I hadn't planned on writing again about the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech. After all, what more could I say that hasn't been said before in the blogospheric chatter that's erupted in the five days since the killings? Despicably, everyone's blaming their favorite cause. Fundamentalists are blaming atheism, secularism, and even Charles Darwin for the rampage. We have people making the ridiculous claim that more liberal concealed carry gun laws would have stopped the rampage before so many people died. Never mind that the price over the years for maybe--just maybe--stopping a rare homicidal maniac would be students pulling out those concealed weapons and capping each other when they get drunk every weekend, which would no doubt account, over time, for far more deaths of innocents than a lone gunman. But, hey, never let a little reality get in the way of a delusion, right? One blogger even lists at least 47 things that people have tried to blame the VTU shootings on.
He missed one.
I thought I had seen it all when it comes to people blaming their favorite hobby horse, be it gun control, secularism, or evolution for the rampage. Then I saw this:
THE grandfather of Cho Seung-Hui said yesterday: "Son of a bitch. It serves him right he died with his victims."
Kim Hyang-Sik, 82, said he had a doom-laden dream of Cho's parents the night of his murderous rampage - and woke to hear the news of the massacre and his grandson's death.
He watched Cho's sick video of himself holding a gun to his head.
His sister Kim Yang-Sun, 85, who also saw it, told the Mirror that afterwards her brother was so distraught he had "gone away for a few days to calm himself down and avoid more questions".
She too repeatedly referred to the killer as "son of a bitch" or "a***hole" and said his mother Kim Hyang-Yim had problems with him from infancy.
Yang-Sun revealed the eight-year-old was diagnosed as autistic soon after his family emigrated to the US.
She said: "He was very quiet and only followed his mother and father around and when others called his name he just answered yes or no but never showed any feelings or motions.
"We started to worry that he was autistic - that was the big concern of his mother. He was even a loner as a child.
"Soon after they got to America his mother was so worried about his inability to talk she took him to hospital and he was diagnosed as autistic."
(More from a more reputable news source than The Mirror, namely the AP, here.)
Uh-oh. You know what's coming next, don't you?
Granted, Cho Seung-Hui's grandfather sounds like a such a lovely, caring grandfather who, from his statements, sounds as though he may well have contributed to the abuse that Cho suffered, and it's quite possible that Cho carried a diagnosis of autism or ASD. Be that as it may, whenever you hear autism, what's not far behind?
Contemptible ghoul Alan E. Moses of The American Chronicle, that's who, as he blames Cho's rampage on vaccines, specifically the thimerosal in vaccines:
There is another contribution to this that many feel has caused problems with their own children. An ever growing number of parents feel that vaccines are causing all types of mental disorders. The neurotoxin thimerosal has been questioned for some time. This is a mercury based antibacterial still used in the production and contained in some vaccines. And a quick look at some of the vaccines that Cho received will shock many of the parents that feel that thimerosal is dangerous to children.
Children in South Korea where Cho and his family migrated from receive a vaccine for Encephalitis as this nation like many Asian countries have outbreaks every year. It is a major health issue. Twenty years ago the South Korean government implemented a program to vaccinate children to ward off this disease. The vaccine of choice was what is known as the Nakayama vaccine or JE. Many travelers to the Fareast today receive this vaccine as a precautionary measure. A South Korean child of 15 may have received 14 of these thimerosal containing vaccines. A booster was required every year as immunity would dissipate. By 1995 this practice was halted due to concerns over excessive vaccinations and the adverse effects that were reported. A new Chinese made vaccine without thimerosal. SA14-14-2 became the booster as it didn't require yearly injections. (Ref. Young Mo Sohn, Yosnei University college of Medicine, Seoul South Korea)
Once Cho and his family came to the U.S. he had to have his U.S. vaccines brought up to requirements in order to attend school. The question remains just how many Thimerosal vaccines did he receive and in how short of time before he began school here? In 1992 many U.S. vaccines still contained this mercury product and we must remember that boosters were required again at 13 for one Hep-B.
