Well, well well: Questions, part two

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By the time I got to where I left off last week, I was convinced I was talking to a scientist willing to go out on a limb with what he believes to be the truth even though it had already and would continue to cost him dearly. It's a very different experience than speaking to a public health official, or a public relations person sticking to carefully crafted consensus lines. So here is the rest of my conversation with toxicologist and biochemist Dr. Boyd Haley.

"What about the argument that autism rates haven't declined since thimersoal has been removed from vaccines?" I pose. "It's a total deception," he says. "We don't actually know the autism rate for the last officially thimerosal-vaccinated cohort. And according to parents who asked to look at vaccine inserts, thimerosal was still present in childhood vaccines as late as 2004 in many places. Then in 2004, the flu vaccine, which contains thimerosal, was recommended for six-month-old infants. I don't know if we even have a thimerosal-free time frame."

"But don't our bodies quickly excrete thimerosal?" I argue. "Infants can't excrete thimerosal very well," he says quickly. "They don't make bile. Autistic infants are totally incapable of excreting mercury. They'd be fine if they weren't exposed to thimerosal. They say mercury leaves the blood too fast to be toxic. It leaves the blood, but not the body. It goes into central nervous system. The amount infants are exposed to would be EPA [Environmental Protection Act] safe for a 275-pound adult. It destroys gut membranes, which are very disrupted in autistic children; this is well-established in the scientific literature. Then it gets through the blood brain barrier. Whatever is causing autism must affect boys more than girls, as autism rates are higher among boys than girls. It is well-known and documented that testosterone accentuates the effects of mercury."

He's passionate. He hasn't been researching this for as long as he has for nothing; he knows what he knows.

"Is the publication of information that challenges the wisdom of immunization, as I've been told on numerous occasions, dangerous and irresponsible?" I ask. "The real danger is in the information we're not being given," he replies.

Much research in autism has been focused on genetic causes rather than toxic ones; Dr. Haley addresses that also. "We know autism isn't genetic," he says. "You can have a genetic susceptibility, which together with an environmental toxin is what I believe is causing it, but autism went epidemic in all 50 states at one time. This isn't the behaviour of a genetically caused disease. The medical community doesn't like this though. They've spent so much time trying to identify a gene and couldn't find one, and when they did find one that could account for a tiny fraction of autism rates, it was major news. But these genes have been around for thousands of years; there's nothing sensible about that hunt."

I ask the question so often put to me. "But don't vaccines deserve credit for our improved mortality rates?"

"The US is the most highly vaccinated nation in the world, and we're number 41 when it comes to infant mortality rates," he says. Not exactly something to be proud of, I think to myself, thankful that Canadian immunization schedules are at least somewhat less rigorous than American ones.

I have one more question; I want some hope. "What will change things?" I ask. "We need more heroes," he says quickly. "More well-respected people willing to be honest. As long as the pharmaceutical industry controls what science gets published and what research gets to the media, we won't get the truth. Every medical school, every health organization ought to be debating this. We, my team, win every time we debate the issue. Those who say vaccines with thimerosal are safe, they have no data. It's a high priest theory of knowledge. It won't change until we go after vaccine manufacturers, which we can do with thimerosal. It won't change until the state is forced to bear the burden of the cost of caring for our vaccine-injured children. I want vaccines to work and to be safe; I'd fight for them if I thought they were."

Well, well well: Questions, part two

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