Autism and Mercury

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Whenever I encounter someone arguing that autism is caused by mercury, particularly mercury in childhood vaccines, I tend to back away slowly making no sudden moves rather than engage them and alert them to the presence of an unbeliever. Finding a post at a blog that I regularly read that seems to jump on the mercury causes autism bandwagon threw me for enough of a loop that I attempted to engage in a discussion about it.

It seems to be that time of year again when people start making the claim the mercury causes autism. There is an extensive body of work by researchers, scientists, doctors, bloggers, and parents that states otherwise. I'm not going to reiterate all of the arguments here. If you're really interested you can go read them for yourself.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/the_geiers_go_dumpsterdiving_y_1.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/good_math.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/mercury_and_autism_foreordaine.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/03/journal_of_american_physicians.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/04/evidence_against_an_autism_epi.php

I haven't blogged about autism a whole lot but what I have written to date is here.

I am of the opinion that genetics is a much more likely cause of autism and related disorders than mercury in vaccines.

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