A major problem with the mercury idea was that different countries had different uptake of vaccines at different times. If the two were connected, the autism stats would have responded accordingly. But the numbers simply don't show that. The sooner people stop wasting time *and* money lynching the nearest suspect and get with real work, the better. If all the money spent on "anti-vaccine" books and on publicity for their authors had been donated to research efforts instead, things would be a bit forrarder. :-(