To me, 4:1 ratio boy/girls with autism clinches anti-vaccine debate

[metzomagic]

Folks, hi,

Haven't been here on the forums for a while, not since the 'great speaker cable debacle' involving Michael(s) Fremer and Lavigne anyway. Being an engineer, and an electrical one to boot, that sort of carry-on really piques my interest. But now there's another issue that's caught my attention...

Over on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog last week, there arose a bi-polar discussion (well, aren't they always) between the critical thinkers and the anti-vaxxers regarding the recent appearance of the 'Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey Road Show' on Larry King. I was reading up on autism and ASD on Wikipedia as a refresher before joining the discussion when this little gem of information leapt out at me:

The prevalence of ASD is about 6 per 1,000 people, with about four times as many males as females

So... if autism is, according to the anti-vaxxers, caused by the mercury in the thiomersal that is used as a preservative in the vaccines (but not since 2001 or so, let's not even go there), then why is the disorder so much more prevalent in males? According to my admittedly limited knowledge of things biochemical, why would a (supposed) neurotoxin be selective according to gender? I posed this very question (in so many words) on Phil's blog, but never got an answer from either camp. But to be fair it was towards the very end of the comments, and I suppose interest had waned by then.

And so I'd like to revive the discussion here. It would seem to me that this would be a strong argument against the anti-vaxxers if it has any scientific basis. Remember, we're looking for a sort of slam-dunk argument along these lines:

Anti-vaxxer: "It's the mercury in the MMR vaccine that causes autism."
Skeptic: "Then why are 4 times as many males affected as females?"

Please discuss.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

[TobiasTheViking]

Actually never thought of that argument. But then again for a long time i have thought it a myth. It is only recently that i have been convinced that the 4:1 ratio is real, and not just an artifact of the diagnosis criteria being boy oriented.

So if i told anyone that 4:1 ratio was a myth, this is me saying i was wrong. :)

It is good to investigate and doubt even one self.

[blutoski]

Sparring with antivaxxers is an exercise in frustration.

Just to prepare you: I have brought up the same point before, and here are the most common replies:


males are more susceptible for genetic reasons
this is Big Pharma propaganda - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic!
this is a misleading artefact of the diagnostic criteria - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic!

[TobiasTheViking]

Oh, and also. Their reply will probably end up being something at least as stupid as this:

Girl brains are more effective, and more mature than boy brains, so the effect is less pronounced/it takes more to hurt them.

[TobiasTheViking]

And do you remember their replies to

males are more susceptible for genetic reasons - Explain or source
this is Big Pharma propaganda - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic! - Explain or source
this is a misleading artefact of the diagnostic criteria - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic! - Explain or source

Though i will admit i have said the latter one(well, besides the last sentence) for other reasons. But i was proven wrong, as i wrote above :)

[portlandatheist]

[i]Anti-vaxxer: "It's the mercury in the MRR vaccine that causes autism."


A couple of quick notes:
1) the MMR vaccine never used the preservative Thiomersal
2) This just a pet peeve of mine but a portion of Thiomersal metabolizes or degrades to ethylmercury and is then expelled from the body as that chemical and at no point is it exactly "Mercury" per se even though it is referenced as such by proponents and opponents of vaccines alike. Methyl mercury, elemental mercury, and mercury sulfides are not interchangeable, have different chemical properties, and different toxicities and should be differentiated.

[metzomagic]

A couple of quick notes:
1) the MMR vaccine never used the preservative Thiomersal
2) This just a pet peeve of mine but a portion of Thiomersal metabolizes or degrades to ethylmercury and is then expelled from the body as that chemical and at no point is it exactly "Mercury" per se even though it is referenced as such by proponents and opponents of vaccines alike. Methyl mercury, elemental mercury, and mercury sulfides are not interchangeable, have different chemical properties, and different toxicities and should be differentiated.

portlandatheist, hi,

Re. your point 1)... well there you go. I just checked the FDA's page concerning the use of thiomersal in vaccines and you are correct. It was *never* used in the MMR vaccine. Guess this skeptical thinker should get his facts straight before trying to make a case :-\

I guess with all the to-ing and fro-ing that was going on in these discussions, I either picked up that bit of factual misinformation from an anti-vaxxer, or just confused it with the use of thiomersal in vaccines in general.