As his symptoms reveal, was Cho an undiagnosed child that suffered from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)? He rarely made eye contact, rarely spoke and preferred to be alone as he seemed to have lacked social skills. During his time in grade school many ASD children went undiagnosed as this phenomenon had yet to explode until the late 90's. There was little information and many doctors put the word shy to over use. And as many of these early ASD children he was ridiculed by classmates and teachers. ASD and mental retardation do not go hand in hand as many believe so Cho's intelligence is not uncommon but may have created the lack of intervention as it is assumed that to be ASD you also have trouble in learning.
Moses seems to be claiming that, if only Cho had been chelated for his "toxic vaccine injury," he might not have gone on a killing spree. In other words, according to Moses, the mercury in vaccines are responsible for a "toxic injury" that led to his becoming a homicidal maniac.
Lovely. Just lovely.
Never mind that blaming autism for the rampage is bad enough, but Moses has to compound the vileness by implying that vaccines can turn children into killers. Never mind that there is no good evidence that the mercury in thimerosal in vaccines in any way contributes to the development of autism or autism spectrum disorders. Never mind that the latest statistics from, for example, California show no decrease and, indeed, a continued increase, in its autism caseload in 3-5 year olds in the first quarter of 2007, now four years since thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines other than the flu vaccine, when by now, if mercury causes autism, we should have seen a huge decrease in the caseload. Never mind that there's lots of other evidence that shows no link between vaccines and autism.
Alan Moses is just another digusting, opportunistic ghoul piling on.
ADDENDUM: It figures. As vile and despicable as Alan Moses' article was, it didn't take long for me to find one even worse on the same topic:
If Cho was autistic, I want to see it publicized. I want it to be well known what mercury does to brains. The ultimate cause of this horror began in 1931 when Eli Lilly started poisoning people with thimerosal. The fact that the media removed that comment from Cho's aunt just says that the media is hiding autism from intense scrutiny. Intense scrutiny of the ultimate reason for this horror might produce the truth for the whole world to see. We don't know if Cho was poisoned by mercury like my son was. Does anyone think that fact will be covered up if a tox screen reveals it? If Cho had thimerosal induced autism, the vaccine manufacturers and the medical profession must accept the blame for the lost lives. The truth is the only thing that can prevent more of the same.
Ha! Isn't the web wonderful!
And now it's there, and linking back to here.
Bob
(Pls lower the gain on your snark meters)I can add three more reasons for Cho's rampage: food, water and air. If he had not been ingesting these items, he would have never act in the fashion he did.
Making Cho the poster person for "enter your own cause" is one of the greatest tragedies of this whole episode.
You know, the day after the shooting I was talking to my friend and I was like 'I wonder when they'll say he was autistic'.
I'd like to claim superpowers, but stating the obvious isn't exactly one.
Sounds like a real caring family....
I'm pretty much left speechless by this.
As you said, everyone's blaming their own pet cause, I'm surprised it took this long for someone in the anti-vaccine militia to scream that it was vaccines.
Why is the truth so hard to accept?
What - no Illuminati? No CIA (or space-alien) mind control experiments? How disappointing. Here I was, ready to blame the CIA-produced and Illuminati directed half-alien Bigfoot, and I can't find any theories!
Sooooo Sad......
Hmm. You seem to be unaware of how concealed-carry laws actually work, and to be laboring under that unfortunately common misconception ("It'll be like Dodge City!") regarding the base rate of gun crimes among people with concealed-carry licenses. Have a look at the research involved. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Goodness knows I was.
Tens of thousands of gun deaths annually (according to the CDC in the mid-90s) and you're "pleasantly surprised"? (Who are you?)
Then again, I don't think the statistics match up very well, since Canada has 1/10th the population and a per 100 000 population gun death rate of 0.54 (Harvard Injury Control Research Center) to the US' 4.08, but if memory serves (and this Wikipedia list backs me up), we've had three school shootings between 1989 and 2006.
