EDIT NOVEMBER 29, 2017: GINGER HAS ADDED TWO MORE PAPERS, MAKING IT A NICE EVEN 144.
EDIT MARCH 1, 2019: GINGER HAS ADDED 13 MORE PAPERS, MAKING IT A TOTAL OF 157.
It seems like all I use Twitter for these days is arguing with antivaxxers. And occasionally flat earthers . . . no, seriously. Unlike "effective homeopathy", they exist. That's not at all why I started tweeting - in fact, I created my account solely for the purpose of shamelessly advertising this stupid blog which you good people are valiantly reading. But alas, I discovered very quickly that Twitter is a wretched hive of scum and villainy like nowhere else in the universe (as far as we know). Antivaxxers are not only present but also obnoxiously vocal, spreading various lies, half-truths, misinformation, and malinformation. They make the same tired (read: wrong) arguments repeatedly, never seeming to learn from the many mistakes they make:
- MMR causes autism! (No it doesn't, and here's evidence)
- But Wakefield was exonerated! (No he wasn't, and here's evidence)
- Thimerosal! (No, and here's evidence)
- Aluminum! (No, and here's evidence)
- Polysorbate 80! (No, and here's evidence)
- Aborted fetal DNA! (No, and here's evidence)
- Formaldehyde! (No, and here's evidence)
- Too many too soon! (No, and here's evidence)
- Then it must be other vaccines! (No, and here's evidence)
- Well if it isn't vaccines, then it must be vaccines! And here is a list of 124 (now 142) research papers that PROVE vaccines cause autism!
And there it is. It nearly always comes down to that link (unless they give up and throw it out at the outset). I've mentioned this particular Gish Gallop in passing (it was formerly 99 papers that was increased to 124, then 130, and has now been rounded out to a nice even 157), but I've never really attacked it head on. This list of papers was compiled by rabid antivaccine lunatic Ginger Taylor, and Liz Ditz previously produced a nice compilation of refutations of many of them. And The Logic of Science blog just wrote a very comprehensive and well-written summary of the supposed evidence against vaccines which addresses several of them as well.
However none of them goes over each of the 142 papers individually. Moreover I've been feeling increasingly uneasy lately about using other folks' blog posts to shoot down this "proof". To that end I've decided to do my own. I'm not saying that the others aren't good enough, it's just that I'm apparently a masochist and enjoywasting my time by reading irrelevant and/or nonsensical papers for hours at a time. Or something. As you've probably guessed, I've now read every . . . single . . . one of these 124 (now 157) papers and will address any and all concerns I found relevant. Despite the fact that many of Ginger's links were broken, the titles here are all clickable and go to the original abstract (or the full paper for some of them).
If you'd like the short short version, click here:
However none of them goes over each of the 142 papers individually. Moreover I've been feeling increasingly uneasy lately about using other folks' blog posts to shoot down this "proof". To that end I've decided to do my own. I'm not saying that the others aren't good enough, it's just that I'm apparently a masochist and enjoy
If you'd like the short short version, click here:
WARNING:
This post will be long, painful, difficult to get through, heavily laden with citations, and most likely fruitless. I'm doing it anyway because I'm tired, I'm grouchy, and it's either this or help my son take apart and put back together the Lego jet for the 23rd (edit 41st) (edit edit 74th) time.
*sigh*
And here we go.
Thimerosal has been removed from all childhood vaccines in most countries since 2001, yet autism rates continue to rise. It is only present in certain multi-dose influenza vaccines. Plus, Taylor et al performed a meta-analysis that included over 1.2 million children that found no relationship between vaccination and autism or ASD, no relationship between MMR and autism or ASD, no relationship between thimerosal and autism or ASD, and no relationship between mercury and autism or ASD. There was also a study done in California that tracked autism rates after thimerosal was removed, and it confirmed the same result - thimerosal does not cause autism.
Michael Pichichero, MD, a physician researcher with over 300 (!) Pubmed citations to his name, reviewed the evidence regarding thimerosal and autism for the UN Environmental Program back in 2008 and again in 2012. A full pdf summarising his review can be found here, but his conclusion was this: "No new evidence could be found in the published literature that brings into question the decision by WHO to endorse the continued use of thimerosal as a safe preservative in multi-dose vaccines." That should be entirely clear and should require no further explanation.
Michael Pichichero, MD, a physician researcher with over 300 (!) Pubmed citations to his name, reviewed the evidence regarding thimerosal and autism for the UN Environmental Program back in 2008 and again in 2012. A full pdf summarising his review can be found here, but his conclusion was this: "No new evidence could be found in the published literature that brings into question the decision by WHO to endorse the continued use of thimerosal as a safe preservative in multi-dose vaccines." That should be entirely clear and should require no further explanation.
Regardless, I'll repeat for those too slow to get it the first time: THIMEROSAL DOES NOT CAUSE AUTISM.
This is a recurring theme, as you will see.
2) {formerly 125} Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12- year old U.S. children
This piece of garbage is one of Ginger's new updates since I initially wrote this piece in mid 2016. I can't say I'm surprised to find it here, and in fact I'd be surprised if she hadn't included it. In short, this is an online survey of mothers who homeschool their children about their self-declared health issues, including autism, allergies, etc. That would be bad enough. But homeschool parents have been found to be less likely to give their children vaccines. So just how bad is this "paper"? I won't even go into the terrible statistics, but suffice it to say it was initially published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health (where the peer reviewer was a chiropractor with ZERO vaccine papers to her name), but it was retracted within a week because it was bullshit. It was then published nearly word-for-word in the Journal of Translational Science (which just so happens not to be indexed on Medline), though it was retracted there again, presumably because it was still bullshit. It then reappeared on that journal's website with no explanation as to why it was removed or replaced. In short, this is a terrible "study" with worthless statistics that is entirely meaningless.
This is a recurring theme, as you will see.
2) {formerly 125} Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12- year old U.S. children
This piece of garbage is one of Ginger's new updates since I initially wrote this piece in mid 2016. I can't say I'm surprised to find it here, and in fact I'd be surprised if she hadn't included it. In short, this is an online survey of mothers who homeschool their children about their self-declared health issues, including autism, allergies, etc. That would be bad enough. But homeschool parents have been found to be less likely to give their children vaccines. So just how bad is this "paper"? I won't even go into the terrible statistics, but suffice it to say it was initially published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health (where the peer reviewer was a chiropractor with ZERO vaccine papers to her name), but it was retracted within a week because it was bullshit. It was then published nearly word-for-word in the Journal of Translational Science (which just so happens not to be indexed on Medline), though it was retracted there again, presumably because it was still bullshit. It then reappeared on that journal's website with no explanation as to why it was removed or replaced. In short, this is a terrible "study" with worthless statistics that is entirely meaningless.
3) Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997-2002.
This is a study of just 31 children with autism. *31*. And the "study" relied on parental reports of their children's autism. Really? REALLY? Drawing any kind of conclusion over a paper with such a small subset of subjects and that relies on parental reports (rather than doctors' diagnoses) is ludicrous.
4) Associations of prenatal and early childhood mercury exposure with autistic behaviors at 5 years of age: The Mothers and Children's Environmental Health (MOCEH) study
Another attempt to say that vaccines = mercury = autism. I don't have access to the full article, but the abstract only mentions that they measured "blood mercury levels" during pregnancy, cord blood, and at 2 and 3 years old. They don't mention vaccines at all, and for good reason: if the child is exposed to any vaccine-derived mercury at all, it is only one dose of thimerosal from the flu shot during pregnancy (assuming the mother was pregnant during flu season). No other childhood vaccine contains mercury, so all other mercury exposure would be environmental. This is a classic grasping at straws, and quite poorly done.
5) The association between mercury levels and autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Another attempt at claiming vaccines = mercury = autism. Is mercury involved in autism? Maybe, though it hasn't been proven. Is the tiny amount of ethylmercury in a single flu shot during pregnancy enough to cause autism? Not remotely.
6) The Putative Role of Environmental Mercury in the Pathogenesis and Pathophysiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders and Subtypes
I have to assume Ginger didn't bother reading this one, because it is not a study, merely a hypothesis paper asking how environmental mercury (including ethylmercury-containing vaccines, of course) could cause autism. Again, ethylmercury does not cause autism. If it did, autism rates should have gone down when thimerosal was removed from vaccines. The rates did NOT go down. This is more flogging the already-dead thimerosal horse.
7) Blood Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
This shows that mercury and cadmium levels are higher in children with autism. Whoopdeedoo. There's no mercury in childhood vaccines.
8) Protective role of alpha-lipoic acid in impairments of social and stereotyped behaviors induced by early postnatal administration of thimerosal in male rat.
I once again must assume that Ginger is just searching "thimerosal" on pubmed and putting whatever she finds here. But let's dig a bit deeper here - the researchers inject newborn rats with thimerosal and alpha-lipoic acid to see if ALA protected against any neurological damage, which it did. How much thimerosal? 30, 300, or 3000 micrograms per kg FOUR TIMES in the first 2 weeks of life (days 7, 9, 11, and 15). Is that a lot? FUCK YES, IT'S A LOT. First of all, the only thimerosal-containing vaccine a child may receive is the flu shot, which would be given once a year (though thimerosal-free versions are available). A flu shot contains 50 micrograms of thimerosal or 25 micrograms of mercury. Assuming a baby is about 8 kg, that's 3 micrograms per kg. The researchers injected the rats with 10, 100, or 1000 times as much thimerosal. Really? Fucking really?
9) Gender-selective toxicity of thimerosal.
Five major problems with this study. 1) The researchers were testing toxicity of thimerosal, 2) on a small number (fourteen total) of 3) mice, not humans, 4) where the doses of thimerosal given were multiple times higher than are used in vaccines, and 5) the authors admit that this study isn't even about the supposed thimerosal-autism link. They were not looking at development of neurodevelopmental problems, they were looking at toxicity. So to say this paper is irrelevant is putting it mildly.
10) Mercury toxicokinetics--dependency on strain and gender.
Curiously this one starts with "Mercury (Hg) exposure from dental amalgam fillings and thimerosal in vaccines is not a major health hazard". I suppose they missed that little gem. Anyway, it's mercury again, so . . . nope.
11) A Review of the Differences in Developmental, Psychiatric, and Medical Endophenotypes Between Males and Females with Autism Spectrum Disorder
A very curious entry. First, the word "vaccine" appears exactly nowhere in this review. Second, the article highlights how autism/ASD is much more common (four times more common, in fact) in boys. Since boys are not vaccinated four times more often than girls, this would point to a genetic origin and away from environmental triggers. I'd probably take this one off if I were Ginger (which, fortunately I am not).
12) Mercury toxicity: Genetic susceptibility and synergistic effects
This was formerly paper #126, but it was moved up to #11 for reasons I doubt even Ginger could explain. I could very easily just say "Sigh, mercury. NEXT!", but I want to expound on this one for a moment. This stupid article was written by Boyd Haley, a retired chemistry professor who has been very active in the anti-vaccine movement. He has long claimed that thimerosal causes autism, but then said:
13) Autism: A form of lead and mercury toxicity
I don't know where to start with this one. This paper suggests, no it flat out states that lead and mercury cause autism, and they know this because they are two of the most common heavy metals and because autism can be treated with chelation. First of all, what? And second of all, WHAT?? Ok now seriously, elemental mercury is not and has not ever been in vaccines and neither has lead, and as we know there is no thimerosal in childhood vaccines. And there is no evidence that chelation can do jack shit for people with autism. You think mercury and/or lead cause autism? Great, first go prove it, and second go fix it, because neither has anything to do with vaccines.
14) Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?
The Tomljenovic and Shaw paper always comes up. They not only abuse statistics but also use misdirection and multiple leaps to conclusions by impling that aluminum causes inflammation, people with autism have signs of increased inflammation, and therefore aluminum may cause autism. They found a correlation, but there is no causation to be found.
15) The putative role of environmental aluminium in the development of chronic neuropathology in adults and children. How strong is the evidence and what could be the mechanisms involved?
This is merely a repeat with nearly the exact same title by the same author (who, as a matter of shameless ad hominem, is described as an "independent researcher", meaning he is not employed by a university) of article #6.
16) Administration of aluminium to neonatal mice in vaccine-relevant amounts is associated with adverse long term neurological outcomes
Tomljenovic and Shaw again, this time basing a paper on the ecological study #13 above, which as we know is incredibly weak. Anyway, this is a study on mice given "high" or "low" doses of subcutaneous aluminum. They exhibit some vague differences on certain mice tests. Does this translate to humans? Hardly.
