Study links Mercury with Autism

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A research team in Melbourne claim **Family history of mercury poisoning has emerged as a significant risk factor for developing autism, Melbourne researchers say.
A Swinburne University survey of 522 Australian survivors of pink disease - a form of mercury poisoning common in the early 20th century - found that one in 25 of their 398 grandchildren aged six to 12 had an autism spectrum disorder. The prevalence is six times higher than the one in 160 diagnosed in the general population.**

Of course this does not prove causation, merely a correlation. Might, however, provide the mercury/vaccine theorists with a little impetus.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/mercu ... z1UbiC411o

There are many mercury compounds and it is unlikely that the test subjects ancestors were exposed to ethylmercury compounds, the human body can eliminate ethylmercury compounds through the liver and stool, mercury poisoning is not heritable, no predisposing genetic factor was identified, and the test subject's autism diagnoses or lack thereof was not verified in an independent double blind study. You could make just as strong of an argument that kinky sexual positions cause autism.

ewww. i don't want to think about my parents doing kinky sex

Basically, what John Browning says. I want to see more science than this. Also, their math is off. 25/398 is 1/16. That would make it ten times as prevalent, not six. 25 out of 522 is about six times as high as 1/160.

Whenever I see studies like this, I think of a quote from Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics." I'll wait until there's more proof to decide one way or the other.

I've seen advertisements on television for a class action lawsuit involving maternal ingestion of Prozac and Autism in the children of the mothers by Sikorovsky, I think. Apparently there's a connection between maternal consumption of Prozac and Autism in the offspring.

Women who took Prozac while pregnant and have a child or children with Autism are suing the manufacturers of the drug Prozac.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 11 Aug 2011, 1:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've seen those commercials. Those lawyers are glorified ambulance chasers that are filing deep pocket lawsuits until one of them eventually works. There's not enough research to make any of those new medical claims stick. Prozac has been widely used by pregnant and nursing women for a long time because it's one of the few drugs any studies were done on for that purpose. There is no correlation between prozac use and autism much less a proven link.

If there's no link then how can these laawyers sue? There must be something, ambulance chasers or not or a lawsuit would not be possible. You cannot sue an apple because it isn't an orange!

They can sue, but they have the burden of proof, and they can hire doctors to make up studies like the lawyers that hired Andrew Wakefield did. You can submit the paperwork for a lawsuit to a court for just about any reason, but you are required to make a case for it. A judge then holds a hearing to determine if the plaintiff(s) have legal standing to file the lawsuit and if the lawsuit has merit (plausibility). If not, then the judge may throw it out. If they can show a paper by a specialist claiming a link between autism and Prozac, the lawsuit will probably proceed but the plaintiff(s) will need to come up with better data to win.

And yet when criminals like Casey Anthony are found not guilty the courts can do no wrong...

I don't think I was ever exposed to mercury within or without the womb, and my Mom never took Prozac. But on the other hand, both my parents showed signs of high functional autism. It's genetic - I'm living proof!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Is there a rule that says Autism must only have one cause?

Even if there is more than one cause, mercury in vaccines has been disproven to be one of them. And from that, I think it can be surmised that mercury introduced by any means doesn't cause autism.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That's a criminal court, which has some similarities. All Casey Anthony had to do was cast enough doubt on the prosecution's case. The prosecution established she is psycho, they established that she had a reason she would want to do it, they established that the timeline fit, but due to what's generally believed to be some really bone-headed blunders, they failed to prove she actually did all those things they proved she was capable of doing. The prosecution failed to conclusively link her to the scene so the jury reluctantly had to let her go. Keep in mind that a jury is not a democracy. All 12 have to agree to convict or acquit after considerable discussion or the case gets dismissed, but the D.A. has the option to retry it.

Likewise the ambulance chasers suing pharmaceutical companies or the federal vaccine court, they have a similar burden of proof. They can show all kinds of statistics that show similar trends, but they will need to show a smoking gun that proves how a medication or vaccine causes autism conclusively enough that the corporations cannot cast a reasonable doubt on it.

It's nice to see intelligent people talking rationally. I listen to a lot of talk radio and I mostly hear people who don't have all of the facts making assertions on things that they barely know anything about(more the callers than the hosts), but I have little contact socially, so it's good for me to see this interaction. Thank you for talking things out with out yelling or continually repeating the same thing over and over and ignoring the facts. I was begining to think that there were not many rational people left.

I meant the class action lawsuit against Prozac. What if there is a link between some cases of Autism and maternal ingestion of Prozac? That would indicate that environment does play a role at times.