In an article in JAMA published in 2003, titled 'Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism,' the authors retrospectively analyzed a population-based cohort of all children born in Denmark from January 1, 1990, until December 31, 1996. Vaccines administered after June 1, 1992, were considered thimerosal-free. All persons in Denmark are given a unique identificaion number in the Danish Civil Registration System, so follow-up informaion and comparative analyses through links o other databases are readily obtainable and reliable. A total of 467,450 children were born in Denmark during this period; of these, 440 were given a diagnosis of autism and 787 had other auistic-spectrum disorders (ASD). Follow-up was complete for 99% of the subjects. Child psychiatrists confirmed all diagnoses and it is uncertain if they were blinded to vaccine records. Only 4.4% of the children (20,755) received all vaccinaions entirely free of Thimerosal. The risk of autism and ASD between children vaccinated with thimerosal-containing vaccines and those receiving thimerosal-free vaccines was not significantly different. There was also no evidence of a dose-response association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism or ASD.

For approximately 60 years Thimerosal was used as a preservative in cerain vaccines. It was removed from those vaccines in 1992.

You need to do more research. Regarding this statement, its extremely vague. you need to explain if this is specific to a country, or specific to a particular vaccine or set of vaccines. What vaccines are you referring to? None mentioned.

It was only in 1999 that the CDC along with another organization the AAP, made a joint statement asking vaccine manufacturers to remove mercury from vaccines on a voluntary basis only, and as a precautionary measure. It was not mandated by law.

Thus, there is no legal ban on Thimerosal.

There was no recall of existing mercury containing vaccines. Vaccines with expiration dates of 2007 in surgeries were being reported. Further, there is no independent or government sanctioned testing to verify that Thimerosal is indeed absent. As large batches are made, they are subsequently used for many long years afterwards.

Children continued to receive Thimerosal containing vaccines after 1999. If you research further you will find this is indeed the case. Today, there are still lots of vaccines containing varying amounts of Thimerosal / mercury. You can go to the CDC website and see for yourself.

In addition to this, the mercury is now found in the flu shot which is also being recommended for pregnant women and children as young as 6 months. So rather than being removed, its just changed places. So while it may have been phased out of other vaccines, its not disappeared from the scene altogether.

This is on a factual level regarding Thimerosal / mercury, even though the issue of neurological damage is not tied to just Thimerosal but to vaccines and their contents in general.

Regarding the study you cited.

In an article in JAMA published in 2003, titled 'Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism,' the authors retrospectively analyzed a population-based cohort of all children born in Denmark from January 1, 1990, until December 31, 1996. Vaccines administered after June 1, 1992, were considered thimerosal-free. All persons in Denmark are given a unique identificaion number in the Danish Civil Registration System, so follow-up informaion and comparative analyses through links o other databases are readily obtainable and reliable. A total of 467,450 children were born in Denmark during this period; of these, 440 were given a diagnosis of autism and 787 had other auistic-spectrum disorders (ASD). Follow-up was complete for 99% of the subjects. Child psychiatrists confirmed all diagnoses and it is uncertain if they were blinded to vaccine records. Only 4.4% of the children (20,755) received all vaccinaions entirely free of Thimerosal. The risk of autism and ASD between children vaccinated with thimerosal-containing vaccines and those receiving thimerosal-free vaccines was not significantly different. There was also no evidence of a dose-response association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism or ASD.

Its a good example of how money can buy and create favourable research and how it is possible to frame a study to create any possible outcome by making use of the underlying data in a creative way.

Firstly, the people behind the research paper work for the Sratens Serum Institut which manufactures and promotes vaccines in Denmark. Its a for-profit organization, and is state-owned. It turns over $120 million per year. We don't accept studies funded by vaccine manufacturers, or by bodies with ties to vaccine manufacturers where a considerable conflict of interest is involved.