I agree completely with your point 2). I read up on these distinctions already.

Thanks for the info,
MetzO'Magic

[kedo1981]

I wonder how you could sort out the genuine autism kids from the ones who’s scum parents just want them to have autism (like our fav low life publicity whore Jenny) so they can get attention.

[metzomagic]

Sparring with antivaxxers is an exercise in frustration.

Just to prepare you: I have brought up the same point before, and here are the most common replies:

* males are more susceptible for genetic reasons


blutoski, hi,

Yes, males are more susceptible for genetic reasons, it would seem. So what would chemicals in vaccines have to do with that? The brain chemistry can't be that fundamentally different between the sexes that a neurotoxin would have a more pronounced effect in males, could it? Or am I following a completely flawed line of reasoning here?

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

[Ivor the Engineer]

IIRC, the ratio of boys:girls who stutter increases with age. At a young age the ratio is roughly even, but as children grow up it increases to 4:1 because more girls 'recover' than boys.

[YeahDude]

I was reading up on autism and ASD on Wikipedia as a refresher before joining the discussion when this little gem of information leapt out at me:

The prevalence of ASD is about 6 per 1,000 people, with about four times as many males as females


Is there a non-wikipedia source available?

[blutoski]

portlandatheist, hi,

Re. your point 1)... well there you go. I just checked the FDA's page concerning the use of thiomersal in vaccines and you are correct. It was *never* used in the MMR vaccine. Guess this skeptical thinker should get his facts straight before trying to make a case :-\

I guess with all the to-ing and fro-ing that was going on in these discussions, I either picked up that bit of factual misinformation from an anti-vaxxer, or just confused it with the use of thiomersal in vaccines in general.

I agree completely with your point 2). I read up on these distinctions already.

Thanks for the info,
MetzO'Magic


This confusion is common, though.

The reason is that in the US & Canada, Thimerosal was proposed as causal due to some sort of toxicity, whereas in the UK, a completely unrelated theory about the MMR "triple-jab" vaccine overloading the immune system was proposed.

In the US, the response was to remove Thimerosal, while in the UK, the response was to advocate dividing the MMR into three seperate inoculations.

It's understandable that people get the two unrelated (and often contradictory) proposals conflated.

[blutoski]

And do you remember their replies to

males are more susceptible for genetic reasons - Explain or source
this is Big Pharma propaganda - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic! - Explain or source
this is a misleading artefact of the diagnostic criteria - according to objective estimates, males and females are equally represented. I thought you were a skeptic! - Explain or source

Though i will admit i have said the latter one(well, besides the last sentence) for other reasons. But i was proven wrong, as i wrote above :)

Pfft. In a lunchroom, neither the skeptic nor the antivaxxer will have references available.

I'm just saying that the ratio argument has less rhetorical weight than you'd expect.

The other problem is that antivaxxer advocates do have citations by the truckload. It's a cottage industry.

[blutoski]

blutoski, hi,

Yes, males are more susceptible for genetic reasons, it would seem. So what would chemicals in vaccines have to do with that? The brain chemistry can't be that fundamentally different between the sexes that a neurotoxin would have a more pronounced effect in males, could it? Or am I following a completely flawed line of reasoning here?

It's not a reasoning problem so much as assignment of burden of proof. It's pretty difficult to show that an as-of-yet-unidentified mutation can't do this or that, because by definition we know nothing about it.

The problem is that it's plausible that a mutation could make men more vulnerable to some type of environmental provocation. If PKU was sex-linked, it'd be a sensitivity to Aspartame that would manifest as much more common in males. Pretty much any defect on the X Chromosome will produce a phenotype more often in males.

