Talk:Thiomersal and vaccines/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

First remarks

This is Ombudsman's, he wanted it in the anti-vaccinationist article. Midgley 01:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

"An example involves the debate over the the removal of mercury from thimerosal containing vaccines (TCVs). Recently, but largely in the United States, it has been suggested that thimerosal in childhood vaccines could contribute to autism or the autism epidemic. This debate has escalated due to recent research indicating the chance that some individuals are less able to excrete heavy metals normally, and reports that the type of organic mercury used may be more toxic than other types for which exposure limits have been set. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies clearly have an interest in denying this, and there are potentially gains for litigants if a connection can be shown in court."

" TCVs are being phased out, although some TCVs (e.g., flu vaccines) are still routinely administered to children, as well as pregnant women and nursing mothers. Vaccines in use in the UK are largely free of it. There is no suggestion that it is required for the immunogenic effect of the preparations, therefore it is thought that TCVs will eventually discontinued entirely." " In 2004, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel favoured rejecting any causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. However, critics allege that the statistical evidence upon which the IOM based its conclusions has been difficult to independendently analyze, due in part the fact that access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database has been restricted due to privacy concerns, and possibly because of the alleged secrecy surrounding the proceedings of the 2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference. " This is spreading out into yet another article that already exists and is reference from teh Thiomersal contro one. Midgley 01:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

not in use in USA?

CDC Director, Dr Julie Gerberding: ... looking for an association between thimerosal and autism in a prospective sense is just about impossible to do right now because we don't have those vaccines in use in this country. Midgley 06:25, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Go look on the FDA web site- u will find a list of vaccines that do indeed contain mercury, one is the tetnus injection. They are bing phased out.. i think another is the new bird flu vaccine.Cilstr 10:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

"In recent years"

Surely someone can do better than that for line one? how about since {date}...

The article should perhaps bring out who said it first, do we not think? Midgley 12:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The opening section

Is not very good. Part of the problem is the buzz phrase "straight into the tissues". How do the the other participants in this stimulating discussion of a controversial artilc efeel about reducing that to a note that the suggestion is that Thimerosal produces mercury poisoning which produces autism etc? Midgley 23:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I noticed this evening that some citations in the very first paragraph were missing. I inserted these references, though admittedly they may not be the best. Better than nothnig certainly. Tony Stein 07:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

New thirmerosal study

This month saw another publication (this time in the Medical Science Monitor) of another assessment finding (claiming) neurodevelopment disorders are coming down in line with the withdraw of thimerosal.(it's by the Geier's again) [http://www.usautism.org/PDF_files_newsletters /geiers_%20downward_trends_in_nds1.pdf] or [1]. Haven't really read it well enough yet to know whether its worth quoting from, so I will stick here in case any body else has the time. Gosh! June already; where does the time go?--Aspro 19:08, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

another study presented recently as well: [2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.1.34.199 (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

That one is already covered; see the recent change. Eubulides (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

State of the Controversy section: poor

Its present state does not suggest a high quality process might have produced it. Midgley 14:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

(Biting my tongue, trying to avoid a sarcastic remark). It's fine, Midgley, and better than any three sentences in Anti-vaccinationist. It outlines the issue, has references, and - apart from a few sentences in the end - written in good prose. I know the facts in this matter bother you to no end, but I really can't help that. --Leifern 16:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Then we agree that the few sentences near the end need cleaning up. Midgley 16:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Legal aspect

Sorry I did not cite when I first made this contribution. The info comes from the July 2006 of the American Bar Association Journal (page 12). Article discusses the legal aspects of this preservative. Sorry for the initial lack of citation. Also, sorry I did not insert this comment in the normal place - Wikipedia is telling me that a spam filter is preventing me from posting this comment. SOmething about tiny.url.com ??? Anyway, FYI. Thanks! Bundas 13:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I came to the page by accident and I know the subject is controversial but... I edited the legal section to replace most of the uses of 'vaccine court' by USCFC. While the repetition of 'so called...' sounds like an NPOV speech, I'm not trying to correct POV here, just grammar. However, looking at 'often referred to as "vaccine court"'. Google only has 742 references to that phrase, several of them on this page. USCFC gets 14,000 references. For comparison, choosing another US legal nickname - 'Scalito' has 203,000 references. Should maybe just be 'sometimes' rather than 'often'? - Bazzargh 00:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not most obviously related to "the thiomersal controversy" though, but rather to one or more other articles. Better to name it here, and leave the interested reader, or readers, to look up the detail of where some legal cases are to be held and how that came about in a more particular article.

"In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act established a no-fault system for litigating claims against vaccine manufacturers. Under this law, all claims against Vaccine manufacturers could not be heard in state or federal court, but had to be heard rather in the U.S Court of Federal Claims. This court, often referred to as the “vaccine court,” hears cases without juries and awards damages that typically are far below damage awards rendered in other courts. The damage amounts are often insufficient to compensate severely injured children."

Could usefully shrink to no more than "Under the no-fault system established by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act claims against Vaccine[sic] manufacturers have to be heard in the U.S Court of Federal Claims"

It appears that "occasionally called "the vaccine court" " might fit in, but is it necessary?Midgley 20:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Undue weight

The article is interesting in a way, but it gives undue weight to the views of the people believing in a link between autism and thiomersal (this is reflected in the reference section). Also, it fails to mentioned the number of large scale international studies that failed to show a link. The article needs a cleanup, to make it more clear that a thiomersal/autism link is very much the minority position in the medicial/scientific community, and that it's mostly held by people with no, or little, peer-reviewed work in the field. --Kristjan Wager 19:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not our job to count votes in this fabled "medical/scientific community" and then assign weight based on such a count. This is an article about the controversy - there's a separate article on thimerosal. Please add citations to the "large scale international studies" that fail to show the link. In the meantime, the evidence for a link is pretty overwhelming, but there are some pretty good reasons why it isn't showcased, i.e., a massive public failure of confidence in vaccinations specifically and other public health programs more generally. --Leifern 20:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

There have been at least five large epidemiological studies conducted since 2001 (in the UK, US, Sweden and Denmark). All of these found no link. They are refered to in this 2004 IOM Report ( summarized here). As to the idea that we shouldn't count votes, I think it would be worthwhile for you to read the wikipedia policy of a neutral point of view. You should especially notice the part about not giving undue weight.

As I stated before, this article gives undue weight to the people who believes in a thiomersal-autism link, especially considered with the wight give to the mainstream researchers. I suggest we fix this somehow. --Kristjan Wager 21:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Have to agree with the undue weight. 1000 sites on poor evidence are no better than 1 site based on the same poor evidence. Scientific American recently noted that autism rates continues to rise in countries where thimersol containing vaccines have been banned-evidence that, at the very least, some other factor is partially responsible for autism.

"... may have, over time, exceeded federal guidelines for bolus (single-dose) mercury exposure, based on methylmercury (but not ethylmercury) studies." That needs work, what is the relevance of the comparison between chronic and bolus? Midgley 21:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's restrain the invisible hand from guiding this debate, shall we? The whole point is, this is controversial. Let the mud slinging continue; that's how we'll make incremental progress towards the goal. Why anyone would accept anyone else's redaction of a controversial perspective I have no idea; this smacks of an attempt to neutralize the debate. Tony Stein 06:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

== Anybody noticed this article? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16870260&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum

It could be referred to to add credibility. 193.141.244.42 08:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

let's get the name of the preservative spelled right

There are at least two misspellings of thimerosal here and throughout.

there are multiple accepted spellings.Geni 02:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The correct - RINN - spelling however is Thiomersal. Midgley 17:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

A hearing is expected in June 2007.

did this ever happen?

216.97.171.219

Article needs cleanup

It appears that this article needs a lot of work. Redundant references, references that point to dead links, paragraphs that would be more appropriate in other sections, poor prose, and most importantly, what appears to be undue weight given to the view that there exists a causative link between autism and thiomersal given its minority status in the medical/scientific field. Yobol 18:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I hope nobody minds, because I basically re-wrote the article, as trying to fix minor things was not going to work with the amount of hodge-podging there was in the article. I basically re-worked the prose, made the references manageable (as opposed to dead links to .pdfs on 3rd party website), rearranged some sections for better flow, and added lots more information for better NPOV. Probably lots more work to be done, but I think that's enough for now.Yobol 13:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thompson et al. 2007 is overemphasized / Autism Focus

This change causes the Thompson et al. 2007 study (PMID 17898097) to be emphasized over other studies, for no reason that I can see. The change uses peacock terms like "a recent study" and "New England Journal of Medicine" to highlight this particular study; why? The study is smaller than some of the other studies that are already mentioned as "smaller studies finding no association". If there is a good reason to highlight this particular study over the other ones, it should be explained; otherwise, the study should just be listed along with the rest (which it already is). Eubulides 20:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. However, I did notice that this study evaluated not just autism, but a spectrum of neurological disorders. Why was the section on consensus focused only on autism effects?

The study in question addressed the neurological symptoms of autism, one at a time. It did not address whether the subjects in question had a diagnosis of autism, but it is a mistake to characterize the study as one that attempted to address general neurological problems. It was focusing on autism's signs, it was motivated by autism, and it did not at all address neurological problems in general. So I'm afraid this change made things worse. Eubulides 04:11, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to fix the problem with this change. Eubulides 06:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Unjustified changes

This change caused the first sentence of the article to become ungrammatical and meaningless. The thiomersal controversy is between two sides; it makes little sense to omit one of the two sides in the initial statement of the controversy.

This change removed a claim that is directly supported by the cited source. Offit 2007 says, "Although the notion that thimerosal causes autism has now been disproved by several excellent epidemiologic studies, about 10,000 autistic children in the United States receive mercury-chelating agents every year. Furthermore, this notion has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the real cause or causes of the disorder."

Neither change was justified in the revision history. I've reverted them. I'm sure the article can stand improving, but these changes were not improvements. Eubulides 08:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The article certainly says that the notion has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the real cause of the disorder, but - speaking as someone who agrees with that sentiment - it's very clearly the article writer's opinion, not an objectively verified fact; people who believe that thiomersal is the real cause of autism would obviously disagree. That sentence has no buisness being stated as fact in a supposedly NPOV encyclopedia article. 70.189.12.96 22:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, you've lost me. How would one "objectively verify" that the thiomersal theory has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the causes of autism? Are you saying that the Offit paper doesn't count as an reliable source because it doesn't include NIH budget figures? Eubulides 23:23, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you're gonna argue that budget figures would help, but what really makes the statement not obective is that it says "real causes." That assumes that thiomersal itself isn't the real cause of autism. And, again, I agree that it isn't, but obviously people on the other side of the controversy don't, so that isn't NPOV. It would be totally appropriate to note that this one specific expert - or lots of experts, or lots of people on our side of the controversy, if you can get more cites - argues that the thiomersal controversy is a distraction. But just stating it as a fact violates NPOV. 70.189.12.96 00:59, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The phrase "real causes" is not in Thiomersal controversy. It's just "causes". I hope this addresses the NPOV objection. Eubulides 04:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Problems with recent changes to the lead

This change introduced several problems:

• It replaced a citation to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with a citation to an IP address. This is substituting a less-reliable source for a more-reliable one.
• It reworded the text to make it claim that 4800 plaintiffs have filed in 2007. As far as I know, this claim is incorrect.
• It rewords the 1st sentence to make it sound like the only concern is about TCVs in children. This isn't correct; it's all TCVs.
• The reworded lead confusingly jumps from thiomersal to organomercury without explaining why the two concepts are related. We can't assume the reader knows this stuff.
• It inserts NPOV text like "adherents of mainstream medical opinion".

The only justification listed for this change was in the log, which said "Modification of Introduction to be more neutral. Correction of link/validation of references." I read through the change looking for link fixes and changing the wording to be more neutral, and came up with this change, which I applied instead. If I missed something let's please discuss this on the talk page. Eubulides (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

* I made a mistake with the Address. When I was following the citation earlier, I was being led to a site that had no relation to the topic. Don't ask me how that happened, but it works now.

• As for the addition of "Since 2007", that is when the class action suit began. I think a date reference is important here.
• It was also my understanding that autism is never developed in adults, however I will defer on this point.
• You can't call someone "mainstream medical opinion", they have to be defined further on this point. I chose to define it as someone who adheres to mainstream medical opinion. It's grammatically inaccurate at present.
• I also wanted to make the introduction an easier read. Right now, it's grammatically clumsy (the first line for example... controversies are defined by a topic, not by who is fighting over it) --Waterspyder (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

• The class action suit did not begin in 2007. It began many years ago.
• There is also concern that TCVs given to pregnant women may help cause autism in their children.
• If I understand you correctly, the grammatical problem is that the previous version said that the controversy was between "critics" and "opinion"; if one side of the controversy is a group of people then the other side should be too. That makes sense, but I think it's better and more neutral to describe the controversy as being between two positions (i.e., two opinions) rather than between two groups of people, so as to not personalize the dispute. With that in mind, the revised lead paragraph gives too much emphasis to people: it talks about "critics" in several places.
• The revised version gives, by my count, about 130 words to anti-vaccination arguments and about 80 words to pro-vaccination. This skews too far to one side of the dispute.
• The revised version uses the word "thiomersal" 3 times in the 1st sentence and once in the 2nd; this is too much repetition.

I attempted to fix the above problems with this change. It adds a few more citations about the court cases, and spruces up existing citations. Eubulides (talk) 22:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Again, I cannot iterate enough that a controversy is on a subject and not between sides. To say "abortion" is a controversy between Catholic Pro-life advocates and Pro-choice mothers is limiting and actually makes it more biased. To state that "abortion" is a controversy regarding the right of a mother to terminate a pregnancy, is actually more neutral. In this case, you cannot simply state two sides. There are more sides, but there are two main opposing sides, each with a main core group. --Waterspyder (talk) 13:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The current wording is subject-oriented, not side-oriented, so I don't understand the criticism. Also, I don't agree that it is more neutral to state that abortion "is a controversy regarding the right of a mother to terminate a pregnancy". That wording is pro-choice, and it is less neutral than saying that the abortion controversy is between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. As the abortion example illustrates, subject-oriented wording can be more biased than side-oriented wording. If you take a look at the lead to Abortion debate, you'll see that it uses side-oriented wording and is relatively neutral. Eubulides (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Scientific consensus changes

These changes by User:137.28.185.19 to Thiomersal controversy #Scientific consensus on controversy introduced a lot of duplication, some poorly-formatted (and duplicative) citations, and some misspellings. I think the intent was to give more detail about studies refuting the connection between autism and thiomersal, but the overall effect was to make the article worse (the introduced text makes the resulting section drone on and one without letup, and puts at least this reader to sleep). There are some good ideas in the change, but it really needs to be thought through better: this article is supposed to be a readable summary of the controversy, and not a mind-numbing list of studies. I see that others had reverted the change as vandalism and then User:137.28.185.19 brought them back. I'm going to revert them now and point to this section in the changelog, in the hopes that we can figure out how to improve the article via discussion rather than via edit wars. Eubulides (talk) 06:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

New Reliable scientific study shows a clear connection to Autism

Here is something to integrate in the article [3] "Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: An assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink." from Journal of the Neurological Sciences May 14th 2008. I think that this well designed study settles the controversy. MaxPont (talk) 12:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It's authors include the Geier pair so no.Geni 14:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The study is published after a blind peer review in a credible academic journal. The fact that someone dislikes one of the authors should not affect the decision to include the reference in the article. And by the way, the lead author is Young, not Geier. MaxPont (talk) 07:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The Geier's have had papers pulled in the past. Their involvement is enough to make the paper largely worthless unless replicated.Geni 11:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

And in spite of that the Journal of the Neurological Sciences published the article. Plus, this time the lead author is Young, not Geier. The lead author is the person that takes the largest responsibility for the publication.MaxPont (talk) 13:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Heather Young? oh much the same conflict of interest issues as the Geiers. That the Geiers are trying to hide behind someone with much the same conflict of interests issues is of no import.Geni 14:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

In the past, similar work by the Geiers has been widely discredited, and its use in Wikipedia has caused Wikipedia itself to lose credit. See, for example, Goodman 2006 (PMID 16915200). The new paper is too new to have been reviewed; in the meantime it is prudent not to play it up, considering its source. Come to think of it, I suspect the work cited by Goodman should be added here, so that readers know what kind of source they're dealing with. Eubulides (talk) 14:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

This study seems problematic too because it flies in the face of the much more detailed and expansive analysis of the data being performed by the CDC itself [4]. Tmtoulouse (talk) 15:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That study is already cited in this article, in Thiomersal controversy#Rationale for concern. I agree with Geni that the study has not affected scientific consensus. Eubulides (talk) 16:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Another study of the vaccine autism link

Presented at the 2008 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR)[5] "Infant Primates Given Vaccines on U.S. Children's Immunization Schedule Develop Biomedical and Behavioral Symptoms of Autism" [6] MaxPont (talk) 13:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That research hasn't appeared in any publications yet, as far as I know. We can wait until it's published. Eubulides (talk) 16:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Was it a poster presentations or an oral presentations? Poster submission to IMFAR would not really qualify as a reliable source, and the fact that the abstract is not available for review and the only sources that talk about it are hyperbolic press releases from the mercury militia all add up to this being not worth bothering with. Tmtoulouse (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Buttar's testimony

Here it is - a shiny new talk page section for discussing the potential inclusion of Buttar's congressional testimony. Please do not re-add the bullet until consensus is reached. - Eldereft (cont.) 21:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The wording of the section is clearly problematic as entered, and would need substantial rewriting were it to be included. But before embarking on that I would like to know why it needs to be included in the first place. Tmtoulouse (talk) 22:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

It does not need to be included. Here is some background. The original addition of the mention of Buttar's testimony was done in concert with the creation of a Wikipedia article Dr. Rashid A. Buttar that (1) was an advertisement for Dr. Buttar's services, and (2) neglected to mention that Dr. Buttar was recently disciplined by the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, which restricted his practice so that he is no longer permitted to treat children or cancer patients.[7] The Buttar article was speedily deleted; likewise, Thiomersal controversy should not be an advertising platform for Buttar. Eubulides (talk) 22:13, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I concur, and believe that the onus of proof of notability is pretty high for inclusion at this point. I will await to see if they can offer more than they have so far. Tmtoulouse (talk) 22:15, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The notoriety=notability of this character would make him eligible for inclusion in a list of dubious persons associated with the mass hysteria around this issue. -- Fyslee / talk 06:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Article Impartial?

This page seems partial to the medical community at large that allegedly rejects the hypothesis that thiomersals are responsible for various brain disorders. The introductory paragraph ends every sentence by casting doubt on the hypothesis. "... and mainstream medical opinion that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims....this 1999 action sparked confusion and controversy that has diverted attention and resources away from other efforts to find the causes of autism....The scientific consensus—including scientific and medical professional bodies and governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration,[4] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,[8] and the World Health Organization[9]—rejects the hypothesis that exposure to thiomersal causes or contributes to autism or other neurological disorders."

Each following paragraph includes statements to the effect that no one takes the Thiomersal controversy seriously...which is seriously untrue. Not to mention the section "consensus of medical community", which bashes us over the head with counter-evidence.

There is no evidence in support of the hypothesis anywhere in the article, and there is evidence out there This: [8] Examiner article is one such example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.20.254.38 (talk) 00:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The case the examiner refers too has nothing to do with thiomersal. The article appears to report things fairly, the truth is that the medical community does reject the claim that thiomersal has lead to any neurological problems. The claim that it does some hoe do this is a tiny minority opinion mostly held outside the medical community. WP:Undue policy dictates how we should address this relative to the majority opinion. Tmtoulouse (talk) 00:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, that case (the Poling case) does have something to do with thiomersal: some of the vaccines Poling received contained thiomersal. However, Thiomersal controversy #Court cases already discusses this topic, with more detail (and more accuracy) than is in the Examiner article. The Examiner article incorrectly claims that the "federal attorneys said the thimerosal in the vaccine appears to have aggravated this disorder", but this claim is incorrect, as far as I know. Since Thiomersal controversy already covers this case accurately, I don't see what further changes are needed in this area.
• The article does present evidence for the minority opinion that thiomersal causes autism. For example, it summarizes and cites James 2005 (PMID 15527868), Hornig et al. 2004 (PMID 15184908), Mutter et al. 2005 (PMID 16264412), and six (!) studies coauthored by vaccines-cause-autism proponent Mark Geier.
• The theory that vaccines cause autism is clearly a minority view; the mainstream consensus is that there is no scientific evidence of a causal role. See, for example, Doja & Roberts 2006 (PMID 17168158).

Eubulides (talk) 01:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a seriously biased opinion "but this 1999 action sparked confusion and controversy that has diverted attention and resources away from other efforts to find the causes of autism". Seeing how people are trying to make sure no one else gets autism through this chemical, it's ignorant to say focusing on it diverts attention and resources from the cause of autism. It's just a silly comment too. I guess focusing on the chemical also takes my attention away from reading other articles....because I'm reading this one. If no one objects, I'll remove it tomorrow. 98.227.247.206 (talk) 02:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems accurate enough to me, since thiomersal does not cause autism the effort and energy spent dealing with the quacks that make the claim take energy away from dealing with real issues. The statement is sourced. Should stay. Tmtoulouse (talk) 02:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The link goes to an article written by Paul A. Offit. He is almost the backbone to the whole thiomersal controversy. Now I'm even more certain the line should be removed. But I'm not going to fight over it. I almost died laughing when I clicked on that link and saw his name front and center lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.247.206 (talk) 03:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I have edited it to include that the statement is made by a merck board member. That makes the article more neutral. Merck is the largest manufacturer of vaccines and to use a quote from one of their board members as a fact is an injustice to wiki. 98.227.247.206 (talk) 04:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

That's more misinformation, I'm afraid. See the list of Merck board members. Offitt is not in the list. Nor is Offit "almost the backbone to the whole thiomersal controversy". Eubulides (talk) 04:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

According to the original link, he is. Look way at the bottom in the fine print. Maybe he no longer does. But most likely, he wrote the article when he was a board member. It needs to be mentioned as part of the controversy if you are going to include a statement like that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.247.206 (talk) 12:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The article already wikilinks to Paul Offit; that should suffice for people who want to check his bona fides. Similarly, there's no need in the article to mention Mark Geier's ties to lawyers suing vaccine companies; the existing wikilink to Mark Geier should suffice. Eubulides (talk) 15:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The line is the personal belief of a doctor who works for/collaborates with merck. Which is where my original comment about him being the backbone to the controversy comes from. It's a biased opinion, from a biased source on an article about the controversy between the two. It needs to be presented as an argument on merck's side. Not stated as fact. But I realize I now have a little wiki friend following around my edits so will wait for someone else to fix this clearly impartial article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.247.206 (talk) 16:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Financial Ties of American Academy of Pediatrics

Would it not be pertinent to the controversy to point out that, according to CBS News, the "vaccine industry gives millions to the Academy of Pediatrics for conferences, grants, medical education classes and even helped build their headquarters." The article continues, "The totals are kept secret, but public documents reveal bits and pieces"." after which they mention a nearly half-million dollar contribution from Merck, in "the same year the academy endorsed Merck's HPV vaccine - which made 1.5 billion dollars a year in sales".[9]

Such facts might be important to anyone studying the controversy, in order to evaluate whether they might constitute a possible conflict of interest in the "scientific consensus" mentioned in the article, in which the AAP is included to support the rejection of a causal link. --MisterSquirrel 14:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Attkisson appears to be making a career out of this sort of story, joy. Better would be a source describing how believers assert or allege conflict of interest among the medical consensus in order to advance their cause. Such a source would probably belong in the Rationale for concern section, as a conflict of interest would certainly decrease the reliability of promulgated information. This course allows us to take a step back from the controversy, which aids in finding a neutral description without rehashing the entire debate either here or on the article. - Eldereft (cont.) 15:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Thiomersal was not mentioned in that story, and I think it unlikely that thiomersal is relevant (the story is about recent vaccines that don't have thiomersal). Vaccine controversy is the logical location for this material. Also, I agree with Eldereft that a better source is needed. Eubulides (talk) 17:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Well if we are traveling down that path, I think it would help to mention that all studies "proving" there is no link to autism are carried out by the Institute of Medicine...which are funded by the government. What I also find funny about that is looking up the wiki article for the IoM, it says "Though a majority of IOM studies are requested and funded by the United States federal government, other organizations may also request studies as long as they have no financial conflict regarding the outcome of the study." Seeing how Merck (only the worlds largest vaccine manufacturer) is head of vaccine safety control for the CDC (government) I see a serious conflict of interest and "financial conflict regarding the outcome of the study".98.227.247.206 (talk) 02:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It is not true that 'all studies "proving" there is no link to autism are carried out by the Institute of Medicine'. For example, the most recently cited study in the article, namely Pichichero et al. 2008 (PMID 18245396), was not carried out by the IoM. As far as I know, there is no such thing as the "head of vaccine safety control for the CDC". Eubulides (talk) 03:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I did a very quick search on pichichero and found out he "collaborates with vaccine companies, international scientists, federally funded investigators, the NIH, FDA, CDC and WHO to characterize immunogenicity and efficacy of vaccines." Now we could debate all day long on the definition of "collaborating" and such, but it would be nice to see a completely independent company perform research on the links between autism and this chemical. Oh wait, they have been done. And those people are all considered quacks. Funny how the only trusted studies are the ones that are somehow linked to the CDC, WHO, IOM, FDC or vaccine manufacturers. One may say that the CDC, WHO etc are trusted organizations, but the problem is that they are all linked to the vaccine manufacturers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.247.206 (talk) 01:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any "completely independent company". But this discussion is starting to veer from the intended topic of this talk page, namely, what text should be on Thiomersal controversy. Eubulides (talk) 01:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

If it is veering, indulge me in an attempt to put it back on course. I disagree that this is somehow not a valid point.

