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Mom's Question: Does Drug Trigger Autism?
by Chris Dovi, Media General
News Service, September
23, 2002
For more articles on disabilities and special ed visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
Mary Miller holds two pictures. Together they tell a story in
the eyes of her son Jamie.
In the first photo, Jamie's expressive eyes dance, a wide grin
reveals a toddler's glee.
The second picture is the same boy, about 11 and grown
handsome. His eyes, ringed by darkened circles, seem empty.
Miller remembers when her son changed. He was still a toddler,
just beginning to talk. He was happy and healthy.
"Then he began waking up at night screaming," she said.
He would thrash and bang. On car rides, Jamie would howl like
a wounded animal.
And when he was calm, he was too calm. Jamie became impassive
and detached. He no longer talked and, when he did, he could
no longer make the simple sentences he had begun to string
together.
Miller went to doctors.
"They were saying he was manipulating me," she said. "We knew
he was in intense pain."
The cure, once it came, seemed simple enough. Her son was
diagnosed as gluten and dairy intolerant, so the family
removed breads, yeast and milk from its diet. Jamie's banging
and screaming stopped.
But his empty stare and his hopelessly arrested development
stayed.
And Miller again started looking for answers.
"There was no map for us to go by," she said. It took five
years for doctors to finally diagnose autism but, once the
diagnosis came, the pieces fell in place.
According to some studies, one in 150 children has some form
of autism, a syndrome characterized by impaired social,
communication and sensory skills. Affected children are prone
to repetitive movements and display an unnatural need for
sameness.
The number of children diagnosed with autism nationally has
risen steadily over the decades, from one in 10,000 when the
disorder was first tracked, to one in 500 just about a decade
ago.
Miller, along with a growing movement of doctors, scientists
and hopeful parents, thinks she knows why.
Two years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told
pharmaceutical companies to stop using thimerosal as an
ingredient in some early-childhood vaccinations.
Thimerosal, a concentration containing a 50 percent mercury
compound, is used as a preservative in the vaccines and in
countless over-the-counter children's medications. Over the
years, it has been yanked from ingredient lists for everything
from infant stuffy-nose drops to children's eardrops and
eyedrops.
Mercury is a known cause of birth defects and brain damage.
Miller's son's symptoms appeared within weeks, even days,
after his first round of childhood inoculations.
She is part of a growing multiparty suit being planned against
pharmaceutical companies that produced thimerosal-containing
vaccines. The suit is waiting for lawyers in a number of
states to organize their strategy and for science to catch up
with their theory. A number of other class actions have been
filed.
The FDA has never said thimerosal is a danger, though it sets
safe exposures to mercury at 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of a
person's weight, far less than what infants receive through
thimerosal-containing vaccinations.
The FDA and drug companies are cooperating to phase out use of
thimerosal but, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of
doses of thimerosal-containing vaccines remain stockpiled.
Despite guidelines, many children younger than a year old are
vaccinated with old vaccines. Following the FDA's recommended
schedule of vaccines, a child receiving the old vaccines
receives 62.5 micrograms of mercury during a single doctor's
visit. By age 2, children may receive as much as 237.5
micrograms of mercury through these stockpiled vaccinations.
New vaccines without thimerosal, by comparison, expose
children to just 37.5 micrograms over the same period.
An FDA spokesman declined comment and referred calls to the
administration's Web site.
The site references a number of studies that showed no
conclusive link between mercury and autism. It says studies
continue because "while the available scientific data do not
establish that these neurodevelopmental disorders are caused
by Thimerosal, at the same time, they do not establish that
these neurodevelopmental disorders are not caused by
Thimerosal."
The official stance of the American Association of Pediatrics
is that there is no connection between thimerosal and autism.
A fact sheet on the association's Web site takes a firm
stance: "There are no studies that show a link between
Thimerosal in vaccines and autistic spectrum disorder."
Drug companies, too, have affirmed their stance that
thimerosal is safe. They cite independent scientific studies,
more than 60 years of use and the more than 350 million doses
distributed as evidence of safety.
Eileen Dolich, a spokeswoman with Merck & Co. Inc., which
manufactures vaccines that previously contained thimerosal,
said she could not comment on the issue because of pending
litigation related to the preservative.
Miller is not convinced.
She and other mothers point to a bill being pushed in Congress
that would absolve drug companies of any future liability for
injuries resulting from thimerosal.
"That's as good as an admission of guilt," Miller said.
And to officials who are not swayed by new research and
arguments supporting the theory, she invites them to live a
day in the shoes of a mother whose toddler goes from normal to
seemingly borderline psychotic.
"You cannot imagine living with these children when they are
so . . . so toxic," she said.
The lack of a recall infuriates parents convinced of a link
between thimerosal and their children's disabilities.
