Provided by: www.ewg.org

Summary
Background
Findings
Recommendations

Findings

An eighteen-month investigation by Environmental Working Group concludes that scientists have identified a signature metabolic profile or "biomarker" in autistic children that may indeed characterize a "small subset" of susceptible children. These findings represent a potential milestone in our understanding of individual vulnerability to toxic substances, including, but not limited to, mercury. This science turns on its head the IOM's judgment that research into the thimerosal/autism link be abandoned, and instead strengthens significantly the case for additional research in this area. We found that:

• Newly published research and follow-up testing by former FDA senior research scientist Dr. Jill James, now of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, has uncovered a unique and consistent metabolic imbalance in autistic children when compared to normal healthy children (James 2004a, 2004b). This impairment manifests as a severe deficit in the body's most important antioxidant and metals detoxifier, glutathione. When compared to normal health children, autistic children showed a significant impairment in every one of five measurements of the body's ability to maintain a healthy glutathione defense. These findings are strong evidence that if these children were exposed to a potentially toxic dose of mercury or other compound they would be much less able to mount an effective defense.

• The finding of a significant glutathione deficit in autistic children provides a biological basis for integrating many facets of autism that have baffled researchers attempting to pin the autism epidemic on a single gene or chemical exposure.
• The implications of these findings extend well beyond thimerosal and autism. Reduced antioxidant defense may characterize a group of individuals who are demonstrably more sensitive to the effects of a range of toxic chemical exposures, and shed light on increasing rates of related learning and behavioral disorders.
• These findings raise serious concerns about the studies that have allegedly proven the safety of mercury in vaccines. While Dr. James' results do not prove that mercury causes autism, they significantly strengthen this possibility. The epidemiologic studies used to dismiss a causal relationship between mercury and autism assumed that all children have the same resistance to chemical exposure. Given James' finding that autistic children would be much more sensitive to certain chemical contaminants, studies that do not acknowledge these vulnerabilities cannot be used to dismiss the relationship between environmental chemicals, including mercury, and the disease.
• When James' results are considered together with the existing body of science, including other recently published research, the weight of the evidence now strongly supports increased research into the relationship between thimerosal and autism as well as other neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders.

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