17) Aluminum-Induced Entropy in Biological Systems: Implications for Neurological Disease
Hey look, it's Tomljenovic and Shaw again! This time it's a review of just how bad aluminum is for us. They list all the ways we are exposed to aluminum (food, water, medicine, vaccines, occupational exposure, etc) and this is bad, they say. What they don't say is that the amount of aluminum in one vaccine is about the same as in 1 liter of infant formula (unless it's soy-based formula, which has 3x the amount). People are exposed to orders of magnitude more aluminum in food, water, and air (no, not chemtrails) than in vaccines. Aluminum just happens to make up 8% of earth's crust and is used in lots of things (including that antacid you maybe have just taken). The amount of aluminum that people get from vaccines a few dozen times in their lives is a minuscule percentage of what they encounter daily in the environment. There is just no evidence that this tiny amount of vaccine adjuvant-based aluminum can cause any of the maladies they suggest. None.
18) Clinical clues for autoimmunity and neuroinflammation in patients with autistic regression
The researchers looked at charts of autistic children and determined if they had either a relative with an autoimmune disease, a febrile illness in the 6 months prior to being diagnosed as autistic, or complications related to their birth. Notice any problems here? If you said "BUT THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES!" then you win. Additionally, there was no control arm in the study, so the results cannot really be taken to mean anything at all.
19) Biological plausibility of the gut-brain axis in autism.
Yet another curious entry. There is a growing body of evidence that the gut may somehow be related to autism. Both autistic children and their non-autistic siblings tend to have more GI symptoms than others, and autistic children have been shown to have a more permeable gut than non-autistic children, but so do their non-autistic siblings. Autistic children also tend to have the same gut microbiome as their non-autistic siblings.
So what does this have to do with vaccines? Well, nothing.
20) A comparison of temporal trends in United States autism prevalence to trends in suspected environmental factors
This is a purely speculative article that lists 10 environmental toxins (everything from glyphosate to aluminum adjuvants to car exhaust) and how children's exposure has correlated with their use. There is no causation even implied here, and the article ends with "Environmental factors with increasing temporal trends can help suggest hypotheses for drivers of autism that merit further investigation." It doesn't even suggest the hypothesis that aluminum vaccine adjuvants may be causing the increase in autism, it is merely the suggestion of a suggestion.
21) Toxic Metals and Essential Elements in Hair and Severity of Symptoms among Children with Autism
Another curious paper. This one found that autistic children (only 44 of them were analysed) had higher levels of aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, antimony, nickel, lead, and vanadium in their hair. What does this have to do with vaccines? Nothing. If they were intimating that it was aluminum from vaccines, 1) we know we get much more aluminum elsewhere than from vaccines, and 2) prove it's not vanadium first. Or cadmium. Or is it antimony? Which is it? Go ahead, I'll wait.
22) Autism is an Acquired Cellular Detoxification Deficiency Syndrome with Heterogeneous Genetic Predisposition
I admit it. Sorry Ginger, I admit it. What? No, I don't admit that vaccines cause autism, because they don't. No, I admit that I laughed when I saw this. It's written by James Lyons-Weller, a self-styled "researcher" at the so-called "Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge", whatever the ever loving fuck that means. He supposedly has a Ph.D in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation Biology, which gives him absolutely no background in immunology or vaccines as far as I can tell. He has said in a video that vaccines are "nasty filthy vials of toxic sludge".
This is a vaccine researcher?
Regardless, the article (which is available here) was published in an open access journal and was obviously peer reviewed by exactly zero people. It reads like an 8-year-old got hold of a bunch of sciencey-sounding words and strung them together. Here are a few excerpts:
And those are just from the first two pages. In short, this is nothing more than an extremely long-winded "VACCINES CONTAIN TOXINS" opinion piece.
23) Assessment of Infantile Mineral Imbalances in Autism Spectrum Disorders
This is another paper documenting elevated levels of various metals (including aluminum (of course), cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic) in autistic children's hair as well as lower levels of zinc and magnesium. They postulate that one or more of these high or low levels of something may be doing something to some genes that causes autism. It's a plausible hypothesis, but that's all it is: a hypothesis.
24) Abnormal measles-mumps-rubella antibodies and CNS autoimmunity in children with autism
This is one of the more controversial papers on this list for several reasons. It has been charged that 1) the laboratory test that author Vijendra Singh used to detect these abnormal antibodies didn't actually detect them, 2) he used "unsubstantiated and un-validated biochemical techniques", and 3) his work has never been replicated. In fact several other trials have directly refuted his findings.
25) Infection, vaccines and other environmental triggers of autoimmunity
Yet another curious addition since the word "autism" is found nowhere in the abstract. It does, however, appear in the text of the article twice:
Regardless, autoimmune diseases are far common in females, and autism is much more common in males. I'd love to hear Ginger explain that one.
26) Impact of environmental factors on the prevalence of autistic disorder after 1979
I'll forgive Ginger's broken link (the first of many) because I managed to find the article with a 0.113-second Google search. This is what I imagine will be the first article by Theresa Deisher, a fundamentalist Chrisitan with a PhD in molecular and cellular physiology who tries desperately to say that it isn't mercury, aluminum, other heavy metals, or anything else that causes autism, but rather it's aborted fetal DNA. No, seriously. Honestly, I wish they would make up their minds. Anyway, Theresa doesn't even waver about it: "rising autistic disorder prevalence is directly related to vaccines manufactured utilizing human fetal cells" she says. Is it? Fascinating. There is a reason why we constantly say that correlation doesn't equal causation since the rise in autism is also strongly correlated to organic food sales:
That's about as strong a correlation you will ever see. Does this mean organic food causes autism? Of course not. Moreover, Theresa's is a highly implausible and improbable hypothesis as it would require 1) any tiny amount of DNA present in vaccines to 2) just happen to make it into the the nucleus of enough neurons in the brain to make a difference, 3) actually recombine with the native DNA, 4) just happen to be useful aborted fetal DNA that produces some protein that 5) just happens to be expressed on the cell surface and that 6) just happens to be identified as "foreign" and that 7) just happens to cause an immune reaction that would 8) somehow cause autism, and 9) it would have to do this in all children with autism. Does this sound like a likely scenario? It sounds more like a fundamentalist desperate for fetal DNA to be evil.
27) A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population
Curiously the author has a PhD not in any scientific field, but in finance. Hm. At the time this was published she also happened to be on the board of SAFEMINDS, a rabidly anti-vaccine group that is convinced vaccines cause autism. Hmm. She also happens to be the mother of two autistic girls. Hmmmmmmm. Lest you think that I'm just attacking the author aka shooting the messenger (though we've seen with mechanical engineer Brian Hooker that non-vaccine-scientists probably shouldn't being doing vaccine research), the dataset she uses is unreliable, and she lumps in children with Specific Language Impairment with autistic children to inflate the results to try to get the result she wants. Cherry picking leads to bad science. Very bad science.
28) Neonatal administration of a vaccine preservative, thimerosal, produces lasting impairment of nociception and apparent activation of opioid system in rats
Fascinating. But there is no thimerosal in childhood vaccines. And this is about the opioid system, not neurodevelopmental disorders.
29) Effect of thimerosal on the neurodevelopment of premature rats.
Thimerosal. Nope, not going to discuss it.
30) Transcriptomic analyses of neurotoxic effects in mouse brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
Again, no thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
31) Lasting neuropathological changes in rat brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
That's three irrelevant papers in a row. Care to make it 4?
32) Persistent behavioral impairments and alterations of brain dopamine system after early postnatal administration of thimerosal in rats
I guess that's a yes. Do I hear 5?
33) B-lymphocytes from a population of children with autism spectrum disorder and their unaffected siblings exhibit hypersensitivity to thimerosal
This is getting old
34) Thimerosal-Derived Ethylmercury Is a Mitochondrial Toxin in Human Astrocytes: Possible Role of Fenton Chemistry in the Oxidation and Breakage of mtDNA
*sigh*
35) Thioredoxin: a novel, independent diagnosis marker in children with autism
Finally, something not thimerosal-related. Ok, let's get down to it. This paper is about a redox-regulating protein which is a marker for oxidative stress and which correlates with autism. What does this have to do with vaccines? Absolutely nothing. Perhaps they got confused and saw "thioredoxin" as "thimerosal". But this is the first in a series of papers that tries to correlate oxidative stress with autism. I suppose their hypothesis is vaccines = oxidative stress = autism, which isn't remotely true. If that were true, any viral infection (which causes a much more robust immune response than any vaccine) could cause autism.
36) Inhibition of the human thioredoxin system. A molecular mechanism of mercury toxicity
Wow, mercury and thioredoxin at the same time. Again, this has nothing to do with vaccines.
37) Effects of selenite and chelating agents on mammalian thioredoxin reductase inhibited by mercury: implications for treatment of mercury poisoning
OOH! This one has both "mercury" AND "thioredoxin" in the title! Uh, well. Hm. Another one that has no involvement with vaccines. It's like Ginger's not even trying. This is about treatment of mercury poisoning. That's it.
38) Serological association of measles virus and human herpesvirus-6 with brain autoantibodies in autism
This is another study by Vijendra Singh (see paper #21) which has not been replicated. They found that anti-measles IgG and anti-HHV6 IgG levels were the same in autistic children as in normal children, but that the majority those who were positive for either were also positive for two brain anto-antibodies. Two problems - first, levels of these antibodies were statistically the same in autistic and normal children. Second, the presence of IgG means either prior exposure or immunity, so this study made no effort to differentiate vaccinated children versus not. In other words, it has nothing to do with vaccines and proves exactly nothing. I'm sensing a trend here.
39) Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism
On the surface this paper has nothing to do with vaccines, until you dig a little deeper into the assumed reason it's included. Essentially autistic children (20 subjects) were found to have impaired methylation and higher oxidative stress than controls (33 subjects). The implication here (I think) is that these children were incapable of handling environmental insults and thus "primed" for developing autism due to some insult, and vaccines were that insult. However, children are subjected to environmental insults every single day from air pollution to dirt to viruses and bacteria, as opposed to the few vaccines they receive over their entire lives. This relationship between oxidative stress and autism has not been proved, and as Taylor showed with their study of 1.2 million children, vaccination is not associated with autism. Any "oxidative stress" that the authors purport isn't from vaccines.
40) Classification and adaptive behavior prediction of children with autism spectrum disorder based upon multivariate data analysis of markers of oxidative stress and DNA methylation.
Now we finally get into DNA methylation, which I guess is another buzz phrase antivaxxers are getting to like. The researchers looked at the levels of certain metabolites in 83 autistic children and 76 neurotypical children, and their levels correlated very tightly with either having or not having autism. They claim this may allow clinicians to diagnose autism earlier rather than wait for it to manifest symptomatically.
That's potentially great news. But it has nothing to do with vaccines.
41) Newborn screening for autism: in search of candidate biomarkers.
Researchers went back and looked at blood samples of children known to be autistic and compared 90 potential biomarkers with non-autistic peers. They found 15 biomarkers that could potentially be used to identify autistic children at birth with a blood test.
This article seems to imply quite strongly that autism is diagnosable at birth.
Uh, Ginger . . . if children are born autistic, do you even realise that this categorically refutes your belief that vaccines cause autism? Do you read these at all? I have to assume you don't, but because it contains the words "glutathione" and "autism", you just stuck it in here?
42) Altered urinary porphyrins and mercury exposure as biomarkers for autism severity in Egyptian children with autism spectrum disorder.
This study looked at children with autism and measured their urine levels of porphyrins compared to their siblings and other healthy (non-autistic) children. They found elevated levels of mercury, lead, and several porphyrins in autistic children. Interesting. But vaccines don't contain mercury or lead. Why is this on the list?
43) Porphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: Implications for environmental toxicity
Another article regarding "environmental toxicity" without mentioning vaccines explicitly. In this one, urine porphyrin is used as a surrogate for serum mercury, as levels are supposedly increased in people with impaired mercury metabolism, so levels are supposed to correlate with mercury exposure. Seeing the problem here? Right, no mercury in childhood vaccines. Father-and-son team Geier and Geier (another pair of antivaccine researchers that antivaxxers like to bring up) seem to be hooked on this hypothesis as well, so I will be entirely unsurprised if I find more of their papers on this list. Next!
44) An investigation of porphyrinuria in Australian children with autism
This is the same as #28, except looking at Australian children. They found consistent elevated porphyrin in autistic children and implicate mercury as possibly causative. Great - if you think mercury is your source, then go after environmental mercury, because childhood vaccines don't have any.
45) Porphyrinuria in Korean children with autism: correlation with oxidative stress
A Korean study which confirms #38 and #39. While is's nice to replicate prior studies, it is worthless in this discussion.
46) Uncoupling of ATP-Mediated Calcium Signaling and Dysregulated Interleukin-6 Secretion in Dendritic Cells by Nanomolar Thimerosal
Ugh, I thought we were done with Thimerosal. Next.
47) Myeloid dendritic cells frequencies are increased in children with autism spectrum disorder and associated with amygdala volume and repetitive behaviors
The authors say that the immune system is dysfunctional in autism. Fascinating. Vaccines are not mentioned.