"If a baby walker turns over and hurts three or four children
in the nation, it's immediately recalled," said the Rev. Lisa
Sykes, whose son Wesley, 6, is autistic. "I am so frustrated
with our government that there has been no recall."
It's an interesting but wholly unfounded theory, said Dr. Paul
Strehler, a Richmond-area pediatrician whose nephew is
autistic.
Most Richmond-area pediatricians contacted by The
Times-Dispatch for this article declined to comment, citing
the controversy surrounding thimerosal. But Strehler has
little patience for what he called unfounded conjecture.
Strehler acknowledged that mercury is bad but stressed that in
the levels administered with vaccines, it is insignificant.
"I've been a pediatrician for over 13 years," he said. "I have
not observed a relationship between vaccinations and autism."
It's like saying thunder causes rain, he said. "I think the
[autism and vaccinations] happen at about the same time in
life, but one doesn't cause the other. You could blame baby
formula, too. Baby formula is given during the first year of
life, and some babies who get it also get autism."
Sykes and others insist the evidence is far stronger than many
in the medical field are willing to admit. She points to what
she calls an alarming double standard when it comes to
declaring drugs safe for adults as opposed to children.
"We tell women not to drink alcohol," Sykes said. "But we put
mercury in [pregnant mothers'] flu shots. You're playing
roulette, and you don't even know it."
Roulette? The odds are not even that good, says Dr. Boyd
Haley, an outspoken scientist who has spent the past 12 years
studying mercury toxicity. He is a professor and chairman of
the department of chemistry at the University of Kentucky in
Lexington.
"I can absolutely guarantee that a pregnant woman shouldn't be
exposed to mercury," Haley said, calling a child in utero "a
magnet" for any mercury that enters the mother's system. "Some
people will say certain levels are OK. They have no data for
that."
Haley said studies have been done on adult animals and on
adult humans to determine safety levels, but he called these
studies irrelevant when applied to children.
"Ask them where is your data where you tested this on infant
monkeys or on infant rats or infant anything," he said. "They
just don't have it."
According to the theory Haley and some other scientists are
formulating, the children who have thimerosal-containing shots
and then become autistic have a genetic or physical weakness
that makes them susceptible.
Additionally, he points to a phenomenon widely accepted in
scientific circles called synergistic toxicity. When exposure
to a toxic element is combined with exposure to another toxic
element, "it increases the toxicity of both a hundredfold," he
said.
But theories need verification, and Haley's has yet to have
entered the mainstream among those who study the toxic effects
of mercury and other substances.
Carl Wolf is the toxicology lab supervisor at Virginia
Commonwealth University Health Systems. He said he is not
familiar with any research supporting mercury poisoning as a
potential cause of autism.
"But I suppose it could be a possibility," Wolf said. "Mercury
has detrimental effects on the nervous system, more related to
the peripheral nervous system rather than the central nervous
system."
Wolf expressed some doubt that a healthy body, regardless of
age, would not be able to process and purge levels of mercury
common in thimerosal-containing vaccines.
"We have a metabolism to handle [mercury] pretty much from
birth. Our body generally does very well at excreting anything
that we would consider a poison," he said. "Most of it should
be clear [of the body] by the time they go for their next
doctor visit."
But what if it does not clear the body, asked Haley, stressing
his theory that some children lack a system developed enough
to process the element.
"The bottom line is thimerosal has a history of being very
toxic," he said, calling irresponsible the current decision by
federal agencies to rely on existing mercury-safety standards
set for adults: "A lack of proof isn't a proof of a lack of
something."
Lisa Sykes and her fellow parents say they have all the proof
that is necessary living under their roofs.
"This is not a psychiatric disorder," Sykes insists. "These
kids are catastrophically sick, and we're just not saying that
the pharmaceutical companies are liable."
Today, Jamie Miller is a beaming, happy boy.
He is tall, with sandy hair cut in a typical child's mop. He
enthusiastically runs to greet visitors to the Millers' home
in the city's affluent West End.
The smile frozen in the photo of Jamie as a toddler once again
flashes easily and often accompanies a hearty laugh. His
parents even describe him as an extrovert.
In some ways, he is unusual among children with autism.
But he still will not maintain eye contact. His balance is
somewhat off-kilter. His attention darts around the room. He
occasionally rocks in place as if considering and
reconsidering his next thought.
These are all common symptoms among autistic children.
If Mary Miller could go back to a time before Jamie changed,
she truly believes he would be a different boy today.
"Be educated, be able to make an informed decision," Miller
said, affirming that she still would have gotten Jamie
vaccinated -- as long as it was with vaccines not containing
thimerosal. "I would tell parents to read the literature
provided by the drug manufacturers themselves."
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