It is hard to give love in a different way– going against what culture believes but I honestly feel that in the long run children can be typical (autism). I still bottle feed at night as his diet (whether it be texture/taste or the problem I have mentioned–damage to salivary production and immune progression). He is healthy, happy and progressing like no other autistic child.

Safe Minds has their own agenda, for sure, but contrary to your claims, Kirby himself has never insisted that the thimerosal hypothesis was correct. He has always bothered to distinguish between “evidence of harm” and “evidence of proof”. Like many of us, he has seen enough to at least be suspicious, enough to ask for a real dialogue and the opportunity to fund conclusive studies (there have been plenty of flawed studies on both sides of the issue). He has acknowleged in the past that 2007 would be the year for the numbers to put up (go down) or shut up (stay the same or increase). And he has always suggested that other environmental triggers could be responsible.

Here’s something you can read right on his evidenceofharm.com website. “At the very least, the thimerosal debate has compelled the scientific community, however reluctantly, to consider an environmental component to the disorder, rather than looking for a purely genetic explanation. ” Written in 2004. And you have the nerve to tell people he’s producing wild new “hunches” this month to bail himself out the thimerosal argument?

My child lost his language, lost his fine motor skills, which had been excellent, in the months after his vaccines. We are not convinced that thimerosal is the cause, but we are still wondering. And although our child is highly self-abusive, has almost no language (now age 9), certainly “low functioning”, we have not trusted chelating or any major biointerventions. We won’t put him at risk. But parents deserve honest information and deserve to ask questions. And in the thimerosal debate, it seems like one side just wants to make the questions go away. Your selective portrait of Kirby just reinforces that perception.

Mercury remains a logical candidate for contributing to “autism spectrum disorders,” either alone or in combination with other environmental insults. Mercury exposure can kill brain cells. It can cause loss of speech and eye contact, digestive and immune dysfunction, social withdrawal and anxiety, and repetitive and self-injurious behaviors.

Regressive auism is real. Studies of family videos and detailed questionnaires of parents have identified at least three groups – early onset autism, regressive autism after normal develpment and regressive autism after atypical development. These studies relied on very small sample sizes and cannot give prevalence data. One estimate by Professor Gillberg is that maybe 20 per cent of autism is regressive.

The problems with parental bias are not a slur on parents. It is a real psychological phenomenon. The publicity around MMR did change parental perceptions. They were not making it up. They were reinterpreting the past in a way that made sense at the time.

I think the real problem, Bill, is with the anti-vaxers hijacking the concept of regressive autism for their own ends. It is their antics that might lead to you all being tarred with the same brush.

I think you will find that their negative effect far outweighs any possible good that might arise from raising legitimate points about autism. And they are not the only ones raising these points. A lot of us in the other camp are concerned that legitimate health concerns and standards of care for autistic children and adults are not being properly addressed.

I won’t attempt to defend Kirby. The only thing I can say about him and others on that side of the fence is they bring out some of the legitimate points about the autistic condition, then draw questionable conclusions about causation. Just like a man named Al Sharpton here in the states: I disagree with probably 90% of the conclusions he draws, but what he is fighting about are valid point and should be listened to…
Bill

Autistic kids don’t usually lose the ability to walk or move their arms, that sort of thing. Maybe they never do, but CDD kids do, to some degree.

BTW, truly regressive autism, which is called CDD, is very rare. Its prevalence is estimated at around 1.7 in 10,000.