One of the reasons for posting this thread initially was that we have a son who is autistic and now 21.

We obviously did everything we could along the way to help him although we realised fairly early on that a cure was unlikely. When he was 8 investigated diet and took him to one of the top experts on food intolerance. He did a number of tests, and among the things he found was that his system contained traces of mercury, but could not explain how this got there apart from possibly a tooth filling.

Some years later it emerged that some innoculations given to children contained a preservative called Thiomersal which was derived from Mercury, a known poison. If you read "Alice in Wonderland", the behaviour of the Mad Hatter is very like someone with autism or Aspberger's. Hatters used to use mercury in their trade and the symptoms of mercury poisoning and autism are, apparently, very similar.

Apparently thiomersal is no longer used but was withdrawn but not before existing stocks were used up on children.

We're often asked by mothers with babies for advice on innoculation, and say that we cannot really advise them one way or another, as we are not molecular biologists.

On the other hand, by the same token, any politician who can stand up and say with any authority that any particular innoculation is aafe is, quite plainly, talking through their a**e!