Vaccines blamed for autism
Parents believe mercury-containing preservative made children
ill and push for legal remedies
By Graham Brink / St. Petersburg Times
MELBOURNE, Fla. -- At the age of 10 months,
Alex Wilmarth could say "Hi" and "Bye bye," "Mama" and "Dada." The little
boy would giggle at funny faces and wave goodbye.
He could make regular eye contact and was beginning to walk without
help. To his parents, Deborah and Vance, Alex seemed perfect.
Then it was like someone flicked off a switch. Alex began staring into
space. His speech turned to gibberish. He reverted back to crawling.
Then came the tantrums and the fixation with water and cars. He grew
older, but still couldn't dress or feed himself.
Eventually, the doctors diagnosed autism.
In their struggle for information, the Wilmarths stumbled onto a
startling theory. Some researchers, they learned, were examining possible
links between autism and poisoning from common childhood vaccinations
administered in the 1990s.
Today, a growing number of parents across the country are convinced
that a mercury-containing preservative used in many vaccinations caused
their childrens' autism.
In what some lawyers say could be the next wave in litigation, hundreds
of parents have joined a national legal campaign to hold pharmaceutical
companies liable for exposing as many as 30 million children to the
vaccines.
The companies and several government-funded agencies say the vaccines
are safe. The parents' theory is based more on coincidence and desperate
hope than hard data, they say.
Still, lawyers from across the country have banded together in
coalitions to share information and strategies. "It's either going to be
nothing," said lawyer Jack Hamilton of Melbourne, Fla., who is handling
some of the Florida cases. "Or it'll be the biggest thing to come down the
litigation pipeline, ever."
Researchers baffled
Autistic children suffer from a neurological disorder that has baffled
researchers, who don't know why it occurs or how to prevent it. The
children can have trouble communicating and socializing. They often have
attention deficit traits and trouble with language.
In the worst cases, they will never learn to talk or feed themselves.
They bang their heads against walls and stab themselves with sharp
objects. They spend their lives suspended in an impenetrable world often
marked by endless rocking. They will never tell a parent, "I love you."
Some who are skeptical of the link between vaccines and autism say
those frustrations are what is fueling the flawed theory. But some parents
and a core of doctors and researchers cast aside the criticism as
condescending and typical of a medical bureaucracy with a history of
responding to controversies at glacial speed.
The evidence, they say, leads directly to thimerosal, a
mercury-containing preservative used to kill bacteria and fungus in
vaccines.
While thimerosal has been used since the 1930s, it became more common
in the last 15 years as pharmaceutical companies began to produce more
multidose vials to cut costs. Without the preservative, a multi-dose vial
could be tainted with organisms once the seal was broken by the first
puncture.
Autism rates jump
Autism rates have exploded around the country in the past 15 years --
the same period in which thimerosal became more prevalent in vaccines. In
California, they point out, the number of autistic children soared 273
percent between 1987 and 1999, while the state's overall population rose
only about 20 percent.
Many of the new wave of autistic children had high levels of mercury in
their systems, the backers say, and the symptoms of mercury poisoning
mimic the behavior of autistic children. Also, this new wave affects boys
even more than usual. So does mercury poisoning.
"Have you ever seen a profoundly autistic child?" Dr. Stephanie Cave
asked recently from her clinic in Baton Rouge, La. "It'll break your
heart, especially if you think it could have been prevented."
Cave is convinced thimerosal plays a key role in why about one in 150
toddlers develop the disorder, a huge increase from 20 years ago. By
medically removing metals such as mercury from autistic toddlers exposed
to thimerosal, they often make "remarkable recoveries," Cave said.
She thinks that suggests mercury played a role in the first place.
Heart-wrenching stories
In the other corner are the giants of health care, including the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the
American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Network for Immunization
Information and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They say the links are far from proven.
The definition of autism has expanded over the years and doctors are
better educated in diagnosing the disorder, they say. Parents also know
that to get extra help from the school system they need the child to be
designated as autistic.
The often quoted report about the California statistics didn't
determine how many of the new cases moved in from other states, they say.
Parents of autistic children sometimes move to a state like California
because it provides more help and funding for treating autism.
The parents involved in the lawsuits have heart-wrenching stories,
potentially potent ammunition for savvy plaintiffs' lawyers facing off
against deep-pocketed drug companies.
The stories could be particularly convincing to a jury of nonscientists
who only have to agree that a majority of the evidence they hear
establishes a link between the vaccines and autism.
"I think the drug companies thought this might just go away," said
Miami lawyer Roberto Villasante. "That won't be happening any time soon."
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