Autism and Alzheimer's

I'm fairly ignorant on the subject of autism and I don't know of anyone personally who has a child with this condition, if that's what one calls it. I am more aware of Alzheimer's in that I've seen a few elderly neighbors and a friend and Ronald Reagan dealing with it.

I've read that autism is a complex developmental disorder best known for impairing a child's ability to communicate and interact with others and that there's been a 10-fold increase in autism rates over the last decade. No one seems to know why the increase.

Some people claim that Autism and Alzheimer's share a common cause, mercury. Human exposure to mercury today comes principally from three sources: dental amalgams, vaccines, and fish. Vaccine makers add thimerosal (which is half ethyl mercury) to vaccines to prevent bacterial contamination. There has been a lot of discussion concerning thimerosal lately and it's relationship to autism.

Despite growing evidence from various studies that mercury is related to autism and alzheimer's our regulatory agencies such as the CDC and the FDA continue to ignore them and focus strictly on mercury levels in fish.

Autism was discovered in 1943, in American children, twelve years after ethyl mercury (thimerosal) was added to the pertussis vaccine. (The disease was not seen in Europe until the 1950s, after thimerosal was added to vaccines used there.)

In the 1950s, with an immunization schedule limited to four vaccines (against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and smallpox), 1 in 10,000 children developed this disease. Those born in 1981 were given 135 micrograms of mercury (on average), and one case of autism occurred in every 2,600 children born that year. With the addition of hepatitis B vaccine (injected on the day of birth) and one for Haemophilus influenzae Type b, providers injected 246 micrograms of mercury into children born in 1996. Autism occurred in one out of every 350 of these children. Today's immunization schedule call for 13 different types of vaccines including various booster shots bringing the total to 33 before the child reaches age 2 (when the development of the brain is completed).

Autism now afflicts 1 out of 100 boys and 1 out of 400 girls. Over the last 30 years more than one million children have come down with this disease, and currently one in every 68 families in America has an autistic child.

Alzheimer’s disease was discovered in 1906, again in America, where dentists used mercury-laden amalgams to fill cavities (dentists in Europe largely avoided them). Today, more than 4 million Americans now have Alzheimer’s disease. It afflicts half of people over the age of 85 and 20 percent aged 75 to 84. Dental amalgams are the main source of mercury in an adult’s brain. An average-sized amalgam filling contains 750,000 micrograms of mercury and releases around 10 micrograms a day. People with Alzheimer’s disease have mercury levels in their brains that are 2 to 3 times higher than that seen in normal people.

Another important factor with regard to mercury on the mind, which officials at the CDC, FDA and the professors in the IOM do not consider, is synergistic toxicity – mercury’s enhanced effect when other poisons are present. A small dose of mercury that kills 1 in 100 rats and a dose of aluminum that will kill 1 in 100 rats, when combined have a striking effect: all the rats die. Doses of mercury that have a 1 percent mortality will have a 100 percent mortality rate if some aluminum is there. Vaccines contain aluminum.

Vaccine manufacturers have started removing thimerosal from vaccines. And for the first time since the state began keeping records on this disease, California has had a decrease, of 6 percent, in the annual number of children over the age of 3 who have been diagnosed with autism. This occurred in children born in 2000, when the phase-out of thimerosal in vaccines began.

Avoiding flu shots that contain thimerosal, and having dentists stop implanting mercury amalgams in people’s mouths would lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. If you have amalgam fillings, particularly if there is a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, you might consider having them removed.

Most of the data mentioned above was taken from 'Mercury on the Mind', by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD. If you want more information, do a Google search on Autism and Mercury and you will find a wealth of information.

I originally heard about thimerosal and its potential link to autism on the Imus in the Morning radio show. Many others have started speaking out including President Kennedy's nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The more I read, the more I start wondering about my own situation. Back in the summer 1965, I experienced what's called a Grand Mal seizure. I was 18 at the the time and had been in fairly good health all my life. I was very active and in fairly good shape when out of the blue I was hit with the seizure and subsequently told that I had Epilepsy. I was put on medication, Dilantin, and with a break or two in the medicine regiment, I'm still taking same 40 years later.

After the seizure, I had never had any problems and everytime I would have a change in doctors, I would always question the diagnosis. They never wavered from the original diagnosis. I would never find out what caused the seizure. Years later, MGH received the first CAT scan machine and I had a CAT scan of my brain. There was nothing there to cause a seizure.

Now that I read about mercury and the relation it has with Autism and Altzheimer's, it brought back memories of the summer of 1965. I had gone to the dentist and was told that I had thirteen cavities, yes 13. So, I spent the better part of three months going to the dentist every week to get one or two of my teeth filled. Looking back, I now realize that I had thirteen teeth filled with poison that was slowly escaping and going to my brain. Based on the numbers mentioned above, the fillings were releasing 130 micrograms of mercury a day into my system. Could this have been the cause of my seizure? I wonder.

As a side issue to the above subject the following was found in an article at www.bestsyndication.com 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks out about Vaccinations causing Autism':


Since this time there has been legislation to add release of any liability to drug companies from thimerosal-related health issues. In 2002, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, added a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill. Eli Lilly contributed $10,000 to his campaign in addition to purchasing 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003, however earlier this year; Frist slipped another condition into an anti-terrorism bill that would disallow reimbursement to children with affliction from vaccine-related brain disorders.

Why is Eli Lilly worried and why is Sen. Bill Frist in bed with this pharmaceutical company? Isn't Bill Frist a doctor? Wasn't he extremely vocal on the Terri Schiavo case? Why isn't he representing the people of this country?