Interestingly, all of them have been in either Alberta (Canada's Texas) or Quebec (home of the people who thought it was ok to abduct and/or kill politicians to make political points). That would indicate cultural factors to me...
If his family is anything like my taekwondo masters (ugh I was in a traditional school, not a black belt factory), this doesnt surprise me. You dishonor the family, youre dead to them, end of story. I think this is a 'cultural thing' and not a sign of life-long mental abuse.
There is another reason why vaccines would be to blame: if Cho hadn't been vaccinated he could've died from diphteria or got cripled by polio. Then he'd not be there to shoot people.
I'd like to believe that using this tragedy to promote some cause would turn at least some people away from the cause, but maybe I am overly optimistic.
I'm confused. Digby points out that elsewhere they're saying it's all Dr. Spock's fault. Probably based on as much acutal knowledge of the murderer's background. I wonder if Korean evangelicals used Spock's book much. Somehow I doubt it.
If I weren't broke, I'd be investing in iron-lung manufacturers right now.
Alexander Cockburn has blamed it on anti-psychotic medication, a classic case of mistaking correllation for causation. He's also called for the abandonment of SWAT teams in favor of citizen posses... I almost laughed, but he was serious.
As a Darwin Youth, I can inform you that Saint Darwin warned us...in the Descent of Man...that vaccinatin weakens the race.
"An ever growing number of parents feel that vaccines are causing all types of mental disorders."
I think this sums up the anti-vaccination movement, actually - they don't have evidence, but they "feel" very strongly that their claims are true. Stephen Colbert would no doubt be proud.
Re Illuminati/CIA involvement: After the Port Arthur massacre in '96, Australian governments pushed through tougher gun laws. Word quickly spread through the far-right nutter community that the gunman, Martin Bryant, was actually a United Nations/CIA/shapeshifting lizard trained Special Forces type ordered to kill a lot of people to justify the "disarming of Australia" as a prelude to invasion by the UN/Indonesia/whoever.
That was 11 years ago and we're still waiting for the black helicopters.
Some of the comments here seem to have been made without actually reading Orac's entry; Luis? Interrobang?
Have I missed something?
Lucas: Some of the comments here seem to have been made without actually reading Orac's entry; Luis? Interrobang?
Have I missed something?
I think they are focusing on this statement:
Never mind that the price over the years for maybe--just maybe--stopping a rare homicidal maniac would be students pulling out those concealed weapons and capping each other when they get drunk every weekend . . .
Which, to me, seems as ridiculous as the claim that allowing concealed carry on campus would have prevented it. Especially when we consider that concealed carry is allowed off campus and we don't see college students shooting each other every weekend when they get drunk off campus. I know that at my University, if you were getting drunk, it was happening off campus in private houses, where concealed carry would be legal, or in bars, where concealed carry would be illegal. Yet, we didn't see drunk students shooting each other every weekend.
Bah, now I've done it too! I've rambled about one insignificant statement from an otherwise excellent post. My apologies.
Just for clarification on the American Chronicle: They don't select writers, writers select them. I upload about an article per month, mostly to get more links to my regular blog. The Chronicle itself has no particular viewpoint, they exist to sell advertising and the writers post for exposure. It really is a situation in which the hosts are not responsible for the editorial content.
So, while there are some clowns that get published there, there are also a bunch of us other writers who are willing to supply them free content. It is a far cry from clownhall.com or the WingnutDaily, which solicits crackpots and pays them.
If you think it would help, I would be willing to write a defense of thimerasol vaccination and upload it.
Larger point: it is ridiculous, yet genuinely unsurprising that so many people are willing to place the blame at everyone's feet but Cho's. He pulled the trigger (several times) and even if he were autistic, that is not the reason he did this. I am not afraid around autistic people, because I don't think it causes them to be murderers.
I wish that fellow parents of ASD children would stop denying the possible link with toxins. Mercury is very toxic and if you would have seen the original VSD study you would understand. Your government knows but due to the influences by the drug manufactures we can't find the truth.