Since the AAP is cited in this article about Thiomersal controversy, and the vaccine industry has an obvious interest in this controversy, information about potential conflicts of interest are pertinent. I don't see how it matters whether the CBS News article discussing the vaccine producers' ties to the AAP mentions Thiomersal specifically. The facts contained within are still pertinent to anyone studying the Thiomersal controversy. Otherwise, the student might assume the endorsement of the AAP of the lack of a causal link carries an impartial authority. The potential conflicts of interest mentioned in the article are certainly germane to evaluating that impartiality. Unless you are suggesting we must protect the student from such information?

As to "Attkisson appears to be making a career out of this sort of story, joy.". I know nothing about this; but in reading the article, very specific facts are stated. It is not mine to judge the credibility of CBS News, but I would presume that they have enough of a reputation as a primary news source, that they would not purposely publish such specific misinformation, for various legal reasons, and to protect their credibility. The information in the article which is pertinent to this controversy, is very specific, and I was unable to find it refuted anywhere. Therefore I am not sure whether the lack of credibility you imply of the author is a very convincing reason to disbelieve the verity of the information presented in the article. Unless you know of some refutation or correction of any of the very specific facts cited in the article, about substantial monetary and other gifts provided by various vaccine producers to the AAP, including those who have an interest in the Thiomersal controversy? --MisterSquirrel 03:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MisterSquirrel (talk • contribs)

Again, the source in question does not mention thiomersal. It's not relevant to this article. This is not an article for ad hominem attacks on organizations merely because they happen to be cited here; it is a page about the thiomersal controversy. The main connection between the AAP and thiomersal is the AAP's 1999 request to remove thiomersal from vaccines, and this new article is irrelevant to that connection. Eubulides (talk) 04:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

U.S.A. focused article

Article is heavily biased towards U.S.A. centric view, ignores worldwide policy and evidence, as well as legal and medical consensus of non-USA countries.

Article tries to present matter as black or white issue, seems biased towards trying to focus only on autism, ignoring other health issues.

FX (talk) 17:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

• As far as I know, the vast majority of the thiomersal controversy is in the U.S., so it's appropriate for the article to be U.S.-centric. Of course, if there are reliable sources about the controversy elsewhere these should be added.
• The following text was prepended to the lead when the above comment was made:

"In the U.S.A., thiomersal was banned in 1998 from over the counter drugs, but thimerosal is still found in some U.S. vaccines. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines in 1980. Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have also banned the preservative from vaccines. In the United States of America, thiomersal is still used, leading to the thiomersal controversy, a U.S.A centered controversy. Some point out studies that show"

This material is not suitable for the lead sentence. As per WP:LEAD, the lead should start by defining the subject; it should not start by a list of countries and what they did. Something along the lines of the material would be suitable for the body of the article, but it needs a reliable source.

• Also, the material is misleading. As I understand it, thiomersal-containing vaccines are still in widespread use in many countries. This issue should be covered in the article, with reliable sources of course
• I suggest proposing text to be added to the article here, on the talk page; we can then get it right and then install it. For now I reverted the change.

Eubulides (talk) 19:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Effects section - NPOV, lack of citations

I'm going to check the claims of this section out and see if I can provide sources. I think something needs to also be said about the effect of removing thiomersal from vaccines on rates of diagnosis of autism (ie: no effect). Any assistance would be appreciated. - and you will know know me by the trail of dead. (talk) 00:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Autism rates dropping

I've found multiple sources that report autism rates (new cases reported) are dropping. Due to the expected controversy and fighting over the issue, there is no way I am adding them to the knowledge base.

You might think something like the number of new cases of autism would be an easy to find, public record sort of dataset. Nothing could be farther from the truth. FX (talk) 04:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't ask me for the sources. You can find them in seconds using Google. Type in "autism rates dropping". It's easy.

Taken together, all the above mentioned data from experimental, clinical and partly from epidemiological studies appear to show that repetitive mercury expo- sure during pregnancy (through thimerosal and dental amalgam), and after birth, through thimerosal contain- ing vaccinations in genetically susceptible individuals is one potential pathogenetic factor in autism. Other metals and toxicants, partly present in vaccines, and the hormonal situation might have synergistic effects with mercury. This has not been officially acknowledged.

Neuroendocrinology Letters Vol.26 No.5, October 2005
Mercury and autism: Accelerating Evidence?
Joachim Mutter, Johannes Naumann, Rainer Schneider

FX (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

This search doesn't bring up any reliable source I can see... — Scientizzle 05:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Reports of autism cases grew dramatically in the U.S. from 1996 to 2007. It is unknown how much, if any, growth came from changes in autism's prevalence.

I'm afraid that the sources I found with the Google query "autism rates dropping" were not reliable. I don't know of any reliable source that claims that true autism prevalence is going down, or going up for that matter. The administrative prevalence (that is, the proportion of children reported to authorities as having autism, as opposed to the true proportion of children) is still rising in the U.S., as can be seen by the adjacent chart, which contains the most-recent figures I could find. Eubulides (talk) 05:03, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

http://fightingautism.org/idea/autism.php?s=50&z=m Can you make any sense out of those graphs? FX (talk) 21:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

If I'm interpreting those graphs correctly, the number of autism cases in the USA has grown every year since '92. There's an annual increase (by 16-28% each year) in cases that is well above the rate of a general "all disabilities" category; the rates do roughly track.

The gist of this, assuming the collection and analysis of the data is accurate, is that any claim that the rates of autism diagnosis in the United States are dropping is demonstrably incorrect. At best, the yearly proportional increase of diagnoses may be decreasing from ~21% more cases per year to ~17% more per year. — Scientizzle 22:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

http://www.sacunion.com/pages/california/articles/5424 News story

https://www.ideadata.org/documents.asp raw statistics

I spent more than a few minutes trying to determine the validity of The Associated Press story. If the rate of new cases is dropping, eventually this should show up in statistics. Still, animal studies would be real science.

http://www.safeminds.org/research/pediatric-vaccines-influence-primat-behavior.html

What if it is just the number of vaccines, not mercury, that ends up being the cause? FX (talk) 13:56, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

The AP story is making an overly big deal about the leveling off of the rate of increase of as I described above. The animal study is arguably not "real science"--it's a poster presentation (read: not peer-reviewed) of clearly flawed data, which has been latched onto by anti-vaccination folks and been critically demolished by several scientists. It makes some awful big claims for a study lacking a balanced control group. Everything you've presented here is run-of-the-mill autism-antivaccine stuff that has been analyzed and refuted by high quality scientific research.

Sadly, there is no discernible link between vaccines (not their contents, not their dosing) and autism. I say "sadly" because if there was it could actually be a huge opportunity to finally unearth the etiology of autism, in turn potentially leading to definitive treatment and prevention plans. — Scientizzle 01:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem with that ...

.. is you don't provide any sources. Anecdotes, like yours, are not evidence, nor is anything you said. Wikipedia is not about trying to determine the truth, but putting together an encyclopedia of stuff that other sources have amassed. Those who try to promote their agenda, their view, are against the NPOV which is the standard for Wikipedia articles. This is why original research is prohibited.

If all the information is available, from all the credible sources, then that is the knowledge on a subject. Those who want to edit out sources, and decide what is true, rather than let the reader have all the facts, are trying to promote their view, not help build a free encyclopedia. You know who you are.

Those who fight to restrict information, are the enemy of knowledge. Those who want to spin things their way, are the opposite of a NPOV.

If CBS or CNN or any real News outlet does a story, and you think they are wrong, you don't get to delete the story reference. If another credible source disagrees, you put that in as a counter. I know, some idiots think they should be the arbitrators of what is allowed to be read on the Internet. They are not only stupid, they are small minded. To them, I always say, you are not the authority. You don't get to decide. Get a clue and quit trying to control information. It is not your job to censor the Internet.

FX (talk) 03:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the issue is disagreement about what constitutes "credible sourcing", rather than evil idiots intent on censorship. Consider that none of us are paid to edit here, so we all believe in a free flow of information on some level.

Contrary to your assertion that there are "no sources" or only "anecdotes", numerous methodologically sound studies have shown that the incidence of autism has continued to increase despite the removal of thimerosal from most or all childhood vaccines. Eight such studies are cited in this article, all published in highly respected peer-reviewed medical journals. Sound methodology and reproducibility are a convincing combination, at least to anyone approaching a question from a scientific standpoint. I'm not seeing anything resembling equally credible sources on the other side of the issue.

I understand you're couching this in terms of "truth", "censorship", and "restricting information". Wikipedia does demand reliable sourcing and proportional representation of views; if you'd like to call this "restricting information", I suppose you could, though I'd disagree. Look at it this way: the goal of this (or any) article is to provide an accurate snapshot of the state of human knowledge on a topic, not to throw every self-published claim out there as if they were equally valid. It's fundamentally wrong, untruthful, dishonest, or whatever emotive term you'd like to attach to pretend that the two sides of this "controversy" are equally rooted in data. They're not. MastCell ^Talk 05:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I responded, but ran into the same weird formatting problem, which I suspect is a browser issue on my end, so I reverted the edit. You can see it in the edit history, maybe even tell me what I did wrong. Most depressing. FX (talk) 15:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw your attempted comment. I didn't provide sources to back up my statements in general because I gathered from the tone of the conversation that this wasn't a debate on the topic, that you were more of a curious questioner than a warrior against perceived censorship...I'm sorry I didn't read that correctly. My intention is not to act as some argument from authority, and I am confident that I can back up everything I've written above with sources and policy arguments. (I'll try to address these below). My tone was simply reflecting that many of the sources and claims you were making have been generally dealt with previously, on this talk page, or in the general scientific discourse.

The overarching issue here is that the scientific community has overwhelmingly rejected any causal link between vaccines and autism, particularly the use of thiomersal, based on the preponderance of evidence. This is well established in the article and accurate in practice. The reason for this is clear: the human studies supporting a link are generally smaller, of poorer quality, and contain a few notable cases of ethical misconduct; published in vitro studies are widely variable and provide interesting hypotheses, but (as it says in the article) "the absence of experimental or human evidence that vaccination (either the MMR vaccine or the preservative thimerosal) affects metabolic, developmental, immune, or other physiological or molecular mechanisms that are causally related to the development of autism, the committee concludes that the hypotheses generated to date are theoretical only".

Take the overwhelming scientific consensus we've got and now apply WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Through Wikipedia policy we are charged with accurately portraying the claims of the vaccines-cause-autism coterie, but providing a substantive and complete rebuttal based on the most reliable of sources. This is not censorship, it is accuracy, and it’s clearly supported by policy.

To directly address your particular links provided above...the AP story from 2005 and the unpublished (and clearly methodologically flawed) poster presentation from this year are laughably insubstantial compared to the several (cited in the article) large-scale major studies published in the last five years. It is the hallmark of pseudoscience to reject the results of the largest, most well-designed trials in favor of smaller ones with comparatively miniscule statistical power. In the special case of Dr. Hewitson's macaques studies, a few notable science bloggers have completely eviscerated the presentation of these studies as anything beyond a half-finished pilot study. Even if Hewitson had no financial stake in showing a link between autism and vaccination, which she doesn’t, it's just an incomplete, methodologically questionable study that has never even been published in a peer-reviewed journal. For the AP story on CA's autism rates, the 2008 publication linked below (& its accompanied commentary piece) specifically analyzed those data and concluded “The DDS data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism.”

Schechter R, Grether JK (2008). "Continuing increases in autism reported to California's developmental services system: mercury in retrograde". Archives of general psychiatry. 65 (1): 19–24. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2007.1. PMID 18180424. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

Fombonne E (2008). "Thimerosal disappears but autism remains". Archives of general psychiatry. 65 (1): 15–6. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2007.2. PMID 18180423. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

In conclusion, I'd like to return to my personal, anecdotal tone. The hypothesis that thiomersal, or vaccination in general, is a causative agent in the development of autism had enough plausibility to justify studying thiomersal's effects, and arguably its early removal was a prudent move (if ultimately unnecessary and clearly a bungled PR disaster). A decade of high quality work has made it clear to the vast majority of the scientific and medical community that there is no relationship. This is good and bad: good because it means many people were not exposed to a compound that could have specific negative neurological effects and it bolsters the generally superior safety record of vaccination; bad because it eliminated the plausibility of a potentially valuable research line that might have unearthed the etiology of this stubborn condition. Every scientist I know personally and read regularly shares these general feelings: we're glad that vaccines were shown against to be generally safe, disappointed that a potentially compelling line of research into autism etiology has dead-ended, and dismayed that some unscrupulous elements with help from a credulous media have turned this whole arena into a full-fledged pseudoscience with dire medical consequences (resurgence of childhood diseases, deadly & ineffective chelation therapies). — Scientizzle 18:42, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I hear you. The point, diluted as it may be, can be summed up, in regards to the article, Thiomersal controversy, is that the entry is about a controversy. It isn't about deciding the controversy, it isn't about presenting one side to try and convince somebody. This is true for both sides, all sides.

Let me say it clearly.

A Wikipedia article is not a battleground to decide the truth.

It is not a soapbox, it is not an ad, it isn't propaganda, and it isn't about winning, getting your views heard, and suppressing your opponents.

It says this in plain English

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth — that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

It is also against a guideline for me to harp on this on this talk page. FX (talk) 20:39, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Having ignored several rules already, let me NPOV this by saying if the article was biased the other way, I would several times more disgusted by the effort to use a Wikipeida article to try and have your view dominate. Because I have bias of course.

Which everybody knows. We all have a point of view. An article about a controversy, that tries to tell you there is no controversy, by preventing all sources regarding a controversy, because you don't like the sources, is censorship.

This page is not about deciding who is right. Obviously that goes on, but it is against the very spirit of Wikipedia to try and have your say, and prevent anybody you disagree with from presenting sources that ILLUSTRATE the controversy.

This and several other "controversy" articles suffer from that very problem. FX (talk) 20:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, in one sense there is no controvery. The preponderance of mainstream science and medicine have unequivocally rejected the hypothesis based on the available evidence; thus the "controversy" is no longer a scientific matter. What remains is a societal phenomenon fueled by those who reject the scientific evidence. Arguably, the science isn't the most important part of this movement. This article can and should properly represent all the aspects of this controversy, including the scientific evidence regarding a causal relationship, portrayal in media coverage, effects of the antivaccination movement, legal implications for vaccine manufacturers and the gov't, etc.

The sources you provided were to make scientific claims, right? The AP story is superceded by an actual peer-reviewed article that analyzed the very same data. The Hewitson study, having not been published, would not be a good candidate for WP:RS-based inclusion. I personally don't see this as suppression or censorship--they're just not great sources.

I aplogize if my tone in these posts has come off as dismissive, but I am honestly not trying to "suppress" anything. WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE clearly mean, as I understand them, that given the wholesale rejection of any thiomersal-autism link by credible organizations, this article must make it abundantly clear how and why the claims are rejected. (This is not unlike Intelligent design or AIDS denialism.) I certainly can see room for expanding this article in the discussion of why the antivaccine folks argue the scientific consensus is invalid, the sociopolitical mark this battle has had on the public conciousness, and other such topics. If you've any suggestions, they would be welcome. Furthermore, if there are any gaps in the coverage of antivaccine claims that should be addressed, those are valid concerns. — Scientizzle 21:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't make scientific claims. My opinion, like yours, is not what Wikipedia is about. It clearly says if you want to tell the world your views, start a blog.

This article is about controversy. You saying there is none is absurd. And, if that is true, this article should be deleted. Of course there is controversy, especially a historic controversy.

Here is how I see it. Somebody is going to end up on this article looking for information about the controversy. Looking for information, sources, a good, non-biased, free encyclopedic collection of information. Unless they have been trapped on a desert island for 15 years, they may already be aware of the controversy.

If the criteria for including information is your idea of good sources, so that anything you decide isn't a good source just doesn't appear, the article is biased. And, with the ease of finding a huge amount of information about this from News sources, blogs, websites, TV, newspaper articles, legal cases, magazines, books and conversations, any intelligent person looking at the article is going to simply dismiss it as bad information.

Trying to make it about what you, or anybody else thinks is "right", isn't what Wikipedia is about. I quoted you policy, linked to the page, you can go read it yourself.

An article about a controversy that simply dismisses half the controversy, is just a joke. A sham. Another reason to dismiss Wikipedia as a valid source for real information.

The opening lines of the article right now are a joke.

The thiomersal controversy describes claims that vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thiomersal contribute to the development of autism and other brain development disorders.[1] The current scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims.[2][3]

The second sentence is a judgmental statement from one side of the controversy. It is an attempt to frame the entire article as there is no controversy, just people who are right, and everybody else, who are wrong. That IS part of the controversy. It isn't a definition of it.

It tells the reader nothing about "what it is". It is a terrible example of bad writing, it reads like a website promoting something. The entire article, as it is, is biased, and lacking in sources and information. Older versions were much more informative. In fact, the edit history of the article is far more informative than the article. FX (talk) 01:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say there is no controversy. I said there is no longer a real scientific controversy. The second sentence is an accurate portrayal of reality as described by reliable sources. You can choose to reject that reality, but it's a claim completely supported by scientific literature and statements made by science and medical organizations. There are people who are right and wrong here according to the most reliable of sources...the NPOV way to present this, then, is to say that one side has the weight the collected scientific evidence and the other doesn't. — Scientizzle 15:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

So the NPOV way to present this is to clearly support one side of the argument? Color me unconvinced. Many of the scientific agencies listed as recognizing no link are as much political entities as scientific ones, in that they have a vested interest in avoiding fear over vaccines. And there are scientists who disagree. One can "review" all the scientific literature one wants, but that does not take the place of actual research. Scientific consensus does not exist, and it should not be the job of an encyclopedia to declare an issue settled. Certainly lines like "The notion has also diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the causes of autism" have no place in an article on this controversy. This article is dripping with opinions and needs an extensive edit so as not to reflect an advocacy of either perspective.--GenkiDama (talk) 22:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The WP:NPOV way to present it is to not provide undue weight to the claims of a fringe minority position and accurately portray the current status of the scientific consensus (that does, in fact, exist) as reported in the highest quality reliable sources. Specific wording, such as the phrase you pointed out can and should be improved. However, the Wikipedia policy-based formulation of this article must clearly and fairly present the actions and claims of the thimersal/vaccination critics, while clearly and fairly explaining why the vast majority of scientific and medical professionals believe the critics' claims to be sufficiently and substantively refuted. — Scientizzle 01:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The determination of reliable sources in relation to determining the scientific consensus is whether or not they are independent, third party sources with no reason outside of scientific validity for coming to such conclusions. That is not the case here, all the studies you've cited "disproving" a link have financial ties with the vaccine manufacturers, such as the AAP, the people who did the study in the New England Journal of Medicine etc. The JAMA study in Denmark was done by people with ties to vaccine manufacturer Statens Serum Institut, and omitted 10-25% of Autistic cases in the earlier findings to give the illusion of a constant rate of Autism increase after thimerosal was removed in 1992, even though today the Autism ratio is 1 in 1500 as opposed to 1 in 500 then. The AAP, the website where almost all the other studies are described has considerable ties to the vaccine industry as do Immunization branches of public health. If you want to examine a fringe minority position, include only independent researchers in the controversy and then make the evaluation over which side can be considered "fringe."

129.64.129.56 (talk) 16:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The above comments about the 2004 JAMA study are misleading or incorrect. The Statens Serum Institut is the Danish center for prevention and control of infectious diseases in Denmark; it's a state organization, and the closest counterpart to it in the U.S. is the Centers for Disease Control. The study in question did not omit any cases: apparently this is referring to the claim in Bernard 2004 (PMID 14722136) that cases were lost, but that claim misunderstood the data: the registry in question counts contacts to psychiatric departments, not the prevalence of autism. Please see Hviid 2004 (doi:10.1001/jama.291.2.180-c) for details. The claim that there's a vast conspiracy by the medical establishment to disseminate false information about vaccines and autism is a fringe claim (in the sense of WP:FRINGE) and we can't base Wikipedia articles on such claims. Eubulides (talk) 21:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

If the SSI is going to compare themselves to the CDC, that would discredit them even more. The CDC held an illegal conference along with other national and foreign public health agencies and representatives of vaccine manufacturers, and an advisory committee made up almost entirely of employees of pharmaceutical corporations. To make Hviid's case even weaker, the response did not address any of the errors spotted in the Denmark study (http://www.safeminds.org/research/docs/Hviid_et_alJAMA-SafeMindsAnalysis.pdf), it simply claimed all documented cases were included, which they clearly weren't. WP:FRINGE has to be unfounded in evidence, what we have is a 259 page transcript from the illegal meeting at Simpsonwood, 27 surviving confidential pages from Verstraetan's "lost" study (http://www.safeminds.org/legislation/foia/Simpsonwood_Transcript.pdf), not to mention serious errors in all the other major epidemiological studies denying a link as evidence for such a collusion.

129.64.129.56 (talk) 23:56, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Hviid's response did address the main concern pointed out by Bernard's letter, namely, Hviid pointed out that the Danish registry data counts contacts to psychiatric departments, not the prevalence of autism. I'm afraid that attacking the CDC as part of the conspiracy is not likely to assuage concerns that this is a WP:FRINGE argument. By the way, is your main account JCroz (talk · contribs)? It might be helpful to log in and use your account rather than post from an IP address. Eubulides (talk) 00:23, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is expecting the Danish psychiatric department to use any cases other than what was has been diagnosed. Hviid merely denied omitting these cases without addressing any flaws pointed out in the study, so it appears to be merely a denial more than anything. JCroz (talk · contribs) is an indefinitely blocked account, and I don't see what's wrong with IPs, but that's veering off topic. Even though Staten Serum Institut is a state agency, they still make vaccines. It is doubtful they'd admit they were poisoning children with their shots given the serious liability it could bring. If holding an illegal meeting in private with major vaccine manufacturers over an epidemiological link between neurodevelopmental disorders and thimerosal and how to cover up such findings isn't a conspiracy, what is?

129.64.129.56 (talk) 06:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

• Are you associated in any way with JCroz (talk · contribs)? If so, it would bear on whether this discussion should continue.
• Hviid's response did not simply deny omitting data; it explained that the data did not count prevalence, but measured something else, which would explain why Bernard's analysis (based on the idea of missing cases) would be mistaken.
• It is true that Staten Serum Institut manufacturers vaccines, as well has having the function of the Centers for Disease Control here. However, this part of your comment seems to be continuing in the theory that the medical establishment is purposely poisoning children, which by Wikipedia standards is a WP:FRINGE theory; this article should not be based on fringe theories.

Eubulides (talk) 06:40, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

First Hviid admitted the data does not measure Autism prevalence, which is very strange for a study that seeks to refute a link between Autism and Thimerosal, then contradicted himself by claiming that all diagnosed cases were included in the registry. The CDC held an illegal meeting with pharma-reps about associations found between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders, similar concerns over Aluminum, and about this information from the public. This isn't a theory, this is clear-cut evidence of collusion. Why? Do I ask you if you are associated in any way with Merck, Wyeth or Sanofi Aventis?

129.64.129.56 (talk) 04:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Studies that purported to find an epidemiological link between thiomersal and autism did not use prevalence data; they used administrative data, just as Hviid did. So, if administrative data actually point the other way, and find no link to autism, that's quite a relevant result, no? Hviid did not contradict himself: his response was self-consistent. Anyway, if you are associated with JCroz (talk · contribs), then you should not be posting here as per Wikipedia rules, right? Eubulides (talk) 06:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Right. MastCell ^Talk 19:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

New study

and this study? what is your opinion? Could you mention it in "Rationale for concern"? [10] --TSP (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Responded on my talk page, where you had cross-posted this. MastCell ^Talk 19:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Timeline

Two concerns regarding this section:

1) It seems undue weight is being added to the minor studies by Ip et al. and Desoto and Hitlan with their addition to this timeline. Neither study are large scale in size nor likely figured prominently in the development (or change) in the scientific concensus on this subject, so the addition of these to the timeline (which seems to indicate importance of these studies) seems inappropriate. This goes for the Fombonne and Pinchiero studies as well. Either they should be incorporated into the article or removed completely. I have therefore reverted the recent change to add even more prominence to these studies that is out of proportion to their prominence in the scientific literature, and encourage re-evaluation of the timeline for the removal of all studies from the timeline completely.