[blutoski]

I wonder how you could sort out the genuine autism kids from the ones who’s scum parents just want them to have autism (like our fav low life publicity whore Jenny) so they can get attention.

Well, this is the purpose of diagnostic criteria. When surveys are conducted, they are not interested in parents' opinions.

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

....Skeptic: "Then why are 4 times as many males affected as females?"

Please discuss.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic


One pair of quacks have proposed it is the testosterone levels. So they have come up with a scheme to sell desperate parents on a protocol that uses chemical castration. There is lots on it here:
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/109/

[Nogbad]

As a parent with an Asperger's daughter I have never been too convinced of the MMR argument. It certainly didn't chime any bells in our experience. However, I have sort of followed the debate on and off over the years (Noglet now being nearly 19 and doing well at college). However, recently on the Guardian comment pages I encountered a couple of people opposed to vaccines. Initially I supposed that they merely had question marks/reservations about the impact of MMR but the more the discussion went one the more it seemed to descend into some surreal conspiracy theory. I, frankly, found the anti-vaccine people a little disturbing. I am not sure I even scratched the surface of the full gamut of the stuff they subscribe too.

Obviously Noglet is one of the 1 in 4 and if testosterone were an issue would she not be quite butch? She is in fact very pretty and feminine and costs me a fortune in clothes and shoes :(

[TobiasTheViking]

IIRC, the ratio of boys:girls who stutter increases with age. At a young age the ratio is roughly even, but as children grow up it increases to 4:1 because more girls 'recover' than boys.

Ehm... no.

[borealys]

IIRC, the ratio of boys:girls who stutter increases with age. At a young age the ratio is roughly even, but as children grow up it increases to 4:1 because more girls 'recover' than boys.

Ehm... no.

I seem to recall reading that somewhere, too, but there's no source I can find that confirms it. According to ASHA (http://asha.org/public/speech/disorders/StutteringCauses.htm), the 4:1 ratio shows up at school age.

Boys are more likely than girls to be diagnosed with quite a few speech, language and learning disorders. Make of that what you will.

[CaveDave]

Boys are more likely than girls to be diagnosed with quite a few speech, language and learning disorders. Make of that what you will.

Sounds to me like yet another case of society's lower expectations for girls.

Too sad.

Dave

[Ivor the Engineer]

Ehm... no.

Could you elaborate please?

[Ivor the Engineer]

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=10521318

Regarding familial versus sporadic stuttering, our data agree with previous findings (Yairi et al. 1996) and suggest that approximately half of all cases of persistent stuttering are accompanied with a report of family history (468/966 from HCRI, 598/1,033 from AIS), while the remaining half appear to be sporadic. One possibility suggested by these data is that roughly half of all cases of stuttering is due to inherited causes, while the other half are due to poorly understood but nongenetic factors. This hypothesis is consistent with the view that persistent stuttering of nongenetic origin is largely a male disorder and may be related to a greater ability of females to overcome childhood stuttering (Ambrose et al. 1997). Genetic stuttering, in contrast, affects males and females more equally, which has important implications for genetic studies of this disorder that exclude young children. In particular, genetic-linkage studies will be much less obscured by the distortion in sex ratio, since this distortion is largely a phenomenon of sporadic stuttering.

Table 2:

Group|No Family History|Males|Females|Male-to-Female Ratio
Familial, NIH|0|137|87|1.57
Unrelated, HCRI|468|410|58|7.07
Unrelated, AIS|435|360|75|4.8

[borealys]

Sounds to me like yet another case of society's lower expectations for girls.

Too sad.

Dave

I don't think so. A lot of the language assessments I use (I'm a speech therapist, btw) have separate norms for girls and boys. Every one that does, without exception, expects better performance from girls, not poorer. That holds for both speech (articulation and phonology) and language (vocabulary, grammar, comprehension and pragmatics). Whether this is an artifact of a general tendency for boys' speech and language skills to mature at a slightly slower rate than girls', or of a neurological difference to result in greater susceptibility to these particular sorts of disorders is an open question. If any cultural factors are in play, it's more likely to be that we expect less of boys in terms of speaking and listening well.