48) Comparison of blood and brain mercury levels in infant monkeys exposed to methylmercury or vaccines containing thimerosal
Researchers found that thimerosal is cleared much more rapidly from the body compared to methylmercury (8.6 days for thimerosal vs 21.5 days for methylmercury), and that brain concentrations of thimerosal were 3 times lower compared to methylmercury, and that much more of the mercury found in the brain was inorganic rather than organic (meaning it didn't even come from thimerosal anyway). Interesting, but all it does is confirm that thimerosal is rapidly excreted and does not accumulate in the brain. Hooray! A paper that refutes Ginger's point! (Psst Ginger, you may want to remove this one on your next edit.)
49) The retention time of inorganic mercury in the brain — A systematic review of the evidence
This has even less to do with vaccines than Ginger probably realises. I almost laughed as I read this. Inorganic mercury is extremely toxic, that is undisputed. However thimerosal (ethylmercury) is an organic mercury compound, it is rapidly metabolised, and it is rapidly excreted. That is a long-winded way of saying "This paper has absolutely nothing to do with vaccines, not even a little bit".
50) Alkyl Mercury-Induced Toxicity: Multiple Mechanisms of Action
Oh look, Ginger found a book chapter (this one from Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 240) about thimerosal. The author posits that the difference in toxicity between methylmercury and ethylmercury (thimerosal) is due to less exposure and more rapid metabolism and elimination of ethylmercury compared to methylmercury. That still makes it less toxic than methylmercury, but I suppose Ginger doesn't really care much about that since this article says that mercury is bad, and that's all that is required of her Google search. Actual relevance and understanding of the articles is apparently meaningless. But guess what? There is still no thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
51) Metabolic endophenotype and related genotypes are associated with oxidative stress in children with autism
With this latest addition to the "oxidative stress = vaccines = autism" stupidity, I because absolutely convinced that Ginger and her ilk have no idea what oxidative stress is.
52) Brain and tissue levels of mercury after chronic methylmercury exposure in the monkey
What? What? Even if thimerosal were in childhood vaccines (which it isn't), that's ethylmercury, not methylmercury. Methylmercury is different than ethylmercury, and not just because it has an "M" at the beginning. That's like saying methanol and ethanol are the same thing because they sound almost the same, because they pointedly are not. This study measured mercury levels after chronic exposure to methylmercury, not ethylmercury. Including this study is akin to saying that boysenberries are bad because poison is bad simply because they sound alike.
53) Interplay of glia activation and oxidative stress formation in fluoride and aluminium exposure
Here we see Ginger take another long leap from A to Q without bothering to find out if steps B through P actually exist. It's about how aluminum and fluoride can increase reactive oxygen species, another in a long string of Ginger's "oxidative stress" ridiculousness. Is the tiny amount of aluminum in vaccines enough to cause this? No. Even if it did, does this cause autism? There is no evidence that it does.
54) Increases in the number of reactive glia in the visual cortex of Macaca fascicularis following subclinical long-term methyl mercury exposure
This is a rather stunning demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action (that's a nice way of saying Ginger once again displays how little she actually understands any of this). Ginger highlights one sentence which she seems to think supports her: "These results suggest that the IHg may be responsible for the increase in reactive glia". IHg is inorganic mercury, not organic mercury (which is, once again, what thimerosal is). That sentence, and this paper, do NOT support her. At all. I think I just lost a few brain cells.
NOTE: This paper was dropped from the list but then inexplicably re-added. I cannot even hazard a guess as to why.
55) Modeling the interplay between neurons and astrocytes in autism using human induced pluripotent stem cells
This is a rather interesting paper describing a possible pathway to treat autism by blocking IL-6 production. What the hell does this have to do with vaccines? Why did Ginger add this to her list? You'll have to ask Ginger, because I have no idea.
56) Neuroglial activation and neuroinflammation in the brain of patients with autism
This paper suggests that some proportion of autistic patients (not all of them, mind you) have neuroinflammatory reactions. They couldn't estimate the proportion because they only examined 11 patients. Regardless, vaccines are again not mentioned nor even suggested.
57) Aluminium in brain tissue in autism
I have to hand it to Ginger, she added this paper to the list AWFULLY quickly (within 3 days of its publication). In short, the authors (the full article is available here) measured the amount of aluminum in the brains of 10 autistic people (the youngest of whom was just 15 years old) and found it to be high. This is interesting in that brain aluminum has never before been directly measured. So is this a smoking gun? Is this finally the evidence Ginger and her ilk have been looking for?
Well, no. Aluminum is one of the most common elements on the planet and the most common metal (comprising about 8% of the Earth's crust), and we are constantly ingesting aluminum through our respiratory and digestive systems in amounts much higher than any vaccine. For example, drinking water contains about 0.01-0.1 mg/litre. Compare this to vaccines, where the average infant will receive about 4 mg over his/her first 6 months from all vaccines combined. During that same time period, breastfed infants will ingest about 10 mg of aluminum from breast milk, and bottle-fed babies will take in 40 mg (for regular formula) to 120 mg (for soy-based formula). That doesn't even measure the amount in food once they start eating.
Of course the antivaxxer's response to this is "BUT INJECTION IS DIFFERENT THAN INGESTION!" Yes, of course they are different. But before any of you start screaming this at me, there is an excellent explanation of why this is true but clinically unimportant here.
As a footnote, I will also mention that this study was funded by the Children's Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI), which was founded and is funded by the Dwoskin Family Foundation. If you haven't heard of them, look down to paper #137. Claire Dwoskin once said "Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems". I will leave it at that.
58) Microglial activation and increased microglial density observed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in autism
Sigh. Yet another example of someone who doesn't understand the words latching onto a few of them. You see, because the title says "microglial" and "autism", so that must mean that vaccines cause autism. Or something like that. One major problem: there is no evidence that vaccines can induce increased microglial density.
59) Transcriptome analysis reveals dysregulation of innate immune response genes and neuronal activity-dependent genes in autism
This is a summary of various genes and pathways which may be implicated in autism. It's an interesting paper, but anything to do with vaccines? Not at all.
60) Nanomolar aluminum induces pro-inflammatory and pro-apoptotic gene expression in human brain cells in primary culture
Now we move down the list from mercury to aluminum, because if it isn't one thing in vaccines, it has to be something else. Aluminum sulfate was found to be harmful to brain cells. And aluminum adjuvants are in vaccines, so that's scary, right? No, the aluminum in vaccines is aluminum potassium sulfate (aka alum), not aluminum sulfate. And alum has been found to be safe over its 70-year use. This bears repeating for Ginger's (and everyone else's) sake: just because two compounds sound similar, it does not mean they are the same thing or have the same effects on human physiology.
61) Aberrant NF-KappaB Expression in Autism Spectrum Condition: A Mechanism for Neuroinflammation
This article describes the molecular mechanism of neuroinflammation that was discussed in paper #51. A protein called (NF-κB) was found to be aberrantly expressed in the brain of autistic people. Again, vaccines are not mentioned and not involved.
62) A Study of Nuclear Transcription Factor-Kappa B in Childhood Autism
An interesting study confirming paper #55. They found increased NF-κB DNA binding in the blood of autistic children. Fascinating, but unrelated to vaccines.
63) Autism: A Brain Disorder, or a Disorder That Affects The Brain?
This is not a research paper but a review which does not say or suggest that vaccines cause autism. I had a feeling the author Martha Herbert (a paediatric neurologist) would show up here at some point. Again, I don't like attacking authors, but I help help it here. A Massachusetts superior court judge had this to say about her:
64) Multivariate techniques enable a biochemical classification of children with autism spectrum disorder versus typically‐developing peers: A comparison and validation study.
This study expounds on the research done in paper #41. The researchers looked to compare five classification algorithms using data on the same metabolites (folate-dependent one carbon metabolism) to see if any of them was both sensitive and specific in diagnosing autism. And wouldn't you know it, one of them was 88% accurate.
This is once again not about vaccines in any way.
65) Activation of methionine synthase by insulin-like growth factor-1 and dopamine: a target for neurodevelopmental toxins and thimerosalThis is a study of just 31 children with autism. *31*. And the "study" relied on parental reports of their children's autism. Really? REALLY? Drawing any kind of conclusion over a paper with such a small subset of subjects and that relies on parental reports (rather than doctors' diagnoses) is ludicrous.
4) Associations of prenatal and early childhood mercury exposure with autistic behaviors at 5 years of age: The Mothers and Children's Environmental Health (MOCEH) study
Another attempt to say that vaccines = mercury = autism. I don't have access to the full article, but the abstract only mentions that they measured "blood mercury levels" during pregnancy, cord blood, and at 2 and 3 years old. They don't mention vaccines at all, and for good reason: if the child is exposed to any vaccine-derived mercury at all, it is only one dose of thimerosal from the flu shot during pregnancy (assuming the mother was pregnant during flu season). No other childhood vaccine contains mercury, so all other mercury exposure would be environmental. This is a classic grasping at straws, and quite poorly done.
5) The association between mercury levels and autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Another attempt at claiming vaccines = mercury = autism. Is mercury involved in autism? Maybe, though it hasn't been proven. Is the tiny amount of ethylmercury in a single flu shot during pregnancy enough to cause autism? Not remotely.
6) The Putative Role of Environmental Mercury in the Pathogenesis and Pathophysiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders and Subtypes
I have to assume Ginger didn't bother reading this one, because it is not a study, merely a hypothesis paper asking how environmental mercury (including ethylmercury-containing vaccines, of course) could cause autism. Again, ethylmercury does not cause autism. If it did, autism rates should have gone down when thimerosal was removed from vaccines. The rates did NOT go down. This is more flogging the already-dead thimerosal horse.
7) Blood Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
This shows that mercury and cadmium levels are higher in children with autism. Whoopdeedoo. There's no mercury in childhood vaccines.
8) Protective role of alpha-lipoic acid in impairments of social and stereotyped behaviors induced by early postnatal administration of thimerosal in male rat.
I once again must assume that Ginger is just searching "thimerosal" on pubmed and putting whatever she finds here. But let's dig a bit deeper here - the researchers inject newborn rats with thimerosal and alpha-lipoic acid to see if ALA protected against any neurological damage, which it did. How much thimerosal? 30, 300, or 3000 micrograms per kg FOUR TIMES in the first 2 weeks of life (days 7, 9, 11, and 15). Is that a lot? FUCK YES, IT'S A LOT. First of all, the only thimerosal-containing vaccine a child may receive is the flu shot, which would be given once a year (though thimerosal-free versions are available). A flu shot contains 50 micrograms of thimerosal or 25 micrograms of mercury. Assuming a baby is about 8 kg, that's 3 micrograms per kg. The researchers injected the rats with 10, 100, or 1000 times as much thimerosal. Really? Fucking really?
9) Gender-selective toxicity of thimerosal.
Five major problems with this study. 1) The researchers were testing toxicity of thimerosal, 2) on a small number (fourteen total) of 3) mice, not humans, 4) where the doses of thimerosal given were multiple times higher than are used in vaccines, and 5) the authors admit that this study isn't even about the supposed thimerosal-autism link. They were not looking at development of neurodevelopmental problems, they were looking at toxicity. So to say this paper is irrelevant is putting it mildly.
10) Mercury toxicokinetics--dependency on strain and gender.
Curiously this one starts with "Mercury (Hg) exposure from dental amalgam fillings and thimerosal in vaccines is not a major health hazard". I suppose they missed that little gem. Anyway, it's mercury again, so . . . nope.
11) A Review of the Differences in Developmental, Psychiatric, and Medical Endophenotypes Between Males and Females with Autism Spectrum Disorder
A very curious entry. First, the word "vaccine" appears exactly nowhere in this review. Second, the article highlights how autism/ASD is much more common (four times more common, in fact) in boys. Since boys are not vaccinated four times more often than girls, this would point to a genetic origin and away from environmental triggers. I'd probably take this one off if I were Ginger (which, fortunately I am not).
12) Mercury toxicity: Genetic susceptibility and synergistic effects
This was formerly paper #126, but it was moved up to #11 for reasons I doubt even Ginger could explain. I could very easily just say "Sigh, mercury. NEXT!", but I want to expound on this one for a moment. This stupid article was written by Boyd Haley, a retired chemistry professor who has been very active in the anti-vaccine movement. He has long claimed that thimerosal causes autism, but then said:
"If, indeed, the complete removal of thimerosal from vaccines was not followed in an appropriate time by a decrease in autism then this would be solid proof that thimerosal was not causal for autism."Thimerosal was removed from all vaccines (except the multi-dose flu vaccine) in 2002, and autism rates have not changed at all. So that's it, right? Haley is going to give up and admit he was wrong, right? HAHA no, not at all. In fact, Haley happens to have founded a company that produces (or rather produced) a "supplement" called OSR#1 that supposedly chelates . . . any guesses? Yup, mercury. And it was touted by antivax site Age of Autism as a treatment for autism. (A quick search for his company's website shows it is no longer valid, though Age of Autism still has their endorsement up.) Antivaxxers like Ginger Taylor who constantly spew "FOLLOW THE MONEY!" should follow their own advice. You can read more about that here.