2) Frankly, I think the entire timeline is redundant, and any important points should be incorporated into the body and the entire timeline section removed. There seems to be a temptation to add extra bullets to the timeline whenever something concerning this controversy appears in the news or journals, which I think long term is counter-productive to the development of an encyclopeia article.Yobol (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:47, 3 January 2009 (UTC).

I agree with both points and would welcome further changes along the lines you describe. We also have the problem of the most-recent studies (e.g., Pinchiero, DeSoto & Hitlan) not being properly reviewed; as per WP:MEDRS we must be very careful of citing primary studies like this. The main reason the further changes haven't been done, as far as I know, is that nobody has had the time to do them. Eubulides (talk) 05:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Since there are recent peer-reviewed papers suggesting links between mercury and autism (e.g., DeSoto & Hitlan (2007), Adams in Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry (2008), Rose et al. in American Journal of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (2008), etc.) this wikipedia article must reflect this fact. I agree the timeline section is not the best place to include this information, and probably a new section would be more appropriate for this purpose. Juliusllb 12:39, 3 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliusllb (talk • contribs)

Any changes along these lines would have to reflect the mainstream consensus that there's no convincing evidence that thiomersal causes autism. The article can't discuss all those sources in detail, and give the mistaken impression that these sources reflect mainstream concerns. Also, it's not clear to me that Rose et al. 2008 is relevant, as it never mentions thiomersal; it's a bit off the topic. Again, as per WP:MEDRS we should be focusing on reliable reviews, not primary sources like these. Eubulides (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I see a strong desire to deny every relationship between thimerosal and autism despite many scientific studies suggest that thimerosal causes autism.--TSP (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

That may be because you're looking at the data very selectively. You are of course welcome to reject or ignore the mountains of data indicating that thiomersal does not cause autism, as a matter of personal opinion. For the purposes of Wikipedia, though, we would be doing our readers a disservice if we failed to make clear that every reputable scientific and medical body examining the issue has been convinced by the scientific evidence that thiomersal does not cause autism. The most recent piece of data (PMID 18180424) confirms numerous previous observations that, despite the removal of thiomersal from childhood vaccines, the incidence of autism continues to rise, confirming at least 7 other epidemiologic studies reaching similar conclusions. I've removed the POV tag you added - that tag is intended to signal ongoing efforts to resolve content disputes through discussion, whereas I see only a general accusation of conspiracy and bad faith thus far. MastCell ^Talk 18:08, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This latest study ignores the fact that from 2001-2003, the "thimerosal-free" period studied, thimerosal containing vaccines were still on the shelves, that in 2002 the FDA started recommending thimerosal-containing flu shots for pregnant women and children ages 6-24 months of age, and that since then vaccines with the full amount of thimerosal were found with expiration dates as late as 2007. How is that evidence? Besides, wouldn't it seem that a thimerosal study done by the Immunization branch of the California Department of Health be a COI? 129.64.72.126 (talk) 04:07, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the study does not "ignore" those facts. It actually addresses them head-on. Perhaps it would be worth reading it (again?) MastCell ^Talk 04:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It ignores all of them but one, that all childhood TCVs expired in 2002. Turns out, the source that the study cites says that the ACIP merely "expressed preference" for use of thimerosal-free vaccines by 2002. The study apparently assumed manufacturers fully complied. The statement that all new Hib and Hep B vaccines in 2000 contained "trace amounts" of thimerosal is unverifiable from the FDA page that it cited. It also does not mention that the FDA started recommending flu shots to pregnant women and these age groups of children in 2002, it was just not added to the official schedule until 2004 due to questions concerning the vaccine's availability. It does not address the concerns of some who have found TCVs with expiration dates as late as 2007, either. 129.64.72.126 (talk) 05:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, then, let's start from the beginning.

• You say that 2001-2003 is the "thimerosal-free period" studied. That's incorrect; the "thimerosal-free period" was 2004-2007 ("From 2004 through March 2007, when we estimate that exposure to TCVs during infancy and early childhood declined, the prevalence of children aged 3 to 5 years receiving services for autism continued to increase from 3.0 to 4.1 per 1000 live births.") That undercuts your first point.
• You question the statement that Hib and HBV vaccines from 2000 forward were formulated with no or trace thimerosal, and whether all childhood TCV's expired by 2003. See the FDA FAQ: "All new vaccines licensed since 1999 are free of thimerosal as a preservative... In addition, all of the routinely recommended vaccines that had been previously manufactured with thimerosal as a preservative... had reached the end of their shelf life by January 2003." That refutes your second point.
• You claim that the removal of thimerosal was just an "expressed preference" rather than a fact. See the FDA statement: "Since 2001, all vaccines manufactured for the U.S. market and routinely recommended for children ≤ 6 years of age have contained no thimerosal or only trace amounts (≤ 1 microgram of mercury per dose remaining from the manufacturing process), with the exception of inactivated influenza vaccine." That refutes your third point.
• You claim the study doesn't address thimerosal exposure in utero. But of course it does. The authors write: "Although vaccinations have been the primary source of exposure to thimerosal in childhood, a small proportion of young children during the study period would have had additional thimerosal exposure in utero through maternal immunization during pregnancy with vaccines or Rho(D) immune globulin."
• You state that the study doesn't address the concerns of unnamed persons who claim to have come into possession of TCV's with expiration dates through 2007. Without knowing who these people or in what venue these claims appeared, it's hard to call this a "weakness" of the study.

The study has weaknesses. Most prominently, it did not directly measure thimerosal exposure but estimated it from vaccination schedules and available stocks. The authors address this directly in their discussion. Other large ecological studies (e.g. Hviid et al.) have directly measured thimerosal exposure, and reported exactly the same finding: thimerosal disappears, but autism rates continue to increase. In fact, 6 or 7 other large studies have reached that conclusion, making it rather hard to disregard without resorting to cherry-picking or outright denialism or conspiracism.

Most of your points betray a basic unfamiliarity with the article in question, which makes me question whether you've read it carefully. In any case, do you apply the same methodological scrutiny to, say, the works of Mark Geier? Actually, never mind - I see it's you. MastCell ^Talk 05:44, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Gender-selective toxicity of thimerosal

Eubulides, what is your opinion about this study? Could you mention it in An in vivo study: Rationale for concern (Thiomersal controversy)? In my opinion,it is important [11]--TSP (talk) 12:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, added. Eubulides (talk) 17:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

increase in autism is caused by changes in diagnosis

From Epidemiology_of_autism#Changes_with_time, plenty of sources. This is an important point that is not on the article. Where can we add the following?:

"The reported increase is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices, referral patterns, availability of services, age at diagnosis, and public awareness.[1][3][15] (...) it is unknown whether autism's frequency has increased[22]"

--Enric Naval (talk) 23:20, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I tried this edit to address the issue. Eubulides (talk) 23:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I added the graphic from Epidemiology_of_autism. Isn't there any image of thiomersal-carrying vaccines or something so that the graphic isn't the only image on the article? --Enric Naval (talk) 00:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The suggestion that the increase in autism is mostly due to changes in diagnostic practices has been documented to be untrue. There is a lot of documentation on this. Scientific evidence credibly has documented that autism incidence has increased over 5 fold in the last 15 years, and that increased vaccinations using highly neurotoxic and brain inflammatory ingredients is the primary cause. The most credible neurologists researching the cause of the increases agree that vaccinations were the primary factor. Likewise for the Austism Associations and majority of parents of autistic children, and the doctors treating them. This page as it exists, is highly biased and not supported by credible science. For credible scientific documentation relating to the increase in autism and the mechanisms by which vaccinations have been documented to be the primary factor in this, see www.flcv.com/kidshg.html and www.flcv.com/autismgc.html Also see the Autism Research Institute web page, the most credible and experienced group on this topic. www.autism.com B. Windham, Research Director, DAMS Intl, Jan 29, 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Berniew1 (talk • contribs) 14:51, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

An unpublished document on a website about conservation of nature, I'm afraid that it fails the guideline on medicine-related reliable sources WP:MEDRS. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the mainstream scientific and medical literature does not agree with the proposition that the true incidence of autism is known to have increased; see the sources cited in Epidemiology of autism #Changes with time. Nor does it agree that the primary cause of autism (or of any purported increase) is due to vaccinations; see the sources cited in Thiomersal controversy and MMR vaccine controversy. There are certainly those who believe vaccines cause autism, but they are not in the mainstream, and as per WP:WEIGHT the article should not emphasize their views over the mainstream view. Eubulides (talk) 17:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Other suggested mechanisms for autism-and-vaccines?

I note that Autism and vaccines redirects to Thiomersal controversy. I'm somewhat concerned about this because I've heard the "vaccines cause autism" crowd proposing mechanisms other than thiomersal. What level of research would I need to present to justify having the Autism and vaccines article be a short discussion of the phenomenon, and link to this article as one of the major proposed mechanisms for a vaccine-autism link? -- Radiantmatrix (talk) 22:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It might not hurt to have a separate article about this. For now, I redirected it to Vaccine controversy #Safety, which covers all the vaccine-and-autism issues I know of offhand. You can consult that section for research. Eubulides (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Young, Geier & Geier 2008

(I copied the following comment from Talk:Causes of autism #New studies, as it talks about a source cited here and not there. Eubulides (talk) 01:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC))

I have reviewed the Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders... paper, and I don't think it is very strong evidence. First and foremost, the data used was very limited. This was not the fault of the authors, but of the strict blinding on their access to the database used [12]. So they had essentially just seven data points (seven birth years), and they had to extrapolate some of the data even there. Second, they present their findings in terms of an effect per 100ug of mercury (delta). However, the data points they used had only about a third of that difference (high of roughly 150ug and a low of roughly 113ug). I don't know how to adjust their results to be on that scale, but I'm pretty confident that the effect for autism would dissapear for even 50ug of mercury (delta). Interestingly, the strongest effect was for ADHD followed by Tics. The effect for autism and ASD was much weaker. Astgtciv (talk) 00:30, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Court ruling: no link

A court hearing a petition to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruled that vaccines and autism have no link:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vaccines aren't to blame for autism, a special federal court declared Thursday in a blow to thousands of families hoping to win compensation and to many more who are convinced of a connection.

The special masters who decided the case expressed sympathy for the families, some of whom have made emotional pleas describing their children's conditions, but the rulings were blunt: There's little if any evidence to support claims of a vaccine-autism link.

The evidence is weak, contradictory and unpersuasive, concluded Special Master Denise Vowell. Sadly, the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding of autism.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/12/washington/AP-Autism-Ruling.html

-- Fyslee (talk) 02:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Very Biased Page

This page, and the page about the Polio Vaccine are extremely biased. These articles are supposed to show information from all sources. You would think that a page titled "Thiomersal Controversy" would show the "controversy" side, but quite the opposite is in this article. This article is an attack on anyone that is critical about Thiomersal (which contains Mercury).

The New England Journal of Medicine, which is one of the sources cited in this article, claims that the Mercury containing compound Thiomersal (aka thimerosal) does not react in the Human Body like environmentally derived Mercury Compounds, because it (Thiomersal) passes though the body more quickly than Mercury Compounds from the environment, and is not a threat. The problem with their understanding of what a "safe" level of Mercury is that even low levels of Mercury are harmful to the brain.Nly8nchz (talk) 03:11, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

• The above comment criticizes Offit 2007 (PMID 17898096), a NEJM article whose main subject is thiomersal and childhood vaccines. The comment's criticism is based on a press release about a study (Yokoo et al. 2003, PMID 12844364) that has nothing to do with thiomersal, or with children, or with autism. This article needs sources that are directly relevant to the topic; Yokoo et al. is not.
• For the polio vaccine, please discuss on the polio vaccine's talk page.
• This article attempts to use the WP:WEIGHT guideline when talking about the thiomersal controversy: that is, it gives the mainstream viewpoint while giving appropriate weight to minority opinions.

Eubulides (talk) 06:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

New study showing toxicity by low dose Thiomersal

From: Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry, June 2009. Title: "Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low-level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds" [13] This ref should be integrated in the article. MaxPont (talk) 06:48, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is an additional ref[14] 06:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding these references...Mark Geier and his son, David, have a terrible reputation regarding autism-thiomersal research. It would be a poor idea to give further attention to their claims without clearer caveats along the lines of

Time and again, reputable scientists have dismissed autism research by Geier and his son, David, as seriously flawed. Judges who have heard Mark Geier testify about vaccines' harmful effects have repeatedly called him unqualified, with one describing his statements as "intellectually dishonest."[15]

Certainly the claims of Geier et al. over the years have played an important role in this whole controversy, but I'm not sure if the present state of the article accurately indicates just how shady the Geiers' research is perceived to be... — Scientizzle 17:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The article already contains lots of citations to Geier. One could argue that adding one more couldn't hurt. On the other hand, it verges on original research for this article to serve as a dumping ground for every paper the Geiers write. It would be better to remove the existing citations to the Geier primary studies, and replacing them with a summary of the Geiers' work based on a reliable third-party source. Eubulides (talk) 18:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The WP articles should reflect reliable sources. WP also rejects self-publisihed sources because a core WP principle is that a reliable third party publisher is a quality assurance for fact checking and notability. If Geier has managed to be published in peer reviewed journals several times, these publications can't be dismissed. Who are you (the WP editors) to overrule academic peer review in credible journals? MaxPont (talk) 08:09, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The Geiers' publications on this topic can be dismissed not because of what I've said here, but because of what reliable sources have said in reviewing the work. Rightly or wrongly, mainstream sources do not take the Geiers seriously. This article should not give more weight to fringe theories than reliable sources do; that's a core principle of Wikipedia. Eubulides (talk) 08:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

My comment above was to state that the Geiers' claims are rather relevant to this controversy (i.e., "Mark Geier and his son, David Geier...experts whose work is most frequently cited by parents [in legal cases]"[16]). However, I don't think the present article qualifies the work of Geier et al sufficiently. For example:

[Dr. Geier] has also testified in more than 90 vaccine cases, he said, although a judge in a vaccine case in 2003 ruled that Dr. Geier was "a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise and experience." In other cases, judges have called Dr. Geier's testimony "intellectually dishonest," "not reliable" and "wholly unqualified."[17]

and

But the Geiers have been widely criticized for both their methods and their treatment. In 2003, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that a Geier study finding a link between vaccines and autism was marred by "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements." The following year, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a report that the purported connection between mercury in vaccines and autism did not exist. The government-sanctioned committee of scientists reserved harsh words for the Geiers' work, saying their research was "uninterpretable" and marred by "serious methodological problems."[18]

Geier & Geier have also been criticized for their monetary gains in relation to this controvery and performing ethically dubious treatments[19][20][21]; it turns my stomach a bit to see anything from Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2nd from the bottom of the current list of "Geier studies" in the article) cited as a legitimate peer-reviewed publication.

So...while I agree with Eubulides over this article evolving into a "dumping ground for every paper the Geiers write", I think adding a couple more items to the "Geier studies" reference list would be fine; however, I think we can and should be even clearer about how the Geiers are viewed regarding quality of research and ethical concerns. — Scientizzle 18:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

A little statistical analysis

I went to PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez) and did a search for "thiomersal autism". This returned 119 papers. I downloaded the HTML results, pulled out the author data (by finding HTML paragraphs with class="authors"), and sliced and diced them a bit with standard unix command line tools. I found 246 distinct authors. I counted how many publications each one had. Of the authors with more than two papers on the subject, I found:

• 3 Singh VK
• 4 Fombonne E
• 4 Redwood L
• 5 Bernard S
• 5 DeStefano F
• 11 Geier DA
• 12 Geier MR

This says to me that, at least by this naive statistical method, the Geier's are the major authors in this field. It is thus not unreasonable that this article should give considerable weight to their publications. I am fully aware that if you send in enough manuscripts to enough places, eventually some will be accepted. Thus, publication count alone is a weak indicator of importance.

I'm not familiar with the epidemiological journals, so I don't know which are considered the better ones. The only one I know is New England Journal of Medicine; of five publications there, none are by the Geiers. This is a little bit of a warning flag for me, but that may be exposing my ignorance of the field more than anything else. What is more significant to me is that of 12 publications, the Geirs are the sole authors on 10 of them. It is certainly common for there to be clusters of authors within a field. You would, however, expect to see some variation in co-authorship as various people come through their labs or they collaborate with different groups on clinical studies.

I don't have an axe to grind here. Personally, I think the thiomersal-autism theory is a crock. But, any journal that's indexed by PubMed should be considered a reliable source, and the PubMed numbers show they are the most frequently published authors on the subject. Thus, it would be disingenuous to ignore their work in this article. Certainly, for an article titled Thiomersal controversy, it seems reasonable to include the work of people who are at the center of the controversy.

If you want to claim their their work is poorly regarded, you need to do better than just the vague dismissive statements above. Perhaps use Science Citation Index. If you can show that their publications are rarely cited by other authors, that would be a much stronger statement about how the scientific community views their work.

-- RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Of the journals cited in the current "Geier studies" list, with ISI 2008 journal citation reports:

• Neuroendocrinology Letters is near the bottom if its field
• Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health (cited twice) is middling-to-low
• Journal of the Neurological Sciences is also middling
• Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is a straight-up crank publication (IMO) that you won't find in PubMed or ISI

That's just one measure for our edification--not really useful in the article. However, there have been plenty of sources linked above and in the article that discuss how the Geiers' work is generally dismissed. — Scientizzle 18:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

To repeat myself, If Geier has managed to be published in peer reviewed journals several times, these publications can't be dismissed or omitted from the article. In particular the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. However, their reception should of course be covered. (PS. Journals about narrow topics will always be low in the citation hierarchy.) MaxPont (talk) 19:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

PS. Journals about narrow topics will always be low in the citation hierarchy ... which is why you look at their rankings within their fields, as I linked to for each. The JCR is only one imperfect rating system, but it is informative to evaluate where a given journal rates within its field.

And to repeat myself (and to boldly speak for everyone else in this thread), nobody appears to be advocating removing what's already in the article or is strongly opposed to adding the two additional references you brought forward. Really! However, it's absurd to assert that any particular publication cannot be omitted; exclusion of any piece of information is the default state and thus the case must be made for inclusion balanced against editorial concerns and Wikipedia policies and norms. — Scientizzle 19:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

To take the number crunching a little further, the two presently-cited the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health studies in the article have 9 (2006) and 11 (2007) citations pointing to them in SCOPUS; however, if you discount the extensive self-citation (2/9 and 6/11 are self-cites by Geier, respectively), these two publications are cited a total of 12 times by external groups, and not generally in high-impact journals. That's perfectly fine--it won't blow anyone away, but it's not awful, either. [As a point of reference, I looked up my own two publications from 2006, in arguably better journals than Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, and they've received 14 cites between them.] There's nothing about these two publications that scream cannot be omitted, IMO... — Scientizzle 20:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• There's no need for us to do this sort of statistical number crunching. There are reliable sources that have already done that for us, and we should be relying on them rather than reindependently debating over whether the Geiers publish junk science. For more on this subject, please see the sources cited in Mark Geier #Controversial studies and Mark Geier #Criticism.
• This article should not be citing primary studies by the Geiers. None of them are notable in themselves, and they are not reliable sources. Even if they were reliable, this article should cite reliable reviews rather than primary studies, as per WP:MEDRS.

Eubulides (talk) 06:18, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Eubulides. WP:MEDRS also states "Make readers aware of any uncertainty or controversy. A well-referenced article will point to specific journal articles or specific theories proposed by specific researchers.". In the main Thiomersal article Geier would probably not be a RS. However, this is an article about a controversy and the constroversy should be described. To repeat, Geier has at least on one occasion managed to be published in a reasonbaly credible peer reviewed publication. MaxPont (talk) 08:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly appropriate to mention the Geiers, their theories, and their role in the controversy, and to cite reliable sources about their role. However, we are under no obligation to cite all the Geiers' papers directly. On the contrary: since the reliable sources cover the Geiers' work adequately, we shouldn't cite any of their primary studies: as is usual in Wikipedia, citing the secondary sources is preferable to citing the primary ones, and primary studies shouldn't be cited directly unless they are particularly notable, which they aren't. None of the Geiers' papers comes even close to the level of the famous Bernard et al. 2001 (PMID 11339848) paper (and why is that paper not cited here, while we have acres of the Geier papers that reliable sources don't take seriously?). Eubulides (talk) 08:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, let's compromise and add the two most high ranking publications (per above) to the Geier footnote together with his other publications. I added the articles from Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health and Journal of the Neurological Sciences. MaxPont (talk) 16:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it is a compromise to add two more primary studies (studies that are not PubMed-indexed!). These show no more evidence of being reliable sources than the debunked Geier studies already cited. My position remains that we should be citing reliable secondary sources (this is Wikipedia policy) instead of these extremely low-quality primary sources, and that we should be removing all the primary studies in question. Eubulides (talk) 05:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Eubulides. Adding more to the list of studies by Geier would seem to be a violation of WP:UNDUE. I would also prefer elimination of his primary studies (and indeed, most of the primary studies cited in the article, as most of low quality and not useful in the context of the scientific consensus), with replacement of citations by secondary sources as suggested as these are the best sources to use per WP:MEDRS. Yobol (talk) 14:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Eubulides. I don't see how this edit fits the definition of a "compromise"...Dramatic re-enactment:

MaxPont Let's add these two studies.
Scientizzle Maybe. But if we do, it should be made clearer how their research is generally dismissed.
Eubulides We shouldn't just make this a dumping ground for Geier papers. More secondary sources would be appropriate.
MaxPont OK, so as a compromise, let's add these two studies.

I'm no dramatacist, but there's a touch of Monty Python-esque farce to that... — Scientizzle 16:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for being funny. My original idea was to add the studies in the body text of the article. However, as other studies by Geier already are summarized in a footnote I can't see why the two most credible studies (from the analysis by RoySmith above) should not fit in that list? I used the word compromise for adding them in a footnote that is invisible for readers of the body text of the article, not in the article itself. I hope that clarifies. MaxPont (talk) 07:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking my post with the humor intended (far too rare in wikiworld). Your explanation does add some clarity, too. I think there's a reasonable middle-ground here...

The Geiers' impact has been prominent in thiomersal-autism court cases and in some of the notable publications on the whole controversy. What Geier studies have been most commonly used in the major cases (Hannah Poling?), or discussed in the secondary literature from each side (i.e., Evidence of Harm & Autism's False Prophets)? Surely there's a discernible rank-order of Geier studies that has had an impact on these? The most relevant of these would be the obvious choice of at least a "Geier studies" footnote but possibly even more detailed discussion & criticism.