In the early years of life, speech and language skills develop very quickly, with the result that even a tiny difference in maturation rate can lead to big differences in what skills are mastered when.

I should also note that there are speech and language problems that are more common in girls. Selective mutism (http://asha.org/public/speech/disorders/SelectiveMutism.htm) is one example. It's often associated with anxiety problems, which, IIRC, are more common in girls.

[TobiasTheViking]

I seem to recall reading that somewhere, too, but there's no source I can find that confirms it. According to ASHA (http://asha.org/public/speech/disorders/StutteringCauses.htm), the 4:1 ratio shows up at school age.

Boys are more likely than girls to be diagnosed with quite a few speech, language and learning disorders. Make of that what you will.
That 4:1 ratio should show up everywhere. Also.. stuttering and autism aren't really linked.

Sounds to me like yet another case of society's lower expectations for girls.

Too sad.

Dave
No. The diagnosis criteria is made in a way that is geared towards boys.
Girls and boys with autism have the same core problems, but the way they are expressed is different. And the original study was made on boys only.


Could you elaborate please?
you don't get "cured" from autism. And i, for some weird reason, didn't see you were talking about stuttering. Regarding stuttering i have no idea if what you say is true. But regarding autism it would be wrong.


I'm confused about how stuttering got into this conversation at all.

[Ivor the Engineer]

<snip>

I'm confused about how stuttering got into this conversation at all.

It doesn't usually. We just sit, nod and smile in the right places while the fluent people talk.:)

[bpesta22]

Articles showing more males stutter:


http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/content/abstract/51/3/669?ck=nck

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1424690

[CaveDave]

I don't think so. A lot of the language assessments I use (I'm a speech therapist, btw) have separate norms for girls and boys. Every one that does, without exception, expects better performance from girls, not poorer. That holds for both speech (articulation and phonology) and language (vocabulary, grammar, comprehension and pragmatics). Whether this is an artifact of a general tendency for boys' speech and language skills to mature at a slightly slower rate than girls', or of a neurological difference to result in greater susceptibility to these particular sorts of disorders is an open question. If any cultural factors are in play, it's more likely to be that we expect less of boys in terms of speaking and listening well.

In the early years of life, speech and language skills develop very quickly, with the result that even a tiny difference in maturation rate can lead to big differences in what skills are mastered when.

I should also note that there are speech and language problems that are more common in girls. Selective mutism (http://asha.org/public/speech/disorders/SelectiveMutism.htm) is one example. It's often associated with anxiety problems, which, IIRC, are more common in girls.

That 4:1 ratio should show up everywhere. Also.. stuttering and autism aren't really linked.


No. The diagnosis criteria is made in a way that is geared towards boys.
Girls and boys with autism have the same core problems, but the way they are expressed is different. And the original study was made on boys only.


Well, I must admit I know little about the subject.

I just thought I was seeing social bias where there must not have been any.:o

Carry on, nothing to see here.

Dave:boxedin:

[TobiasTheViking]

Well, I must admit I know little about the subject.

I just thought I was seeing social bias where there must not have been any.:o

Carry on, nothing to see here.

Dave:boxedin:

There IS a social bias.. above and beyond the 4:1 ratio(IIRC)

[Estellea]

If the basis of the argument is thimerosal in vaccines, then how can you disentangle it? Thimerosal has been removed from all U.S. paediatric vaccines (save a trace amount in some). Different countries have different schedules, have removed thimerosal prior to the U.S. and still have increasing autism rates that parallel and even exceed that of the U.S. All epidemiological studies demonstrate a higher male:female ratio of diagnoses.

[Professor Yaffle]

Tobias, can you give me ome links/references on the issue of whether the gender ratio is real or artifact. I have only looked a couple of places, but they said it was still ambiguous. What was it that convinced you?

