Those who claim thimerosal is causing the autism ‘epidemic’ have not provided any reasonable justification for why the mercury poisoning is so selective. In most cases of heavy metal poisoning, such as with arsenic or lead, nearly everyone exposed at adequate levels is affected in some way. These heavy metals have very specific ways they act in the human body to harm us. Severity of symptoms varies from person to person, situation to situation, but the toxicity is not highly selective. If you expose a child to enough arsenic, they are going to have serious problems. Same goes for lead, and chromium, and selenium.

Somewhere around 1 in 100-150 of children develop autism spectrum disorders today. And, over 90% of children have received the full scope of recommended vaccines. If thimerosal is so toxic as claimed, then why is only 1 in 90-135 or so children negatively affected by the ethyl mercury? Why do rare children develop a severe neurological deficit and most others apparently walk away unscathed? Why does mercury differ so much from other heavy metals? And, why are there not large numbers of cases of mild mercury poisoning among the general population, poisoning that does not result in autism symptoms but result in other symptoms typical of mercury poisoning? Mercury poisoning has very specific symptoms; why aren’t these showing up in kids who aren’t autistic, or for that matter, who are autistic?

In the Minamata case discussed above, mercury poisoning symptoms were consistent with exposure. The cases were clustered in fishing villages in fishermen and their families exposed to the mercury. The mercury victims were frequently from the same family, who ate at the same table. It was not just humans; the mercury also impacted cats fed scraps from the table. Why wasn’t the mercury selective in who became symptomatic?

No advocate of the thimerosal theory of autism has offered a credible answer to these questions. Yes, some individuals have postulated that the key difference is autistic children are poor excretors of mercury. However, there has never been any credible scientific evidence produced to support that conclusion – and the Safe Minds sponsored Holmes / Blaxill / Haley study which claimed that low levels of mercury in the hair of autistic children means they are poor excretors of mercury, in no way leads to a logical conclusion that autistic children don’t excrete mercury well – maybe they just have low levels of mercury, or maybe the study is bunch of biased bunk. There are many things wrong with that study and it has been thoroughly debunked.