The thing about the newer research is it hasn't really had time to make an impact in the controversy or be covered secondarily. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.) By all means, these studies should be included in the Mark Geier article; until they have some impact in secondary coverage of the controversy, it may be best to leave the newest articles out as they can't be properly contextually discussed. Thoughts? — Scientizzle 13:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent suggestions both. Eubulides (talk) 16:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I interpret this as that it is OK to add back the studies to the footnote.(?) MaxPont (talk) 08:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Ummm, no. Adding the two citations is not a compromise. Didn't the Monty Python skit make this clear? Eubulides (talk) 05:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think it is unfair to refer back to the Monty Python joke above again as I have explained what I meant with a compromise (a footnote is much less prominent than refering the study in the body text of the article). I also think that it is too strong wording to label it a "dumping ground" if a list of studies in a footnote is added with two more peer reviewed studies in a footnote if the body text says "a series of epidemiologic studies coauthored by Mark Geier claimed a population-level correlation between thiomersal and autism". MaxPont (talk) 10:33, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

No, really, it's not a compromise, as it doesn't at all address the fundamental issues being raised by the other side. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of peer-reviewed articles about the thiomersal controversy. Why does this article cite every paper of a discredited source like the Geiers, and not cite other papers, which are much higher quality? Why does this article not summarize this extremely low-quality work using the higher-quality secondary sources that are available? It is not a compromise to compound the problem by citing even more junk-science sources. We should remove these sources, not add more of them. Eubulides (talk) 23:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Eubulides, I can think of many answers to your questions, but all of them are unacceptably cynical. In any case, I think your points are sound. This probably falls under the part of WP:MEDRS that cautions against stringing together cherry-picked primary sources to weight the article in a way that doesn't represent reality or the current state of knowledge on the subject. MastCell ^Talk 04:04, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Primary/secondary sources

Primary sources dominate some parts of the article (most notably the Rationale for Concern section), where we can have secondary sources describe the the findings and thoughts that are currently there. I will be looking to replace the primary sources (most notably the long list of Geier sources) with secondary sources, being sure to leave the "important" primary sources in place (i.e. large studies published in prominent journals). Yobol (talk) 14:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Much as I disapprove in general of linking to Medical Hypotheses, I caution that the metric for importance to this topic should not be the same as that for importance to medicine. Irrespective of being rejected by medical researchers, some of these papers are important to this article for their political impact. That said, I applaud your efforts to edit this article to follow the coverage of the topic in reliable sources. The Rationale section definitely needs cleanup with secondary sources so we know how to present and weight each point, but the Timeline and possibly Background sections need the primary sources. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:24, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Aaand catching up on discussions I note that #Timeline is no longer an issue, per previous section. Tell you what - go ahead with the restructuring, and if I have any objections more concrete than vague handwaving, we can discuss them then. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I suggest mentioning Bernard et al. 2001 (PMID 11339848), published in Medical Hypotheses and perhaps the most important paper underlying the controversy. It should not be hard to find reliable secondary sources that review that paper and its role in the controversy. Eubulides (talk) 18:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. [22]Yobol (talk) 18:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Political controversy and allegations about conflict of interests

There exists a political controversy with claims in mainstream media that the medical establishment is trying to suppress facts about the risks with Thiomersal. This conflict does not fall under WP:MEDRS but should be covered in the same way as other political controveries. On important source is the article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Deadly Immunity [23] which should be included as a reference.MaxPont (talk) 14:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that conflict of interest is the main issue here. The main issue is that a substantial number of people distrust the mainstream medical and scientific consensus, for whatever reason (not necessarily conflict of interest), and that their views are not adequately covered in this article. I agree, and suggest that we add a new section about the course of the controversy itself. An excellent review source for this would be:

• Gross L (2009). "A broken trust: lessons from the vaccine–autism wars". PLoS Biol. 7 (5): e1000114. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000114. PMC 2682483. PMID 19478850.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

Eubulides (talk) 16:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this [24] a reliable source? It would address the reasoning behind the distrust as well as background. Yobol (talk) 02:37, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, it lacks the long list of corrections that Kennedy's article eventually required, but it would probably do... :) MastCell ^Talk 02:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I was unclear. People distrust the medical establishment because they believe it to be corrupt and swayed by economic conflicts of interests. This belief/opinion and the supporting WP:RS for this falls outside the scope of WP:MEDRS. It should be covered in the article in the same way as parts of the article Aspartame controversy is not covered by WP:MEDRS. MaxPont (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Even though the controversy itself is outside WP:MEDRS's scope, the fact remains that we still want the best sources available, and that peer-reviewed academic articles and reviews, when available, are better than sources in the popular press (see WP:RS#Scholarship. Of the sources mentioned so far in this thread, Gross 2009 (PMID 19478850) is the only one in this category, and it (unless we find a better one) it should be used in any rewrite along the lines suggested above. Eubulides (talk) 23:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, to some extent yes, but the WP:RS#Scholarship for a "political" conflict would be peer reviewed articles in political science or some similar social science discipline. The (PMID 19478850) ref. is good but it is not the perfect WP:RS for this content. MaxPont (talk) 17:54, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Timeline

If no one has objections, as time permits, I will be removing the Timeline section and adding any useful references/information to the main body. I will also see what can be done to decrease the number of primary sources in this article, per the discussion above. Yobol (talk) 02:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

slightly off topic, but while on the topic of links, I think reference one should start at E1012 instead of E1011. E1011 contains nothing on topic to this article anywhere on the page.

131.215.40.141 (talk) 08:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral)

Reintroduction of Thiomersal?

Hi, I was just reading the factsheet for the Australian Government's H1N1 vaccine. I was under the impression that thiomersal and mercury had been removed from vaccines, but the factsheet indicates that it is present in this vaccine. The article gives the impression that thiomersal is pretty much phased out, but this would seem to indicate otherwise, particularly given that this vaccine is being distributed very widely. A quick internet search reveals that it is also used in other flu vaccines. This article shouldn't give undue weight to the anti-thiomersal side, but its current use does need to be noted. Mostlyharmless (talk) 04:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Look towards the end of the scientific background section - it does say that Thiomersal is found in some vaccines, specifically noting influenza vaccines. This might be something to make sure isn't lost in other places in the article. Ravensfire (talk) 04:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Thiomersal is still used in vaccines

As this is a fact, saying the opposite makes Wikipedia look bad. I don't like that. It wasn't removed from all vaccines, so the article should say that. Trying to reverse it is stupid. This is an article on controversy, not your soapbox to try and convince people of something. FX (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The article did not say that thiomersal was "removed from all vaccines". The rewording you installed went too far in the other direction, as its lead phrase "Thiomersal is still used in vaccines" makes it sound like thiomersal use is still universal in vaccines, which is not the case. I changed the wording to something that is closer to what is actually happening, namely, thiomersal has been removed from routine infant vaccines in the U.S., but is still present in multidose versions of flu and tetanus vaccines. My change also updated the citations. Eubulides (talk) 16:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The beginning of the Effects of the controversy section may also need a mention that thiomersal is still in some vaccines. I'm leery of adding something like that every place the article says "removed from vaccines", as it seems like the article is trying to justify something. It's covered in the lede and in the Scientific background section. Given the current events, I'm leaning towards adding something brief in the Effects section. Ravensfire (talk) 17:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Good point about the Effects section. Come to think of it, the last paragraph of the Scientific background section was out of place, as it didn't talk about the background: it talkeds about one of the results of the controversy, namely, the removal of thiomersal from most vaccines in the U.S. So a better home for that paragraph is Effects of the controversy, which already talks about the same removal. I boldly moved it there; further suggestions are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 17:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Hadn't thought about that approach, but like it. Thanks! Ravensfire (talk) 19:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Introduction Neutrality Dispute

The introduction to this article claims:

"The thiomersal controversy describes claims that vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thiomersal contribute to . . . brain development disorders.[1] The current scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims.[2][3]"

Curious, I ran a pub med search for Merthiolate (another alternate name for thiomersal more frequently used in the scientific and medical literature) and toxicity test. I got 101 returned articles of two different types. Secondary research, in the form of literature reviews and some opinion pieces, and primary research done on actual in-vitro toxicity studies. Most of the secondary research suggests, much like this article, that there is little correlation. But almost all of the primary research suggests strongly from the conducted studies that thiomersal is actually very toxic with potent neurological effects. The disparity between the opinion and review pieces and the primary literature is kind of strange, but especially as this page is about the controversy, I would not suggest that "no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims" is a poor statement in light of the majority of the primary literature suggesting otherwise. I didn't have time to read all 101 papers that returned from the literature search but I will post some excerpts from the first 10 that are highly relevant to the discussion and suggest that the intro paragraph is highly misleading about science and medicine's opinion on the mater.

131.215.40.141 (talk) 02:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral, e-mail cischiral (at) yahoo.com)

Paper: Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following Thimerosal-Containing Childhood Immunizations: A Follow-Up Analysis. Geier, David A.; Geier, Mark R. MedCon, Inc., Silver Spring, MD, USA. International Journal of Toxicology (2004), 23(6), 369-376. Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc., CODEN: IJTOFN ISSN: 1091-5818. Journal written in English. CAN 142:385908 AN 2005:99969 CAPLUS

Relevant Excerpts from abstract: "It was detd. that there were significantly increased odds ratios (ORs) for autism (OR=1.8,p<05), mental retardation (OR=2.6,p<002), speech disorder (OR=2.1,p<02), personality disorders (OR=2.6,p<01), and thinking abnormality (OR=8.2,p<01) adverse events reported to the VAERS following thimerosal-contg. DTaP vaccines in comparison to thimerosal-free DTaP vaccines.

Paper: Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low-level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds. Geier, D. A.; King, P. G.; Geier, M. R. Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc., Silver Spring, MD, USA. Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry (2009), 91(4), 735-749. Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd., CODEN: TECSDY ISSN: 0277-2248. Journal written in English. CAN 151:237900 AN 2009:1042947 CAPLUS

Relevant Excerpts from abstract: "Thimerosal-induced cellular damage as evidenced by concn.- and time-dependent mitochondrial damage, reduced oxidative-redn. activity, cellular degeneration, and cell death in the in vitro human neuronal and fetal model systems studied. Thimerosal at low nanomolar (nM) concns. induced significant cellular toxicity in human neuronal and fetal cells. Thimerosal-induced cytoxicity is similar to that obsd. in AD pathophysiol. studies."

Paper: Study on the developmental toxicity of thimerosal. Kwack, Seung Jun; Rhee, Gyu Seek; Kim, Soon Sun; Sohn, Kyung Hee; Kim, So Hee; Chae, Soo Young; Choi, Yo Woo; Won, Yong Hyuck; Park, Kui Lea. Department of Specialized Toxicology, National Institute of Toxicological Research, Seoul, S. Korea. Journal of Toxicology and Public Health (2003), 19(4), 267-275. Publisher: Korean Society of Toxicology, CODEN: JTPHFT ISSN: 1226-8399. Journal written in Korean. CAN 140:387217 AN 2004:126918 CAPLUS

Relevant Excerpts from abstract: "These data indicated that thimerosal showed developmental toxicity in vitro. . . .Further investigation is needed on the safety of vaccine components, i.e., using thimerosal in in vitro and in vivo tests in the future."

Paper: Wide Use of Merthiolate (Thimerosal) May Cause Mercury Poisoning in Mexico. Ohno, H.; Doi, R.; Kashima, Y.; Murae, S.; Kizaki, T.; Hitomi, Y.; Nakano, N.; Harada, M. School of Medicine, Department of Molecular Predictive Medicine and Sport Science, Kyorin University, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan. Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (2004), 73(5), 777-780. Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., CODEN: BECTA6 ISSN: 0007-4861. Journal written in English. AN 2004:952208 CAPLUS

Title says it all.

Paper: Monitoring early toxicity of heavy metals including Hg using an hse- seap reporter gene. Yu, Zhanjiang; Yang, Qin; Yang, Xiaoda; Wang, Kui. School of Pharmacy, Peking University, Beijing, Peop. Rep. China. Zhongguo Zhongyao Zazhi (2006), 31(16), 1346-1349. Publisher: Zhongguo Zhongyao Zazhishe, CODEN: ZZZAE3 ISSN: 1001-5302. Journal written in Chinese. CAN 147:463172 AN 2007:1055170 CAPLUS

Relevant Excerpts from abstract: ". . .the cells were treated by four Hg compds., HgCl2, merthiolate Na [thimerosal], HgS, and cinnabar, at the sub-lethal concns. . . .All four Hg compds. induced heat shock response in both time- and concn.-dependant manner."

The implication here is that thimerosal is just as toxic as any other standard mercury compounds in-spite of the claims in the secondary literature which is also the exclusive opinion mirrored in the wikipedia article.

These articles keep on going and going and going. If people want me to provide the rest of my initial search, I can, but I think there is enough here to demonstrate that medicine and science are not convinced that there are no links between thimerosal and developmental brain disorders. In fact, while I have no problem calling it a controversy and presenting opinions from both sides of the argument, the actual primary and experimental literature seems to overwhelmingly suggest there is an obvious and verifiable direct link between thimerosal and developmental disorders especially neurological ones including autism. I have access to some (but not all of the papers). If anyone wants me to e-mail them a .pdf of any of the actual articles just let me know (e-mail listed below) and I will see if it is one I have access to.

131.215.40.141 (talk) 02:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral, e-mail cischiral (at) yahoo.com)

Forgot to mention, all of the above papers are from accredited peer-reviewed scientific or medical journals so they make acceptable reference material for wikipeida. I can hunt around for the relevant electronic resources on-line for the purposes of links if anyone is interested.

131.215.40.141 (talk) 03:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral, e-mail cischiral (at) yahoo.com)

Several points:

• First and foremost, I should point you to our guideline on medicine related reliable sources which states, among other things, "Individual primary sources should not be cited or juxtaposed so as to "debunk" or contradict the conclusions of reliable secondary sources, unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim." None of those primary sources qualify, and the secondary sources are clear that thiomersal does not lead to autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders, as documented extensively in the article.
• The research of Mark Geier is notoriously unreliable. See Mark Geier#Controversial studies
• The assertion that the secondary sources cited by the article (including those by prestigious institutions like the Institute of Medicine) as being "incomplete" and "poorly referenced opinion pieces" will have to be backed up with reliable sources stating as such before any credence can be given to it.
• I would also recommend you look at our policies on neutral point of view, with special attention placed to the portion on undue weight. The literature is clear that thiomersal does not cause autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Merely claiming that the secondary sources are wrong and pointing to a handful of primary articles will not likely be very convincing.Yobol (talk) 03:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Noted, you are right about my tone, sorry, I changed my statement above to be a a bit less opinionated.
• I am not trying to debunk any claims, but I am suggesting that the majority of the primary literature does seem to support the neurological disorder links with thiomersal so I still feel the intro paragraph to this article is a bit slanted on where scientific opinion lies over this controversy.
• Never heard of Mark Geier before so I was unaware that there was any controversy over his work, wouldn't have put them up otherwise. He only seems to be on the first two papers I found and listed though. I can get you just under 100 more that say more or less the same thing if you like.
• Since almost all the primary sources say one thing and the secondary another, should I root through all the primary sources to find a definitive statement somewhere just to give evidence for a more neutral intro paragraph to this article? I can if that would be necessary, but it will take a while.

Suggestions? 131.215.6.110 (talk) 04:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral e-mail (cischiral (at) yahoo.com)

Per our guidelines on WP:RS and WP:MEDRS, we rely on secondary sources, not primary sources. You have provided no reason to doubt that evaluation of the reliable secondary sources other than your own reading of the primary sources. Putting your own judgment above those of the reliable secondary sources runs against our guidelines and is original research, which is against our policies. As I noted above, we do not debunk secondary sources with primary sources, all of which are clear in their conclusion. Note that while I completely disagree with your assessment of the primary literature that the "majority" link neurological disorders and thiomersal, it is not our role to go paper by paper and make our own judgments on the subject, but rather to rely on our guidelines which tell us to rely on the secondary sources. In this case, the secondary sources are clear. Unless you can provide reliable secondary sources which support your assertion that the medical literature supports a link, I'm afraid your own assessment of the literature will not be allowed in the article as that would violate our policies.Yobol (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Most primary sources on cold fusion agree that cold fusion exists, but that doesn't mean cold fusion is real or that the Cold fusion article should give these articles weight over reliable reviews. The situation here is similar. There are many unreliable sources on thiomersal (the Geiers are not the only ones), and we can't use our own judgment to give these unreliable sources more weight than reliable reviews. Incidentally, I'm puzzled as to how a PubMed search could turn up Kwack et al. 2003, as that article is not indexed in PubMed. What sort of search did you do, exactly? Eubulides (talk) 06:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not suggesting doing original research, That was the one wikipedia policy I did understand before posting, but some of the papers listed have clinical suggestions based off of their research. That is not original research on my part, that is a direct quote concluding and summarizing the research done by the authors in their own paper. For instance one of the quotes I have listed above is "These data indicated that thimerosal showed developmental toxicity in vitro. . . .Further investigation is needed on the safety of vaccine components, i.e., using thimerosal in in vitro and in vivo tests in the future." There are many such quotes among the primary literature, I am not suggesting interpreting the data myself so much as locating such conclusions simply for the purpose of suggesting that the scientific take on the mater is not 100% against any link between thiomersal and neurological development disorders which is what the wikipedia article states. 131.215.40.141 (talk) 07:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Posted by guest (cischiral)

I'm afraid that the previous comment doesn't address the issues made by Yobol and by myself. There are zillions of primary sources on cold fusion, and the vast majority of them give evidence that cold fusion exists and suggest that further study is needed. The situation with thiomersal and vaccines is similar. Please see WP:PSTS for more. Eubulides (talk) 07:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

If reviews count as secondary sources would these work?:

Paper: Being on the track of thimerosal. Review. Madi A Signalling and Apoptosis Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, University of Debrecen, Nagyerdei krt. 98, H-4012 Debrecen, Hungary. madi@indi.biochem.dote.hu Acta microbiologica et immunologica Hungarica (2005), 52(1), 95-103. Ref: 53. Journal code: 9434021. ISSN:1217-8950. Hungary. Journal; Article; (JOURNAL ARTICLE); (RESEARCH SUPPORT, NON-U.S. GOV'T); General Review; (REVIEW) written in English. PubMed ID 15957237 AN 2005309798 MEDLINE

Excerpt from Abstract: The common preservative thimerosal is one of the most important organic mercury compounds human populations are exposed to. It has toxic effect on several cell lines, and it also induces programmed cell death in in vitro experiments. Association is suggested between application of thimerosal-containing vaccines and the occurrence of neurodevelopmental disorders, like autism.

Paper: Vaccines without thiomersal : Why so necessary, why so long coming? van't Veen, Albert-Jan. Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Erasmus University Hospital Rotterdam-Dijkzigt, Rotterdam, Neth. Drugs (2001), 61(5), 565-572. Publisher: Adis International Ltd., CODEN: DRUGAY ISSN: 0012-6667. Journal; General Review written in English. CAN 136:100652 AN 2001:419384 CAPLUS

Excerpt from Abstract: "However, with regard to the debate on primary sensitization during childhood and renewed attention for a redn. of children's exposure to mercury from all sources, the use of thiomersal should preferably be eliminated or at least be reduced. In 1999 the manufacturers of vaccines and Igs in the US and Europe were approached with this in mind. The potential toxicity in children seems to be of much more concern to them than the hidden sensitizing properties of thiomersal. In The Netherlands, unlike many other countries, the exposure to thiomersal from pharmaceutical sources has already been reduced. Replacement of thiomersal in all products should have a high priority in all countries."

Paper: Kawasaki's disease, acrodynia, and mercury. Mutter J; Yeter D Department of Environmental and Complementary Medicine, Salusmed Medical Center, Wieslistrasse 34, CH - 8267 Berlingen, Switzerland. jo.mutter@web.de Current medicinal chemistry (2008), 15(28), 3000-10. Ref: 164. Journal code: 9440157. ISSN:0929-8673. Netherlands. Journal; Article; (JOURNAL ARTICLE); General Review; (REVIEW) written in English. PubMed ID 19075648 AN 2009028249 MEDLINE

Excerpt from Abstract: "Coinciding with the largest increase (1985-1990) of thimerosal (49.6% ethyl mercury) in vaccines, routinely given to infants in the U.S. by 6 months of age (from 75microg to 187.5microg), the rates of Kawasaki's Disease increased ten times, and, later (1985-1997), by 20 times. Since 1990 88 cases of patients developing Kawasaki's Disease some days after vaccination have been reported to the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) including 19% manifesting symptoms the same day."

Paper: An assessment of thimerosal use in childhood vaccines. Comment in: Pediatrics. 2001 May;107(5):1177-8. PubMed ID: 11331704 Ball L K; Ball R; Pratt R D Division of Vaccines and Related Products Applications, Office of Vaccines Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Foodand Drug Administration, Rockville, Maryland 20852, USA. balll@cber.fda.gov Pediatrics (2001), 107(5), 1147-54. Ref: 53. Journal code: 0376422. E-ISSN:1098-4275. United States. Journal; Article; (JOURNAL ARTICLE); General Review; (REVIEW) written in English. PubMed ID 11331700 AN 2001290443 MEDLINE

Excerpt from Abstract: "Delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions from thimerosal exposure are well-recognized. Identified acute toxicity from inadvertent high-dose exposure to thimerosal includes neurotoxicity and nephrotoxicity. Limited data on toxicity from low-dose exposures to ethylmercury are available, but toxicity may be similar to that of methylmercury. Chronic, low-dose methylmercury exposure may cause subtle neurologic abnormalities." (Important note: though they find thimerosal to be a source of these problems I should point out that the review does conclude that they think the level of thimerosal in vaccines should be under the dangerous limits.)

Paper: Human exposure to mercury: the three modern dilemmas. Clarkson, Thomas W.; Magos, Laszlo; Myers, Gary J. Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, NY, USA. Journal of Trace Elements in Experimental Medicine (2003), 16(4), 321-343. Publisher: Wiley-Liss, Inc., CODEN: JTEMEM ISSN: 0896-548X. Journal; General Review written in English. CAN 140:333643 AN 2003:966654 CAPLUS

Excerpt from Abstract: ". . .[and] thimerosal, which is used as a preservative in certain commonly used childhood vaccines. Each of these 3 forms of mercury has distinct toxicol. characteristics and clin. manifestations. "

• (Madi 2005) is a paper that describes the effects of thiomersal on cells lines in vitro, or in an artificial environment outside the human body. The thiomersal controversy is specifically about the effects of thiomersal in developing children through vaccination. in vitro studies are often wrong about actual effects once a substance is exposed to the human body (this is why so many possible new drugs do not reach the market; earlier in vitro studies which proved promising may not have the same or adequate effects when introduced in vivo). Therefore in vitro studies are inappropriate for this article other than as already cited, per WP:UNDUE.
• (van't Veen 2001) is from 2001, before much of the convincing data on the effects of thiomersal was published, and is therefore out-of-date (indeed, the 2001 IOM report cited in our article is probably a much better secondary source to cite about the scientific consensus at the time). The article you cite appears to only advocate for the removal of thiomersal from vaccines due to uncertainty of toxicity as a precautionary measure, saying things like "Definitive data of doses at which developmental effects occur are not available." Given that it is out-of-date and only advocates a policy decision rather than establishing actual toxicity, it is inappropriate to use as evidence of a consensus of the current literature is different than as described in our article.
• (Mutter et al 2008) appears to be about Kawasaki's disease and not a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism as described in our article and therefore inappropriate.
• (Ball et al 2001) is already prominently cited and quoted in our article (citation #21). It should be noted it says, "Our review revealed no evidence of harm caused by doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for local hypersensitivity reactions" and therefore does not agree with your position that the scientific literature suggests a link between thiomersal and autism.
• (Clarkson 2003) does not appear to have an abstract which I can see [25], nor do I have access to it to the full article to assess. However, Clarkson did publish an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that same year in which I do not see him establishing a link between thiomersal and autism [26]. It would be unlikely that he would establish a link in one article and not in the other, more prestigious journal. The quotation you show also does not establish a link between thiomersal and autism.

These secondary sources do not appear to support your position that the medical literature supports a link between autism and thiomersal.Yobol (talk) 14:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• I know what in vitro is, and thus I understand its difference from actual clinical trials or other in vivo studies, but the wikipdia article makes statements like “Despite the lack of convincing evidence of toxicity of thiomersal:” which seems to suggest that there is no evidence of any toxicity, which isn’t true as the in vitro studies are evidence of toxicity. I would be less hung up with a statement to the effect of “Despite the lack of convincing evidence for the toxicity of thiomersal in low quantities when used in vaccinations” or something to that effect which clarifies under what types of studies it is deemed safe, because certainly the in vitro studies make it clear that under some conditions it is strongly toxic. A general blanket statement of safety like the one above contradicts the in vitro studies, specification for in vivo use or the like is required to exclude the in vitro studies from conflicting with such a statement. “Therefore in vitro studies are inappropriate for this article other then as already cited,” Out of curiosity why are the currently sited in vitro studies acceptable and not the ones I have provided? If you can clarify the criteria I can screen more efficiently for relevant papers.
• What do you mean by convincing data? I understand opinions have changed wildly since 2001 but I don’t think much of the data has suddenly become more convincing and that work done before the controversy erupted suddenly became untrue. Is van’t Veen accused of controversial research as well or one of the other authors on that paper? I can try to retrieve the paper to check, but I am sure it has decent sources and reasonable studies referenced from it. "Drugs" is not a small time or controversial journal to my knowledge. It is true this paper prescribes policy decisions, but those prescriptions are based off of the conclusions concerning clinical toxicity also within the paper.
• Your right, sorry, I was looking for health related issues to thiomersal, but I guess working so broadly might be slightly off topic. However, for the record I am making no claim to a link directly with autism per say so much as general neurodegenerative issues. I’ll try to stay more on track in the future.
• Yes, when I posted the excerpt I also posted that note about their clinical conclusion, but while they conclude that it is safe (if only barely) in the prescribed dosages they do mention that “high-dose exposure to thimerosal includes neurotoxicity” which is still a scientific link between thiomersal and neurotoxicity.
• Here is the full abstract for the Clarkson paper which I got off of SciFinder/CAS:

Abstract A review on the 3 different forms of mercury exposures by the general population: mercury vapor emitted by dental amalgam fillings, methylmercury naturally bioaccumulated in fish, and an ethylmercury compd., thimerosal, which is used as a preservative in certain commonly used childhood vaccines. Each of these 3 forms of mercury has distinct toxicol. characteristics and clin. manifestations.

If you don’t trust me, I can try to hunt the paper down and then e-mail it to you, but I am not sure I have access to the full article. I need to check with my institution though we get very few Wily electronic resources, but we may have a hard copy I could Xerox and scan.

I don’t need to show that the medical literature universally supports the link, just that there is enough scientific controversy to show that the statement “The current scientific consensus is that no convincing scientific evidence supports these claims” may be a little too bold.