As we have said to many people involved in medicine and who engage in the discussion of these issues, if you take the view of just looking at the science that is put out there thinking that science inherently will allow you to come to the truth of the matter, whilst being oblivious to how money and politics are weaved into it all - you will be seriously misguided in your perception of the true state of affairs. In medicine, you are dealing with corporate pharmaceutical science which is one of the most fraudulent and corrupt areas of contemporary scientific research. Whole books have been written on this subject by former insiders. You can go to Amazon, buy the books and research the subject.

To see the authors involved in a series of papers that purport to refute the vaccine / autism link, their connections to profit-making vaccine organizations see the following excellent document:

Something Is Rotten in Denmark
Download

It includes the authors of the research you cited above.

You can also see the following document regarding the Denmark studies. The data actually proves the opposite of what the industry tied authors tried to conclude from their used of the Danish data:

MMR and autism in Perspective: The Denmark Story
Download

Secondly, the flaws of the study have been rebutted in full and in fact a more honest look at the data shows a different conclusion. See the following paper for full details:

Analysis of the Danish autism Registry Data Base in Response to the Hviid et al Paper on Thimerosal in JAMA (October, 2003)
Download Report

The above is not atypical of studies purporting to finally disprove any link between vaccines/thimerosal and autism. They are framed and designed in a way to lead to a favourable outcome for vaccine manufacturers. Its like the tobacco industry funding a study to prove no link between smoking and lung disease or cancer. Fifty years ago that would have been believed by many, today it would be laughed at and scorned.

Another similar example is that highlighted in this article:

The Truth Behind The vaccine Cover-Up
http://www.healthymuslim.com/?pvule

Despite initially finding a very strong dose-response relationship between Thimerosal and autism, Dr Thomas Verstraeten delayed the publication of the report for 4 years, allowing time to for the data to be fudged to disprove any link. You can download the original report on that page.

As aptly noted by the authors of the "MMR and autism in Perspective: The Denmark Story" article mentioned above:

In this context, the alarming statements of representatives of the CDC at the 2000 Simpsonwood meeting between the CDC and vaccine manufacturers are revealing. When considering how to deal with data that indicated a positive association between the mercurybased vaccine preservative Thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders, epidemiologists from the CDC recommended changing the study inclusion criteria, post hoc, to get them any result they wanted. This does not provide any basis for confidence.

In addition to all of this, another important point to make is that while epidemiological studies (which are statistical studies) are the type that are being used to negate the vaccine neurological damage, biological studies (which are the ones that should be conducted and used) show the entire opposite. Statistical studies can be manipulated and fudged to support the desired outcome. Biological studies explain the actual biochemistry underlying the condition and allow plausible mechanisms of action to be discovered.

These types of studies are plenty. I'll end this with a quote from a Michael Wagnitz who puts this issue nicely into writing:

Research supports mercury-autism link

It was reported repeatedly in 2006 that the link between mercury-containing vaccines and autism has been disproven. Yet if one looks at the most recent research coming from some of our major universities, one may draw the opposite conclusion.

What we have learned in the last couple of years is that the underlying medical condition of autism is neuroinflammatory disease. In a study conducted at John Hopkins University, brain tissue from deceased autistic patients was examined. The tissue showed an active neuroinflammatory process and marked activation of microglia cells. Neuroinflammatory disease is synonymous with an activation of microglia cells.

A study done at the University of Washington showed that baby primates exposed to injected Thimerosal (50 percent mercury), at a rate equal to the 1990s childhood vaccine schedule, retained twice as much inorganic mercury in their brains as primates exposed to equal amounts of ingested methylmercury. We know from autometallographic determination that inorganic mercury present in the brain, following the dealkylation of organic mercury, is the toxic agent responsible for changes in the microglial population and leads to neuroinflammation.

Recently it was shown that in more than 250 examined patients, atypical urinary porphyrins were almost three times higher in autistic patients than controls. Porphyrins are precursors to heme, the oxygen-carrying component of blood. Mercury inhibits the conversion of porphyrins to heme. When the patients were treated to remove mercury, urinary porphyrins returned to normal levels.

In a study done at the University of Arkansas, autistic children were found to have significantly lower levels of the antioxidant glutathione. Glutathione is the major antioxidant needed for the elimination of mercury at the cellular level. This may explain why some children are more severely affected by Thimerosal in vaccines than others.