[ElMondoHummus]

If the basis of the argument is thimerosal in vaccines, then how can you disentangle it? Thimerosal has been removed from all U.S. paediatric vaccines (save a trace amount in some). Different countries have different schedules, have removed thimerosal prior to the U.S. and still have increasing autism rates that parallel and even exceed that of the U.S. All epidemiological studies demonstrate a higher male:female ratio of diagnoses.

You don't. Disentangle it, that is. Problem is, the "mercury in vaccines" meme is so prevalent that little factual tidbits like this get lost in all the shouting.

[TobiasTheViking]

Tobias, can you give me ome links/references on the issue of whether the gender ratio is real or artifact. I have only looked a couple of places, but they said it was still ambiguous. What was it that convinced you?

It was a powerpoint presentation by a colleague of mine(well, partly). I don't have the presentation.

But basically, her point was the genetic inheritance of autism. This paste from wikipedia on color blindness was her point


About 5–8 percent of males, but less than 1 percent of females, are color blind in some way or another, whether it be one color, a color combination, or another mutation.[5] The reason males are at a greater risk of inheriting an X linked mutation is because males only have one X chromosome (XY, with the Y chromosome being significantly shorter than the X chromosome), and females have two (XX); if the women inherit a normal X chromosome in addition to the one which carries the mutation, they will not display the mutation, while men have no 'spare' normal chromosome to override the chromosome which carries the mutation. If 5% of variants of a given gene are defective, the probability of a single copy being defective is 5%, but the probability that two copies are both defective is 0.05 × 0.05 = 0.0025, or just 0.25%.


The details besides for that, i can't remember.

If that isn't sufficient, i can ask her for a source.

Btw. the women in question is this one(sorry, site is i danish)
http://www.aspergers.dk/index.php?Om_Aspergers_Ressource_Center:Medarbejde re:Kirsten_Callesen

[Professor Yaffle]

Have they found any genes on the x chromosome that are linked to autism?

Does it seem to follow a sex linked pattern of inheritance?

[TobiasTheViking]

Have they found any genes on the x chromosome that are linked to autism?

Does it seem to follow a sex linked pattern of inheritance?

The details of the genetical heritage is not yet know, but there is enough evidence to say it is there. With that said, there also are cases of identical twins where only one of them has autism. I have sources for this if you want.

There are some specific genes that are suspected. I do not know if (any of them) are specific to the x chromosome.

[bpesta22]

Here's a very recent article validating a psych test for autism-- it shows males scoring higher than females (and math geeks scoring higher too!).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4W386W3-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6b855ebd03613db0037f02c322bf54ac

[Estellea]

You don't. Disentangle it, that is. Problem is, the "mercury in vaccines" meme is so prevalent that little factual tidbits like this get lost in all the shouting.True, although the likes of J.B. Handley have shifted the goalposts in light of the undeniable evidence to 'vaccines cause autism' via toxins, too many too soon, etc. That is not to say that they can let go of the thimerosal gambit, however.

Rett Syndrome is a sex-linked autism seen almost exclusively in females, PMID:17440498 (sorry, not allowed to post URLs yet). ADD/ADHD are also diagnosed based upon a constellation of symptoms, like ASDs and also has a heavy male:female ratio, 3-4:1. I had a thought that since ASDs are being diagnosed at younger ages, and I haven't consulted the literature yet, that since boys are on a much different developmental trajectory than females, how many lose their diagnoses at later ages and if that shakes out to be a bit more even. I don't even know if this sort of longitudinal study has been undertaken.

[Professor Yaffle]

The details of the genetical heritage is not yet know, but there is enough evidence to say it is there. With that said, there also are cases of identical twins where only one of them has autism. I have sources for this if you want.

There are some specific genes that are suspected. I do not know if (any of them) are specific to the x chromosome.