131.215.40.141 (talk) 00:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Posted by guest (cischiral)

• I agree that particular sentence could be misinterpreted, have clarified using the wording from the cited source ("thimerosal as a vaccine preservative"). To clarify what I said, I have no particular attachment to the in vitro studies already cited, I just wanted to say that no additional emphasis be paid to in vitro studies in this article given their inherent weaknesses.
• Since 2001, a significant number of large scale epidemiological studies were done which showed convincingly that there is no significant association between thiomersal and autism (these studies are documented in our article). Since 2001, a number of reviews and position statements have been released that take these studies into account, and when taken together form the scientific consensus. As is usually the case with science, we do not cite old reviews for current consensus when newer reviews are available that take into account new data. The van't Veen review would only be useful to document the state of the consensus in 2001, not the current consensus. However, our article already cites a more extensive and widely reported review (the IOM 2001 review); I see no particular need to add it to describe the consensus in 2001.
• The notability of thiomersal has always been in the context of vaccines and neurodegenerative disorders, especially autism.
• High doses of water is toxic as well. The important distinction is if the thiomersal doses as given in vaccines is toxic, something which cannot be gleaned from the information you provide. Like I said, the same author published another article in NEJM which did not link vaccine doses and autism, so I would be very wary of citing it for anything without actually seeing the article.
• You are more than welcome to present data from secondary sources which show a lack of consensus in the scientific literature. However, given the multiple position statements by multiple government and scientific bodies (as documented in our article) that thiomersal and autism aren't related, it would have to be much more substantial than what you have provided so far. To date, none of the sources you have presented are secondary, current, and show unambiguously that there is not a consensu in the literature. Yobol (talk) 02:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that all makes sense. For my edification though why didn't some of those reviews count as secondary literature? What about a review determines wether it is or isn't secondary literature? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.40.141 (talk) 03:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Reviews usually are secondary sources, by definition. They just may not be current or directly deal with the topic at hand in a way as to require their inclusion in this article. Yobol (talk) 03:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Nature of the controversy

A controversy, is by definition, a dispute between two sides. So we should identify these sides.

Also, "attracted controversy" and "attracted opposition" are not the same thing. There is a campaign against mercury in general (in tuna, in dental fillings, etc.) as well as a campaign against thiomersal. We should describe the anti-thiomersal campaign.

The controversy is between two sides:

1. the side that says thiomersal is safe, or at least that there is no proof that it's dangerous
2. the side that says thiomersal is unsafe, or at least that we'd better err on the side of caution

Part of the confusion is that the Atlanta CDC is apparently on both sides here! They have said,

• There is no convincing evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. [27]

And either our thiomersal article or our controversy article (both?) also said that CDC called for a ban on it.

Am I summing this all up correctly? --Uncle Ed (talk) 03:30, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, they said that the controversy was causing less coverage of vaccination, so they dumped thiomersal even although they state themselves that it's totally harmless on all accounts:

Vaccine Preservative (Thimerosal) in Multidose Vials of TIV Thimerosal, a mercury-containing anti-bacterial compound, has been used as a preservative in vaccines since the 1930s (242) and is used in multidose vial preparations of TIV to reduce the likelihood of bacterial contamination. No scientific evidence indicates that thimerosal in vaccines, including influenza vaccines, is a cause of adverse events other than occasion local hypersensitivity reactions in vaccine recipients. In addition, no scientific evidence exists that thimerosal-containing vaccines are a cause of adverse events among children born to women who received vaccine during pregnancy. Evidence is accumulating that supports the absence of substantial risk for neurodevelopment disorders or other harm resulting from exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines (243--250). However, continuing public concern about exposure to mercury in vaccines was viewed as a potential barrier to achieving higher vaccine coverage levels and reducing the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases. Therefore, the U.S. Public Health Service and other organizations recommended that efforts be made to eliminate or reduce the thimerosal content in vaccines as part of a strategy to reduce mercury exposures from all sources (243,245,247). Since mid-2001, vaccines routinely recommended for infants aged <6 months in the United States have been manufactured either without or with greatly reduced (trace) amounts of thimerosal. As a result, a substantial reduction in the total mercury exposure from vaccines for infants and children already has been achieved (197). ACIP and other federal agencies and professional medical organizations continue to support efforts to provide thimerosal preservative--free vaccine options. Prevention and Control of Influenza. Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), 2008

--Enric Naval (talk) 23:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Lancet paper retracted

I just know you guys are going to have fun with this one. A prominent British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Britain after the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism. Full text in The New York Times. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Another reference: New York Times editorial -- RoySmith (talk) 22:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Web sites mentioning the Summer 2000 Simpsonwood meeting about the mercury preservative

Videos on the Internet identify a meeting of vaccine gurus in early June of 2000 at Norcross, Georgia at the Simpsonwood Retreat Center. Simsponwood is mentioned only as a linked keyword in the WP article towards the bottom as a “see also” or whatever.

Some apologist web sites for mercury laced vaccines have said that no attempt at cover up was evident in the freedom of information act-obtained transcript of the event. Can these skeptic / apologist web sites be trusted? Perhaps not if one was not lazy and was bothered to search the transcript for key phrases that demonstrated the corrupt nature of the participants.

Participants were supposedly from vaccine manufacturers, the CDC, and other medical researchers involved in the government.

A Google search of >thimerosal simpsonwood transcript pdf< gives a list of about 2,100 such hits.

For me, hit number nine that is entitled "Why You Can't Believe The CDC | Gene's Green Book" was much different than the supposed skeptics' web sites that "liked mercury in their blood, brain, and nervous system."

It contains two links to the supposed Simpsonwood pdf transcript, and outlines a number of cherry picked statements / phrases that possibly illustrate what sinister things were really going on in the unrecorded conversations between invited guests:

* "The number of dose-related relationships are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant."

* " We don’t see that kind of genetic change in 30 years. " (in response to the idea that autism is caused by genetic factors)

* " The medical legal findings in this study, causal or not, are horrendous and therefore, it is important that the suggested epidemiological, pharmacokinetic, and animal studies be performed. If an allegation was made that a child’s neurobehavioral findings were caused by Thimerosal containing vaccines, you could readily find a junk scientist who would support the claim with “a reasonable degree of certainty.” But you will not find a scientist with any integrity who would say the reverse with the data that is available. And that is true. So we are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits if they were initiated and I am concerned. "

* " But there is now the point at which the research results have to be handled, and even if this committee decides that there is no association and that information gets out, the work that has been done and through the freedom of information that will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. And I am very concerned about that as I suspect it is already too late to do anything regardless of any professional body and what they say... "

* " Our first male in the line of the next generation, and I do not want that grandson to get a Thimerosal containing vaccine until we know better what is going on. It will probably take a long time. In the meantime, and I know there are probably implications for this internationally, but in the meantime I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines. "

— Supposed June 2000 Simpsonwood Meeting transcript excerpts

I downloaded one of these supposed full 280+ page transcript pdf files and searched for some of these quotations and found them. (What a coincidence?) Are these linked transcripts legit?

Is there a way that this damming evidence can be quoted from other reliable sources and included in the WP article text? Does this show that the US government is full of corrupt individuals who are cooperating fully with the vaccine manufacturers to create chronic care patients for the health industry?

The quotations mention junk scientists who produce medical journal studies for public consumption—-is this common practice for these peer reviewed science journals to publish such trickery to fool the public into rolling up their sleeves for mercury laced compounds (among many other questionable things)?

Are these junk scientists here contributing to wikipedia, pushing this crank stuff as factual?

When you do a Google search for >chemical lobotomy neurotoxin OR mercury< you get listings making mention of this Eli Lilly preservative.

If the various proofs of the autism links with this compound have not been published, could this be due to the mentioned junk scientists who prostitute themselves for whomever provides them with funding. Does the funding come from rich elite Bilderberg group rulers of the world? = New World Order types? What punishment should be established for death and illness caused deliberately by both these parties?

What other keywords could be used to search for this material from reliable sources? Maybe parts of the actual quotation phrases could be searched in internet domains that are WP:RS? When I do a keyword search for just some of the phrases, I get under 200 Google hits--are any of these WP:RS that could be used? Oldspammer (talk) 10:25, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/09/22/blaylock-vaccine-coverup-part-one.aspx I found this critical assessment of the Simpsonwood transcripts on Dr. Mercola's web site.] (to avoid annoying popups, you could temporarily turn off javascript) Could any of its critique be cited in the article? Oldspammer (talk) 11:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Not a WP:RS, so you could not use it as a source for anything in the article. Ravensfire (talk) 16:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes

I completely overhauled the rationale for change section to be incorporated into the historical section of the text; this had the added benefits of removing the bullet point listing that was a carry-over from previous versions of the article, and removing mention of most primary studies. I also introduced one new source and expanded on an existing source to document more clearly the social background from which the theory came up.Yobol (talk) 20:40, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I just changed a reference to remove the list of primary studies by the Geiers. I am trying limit the number of primary studies in this article, and found what should be a suitable substitute reference to be used as a citation. Thanks to Oldspammer for providing that reference below. Yobol (talk) 14:57, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

For future reference

http://www.springerlink.com/content/3398g44388158630/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yobol (talk • contribs) 01:41, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/science/25autism.html?pagewanted=3 Oldspammer (talk) 09:13, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Albuquerque Journal has mention of a local presentation by Daniel Cobb, doctor of oriental medicine. Cobb screened for the audience a Radio Liberty lecture by Dr. David Ayoub MD November, 2005 in which the 5 studies accepted by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics were systematically debunked.

January 2008 Chicago Tribune reports a study is out from California indicating steady or increasing autism cases. Comments / critiques for the story exist. Oldspammer (talk) 21:28, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D0CEED9173DF936A15751C0A9639C8B63&fta=y Departments have conflicting interests so they were split 2005.

http://www.aapsonline.org/press/nr-03-02-2006.php carried by News Wires published directly by some newspapers points to http://www.jpands.org/jpands1101.htm that points to medical journal article http://www.jpands.org/vol11no1/geier.pdf Autism rates decline some years after thimerosal is removed from childhood vaccines in 1999-2002. Oldspammer (talk) 04:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• The Google Video and (especially) the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons press release are not appropriate sources by any stretch of the imagination (see WP:MEDRS). How do you propose to use the other sources, which are potentially appropriate? MastCell ^Talk 05:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Goal=NPOV to include honest science. Sorry, but the NM newspaper story says that video was presented in a public forum in NM where discussions afterward no doubt happened. I have included the med journal link and the med journal study doc link now. This is a controversy covered and referenced by newspaper sources too--where the PR was carried virtually unedited by news wires and published by some newspapers.

http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/quicksummary.html Seems to summarize the time line and has the documents in question cached locally on their site. A cross check indicates that the documents replicate the original source information. One link is to a 2002 PDF image document that is a CDC contract for more than $190 Million for a private company to maintain the Vaccine Safety Datalink database away from public inquiries made through freedom of information act since the private company is not subject to the act. Oldspammer (talk) 05:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

All google videos and AAPS articles as well as self published websites such as the one above fail WP:MEDRS. I believe the article about California autism rates is already cited in the lead, and I will soon adjust the article to include it (I've already done a lot of editing to the article). Not sure how the NYTimes article would be beneficial, though a mention of Rep Weldon's support for a link may be in order. Yobol (talk) 12:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Having re-read the Chicago tribune link again, I note that it is a blog and public press and likely to fail WP:MEDRS. The actual journal article is cited in the lead. Yobol (talk) 14:13, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

AAPS journal studies are self-published? Where is that coming from? From the MastCell linked Wiki article they seem an anti-fascist political medical organization that attempts to inject debate to counter forces of fascism? The talk page regarding the journal says that the Journal is not indexed by Pub Med for reasons unknown, and not that it is not peer-reviewed by society / association members, and not that it is self-published web documents by the given authors. Because the journal's studies are available on-line, Pub-Med might need to replicate not only the Abstract, but the entire article?

Is the Chicago Tribune article written by a given Chicago Tribune writer? Does the CT article happen to include "uncontrolled" public comments that debunk the article subject study's findings that precisely coincide with the findings and criticisms offered in the later AAPS journal study?

Article bias--How will it appear to observers if one side of the controversy is selectively excluded? If the critiques / studies are unreasoned or completely unscientific or only political, that would be easily counter-argued by "the other side."

Newspapers carried the news wires story about the study. The study is notable. If at all inaccurate, the study should have critiques / debunking it. If no critiques, then the study stands unopposed, but shall be selectively excluded due to "opinions that the Journal is self-published?"

This critique (that is cited in lots of places on the web and Wikipedia) is currently gone I suggest that links to it be changed everywhere. Oldspammer (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

1) I did not meant to say AAPS was self-published; I meant that the website such as www.putchildrenfirst.org is self published and fails WP:MEDRS. JPandS is not a reliable journal by MEDRS standards, as it is not even listed in the main journal listing MEDLINE, and as the WP article shows, it espouses AIDS denialism and creationist "articles". IOW, not reliable.

2) The Chicago Tribune article is apparently from a blog (see the url) and public comments made on such blogs are not WP:RS either. 3) The current Thiomersal Controvery article, in my opinion, is well within the guidelines of WP:NPOV. It presents both sides of the arguments; however, the vast majority of the WP:MEDRS fall on the side of thiomersal not being a cause of autism, meaning we have to place the weight of the article this way as well. 4) Please read WP:MEDRS (again). The vast majority of the sources should be from secondary sources (I have spent a lot of time over the past month removing primary sources) and they must not be used to try to debunk the secondary sources, all of which show thiomersal does not cause autism. Yobol (talk) 20:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Input requested

For the people who have this watchlisted: I think I'm pretty much done with this article, save a few minor changes here and there. Any suggestions for improvement before I move on? (and spend another 3 years on another article...)Yobol (talk) 18:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

In the Population Studies section of the article, the first paragraph states "...almost all of which have found an association between thiomersal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism."

The surrounding context indicates that this should read "...almost none of which..."

Any thoughts on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gulliverian (talk • contribs) 13:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Good catch, changed. Thanks! Yobol (talk) 15:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

This is from on wiki Eli Lilly controversies article, can this be in this article too? Also should a link in the article link to Eli Lilly controversies? Quote, "Political analysts and the parents of autistic children were baffled when it was revealed, shortly after the passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2002, that a rider to the bill had been added just prior to passage, that would shield Eli Lilly and the pharmaceutical industry from billions of dollars in anticipated lawsuits over vaccines.[19] Known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act",[20] the provision was designed to force lawsuits over the preservative thiomersal, calling the suits into a special 'vaccine court'. The provision could have resulted in the dismissal of thousands of cases filed by parents, who contend mercury in thiomersal poisoned their children, causing autism and other neurological ailments, but the rider was subsequently repealed when the next session of Congress convened in 2003."--199.60.104.18 (talk) 20:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Thiomersal and vaccines/Archive 1/GA1

Biliary transport and mentioning the word bile in the article

It is well known that infants do not produce significant levels of bile or have adult renal capacity for several months after birth. Bilary transport is the major biochemical route by which mercury is removed from the body.

This issue about the amount of bile in a newborn should be in the article as this is part of the Thiomersal controversy.

Quote, "According to Dr. Boyd Haley, head of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, and an internationally recognized researcher on the toxicity of mercury compounds, says no amount of thimerosal is a safe amount. He says, "It is well known that infants do not produce significant levels of bile or have adult renal capacity for several months after birth. Bilary transport is the major biochemical route by which mercury is removed from the body, and infants cannot do this very well." Haley adds that thimerosal is more toxic than mercury and that "giving a ten-pound infant a single vaccine in a day is the equivalent of giving a 100 pound adult 40 vaccines in a day."http://www.healing-arts.org/children/cdc.htm --199.60.104.18 (talk) 00:01, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The article uses the word might exceed the EPA guidelines

It does. Please post the sources that say it does not or might. The EPA guidelines is a feature of the Thiomersal controversy. How the EPA position is placed in the article and worded, needs work. The article should say something more than it might exceed EPA limits. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Congress said the EPA limited was exceeded, it is exceeded. To say might is unfair to the reader. http://books.google.ca/books?id=k7dKHW9trqIC&pg=PA12732&lpg=PA12732&dq=epa~thimerosal~exceed&source=bl&ots=8h9pNdKtju&sig=YyC9LwHN1Uc5qLmrxs7GQi4F8xE&hl=en&ei=m_zPTpi7BYjiiAKirtnwCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CE8Q6AEwCA&safe=strict#v=onepage&q=epa~thimerosal~exceed&f=false--199.60.104.18 (talk) 20:46, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Congress isn't WP:MEDRS. The FDA, which is, says, "However, depending on the vaccine formulations used and the weight of the infant, some infants could have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded EPA recommended guidelines for safe intake of methylmercury." (from the source in the article) We should use MEDRS, not cherry picked quotes. Yobol (talk) 22:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

The claim that thiomersal vaccines exceed the EPA guidelines is a mainstream claim. The article can be improved by including this claim. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 23:41, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

extensive edit-warring by editor

Please start citing articles from mainstream reliable sources or stop posting here. Your behavior is disruptive. NW (Talk) 00:42, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Extensive edit warring. Like, please give the list. What list? MasterCell you're a liar. --96.54.128.212 (talk) 18:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC) 96.54.128.212 / 199.60.104.18 / 96.50.64.208 , that was completely uncalled for. You, using at least two three different IPs (it's forbidden to do that here...use only one account, so register to avoid this problem) have been edit warring, ignoring advice, violating our policies and guidelines, and generally showing yourself to be unwilling to follow our sourcing policies. Now you attack a highly respected admin who is just enforcing policy and protecting Wikipedia from your ignorance. Ignorance is excusable, but refusing to learn isn't. Why you haven't been blocked yet is beyond me. We don't usually suffer fools for so long. -- Brangifer (talk) 21:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC) The "evidence of your wrongdoing" I mentioned in my edit summary is the fact that you accused MastCell of lying. That is just so wrong on so many levels. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC) The thiomersal controversy article is possibly one of the worst articles on wiki and it should be demoted as one of wiki's natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. Thiomersal controversy article exposes readers to serious misinformation. It no longer meets the criteria, a reassessment is asked for. For example the article refuses to acknowledge the drug thiomersal was grandfathered in by the FDA. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 17:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC) It's one of the best articles, but because it meets the standards of NPOV, MEDRS and other guidelines, you have to whine. But if you want to have YOUR version of the article, I'm sure there's a CrapScienceWiki somewhere. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 19:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC) That would be Conservapedia. And yeah, their Thiomersal article is about as POV as most of their articles. Ravensfire (talk) 19:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC) Thiomersal may clear the blood faster, but it does not clear the brain faster. Thiomersal build up in the brain occurs faster than MEHG. [HOW CAN IT BE MORE EXSPOSURE THOUGH IF HAS A SHORTER HALF LIFE?] The tests found thiomersal build in the brain will occur. Quote,"Recent studies show these feared effects were likely overestimated. Ethylmercury, such as in thiomersal, clears much faster from the body [this should say blood stream] after administration than methylmercury, [FALSE] suggesting total mercury exposure over time is much less with ethylmercury." [EXPOSURE IS BASED ON AMOUNT OF DEPOSITS IN THE BRAIN NOT HOW FAST IT CLEARS THE Blood stream. ] --199.60.104.18 (talk) 19:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

THE ARTICLE refers to this STUDY AS THIS IS THE ONLY CHIEF HALF LIFE STUDY on thiomersal. Why have you called this half life thiomersal study not mainstream??

The informatin is cited from a mainstream reliable source. Quote, ""The average brain-to-blood concentration ratio was slightly higher for the thimerosal-exposed monkeys (3.5 ± 0.5 vs. 2.5 ± 0.3). A higher percentage of the total Hg in the brain was in the form of inorganic Hg for the thimerosal-exposed monkeys (34% vs. 7%)." Reference. http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.7712 Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Community Medicine,, 2 Washington National Primate Research Center,, 3 Center on Human Development and Disability, and, 4 Departments of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA, 5 Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York--96.54.128.212 (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Damn, you're persistent. And how does this correlate with vaccines? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:05, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The wiki article says,"Ethylmercury, such as in thiomersal, clears much faster from the body after administration than methylmercury, suggesting total mercury exposure over time is much less with ethylmercury. Currently used methods of estimating brain deposition of mercury likely overestimates the amounts deposited due to ethylmercury, and ethylmercury also decomposes quicker in the brain than methylmercury, suggesting a lower risk of brain damage."

WHEREAS the truth is, "Brain concentrations of total mercury were approximately 3–4 times lower in the thimerosal group than in the methylmercury group, and total mercury cleared more rapidly in the thimerosal group (with a half-life of 24.2 days versus 59.5 days). HOWEVER, the proportion of inorganic mercury in the brain was much higher in the thimerosal group (21–86% of total mercury) compared to the methylmercury group (6–10%). Brain concentrations of inorganic mercury were approximately twice as high in the thimerosal group compared to the methylmercury group. Inorganic mercury remains in the brain much longer than organic mercury, with an estimated half-life of more than a year. It’s not currently known whether inorganic mercury presents any risk to the developing brain." Quote, " they describe other research linking persistent inorganic mercury exposure with increased activation of microglia in the brain, an effect recently reported in children with autism." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280369/ --199.60.104.18 (talk) 19:20, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Per our guidelines on medical sourcing, we use medical reviews (such as the one used in the article) rather than primary studies. We specifically do not use primary studies to debunk secondary studies as you seem to be suggesting here. Yobol (talk) 19:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Yobol, this is a secondary source. The primary study was the primate thiomersal half life study, these quotes are not from this. Note in the title is makes reference to the primate study. The issue is your secondary study suggests stuff that misrepresent the primary study data. Are you saying this is a primary report, NO its a review and can be accessed by wiki. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280369/ This mainstream secondary source says something very different then the wiki article says and this is a concern. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 19:57, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

??? Wiki quote, "Currently used methods of estimating brain deposition of mercury likely overestimates the amounts deposited due to ethylmercury." THE ARTICLE NEEDS TO MENTION INORGANIC MERCURY. Let's get it right. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 20:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Typing in caps of course will make your point. Oh wait, no it won't. Back from the world of snark. Let's see, couple of minor issues. Not one single epidemiological study, NONE (see, I can use caps too), have linked vaccines to autism. But let's assume there's a tiny risk to thiomersal (and this is an unsupported, non-evidence based assumption, but I'm willing to play along with you). It is far exceeded by the benefit of vaccines in the first place. Thiomersal is a preservative that keeps the contents of the vaccine safe for use for a lot longer, which means its safer for patients. So, the vaccine has a huge benefit (you know, preventing death from everything from measles to cancer), the preservative keeps the vaccine safe, and the risk is not quantifiable or doesn't even exist. Moreover, the amount of thiomersal used is so tiny as to be far outweighed by the amount of mercury consumed in your typical tuna fish sandwich. This conversation really is boring. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:30, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

199.60, or whatever IP you're choosing to use today, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that there is only one study about this. If you had bothered to read the review already cited in the article, you would know that they cite multiple studies, in context, rather than cherry-picking one based on the conclusion, as you are doing here. Yobol (talk) 21:05, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Hey Yobol good to see you again. Aren't we past the outstayed your welcome rules for anonymous accounts. Hell, even for real accounts. This person has babbled about the same point over and over, brought nothing to the table, and has no understanding of clinical studies. I think they should be blocked, or at least topic banned from this article. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Good to see you again, too, it's been a little quiet without you stirring things up a bit. I agree a topic ban is ideal, but you would have to find an admin with some real cojones to implement such a thing. General mood around here seems to be they would rather established editors get driven off by POV pushers rather than keep the nonsense level to a minimum. Shrug. Yobol (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

How about the issue that thiomersal was grandfathered in? This fact is brought to the table for discussion. The french version of wikipedia has that the drug was grandfathered in, so so should we. http://www.google.ca/search?q=thimerosal%7Egrandfathered%7Ewikipedia&hl=en&gbv=2&prmd=ivnsfd&ei=Mr_WTsahDO7ciQLc3tylCg&sa=N&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=136281l143109l0l143343l19l17l2l0l0l4l250l2470l1.9.5l15l0&oq=thimerosal%7Egrandfathered%7Ewikipedia&aq=f&aqi=&aql= --96.54.160.222 (talk) 23:53, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

La quote, "Le thiomersal n'est pas affecté par le Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act qui octroie depuis 1938 à l'agence fédérale de nouvelles prérogatives : sur la base de l'expérience alors accumulée, la FDA ne juge pas nécessaire de demander à Eli Lilly d'études supplémentaires confirmant l'innocuité de leur produit[16]." Translation: not necessary to demand Eli to study any further to confirm the innocence of their product. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal --96.54.160.222 (talk) 00:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

What the French Wikipedia does is not of our concern. Find a reliable source (not a quack/fringe website or book) that says thiomersal was grandfathered AND that this fact is important to the controversy, and we can add it. Short of finding such sources, you're wasting everyone's time. Yobol (talk) 00:07, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Come on this is a controversy about a drug. Why hide this from the reader? Googled thiomersal~grandfathered and it's an established fact, there's 128,000 results. The reason to include is obvious. http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=strict&noj=1&biw=792&bih=425&q=thimerosal%7Egrandfathered&btnG=Search&oq=thimerosal%7Egrandfathered&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=0l0l0l28803l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0--199.60.104.18 (talk) 00:52, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

According to a WHOIS inquiry, IP is editing from a shared Canadian terminal, (and thus more likely than otherwise to be a French speaker or actual francophone) and I think there is a chance that the above editor could be responsible for the quoted information. Could a French speaker please check?--Tznkai (talk) 00:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but no I did not place that in the French Wiki. It was asked why it is important to place the grandfathered fact in the history of thiomersal. The reader has a right to know. You would want to know if a drug your taking is grandfathered right, so does everybody else; so, the article has a moral obligation to disclose thiomersal was a grandfathered drug. The FDA says this about grandfathered drugs, "Many older products introduced before FFDCA was passed in 1938 were tested in accordance with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which required only that drugs meet certain standards for strength and purity but not for safety." http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/EnforcementActivitiesbyFDA/SelectedEnforcementActionsonUnapprovedDrugs/ucm119899.pdf --199.60.104.18 (talk) 21:33, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

1950's thiomersal Pink's disease break out

This is not in the article yet, this real event is a past controversy concerning thiomersal. Quote, "In the 1950′s, the use of thimerosal in teething powders for infants leads to a fatal out break of Acrodynia, or “Pink’s Disease”, which is a form of mercury poisoning. This illness has many symptoms in common with Autism." Mercury poisoning --199.60.104.18 (talk) 17:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Respected sources. http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1995/pdf/1995-v10n0304-p145.pdf & their reference Warkany J, Hubbard DM: Mercury in the Urine of Children with Acrodynia. Am J. Dis Child 79: 388, 1950. --199.60.104.18 (talk) Also google tested and there are 549,000 results. 17:58, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

To be included on Wikipedia, material must first be published in a reliable source (the relevant policy is here). If you're having trouble identifying reliable sources, please take a look at the general guideline and the sourcing guidelines for medical material before continuing to post Google hits and "orthomolecular" webpages. MastCell ^Talk 18:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

First, the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine is not a reliable source for medical information. Second, the article has nothing to do with either thiomersal or autism, and mentions neither word or concept. Third, some infant teething powders (up until they were banned in the 1950's) contained calomel, not thiomersal—an inorganic mercury compound that was administered orally, more often, and in much higher doses.