13) Autism: A form of lead and mercury toxicity
I don't know where to start with this one. This paper suggests, no it flat out states that lead and mercury cause autism, and they know this because they are two of the most common heavy metals and because autism can be treated with chelation. First of all, what? And second of all, WHAT?? Ok now seriously, elemental mercury is not and has not ever been in vaccines and neither has lead, and as we know there is no thimerosal in childhood vaccines. And there is no evidence that chelation can do jack shit for people with autism. You think mercury and/or lead cause autism? Great, first go prove it, and second go fix it, because neither has anything to do with vaccines.
14) Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?
The Tomljenovic and Shaw paper always comes up. They not only abuse statistics but also use misdirection and multiple leaps to conclusions by impling that aluminum causes inflammation, people with autism have signs of increased inflammation, and therefore aluminum may cause autism. They found a correlation, but there is no causation to be found.
15) The putative role of environmental aluminium in the development of chronic neuropathology in adults and children. How strong is the evidence and what could be the mechanisms involved?
This is merely a repeat with nearly the exact same title by the same author (who, as a matter of shameless ad hominem, is described as an "independent researcher", meaning he is not employed by a university) of article #6.
16) Administration of aluminium to neonatal mice in vaccine-relevant amounts is associated with adverse long term neurological outcomes
Tomljenovic and Shaw again, this time basing a paper on the ecological study #13 above, which as we know is incredibly weak. Anyway, this is a study on mice given "high" or "low" doses of subcutaneous aluminum. They exhibit some vague differences on certain mice tests. Does this translate to humans? Hardly.
17) Aluminum-Induced Entropy in Biological Systems: Implications for Neurological Disease
Hey look, it's Tomljenovic and Shaw again! This time it's a review of just how bad aluminum is for us. They list all the ways we are exposed to aluminum (food, water, medicine, vaccines, occupational exposure, etc) and this is bad, they say. What they don't say is that the amount of aluminum in one vaccine is about the same as in 1 liter of infant formula (unless it's soy-based formula, which has 3x the amount). People are exposed to orders of magnitude more aluminum in food, water, and air (no, not chemtrails) than in vaccines. Aluminum just happens to make up 8% of earth's crust and is used in lots of things (including that antacid you maybe have just taken). The amount of aluminum that people get from vaccines a few dozen times in their lives is a minuscule percentage of what they encounter daily in the environment. There is just no evidence that this tiny amount of vaccine adjuvant-based aluminum can cause any of the maladies they suggest. None.
18) Clinical clues for autoimmunity and neuroinflammation in patients with autistic regression
The researchers looked at charts of autistic children and determined if they had either a relative with an autoimmune disease, a febrile illness in the 6 months prior to being diagnosed as autistic, or complications related to their birth. Notice any problems here? If you said "BUT THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES!" then you win. Additionally, there was no control arm in the study, so the results cannot really be taken to mean anything at all.
19) Biological plausibility of the gut-brain axis in autism.
Yet another curious entry. There is a growing body of evidence that the gut may somehow be related to autism. Both autistic children and their non-autistic siblings tend to have more GI symptoms than others, and autistic children have been shown to have a more permeable gut than non-autistic children, but so do their non-autistic siblings. Autistic children also tend to have the same gut microbiome as their non-autistic siblings.
So what does this have to do with vaccines? Well, nothing.
20) A comparison of temporal trends in United States autism prevalence to trends in suspected environmental factors
This is a purely speculative article that lists 10 environmental toxins (everything from glyphosate to aluminum adjuvants to car exhaust) and how children's exposure has correlated with their use. There is no causation even implied here, and the article ends with "Environmental factors with increasing temporal trends can help suggest hypotheses for drivers of autism that merit further investigation." It doesn't even suggest the hypothesis that aluminum vaccine adjuvants may be causing the increase in autism, it is merely the suggestion of a suggestion.
21) Toxic Metals and Essential Elements in Hair and Severity of Symptoms among Children with Autism
Another curious paper. This one found that autistic children (only 44 of them were analysed) had higher levels of aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, antimony, nickel, lead, and vanadium in their hair. What does this have to do with vaccines? Nothing. If they were intimating that it was aluminum from vaccines, 1) we know we get much more aluminum elsewhere than from vaccines, and 2) prove it's not vanadium first. Or cadmium. Or is it antimony? Which is it? Go ahead, I'll wait.
22) Autism is an Acquired Cellular Detoxification Deficiency Syndrome with Heterogeneous Genetic Predisposition
I admit it. Sorry Ginger, I admit it. What? No, I don't admit that vaccines cause autism, because they don't. No, I admit that I laughed when I saw this. It's written by James Lyons-Weller, a self-styled "researcher" at the so-called "Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge", whatever the ever loving fuck that means. He supposedly has a Ph.D in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation Biology, which gives him absolutely no background in immunology or vaccines as far as I can tell. He has said in a video that vaccines are "nasty filthy vials of toxic sludge".
This is a vaccine researcher?
Regardless, the article (which is available here) was published in an open access journal and was obviously peer reviewed by exactly zero people. It reads like an 8-year-old got hold of a bunch of sciencey-sounding words and strung them together. Here are a few excerpts:
"The wisdom of the use of aluminum in vaccines is now in doubt due to many lines of evidence, including the findings that monocytes pick up aluminum and are signaled to the brain via TNF- and that amyloid is part of amyloid"
"There numerous previous authors have pointed to evidence of a role of environmental toxins in ASD."
"A direct role of mitochondrial disorder (MD) is ASD overall is rare"
"Valproic acid is used routine in mouse models of ASD and is noncontroversial known cause of autism."
And those are just from the first two pages. In short, this is nothing more than an extremely long-winded "VACCINES CONTAIN TOXINS" opinion piece.
23) Assessment of Infantile Mineral Imbalances in Autism Spectrum Disorders
This is another paper documenting elevated levels of various metals (including aluminum (of course), cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic) in autistic children's hair as well as lower levels of zinc and magnesium. They postulate that one or more of these high or low levels of something may be doing something to some genes that causes autism. It's a plausible hypothesis, but that's all it is: a hypothesis.
24) Abnormal measles-mumps-rubella antibodies and CNS autoimmunity in children with autism
This is one of the more controversial papers on this list for several reasons. It has been charged that 1) the laboratory test that author Vijendra Singh used to detect these abnormal antibodies didn't actually detect them, 2) he used "unsubstantiated and un-validated biochemical techniques", and 3) his work has never been replicated. In fact several other trials have directly refuted his findings.
25) Infection, vaccines and other environmental triggers of autoimmunity
Yet another curious addition since the word "autism" is found nowhere in the abstract. It does, however, appear in the text of the article twice:
"Three major neurological autoimmune manifestations have been addressed in conjunction with vaccination: the GBS, MS and autism."and
"The vaccine most commonly associated with autism was the measles vaccine."Both of these statements are, of course, wholly unsubstantiated bullshit. Of course autism is not an autoimmune disease, and the measles vaccine does not cause autism. But this is what author Yehuda Shoenfeld does - makes two giant leaps of illogic and then uses this predetermined conclusion to work backwards towards his predetermined connection.
Regardless, autoimmune diseases are far common in females, and autism is much more common in males. I'd love to hear Ginger explain that one.
26) Impact of environmental factors on the prevalence of autistic disorder after 1979
I'll forgive Ginger's broken link (the first of many) because I managed to find the article with a 0.113-second Google search. This is what I imagine will be the first article by Theresa Deisher, a fundamentalist Chrisitan with a PhD in molecular and cellular physiology who tries desperately to say that it isn't mercury, aluminum, other heavy metals, or anything else that causes autism, but rather it's aborted fetal DNA. No, seriously. Honestly, I wish they would make up their minds. Anyway, Theresa doesn't even waver about it: "rising autistic disorder prevalence is directly related to vaccines manufactured utilizing human fetal cells" she says. Is it? Fascinating. There is a reason why we constantly say that correlation doesn't equal causation since the rise in autism is also strongly correlated to organic food sales:
That's about as strong a correlation you will ever see. Does this mean organic food causes autism? Of course not. Moreover, Theresa's is a highly implausible and improbable hypothesis as it would require 1) any tiny amount of DNA present in vaccines to 2) just happen to make it into the the nucleus of enough neurons in the brain to make a difference, 3) actually recombine with the native DNA, 4) just happen to be useful aborted fetal DNA that produces some protein that 5) just happens to be expressed on the cell surface and that 6) just happens to be identified as "foreign" and that 7) just happens to cause an immune reaction that would 8) somehow cause autism, and 9) it would have to do this in all children with autism. Does this sound like a likely scenario? It sounds more like a fundamentalist desperate for fetal DNA to be evil.
27) A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population
Curiously the author has a PhD not in any scientific field, but in finance. Hm. At the time this was published she also happened to be on the board of SAFEMINDS, a rabidly anti-vaccine group that is convinced vaccines cause autism. Hmm. She also happens to be the mother of two autistic girls. Hmmmmmmm. Lest you think that I'm just attacking the author aka shooting the messenger (though we've seen with mechanical engineer Brian Hooker that non-vaccine-scientists probably shouldn't being doing vaccine research), the dataset she uses is unreliable, and she lumps in children with Specific Language Impairment with autistic children to inflate the results to try to get the result she wants. Cherry picking leads to bad science. Very bad science.
28) Neonatal administration of a vaccine preservative, thimerosal, produces lasting impairment of nociception and apparent activation of opioid system in rats
Fascinating. But there is no thimerosal in childhood vaccines. And this is about the opioid system, not neurodevelopmental disorders.
29) Effect of thimerosal on the neurodevelopment of premature rats.
Thimerosal. Nope, not going to discuss it.
30) Transcriptomic analyses of neurotoxic effects in mouse brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
Again, no thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
31) Lasting neuropathological changes in rat brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
That's three irrelevant papers in a row. Care to make it 4?
32) Persistent behavioral impairments and alterations of brain dopamine system after early postnatal administration of thimerosal in rats
I guess that's a yes. Do I hear 5?
33) B-lymphocytes from a population of children with autism spectrum disorder and their unaffected siblings exhibit hypersensitivity to thimerosal
This is getting old
34) Thimerosal-Derived Ethylmercury Is a Mitochondrial Toxin in Human Astrocytes: Possible Role of Fenton Chemistry in the Oxidation and Breakage of mtDNA
*sigh*
35) Thioredoxin: a novel, independent diagnosis marker in children with autism
Finally, something not thimerosal-related. Ok, let's get down to it. This paper is about a redox-regulating protein which is a marker for oxidative stress and which correlates with autism. What does this have to do with vaccines? Absolutely nothing. Perhaps they got confused and saw "thioredoxin" as "thimerosal". But this is the first in a series of papers that tries to correlate oxidative stress with autism. I suppose their hypothesis is vaccines = oxidative stress = autism, which isn't remotely true. If that were true, any viral infection (which causes a much more robust immune response than any vaccine) could cause autism.
36) Inhibition of the human thioredoxin system. A molecular mechanism of mercury toxicity
Wow, mercury and thioredoxin at the same time. Again, this has nothing to do with vaccines.
37) Effects of selenite and chelating agents on mammalian thioredoxin reductase inhibited by mercury: implications for treatment of mercury poisoning
OOH! This one has both "mercury" AND "thioredoxin" in the title! Uh, well. Hm. Another one that has no involvement with vaccines. It's like Ginger's not even trying. This is about treatment of mercury poisoning. That's it.
38) Serological association of measles virus and human herpesvirus-6 with brain autoantibodies in autism
This is another study by Vijendra Singh (see paper #21) which has not been replicated. They found that anti-measles IgG and anti-HHV6 IgG levels were the same in autistic children as in normal children, but that the majority those who were positive for either were also positive for two brain anto-antibodies. Two problems - first, levels of these antibodies were statistically the same in autistic and normal children. Second, the presence of IgG means either prior exposure or immunity, so this study made no effort to differentiate vaccinated children versus not. In other words, it has nothing to do with vaccines and proves exactly nothing. I'm sensing a trend here.
39) Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism
On the surface this paper has nothing to do with vaccines, until you dig a little deeper into the assumed reason it's included. Essentially autistic children (20 subjects) were found to have impaired methylation and higher oxidative stress than controls (33 subjects). The implication here (I think) is that these children were incapable of handling environmental insults and thus "primed" for developing autism due to some insult, and vaccines were that insult. However, children are subjected to environmental insults every single day from air pollution to dirt to viruses and bacteria, as opposed to the few vaccines they receive over their entire lives. This relationship between oxidative stress and autism has not been proved, and as Taylor showed with their study of 1.2 million children, vaccination is not associated with autism. Any "oxidative stress" that the authors purport isn't from vaccines.
40) Classification and adaptive behavior prediction of children with autism spectrum disorder based upon multivariate data analysis of markers of oxidative stress and DNA methylation.
