Tuesday, August 09, 2005

RFK Jr.'s suggestion re: Thimerosal

This topic is well outside my sphere of "expertise", but within my concerns as a parent and as a friend of other parents.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests here that if researchers are interested in studying the link between Thimerosal and autism, it would be well within the "Duh!" range to compare American populations of vaccinated kids with their non-vaccinated peers in Amish communities et al.

Like I said, I'm shamefully uninformed on the controversy, beyond what little I've heard in the mainstream press here and in the U.K. (it was a hot topic while we lived there, with much pressure coming from British parents to ban the MMR combined-vaccine).

If anyone has any good resources for getting up to speed on the topic, I'd be grateful if you'd share. Thanks.

5 comments:

Cantankerous Bitch said...

Thanks for the links, Les. Much appreciated.
Hope the registration requirement wasn't too much of a pain. I've got it turned on to discourage drive-by comments (I mean, what fun are those?).

Oh, and please. Don't censor or in any other way stand on propriety here, for heaven's sake. We prefer you "naked", as it were.

Cantankerous Bitch said...

Thanks for weighing in, Liz (and happy to have you here!).
What concerns me are the allegations that the studies "disproving" the link were funded and conducted by the vaccine manufacturers themselves (i.e. indicative of possible bias) and that the concentration of Thimerosal in American vaccines is significantly higher than that in the vaccines given abroad.
That being said, I think the point about diagnosis is valid. Any time we start tracking something that was previously underrported, it's naturally going to look like there's an explosion in occurence.

Cantankerous Bitch said...

I've read some interesting things regarding suspicious connections between diet and ADD/ADHD, and it's given me pause to think in light of an afflicted extended family member. As I understand it, the usual culprits that mess with blood sugar (copious amounts of refined carbs & sugar) may be interacting on some biochemical level or another and producing symptoms that mimick, almost indistinguishably, ADD/ADHD. Watching what the aforementioned family member has been eating since he was a baby, I can't help but wonder if the correlary is actually causal.
This isn't to suggest that there are parallels between this and autism incidents, but it triggered my memory re: increased reporting.
Not to get into your personal business or anything, Les, but is your daughter in treatment (on meds or behavioral therapy)?
One of my friend's daughters is autistic -- or so they were told, but she's responded more positively to therapy than most kids with her kind of diagnosis. I haven't posed the vaccination question to her mom, since she's in the target age group and I'm concerned about hitting a sore nerve...

Cantankerous Bitch said...

No apology needed. I'd be a bit consumed by it, too. I like what you've decided re: school year vs. summer, and would presume it'll give her a sense of control in an otherwise fairly powerless situation. If I come across any interesting articles & such on the topic, I'll be sure to whip up an entry. Good luck to you, Mrs. Les and Miss M.

Lily said...

Just to throw on my "behavioral social work" hat, my most recent job was working with autistic children, and I have fifteen years "in the field" so to speak. Many of my "clients" also had ADD/ADHD as well. Learning disabilitiesare also not uncommon, particularly perceptual and fine motor such as dysgraphia. Autism literature has changed alot in recent years, as have the treatment approaches. "Spectrum" paradigms have prompted changes in thinking.The link to diet has been controversial and some parents, for example, swear by gluten free or sugar free products. Some have jumped on dairy and use soy. There is a mixed bag of results, and certainly nourishing children with healthier, organic food would contribute to improved brain function for most children. It might help, it might be one factor in many, but certainly it does not seem to hurt to try. The literature has been mixed in our training. We know some parents that will simply try anything, and one can hardly blame them for that. Chances are good that the parent that goes broke in the organics shop is also likely to be attentive with services, engaged with providers, and involved in the school. Diet interventions require a dedication unusual among more inattentive caregivers and it has been theorized that this skews the results of dietary data.
We also need to balance our distrust of the FDA and food additives, medications, chemicals, etc. against the fact that the alternative/herbal market is a growing and not necessarily reputable information source. We must be discerning in either case. Some of us parents have been going back and forth on issues like flouridation and immunization stabilizers for years!
I have seen great results when a family uses medication as only a part of the equation, certainly the parents that think a pill solves all are often dissappointed. A good behavioral specialist to help coordinate the in-home wrap around services such as TSS and BSC never hurts but gets expensive. Sadly, many of the people spending the medically prescribed hours with these children are new to the field and while nobody can blame them for being entry level, the body of knowledge needed at such a critical time for the children results in opportunities lost. And it is important to simply support parents, whether they decide on medication or not. Undermining parents or accusing them of "drugging their child" is never helpful. On the other hand, every time a child is (as stated) "cantankerous" the school does not necessarily have to push for a medical intervention. I know some doctors that are extremely cautious about zoloft and such classes of drugs in young populations. Perhaps our pharmacist blogger can speak to that.
This is also the product of our "disease" culture that puts so much emphasis on children's deficits. In a meeting, two parents were asked to list some strengths about their child. Mom quickly said "I can't think of any."
Can you imagine? How can medication help a little child whose own parents cannot think of something good about her?