While all the government-conducted epidemiological (statistical) studies show no link between Thimerosal and autism, the clinical studies examining brain tissue, blood, urine and human cells show a completely different picture.

Michael Wagnitz is a Madison resident with more than 20 years of experience as a chemist working with trace metal analysis.

To see another great illustration of the integrity of the people tied to the producers of vaccines refer to the first comment in this article regarding the Verstraeten study:

http://www.healthymuslim.com/?pvule

On the other hand there are plenty of studies showing just the opposite, by way of example:

Hepatitis B triple series vaccine and developmental disability in US children aged 1-9 years

I'll quote the abstract here for reference:

This study investigated the association between vaccination with the Hepatitis B triple series vaccine prior to 2000 and developmental disability in children aged 1-9 years (n = 1824), proxied by parental report that their child receives early intervention or special education services (EIS). National health and nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2000 data were analyzed and adjusted for survey design by Taylor Linearization using SAS version 9.1 software, with SAS callable SUDAAN version 9.0.1. The odds of receiving EIS were approximately nine times as great for vaccinated boys (n = 46) as for unvaccinated boys (n = 7), after adjustment for confounders. This study found statistically significant evidence to suggest that boys in United States who were vaccinated with the triple series Hepatitis B vaccine, during the time period in which vaccines were manufactured with Thimerosal, were more susceptible to developmental disability than were unvaccinated boys.

In 2003, an article published in Pediatrics, Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data, concluded that the discontinuation of thimerosal-containing vaccines in Denmark in 1992 was followed by an increase in the incidence of autism. Be it that, US health-care system has been magnanimous in the precautionary removal of the vaccine component taking into consideration the passion of parents with autistic children, who still had the belief.

As much as I would love to ignore studies supported by industry, I would have little to help my patients without such studies. The majority of drug research in US takes place in pharmaceutical industries rather than in universities. If I were to not accept such studies, many of the good medicines may not come to the help of my patients.

As you suggested, I did visit the CDC website on autism and vaccines, and this is what I found: The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism. [http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/vaccines.htm]

Furthermore, on Thimerosal and autism, CDCs Statement goes, Some people believe increased exposure to Thimerosal (from the addition of important new vaccines recommended for children) explains the higher prevalence in recent years. However, evidence from several studies examining trends in vaccine use and changes in autism frequency does not support such an association. Furthermore, a scientific review by the Institute of medicine (IOM) concluded that "the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism." CDC supports the IOM conclusion. [http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal.htm]

In the US, practice of medicine is guided by bodies like CDC, who help the practitioner to go by the best evidence base. The JAMA study I mentioned is from an evidence base known as POEM (Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters). Even if the practitioner is unable to get to such evidences because of time constraints, protocols and recommendations from such bodies help the doctor provide the standard of care. As the CDC rightly stated, this does not mean we do not look into vaccines as a cause for autism; we continue to look for causes of autism in all possible corners, but provide care based on the best evidence we have. It would be naïve to conceive that the CDC would not have the statisticians and researchers who would not have looked into flaws in different research studies.

You referenced another Danish study:

In 2003, an article published in Pediatrics, Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data, concluded that the discontinuation of thimerosal-containing vaccines in Denmark in 1992 was followed by an increase in the incidence of autism. Be it that, US health-care system has been magnanimous in the precautionary removal of the vaccine component taking into consideration the passion of parents with autistic children, who still had the belief.

Regarding this paper, again its another case of using epidemiological studies, framing them in such a way to get the conclusion desired by the vaccine producers who are behind the study in the first place. To see how that research was fudged you can see the document below:

Danish Thimerosal-Autism Study in Pediatrics: Misleading and Uninformative on Autism-Mercury Link
Download File

They used numerous framing methods to inflate the autism count after 1992. I'll quote part of this report:

These distortions allow the authors to make assertions about a rising trend in autism "incidence" in the 1990s that has no basis in fact. The reports claims are based on the following distortions:

• autism counts were first based on hospitalized, inpatient records and then changed in the middle of the study period to add in outpatient records. This new outpatient registry was introduced in 1995. Therefore, their purported increases after 1994 can be explained entirely by the registration of an existing autism population that did not require hospitalization. The authors minimize this discrepancy and do not adjust for it in their chart (Figure 1), yet in a prior study using the same Danish data, outpatients exceeded the inpatients by a ratio of 13.5 times, and represented over 93% of total cases. This huge gap clearly invalidates their inpatient data, the corresponding time period from 1970-94, and any evidence for a rising trend of autism in Denmark. The authors claim that inpatient admissions were rising also, but the "data [were] not shown". They did not explain this omission, the only bit of credible data in their possession, since it compared equivalent populations.

• Additional discrepancies in the autism case counts make the trend assessment unreliable. After 1992, the registry added in patients from a large Copenhagen clinic, which accounted for 20% of the case load in Denmark. The patients from this clinic were excluded prior to 1992. Their inclusion in subsequent years would drive apparent increases in rates from 1992- 1995 that was yet another form of registration effect.

• The diagnostic category used by the Danish psychiatric system changed after 1993 from "psychosis proto-infantilis" of ICD-8 to "childhood autism" of ICD-10. Psychosis proto-infantilis (code 299) is a category that has never been used in published autism surveys outside of Denmark. ICD-8 contained another, clearly more suitable code, 295 for "infantile autism", which provided diagnostic criteria similar to current criteria used in ICD-10 and DSM-IV. The Pediatrics report mentions the diagnostic change in passing but fails to quantify its effect. In another paper using the same inpatient registry, two of the investigators in the Pediatrics report note that the psychosis proto-infantilis category includes inpatient cases that do not fulfill the criteria for autism (which would further reduce the value of this case finding tool), while also noting the that ouptatient cases of autism in Denmark would not be captured.

• The autism trend data are described as an "incidence study", a marker of quality in an epidemiological analysis. But the report is in no way a proper incidence study. It relies instead for its definition of the "incidence" of autism on the date when cases were entered into the new registry of outpatients. Many of these children were between 7-9 years old, and most were over 4 years old, when recorded as part of an increasing "incidence" trend. Yet the onset of autism must occur, by definition in the diagnostic criteria, before three years of age. Recording an "incidence" event at, say, seven years of age is clearly incorrect. Yet the authors record many such events to report an increase in registrations (especially after 1994) that they misleadingly describe as increasing incidence. The most widely used approach to assessing autism trends is to use year of birth as the "incidence time." This approach was used, for example, in the California autism Epidemiology Report by Byrd et al. Madsen et al. clearly have this information as part of their data set but chose not to report it. Failure to report the birth cohort incidence means that this studys autism rates cannot be fairly compared with incidence levels observed in other countries.

• A recent study from same group reported Danish autism rates for children born in the 1990s of 6 per 10,000. This falls below the rates of autism reported in the U.S. (over 30 per 10,000) by more than 80%.8,9 While emphasizing their illusory increase, the authors never mention that their rates are actually quite low. Although our estimates confirm that these Danish rates are very low in the 1990s compared to the U.S. or the U.K., the authors fail to provide the most basic statistics that might enable a full comparison with other reports. These crucial omissions suggest a clear bias toward elevating the perception of Danish autism rates later in their study period.

• The report also estimates inpatient rates for the pre-1993 "psychosis proto-infantilis" at well below 1 per 10,000. If these were true rates for autism, these would be among the lowest rates measured anywhere in the world at any time period. This low rate would also contradict the single published survey of autism rates from Denmark, which indicated an autism rate of over 4 per 10,000 as far back as the 1950s. Normally, authors cite relevant studies in their introductory or discussion sections, but Madsen et al. fail to mention this study, as they fail to comment on the unusually low autism rates for the earlier years of their study period.

This is corporate science which is bought by money. Its not true objective science.

You wrote:

As much as I would love to ignore studies supported by industry, I would have little to help my patients without such studies. The majority of drug research in US takes place in pharmaceutical industries rather than in universities. If I were to not accept such studies, many of the good medicines may not come to the help of my patients.

