Mercury On the Mind
By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

Although they afflict widely different age groups, autism and Alzheimer's disease share a common cause: mercury. Dr. Boyd Haley, professor and chair of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Bernard Rimland, founder of the Autism Research Institute, presented evidence at this year's Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting that connects mercury with these diseases.

This heavy metal is highly poisonous. A Dartmouth professor studying the chemical characteristics of an organic form of mercury -- dimethyl mercury -- spilled two drops of it on her gloved hand. The first sign of mercury poisoning occurred four months later when her speech began to be slurred. This was followed by difficulty walking and loss of vision. She then fell into a coma and died.

Another person, attempting to smelt the silver in dental amalgams he obtained (they are 35 percent silver, 50 percent mercury and 15 percent tin, zinc and other metals), heated them in a frying pan. The mercury vapor generated killed him quickly. The two other family members in the house at the time also died.

The Deadly Properties of Mercury

Mercury is one proton (neutron and electron) heavier than gold. The atomic number of gold is 79 (mercury is 80). It is distributed throughout the earth's crust. Unlike other metals, mercury, in its elemental state, is liquid (molten) at room temperature. And it releases a steady stream of gaseous mercury atoms that linger in the atmosphere for months (eventually falling back to earth and its oceans in an inorganic form in raindrops). Even in a solid state or combined with other metals as an alloy, mercury atoms continually escape into the atmosphere.

Once added to latex paint, put in teething powder, used in making hats and as a fungicide on seeds, an antiseptic (Merthiolate) and a treatment for syphilis (the cure was worse than the disease), human exposure to mercury today comes principally from three sources: dental amalgams, vaccines and fish.

Elemental mercury when released by a dental amalgam is inhaled and (80 percent of it) absorbed by the lungs and retained in the body. Vaccine makers add thimerosal (which is half ethyl mercury) to vaccines to prevent bacterial contamination.

This injected organic form of mercury is readily taken up by brain and heart muscle cells. Fish harbor another organic form of mercury -- methyl mercury -- that is obtained from plankton that synthesize it from inorganic mercury extracted from the sea.

Ignoring the Obvious

Currently, the two most important sources of mercury exposure for Americans are dental amalgams and vaccinations. The federal government's CDC and FDA -- for reasons not explained -- have chosen to ignore this fact. In fact, these agencies and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) focus exclusively on mercury in seafood, to the extent the NIH will not fund studies that address mercury in amalgams and vaccines.

In lockstep with the government, the American Dental Association (ADA) claims that amalgams are safe, and the mercury in them poses no problem. The (government-funded) Institute of Medicine (IOM) and various specialty societies, notably the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the American Medical Association (AMA), say the same thing about mercury in vaccines.

There is growing evidence, however, that mercury in vaccines and amalgams cause both autism and Alzheimer's disease.

The CDC and FDA and the medical establishment, led by its specialty societies, discount or ignore evidence that includes:

• Privately funded epidemiological studies
• Research on how mercury damages brain cells grown in cultures
• Animal studies in rodents, sheep and primates
• Clinical studies in children and adults

Autism was discovered in 1943, in American children, 12 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 a typical case, shortly before his second birthday, a normally developing, healthy boy stops communicating with others and withdraws into himself. He avoids eye contact and becomes strange and aloof. His vision becomes blurred and he develops various motor disturbances, such as an involuntary jerking of the arms and legs and walking on his toes.

In addition to these manifestations, Dr. Sallie Bernard and her colleagues, in a study entitled, "Autism: A Unique Type of Mercury Poisoning," describe the speech difficulties, unusual behavior (such as unprovoked crying spells and head banging), various degrees of cognitive impairment, gastrointestinal difficulties and immune difficulties that these autistic children can have.

Mercury is most likely a causative factor in other developmental disorders as well, such as delayed speech and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A Direct Connection

Investigators have shown there is a direct relationship between increasing doses of mercury in vaccines and autism. In the 1950s, with an immunization schedule limited to four vaccines (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and smallpox), one in 10,000 children developed this disease.

As vaccines for other diseases were added, health care providers began injecting increasingly larger doses of mercury into children. 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, providers follow an immunization schedule prepared by the CDC and approved by the AAP and AAFP, that includes 13 vaccines given, with variable numbers of booster shots, 33 times before a child reaches the age of 2 (when the development of the brain is completed). Autism now afflicts 1 in 100 boys and 1 in 400 girls, and physicians diagnose 100,000 new cases of this disease every year in the U.S (using diagnostic criteria, in the DSM-IV, that is more restrictive than the previous DSM-IIIR).

Over the last 30 years, more than 1 million children have come down with this disease, and currently one in every 68 families in America has an autistic child.

Mainstream medical journals, like Pediatrics and The New England Journal of Medicine, only publish studies that claim thimerosal is safe. And it turns out that these articles are written in large part by researchers in the pay of vaccine makers, as the Coalition for Safe Minds (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders), a private nonprofit organization, has shown.

Editors of these journals will not publish studies that show a link between thimerosal and autism like, Thimerosal in Childhood Vaccines, Neurodevelopment Disorders, and Heart Disease in the United States by Mark and David Geier, which documents a strong association between the amounts of mercury injected in vaccines and autism.