Now we finally get into DNA methylation, which I guess is another buzz phrase antivaxxers are getting to like. The researchers looked at the levels of certain metabolites in 83 autistic children and 76 neurotypical children, and their levels correlated very tightly with either having or not having autism. They claim this may allow clinicians to diagnose autism earlier rather than wait for it to manifest symptomatically.
That's potentially great news. But it has nothing to do with vaccines.
41) Newborn screening for autism: in search of candidate biomarkers.
Researchers went back and looked at blood samples of children known to be autistic and compared 90 potential biomarkers with non-autistic peers. They found 15 biomarkers that could potentially be used to identify autistic children at birth with a blood test.
This article seems to imply quite strongly that autism is diagnosable at birth.
Uh, Ginger . . . if children are born autistic, do you even realise that this categorically refutes your belief that vaccines cause autism? Do you read these at all? I have to assume you don't, but because it contains the words "glutathione" and "autism", you just stuck it in here?
42) Altered urinary porphyrins and mercury exposure as biomarkers for autism severity in Egyptian children with autism spectrum disorder.
This study looked at children with autism and measured their urine levels of porphyrins compared to their siblings and other healthy (non-autistic) children. They found elevated levels of mercury, lead, and several porphyrins in autistic children. Interesting. But vaccines don't contain mercury or lead. Why is this on the list?
43) Porphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: Implications for environmental toxicity
Another article regarding "environmental toxicity" without mentioning vaccines explicitly. In this one, urine porphyrin is used as a surrogate for serum mercury, as levels are supposedly increased in people with impaired mercury metabolism, so levels are supposed to correlate with mercury exposure. Seeing the problem here? Right, no mercury in childhood vaccines. Father-and-son team Geier and Geier (another pair of antivaccine researchers that antivaxxers like to bring up) seem to be hooked on this hypothesis as well, so I will be entirely unsurprised if I find more of their papers on this list. Next!
44) An investigation of porphyrinuria in Australian children with autism
This is the same as #28, except looking at Australian children. They found consistent elevated porphyrin in autistic children and implicate mercury as possibly causative. Great - if you think mercury is your source, then go after environmental mercury, because childhood vaccines don't have any.
45) Porphyrinuria in Korean children with autism: correlation with oxidative stress
A Korean study which confirms #38 and #39. While is's nice to replicate prior studies, it is worthless in this discussion.
46) Uncoupling of ATP-Mediated Calcium Signaling and Dysregulated Interleukin-6 Secretion in Dendritic Cells by Nanomolar Thimerosal
Ugh, I thought we were done with Thimerosal. Next.
47) Myeloid dendritic cells frequencies are increased in children with autism spectrum disorder and associated with amygdala volume and repetitive behaviors
The authors say that the immune system is dysfunctional in autism. Fascinating. Vaccines are not mentioned.
48) Comparison of blood and brain mercury levels in infant monkeys exposed to methylmercury or vaccines containing thimerosal
Researchers found that thimerosal is cleared much more rapidly from the body compared to methylmercury (8.6 days for thimerosal vs 21.5 days for methylmercury), and that brain concentrations of thimerosal were 3 times lower compared to methylmercury, and that much more of the mercury found in the brain was inorganic rather than organic (meaning it didn't even come from thimerosal anyway). Interesting, but all it does is confirm that thimerosal is rapidly excreted and does not accumulate in the brain. Hooray! A paper that refutes Ginger's point! (Psst Ginger, you may want to remove this one on your next edit.)
49) The retention time of inorganic mercury in the brain — A systematic review of the evidence
This has even less to do with vaccines than Ginger probably realises. I almost laughed as I read this. Inorganic mercury is extremely toxic, that is undisputed. However thimerosal (ethylmercury) is an organic mercury compound, it is rapidly metabolised, and it is rapidly excreted. That is a long-winded way of saying "This paper has absolutely nothing to do with vaccines, not even a little bit".
50) Alkyl Mercury-Induced Toxicity: Multiple Mechanisms of Action
Oh look, Ginger found a book chapter (this one from Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology Volume 240) about thimerosal. The author posits that the difference in toxicity between methylmercury and ethylmercury (thimerosal) is due to less exposure and more rapid metabolism and elimination of ethylmercury compared to methylmercury. That still makes it less toxic than methylmercury, but I suppose Ginger doesn't really care much about that since this article says that mercury is bad, and that's all that is required of her Google search. Actual relevance and understanding of the articles is apparently meaningless. But guess what? There is still no thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
51) Metabolic endophenotype and related genotypes are associated with oxidative stress in children with autism
With this latest addition to the "oxidative stress = vaccines = autism" stupidity, I because absolutely convinced that Ginger and her ilk have no idea what oxidative stress is.
52) Brain and tissue levels of mercury after chronic methylmercury exposure in the monkey
What? What? Even if thimerosal were in childhood vaccines (which it isn't), that's ethylmercury, not methylmercury. Methylmercury is different than ethylmercury, and not just because it has an "M" at the beginning. That's like saying methanol and ethanol are the same thing because they sound almost the same, because they pointedly are not. This study measured mercury levels after chronic exposure to methylmercury, not ethylmercury. Including this study is akin to saying that boysenberries are bad because poison is bad simply because they sound alike.
53) Interplay of glia activation and oxidative stress formation in fluoride and aluminium exposure
Here we see Ginger take another long leap from A to Q without bothering to find out if steps B through P actually exist. It's about how aluminum and fluoride can increase reactive oxygen species, another in a long string of Ginger's "oxidative stress" ridiculousness. Is the tiny amount of aluminum in vaccines enough to cause this? No. Even if it did, does this cause autism? There is no evidence that it does.
54) Increases in the number of reactive glia in the visual cortex of Macaca fascicularis following subclinical long-term methyl mercury exposure
This is a rather stunning demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action (that's a nice way of saying Ginger once again displays how little she actually understands any of this). Ginger highlights one sentence which she seems to think supports her: "These results suggest that the IHg may be responsible for the increase in reactive glia". IHg is inorganic mercury, not organic mercury (which is, once again, what thimerosal is). That sentence, and this paper, do NOT support her. At all. I think I just lost a few brain cells.
NOTE: This paper was dropped from the list but then inexplicably re-added. I cannot even hazard a guess as to why.
55) Modeling the interplay between neurons and astrocytes in autism using human induced pluripotent stem cells
This is a rather interesting paper describing a possible pathway to treat autism by blocking IL-6 production. What the hell does this have to do with vaccines? Why did Ginger add this to her list? You'll have to ask Ginger, because I have no idea.
56) Neuroglial activation and neuroinflammation in the brain of patients with autism
This paper suggests that some proportion of autistic patients (not all of them, mind you) have neuroinflammatory reactions. They couldn't estimate the proportion because they only examined 11 patients. Regardless, vaccines are again not mentioned nor even suggested.
57) Aluminium in brain tissue in autism
I have to hand it to Ginger, she added this paper to the list AWFULLY quickly (within 3 days of its publication). In short, the authors (the full article is available here) measured the amount of aluminum in the brains of 10 autistic people (the youngest of whom was just 15 years old) and found it to be high. This is interesting in that brain aluminum has never before been directly measured. So is this a smoking gun? Is this finally the evidence Ginger and her ilk have been looking for?
Well, no. Aluminum is one of the most common elements on the planet and the most common metal (comprising about 8% of the Earth's crust), and we are constantly ingesting aluminum through our respiratory and digestive systems in amounts much higher than any vaccine. For example, drinking water contains about 0.01-0.1 mg/litre. Compare this to vaccines, where the average infant will receive about 4 mg over his/her first 6 months from all vaccines combined. During that same time period, breastfed infants will ingest about 10 mg of aluminum from breast milk, and bottle-fed babies will take in 40 mg (for regular formula) to 120 mg (for soy-based formula). That doesn't even measure the amount in food once they start eating.
Of course the antivaxxer's response to this is "BUT INJECTION IS DIFFERENT THAN INGESTION!" Yes, of course they are different. But before any of you start screaming this at me, there is an excellent explanation of why this is true but clinically unimportant here.
As a footnote, I will also mention that this study was funded by the Children's Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI), which was founded and is funded by the Dwoskin Family Foundation. If you haven't heard of them, look down to paper #137. Claire Dwoskin once said "Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems". I will leave it at that.
58) Microglial activation and increased microglial density observed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in autism
Sigh. Yet another example of someone who doesn't understand the words latching onto a few of them. You see, because the title says "microglial" and "autism", so that must mean that vaccines cause autism. Or something like that. One major problem: there is no evidence that vaccines can induce increased microglial density.
59) Transcriptome analysis reveals dysregulation of innate immune response genes and neuronal activity-dependent genes in autism
This is a summary of various genes and pathways which may be implicated in autism. It's an interesting paper, but anything to do with vaccines? Not at all.
60) Nanomolar aluminum induces pro-inflammatory and pro-apoptotic gene expression in human brain cells in primary culture
Now we move down the list from mercury to aluminum, because if it isn't one thing in vaccines, it has to be something else. Aluminum sulfate was found to be harmful to brain cells. And aluminum adjuvants are in vaccines, so that's scary, right? No, the aluminum in vaccines is aluminum potassium sulfate (aka alum), not aluminum sulfate. And alum has been found to be safe over its 70-year use. This bears repeating for Ginger's (and everyone else's) sake: just because two compounds sound similar, it does not mean they are the same thing or have the same effects on human physiology.
61) Aberrant NF-KappaB Expression in Autism Spectrum Condition: A Mechanism for Neuroinflammation
This article describes the molecular mechanism of neuroinflammation that was discussed in paper #51. A protein called (NF-κB) was found to be aberrantly expressed in the brain of autistic people. Again, vaccines are not mentioned and not involved.
62) A Study of Nuclear Transcription Factor-Kappa B in Childhood Autism
An interesting study confirming paper #55. They found increased NF-κB DNA binding in the blood of autistic children. Fascinating, but unrelated to vaccines.
63) Autism: A Brain Disorder, or a Disorder That Affects The Brain?
This is not a research paper but a review which does not say or suggest that vaccines cause autism. I had a feeling the author Martha Herbert (a paediatric neurologist) would show up here at some point. Again, I don't like attacking authors, but I help help it here. A Massachusetts superior court judge had this to say about her:
"Dr. Herbert’s method is not generally accepted in the scientific community. Dr. Herbert’s theory of environmental triggers of autism may some day prove true. It has not yet. Her proffered testimony does not meet the standard of reliability required by the case law, and cannot be admitted in evidence at trial."Ouch. I will mention that Herbert essentially says that many things can contribute to autism, including oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction, yet she offers no new evidence.
64) Multivariate techniques enable a biochemical classification of children with autism spectrum disorder versus typically‐developing peers: A comparison and validation study.
This study expounds on the research done in paper #41. The researchers looked to compare five classification algorithms using data on the same metabolites (folate-dependent one carbon metabolism) to see if any of them was both sensitive and specific in diagnosing autism. And wouldn't you know it, one of them was 88% accurate.
This is once again not about vaccines in any way.
Thimerosal again? Come on, Ginger. At least pretend to list these in some semblance of organisation.
66) Validation of the Phenomenon of Autistic Regression Using Home Videotapes
Autistic regression exists. I'm not sure who is denying that, but I certainly am not. Vaccines are not mentioned, and rightfully so.
67) Blood Levels of Mercury Are Related to Diagnosis of Autism: A Reanalysis of an Important Data Set
Mercury. Next.
68) Empirical Data Confirm Autism Symptoms Related to Aluminum and Acetaminophen Exposure
I admit that when I first read the title of this one I got a bit nervous. It certainly sounds convincing, right? Then I actually looked at it, and before the abstract even came up there was a warning from the editors about potential bias in the authors' opinions and choice of citations in their literature review. Uh oh - BIG RED FLAG. And if that weren't bad enough, this paper investigates "word frequency patterns" in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). HAHAHAHA no, seriously. In case you don't know, VAERS is a repository of any and every adverse event that is reported after vaccines are given. Anyone can file a report, and some of them are downright risible (see this collection of deaths by car accident, drowning, suffocation, and even AIDS reported to VAERS). I can't take this paper seriously. There are myriad criticisms of its main author Stephanie Seneff around the internet which I won't bring up here.
69) Glutathione-Related Factors and Oxidative Stress in Autism, A Review
Another one about oxidative stress. Nothing to see about vaccines here, please move on.
70) Developmental Regression and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in a Child With Autism
This is the famous Hannah Poling case. The first author of this paper is her father Jon, an MD PhD neurologist at Johns Hopkins. Those are indeed impressive credentials. His daughter Hannah regressed after receiving a series of several vaccines and being diagnosed with encephalopathy due to a rare mitochondrial enzyme deficiency. Her parents sued the Vaccine Court and won. Is this a smoking gun? No, not really, though it is definitely a sad case (mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies are extremely rare). Dr. Paul Offitt, a world-renowned expert (and thoroughly reviled shill according to antivaxxers) explains why this isn't the smoking gun antivaxxers want it to be.
