Vaccines vs. Power Plants

Michele Bachmann raised a lot of questions -- mostly about her competence and judgment -- when she repeated a claim from "a woman in the crowd" who said that the HPV vaccine made her 12-year-old daughter retarded. Did Bachmann simply make this person up? She can't produce the woman, even though two scientists have offered a substantial reward for the girl's medical records.

Bachmann does voice a concern about vaccines that many people have. In 1998 a study by British doctor Andrew Wakefield et al. claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. An American doctor, Mark Geier, also published several papers that claimed vaccines caused autism. Did these studies have any validity?

The preservative thimerosal, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, is an organic mercury compound. Mercury is known to cause birth defects and mental retardation. Mercury poisoning causes brain damage in adults as well. For this reason mercury is no longer used in dental amalgams. The phrase "mad as a hatter" has its origins in history -- hatters used mercury to cure felt. So it wasn't a stretch for Geier to propose that organic mercury could cause autism. But other scientists believed the concentration of thimerosal was too small to affect children vaccinated at that time in their development.

As it turns out, Wakefield falsified data for his paper, and the Lancet withdrew it in 2010. There was no link proved between autism and the MMR vaccine. Geier's medical license was suspended in 2011, for endangering the lives of autistic children with questionable (and expensive) treatments.

But, just to be on the safe side, the use of thimerosal in child vaccines was ended in 2001 (it's still used in some flu vaccines). It's also not used in Gardasil, the HPV vaccine used in Texas. The incidence of autism since thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines has continued to climb since then, so it's fairly certain that it has little or nothing to do with autism.

The largest source of mercury that children are exposed to are emissions from coal-fired power plants and waste incinerators. Mercury is emitted into our air, lakes, rivers and seas, where it becomes concentrated in animals. People who eat fish and shellfish can accumulate potentially harmful levels of mercury in their bodies. That's why pregnant women, women trying to get pregnant, and nursing mothers are advised not to eat tuna, fish and shellfish, and everyone is advised to limit their intake of seafood with high concentrations of mercury.

(Interestingly, Bachmann has also campaigned against compact fluorescent light bulbs in part because they contain mercury.)

Bachmann did raise legitimate questions about Texas governor Rick Perry's financial and political ties to the pharmaceutical industry. One of his former aides was a lobbyist for the drug company that provided the vaccine to Texas, which Perry decreed all girls be vaccinated with, a decision that the Texas legislature overturned before it went into effect.

But this isn't really just about Michele Bachmann. She and the entire Republican Party are now on a tear about regulation.  They oppose "costly" regulations on coal-fired power plants that limit mercury emissions by requiring smokestack scrubbers and dictate the quality of coal burned.

Why do Republicans like Bachmann so often lend credence to discredited studies like Wakefield's, and rumor and innuendo, while completely dismissing the far greater and well-documented dangers from toxins like fine particulates, ozone, mercury, lead and benzene released into the environment by energy industries? Why do Republicans so often deride recycling programs that keep toxins like lead and mercury out of the environment and reduce the need for us to mine these heavy metals?

All the other Republican candidates pounced on Perry to decry the state mandate for the vaccine, apparently objecting that children be forced to receive injections of a substance that the vaccine doesn't actually contain.

But Texas parents would have been able to opt out of the vaccine program if they chose. Sadly, the only the way the rest of us can opt out of ingesting the toxic emissions the Republicans want to prevent the EPA from regulating is to stop breathing, eating and drinking.

So, what's behind the increase in the autism rate? It's a non-trivial issue. One part is that it's simply being diagnosed more frequently: parents often lobby for an autism or ADHD diagnosis to get special treatment for their kids. Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism, is sometimes called the Geek Syndrome. Some would argue that Asperger's and milder ADHD not real diagnoses, they're just personality types. Another theory is that children of older fathers are more prone to autism, and Americans are having children at an older age. But most theories posit that autism is due to some kind of environmental insult. One theory links pesticides to autism and another one links them ADHD.  Others variously blame rain, unemotional mothers, lack of vitamin D, mercury, lead, excessive hygiene, and so on. Short answer: who knows?

One thing we know for certain is that even minute concentrations of chemicals and hormones can disrupt the fetus at critical stages of development. Toxins that don't hurt adults can cause tragic birth defects. If the Republican Party is really the pro-life party, how can they so cavalier about exposing those precious children to environmental toxins?