tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33052404.post6919892415207117700..comments2024-02-13T21:31:57.980-04:00Comments on Facing Autism in New Brunswick: Autism & Mercury - Wagnitz Challenges FombonneAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05838571980003579163noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33052404.post-56816283761197041542007-05-11T04:22:00.000-03:002007-05-11T04:22:00.000-03:00I am happy that you don't subscribe to the mercury...I am happy that you don't subscribe to the mercury-autism link. And I'd like to ask Dr. Wagnitz the same question: How stupid do you think we are?<BR/>Let's begin with Dr. Wagnitz's challenge that "a psychiatrist is considered qualified to do toxicological work". Dr. Fombonne isn't the only author of the work in question. He has three co-authors (the abstract of the presentation is accessible at http://www.cevs.ucdavis.edu/Cofred/Public/Aca/WebSec.cfm?confid=281&webid=1514). I suppose that at least one of the co-authors is a toxicologist; I don't want to waste time to check. But even if not, is it so important? Every MD has received some toxicology training. Biologists like me regularly participate in medical research and vice versa. In fact, some major breakthroughs in science have been achieved by researchers without formal training. So, to my opinion, ability to do research is more important than what is written in the diploma. I searched PubMed for "Fombonne E" and "Wagnitz M" and the first search gave results, the second one didn't. So, although I'm not a toxicologist, I feel qualified to argue with Dr. Wagnitz as an equal, because we have the same number of published articles on autism (that is, 0).<BR/>Dr. Fombonne's abstract doesn't contain a word about vaccines. It is about mercury exposure, which could come from many sources but in this case not from vaccines because the children had mean age 4 and so most of them shouldn't have received mandatory thimerosal-containing vaccines. So after which immunization exactly should the patients have been tested, according to Wagnitz, and what have the immunization schemes in the 1990s to do with autism in kids not conceived at that time?<BR/>Having the above in mind, you see that the discussion of how rapidly mercury clears from the blood is nonsense. The sources of mercury for Fombonne's patients were UNKNOWN. The exposure could have been either incidental or continuing. In the second case, mercury of course would be present in blood, urine and hair in relevant concentrations. In the first case, the researchers couldn't know the time of mercury exposure, so the best they could do was to do the measurements shortly after the diagnosis - which they did.<BR/>My PubMed search for "mercury urinary porphyrin profile" produced only 7 articles, of which 6 listed JS Woods as co-author. This of course doesn't mean that the method is irrelevant, but clearly shows that it is preferred by one group of researchers, rather than being universally accepted among toxicologists. As for the sentence "The other way to test for mercury in the body is by using a provoking agent and measuring mercury in the urine" - I've already mentioned in a previous comment that this method isn't popular in toxicological studies available in PubMed.<BR/>And now, let me return to the earlier Wagnitz's notion that "autistic kids do not excrete mercury efficiently". He gives no reference but I guess he means the work of Kern et al. (2007), Sulfhydryl-reactive metals in autism, and the references therein. These authors, finding lower hair content of mercury and other metals in autistic vs. control children, suggest that "children with autism may have trouble excreting these metals". (My own explanation is that parents of autistic kids take more care to feed them "healthy, organic" foods and to spend time in unpolluted environment.)<BR/>Bad science is characterized by faulty study design, methodological errors or data misinterpretation, but its root cause usually is failure to accept and apply the scientific method. The latter requires each hypothesis/theory to be falsifiable. I.e. when presenting a theory, you must say what data, if obtained, will disprove it. However, scientists tend to cling to their pet theory and, when confronted by contradicting facts, modify it to make it compatible to the facts. In some cases this is relevant, but more often such supports just prolong the agony of an entirely wrong theory, sometimes up to 40-50 years.<BR/>In its simplest form, the mercury-autism theory postulates higher mercury burden in autistic children. The measured mercury concentration in autistics has three variants - to be (a) higher, (b) the same and (c) lower than in controls. So results (b) or (c), if obtained, contradict the theory. But you see that when (c) is obtained, Dr. Wagnitz says that autistics don't excrete mercury efficiently, and when (b) is obtained, he says that the researcher obtaining (b) isn't a toxicologist and has done a mess of it all. So Wagnitz supports a "theory" that cannot be disproved and hence is no scientific theory at all; it's a cult. BTW Kern et al. have measured mercury in hair - the method Dr. Wagnitz finds wrong; but he doesn't call them incompetent, because they don't challenge his pet theory, even though their results do.<BR/>In conclusion, I'd like to ask Dr. Wagnitz two more questions:<BR/>(1) Could you please tell us what empirical results, if obtained, will make you admit that the mercury-autism theory is wrong?<BR/>(2) How many years must pass after removal of mercury from vaccines so that you stop blaming mercury in vaccines for (the non-diminishing cases of) autism?<BR/>Sorry for the long comment, but as one of the few readers who feel at home at the PubMed site, I felt obliged to do the work for the others who don't. And I blame Dr. Wagnitz for making me waste my time, among other sins.Maya Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10877457709995369246noreply@blogger.com