71) Oxidative Stress in Autism: Elevated Cerebellar 3-nitrotyrosine Levels
Another broken link. How annoying. Another paper about oxidative stress that has nothing to do with vaccines; even more annoying.
72) Large brains in autism: the challenge of pervasive abnormality
I have no idea why this paper is included here, except perhaps that in includes the words "neuroinflammation" and "heavy metals". Vaccines are, once again, not mentioned or implied. Oh, and the author is Martha Herbert. I won't rehash all that.
73) Evidence of toxicity, oxidative stress, and neuronal insult in autism
This article proposes the hypothesis that oxidative stress causes certain brain cells to die after birth, and that could cause autism in some children. Another giant leap to a conclusion.
74) Oxidative stress in autism
The authors find that oxidative stress markers are increased, and some antioxidant proteins are decreased, in autistic children. Fascinating. Nothing to do with vaccines.
75) Thimerosal neurotoxicity is associated with glutathione depletion: protection with glutathione precursors
Back to thimerosal again? Could you at least try to organise your bullshit at least a little?
76) Toxic Metals and Oxidative Stress Part I: Mechanisms Involved in Metal induced Oxidative Damage
Heavy metals are involved in oxidative stress. Nothing to do with vaccines. Again.
77) Aluminum adjuvant linked to Gulf War illness induces motor neuron death in mice
Well this is interesting. A small study that was never replicated, has nothing to do with autism, and was done on mice. How very not at all fascinating. But it has "aluminum adjuvant" in the title, so goodness knows it simply must be included on this list.
78) Enrichment of Elevated Plasma F2t-Isoprostane Levels in Individuals with Autism Who Are Stratified by Presence of Gastrointestinal Dysfunction
The researchers found that children with more severe autism symptoms have higher levels of a certain marker of oxidative stress. Interesting! But wait . . . how does this prove vaccines did anything? Oh right, it doesn't.
79) Reduced levels of mercury in first baby haircuts of autistic children
This is very simple to dismiss as "MERCURY. NEXT!", but let's delve a little deeper here. The researchers (including Mark Blaxill, whom we will meet later) found decreased levels of mercury in hair of autistic children compared to neurotypical children. Wait, DECREASED levels? Yes, decreased levels. What does this mean? Well, it 1) doesn't lend any support whatsoever to any autism-vaccine link, 2) it points away from mercury causing vaccines, and 3) has nothing to do with vaccines anyway. Why is this paper here? Ginger?
80) A case series of children with apparent mercury toxic encephalopathies manifesting with clinical symptoms of regressive autistic disorders
This is Geier and Geier again banging on about mercury in vaccines causing autism. Which it doesn't. If it did, autism rates would have gone down after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, which they did not. Wait, have I said that before?
81) The Changing Prevalence of Autism in California
This is a commentary, not a scientific paper, by Mark Blaxill, an antivax father who has vehemently defended Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study which started this whole thing. In his commentary he claims that diagnostic substitution cannot explain at least part of the increase in autism prevalence despite evidence to the contrary. Does he offer any proof? No he does not.
82) California Autism Prevalence Trends from 1931 to 2014 and Comparison to National ASD Data from IDEA and ADDM.
This is Mark Blaxill again, who argues that the increase in autism (the "autism epidemic" as antivaxxers like to call it) is real and not due to diagnostic substitution and/or increased awareness, because the rate in California is rising.
Ok, I'm going to assume this is true (which it may or may not be). Does this mean it is true everywhere? Because this study from the UK shows autism rates plateauing in the early 2000s.
But here is the bigger question - if this is indeed true, how the fuck does this show a link between vaccines and autism?
It doesn't.
83) Diagnostic Substitution for Intellectual Disability: A Flawed Explanation for the Rise in Autism
Mark Blaxill again claims that diagnostic substitution cannot explain the rise in autism. However multiple researchers have found the same thing, despite Blaxill complaining about it.
And this still has nothing to do with vaccines.
84) Mitochondrial Energy-Deficient Endophenotype in Autism
I'm kinda getting tired of the broken links. Regardless, this paper again tries to link oxidative stress with autism without mentioning vaccines.
85) Bridging from Cells to Cognition in Autism Pathophysiology: Biological Pathways to Defective Brain Function and Plasticity
Uh oh, two of the authors are Brian Hooker (yes, that Brian Hooker who thoroughly abused statistics in a retracted paper that didn't actually indicate that vaccines increase risk of autism in black boys and has led to the whole #CDCWhistleblower nonsense) and Martha Herbert, whom we met in #63 and 72. Leaving that aside, this is another speculative paper that concludes that "overzealous neuroinflammation" can lead to autism. Interesting hypothesis, but it still doesn't lend any support to the idea that vaccines cause autism.
86) Heavy-Metal Toxicity—With Emphasis on Mercury
Mercury. Nope.
87) Evidence of Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism and Implications for Treatment
This article speculates that some environmental toxin causes damage to mitochondria, and this may cause autism. The author lists those potential toxins (valproic acid, thalidomide, rubella, cytomegalovirus, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), industrial chemicals, mercury, lead, cadmium, nickel, and tin), but curiously vaccines are not on the list. So why is it on this list? I can only guess, but then I'd be delving into the abyss that is Ginger Taylor's addled brain. No thanks.
88) Evidence of Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Autism: Biochemical Links, Genetic-Based Associations, and Non-Energy-Related Mechanisms
This is another new addition to the list, another review article about how autism may be related to mitochondrial dysfunction. It's a rather interesting read, including a study of 60 people with autism, 8% of whom were found to have biochemical markers of abnormal aerobic respiration. There is also evidence of decreased levels of various mitochondrial complexes in the brain tissue of autistic people.
So what does this have to do with vaccines? Well, absolutely nothing. I've read over the full paper 3 times, and the word "vaccine" does not occur, nor does "aluminum" or "mercury". "Oxidative stress", however, occurs 37 times. That is the only explanation I can come up with.
89) Proximity to point sources of environmental mercury release as a predictor of autism prevalence
Mercury. The abstract even starts off "This study should be viewed as hypothesis-generating". That's it, "hypothesis-generating", not "proving vaccines cause autism".
90) Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder in Portugal: prevalence, clinical characterization, and medical conditions
Vaccines are not discussed, but the buzzwords "mitochondrial disorders" did. Unrelated.
91) Thimerosal induces neuronal cell apoptosis by causing cytochrome c and apoptosis-inducing factor release from mitochondria
Thimerosal. Nope.
92) Mitochondrial mediated thimerosal-induced apoptosis in a human neuroblastoma cell line (SK-N-SH)
Thimerosal again. Nope again.
93) Possible immunological disorders in autism: concomitant autoimmunity and immune tolerance
I admit I laughed out loud here. The title isn't overtly funny and it certainly sounds damning (See right there? AUTOIMMUNITY!) , but the findings are downright hilarious. In her efforts to prove vaccines cause autism, Ginger linked a study which found lower rates of anti-MMR antibodies in autistic children than in control children. That made me laugh. But what made me laugh even harder is the finding that autistic children have a higher rate of anti-casein and anti-gluten antibodies than controls. This was the first paper I had seen linking dairy and gluten to autism. So it isn't mercury or aluminum or whatever, now it's milk and bread! But despite the unintended comedy ("GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES CAUSE AUTISM!"), it firmly points away from vaccines causing autism. Nice one, Ginger.
94) Pediatric Vaccines Influence Primate Behavior, and Amygdala Growth and Opioid Ligand Binding
If I was laughing at #68, I was rolling on the floor (metaphorically speaking) after reading this one. This was a pilot study which showed (in its preliminary data) that macaques given childhood vaccines showed some neurodevelopmental deficits. The followup 5-year comprehensive study, which was funded by Safeminds (another rabidly antivax group) was published in 2015, showed no differences in macaques given the full infant vaccine schedule with and without thimerosal versus controls who were given saline injections. I'll repeat for those antivaxxers too slow to understand: the full infant vaccine schedule was given, the monkeys were followed for 5 years, and there was no evidence of any neurobehavioural differences. Feel free to use that reference (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25690930) with any antivaxxer that tries to claim "BUT THE VACCINE SCHEDULE HASN'T BEEN TESTED!" It has, and it was funded by antivaxxers. Safeminds was, as expected, not happy that their money went to fund a study that refuted their own pre-determined conclusion. If that isn't comedy, I don't know what is. What is even funnier is antivaxxers citing it without knowing what it actually shows.
95) Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: an assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink
I knew Geier and Geier would show up again. Anyway, thimerosal.
96) Glutathione, oxidative stress and neurodegeneration
Another one about oxidative stress. You want to prove that causes autism? Fine, then do it. But don't google a couple of terms, throw out the words, and expect it to stick.
97) Hepatitis B triple series vaccine and developmental disability in US children aged 1–9 years
The investigators used only data prior to 2000 specifically to look at children who were given the HepB vaccine, which at that time contained thimerosal. Regardless, this isn't even about autism. They surveyed parents and asked them if their children received early intervention or special education services. THAT is their "proxy" for autism. Really? REALLY? I realise I could have just said "thimerosal" and ended it, but this was way more satisfying.
98) IL-4 mediates the delayed neurobehavioral impairments induced by neonatal hepatitis B vaccination that involves the down-regulation of the IL4 receptor in the hippocampus.
You've spent all this time arguing that mercury causes autism (it doesn't), but now you've moved on to IL4. I should mention that IL4 is an anti-inflammatory cytokine, and Ginger seems to think inflammation is a hallmark of autism. Or something. Though IL4 is anti-inflammatory. So which is it? Inflammation or anti-inflammation? This is just another example of throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Anyway, researchers found that the hepatitis B vaccine induces IL-4 production in mice. They then found inflammation in the hippocampus of these mice along with impaired cognition.
Fascinating. Except for one small problem - children are not mice, and there is no evidence that vaccines cause any cognitive problems in humans.
99) The risk of neurodevelopmental disorders at age 10 years associated with blood concentrations of interleukins 4 and 10 during the first postnatal month of children born extremely preterm.
This study looked only at children both extremely prematurely, so extrapolating this to all children is impossible (and rather silly). Regardless, researchers took blood samples from these preemies at 21 and 28 days of age. Higher levels of IL4 and IL10 were correlated with lower scores on certain intelligence tests, and higher levels of IL4 were associated with increased risk of autism.
Vaccines are not discussed. Oh but I guess Ginger was using this article and the previous one to say "Hep B vaccine causes increased IL4 in mice, and increased IL4 in 1-month old previously extremely premature children is associated with an increased risk of autism 10 years later, so therefore vaccines cause autism". You would need to be as limber as Stretch Armstrong to be able perform such mental gymnastics and reach such a conclusion.
100) Induction of metallothionein in mouse cerebellum and cerebrum with low-dose thimerosal injection
1) This is an animal study, 2) previous research by this team showed no increase in the cerebrum of metallothionein levels in these mice after injection of thimerosal, 3) even if MT was increased in the cerebellum, that doesn't mean the brain tissue was "damaged" or that it could cause autism. In other words, thimerosal. Nope.
101) Mercury induces inflammatory mediator release from human mast cells
This isn't about thimerosal at all, but rather mercuric chloride. Nothing whatsoever to do with vaccines or thimerosal.
102) Brain enlargement is associated with regression in preschool-age boys with autism spectrum disorders.
Head circumference of boys (but not girls) who were diagnosed with regressive autism was found to be the same as neurotypical boys at birth, but by 4-6 months of age tends to increase in autistic boys.
Yet another example of Ginger not reading what she throws against the wall, because this has nothing to do with vaccines. Unless the claim here is that vaccines make your head grow.
103) Blood-brain barrier and intestinal epithelial barrier alterations in autism spectrum disorders.
This one is rather curious. It showed that brain biopsies in autistic individuals had lower expression of several genes associated with the blood brain barrier (leakier tight junctions, for lack of a better term). How this relates to "vaccines cause autism" is beyond me. I have to assume that they believe that people with a "leakier" blood brain barrier may allow "toxins" to "cross" into the "brain" and cause "inflammation" which can "then" "lead" "to" "autism". "I" "guess".
104) Influence of pediatric vaccines on amygdala growth and opioidligand binding in rhesus macaque infants:A pilot study
This is by the same group which did #69. Again, this was the pilot study, and the full study thoroughly negated any connection between the full infant vaccine schedule and autism. I got another good chuckle out of this.
105) Cultured lymphocytes from autistic children and non-autisticsiblings up-regulate heat shock protein RNA inresponse to thimerosal challenge
A fascinating study where researchers exposed cells from autistic children and their non-autistic siblings to zinc, thimerosal, and a control medium. They then checked for up-regulation of metallothionein. Thimerosal did not upregulate it while zinc did. However there was no difference in the cells from autistic children versus their non-autistic siblings. This non-difference MATTERS, just not to Ginger apparently.