Finally, the "quote" that you provide isn't from either of the two sources you're listing. It's lifted from a blog post by confused blogger Ginger T. (who also would, pretty please, like the world to stop "bullying" noted liar and fraud Andrew Wakefield). I don't know if you're not knowledgeable enough to evaluate the sources you're providing, or if you're deliberately misstating the contents of your sources, or if you're just dangerously sloppy in your research, but your history here suggests that you would be far better off editing Wikipedia articles where you have relevant experience, skills, knowledge, and training. Your enthusiasm for this topic is admirable, but it doesn't compensate for the deficits in your approach to editing here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:24, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Good news, Wikipedia can create a new article called pink's disease. When something affected that many people, it has a place on wiki. Quote, "The most common cause of mercury exposure for babies in the English speaking Western World, up until the late 1950's, was from certain brands of teething powders. Teething powders were also known as soothing powders. It is estimated that only 1 in 500 babies given teething powders got Pink Disease." The SERIOUS ERROR was putting mercury into teething powders. Dangerously sloppy was allowing this to be sold, and not to create an article rewards this. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 04:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• Please stop copying in quotations without identifying their sources, and please stop copying in quotations from blogs and individual's websites. You're wasting the time of other editors who have to try to figure out where you've gotten each batch of misinformation.
• We already discuss Pink's disease in Wikipedia; it's part of the article on mercury poisoning, which you would know if you had taken the time to look.
• Wikipedia is not a chat forum. If you just want to share conspiracy theories with other enthusiasts, there are appropriate venues; this project is not one of them.
• This talk page is for discussions related to improving its associated article (thiomersal controversy). If you aren't prepared to make specific, concrete suggestions about changes that should be made to this article, then don't add to this page.
• Don't suggest quotations or modifications that aren't supported by reliable sources. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:01, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Could an editor please archive this section. I acknowledge I made an error, this mercury has chlorine attached to it, and not a carbon chain in this product. Obviously, thiomersal was used in several over-the-counter products, but the article misses this and I honestly just wanted the article to clarfy this aspect of thiomersal as thiomersal is more than vaccines. For example my contact lense solution in bold letters says, THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT CONTAIN THIOMERSAL" Hopefully, the article would explain this.

I agree to limit my posting on this discussion board. My quotes are instantly available when cut and pasted to google. A 2011 Swinburne University of Technology research study CLAIMS "One in 25 grandchildren of pink disease survivors aged 6-12 had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. A family history of pink disease is a significant risk factor for developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD)." Thank you for archiving this. Maybe an EXTERNAL LINK can link to this study once it is peer reviewed and checks out. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20110908-22477.html http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/issue-november-2011/autism-linked-pink-disease.html --96.54.160.222 (talk) 16:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Wakefield

How can this article make no mention of the Andrew Wakefield fraud? It seems a pretty basic part of the whole discussion. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:02, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Well he was a fraud. And he lied. And he is culpable for every death that resulted from parents listening to his crap and not vaccinating their children who then died of preventable diseases. But did he actually use thiomersal as his false boogeyman? In fact, the Wakefield article itself does not mention mercury or thiomersal. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Wakefield was part of the MMR vaccine controversy, which was a completely separate autism-vaccine controversy (MMR never had thiomersal in it). Yobol (talk) 21:19, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd, other nonspecialist publications have made the link between Wakefield's fraud and the lawyers' campaign against thiomersal, such as: [28] [29] [30]. Perhaps I'm not reading deeply enough, but it seems pretty obvious. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:29, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's easy to conflate the two theories, as both came out at about the same time and linked vaccines to autism; however, Wakefield specifically addressed the MMR vaccine, while the thiomersal controversy was popularized by another largely discredited researcher, Mark Geier, as well as the folks over at Generation Rescue. The MMR vaccine never had thiomersal in it, though, and I doubt Wakefield made much fuss about thiomersal as he was too busy trying to promote his own pet theory. Yobol (talk) 21:35, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

My point is simply that in the popular mind it still boils down to "OMG, vaccines would hurt my baby's brain" with only minor thought (if any) given to the mechanism. Each person that knowingly contributed to that hysteria is responsible for the harm done by it. LeadSongDog come howl! 07:29, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, most diatribes about vaccines usually incorporates all sorts of nonsense. There is some justice in Wakefield and Geier, architects of the main theories, are professionally rebuked, if very late. Yobol (talk) 16:40, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Should the article include something on pet vaccines with thiomersal?

The controversy is not just autism. Looking to source the quote, "In 1991 the FDA considered banning Thimerosal from animal vaccines." Did the quote, "The pet vaccine industry took thimerosal out of pet vaccines over ten years ago." Quote, " By 1992, it had been pulled out of dog vaccines and contact lens solution." If this holds up, maybe the article should include a section just on pets. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 21:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry; what is the source for all of this? MastCell ^Talk 22:22, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

If this is true then there should be quality medical sources to support this, don't have that yet. These quotes are repeated in tons of blogs that, "In 1982 the FDA concluded that Thimerosal was too dangerous to include in over-the-counter products. In 1991, Thimerosal was banned from animal vaccines --96.54.160.222 (talk) 23:44, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused as some websites say there is NOT ban for thiomersal for pets and others say there is. --96.54.160.222 (talk) 23:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Even if this is true, it may not be appropriate for the article

Quote, "In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with Thimerosal was dabbed on their umbilical cords." http://www.google.ca/search?q=In+1977,+ten+babies+at+a+Toronto+hospital+died+when+an+antiseptic+preserved+with+Thimerosal+was+dabbed+on+their+umbilical+cords&hl=en&gbv=2&prmd=ivns&ei=rEjhToiULNTWiAL7-5WKDw&start=180&sa=N Looking for newspaper articles. --96.54.160.222 (talk) 23:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Look, you need to stop just throwing unsourced and poorly-sourced quotes onto this talk page. You need to do your own research first, not come here an ask other editors to do your work for you. I'm seriously concerned that you don't understand what constitutes a reliable source for a Wikipedia article, and that you haven't read or don't understand the sources that you have occasionally offered. You've been blocked twice now (once at your 96.54 address, and once as 199.60) for your ongoing battleground approach to this topic; you're still not contributing constructively, and you are likely to be blocked again if you continue in this vein. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're seriously concerned and I am contributing constructively. These are leads, well established in the thiomersal google world. If for example, pets and thiomersal vaccines is an issue, and as wiki readers love their pets, then I would be seriously concerned if the article failed to mention this. This article has a wiki rating as a good article; lets keep it that way. PS NONE OF WHAT I SAY IS ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Here's a published book that mentions Toronto,1977 and the pets etc, usually this is good enough for wiki, but you want five star quality medical peer review papers, and that sets the bar very high. I do source it to show it's LIKEY true. The source is not meant to be used in the article, it's to prove the fact beyond a reasonable doubt. http://books.google.ca/books?id=_Pf1vkK2SsQC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=thimerosal~toronto~1977&source=bl&ots=JJiiNIbh02&sig=ot9ylCvDcqjMKPl_ea3xJMOYfK4&hl=en&ei=sl3hTrbtNezXiALF28mfDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ&safe=strict#v=onepage&q=thimerosal~toronto~1977&f=false Rolling Stones Magazine printed this and they fact check and they said quote, " In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. http://dimension.ucsd.edu/ceimsa-in-exile/ateliers2/a3/art3-23.html --199.60.104.18 (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that the "In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with Thimerosal was dabbed on their umbilical cords" story just isn't true. Like your serious error last week about about Pink's disease in the 1950's, you're quoting from poorly-qualified secondary and tertiary sources that have misunderstood and misreported the scientific record. "Well established in the thiomersal google world" has nothing whatsoever to do with reality, and cannot be relied upon to construct accurate encyclopedia articles.

Citing Rolling Stone and books by fringe advocates doesn't help to advance your point. I ask for high-quality sources because high-quality sources do exist; while I understand that you want to help out here, if you're not prepared to find "five star quality medical peer review papers", then this might not be the best area for you to contribute. As an aside, I will note that the thiomersal controversy (this article) is really just about the effects of thiomersal in vaccines; articles (even studies) relating to the use of thiomersal and other mercury compounds as antiseptics or in other formulations (particularly as they may have been used thirty, sixty, or more years ago) may at best be tangentially be related to this article's topic. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Could you please provide even a fringe source saying this is false. Quote, "In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with Thimerosal was dabbed on their umbilical cords" story just isn't true." Obviously, this urban legend, if it is false would have been called out as false by someone, as it made it into several books etc and is repeated over and over and over again in the google universe, so I look forward to reading that rebuttal. Thank you. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 04:45, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm still waiting on a reliable source from you to even suggest that it's true. You've still not shown a willingness to do basic research in support of the points you're arguing, and you're still failing to even cite a source for your original quotation. Where was the quote originally published, and was it in a reliable source? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:11, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Also sometimes seen as "In 1997..." - evidently a sufficiently uninteresting story to have been ignored by every news agency in Toronto through the past three and a half decades. Hal peridol (talk) 16:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

@ip, you are supposed to provide a reliable source for stuff. A google search is not enough. I can only find a 2008 salon.com article[31]. It doesn't explain if it was just a trial run with 10 babies or if it was given at many babies, if there are any babies who didn't die after receiving it, if the autopsy cited thiomersal as the cause of death, if it was a batch of antiobiotics that had gone bad for reasons not related to thiomersal, etc. And it doesn't cite any source, so we can't even try to extract those details from the original source.

And I only see the same claim, copy/pasted from one advocacy article to other, without ever giving the original source. For example, looking at this 2007 unreliable book[32], they try to give footnotes to all sentences, but they don't give a source for that specific sentence.

I'm willing to bet that it all arises from this 2005 unsourced statement in this self-published book[33] "A study in 1977 showed that 10 of 13 children treated topologically with thimerosal agents in a Toronto hospital for umbilical cord infections died of mercury toxicity. This lead to the removal of the topological antiseptic agents (mercurochrome and merthiolate) from the market." I strongly suggest that you find a reliable source for that statement.

(If possible, the source should also explain how thiomersal antibiotics in umbilical cords are relevant to thiomersal vaccines in 5-6 year old children.)

Summary: find a reliable source for the study. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I found it:

“ A REVIEW OF THIMEROSAL (MERTHIOLATE) AND ITS ETHYLMERCURY. BREAKDOWN PRODUCT: SPECIFIC HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS. REGARDING SAFETY AND EFFECTIVENESS, David A. Geier1, Lisa K. Sykes2, Mark R. Geier3, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 10:575–596, 2007, DOI: 10.1080/10937400701389875

Fagan et al. (1977) published a case series of children who were apparently poisoned by Thimerosal. Fagan et al. (1977) reported, in a study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, that between 1969 and 1975, 13 cases of exomphalos were treated by Thimerosal. The authors analyzed the mercury content in tissues from 10 of the patients who had died. Upon reviewing the test results, the researchers stated:

"The results showed that Thiomersal can induce blood and organ levels of organic mercury which are well in excess of the minimum toxic levels in adults and fetuses . . . Although Thiomersal is an ethyl mercury compound, it has similar toxicological properties to methyl mercury and the long-term neurological sequelae produced by the ingestion of either methyl or ethyl mercury-based fungicides are indistinguishable. (p. 962–963)"

The authors also emphasized, “the fact that mercury readily penetrates intact membranes and is highly toxic seems to have been forgotten. Equally effective and far less toxic broad-spectrum antifungal and antibacterial . . . antiseptics are currently available” (p. 964).

Citing Fagan, D. G., Pritchard, J. S., Clarkson, T. W., and Greenwood, M. R. 1977. Organ mercury levels in infants with omphaloceles treated with organic mercurial antiseptic. Arch. Dis. Child. 52:962–964.

”

So, it was only one of the studies that caused the banning, and it doesn't say that the children died because of the thiomersal. It only suggests that, due to the effects of the same quantities in other age groups "it is extremely unlikely that these infants escape neurological damage, which may be subtle." --Enric Naval (talk) 18:38, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it appears that Mark Geier's research is already cited in our article? As terrible research that has received wide criticism? So much for my idea of using his review in the article :-( --Enric Naval (talk) 18:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

And even if we assume that there is a link between thiomersal and these neonates, and I read the article, and I'm not seeing, but let's assume it, it is synthesis and original research to conclude ANYTHING (I'm going to use caps here, since IP seems to love them) about vaccines that do not have thiomersal, have not had thiomersal, and will not have thiomersal. OK, yes, some vaccines have had or do have thiomersal, but again, how does this study relate to vaccines? it doesn't. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if thiomersal did cause plain, ordinary, uncomplicated mercury poisoning in these cases. In summary, the 1977 paper by Fagan et al. discusses a case series involving neonates with omphaloceles: loops of intestine and/or abominal organs like the liver extending outside the abdominal wall, through the umbilicus. In these neonates, there is a substantial risk of infection, as organs that ought to be safely and securely buried in the abdomen instead are exposed outside the body. From what I gather, the standard of care at the time involved the application of antiseptics to the exposed organs until the condition can be surgically corrected. Among other options, the organomercury antiseptics mercurochrome and thiomersal (merthiolate) were used. Fagan et al. mention the periodic use of 0.1% tincture of thiomersal. (In a half-dozen cases described in the paper, the number of applications of thiomersal ranges from 9 up to 48(!) per patient.) At autopsy, the deceased babies showed highly elevated levels of mercury in blood and tissue, which isn't surprising given the massive amount of antiseptic to which they would have been exposed. A similar issue was raised by Stanley-Brown and Frank in 1971, who reported apparent signs of mercury poisoning in a single omphalocele case treated with 1% and 2% merbromin (mercurochrome) in a letter to JAMA: [34].

What does this have to do with the thiomersal controversy, which relates to thiomersal in vaccines? Precious little, really, except as a point of obfuscation used by advocates who want to confuse. The direct application of significant volumes of 0.1% thiomersal (or 2% mercurochrome) to abdominal organs, up to several times daily, in already-very-sick neonates, cannot legitimately be used as the basis for the evaluation of small volumes (500 uL, perhaps) 0.01% to 0.001% thiomersal administered intramuscularly, at wide intervals, to healthy children. (In rough terms of dose, it's like concluding a single glass of wine is harmful, because drinking a bottle of vodka every day for a week has negative effects.) I think it's also telling that the supposedly corrupt medical establishment had no problem with abandoning the use of mercurial antiseptics in these cases when presented with a few clear studies like these (even though they were based on small sets of patients), just as it only took a few studies to eliminate the use of calomel in teething powders. It's not clear why – and the conspiracy theorists have offered little help in finding an explanation – the evil pharmaceutical industry has been so effective at covering up the deadly effects of thiomersal in vaccines, when they've been so bad at covering up their dangers when used inappropriately. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:58, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

In 1999, a new FDA analysis concluded that infants could receive as much as 187.5 micrograms of ethylmercury during the first six months.

Source: thiomersal wiki article older version before someone tossed it aka vandalized the article. Reference was Ball LK, Ball R, Pratt RD (2001). "An assessment of thimerosal use in childhood vaccines". Pediatrics 107 (5): 1147–54. doi:10.1542/peds.107.5.1147. PMID report Shouldn't the article mention micrograms? Seek permission to undo the thiomersal edit that removed the quote. This would improve the article to include this. --199.60.104.18 (talk) 01:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure why you added the contextless number back into the thiomersal article already; I've removed it. I'm pretty sure you've also been cautioned before about (and blocked for) making personal attacks; it's not appropriate to accuse good-faith editors of vandalism.

Now, since you've recommended that we use the Ball et al. paper, I'm sure that you have read it, and will be able to summarize its conclusions for us...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The reader should be provided with the amount of thiomersal used. Not to provide the amount of micrograms makes the article contextless. Please do not censor this from the reader. Where in the article does in menation micrograms then? How else is the reader to know? --216.18.10.17 (talk) 17:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a heap of all information or the one-stop shop to learn everything about everything. As you have now been told repeatedly, adding a contextless number is a common scare tactic, not "useful information"--it's only useful if readers have some clue how to use it. If you edit-war to insert it, you will surely be blocked for an increasingly long time. If you are looking for a site that lets anyone post anything about anything, then you need to go somewhere other than Wikipedia. WP:CONSENSUS rules here, and you do not have consensus to include it there (just the opposite it appears based on that article's talk-page and policies and guidelines mentioned therein). DMacks (talk) 17:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

As always - - - - - - - - - -> get secondary reliable sources, assessing the relevance of the numbers. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps context regarding the amount of mercury could be provided in light of the 1991 memo from renowned vaccinologist Maurice Hilleman to the head of Merck's vaccine division, Dr. Robert Gordon. [35] This memo was acquired by the Los Angeles Times in 2005 and was the basis for an article on the subject. [36] The memo discusses concerns of Hilleman regarding the mercury load, especially on babies receiving a normal schedule of vaccines at the time. Hilleman, who was responsible for the development of more vaccines than any other person then or since, cautioned Dr. Gordon that "if 8 doses of thimerosal-containing vaccine were given in the first six months of life, the 200 micrograms of mercury given, say to an average size of 12 pounds, would be about 87 times the Swedish daily allowance of 2.3 micrograms of mercury for a baby of that size." MisterSquirrel 07:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MisterSquirrel (talk • contribs)

Providing readers with how much mercury was in the vaccine schedule is a scare tactic? My position is this should be in the thiomersal controversy article at least. Specifics about the quantity is surely better than saying such a small amount that we won't tell you. Why hide this? --199.60.104.18 (talk) 21:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Clearly this belongs in the thiomersal controversy article. --96.54.160.222 (talk) 23:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Saying the same thing from three different IP addresses isn't helpful or constructive, especially when you repeatedly fail to address the concerns other editors have raised. I note that you haven't read the Ball paper that you recommend as a source for this article; haven't you had repeated problems in the past with suggesting the addition of sources that you haven't read and don't understand? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Link

http://www.autism.com/pro_research_methionine.asp

This link gives experimental evidence showing that thiomersal shuts down methionine synthase. Do the sources it cites seem legit? I'm not interested in investigating myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.225.126 (talk) 17:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:MEDRS we use secondary reviews, not primary studies in our articles for medical claims, so mention of this does not belong in this article based on this primary source. Yobol (talk) 17:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

The evidence favors a link

This talk page is a forum to discuss specific improvements to the article, not a forum for long expositions of editors' personal viewpoints and ideology.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
>>According to a recent article which forms the most in depth review of the literature on heavy metal toxicity and autism to date: "To summarize, of the 58 empirical reports on autism and heavy metal toxins, 43 suggest some link may be present, while 13 reports found no link. Even with the tendency for null results not to be reported, it cannot be said there is no evidence for a link between heavy metal toxins and autism: although the question may still be open-in sum, the evidence favors a link." -- Mary Catherine DeSoto and Robert T. Hitlanby; Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, vol 70, No 2, pg 172, 2010; FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://www.ane.pl/pdf/7021.pdf (last retrieved: April 14th, 2012.) ps: To anyone who would advance the collective effort to better understand autism: Perhaps you should first try to befriend, and understand, at least one full-blown autistic person (of which there are tens of thousands). And until you've had success with that (in your heart of hearts) perhaps you should keep your uninformed opinions (and / or stifling editorial stances) on an appropriately short leash. (This article currently reads like it was prepared by Eli-Lilly's defence council; which, given their actions with the US homeland security bill, is actually not nearly as far fetched as I would like to believe.) << Seipjere (talk) 19:32, 14 April 2012 (UTC) I don't believe that knowing an autistic person, or being a parent to an autistic child, is a requirement for scientific analysis of data. In fact, like surgeons, having an unemotional detachment from the analysis will be a foundation for a more unbiased review of data. It is pretty annoying that you would think any editor here is uninformed. I am not uninformed, and, in fact, quite knowledgeable about both the science behind neurodevelopmental disorders along with vaccines. I have only made one edit to this article, which was promptly reverted for strange reasons, yet I find this article quite neutral, accurate, and well-source. As for the article above, I will have to make three points. First, DeSoto is supported by the Age of Autism, and anti-vaccination group. Second, she is a psychologist, with little or no training in pharmacology, biochemistry and meta-analyses. Third, it is published in a low impact journal. However, if you feel that it adds anything to this article, I would suggest you assume good faith on the parts of all editors, write a balanced sentence or two that accurately states the position of this article with respect to the hundreds of other articles that do not support this point of view, and add it to the article. If you're just going to write "All the other citations are rubbish, and this represents the One Truth™," I believe the color of your statement will cloud any neutrality. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 20:05, 14 April 2012 (UTC) >>I repeat: THE PREPONDERANCE OF PRIMARY EMPIRICAL DATA HAS FAVOURED THE HEAVY METAL AUTISM HYPOTHESIS. Accordingly, I believe both this article (and thimerosal's parent article) should reflect that fact. (After reading DeSoto & Hitlanby I believe the vast majority of readers would find them to be thorough in their research, concise in their writing, comprehensive in their scope, and cautious with their conclusions. In fact, I believe more people would take issue with the degree of caution with which their conclusions seam to have been tempered than with any other aspect of their writing.) Taking DeSoto & Hitlanby at their word (as I believe we should) we can conclude that their are at least 43 independently published peer-reviewed primary data sets (as of 09-10) to indicate that the tone of this article is presently inappropriate (and only 13 which suggest otherwise). Therefore, it's fair to say that it should be rebalanced (in it's entirety) appropriately. Ps (1): IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO JUDGE FOR YOURSELF (re. DeSoto & Hitlanby, and the 43 datasets they evaluated and I referenced) THE FULL PUBLICATION (and bibliography) CAN BE READ HERE: http://www.ane.pl/pdf/7021.pdf (2): I stand by my earlier comments, (though I apologize if I offended anyone, that was not my intention. It's just that for many of our friends and neighbours, at the centre of this discussion, the only chance they have at being better understood is us; personally, I believe this fact should be taken to heart). (3): Remember: Being wrong feels like being right (until you've learned your lesson).<< Seipjere (talk) 00:54, 17 April 2012 (UTC) Actually the preponderance of medical data debunks the assertion. Sorry. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 00:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC) I don't think this particular source will be useful for us, per WP:WEIGHT, we can't use an article from a low impact Polish journal to dispute the overwhelming consensus that thiomersal does not cause autism (as evidence by the IOM, WHO, etc). Yobol (talk) 01:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC) I'm more troubled that the author is an Age of Autism shill, but we can't judge an article based on the biases of the author. Unless we can?SkepticalRaptor (talk) 01:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC) Anyone who has followed this controversy will recognize the authors as having published a controversial paper about thiomersal before as well. The association of the authors is certainly a red-flag, but we don't need to get into those weeds here; introducing this paper as a counterweight against scientific consensus is a clear violation of WP:WEIGHT. Yobol (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC) Thanks. I'll be critiquing that article off-wiki when I discuss the anti-vaccine crowd. Very useful. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 02:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC) That's really a terrible paper; aside from coming from dubious authors in a low-impact journal, the method of 'counting papers that agree with us' is a dreadful method by which to perform a meta-analysis. Real meta-analyses actually aren't shy about evaluating the studies they include, assigning appropriate weights to different types and qualities of evidence, or – for that matter – even basic things like presenting a list of the studies that were included in their counts. DeSoto and Hitlanby's analysis would assign exactly the same weight to a single-patient case report as it would to a properly-blinded, thousand-patient, multicenter, longitudinal study. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC) I agree. After reading the paper, it seems that either the authors are unaware of how to conduct a serious systematic review, or else the paper is simply intended to impress a scientifically unsophisticated audience. It speaks poorly for the authors, the peer reviewers, and the journal in which this was published. MastCell Talk 04:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC) The two of you sound like your expectations were somewhat higher than mine. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 04:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC) On the contrary, I suspect that the paper entirely met our expectations. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC) “A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get it's pants on.” - Winston Churchill On the subject of DeSoto and Hitlan’s earlier (2007) “questionable” review of the flawed 2004 Ip et al Autism Spectrum Disorder children's mercury-blood study The data in question is from the first published study comparing blood mercury levels of Autistic Spectrum Disordered (ASD) children with a control group (‘Ip et al 2004’). The data was based on 7 year old kids (in Hong Kong) and the original study [foolishly] concluded that, quote: “there is no causal relationship between mercury and as an environmental neurotoxin and autism.” [sic] - Ip et al 2004 . It was cited 9 times as ‘definitive’ by a number of early pro-thimerosalers (if you will - Eric Fombonne, Paul Shattuck, and others) long before the data had been released or any of the ‘results’ confirmed. In 2007 DeSoto and Hitlan noticed, based on the limited published results, that the published p value was grossly incorrect. (It was skewed in favour of Ip et al's would be conclusions.) They (D&H) wrote to the publisher’s editor (Roger Brumback, Journal of Child Neurology) and after a couple of corrections (by both the journal and the secondary author of the study) the raw data was published. Subsequently, it became embarrasingly clear that practically the entire data-set had been skewed in favour of their (Ip et al's) conclusions. So, DeSoto and Hitlan published [http://www.hbotnm.com/BloodHg.pdf a short re-analysis (the only peer reviewed published analysis of the corrected data to come of the flawed study). And even though it’s terribly inconvenient for many to admit (i.e. ‘epiwonk’, Frombonne, Shattuck...), basically - compared to practically everyone else - DeSotto&Hitlan got it (Ip et al) right; while everyone 'following the controversy’ didn’t. Here’s a few quotes from D&H's more respectable pseudonymous detractor, 'epiwonk', (an emotionally biased ex-CDC senior prenatal / childhood disease epidemiologist, who was paid to man the US's child safety switch through the late 90s and early 2000s, and who, in his retirement, has courted a myriad of sheeple blogosphere followers): On the subject of the Ip study (i.e. the corrected data) "The first thing I always do — and I always told my students to do this — is to actually LOOK at the data. … Is there a difference between these two distributions? And how would we characterize the difference? It looks like the main difference is that the ASD cases have more mercury blood values at the upper end of the distribution than do the controls. By ‘the upper end of the distribution’ I mean values greater than 25 nmol/L. In fact, that’s just what’s going on. Of the 54 controls, there were only 5 children with blood mercury levels greater than 25 (and the greatest value was 42). Of the 81 ASD cases, there were 21 children with values greater than 25, with 4 values between 41 and 45 and a high value of 59. ... and one of his better conclusions (again on Ip): ... “Shattuck should never have cited Ip et al. as a recent study that “failed to establish a connection between [mmr] vaccination or the use of mercury-based vaccine preservative and autism.” Fombonne et al. should not have cited Ip et al. as a biological study of ethylmercury exposure that “failed to support the thimerosal hypothesis.” [sic] Footnote the more recent CHARGE study results (which have been widely purported to have “put the final nail in the coffin of the mercury hypothesis” - the strongest of the 13 studies on the other side of D&H’s 2009 ledger) is also sort of meaningless. i.e. The question / subject of inorganic mercury brain burdens (and how they seem to bare little or no relation to long-term mercury blood levels) was -- has thus far been, thoroughly overlooked. All the best, respectfully yours, Seipjere (talk) 15:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC) This talk page is for improvement of the article, not argument about the subject. - Yobol (talk) 16:06, 11 July 2012‎ (UTC)