I just ask that you wake up and see the light. As is consistent with you wanting to call me names. Very adult of you.
As Mark Twain once said " a lie can be half way around the world before the truth gets its shoes on".
If you have a better theory then explain it. Thimerosal was and is only a contributor.
Thoughts and Prayers to all,
Alan E. Moses
I wish that fellow parents of ASD children would stop denying the possible link with toxins. Mercury is very toxic and if you would have seen the original VSD study you would understand. Your government knows but due to the influences by the drug manufactures we can't find the truth.
I just ask that you wake up and see the light. As is consistent with you wanting to call me names. Very adult of you.
As Mark Twain once said " a lie can be half way around the world before the truth gets its shoes on".
If you have a better theory then explain it. Thimerosal was and is only a contributor.
Thoughts and Prayers to all,
Alan E. Moses
Alan Moses said:
I wish that fellow parents of ASD children would stop denying the possible link with toxins. Mercury is very toxic and if you would have seen the original VSD study you would understand. Your government knows but due to the influences by the drug manufactures we can't find the truth.
I just ask that you wake up and see the light. As is consistent with you wanting to call me names. Very adult of you.
As Mark Twain once said " a lie can be half way around the world before the truth gets its shoes on".
If you have a better theory then explain it. Thimerosal was and is only a contributor.
Thoughts and Prayers to all,
Alan E. Moses
Alan, Autism is strongly genetic as shown by scientific research. Do spend some time getting a clue.
The fairy tale connection with thimerosal is DE-BUNKED. It does not exist. Period.
Instead of worrying about causation, worry about how to make your child's life the best possible. Get your child all the services that can benefits, and do not use those quack remedies.
Alan E. Moses said: I wish that fellow parents of ASD children would stop denying the possible link with toxins.
I don't see anyone denying a possible link with toxins, Alan. You, OTOH, state it with complete certainty. Why bother with words like possible followed by "Thimerosal was and is only a contributor"?
As far as the "better theory" nonsense, why don't you just say, "Maybe it's unlikely but it's all we have at the moment."
You know what I wish for, Alan? I wish that fellow parents of ASD children would stop trying to convince the world that autism is the result of thimerosal or some unidentified toxic insult when they have little to no evidence to that effect.
Mr. Moses you are welcome to present the real and actual evidence that thimerosal is the absolute cause of autism.
Just remember that we are very picky as to what constitutes real and actual evidence. You see, it has to be published in a real medical journal... and that EXcludes "Medical Hypothesis" (who will print anything as long as your check clears), "Medical Veritas" ... and of course the ill-esteemed Journal of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (more of a political rag than anything else).
Also, the "research" is not to have its funding from a lawyer or done by those who work for lawyers. This excludes anything written by Wakefield, the Geiers or Hornig and a bunch of others. Or by anyone who seeks to gain financially by their secret cure. That would be quacks like Yasco, Blaylock, Buttar and Bradstreet.
The Geiers, of course, get funded by lawyers (MedCon), and by pushing their own special cure: chemical castration of children with Lupron: http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/109/lupron-geier-index
As TheProbe said: Stop playing the blame game, and work to get your child the services he or she deserves.
Unfortunately mercury is still in flu shots. Pregnant women & children 6 months & older are pressured to get it.
SingM said "Unfortunately mercury is still in flu shots."
So what?
More expensive flu shots are available without thimerosal. Where is the evidence that the tiny amount of thimerosal in those shots that are given to a small percentage of people causes any harm?
Even still... the risk of injury from influenza than a small amount of thimerosal is still much greater for my teenager with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with obstruction.
So until SingM and Mr. Moses show me real and definitive evidence that the danger from the vaccine is worse than influenza, tetanus and pertussis I will continue to protect my teenagers (and the small children the younger ones come into contact with).
HCN - of course you may do as you please. i was responding to post above that mercury was no longer in shots. this is untrue. for myself & my loved ones we won't take a chance with the flu shots due to the presence of mercury. and you will do as you wish. i have no desire to convince you of anything.