106) Sorting out the spinning of autism: heavy metals and the question of incidence
Essentially an opinion paper that concludes that environmental toxins shouldn't be ruled out as a causative factor in autism. I have no problem with that statement. It still has nothing to do with vaccines.
107) Urinary porphyrin excretion in neurotypical and autistic children
I thought we finished with the porphyrin discussion 30 papers ago? Actually it was 48 papers ago. Actually now that the list has been updated, it's oh fuck it who cares. God damn it this list is long, and I'm only 67% done with it. What the fuck am I doing here. Anyway, this paper is a discussion of mercury exposure, not vaccines. Next.
108) Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Ah, finally - a systematic review and meta-analysis! From Nature, no less! Finally some meat! But wait, the conclusion is that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with autism. Well that's all fine and dandy, but it is a huge leap in logic assuming vaccines cause or activate mitochondrial dysfunction which is associated with (but doesn't necessarily cause) autism, when no such link exists. A fine example of putting the cart before the horse.
Mitochondrial diseases are so rare that they are difficult to study. If they were causative in autism, they should be common (and rising in incidence), which they are not.
109) Sensitization effect of thimerosal is mediated in vitro via reactive oxygen species and calcium signaling
Thimerosal. Someone needs to teach Ginger how to organise.
110) What's going on? The question of time trends in autism
HAHAHA! No seriously, Mark Blaxill (again) titled this "What's going on?" I can't even make this stuff up. Anyway, this "article" merely documents the increase in the incidence of autism, not what's causing it.
111) Vaccines and Autism
This was written by Bernard Rimland, a psychologist (and father of an autistic child) who interestingly was the technical adviser for the movie Rain Man. Anyway, this is not a scientific study, rather it is merely a discussion (mainly of the evils of thimerosal). There is no evidence here, just opinion and misinterpretation.
112) Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review
When the title of a paper starts with "Theoretical", it probably isn't a good idea to use it as evidence of anything. Even ignoring that, this is a terribly written piece which uses an insane antivax blog called "ChildHealthSafety" as a reference. Twice. At one point the author mentions how autism levels in California continued rising after thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines (indicating that it isn't thimerosal), then ends the same paragraph with "despite its implication in autism". What? Are you even reading what you are writing? Did you proofread this dreck before publishing it? Another gem is this unsubstantiated bit: "A challenge by so many vaccines while the immune system is compromised might contribute to an onset of autism." No reference, no data, no evidence, just an unproven, uncorroborated hypothesis. Does the author have any idea how many thousands (possibly millions) of antigens babies are exposed to on a daily basis, crawling on the floor, putting anything and everything in their mouths, smearing poop on the wall (what, only my kids did that?)? Orders of magnitude higher than any vaccine.
The author goes on to discuss other unproven or disproved hypotheses, including MMR, mercury, and other metals. Eventually she hits on genetics, including a study which showed a strong concordance for autism in monozygotic (identical) twins with a much lower concordance for dizygotic (fraternal) twins. She actually plagiarized word-for-word this sentence: "This suggests that interactions between multiple genes cause "idiopathic" autism but that epigenetic factors and exposure to environmental modifiers may contribute to variable expression of autism-related traits."
Yes, word-for-word. Like I said, terribly written. You know, except for the part she stole from another author.
113) Preterm birth, vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders: a cross-sectional study of 6- to 12-year-old vaccinated and unvaccinated children
This is a continuation of the awful Mawson pilot paper we saw way back at #2. It simply rehashes the same bullshit.
114) Iatrogenic exposure to mercury after hepatitis B vaccination in preterm infants
This one, published in 1999, starts with "Thimerosal, a derivative of mercury, is used as a preservative in hepatitis B vaccines." No it isn't. It was in 1999, but that was 20 years ago. I can fault the authors who published this in 2000, but Ginger has no such excuse. Try to keep up, Ginger. Anyway, they show that mercury levels are higher in preterm infants after they receive thimerosal-containing vaccines compared to term infants.
So what? Childhood vaccines don't contain thimerosal.
115) Infants born late/moderately preterm are at increased risk for a positive autism screen at 2 years of age
Preterm children were found to be significantly more likely to have a positive autism questionnaire screen. Three very small problems here: first, this was based on parent questionnaires, second 83% of the children who were screened as autistic by the parents' answers were not actulaly autistic, and third and just slightly more importantly THIS HAS ABOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES. Why put this one on the list? Why?
116) Preterm birth and mortality and morbidity: a population-based quasi-experimental study
Wait, what? An article that discusses increased risk of death and autism in severely premature infants, one that states that preterm birth is likely causal for both mortality and psychiatric morbidity (ie autism)? How in the world does this implicate vaccines in any way? This points towards something other than vaccines as causative of autism. It's thus the exact opposite of what they're trying to show. Yet another good guffaw from Ginger.
117) Ancestry of pink disease (infantile acrodynia) identified as a risk factor for autism spectrum disorders
Pink disease? Seriously? This one takes several leaps of faith: 1) Pink disease was caused by mercury exposure in the early 20th century, and 2) not every child exposed to mercury developed it, so 3) it is presumed that those children who did develop pink disease had a mercury sensitivity, and 4) it is postulated that mercury causes autism, and 5) mercury exposure is widespread (is it?), and 6) not every child exposed to mercury develops autism, so therefore 7) children who are hypersensitive to mercury may develop autism. Whew - did you get all that? Anyway, there's no mercury in vaccines, so this entire silly endeavor was a waste of my (and your) time. Sorry about that.
118) Risk factors for autistic regression: results of an ambispective cohort study
Another one that takes a rather large leap of faith. First, vaccines are not mentioned. However, using multiple logistic regression febrile seizures were found to be associated with autistic regression. What I'm assuming Ginger means by including this article is that febrile seizures are associated with autism, and vaccines can cause febrile seizures, so vaccines therefore cause autism. Or something like that. I found a total of -0- articles which demonstrate a link between febrile seizures and autism, though there are several which refute it.
119) Early Seizures Prematurely Unsilence Auditory Synapses to Disrupt Thalamocortical Critical Period Plasticity.
Early-life seizures were found to be associated with autism and language disorders. That's it. That's the whole study.
I tried to figure out why this is on the list, and the only thing I could imagine is "Vaccines cause seizures and this says seizures are associated with autism, so vaccines cause autism". While it is certainly true that vaccines can cause febrile seizures, they are benign and self-limiting and do not increase the risk of seizure disorders (ie epilepsy). That is a completely different phenomenon than the seizures this article discusses. I actually can't fault Ginger for not knowing that, though if she every reads this (she won't), now she knows.
120) MMR vaccination and febrile seizures: evaluation of susceptible subgroups and long-term prognosis
I think this confirms my suspicion above. Did Ginger read the conclusion of this paper? Obviously not. Before I get to that, let's all remember that febrile seizures are common and quite scary, but they are not dangerous. They are benign and do not increase the risk of seizure disorders. Do we all have that? Good. Now with that out of the way, let me help Ginger with the conclusion of this paper, which she seems to have completely overlooked: "CONCLUSIONS: MMR vaccination was associated with a transient increased rate of febrile seizures but the risk difference was small even in high-risk children. The long-term rate of epilepsy was not increased in children who had febrile seizures following vaccination compared with children who had febrile seizures of a different etiology." Emphasis added for additional oopsies. Oh, and seizures don't cause autism either. Sigh.
121) Common variants associated with general and MMR vaccine-related febrile seizures
This article nicely discusses the genetics of children who are more likely to develop febrile seizures following vaccines. But even if we didn't learn anything from #107, this paper is irrelevant as febrile seizures don't cause autism.
122) Adverse Events following 12 and 18 Month Vaccinations: a Population-Based, Self-Controlled Case Series Analysis
Another curious paper which tries to tie febrile seizures to autism, even though there is no association. But the statistics are still interesting - several hundred thousand children who were vaccinated were followed up for several days after their 12- and 18-month vaccinations to see if emergency room visits were increased in that time period. There was one additional ER visit per 168 12-month vaccination, and 1 additional ER visit per 730 18-month vaccination. There was no increase in severity for these visit compared to ER visits outside the study period and no increase in children admitted to the hospital. Most of the ER visits were for febrile seizures (SHOCKING) or viral rashes. There were an additional 20 febrile seizures per 100,000 children vaccinated at 12 months. For those of you bad at math (GINGER) that's 0.02%. Oh, and this has nothing to do with autism.
123) Reduced GABAergic action in the autistic brain
I've gone over this paper thrice and I still can't figure out why it's here. Essentially they suggest a disruption in inhibitory pathways in the brain of autistic people. What does this have to do with vaccines? The only clue I have is that the word "seizures" is present in the abstract. Other than that, I have no idea.
124) Administration of thimerosal to infant rats increases overflow of glutamate and aspartate in the prefrontal cortex: protective role of dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate
Oh good good good, thimerosal in rats. I was hoping we would get to that. Actually, no I wasn't. And here I thought we were done with thimerosal. And rats. My mistake, apparently. Anyway, the researchers gave rats 20 times the normal vaccine dose of thimerosal, and they found it increased the level of several neuroexcitatory amino acids in the brain. However, at normal vaccine doses of thimerosal, they found no difference. Hey Ginger, that means thimerosal doesn't do what you seem to think it does.
125) Neonatal administration of thimerosal causes persistent changes in mu opioid receptors in the rat brain
Apparently we are done with neither thimerosal nor rats. Ugh. Anyway, the researchers showed that thimerosal changes the density of mu opioid receptors in the brain of rats. What does this have to do with autism? Nothing whatsoever.
126) Unanswered Questions; A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury
I almost laughed again at this one, which is a peer-reviewed legal paper, not a scientific paper. It was an examination of "vaccine damage" claims paid by the vaccine court which was apparently published in a peer-reviewed law journal. In it, they really stretch to make the case (ha ha) that because the vaccine court paid the claim, this proves vaccines cause autism. Er, no. Just no. Courts and lawyers and judges don't decide on science, science does that. In case you don't like my "just no" argument (and because I'm not a lawyer), here is an explanation by someone who IS a lawyer (and licenced to practice before the vaccine court) why that argument is so ridiculous.
The short version here is that the burden of proof in the vaccine court is lower than that of civil courts. Causation does not have to be proved.
127) Integrating experimental (in vitro and in vivo) neurotoxicity studies of low-dose thimerosal relevant to vaccines
Back to thimerosal. Got it. It still doesn't cause autism, and it still isn't in childhood vaccines.
128) Hepatitis B vaccine induces apoptotic death in Hepa1-6 cells
A very curious addition. The researchers dripped the Hep B vaccine onto mouse liver cancer cells in a petri dish (not human cells, not normal cells, not injected, but dripped onto mouse liver tumour) and found that some of the cells died. Well isn't that interesting. Let's see if we can break this down - A) humans aren't mice, B) humans aren't mouse livers, C) humans aren't mouse liver cancers, D) even if we were mouse liver tumours, vaccines are not dripped onto the liver, and E) so what? Is this about autism? Not remotely.
129) Thimerosal Induces Apoptosis in a Neuroblastoma Modelvia the cJun N-Terminal Kinase Pathway
An in vitro study showing how thimerosal can affect cells in a petri dish that has not translated to actual human studies.
130) Maternal thimerosal exposure results in aberrant cerebellar oxidative stress, thyroid hormone metabolism, and motor behavior in rat pups; sex- and strain-dependent effects
Though this is about thimerosal and I could easily just skip it, I'm going to discuss it just to show you the lengths these people will go to prove some kind of link. In this study, rats were given thimerosal while pregnant and lactating, and the pups were evaluated for motor and auditory function. How much thimerosal? 200 μg/kg body weight. That may not seem like a lot, especially considering an adult female Sprague Dawley rat weighs only 300 g. For those of you bad at math (GINGER) I did it for you, and that's still 60 μg of thimerosal. Compare that to the 25 μg of thimerosal in a flu shot (though many flu shots are thimerosal-free), which even if given to a small child weighing 10 kg, that's merely 2.5μg/kg, nearly 100X less than the 200 μg/kg given to the rats. Seeing the ridiculous yet? The "normal" test dose of thimerosal is 12 μg/kg, so using 200 μg/kg and trying to say "SEE? A PROBLEM!" is ludicrous.
Oh yeah, and there's no thimerosal in childhood vaccines. I feel like I may have said that before.
131) The rise in autism and the role of age at diagnosis
This article chronicles the increasing rate of autism in California (again). They estimate that the changing age of diagnosis explains 12% of the increase, in the inclusion of milder cases 56%. In other words, over 2/3 of the increase can be explained by how autism is diagnosed. How are vaccines discussed in this article? They aren't.