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Seipjere (talk) 22:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Do not do this. See WP:TPNO. Do not continue to engage in WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior. Do not characterize the comments of your fellow editors as "shoddy" or "biased". See WP:CIVIL. Failure to adhere to the Wikipedia policies and guidelines you are being pointed to will probably result in the restriction of your editing capabilities. Zad68 22:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Zad, drop the policy puritanism, get off your high-horse and help forge a consensus. Seipjere (talk) 12:04, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh snap! Take that Zad. TippyGoomba (talk) 05:54, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Egregious Error in Thimerosal Exposures within the 2004 IOM 'Vaccines & Autism' report

This talk page is a forum to discuss specific improvements to the article, not a forum for long expositions of editors' personal viewpoints and ideology.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
While trying to get to the bottom of the science on DeSoto & Hitlan’s 2007 review paper (re the corrected Ip et al 2004 data-set [re. the 'discussion' underway in the Evidence Favours A Link section of this page] I was reviewing the US Immunization Safety Review Committee’s final (8th) ‘Vaccines and Autism’ (2004) report and on page 39; here's what we find: "Recommended limits on methylmercury exposure: EPA: 0.1 μg/kg body weight/day; ATSDR: 0.3 μg/kg body weight/day; FDA: 0.4 μg/kg body weight/day; WHO: 3.3 μg/kg body weight/week" - Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism page 39 pdf (and) html here AND, Directly above we find this: TABLE 1 [ Upper Portion ] Estimated Exposure to Mercury from Vaccines in United States in 1999 and in 2004 ( [Infants] <6 months of age) Vaccines 1999 2004 Maximum Mercury Dose (μg) Maximum Mercury Dose (μg) 3 doses of DTaP† 75.0 μg <0.9 3 doses of Hep B‡ 37.5 μg <1.5 3 doses of HIB 75.0 μg 0 TOTAL 187.5 μg <2.4 TABLE 1 [lower portion] Estimated Exposure to Mercury from Vaccines in 1999 and in 2004 ([Infants]< 2 years of age) Vaccines 1999 2004 Maximum Mercury Dose (μg) Maximum Mercury Dose (μg) 4 doses of DTaP† 100 μg <1.2 3 doses of Hep B 37.5 μg <1.5 4 doses of HIB 100 μg 0 3 doses of influenza* **[37.5] μg **37.5 μg TOTAL 237.5 [275] μg < 40.2 μg ???????? So, based on the 0.1 μg/kg of body weight/day EPA limit the average baby who got their shots between 1991 and 2003 (who would have had either 62.5 μg or 75 μg of mercury on each of the 3 or 4 days of their vaccine schedule) would have to have weighed either 312.5 kg (687.5 lbs) or 375 kg (825 lbs) to be EPA safe!! [NOTE 1: That's if we treat ethylmercury (thimerosal) as if it were half as toxic as methylmercury (The standards quoted at the top of the section refer to methylmercury; the only study I've looked at on the subject so far (on infant monkeys, in 2005, by Burbacher et al.) actually found that thimerosal contributed significantly more mercury to the brain than a comparable oral exposure of methylmercury. [CLARIFICATION: i.e. significantly more long term (on account of the different ratios, and half lives, of organic Hg to inorganic Hg) Seipjere (talk) 14:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)] But, unlike the reports authors, I thought I'd be conservative. (If we were to consider ethyl and methyl to be on par with one another those hypothetical babies need to be twice as heavy)] [NOTE 2: The author(s) arrived at their conclusion of "safety" by averaging the total mercury exposures (which are given in bolus / bulk doses) over a 26 week period (No, that's not a typo.) That's like determining that a guy who chugged 14 beers before taking his El Camino for a joy ride wasn't drunk because he hadn't drank anything the previous week (; i.e. he only averaged 2 beers a day).] Seipjere (talk) 06:17, 26 May 2012 (UTC) This page is for discussing how to improve the article, not for your own data analysis. That said: there's a reason why it's usually experts who make such an analysis. You're assuming that it's invalid to base the exposure limits on a 26 week period, the expert committee saw it as valid. I'm not a toxicologist so right now I don't know why this was done (perhaps because it takes 26 weeks until all the mercury is excreted?), but there's no reason to give your opinion more weight than that of an expert committee. Actually, there's a policy that says your analysis shouldn't be given any weight, so unless reliable scientific sources say that these limits are wrong, there's nothing to discuss here. --Six words (talk) 07:44, 26 May 2012 (UTC) Six words got it all right, but let me give you one simple criticism. The reason you could find only one poorly designed, poorly analyzed (but very popular with the Age of Autism crowd) is because the study shows nothing, and researchers tend to dismiss badly designed studies. You also are guilty of confirmation bias, only finding the one lame study that supports your POV, but ignoring the dozens of others that show that you're hypothesis was nullified. But Six words is right. You are providing original research which is deprecated on Wikipedia. Find something, discuss it, and maybe we'll include it. SkepticalRaptor (talk) 19:42, 28 May 2012 (UTC) Perhaps context regarding the amount of mercury could be provided in light of the 1991 memo from renowned vaccinologist Maurice Hilleman to the head of Merck's vaccine division, Dr. Robert Gordon. [37] This memo was acquired by the Los Angeles Times in 2005 and was the basis for an article on the subject. [38] The memo discusses concerns of Hilleman regarding the mercury load, especially on babies receiving a normal schedule of vaccines at the time. Hilleman, who was responsible for the development of more vaccines than any other person then or since, cautioned Dr. Gordon that "if 8 doses of thimerosal-containing vaccine were given in the first six months of life, the 200 micrograms of mercury given, say to an average size of 12 pounds, would be about 87 times the Swedish daily allowance of 2.3 micrograms of mercury for a baby of that size." MisterSquirrel 07:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MisterSquirrel (talk • contribs) [NOTE: This comment was retrieved from a previously deleted thread (on practically the same topic) which has yet to be addressed by this article. (I've notified MisterSquirrel(talk), and the emphasis added is my own. Seipjere (talk) 19:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC) ] Unless you have something more than original research there is nothing to address. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:04, 24 July 2012 (UTC) The theoretical amount of thiomersal introduced at an early age due to vaccination is already discussed at length in the 2nd paragraph of the "History" section. To say it hasn't been addressed is incorrect. Yobol (talk) 21:08, 24 July 2012 (UTC) Thanks for pointing that out to me. The important point here, that seams to have been lost on so many contributors to this article, is that all those guidelines are quite explicit, and strictly speaking, the amount of thimerosal in the typical vaccine schedule grossly exceeded all of them (by large magnitudes). Again: the limits are as follows: "Recommended limits on methylmercury exposure: EPA: 0.1 μg/kg body weight/day; ATSDR: 0.3 μg/kg body weight/day; FDA: 0.4 μg/kg body weight/day; WHO: 3.3 μg/kg body weight/week" So, please explain to me how, when the average shot contained 25μg of mercury, and the average infant weighs next to nothing, and multiple injections were given on the same day (sometimes on the day of birth), "the vaccine schedule for infants did not exceed FDA...ATSDR... or WHO guidelines on mercury exposure"? (as is foolishly stated in this article) [ps: that's a rhetorical question ] - Seipjere (talk) 00:27, 25 July 2012 (UTC) We don't use our own calculations, we use those from reliable sources, such as the FDA. Yobol (talk) 01:38, 25 July 2012 (UTC) Tell me something I don't already know. The so called "calculations" (foolishly referenced in the main article) by the FDA, that you defer to, is no such thing. It is, in fact, just a regurgitation of the canned line from the 2004 (8th) IOM report. And thus, it offers no intelligible justification for the creative extrapolations used by it's original author (i.e pro-rating the mercury safety limits, AND averaging the bolus/bulk mercury doses over 6 month, and two year, time frames. (There's nothing 'original' or 'novel' about me pointing this out; it's plain fact.) And, moreover, the FDA document (which is used as the reference in the main article) clearly points out that: "To address the issue of conflicting methylmercury exposure guidelines, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to study the toxicological effects of methylmercury and provide recommendations on the establishment of a scientifically appropriate methylmercury reference dose. Their report concluded that the EPA's current reference dose, the RfD, for methylmercury, 0.1 µg/kg/day is a scientifically justifiable level for the protection of human health." Again, that was 0.1 µg/kg/day. And FYI, there are tens of thousands of 3kg (and under) babies getting 12.5µg (of mercury) flu shots as we speak. (No wonder you don't like calculations.) - Seipjere (talk) 03:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC) As has been explained to you already, we are not allowed to do our own calculations (i.e. over how many days we calculate each dose is over). When you find an equally reliable source as the FDA we can discuss this further, otherwise this is going nowhere, and I will not waste any more time on this. Yobol (talk) 03:17, 25 July 2012 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a venue for editors to expound their personal interpretations of the Institute of Medicine report -- Mastcell (talk) 03:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC) Hatting a part of a talkpage is a particularly pointless thing to editwar over. Stop it. Now, does anybody have any new suggestions - within policy - for improving the article? bobrayner (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2012 (UTC) Sans reliable sources, one editor who continues to use this talk page as their personal forum to push a unsupported idea seems to be a perfect place to hat a part of a talk page. Or did you not read what several responsible editors have said in reply to this one editor? SkepticalRaptor (talk) 21:16, 25 July 2012 (UTC) Seipjere, although I well understand you might have a very strong opinion about the subject, you have to respect that Wikipedia is not a medium for promotion of your research and concepts. Feel free to keep your own blog or website, or even write articles for respectable newspapers and link them here. However, the policy of this website states absolutely clearly that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought and if you want to contribute here you have no choice but to follow this. kashmiri 07:57, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

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Seipjere (talk) 99.225.12.111 (talk) 12:15, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Autism

what causes autism.2602:306:C5E8:9F20:3C89:6F94:7B12:118A (talk) 06:01, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:Autism#Causes. TippyGoomba (talk) 06:55, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Social phenomenom, sociology?

This stuff is an interesting sopcial phenomenom. (It isn't any other sort of science). It is an interset between antivaccinationists - who seize on anything vaguely plausible, with the intention of convincing people vaccination is bad, not with any intention of investigating anything, and produce material having an occasional similarity to scientific writing - and people worried by or seeking someone at fault to claim redress from for their autistic child. The consequences of the latter are not intended, and of the former are intended, and are damaging to society. Midgley (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

'Questioning Thimerosal's Safety' -- Controversial Material Needed

The article is about an enormous controversy, and not a single shred of "controversial" material is adequately described.

Clearly there is a need for a Questioning Thimerosal's safety section, where damning and "controversial" research can be appropriately cited and described.

Seipjere (talk) 13:29, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:SODOIT. TippyGoomba (talk) 17:54, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Go for it. I suspect you may have problems finding RS that live up to WP:MEDRS, but bring what you find to this talk page, with suggested format/wording for inclusion, and there may be something that can be used. -- Brangifer (talk) 19:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hogwash. We have an entire section as to why some might have considered thiomersal unsafe, cited to high quality secondary reviews. Any suggestions for inclusion would be appreciated, but only if they meet the high quality standards already set in the article. Attempts to give undue weight to fringe positions will not be successful. Yobol (talk) 19:53, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, so let's see what (s)he finds. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:57, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I, aka he, ask(s) you to bare with him (me). (I'm very busy and I don't expect to have enough time for this until the winter.)

But, since I'm here, I should remind Yobol and company that there's hardly any actual science discussed in that nutrient deprived horse manure section (s)he (Yobol) referrenced; (It's heavily biased and almost entirely predicated upon unsettled, early stage, speculative, and / or false presumptions;) E.g. here...

Sorry for the long delay, and I appreciate the patience;

respectfully, Seipjere (talk) 13:09, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

With respect to animal studies, the Rationale for concern section in its present version, cites only the DeStefano refutal article without giving a slightest bit of explanation of its conclusions, or citing the animal studies that predate or follow it (BTW, the links generated by Wikipedia have the article hidden behind paywalls; an URL to publically available copy would be useful).

Actually, as is, the DeStefano article citation would more properly belong in the Scientific evaluation section instead of Rationale for concern, but I'd rather vote for leaving it in place, while putting it in proper context:

There is a host of animal studies that find neutotoxicity effects in animals and these are the main vehicle of raising concerns that have any amount of scientific weight behind them.

Some of those are cited in the DeStefano refutal article. Some have occured later, like the this 2007-09 animal study the publication of which predates the cited DeStefano article by only a month so it could not be taken into account there. Its translation into English is already publicized on sarnet.org, a site with strong anti-vaccination bias. It would be interesting to have the quality of the translation from Spanish being independently assessed, BTW.

Citing the conclusions of that animal study in English: The administration of thimerosal in doses equivalent to vaccines content was associated with low corporal weight, low encephalon weight and smaller stature in postnatal hamsters. Neurotoxic effects were also produced at encephalic level, at hippocampus (regions CA1, CA3, DG), cerebral cortex and cerebellum (Purkinje cells and granuloses cells) with decrease in neuronal density, neuronal necrosis, axonal dismyelinization and gliosis. In addition, risk increase in developing any of these alterations was high in the animal group receiving thimerosal.

This can easily lead anyone to assume that there are valid scientific reasons for concern with Thiomersal when administered to humans.

The WP:MEDRS#Avoid_over-emphasizing_single_studies.2C_particularly_in_vitro_or_animal_studies does a good job of explaining that animal studies don't necessarily translate to clinical effects in humans and a similar paragraph should accompany the DeStefano citation in the current article.

IMHO the Rationale for concern section should cite the most significant animal studies that Thiomersal human neurotoxicity proponents are likely to refer to, followed by a proper citation/rephrasing of the WP:MEDRS#Avoid_over-emphasizing_single_studies.2C_particularly_in_vitro_or_animal_studies section, and finally the current citation of the DeStefano refutal article coming last. Otherwise, the DeStefano refutal article citation lacks necesary context and leaves a general impression of one-sidedness and bias of the Wikipedia article and doesn't do a good job of informing people seeking an objective view addressing both sides of the argument.

--Aleksander.adamowski (talk) 12:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

New-ish paper

I was searching PubMed for mercury and autism and I stumbled across this interesting paper from 2011 [39] which contends there might be a link between the two. I am posting it here so I can get some feedback on it and why it is not mentioned in this article. Jinkinson talk to me 20:55, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem I see there is that it suffers from the "beautiful theory...killed by an ugly fact" problem. The author strings together a lot of references to support an elegant chain of arguments—but the epidemiological data doesn't show a reduction in autism incidence following the removal of thiomersal from (most or all) childhood vaccines. To be fair, he does bite the bullet and admit this in the middle of the introduction:

It seems logical to make the assumption that vaccination is a cause of autism due to the simular temporal period in which the first signs of autism occur and modern vaccination schedules are administered. However, numerous epidemiological studies reviewed by Schultz (2010) are not able to support such an association and those that do have some severe limitations. Another more recent study was not able to support a clear association between increased risk of autism and Hg-containing vaccinations (Price et al. 2010). Despite the lack of a clear association based on epidemiological studies...

He's giving us the "cellular perspective" in his paper because a clinical or epidemiological perspective just doesn't support his conclusions. I would be very reluctant for us to include a paper in this article (which, after all, deals with thiomersal) that could be briefly summarized as There's a decade of good epidemiological studies which failed to detect any link between thiomersal and autism. Now I'm going to talk about why thiomersal might cause autism. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm back, this time with a really new paper, published earlier this month by Jose G. Dorea (whose Wikipedia article I just created). The paper, which is a secondary source, concluded that "mercury load in fetuses, neonates, and infants resulting from TCVs remains in blood of neonates and infants at sufficient concentration and for enough time to penetrate the brain and to exert a neurologic impact and a probable influence on neurodevelopment of susceptible infants." Again, I am not anti-vaccine and I realize that all the epidemiological studies say thimerosal doesn't cause autism, I'm just curious as to whether it should be added to this article (it almost certainly shouldn't). Here is the paper: [40] Note: it is hidden behind a $60+ paywall. Jinkinson talk to me 01:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems a bit odd that Dorea - a nutritionist - is publishing in this area. I'll take a look at the article later. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 05:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Use of primary sources

I recently removed some primary sources from the article, a couple of which were epidemiological studies with low N (<2000); I wanted to ask for feedback on this. The article already has plenty of primary studies with N in the tens of thousands or higher, so I don't see the benefit of including ones which are inherently much less reliable. In the worst case, I think the space they take could be construed as giving them too much WP:WEIGHT relative to the large primary studies. (Also, IMO addition of less-reliable sources tends to dilute the conclusions rather than strengthen it. We should be minimizing primary sources per MEDRS in any case.) My removals were contested here though not reverted, so I'm opening a talk section. I was also informed that there are other small-N studies in the article which I missed - I found two, but I will hold off edits pending discussion.

List of sources and Ns (the first two are the ones I already removed)

• n = 1403: Tozzi AE, Bisiacchi P, Tarantino V; et al. (2009). "Neuropsychological performance 10 years after immunization in infancy with thimerosal-containing vaccines". Pediatrics. 123 (2): 475–82. doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0795. PMID 19171612. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• n = 305 (mothers), 321 (children): Miles, J. H.; Takahashi, T. N. (2007). "Lack of association between Rh status, Rh immune globulin in pregnancy and autism". American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A. 143A (13): 1397–1407. doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.31846. PMID 17508426.
• n = 1047: Thompson WW, Price C, Goodson B; et al. (2007). "Early thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological outcomes at 7 to 10 years". N Engl J Med. 357 (13): 1281–92. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa071434. PMID 17898097. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• n = 256: Price CS, Thompson WW, Goodson B; et al. (2010). "Prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins and risk of autism". Pediatrics. 126 (4): 656–64. doi:10.1542/peds.2010-0309. PMID 20837594. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

--Sunrise (talk) 01:36, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the whole "Population studies" section is problematic: this article is attempting to be a review article itself! It's also mostly a hard-to-read "shopping list" of primary study findings, which for a GA is rather surprising. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 06:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

True - I just identified the most apparent problems. I think a case could be made for the use of at least some of the remaining studies, but I won't argue it either way. Since it's been a couple of days and the editor who objected hasn't made further comments, I've removed the other two studies I mentioned above. I know I could wait longer before going ahead, but I'm trying to focus my Wikipedia time on other articles right now. Feel free to do what you like with my edits. :-) Sunrise (talk) 20:12, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Andrew Wakefield

I believe that Andrew Wakefield should be included in this article since it's was his study that started this controversy. I have some links that can be used for this, but I am not sure which section to put it in.

American Academy of Pediatrics This is a link to a page refuting the claims in the original study done by Wakefield. The Lancet This is the original study done by Wakefield which you can see has been retracted. Mitziferret (talk) 16:12, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Wakefield started the MMR vaccine controversy, which is different from the the thiomersal controversy (the MMR vaccine did not contain thiomersal). 17:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Growth of Autism

The article says "It is unknown how much, if any, growth came from changes in autism's prevalence". That is no longer the case. --Hiperfelix (talk) 01:39, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

History of the extent of use

What is the trend in the usage of thiomersal, from its introduction to the present day, with emphasis on the effects of the USPHS and AAP precautionary recommendations? The data could take the form of the percentage of doses that contain it, the total number of doses per year that contain it, the total amount used per year, the amount per dose in the vaccines that use it, and similar. I would think that some people are keeping track of that kind of thing and have written it down somewhere.CountMacula (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

This is not a forum, you might have more luck asking questions like this at the Reference Desk --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:31, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Minor criticism, request for elaboration

I happen to be autistic and pro-vaccines. And I understand if an article about a scientific controversy has to have some standards for what kind of fringe ideas it deals with (since there is an infinite number of them), but I would've liked to see a deeper explaination of why thiomersal, which is toxic to bacteria, is thought to not affect one's neural development. Also, it's not really clear to me why evidence relating to mercury poisoning or methylmercury is relevant to thiomersal. Are the claims against using thiomersal that thiomersal causes the same mercury poisoning as methylmercury or metallic mercury?

I suppose it's pointless of me to point out that the article seems rather... one-sided. For one, I think it's quite underhanded to put the "pro-thiomersal" arguments under a big, fat headline called "Scientific evaluation". And then I don't feel that segment does a very good job pointing out what the claims against thiomersal are. Which gives the impression that the article gets to pick and choose which claims to argue about (which reads as strawman-bashing). Maybe that's normal in these kinds of articles. I get that you don't want to air total nonsense, and that you want to promote public health, but the article reads like a press release from the CDC. And I'm a big supporter of the CDC. For that matter, I'm a big supporter of autism. I wish more people were like me.

Emil Sørensen — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.50.45.192 (talk) 23:58, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Emil, we can include references to discussions the purported harms if we can find a reliable source. For medical topics that usually requires a study or article that has been peer reviewed by experts and published in a reputable medical or scientific journal. I expect that the reason may seem "one sided" is that the other side has yet to present a case in any forum other than the tabloids. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:35, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Does the European Union have a position on this?