I know there appears to be a strong genetic component, but it just seems a bit of a leap to assume that the difference in rates between the sexes is due to x-linked genes unless there is more direct evidence of this. I'll have to look into it further myself as I had suspected that diagnosis played a big role in the disparity. For example with severe autism (where diagnosis is less likely to be missed) the disparity is much smaller, but with higher functioning autism and asperger's syndrome the disparity is much greater.



Since it is a known fact that more males have autism than females, researchers believed that autism might be associated with a non-working gene on the X chromosome. Recent data for our group and others have shown that it is unlikely that a gene on the X chromosome causes the majority of cases of autism. How do we know this? By studying many different families in which more than one member has autism, or a variant of autism such as Asperger’s syndrome or PDD, we have seen that in a number of families the "gene" is passed through the father to a male child with autism. Since a father transmits an X chromosome only to his daughters and not his sons, the "gene" cannot be on the X chromosome in these families.


http://www.autism-pdd.net/autism-research.html

But then there is this

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1157313.ece
I definitely need to read up more on this.

[borealys]

That 4:1 ratio should show up everywhere.
Given that I was talking about stuttering here, that isn't true. Plenty of people stop stuttering, quite a few of them with no therapy at all, especially in the preschool years. All this means is that a sex-linked difference in recovery from stuttering, if it exists, is most likely to manifest at preschool age.

Wish I could find my old fluency books. Stuttering is one of the few things I don't work with at all, so my knowledge of the subject is a bit patchy. Of course, we're talking about autism here, not stuttering, so I suppose it doesn't matter much. :)


The diagnosis criteria is made in a way that is geared towards boys.
Girls and boys with autism have the same core problems, but the way they are expressed is different. And the original study was made on boys only.


There IS a social bias.. above and beyond the 4:1 ratio(IIRC)

I wrote a short paper on Asperger syndrome a few years ago, and sorting out the boy:girl ratio was absolute hell. Every study I looked at had a different ratio reported, from 1.5:1 to 7:1. And every study I looked at acknowledged the establishment of an accurate ratio as a problem, since the diagnostic criteria were developed based mainly on studies of boys.

I've heard similar claims about AD/HD, too.

That any particular cognitive or behavioural developmental disorder would manifest differently (on average) in boys and girls is hardly surprising, given that male and female brains don't develop in precisely the same way or at the same rate in the early years. And that's not even considering the differences in social and cultural expectations of boys and girls, which surely have an impact as well.

[TobiasTheViking]

Given that I was talking about stuttering here, that isn't true.
And i was talking autism. So i consider that entire argument null and void. :)

[Father Dagon]

One theory is that autism/AS is a degenerated male thinking and that men therefore are by nature more suspectible for it. Another theory is that we really don't know what to look for when diagnosing women with autism/AS.

It's probably a mix of both. But the second theory does have some problems. Yes, autism/AS is a most heterogenous condition. But if you have a sets of criterias and the results are "inequal", is it really intellectually honest to change the criterias in order to reach "equality"? I mean, no one is shedding any tears over the fact that 100% of the prostate cancer patients are men.

[Damien Evans]

I wonder how you could sort out the genuine autism kids from the ones who’s scum parents just want them to have autism (like our fav low life publicity whore Jenny) so they can get attention.

Evidence her son doesn't have autism?

[TobiasTheViking]

I agree with Damien!

[Samon1985]

A scientist Boyd Hayley has looked into this:

He has shown that in the presence for thimerosal, there's a lot of damage to nerve cells. When you add aluminium to the thimerosal, you need less thimerosal to create the damage to the immune & nerve cells in the presence of aluminium.

Then when you add neomycin - an antibiotic in some of the vaccines - it potenitates the potency of nerve cell damage with aluminium & mercury together.

And when you culture the nerve cells & testosterone, versus oestrogen, and you expose them to some of the vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged in greater amounts.

This could give a possible reason for the 4:1 ratio

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

A scientist Boyd Hayley has looked into this:

He has shown that in the presence for thimerosal, there's a lot of damage to nerve cells. ...

