Nutty, I daresay you've taken aspirin or acetaminophen (paracetamol) for a headache. And you are probably also aware that if you swallowed a bottle of the stuff, you'd die. If you swallowed a large quantity of sodium cyanide, you'd die. If on the other hand, you ingested a tiny amount of cyanide--say, less than the amount that's in one cigarette (you do know that cigarette smoke contains cyanide, right?)--you wouldn't die, or even get sick. At least, not from the cyanide.

Of course mercury is a toxin. The amount of mercury that used to be in a dose of vaccine, though, is vanishingly small compared to the amount that causes acrodynia. In addition, thimerosal is a salt of ethyl mercury, which is metabolized and excreted by the body much more easily than methyl mercury (the one that caused Minamata disease). Check this site for more info.

Brucie, the answer to the question, "Why is autism becoming so much more common," is complex, and most of it is still simply unknown. I don't know why I'm making a new diagnosis of autism in two or three children every week. I wish I did. Some of it is clearly that we are recognizing that a child who makes eye contact with you, and hugs his parents, and plays with other children, and doesn't rock back and forth or scream all the time, can still be on the autistic spectrum. In another 5 or 10 years, we'll probably be smarter at sorting out and classifying all the children we're now lumping under the umbrella term of autism. But not all of the increase is due to changes in diagnosis. It's clearly becoming more common. And this increase has continued AFTER thimerosal was removed from vaccines. My belief is that some of the prenatal triggers for autism--which will only cause the condition in someone who is genetically susceptible--include viruses (which may be spreading) and also some of the thousands of chemicals and pesticides that now infest our food supply.

The most important news, though, is that early intervention works. More autistic children are going to improve with intensive early intervention services than without.

The confounding fact is that some autistic children will improve no matter what we do. Few people, and few doctors, are aware that after Kanner published his original description of nine autistic patients in 1943, he went back and looked at them again seven years later, and two or three of them had improved, with no treatment whatsoever. What that means is that many people are convinced that they know what "cures" autism, because "they saw it work with their own eyes" with their child, or a neighbor's child, or several children in their clinic. And no one can convince them that their child might have been one of those who would have gotten better on his or her own.

I have nothing but compassion and respect for parents of children with this puzzling and often heartbreaking condition, and for those who work with the children day after day, teaching them by slow painful repetition the things that their friends learn automatically: how to respond when somebody waves and says "hello," how to understand the meaning of a smile or a frown, how to ask for something to drink, what to do when the teacher tells you to get out your book and read page 25.   

I agree with Dianavan: especially her plea to compensate adequately those who work with these children "in the trenches."

Aloha,
Mark