Moses writes:
A South Korean child of 15 may have received 14 of these thimerosal containing vaccines.
Even if that's correct, Cho left South Korea at age 8, so he would not have received anywhere near that number of shots.
Once Cho and his family came to the U.S. he had to have his U.S. vaccines brought up to requirements in order to attend school. The question remains just how many Thimerosal vaccines did he receive and in how short of time before he began school here?
That question is entirely irrelevant. As Cho's great-aunt points out, he was already displaying symptoms of autism prior to arriving in the United States, enough so to make his mother suspect he had it.
I wish some parents would stop trying ever more extreme ways to make us seem horrific and inhuman by claiming we're poisoned; thus dismissing the abundant strengths and good qualities we have as Autistics.
Last night my ASD child played violin with the rest of her 4th grade music class. I don't think any casual observer would have noted any difference from her peers. Six years ago she was a hyperactive, noncommunicative child. Six years of OT,PT, and speech with no chelation or other quackery plus the wonderfull cure of TIME have made the difference. She is still autistic, she is just an autistic that has learned to function in the neurotypical world.
I wish the mercury militia would spend some time reading the older medical literature. What was the standard treatment for digestive troubles in 1902? Mercury. What was the standard treatment for syphylis before penicillin? Mercury. Did any of you have merthiolte in the medicine cabinent? Another brand name for thiomersal. Read the symptoms of real mercury poisoning from Japan and Iraq. We are exposed to less heavy metals today than our grandparents were.
SingM, if you wish to not take the risk of a teeny tiny bit of a preservative versus certain diseases... then you need a refresher course in risk assessment. Also, there are influenza vaccines available without thimerosal.
Still waiting for Mr. Moses to give me definitive evidence that thimerosal causes the problems he claims it does. Come on... where is it?
HCN - i have no doubt you believe i haven't properly done my research re mercury in flu shots when in fact i have. the amount in the shots is too much for me. obviously, it's all relative to one's perspective. i see the real problem not in the amount of mercury but in the fighting over it. why argue about it? we live in a free society & should all be allowed to make informed, educated decisions. you'll probably argue every person getting the flu shot is told there is a shot available minus the mercury. i know that's not true.
we should all be making informed decisions & quit arguing. more & more grocery stores are posting mercury warnings at their seafood departments. i'd like to see more of that. if you want to eat food that is irradiated, genetically altered, hormone & steroids treated, pesticide exposed etc etc i think that is your right. but i would like the right to decide. it's really pretty simple. just label it, post it, inform people re the issues to which they are expressing concern. and quit fighting.
SingM wrote "we should all be making informed decisions & quit arguing. more & more grocery stores are posting mercury warnings at their seafood departments. "
That is for methylmercury occurring in seafood. That is completely different than the ethylmercury contained in thimerosal.
Kind of like equating methanol with ethanol. One will kill you, the other is in wine, beer, etc.
If you are also going to get antsy about an atom called "mercury". Perhaps you should avoid anything that contains sodium, Na (a nasty volatile metal) or chlorine, Cl (a poisonous gas). Perhaps you should really worry about dihydrogen monoxide, http://www.dhmo.org/ .
Also, as for genetically altered food... I sincerely doubt you have ever eaten any fruit or vegetable that has NOT been genetically altered. For instance, the original form of banana is almost all seed, yet the varieties you buy in the grocery store will never ever form full seeds. The original form of corn, carrot, tomato, and on and on... are vastly different from what you can buy in any organic grocery store. Even though the changes were through selective breeding, it is STILL genetically altered.
If you want to make informed choices, I suggest you work on getting actual factual information to make those choices. From what I can see you are having trouble with that bit.
Your claim that your "research" shows that the flu vaccine has too much thimerosal kind of falls flat when looking at http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm shows these:
Fluzone (AP)3
(no thimerosal) Free
and
FluMist4 (MedImmune) Free Never contained Thimerosal
And neither you nor Mr. Moses have provided actual real verifiable evidence that vaccines with thimerosal cause autism.
