Michael Wagnitz: Don’t rule out mercury as a factor in autism

Letter to the editor — 2/07/2008 10:32 am
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/271425

Dear Editor: Amazing what a silly television show can do to get the attention of the mainstream medical community.

Despite letters bordering on hysteria from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the March of Dimes, ABC went ahead with the show “Eli Stone.” The first episode was about a case where the jury awarded a family compensation for a vaccine ingredient (thimerosal, 50 percent organic mercury) linked to their child’s autism.

Because of this show we have now seen over 1,000 headlines that say “Once and for all, mercury does not cause autism.” Who says it does?

The studies I read are saying that mercury is a neurotoxin and causes/exacerbates neuroinflammatory disease. There are now 11 published papers that define the underlying medical condition of autism as neuroinflammatory disease.

The most in-depth paper, “Neuroglial activation and neuroinflammation in the brain of patients with autism,” was done at Johns Hopkins University. It was done by analyzing brain tissue of deceased autistic patients.

One might think the most logical question would be: What is causing the neuroinflammation? If you go to the most popular health search engine and type in “mercury and inflammation,” you will get 156 published papers to review. Many of these papers explain the role of mercury and activation of microglial cells in the brain. In a paper published in the Journal of Neuroinflamation, “Microglia and neuroinflamation: a pathological perspective,” the authors define activation of microglial cells as being synonymous with neuroinflammatory disease.

We now know that primates exposed to ethyl mercury via vaccines retain twice as much inorganic mercury in their brains as primates exposed to equal doses of methyl mercury. These primates were exposed to mercury levels at a rate equal to what U.S. children received via standard childhood vaccines in 1991-2003.

Why has research in this area been stopped? Maybe someone from the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can answer this question. They seem to have billions to waste on chasing that elusive, spontaneous, mutating autism gene.

Michael Wagnitz

Michael Wagnitz is a Madison resident with over 25 years of experience evaluating material for mercury and other heavy metals. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Autism Association.

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