261Autism and Environmental Factors, First Edition. Omar Bagasra and Cherilyn Heggen.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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There are over 165 studies that have focused on Thimerosal, an organic‐
mercury (Hg) based compound, used as a preservative in many childhood
vaccines, and found it to be harmful. Of these, 16 were conducted to
specifically examine the effects of Thimerosal on human infants or children
with reported outcomes of death; acrodynia; poisoning; allergic reaction;
malformations; auto‐immune reaction; Well’s syndrome; developmental
delay; and neurodevelopmental disorders, including tics, speech delay,
language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism.
Brian Hooker, Janet Kern, David Geier, et al., 2014,
Methodological issues and evidence of malfeasance
in research purporting to show thimerosal in
vaccines is safe. Biomed. Res. Int., 2014 :247218.The risk of serious complications associated with the development of
diseases in unvaccinated individuals far outweighs the potential risk of
adverse consequences associated with immunization with thiomersal‐
containing vaccines.
Aleksandra Goloś and Anna Lutyńska, 2015,
Thiomersal‐containing vaccines – a review of the current state
of knowledge. Przegl. Epidemiol., 69 (1):59–64, 157–61.Childhood Vaccines and Regressive Autism
Childhood immunization is a factor that has received much scrutiny as a
potential environmental cause of autism. Claims of a link between vaccines
and autism first arose in the late 1990s in England, the USA, and other