Bad Astronomy, Penn and Teller, etc.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by jinx

"children that have a rare, mitochondrial disorder"

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

Jinx, I'm sorry, I don't know how to deal with this reference,
other than to say that the actual research in the article sited above
has no direct connection to autism.
The authors mention their own study in the Introduction (literature review),
and while discussing some other articles about toxicity studies in cell lines,
and again later in their Acknowledgment (of funding) and the References.
There is no reference cited to connect cell line data with patients diagnosed with ADs

As an example I quote:

Additionally, the effects induced by Thimerosal in the present study, as well as from previous studies
(Deth et al. 2008; Herdman et al. 2006; Humphrey et al. 2005;
James et al. 2005; Parran et al. 2005; Waly et al. 2004; Yel et al. 2005),
are consistent with recently emerging evidence documenting the brain pathophysiology present in patients diagnosed with ADs.

Their actual research is done only with 3 cell lines (kinds of cells in tissue culture),
and their cell lines are NOT from patients with any of the diseases that they discuss.
No patients with any of these diseases was involved in this study.

This was a simple toxicity study of how much (Thimerosal)
it takes to cause toxicity (mitochondial-dysfunction) or cytology (visual) changes.
You can do the same kind of study with many other chemicals, and get similar results.
All the authors say is that their data "is consistent with" ....

The authors, themselves, to not attempt to equate their results
with any kind of direct cause-and-effect with autism,
or with patients with the rare mitochondrial diseases
mentioned in their literature review.

While I do have my own beliefs about the usefulness of tissue culture studies in medical research
and about the causality of vaccination and autism, I won't get into any of that here.
It has been discussed endlessly on TV and probably here in The Cellar.

I apologize for being so blunt.