I see a lot of U.S. agencies but often there are differences between findings of American agencies and European Union ones. Does the EU have differing view(s) in this case on this? If so it would be nice to hear it in an objective way. CaribDigita (talk) 03:26, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm a bit uncertain about what you are specifically referring to. Vaccine policies in the EU and the USA are pretty much aligned. There are no truly significant differences, at least when it comes to mainstream support of the value of vaccination programs. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:54, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

CDC scientist granted Federal Whistleblower Status, says CDC suppressed evidence of link between Thiomersal and Autism

It is amazing that this whistle blower information is not included in this page about the controversy, as it totally changes the available evidence:

Dr. William S. Thompson, a scientist from the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has been granted protection by Obama administration under Federal whistle blower protection laws and he reveals that CDC & drug companies intentionally suppressed information for 10 years that there is strong evidence that mercury based preservative Thiomersal aka thimerosal in immunization shots causes Autism.

Watch the Astonishing documentary "TRACE AMOUNTS" which also explains why Austism is much more frequent in boys than girls. which also discussed other neurological problems due to mercury poisoning in the brain, even causing problems in adults given flu shots or tetanus shots.

A US Congressman gives a short statement to the house about this here (5 minutes):

Other coverage here:

Many other references can be found by searching on google for "federal whistleblower autism vaccine"

Note that I believe that mercury based preservatives have been removed from most (perhaps all) immunization shots now - but worth checking before you let anyone stick a needle into you or your child.

Also important to note that the mercury compounds were included as a preservative not the intended active ingredient in the immunization shot, so this is not evidence against immunisation in general.

217.140.96.140 (talk) 10:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Do you have a source for this claim which complies with our WP:MEDRS guidelines? --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Here is a link http://www.jpands.org/jpands1101.htm

Arydberg (talk) 03:38, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I can confirm that that is, indeed, a link. Not sure what it's good for, though. It appears to be a decade-old table of contents from the wingnut Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:19, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

A bit of a summary in snopes.com [41]. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

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Pro-vaxxer bias

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This whole article is completely one-sided. There is a wealth of info with dozens of published studies showing the dangers of vaccines. I'm too lazy to publish all of the links here, but anyone who wants to take a look at this video can do the work of copying down all the links to all the studies showing the dangers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ixbGlHTTI

I suspect my comment will be removed due to some type of Wiki policy violation. Let the countdown to removal begin.

Joelrosenblum (talk) 08:40, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Joelrosenblum, please add sections at the end of talk pages, rather than the start. I have moved your comment to the proper location. As for your concern about bias, Wikipedia includes content to reflect reliable sources. There are indeed plenty of publications alleging some danger associated with vaccines, as you state, but not published in reliable sources. The medical and scientific evidence is overwhelming and supports a very broad consensus on the question. The problem you have is not with the content of this article, or its editors, or even with Wikipedia policy – it is with masses of evidence that supports a conclusion with which you disagree, and with those advocating that there is a danger for utterly failing to produce definitive evidence that withstands rigorous scrutiny and justifies standard sources publishing it. Wikipedia's perspective favours the content of reliable sources, which you might call a bias, but we will adapt content when consensus and sources justify it. I would say that is consistent with an encyclopedia reflecting reality as it is understood. It can be wrong or need adjusting in light of new information, but only when that information leads to changes in (in this case) medical and scientific consensus... and we follow such changes, rather than advocating for them. I am a scientist and am persuaded by evidence, but as a Wikipedian, I would not change content based on my evaluation of evidence without sources backing that interpretation. My view of the dangers of vaccines is that most such claims have been refuted, which is what this article also says, citing the evidence to support it. When evidence is available that is tested, published in reliable sources, and leads to a re-evaluation by the medical and scientific communities, Wikipedia will include it in articles. However, advocacy that the existing consensus is wrong is not suitable for inclusion in an article. In short, if you want to change Wikipedia's coverage of the world, change the world first... don't try to change the world by changing Wikipedia because we are the reflection of reality. If you don't like your reflection in a mirror, it doesn't help to change the mirror. EdChem (talk) 09:42, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

EdChem, can you elaborate on the overwhelming evidence in support of safety of vaccines? Current CDC schedule has never been in clinical trials.

The individual vaccines have all been rigorously tested for safety before being approved for use. There is no reason to believe to believe they are unsafe to give together. The whole "vaccine overload" thing (if that's what you're getting at) is based on a misunderstanding of immunology. Please see here [42]. If you have further questions or suggestions for or about the ACIP process, I suggest you call or write to them about these questions or suggestions/concerns you have. Also, I recommend you read this article [43]. Lastly, what does this have to do with thimerosal? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 20:04, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

TylerDurden8823, "There is no reason to believe to believe they are unsafe to give together" - is there a reason to think otherwise without clinical trials? If vaccines are that safe, then why wouldn't we administer them all in one day at birth to further reduce the risk of preventable diseases?

Yes, there is a reason to think otherwise. Humongous amounts of real-world clinical experience is just one. People receive multiple vaccines together everyday with no problem all over the world. If you read the second article I linked to, it explains very clearly why certain vaccines are given at certain times in life and we don't simply give all available vaccines at once when a baby is born. There are important physiologic/immunologic reasons. Also, do you have a specific change to propose for this article? If so, please present it here. Otherwise, please see WP:NOTFORUM. Thank you. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 06:59, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Title

We have apparent consensus that the current title is acceptable but some good faith comments to the effect that it could be firmer.

I can think of a few possible titles, including the suggestion above and excluding the clearly rejected "controversy":

1. Thiomersal and vaccines (current)
2. Safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines
3. Safety of thiomersal in vaccines

Is it worth exploring an alternative? Any more ideas? Guy (Help!) 10:47, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines sounds good to me. Tornado chaser (talk) 17:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

I would say don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This isn't a bad title, and we could have long-standing debate (already have) about a better title to no agreement. MartinezMD (talk) 22:30, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

My personal perspective is that the current title and Safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines are equivalent in NPOV and justifiability. They are both neutral and eye-catching. I would say err on the side of caution and keep the status quo.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 16:03, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm also happy with "Safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines". --Project Osprey (talk) 16:40, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

News

• The Risk of Autism Is Not Increased by "Too Many Vaccines Too Soon"

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Spelling of thiomersal

The title and name of this preservative is misspelled. It is spelled Thimerosal, not Thiomersal. 97.85.91.212 (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

The spelling used in this article – thiomersal – is the generic International Nonproprietary Name, rather than the U.S. equivalent, thimerosal. It's not a misspelling. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:21, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Debunked conspiracy theory

A new New York Times article describes the Thiomersal-vaccine link as a "debunked conspiracy theory." --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:39, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Poor wording

many parents continue to hold on to their belief that such a link exists.[14] These parents share the viewpoint that autism is not just treatable

This combined statement is incorrect. Not all of these parents share that viewpoint. Jkister (talk) 23:39, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

The statement does not say "all" or even "most" parents, so there is nothing wrong with the statement.MartinezMD (talk) 01:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Lead issues

The lead says that this is being pushed by anti-vax activists, but then says Controversies around thiomersal were sustained (though not initially created) by plaintiffs' lawyers and anti-vaccination activists Which leaves the reader wondering "who or what initially created the controversy?" The lead should summarize how the controversy originated and then was perpetuated by antivaxers. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:06, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Antivaxers. Just not plaintiffs' lawyers. Guy (Help!) 01:33, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Right now the article looks like someone unspecified other than antivaxers or plaintiffs lawyers started it, but antivaxers and lawyers continued it. Tornado chaser (talk) 02:33, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Scientific consensus section

Maybe this whole section should be removed or just its conclusions wrapped up in another section. It just goes on too long and reads as if it was put there to shed doubt on the consensus. I edited a couple of words but I can come back to it in a week or so. --Akrasia25 (talk) 12:27, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Antivaxers are no different from any other charlatan in this respect: they exploit the inability to prove a negative and deliberately represent the normal cautious language of science in the same way that creationists do, to create a fallacious gap into which to crowbar their bullshit. "There is no robust evidence of significant effect" is science-speak for "it's bollocks". Fortunately pop science communicators these days often do the translations for us. Guy (Help!) 12:49, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Category

Three vaccine"controversy" articles have now been renamed to remove the word "controversy", which gave undue weight to fringe ideas.

• In line with the renaming of MMR vaccine controversy to MMR vaccine and autism, I have proposed renaming category:MMR vaccine controversy to category:MMR vaccine and autism to match the parent article. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 February 5 § Category:MMR vaccine controversy.
• In line with the renaming of vaccine controversies to vaccine hesitancy, I have proposed renaming category:Vaccine controversies to Category:Vaccine hesitancy, to match the parent article. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 February 4 § Category:Vaccine controversies.
• In line with the renaming of Thiomersal controversy to Thiomersal and vaccines, I have proposed renaming category:Thiomersal controversy to category:Thiomersal and vaccines , to match the parent article. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 February 5 § Category:Thiomersal controversy,

I put this through CFD rather than simply move them so that the bot will do the spadework. Guy (Help!) 21:22, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Pro-vaxxer bias

This whole article is completely one-sided. There is a wealth of info with dozens of published studies showing the dangers of vaccines. I'm too lazy to publish all of the links here, but anyone who wants to take a look at this video can do the work of copying down all the links to all the studies showing the dangers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ixbGlHTTI

I suspect my comment will be removed due to some type of Wiki policy violation. Let the countdown to removal begin.

Joelrosenblum (talk) 08:40, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Joelrosenblum, please add sections at the end of talk pages, rather than the start. I have moved your comment to the proper location. As for your concern about bias, Wikipedia includes content to reflect reliable sources. There are indeed plenty of publications alleging some danger associated with vaccines, as you state, but not published in reliable sources. The medical and scientific evidence is overwhelming and supports a very broad consensus on the question. The problem you have is not with the content of this article, or its editors, or even with Wikipedia policy – it is with masses of evidence that supports a conclusion with which you disagree, and with those advocating that there is a danger for utterly failing to produce definitive evidence that withstands rigorous scrutiny and justifies standard sources publishing it. Wikipedia's perspective favours the content of reliable sources, which you might call a bias, but we will adapt content when consensus and sources justify it. I would say that is consistent with an encyclopedia reflecting reality as it is understood. It can be wrong or need adjusting in light of new information, but only when that information leads to changes in (in this case) medical and scientific consensus... and we follow such changes, rather than advocating for them. I am a scientist and am persuaded by evidence, but as a Wikipedian, I would not change content based on my evaluation of evidence without sources backing that interpretation. My view of the dangers of vaccines is that most such claims have been refuted, which is what this article also says, citing the evidence to support it. When evidence is available that is tested, published in reliable sources, and leads to a re-evaluation by the medical and scientific communities, Wikipedia will include it in articles. However, advocacy that the existing consensus is wrong is not suitable for inclusion in an article. In short, if you want to change Wikipedia's coverage of the world, change the world first... don't try to change the world by changing Wikipedia because we are the reflection of reality. If you don't like your reflection in a mirror, it doesn't help to change the mirror. EdChem (talk) 09:42, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

EdChem, Thanks EdChem for recommending that I add sections to the end. As for your belief that current "scientific" consensus is based on the most definitive evidence, that is laughable. To get published as a scientist you have to get past editors. In social psychology, you learn that there is such a thing as "group think." Also, "cognitive dissonance." When the two are combined into "group cognitive dissonance avoidance," even the most clear evidence can be ignored in order to maintain the collectively treasured beliefs (which just so happen to line up nicely with profit incentives at many levels of interlocking directorates with political revolving doors, as well as arguments for more coercive government). I'd like to ask you a very pointed question because it seems you are not really interested in what I actually posted above... Did you watch the video? Have you looked at any of the many many studies linked there? Can you point me to anything which takes on any of the points made in that video? I'd be very appreciative, because I'm not tied to any beliefs whatsoever. Thanks. Joelrosenblum (talk) 07:26, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Vaccines make very little money. It would be much more profitable for pharmaceutical companies to let people get sick, then treat their illness. The entire reason that NVICP exists is that frivolous lawsuits were in danger of driving all manufacturers out of the US market.

But that's not relevant to the specifics of thimerosal because here we have very specific data that shows precisely zero effect on autism diagnosis when thimerosal was removed from vaccines. It's very hard to prove a negative in science, but this is as close as you get. Hypothesis: X causes Y. Test: Remove X and see if Y changes,. Outcome: Y does not change. Conclusion: X does not cause Y. Which is hardly a surprise since autism rates are not associated with vaccination rates. Vaccines don't cause autism, sio it's hardly a surprise that thimerosal in vaccines doesn't cause autism.

Sorry that doesn't align with your personal beliefs, your best bet is to go out and study some reality-based data rather than Google-based confirmation bias. Guy (Help!) 07:49, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

And Joel, yes, I have seen the video. The guy speaking is unqualified (chiropractor, not a physician) and his arguments have been extensively researched and all debunked. The arguments and narratives he espouse are complete nonsense and are highly flawed/illogical on many levels. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 08:13, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@TylerDurden8823: Without questioning the necessity of vaccination, I'd like to know what you think of the reliability of CDC sources, see this article PMID 24995277 for example questioning their methodology. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

You can stop at "Geier, D", but in case you didn't, "Geier, M" and "Hooker, B" clinch it. This was written by at least two of the most lunatic charlatans in the antivax crankosphere and three of the most dishonest writers on vaccines. Those two categories overlap. COI statements for some of the authors noted here: [44]. In short, that paper is purest arse gravy. Guy (help!) 15:54, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Additionally, the journal appears to be a pay-to-publish source, approximately $2000 MartinezMD (talk) 16:12, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree, the article linked above is not a reliable source. On the other hand, the CDC does put out high-quality reliable information. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 17:20, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 19 February 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Consensus to not move. Very little support, much strong opposition. Consensus is clear: no move. (non-admin closure) В²C ☎ 01:04, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

---

Thiomersal and vaccines → Thimerosal controversy – This page was moved without discussion from Thimerosal controversy, given that this page is clearly talking about controversies, I think "Thimerosal controversy" was a more appropriate title, rather than the current, vaguer, title. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Support as OP. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)]

To editor Tornado chaser: please see WP:RM#Nom, which tells us that a nomination is an automatic support !vote and rationale. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  00:58, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. The "controversy" is conspiracist bullshit, this title is more compliant with WP:NPOV because to cast it as a controversy is the fallacy of false balance. Guy (Help!) 00:34, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

This is referred to as a controversy 9 times in the article. Not all of it is conspiracy theories, there was controversy about whether to remove it as a precaution, for example. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:40, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

See WP:SEALION. It's a manufactroversy. Peter Hotez has traced its creation from whole cloth by antivaxers. In science, it was never controversial, and it's even, less controversial now we have data over the period when it was removed from vaccines that shows it has absolutely no link with autism. Wikipedia is not here to flatter the antivax community's delusions. Guy (Help!) 00:46, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with Guy that Thimerosal controversy falsely implies a that a real, fact-based controversy exists where there is none. Paul H. (talk) 01:55, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
• Procedural comment. I have removed "Thiomersal"-->"Thimersoal" from the template because a move request on that topic just ended without a move, and because it wasn't listed properly in the template. Also, without passing judgment, it is true that the stable title of this page is "Thiomersal controversy" if there isn't a consensus here. It would have been best to list this through WP:RMUM so a normal move request could have proceeded. Dekimasuよ! 02:51, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
• Support. It was enough of a controversy that the FDA ordered its removal from vaccines given to young children. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:34, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Typicalm antivax bullshit. "A robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines." Source: What the FDA actually says as opposed to what antivaxers claim that it says.[45] --Guy Macon (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
  • The question isn't whether or not it's safe, but whether or not the use of thimerosal in vaccines is/was controversial. And if it wasn't controversial, then why would they remove it from vaccines? "FDA is continuing its efforts toward reducing or removing thimerosal from all existing vaccines...The Committee stated that the effort to remove thimerosal from vaccines was 'a prudent measure in support of the public health goal to reduce mercury exposure of infants and children as much as possible.'"[46] Rreagan007 (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

I think that some editors (eg Guy and Guy macon) see "controversy" as meaning ether side could be right, and others (like me) see "controversy" as just meaning there is or was substantial disagreement about something, regardless of whether one side was proven right or not. The fact that the science is now settled doesn't mean that there was never a controversy. Tornado chaser (talk) 05:02, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point. Please see Teach the Controversy for some reasons why I use the definition that I do. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Leaning oppose. While I do not think that it is inaccurate to describe the matter as a "controversy", it is more useful to have a title that includes the word "vaccines", since thimerosal (or thiomersal) is not an issue at all other than for its use in vaccines. bd2412 T 03:59, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: creationists, holocaust deniers, antivaxxers, homeopaths, etc. all try to spin the total lack of evidence for their positions as a "controversy". --Guy Macon (talk) 04:50, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• I feel like I have to point out that all of those are straw man arguments that have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not having thimerosal in vaccines was a controversy. Rreagan007 (talk) 09:18, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• I don't understand why you feel you need to make false statements, personally. --Calton | Talk 14:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Are you denying that the government has taken steps to remove Thimerosal from vaccines? Rreagan007 (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose: This has gone through the appropriate channels and it was decided to move it away from the "controversy" wording. Nobody has yet found anything wrong with the current wording, because the article is about thiomersal and vaccines, but the old wording was, well, controversial, to say the least. Good reasons are given above. No need to raise that from the dead. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: This has gone through the appropriate channels and it was decided to move it away from the "controversy" wording. If you can show me where a consensus existed for this I will withdraw my proposal here, otherwise please strike you false statment. Tornado chaser (talk) 05:15, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Whoops. Confused it with the category of the same name. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:18, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: I understand, thanks for the correction:) Tornado chaser (talk) 05:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose: going back to controversy since it wasn't one. I can't really think of a title that encompasses the panic and meme like nature of this semi hoax so it is probably best to just play it straight like we do at present. AlmostFrancis (talk) 05:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
• Support The article discusses the (largely historic) controversies surrounding thiomersal, thus 'thiomersal controversies' is the most natural title. --Project Osprey (talk) 10:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

I'd be OK with manutactroversy, but Peter Hotez' research shows that the "controversy" was created form whole cloth by antivaxers. Guy (Help!) 11:07, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Then, with greatest respect, the title is not the real issue. This page is an essay about the controversies surrounding thiomersal, complete with graphs of autism rate and citations to Mark Geier. If you think such content violates Wikipedia's policies that you should take the whole page to AfD. Otherwise the title should reflect the contents, so that that people can find what they're looking for. If 'controversy' is too political a term then how about 'Thiomersal and autism'? --Project Osprey (talk) 11:49, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

The only "controversy" here is the kind discussed at Teach the Controversy. Key quote:

"The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that there is no scientific controversy regarding the validity of evolution and that the controversy exists solely in terms of religion and politics. A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a 'false perception' that evolution is 'a theory in crisis' by falsely claiming it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community".

This is exactly what the antivaxxers are attempting to do. As is the case with creationism, there is no actual controversy. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:13, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

If 'controversy' is too political a term then how about 'Thiomersal and autism'

Changing from "too political" to "false, by implication" is not in any way an improvement. --Calton | Talk 14:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Then by that description Thiomersal is/was a political or social controversy if not a scientific one. That is no less a controversy. In any event changing the page's title does nothing to change its content. The page discusses Thiomersal in terms of autism, by obscuring that behind a neutral title you make it harder for people to find an accurate and well referenced refutal of that controversy - it's actually a disservice to your position. --Project Osprey (talk) 14:03, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

...obscuring that behind a neutral title

Oh no, a neutral title! We can't be having any of THAT, now can we? --Calton | Talk 14:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

A neutral title is obviously fine, even preferable. What we can't be having is a title that fails to convey what the article is about.--Project Osprey (talk) 15:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

No, it was a manufactroversy. It was made up from whole cloth by antivaxers, in the way that conspiracists do: they throw crazy shit out there and then demand that science proves them wrong. We don't have an article on earth flatness controversy or moon cheese controversy. Guy (Help!) 16:53, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

More staw men arguments. These things are not comparable. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:22, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• You keep coming back to 'manufactroversy' but I don't feel it has any weight as an argument. The measure of a controversy is not how it's created, or by whom, but whether it generates prolonged public discussion and ultimately whether that leads to change. You are quite right that flat earthness and moon-cheesiness are not controversies, they are easily refutable and have changed nothing. Vaccination conspiracies have had profound effects; vaccination rates are down, medieval diseases are up. The continued march of antivaxxer movements are controversial in my view. In any event we've moved beyond the original topic - my opinion remains that the current title is inadequate. There will be readers who have heard conflicting things about vaccination and wish to inform themselves, it's best for all that pages on those topics are clearly titled and thus easily locatable, otherwise they may look elsewhere - and you certainly might find those sources controversial.--Project Osprey (talk) 11:51, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

By that argument, we should have an article on Earth roundness controversy. In fcat we do not, because the "controversy" is deliberately created by WP:FRINGE believers. Exactly as here. Guy (Help!) 14:39, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

• No, by that argument we would not have an article on Earth roundness controversy. I was quite specific about that. Anyway, as I've stated previously including the word "controversy" in the title is not my aim, I merely wish for the title to better reflect the article content. Thiomersal healthscares perhaps, as healthscare usually denotes a false alarm (and a settled one at that), or indeed any of the options currently being discussed over at Talk:MMR_vaccine_and_autism. --Project Osprey (talk) 15:50, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Your supposed specificity fails to yield a meaningful distinction, as far as I can see. But do feel free to propose a better title. Guy (Help!) 17:26, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Thimerosal manufactroversy? --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:31, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, quite. The antivaxers will hate that and many people don't know what manufactroversy (or nontroversy or any of the other appropriate reality-based terms) means. Guy (Help!) 10:15, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Not a controversy, unless you define the term so broadly as to make it meaningless. --Calton | Talk 14:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Well, Webster's Dictionary defines "controversy" as "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views". That seems to fit this topic to me. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:36, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Not really, no. In exactly the way that the earth being round is nto a controversy despite there being opposing views: one side is essentially deliberately deciding to stand in opposition to reality, in order to support wider conspiracist ideation. Guy (Help!) 20:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Bad analogy, since the government hasn't done anything to even acknowledge the existence of flat-Earthers, while they have taken steps to study the issue of Thimerosal in vaccines at the behest of people contesting its practice, as well as taken substantive steps to remove Thimerosal from vaccines, which lends credibility to there being an actual "controversy" as defined by the dictionary. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:15, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Point of fact, the government is not the one who took thiomersol out of vaccines. That was individual pharma companies, probably worried about liability. Thiomersol is still allowed and is found in multi-dose vaccine bottles such as for influenza. MartinezMD (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Why would they be worried about liability unless there was a plausible chance of harm? And while you are correct that the U.S. government hasn't required its removal from vaccines, they have encouraged manufacturers to remove it. That seems to imply that its use is at least controversial, otherwise there would be no reason to remove it at all. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Because in lawsuits, an award can be determined by a jury, who can be swayed by different experts. There may not be actual causation, but they can still lose a suit if one "expert" is more convincing than another. I've seen it first hand. You can also look at the talcum powder suits and the Roundup suits as examples.MartinezMD (talk) 22:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

@Rreagan007: That question is actually very important. There are a number of reasons. One is that the anti-vaccinationists fund fraudulent research specifically in order to win lawsuits. The canonical example is Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper in The Lancet, which was funded by concealed payments from a personal injury lawyer seeking compensation for families, and whose conclusions were specifically written to support that litigation (e.g. portraying symptom onset as a few weeks after vaccination when it varied from months before vaccination to months afterward). Another reason is that juries can be capricious. The NVICP was set up because frivolous lawsuits were driving manufacturers towards leaving the US market altogether, and other countries do not have the NVICP. A provincial court in Italy ruled that MMR caused autism in 2012, with Wakefield's fraudulent and retracted study offered in evidence, and it took over two and a half years years for that to be struck down 0and it wasn't finally laid to rest until their Supreme Court of Cassation ruled over five years after the original verdict. During that entire time - and still today - the original verdict was promoted by antivaxers as proof of a link, and the fact that the press did not continue to report it as evidence of their suppression of The Truth™. The anti-vaccination movement is dishonest and unscrupulous, and they don't care if something is true or not as long as it undermines vaccination. Guy (Help!) 23:22, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

@MartinezMD: I think CDC requested removal, on the precautionary principle (and probably out of fear of the effects of antivax propaganda). Guy (Help!) 23:26, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose using the name thimerosal controversy as it is misleading and inaccurate. However, the point that thiomersal and vaccines is not really the topic is worth considering. I wonder if a better title might be something like safety of thiomersal-containing vaccines with a lede that is unambiguous that there is no scientific basis for safety concerns but they are alleged by anti-vaxxers. The current lede should be re-written along those lines anyway, in my opinion, and needs change in any event as it presently lacking coherence and flow. EdChem (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose False balance, creates the idea of a possible "controversy" for alternative medicine fanatics to cling to. I do like the suggestion by User:EdChem above, to rename to Safety of thimersal-containing vaccines. --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:40, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Thiomersal which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)