Dr. Williamson en zijn collega Jordan Davis. MD zegt dat vergiftiging door kwik uit amalgaam pandemisch is in onze samenleving. 
Tegenwoordig begrijpt of onderschrijft bijna niemand dit probleem. Toch kan kwikvergiftiging een zeer plausibele verklaring 
zijn voor de explosie van leer- en gedragsproblemen, autisme plus nog zeer veel andere problemen sinds de 2e wereldoorlog. 
Deze 55 jarige periode correspondeert precies met de grootscheepse invoering en het wereldwijd toepassen van kwikamalgaam.

A study of mercury levels in the baby hair of children who were later 
diagnosed with autism has produced startling results. The babies had far 
lower levels of mercury in their hair than other infants, leading to 
speculation that autistic children either do not absorb mercury or, more 
likely, cannot excrete it.

The results will be seized upon by parents who blame vaccines containing 
the mercury-based preservative thimerosal for their children's autism, some 
of whom are suing health authorities in the US and Canada. (The MMR vaccine 
that some accuse of triggering autism, despite a lack of credible evidence, 
does not contain mercury.)

But while the study's findings support the theory that some children have a 
genetic fault that makes them far more susceptible to mercury poisoning, 
the results certainly do not prove this, or that thimerosal is involved.

The difference in mercury levels in hair may be a sign of a more general 
problem in dealing with metals or it could simply be an anomaly that 
reveals little about what is happening elsewhere in the body.

But if the results are confirmed, the conclusions of studies looking at the 
safety of low levels of mercury (New Scientist print edition, 14 June) 
could also be called into question. Many of these studies relied on mercury 
levels in hair as a measure of exposure.
 

First cuttings

Autism experts say the findings are intriguing, but all emphasise the need 
for further studies. Although the findings are to be published in a 
peer-reviewed journal, some critics say the results are rather too 
striking, and point out that the researchers who did the work all believe 
that thimerosal is to blame for autism.

The team leader, Louisiana doctor Amy Holmes, in fact set out to try to 
prove that autistic children had been exposed to high levels of mercury. 
She obtained baby hair from parents who had kept the first cuttings and 
sent off a few samples for analysis. To her surprise, mercury levels were 
low.

Holmes has now done a bigger study, comparing mercury levels in first baby 
haircuts from 94 autistic children with those of 45 other children. The 
mean level in the baby hair of children later diagnosed as autistic was 
0.47 parts per million, compared with 3.63 ppm in the others, the team 
found - nearly nine-tenths lower.

What is more, the more severe the autism, the lower the mercury levels. The 
mean levels of children with mild, moderate and severe autism were 0.79, 
0.46 and 0.21 ppm respectively.
 

Fillings and fish

Most of this mercury came from the mothers. The main sources of exposure, 
according to the team, were mercury amalgam fillings, Rho D immunoglobulin 
injections containing thimerosal given to Rhesus negative mothers, and 
heavy consumption of fish (defined as more than five fish meals a month).

In the control group, hair mercury rose in line with the mothers' exposure. 
But the baby hair of autistic children had consistently low mercury levels, 
even when the mothers' exposure was high, the team found. The results will 
appear in the International Journal of Toxicology in September.

One explanation, says team member Mark Blaxill of the campaign group 
SafeMinds of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a problem with metal uptake. If 
so, autistic children might also be deficient in metals essential for brain 
development such as zinc, iron and copper.

Alternatively, some children may have a problem excreting mercury. The 
metal might then build up in the brain, producing autism. Most mercury is 
excreted in urine and faeces, but the lack of mercury in hair might be a 
sign that the metal is being retained in cells rather than getting into the 
blood, the researchers suggest.

Mercury is one of the suspected causes of autism, with proponents arguing 
that there are many similarities between autism and mercury poisoning. But 
a review published earlier in 2003 pointed out that poisoning by the 
different forms of mercury found in fish, fillings and thimerosal has
effects distinct from autism, and concluded that what little evidence there 
is does not support any link.
 

'Loaded to the gills'

Despite this, some doctors, including Holmes, have been experimenting with 
giving autistic children metal-binding agents, or chelators, to rid the 
body of heavy metals. "They are loaded to the gills with metals," Holmes, 
who was unavailable for comment, claimed in 2002. The only published 
evidence, however, is a very small study from 1976 suggesting autistic 
children have higher levels of lead in their blood.

Critics such as child neurologist Emanuel Dicicco-Bloom of the Robert Wood 
Johnson Medical School in New Jersey says concluding that autistic children 
accumulate mercury on the basis of low levels in hair is a big logical leap 
that is not justified by the evidence.

Even some of those who blame heavy metals such as mercury for autism echo 
his warnings not to try potentially dangerous therapies such as chelation. 
Parents should wait for the results of the clinical trials about to begin,
they say.

And Dicicco-Bloom's colleague Mike Gochfield, who does mercury testing, 
says that the levels of mercury in the control group are way above what he 
would expect for children in the US. Blaxill's response is that no one has 
ever tested first baby haircuts before, so there are no "normal" results to 
compare to.

The lab that did the testing was not told which children the samples were 
from, he adds. And according to unpublished work by Steve Lindow and Steve 
Haslow at the University of Hull in the UK, hair mercury levels in newborns 
can be even higher than in the mother.
 

Active transport

They suspect that mothers may actively transport metals to the fetus. But 
on average the first baby hair in Holmes' study was cut at 18 months old, 
so this would not explain the high levels in the controls.

Astonishingly, only one other published study, from 1985, has compared 
mercury levels in the hair of children with and without autism. That study 
found no difference, but it did find lower levels of metals such as 
calcium, copper and chromium - levels that were so distinctive they could 
be used as a "diagnostic tool for autism".

Other experts say the theory that autistic children are particularly at 
risk from heavy metals is at least plausible. "This kind of 
gene-environment interaction is not incompatible with the known 
heritability of autism," says Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University. 
"If these results hold up, metal studies on the brain could be revealing."
 

Richard Lathe and Michael Le Page
 

Mercury was responsible for the first known epidemic of cerebral palsy from a toxin when it was dumped into Minamata Bay in Japan in the 1950's by a vinyl plastics factory. Might it also cause mercury toxicity in children who frequently get mercury-containing vaccines? This has long been a concern with the gamma globulin shot used to prevent Hepatitis A in travelers. Where practical, the Hepatitis A vaccine is a safer and more effective alternative that does not contain mercury. Still, getting a shot of gamma globulin is still far better than getting hepatitis.
All of the vaccines now in the routine schedule are available in thimerosal-free forms. Other vaccines such as the diphtheria-tetanus, meningococcal, influenza vaccines, and gamma globulin will still contain thimerosal after the first quarter of 2001.These vaccines are not recommended for children as part of the recommended childhood immunization schedule, though for some children the benefits will outweigh the risks. In addition, the vaccination of children in much of the world will continue to require the use of multi-dose vials for reasons of cost and storage capacity. 
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the United States Public Health Service (PHS) has called for the elimination of mercury from all vaccines. Multi-dose vials require a preservative to prevent microbial contamination after the vial is opened, but manufacturers are encouraged to seek alternatives.