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every other organisation will endorse these vaccines and proclaim them to be as safe as spring water, but Dr Johnson and some of the others will keep their silence. It is only during the last day of the conference that we learn that most of the objections concerning the positive relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ADD and ADHD are bogus. For example, Dr Rapin notes (page 200) that all children in the study were below age six and that ADD and ADHD are very difficult to diagnose in pre-schoolers. She also notes that some children were followed for only a short period. Dr Marty Stein adds that, in fact, the average age for diagnosis of ADHD is four years and one month—a very difficult diagnosis to make—and that the guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics limits diagnosis to six- to 12-year-olds. Of course, he is implying that too many were diagnosed as having ADHD. Yet recent research found that the famous Denmark study* that led to the announcement by the Institute of Medicine that there was no relationship between autism and the MMR vaccine used the same tactic: they cut off the age of follow-up at age six (*Madsen K.M., Hviid A.,Vestergaard M. et al., "A population-based study of measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations and autism", New Eng. J. Med. 2002; 347:1477- 1482). It is known that, especially with ADD and ADHD, many cases appear after this age group. In fact, most learning problems appear as the child is called on to handle more involved intellectual material. Therefore, the chances are that the study's authors failed to diagnose a number of cases by stopping the study too early. that this was prenatal exposure to mercury—not exposure after birth, as would be seen with vaccinations—the idea being that prenatally the brain is undergoing neural formation and develop- ment, making it more vulnerable. As I have mentioned, this rapid brain growth and development continues for two years after birth; even at age six years, the brain is only 80% formed. Dr Clarkson keeps referring to the Seychelles study, which demonstrated that the children reached normal neurodevelopmen- tal milestones as shown by a number of tests. Dr Weil points out (page 216) that this tells us little about these children's future brain function. He s "T have taken a lot of histories of kids who are in trouble in school. The history is that developmental milestones were normal or advanced and they can't read at second grade, they can't write at third grade, they can't do math in the fourth grade and it has no relationship as far as I can tell to the history we get of the developmental milestones. So I think this is a very crude measure of neurodevelopment." In other words, both the Seychelles and Faroe Islands studies tell us nothing about the actual development of these children's brain function except that they reached the most basic of mile- stones. To put this another way, your child may be able to stack blocks, recognise shapes and have basic language skills, but later in life could be significantly impaired when it came to higher mathematics, more advanced language skills (comprehension) and ability to compete in a very competitive intellectual environment, like college or advanced schooling. The child's future would be limited to the more mundane and intellectually limited jobs. Post-natal brain development—that is, from birth to age six or seven—involves the fine-tuning of synaptic connections, dendritic development and neural pathway refinement, all of which prepare the brain for more complex thinking. These brain elements are very sensitive to toxins and excessive immune stimulation during this period. This is never mentioned at this conference. It also must be remembered that the children in these two studies were exposed only to methylmercury and not the combined neurotoxic effect of mercury, aluminium and excessive Brain development and neurological effects Several of the participants try to imply that autism is a genetic disorder and therefore could have nothing to do with vaccines. Dr Weil puts that to rest with this comment: "We don't see that kind of genetic change in 30 years." In other words, how can we sud- denly see a 300% increase in a genetically related disorder over such a short period? It is also known that there are two forms of autism: one that is apparent at birth, and one that develops later in childhood. The former has not changed in incidence since statistics have been kept; the other is epidemic. One interesting exchange, which ends up being their justification for the view that mercury is of no danger in children vaccinated with vaccines containing thimerosal, involves two studies in children born to mothers consuming high intakes of mercury- Ei contaminated fish. One study, reported in the journal - Neurotoxicology, examined children living in the ie Republic of Seychelles. The authors examined the rd effect of prenatal exposure to mercury through the oi mother's consumption of fish high in methylmercury. a A battery of developmental milestone tests were done aa and no adverse effects were reported in the study done eh by Dr Tom Clarkson (and co-workers), the very same 4 (4 person at this conference. He never mentions that a rs follow-up study of these same children did find a = oct positive correlation between methylmercury exposure ERS and poor performance in a memory test. Ina ak subsequent study of Faroe Islands children exposed to Ws methylmercury, researchers did find impairments of ty neurodevelopment. This experiment was done by scientists from Japan. Throughout the remainder of this discussion, Dr Clarkson and others refer to these two studies. When they are reminded that the Faroe study did find neuro- logical injury to the children, they counter by saying "If it weren't for the fact that the asteroid is going to destroy all life on Earth as we know it, I could build a lucrative swath of aged-care high-density townhouses on it." os NEXUS #21 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2005 www.nexusmagazine.com