Such articles can only find acceptance in alternative (i.e., politically incorrect) journals like the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, where this one was published.

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The Cold, Hard Facts

The accepted wisdom now is that vaccines are a panacea. Health care providers start injecting them in infants on the day of birth, and government officials seek to have them made mandatory for all Americans. But some little-discussed facts belie their value.

Deaths from diphtheria, for example, declined 90 percent from 1900-30, due to better sanitation and nutrition, before there was a vaccine for this disease. Likewise, the death rate for measles declined 95 percent (13.3 to 0.03 deaths per 100,000 population) between 1915-58, before the vaccine for measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Viewed from a risk/benefit perspective, providers and government officials downplay the deleterious effects that vaccines can have on one's health and inflate their benefits.

The top medical textbook on the subject is Vaccines, edited by Drs. Plotkin and Orenstein. In the 1999 third edition that I reviewed (a slightly longer fourth edition was published last year), its authors confine their discussion of mercury in vaccines to two short paragraphs in this 1,230-page book.

They do not address concerns that have been raised about its neurotoxicity.

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. Iowa has passed a law banning thimerosal in that state, and California has done the same thing for pregnant women and children under 3 (the bill awaits the governor's signature). But pharmaceutical companies still add thimerosal to their flu vaccines, and pediatricians are vaccinating children with their remaining supplies of thimerosal-containing vaccines, which the FDA has chosen not to recall.

Taking mercury out of vaccines would substantially reduce the incidence of autism, but this alone will not eliminate the disease. Giving too many vaccines over too short a time to infants whose nervous system is not yet fully developed can also trigger autism and its spectrum of disorders.

As Dr. Russell Blaylock has shown (see Recommended Reading below), multiple vaccines given close together over-stimulate the brain's immune system and, via the mechanism of "bystander injury," destroy brain cells.

Spending More on Cows than People?

Much more research needs to be done on the neurotoxicity of mercury and excessive vaccination. Dr. Haley terms autism as Mad Child Disease. Finding one cow in the United States with Mad Cow Disease from Canada, prompted the federal government to spend millions of dollars examining other cows to see if they had contracted it. With regard to Mad Child Disease, however, the government spends $59 in research for every case of autism diagnosed in this country.

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. Be sure to have a dentist who follows the protocol established by The International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology for safely removing them.

For the third source of mercury, follow the CDC's advice and don't eat mercury-contaminated fish, especially if you are pregnant because mercury in your bloodstream crosses the placenta and is concentrated in the fetus' brain.

Recommended Reading in addition to the online links I've provided

An excellent review of thimerosal and autism, titled Mercury in Medicine -- Taking Unnecessary Risks, is to be found, of all places, in the Congressional Record. Prepared by its Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, this report was presented to the Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Dan Burton (who has an autistic grandson). Congressional Record, May 21, 2003, E1011 -- E1030.

SafeMinds president, Lyn Redwood, presented testimony at a Congressional hearing held on September 8, 2004 that exposes malfeasance by the CDC and FDA related to thimerosal. It is titled Truth Revealed: New Scientific Discoveries Regarding Mercury in Medicine and Autism and is posted on the safeminds.org Web site.

Also, read this organization's 84-page Report to Congress titled, A Brief Analysis of Recent Efforts in Medical Mercury Induced Neurological and Autism Spectrum Disorders (September 8, 2004).

"The Three Modern Faces of Mercury" -- in fish, vaccines, and dental amalgams -- by Thomas Clarkson in Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 110 | Supplement 1 | February 2002 | pages 11 -- 23. This study provides a current-day perspective on mercury exposure, post Calomel, Merthiolate and Mad Hatters.

If your dentist parrots the American Dental Association stance on this subject and says that "silver" -- i.e., mercury -- amalgams are perfectly safe, insist that he or she read Dr. Boyd Haley's response to the president of the ADA on his defense of dental amalgams. It is posted on this website. I sent it to my dentist who I had been going to for a number of years. When he chose to ignore it, I changed dentists -- to a mercury-free one and had him remove all my amalgam fillings.

"Mercury: the Silent Killer," Chapter 3 in Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. As a board-certified neurosurgeon, Dr. Blaylock, like me, is a member of the medical establishment. He now, however, studies and writes about wellness and complementary/alternative medicine on a full-time basis. Are Vaccines Safe and Effective? by Neil Z. Miller (2002), is well worth reading, especially if you have children or if you are being pressured to get a flu shot.

For a comprehensive review, with 167 scientific references, on how vaccines damage infants' and soldiers' brains (Gulf War Syndrome) when given too close together, see Dr. Blaylock's "Interaction of Cytokines, Excitotoxins, Reactive Nitrogen and Oxygen Species in Autism Spectrum Disorders" in the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association (JANA 2003;6[4]:21 -- 35).

Also read his study, Chronic Microglial Activation and Excitotoxicity Secondary to Excessive Immune Stimulation: Possible Factors in GulfWar Syndrome and Autism, in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JAPS 2004;9[2]:46 -- 52). Dr. Blaylock has written a simplified version of these studies for the general public, titled Vaccines: the Hidden Dangers, in his Blaylock Wellness Report (Vol. 1, No. 1), which is published monthly and can be purchased online.