Vaccination & Autism : Dan Olmstead, Senior Editor UPI, picks up the link.

[Guest guest]

Dan Olmsted is a UPI Senior Editor Copyright 2005 by United Press International The Age of Autism: The story so farby Dan OlmstedDec 18, 2005 Excerpts from the article: "-- Something happened among children born in the early 1930s to bring autism to the attention of Leo Kanner, the eminent and experienced Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist who first described the disorder in a landmark 1943 paper. At the same time, a Viennese pediatrician named Hans Asperger was noticing a remarkably similar, though somewhat less severe, syndrome that came to bear his name." "Coincidence or not, 1931 appears to be the first year in which U.S. vaccines contained a mercury preservative called thimerosal, and that yields

an alternate hypothesis that could explain the decisive increase in cases that we think is probable. Some parents and a minority of scientists now believe thimerosal -- which is about half ethyl mercury by weight -- is behind most autism cases, perhaps triggering the disorder in a genetic subset of children who lack the ability to excrete it. Although it wasn't fully understood at the time, organic mercury is a potent neurotoxin in even minute quantities; beginning in 1999 thimerosal was phased out of routine childhood immunizations, though federal health authorities say it is safe in that form, and they stand by its continued use in flu shots for pregnant women and toddlers." Link provided by The Post Chronicle: http://www.postchronicle.com/news/health/article_2122114.shtml We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. -- General Omar

Bradley