Give the journal, title and date of that paper (remember if it is a whale.to or any other associated link, you are subject Scopie's Law (http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Scopie%27s_Law) ). Show us exactly where the Boyd Haley's results were replicated. Also show why the 4:1 ratio still holds almost a decade after thimerosal has been removed from pediatric vaccines.

For a starter you can try reading this entire thread plus this:
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=16

[Estellea]

A scientist Boyd Hayley has looked into this:

He has shown that in the presence for thimerosal, there's a lot of damage to nerve cells. When you add aluminium to the thimerosal, you need less thimerosal to create the damage to the immune & nerve cells in the presence of aluminium.

Then when you add neomycin - an antibiotic in some of the vaccines - it potenitates the potency of nerve cell damage with aluminium & mercury together.

And when you culture the nerve cells & testosterone, versus oestrogen, and you expose them to some of the vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged in greater amounts.

This could give a possible reason for the 4:1 ratioResults from cell culture (particularly experiments for which you are using much higher than physiological amounts) do not always translate to in vivo observations. I see that HCN has introduced you to a wee conflict of interest Boyd Haley has as well.

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

And that isn't even a new bit of news about Haley's conflicts of interest. Years ago he was pushing testing for "mercury poisoning" from amalgam fillings, and then a "cure." Now he has a new "Industrial Treatment (http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/169/)"!

[Eos of the Eons]

A scientist Boyd Hayley has looked into this:

He has shown that in the presence for thimerosal, there's a lot of damage to nerve cells. When you add aluminium to the thimerosal, you need less thimerosal to create the damage to the immune & nerve cells in the presence of aluminium.

Then when you add neomycin - an antibiotic in some of the vaccines - it potenitates the potency of nerve cell damage with aluminium & mercury together.

And when you culture the nerve cells & testosterone, versus oestrogen, and you expose them to some of the vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged in greater amounts.

This could give a possible reason for the 4:1 ratio

BS

Ethyl mercury is in thimerosal, and it is excreted from the body before it builds up to any level that could be toxic and cause any damage.

I'd like to see this so-called reaction between aluminum and thimerosal, you got that somewhere for us to evaluate? You know, an equation something like H + 2O that makes water (when separate they are gasses).

Where are these experiments taking place as well? They certainly aren't what you see with these substances in the human body, especially with the amounts in vaccines. Aluminum and other "vax ingredients" are already present in the body at any time in higher amounts you'll ever find in vaccines.

[Eos of the Eons]

I hate to break it to this mother, but there's a huge difference between two raw metals coming in contact with each other on the surface of aluminum and ethyl mercury (thimerosal) at minute concentrations in the body, rapidly excreted, and tiny amounts of aluminum that are considerably smaller than what a baby receives from breastfeeding and other environmental sources. Unless someone's putting mercury metal directly on aluminum, not much is going to happen. Certainly, there's no evidence that aluminum "reacts" with mercury in the body to become more toxic.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/09/what_were_up_against_aluminum_as_the_new.php

So, this is the new antivax claim is it. Can't scare em enough about the aluminum since that is in breast milk, so claim that it makes the ethyl mercury dangerous. Nice scaremongering. Sorry, but aluminum salt and thimerosal are used safely in vaccines.

And since when is neomycin used in vaccines with thiomerosal???

[blutoski]

blutoski, hi,

Yes, males are more susceptible for genetic reasons, it would seem. So what would chemicals in vaccines have to do with that? The brain chemistry can't be that fundamentally different between the sexes that a neurotoxin would have a more pronounced effect in males, could it? Or am I following a completely flawed line of reasoning here?

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

I don't believe any of these hypotheses, personally.

What I'm saying is that this ratio doesn't "clinch" anything for the believers. Healthfraud is all about what sounds plausible.

They didn't have to show an hypothesized mechanism was possible, so they won't have to show the ratio is consistent with their model either. Anybody who bought the last five years of quackery will buy my tossed out arguments, too.