandchild then chastises the only honest Joe in the discussion who clearly states the obvious:
"The number of dose related relationships are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant"

Then there that pesky aluminum synergism. But the past is behind us, so its really great that those in the past who called for this to be out of medical practice have some of their thought memorialized in the medical literature:


Möller H.
Merthiolate allergy: a nationwide iatrogenic sensitization.
Acta Derm Venereol. 1977;57(6):509-17.
PMID: 73326 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


Again, major problem here that could have been avoided had those who are so entrenched in status quo just done the right thing. All this great science in the US and no one could come up with something better than a product developed in the 1930's?
Ah well, at least thoratrast and its reticuloendothelial cancers, iodinated contrast nephropathy, and gadolinium linked nephrogenic systemic fibrosis were identified iatrogenic complications that well meaning people in imaging now smartly realize as problematic in the wrong people. I guess kids are just little adults and virtually identical.