Just a reminder... The only child who gets the flu vaccine gets it early because he has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with obstruction. I would suggest you look it up, and then tell my how the tiny bit of thimerosal that is in any flu vaccine is more dangerous then a person with this condition getting the actual disease (most of what you think is "flu" is nothing compared to real influenza). Be specific with actual evidence.
Just in case you want to go back to the "good ol' days" when there were no vaccines, here is a reminder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6IESFUpJjE
From SingM: "we should all be making informed decisions & quit arguing"
The "arguments" that you don't like to see here are intended to help you make an informed decision. Whether you wish to be open to facts as opposed to vague fears, is up to you.
last attempt ~ the concept is simple.
when one goes for a flu shot they should be asked "would you like your shot with or without mercury?"
freedom of choice.
would you like your meat radiated or not?
any pesticides when your veggies were grown or do you prefer organic?
the list goes on & on, as i outlined above.
i agree to disagree with you.
freedom of choice in a free society.
have fun arguing - i'm going to plant in my organic garden.
Should insurance pay the higher price of thimerosal-free vaccines, or should the person requesting thimerosal-free vaccines be expected to pay the difference in cost? In other words, should everyone else be forced to subsidize your choice, which is based on your own fear and no sound science, or should you be expected to pay your own way?
If you want to pay extra yourself for thimerosal-free vaccines, go for it, but don't expect me to subsidize your non-science-based "choice."
"should everyone else be forced to subsidize your choice"
come on now - you know i feel exactly the same way, just the flip side of that coin.
No we should not have to subsidize your "freedom of choice". You should have to pay the full amount of the "thimerosal free" vaccine, which is up to 10 times that of the other version.
Especially when your "freedom of choice" to not vaccinate reduces herd immunity. Some kids with certain health issues (like my oldest son) depend on herd immunity because they have medical reasons not to vaccinate.
So where is my "freedom of choice" when your decisions based on faulty information and thinking reduce herd immunity and endanger my kid?
A case in point: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1055533.ece
Point of clarification: When oldest child was an infant he had a seizure disorder so he could not be vaccinated for pertussis... which was at epidemic levels in our county at that time (about the time when measles returned and kill over 120 people in the USA).
He has since been diagnosed with a very severe genetic heart condition... hence the requirement for an annual flu vaccine.
But my comment still stands... Your "freedom of choice" takes away from other people. First you want the government to subsidize a more expensive vaccine without any good evidence, and second your "choice" to not vaccinate does reduce herd immunity and can cause issues with the health of others.
I suggest you click on both the Youtube and Timesonline links I provided.
Still... Where is the real verifiable evidence that the amount of thimerosal in vaccines has caused any neurological problems in children?
Mat can be Captain Obvious, with his faithful sidekick, the faithful Redundant Boy.
I have a son who is autistic. He wasn't born that way. He regressed into autism gradually after about 15 months. He is quite severe. He no longer talks. He eats his own feces. He runs and jumps and stims most of the day and if one tries to redirect him, he throws himself on the floor and screams throwing a hysterical fit. Do I want you to feel sorry for me? NO. However, if you do not live with an autistic child or know someone who does, wait another decade or 2 and you will. It is a fact statistically.
Do I think vaccines caused my son's autism? He is only 3. Thimerasol was supposed to be removed from all vaccines by then. Dr.'s were allowed to use their vaccine stock and I went back, got my sons' shot records and he did receive vaccines from the year 1999, so yes they were mercury laden- I checked the lot numbers. He had gotten behind and received a whopping 6 in one day and was never the same.
Is this all that I think caused his autism? Absolutely not. I think a host of things are involved in this disorder, otherwise wouldn't my other 3 children (2 of them fully vaccinated with all thimerasol vaccines) also be autistic? I believe genetics are involved. My son had some recurrent ear infections and antibiotics and there is some consensus that the good bacteria in his colon were killed off at this time and that contributed. I think there are many factors, many of which are unknown.