I agree partially with what you have written and this is the situation faced by almost all physicians and doctors. There are useful, beneficial medicines that are produced which if used at the right time and in the right context can offer benefit to patients. We do not deny that there are such medications produced by the pharmaceutical industry, even if the entire thrust of this industry is to only treat symptoms and never to venture into removing the causes. As its predicated on profit, it will always remain a "symptoms management" industry, and never offer "true healing". We know from the Sunnah that there is a cure for every disease. That is not what modern medicine is predicated on. Its predicated on treating only the symptoms of disease.

However, as the profit motive is inherent throughout and is intrinsic to the entire structure, studies should be scrutinized carefully. We are not saying all studies should be rejected outright just on the basic notion that they are supported by the pharmaceutical industry, but that they should be scrutinized before acceptance, and not taken at face value.

The Danish studies are suspect. There is a huge financial liability at stake. There is clear evidence of bias in the studies and thus they are to be discounted. The study conducted by Thomas Verstraeten in 1999 commissioned by the CDC whom he was working for, which establish a very strong statistical correlation between autism and Thimerosal and was later whitewashed in a very devious way is another perfect example of the type of dishonesty we have to look out for.

In Islam, before we take peoples statements with acceptance we establish their adaalah (integrity, honesty, truthfulness). Where a person's adaalah has been questioned and brought into disrepute with clear evidence, all their future statements and claims are suspect and should not be taken at face value. This is the basic point being made. This does not mean that they will not be speaking the truth at all, they will be in some issues, but their integrity has been disreputed, and thus questionable in each claim that is subsequently made.

You wrote:

As you suggested, I did visit the CDC website on autism and vaccines, and this is what I found: The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism.

I referred you to the CDC website to verify that vaccines still contain Thimerosal and not for their position on the vaccine-autism issue. I do not accept the integrity of the CDC, nor of the FDA, or the IOM and nor of these types of organizations which are pretty much run by people who are married to the pharmaceutical and medical industries. These people go through a revolving door, they move between these medical organizations and the industry. So I would not take the sentence you quoted from the CDC at face value. These organizations, when you look at the people involved, you will see a husband and wife relationship between them and the industry, but this is an entirely different area that needs to be look at on its own, books have been written on it.

You wrote:

In the US, practice of medicine is guided by bodies like CDC, who help the practitioner to go by the best evidence base. The JAMA study I mentioned is from an evidence base known as POEM (Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters). Even if the practitioner is unable to get to such evidences because of time constraints, protocols and recommendations from such bodies help the doctor provide the standard of care. As the CDC rightly stated, this does not mean we do not look into vaccines as a cause for autism; we continue to look for causes of autism in all possible corners, but provide care based on the best evidence we have.

You have very accurately described the situation, and this indeed how things work. Organizations like the CDC and FDA and others provide guidance to physicians as to the nature and standard of care and all physicians and doctors are pretty much tied to their protocols and recommendations.

You wrote:

It would be naive to conceive that the CDC would not have the statisticians and researchers who would not have looked into flaws in different research studies.

I would have to disagree with you on this one. I believe the naivety is on the flip side.

The CDC does indeed have statisticians and researches who move between working for organizations like the CDC and then working for private industry vaccine manufacturers such as GlaxoSmithkline (now being sued by parents with autistic children). These researchers and statisticians are expected to find favourable results that help the industry and where the results are not favourable they have to be "fixed" in order to prove the desired outcome and to avoid adverse financial consequences. See this very informative document on this subject that shows the activities of the CDC in this regard:

Analysis And Critique Of The Cdc's Handling Of The Thimerosal Exposure Assessment Based On vaccine Safety Datalink (Vsd) Information
Download File

When this is the reality of such bodies and organizations it does not instill any great confidence in them.

This article is very beneficial, thanks for your information..May Allaah increase you all in beneficial knowledge.

I hope you would also cover more about traditional therapy according to Islam vision, for example Yoga Therapy, is it forbidden for moslem ?

Jazaakumullaahu kahiran Katsiiran..

dr.Abu Hana _Indonesia