132) Slow CCL2-dependent translocation of biopersistent particles from muscle to brain
Finally some real meat! A discussion on aluminum potassium sulfate (alum) and how it can persist! About time we got something I can sink my teeth into. Ok, let's see. The researchers injected mice with alum and found that it can persist in distant organs (including the spleen and brain) for at least a year. Ok, so that means . . . nothing. Especially when they conclude that "This occurs at a very low rate in normal conditions explaining good overall tolerance of alum despite its strong neurotoxic potential". It may be increased in an extremely small subset of the population with an anomolous CCL-2 gene. The research there is ongoing, but the authors essentially say that alum is very well tolerated. Another case where Ginger and her colleagues didn't understand a word of what they were reading, but gosh the title sure sounds scary.
133) Thimerosal and autism? A plausible hypothesis that should not be dismissed
Another one that gave me a good chuckle. The first thing to notice here is that it was published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Strike 1. The second is that it is written by Mark Blaxill, whom we have met several times. The third is that oh, fuck it. This isn't research. Fucking thimerosal, fucking hypothesis, fucking Blaxill, not fucking research, fucking next.
134) Autism Spectrum Disorders in Relation to Distribution of Hazardous Air Pollutants in the San Francisco Bay Area
I have to admit this was a new one for me. I've seen antivaxxers move the goalposts so many times I've lost count, but apparently now the argument is "AIR POLLUTION!" I mean, seriously. Seriously. This isn't about vaccines, it's just changing the argument. But still, it's TOXINS.
135) Environmental mercury release, special education rates, and autism disorder: an ecological study of Texas
This is about environmental released (ie dumped) mercury. Not vaccines.
136) Autism spectrum disorder prevalence and proximity to industrial facilities releasing arsenic, lead or mercury
Autism is higher near industrial facilities that release arsenic, lead, or mercury into the air. Fascinating. This is a rehash of the "AIR POLLUTION!" from #121, I suppose. Vaccines aren't airborne last I checked (despite what the chemtrails nutters would have you believe), nor do they contain mercury, lead, or arsenic.
137) Inflammatory Responses to Trivalent Influenza Virus Vaccine Among Pregnant Women
Wow is this one a stretch. Pregnant women given the flu vaccine were found to have an inflammatory response. As much as I can't stand saying this, I have no choice: DUH. That's exactly what the vaccine is supposed to do: elicit an immune response. Plus, the authors note that "The inflammatory response elicited by vaccination is substantially milder and more transient than seen in infectious illness, arguing for the clinical value of vaccination." In other words, if you are trying to make the case that the flu vaccine causes autism because it induces an inflammatory response, then THE ACTUAL FLU should cause autism a lot more often because the inflammatory response is that much greater. And trying to make the leap to "transient, mild, and fully expected inflammatory response causes autism" is risible.
138) Elevated maternal C-reactive protein and autism in a national birth cohort
Another stretch of a study which found that high maternal C-reactive protein (CRP), a nonspecific marker of inflammation, was associated with a 43% increased risk of autism in their children. While interesting, it has nothing to do with childhood vaccines. Infections cause a lot more inflammation than vaccines.
139) What is regressive autism and why does it occur? Is it the consequence of multi-systemic dysfunction affecting the elimination of heavy metals and the ability to regulate neural temperature?
The author of this "article", Graham Ewing, is not a doctor. He is not a scientist. He is not a psychologist. He is a businessman and CEO of a company called Montague Healthcare, he and his wife run a website called PositiveHealthOnline, and he promotes his "Virtual Scanning" which uses a oh god damn fuck it all, I can't do it this one anymore. Just go to his website and experience the bullshit for yourself. Anyway, he bullshittily claims that autism is due to "subtle DNA alteration" from the "overuse of vaccines", no evidence required or supplied.
140) Neurologic adverse events following vaccination
This is a 2012 Polish review of adverse events following vaccination. At least up to 2011 thimerosal was still present in several childhood vaccines in Poland, and this article focuses on that quite determinedly. It also shockingly descends quite deep into the "Vaccines Didn't Save Us" pit of stupidity before making several recommendations (including eliminating thimerosal, giving a maximum of 3 vaccinations per day, and eliminating live-virus vaccines). The authors must have missed the study from just the previous year, also from Poland, that found no link between thimerosal and autism. Oops. When supposed vaccine researchers start using the "Vaccines Didn't Save Us" gambit, you can dismiss their work out of hand.
141) Immunological and autoimmune considerations of Autism Spectrum Disorders
This is a review, not a scientific research paper. It discusses the association between inflammation and autism, but it still does not link vaccines, nor does it try to.
142) Identification of Unique Gene Expression Profile in Children with Regressive Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Ileocolitis
Not about vaccines in any way. I guess it's another way to say "inflammation = autism". I guess.
143) Early Disruption of the Microbiome Leading to Decreased Antioxidant Capacity and Epigenetic Changes: Implications for the Rise in Autism.
I see we're back to the microbiome argument from #19. Organisation is not Ginger's strong suit. This article hits all of Ginger's buzz phrases, including immune system dysregulation, inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic and methylation abnormalities, and gastrointestinal distress. Not shockingly, the word "vaccine" appears exactly zero times.
144) Methylomic analysis of monozygotic twins discordant for autism spectrum disorder and related behavioural traits.
Finally, another article from Nature. Maybe something good here! The researchers looked at twins where only one was autistic and looked at methylation patterns of their DNA. And they were different.
That's it. Seriously, that's it. No mention of vaccines.
145) Correlations Between Gene Expression and Mercury Levels in Blood of Boys With and Without Autism
Mercury. Not vaccines.
146) Abnormal immune response to brain tissue antigen in the syndrome of autism
A very small (N=28) study which found that 76% of autistic children may have a cell-mediated immune response to brain tissue. 1) Small sample, and more importantly 2) NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES. Honestly, "inflammation" does not equal "vaccines".
147) Detection and sequencing of measles virus from peripheral mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and autism
Oh this study. I was so hoping Ginger would include it. Happy day! The lead author, Hideyuki Kawashima, studied nine children diagnosed with autistic enterocolitis and found measles genes in three of them. This seems to confirm Andy Wakefield's research! Stop the presses! Wakefield is exonerated! Right? Right!? But wait wait wait . . . who diagnosed these nine children with autistic enterocolitis? You guessed it - ANDY FUCKING WAKEFIELD. These are nine of the same children from his original fraudulent study. And study after study after study after study after study has found no evidence of measles in autistic children.
148) Mechanisms of aluminum adjuvant toxicity and autoimmunity in pediatric populations
This one from Tomljenovic and Shaw is a favourite of antivaxxers. However, it is not a scientific study, just a series of hypotheticals which concludes that "a rigorous evaluation of the vaccine-related adverse health impacts in the pediatric population is urgently needed." That's a fine idea - I'll wait until that comparison of vaccinated and unvaccinated children is done. Oh wait - they have been done, and they show 1) no difference in allergic diseases or non-specific infections, 2) lower rates of asthma among vaccinated children, 3) increased cognitive scores among vaccinated children, 4) fewer preterm births and higher birth weights, and 5) fewer heart attacks. (Thanks to thoughtscapism for compiling that list).
149) Etiology of autism spectrum disorders: Genes, environment, or both?
Tomljenovic and Shaw again. This is another speculative piece about how aluminum might perhaps maybe vaguely do something, but again no direct evidence of its evils is presented.
150) Thiol-modulated mechanisms of the cytotoxicity of thimerosal and inhibition of DNA topoisomerase II alpha
I was kinda hoping to get an easy one on thimerosal. Doing this is freaking exhausting.
151) Topoisomerases facilitate transcription of long genes linked to autism
Yet more goalpost moving. Topoisomerase is an enzyme which regulates the winding of DNA. It's been found to be mutated in some people with autism, and topotecan (which inhibits topoisomerase) reduces the expression of long genes. And many potential autism genes are long. So . . . wait, what does this have to do with vaccines? Nothing.
152) Aluminum in the central nervous system (CNS): toxicity in humans and animals, vaccine adjuvants, and autoimmunity
It's our friends Tomljenovic and Shaw again, and it's yet another not-a-scientific-paper, but hypotheses and conjecture. This is the time when I should point out that this study was funded by the Dwoskin Family Foundation, which was founded by Claire Dwoskin. Mrs. Dwoskin is a board member of the horribly misnamed National Vaccine Information Center, a public charity anti-vaccination advocacy group. Shaw and Tomljenovic have been speakers at conferences with such other speakers as antivax neurosurgeone Russell Blaylock, MD, NVIC founder Barbara Loe Fisher, and Andrew Wakefield. As I'm not terribly fond of ad hominems, I'll stop there.
Anyway, this is a shift back from mercury to aluminum. Tomljenovic and Shaw again say that the number of aluminum-containing vaccines that children receive correlate with the rate of autism. Great, so does organic food sales. Does that mean that either organic food or vaccines cause autism? Of course not. They also say that aluminum-induced toxicity may be autoimmune mediated, though autoimmunity is more common in females and autism is more common in males. Got all that?
153) Transcriptomic analyses of neurotoxic effects in mouse brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal
The researchers injected mice with 20 times the normal does of thimerosal, and they found it negatively affected their neurological development. If you want to know how ridiculous that is, next time you go out for a burger, instead of eating one, eat twenty. Or if you smoke a pack of cigarettes daily, instead of smoking one pack, smoke 20 packs a day. Then you'll know how this silly article relates to real life. It doesn't.
154) Self-Organized Criticality Theory of Autoimmunity
Repeated immunisation can cause autoimmunity. IN MICE. No definitive link between autoimmunity and vaccines has ever been shown. Oh, and this has nothing to do with autism anyway.
155) Can Awareness of Medical Pathophysiology in Autism Lead to Primary Care Autism Prevention Strategies?
Let's start by saying that this was published in the North American Journal of Medicine & Science. What, you've never heard of it? Neither had I, and neither has anyone else apparently, since it has an impact factor of 0. Yes, ZERO. Even "Homeopathy" has an impact factor of 0.76 (by comparison BMJ's is 17.4, Lancet's is 45.2, and New England Journal of Medicine's is 55.9). That aside, the author Elizabeth Mumper (who coincidentally has a terribly unfortunate name for an antivax paediatrician) is the CEO of Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine who runs a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to treat children with autism. Shockingly (not really), HBO has been shown not to be effective for autism. Anyway, back to the "study". Dr. Mumper introduced an alternative vaccine schedule to her patients and had a 0% rate of autism among 294 subjects. Note these children were not unvaccinated (though they did not get Hep A, Hep B, rotavirus, or flu vaccines). So does this prove vaccines cause autism? Er, no.
156) Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning.
I'll just quote from the abstract here: "Thimerosal, a preservative added to many vaccines, has become a major source of mercury in children who, within their first two years, may have received a quantity of mercury that exceeds safety guidelines."
No it isn't, no it hasn't, no no they haven't. Again, I can possibly fault the authors since this was published (in Medical Hypotheses again) in 2001, but Ginger has no such excuse.
157) Autistic disturbances of Affective Contact
This is Leo Kanner's seminal description of autism from 1943. I'm honestly shocked Ginger would include this article, since it was published several decades before most current childhood vaccines were introduced (polio 1955, measles 1963, mumps 1967, rubella 1969, HiB 1977, meningitis 1978, hepatitis B 1981, varicella 1984 rotavirus 2006). I can only assume this article was included because Kanner describes one of the case studies as getting "an attack of diarrhea and fever, from which he recovered in somewhat less than a week" after getting a smallpox vaccine. Now that is the ultimate stretch, considering routine smallpox vaccination hasn't been done since the 1970's. So what, according to Ginger and her friends, caused autism before vaccines? Hmm??
DELETED:
formerly 20) Behavioral abnormalities in young female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil.
I'll let the abstract on this one (on which Tomljenovic and Shaw are both authors) speak for itself. Oh wait, there is no abstract. In the place where the abstract should be is only this:
"This article has been withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief due to serious concerns regarding the scientific soundness of the article. Review by the Editor-in-Chief and evaluation by outside experts, confirmed that the methodology is seriously flawed, and the claims that the article makes are unjustified. As an international peer-reviewed journal we believe it is our duty to withdraw the article from further circulation, and to notify the community of this issue."I have nothing to add other than HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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And that is it. THANK FUCKING GOD. As I was going through every single paper in this list, it became increasingly clear that Ginger simply went to Pubmed, typed in her search terms (thimerosal, mercury, oxidative stress, autism, heavy metals, glutathione, seizures, etc), and copied the links without bothering to read or understand what the hell she was reading. Of the 157 papers presented, exactly -0- of them proves any link between vaccines and autism, and a few even disprove any link. I sincerely doubt that any antivaxxer who sprays this list around the Twitterverse (or anywhere else) has read any of these papers, let alone all of them. Having now read every single one, I feel . . . well, I feel exactly the same.
VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM.
A hearty congratulations (and a heartfelt 'thank you') to anyone who actually got this far. Hopefully this will be the longest blog post I ever write. I intend never to do this ever again. Ever. EVER.
Until I do.
