On Hilleman, Mercury, and Autism
The other night I was reading through some old Economists before recycling them, and found an obituary of Dr. Maurice Hilleman. (The Economist runs a very interesting obit every week, usually of someone fascinating and important that you've never actually heard of. I highly recommend them.)
Many of you (and by you, I mean me, also) have probably never heard of Dr. Hilleman, but there's a good chance he saved your life.
Quick: who developed the polio vaccine? Jonas Salk; everyone of my parents' generation knows that, and so do a fair number of my contemporaries.
Now: Who developed the mumps vaccine? Hilleman. How about measles, or that three-for-one MMR we all got? Hilleman. How about meningitis? Pneumonia? Chicken pox? Hep A and B? Chances are, if you got vaccinated for it, Hilleman developed the vaccine. All this from a guy who literally grew up in Old West Montana. He was, apparently, goddamn good at what he did, and frankly kind of stunned that he didn't develop an AIDS vaccine in his lifetime.
Today I was skimming Boston.com on my break, and found this op-ed by Robert Kennedy, Jr. In it, he discusses the possibility that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative found in vaccines, causes autism.
I always considered the "vaccines cause autism" argument to be a classic case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"); just because kids get vaccinated at 2 and autism shows up at 2 doesn't mean that autism is caused by vaccines. You might as well argue that college causes schizophrenia, since schizophrenia typically shows up in the late teens/early twenties. Besides which, while I don't doubt that Kennedy's heart is in the right place, he is not a statistician, clinician, or doctor.
But Hilleman was.
According to this Op-Ed piece, this is what Hilleman, father of modern preventative medicine, had to say about Thimerosal:
"In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned his bosses that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standards. He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued and complained that the US Food and Drug Administration, which has a notoriously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, could not be counted on to take appropriate action as its European counterparts had. Merck ignored Hilleman's warning, and for eight years government officials added seven more shots for children containing Thimerosal."
Autism diagnoses have been on the rise since the early 1990s. Part of this is, in my opinion, due to better diagnostic procedures, and the fact that Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high-functioning, high intelligence autism, was only added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1994. But is Thimerosal to blame? We don't know. But considering this is a disorder that afflicts more children than every form of childhood cancer combined, and receives about one-twentieth the funding of childhood cancer research, I don't think we can afford to ignore Thimerosal anymore.
Many of you (and by you, I mean me, also) have probably never heard of Dr. Hilleman, but there's a good chance he saved your life.
Quick: who developed the polio vaccine? Jonas Salk; everyone of my parents' generation knows that, and so do a fair number of my contemporaries.
Now: Who developed the mumps vaccine? Hilleman. How about measles, or that three-for-one MMR we all got? Hilleman. How about meningitis? Pneumonia? Chicken pox? Hep A and B? Chances are, if you got vaccinated for it, Hilleman developed the vaccine. All this from a guy who literally grew up in Old West Montana. He was, apparently, goddamn good at what he did, and frankly kind of stunned that he didn't develop an AIDS vaccine in his lifetime.
Today I was skimming Boston.com on my break, and found this op-ed by Robert Kennedy, Jr. In it, he discusses the possibility that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative found in vaccines, causes autism.
I always considered the "vaccines cause autism" argument to be a classic case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"); just because kids get vaccinated at 2 and autism shows up at 2 doesn't mean that autism is caused by vaccines. You might as well argue that college causes schizophrenia, since schizophrenia typically shows up in the late teens/early twenties. Besides which, while I don't doubt that Kennedy's heart is in the right place, he is not a statistician, clinician, or doctor.
But Hilleman was.
According to this Op-Ed piece, this is what Hilleman, father of modern preventative medicine, had to say about Thimerosal:
"In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned his bosses that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standards. He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued and complained that the US Food and Drug Administration, which has a notoriously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, could not be counted on to take appropriate action as its European counterparts had. Merck ignored Hilleman's warning, and for eight years government officials added seven more shots for children containing Thimerosal."
Autism diagnoses have been on the rise since the early 1990s. Part of this is, in my opinion, due to better diagnostic procedures, and the fact that Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high-functioning, high intelligence autism, was only added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1994. But is Thimerosal to blame? We don't know. But considering this is a disorder that afflicts more children than every form of childhood cancer combined, and receives about one-twentieth the funding of childhood cancer research, I don't think we can afford to ignore Thimerosal anymore.