I think the causes ARE important. We need to find out why this is happening and help prevent this. Some autistic individuals say "Why do you want to change us?". I am sorry to offend, but not every autistic person rises to the point of self-sufficiency or even language. I don't want to "change" you, but is living in some home or institution what you feel is an optimal choice? This IS the only choice for some.
The number of autistic adults in this country who will end up in group homes or institutions in 20 years will be staggering. Do you realize the cost? Do you understand that these children qualify for disability? Who do you think pays for this? It is EVERYONE'S concern and if more people pushed for answers and gave a crap instead of telling us parents we're full of it and we're looking for someone to blame maybe something would get done.
People do not care until it is someone they love- that's a fact. I knew little about autism except "Rain Man". I assure you my son is NOTHING like Rain Man. Everyone says focus on getting them help. That is all fine and good, but how do you suggest I do that? My son is in a developmental disability preschool here in a middle-of-the-road school system. That is it, all I get. I cannot afford ABA. Do you know how much that costs? Some of us ARE middle income people and the government does not give us anything other than what they deem a "proper education". So, hopefully the ST and OT he gets there can somehow help.
I pray (again sorry to offend) that you never experience this. It is a devastating loss to watch your child who loves life and looks into your eyes and adores you, change into a shell who if you can get him to look into your eyes, he looks blank back at you. He is not the same, I don't care what caused it.
Regards,
Laurie
Hi Laurie,
Our experiences sound similar in many ways. I too used to think we need to look more closely at vaccines but now I have come to realize that the whole thimerosal thing has been a tremendous waste of time and money.
You say: "I think the causes ARE important. We need to find out why this is happening and help prevent this."
Glad to see you are using the plural for cause but many parents believe they already know the cause and it's thimerosal. If we are to continue to discover things that can cause or contribute to autism, focusing on a single substance isn't how it will happen. Science doesn't work that way.
Your son is three, if I read correctly. All I can tell you is that things can change a lot as he gets older. I'm not saying things will get better or easier for you, but I can guarantee that your son won't always be the way you've described him above.
I never claimed that Thimerosal was the sole contributor to ASD. There are many other sources of mercury exposure. There are many other toxins that are coming under fire. When you add it all up you start getting a picture. By the way I never said Autism caused Cho to kill. I did mention dry cleaning chemicals that have shown to cause severe mental disorders.
I am sorry but your own government claimed that snoking was okay, Lead was okay, DDT was okay, Agent orange was okay etc. It took people who do the research to find the truth. Mercury can and with the government study of 1999 did prove that Thimerosal contributes to ASD outcomes. Look up Simpsonwood mtg. And read that.
Its amazing how militant and ignorant the mercury lovers are. Just conduct a study comparing about 3000 people with no thimersol exposure vs. people with the 1991 levels by a group of independent scientists, not drug company hacks.
This study has never been done, so you should stop lecturing others about how good mercury is for you when you dont have one properly designed study to support your claims.
There is a preliminary study by generation rescue that confirms a link, in the meanwhile the real question is not whether or mercury causes autism, but do you want your child to take 100x's EPA's safe level of mercury? Are you people so out of touch with reality that you are oblivious to young people taking in several times the safe level of a known nuerotoxin?
This lecture by Dr. Ayoub shows how manipulated and fallacious the IOM studies were. (If you make ad hominem attacks against him for being this and that, the please take an undergrad critical thinking class and learn about fallacies)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6890106663412840646
Please don't lie about what I've said or those who've discussed this issue from a rational, scientific point of view, unlike your conspiracy-mongering idiocy. We do not claim mercury is "good for you." We correctly claim that no good scientific studies show a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Period. Not only have no credible studies ever found a convincing link, but several large, well-designed studies have failed to find a link.
As for the Generation Rescue poll, it's a load of crap, a poorly designed automated phone survey, nothing more. See:
As for Dr. Ayoub, not only has he never done anything even resembling credible research on autism, but he's totally off the deep end with conspiracy theories. See:
Either you're a troll, or you're even dumber than I had come to think.