Christ on a turbocharged saltine cracker. Lets do a little combined history and math lesson on the subject of Lilly Pharmaceuticals and their miracle of modern mayhem "thimerisol" a mercury based preservative long suspected and recently VERIFIED by the cdc's own shameful hidden research to be THE causative agent in the 30 year explosion in the instances of autism. When the cable came in so did the autism. ha! Would someone just shoot me and get it over with? Here's my take.

1935 Lilly introduces thimerisol for use in vaccines and other drugs as a preservative. It triples shelf life, and is soon in wide spread use. Now lets join Sherman and Mr. Peabody in the wayback machine, and leap to 1947. Leo Kanner identifies a group of young male children who seem withdrawn and fiercely anti-social, to the point of having no concept of others, as anything but yet another object in the world they cannot grasp. Kanner's first diagnosis had been mercury poisoning, but he could not locate the causative agent. Lilly knew though. And continued to reap profits while autistics and their families suffered through 30 years of unadulterated hell, at the hands of charlatans like bettelhiem and the national asylum system which was unchanged since the 1800's in it's treatments and care of inmates. Yes inmates, not patients. The autism project of U.C.L.A. helped to shine some light on the root of the problem and developed treatments but unfortunately Lilly was about to quadruple the number of products it's harmless little preservative would be included in, counting in the number nearly 20 childhood vaccines and inject able drugs. By the time my boy was born in 1996 the average American child received 400 times the safe level of mercury (did I mention that thimerisol is 50% ethyl mercury by weight?) that the E.P.A. allowed. If a health care worker had dropped a bottle of m.m.r. Vaccine, and the mercury content were openly known; the hospital would be closed due to a high level HAZMAT incident.

Mercury is one of the most lethal substances known to man, but for a 20-year period in the first part of the 20th cent, it was used in hundreds of products. Don't believe me, look it up. Autism and mercury poisoning are indistinguishable from one another. Shame on you Lilly, shame on the bush family for it's willing involvement in this horrific assault on our children, our future, and most of all, shame on the government Dick Armey in particular, for the stealth rider in the 2001 patriot act limiting Lilly’s liabilities to 250k per case should thimerisol be found to be a contributing factor in the autism epidemic. Now tell me again, Barney and the teletubbies cause autism right? Whew, glad it's that simple, now my son can start talking and having some kind of life at 12. Allah be praised. I must go hurl now.......C-ya

DLR http://davidrich7.tripod.com for our story of autism and anguish.

I'm very sorry to hear about your son.

I have a question about the use of thimerosal in vaccines. My (very limited) understanding is that thimerosal has not been used in childhood vaccines in the US since 2001, yet autism rates are continuing to rise even though children no longer are exposed to thimerosal. If the preservative is no longer used and rates are still increasing, wouldn't it be unlikely that the preservative causes autism?

"My (very limited) understanding is that thimerosal has not been used in childhood vaccines in the US since 2001, yet autism rates are continuing to rise even though children no longer are exposed to thimerosal"

You are partially wrong. It's use was banned in production, however what was on the shelves (and remember thimerasol is a preservative, those vaccines are good for 3-4 years depending on type) were not destroyed, nor was there a law in place to destroy them and not give them to children. I'm not saying that thimerosal is the only cause of ASD, but there's good reason thimerosal was banned.