Personal Injury Suit Alleging Mercury-Autism Withdrawn by Plaintiffs
The suit was brought by the Rev. Lisa Sykes and her husband Seth Sykes, alleging that their son's autism was caused by thimerosal in injections received by both Rev. Sykes and the child.
Their attorney, Clifford Shoemaker, filed an invasive subpoena against Kathleen Seidel for her work at Neurodiversity.com.
Seidel reported May 2, 2008, that the Sykes had withdrawn the suit.
As PalMD noted, Rev. Sykes was successful in another arena: The United Methodist Church approved her petition about "mercury containing drugs".
And Orac gives a close reading to the newly-published Palmer et al. study, alleging a connection between mercury exposure from coal-burning power plants and autism rates in surrounding areas.
It's entirely possible that some environmental factor, or factors, may contribute to the development of autism, either on their own or by acting with some genetic susceptibility, but if that is the case with mercury this study is thin gruel to use to support such a hypothesis. In fact, it's not even that good as a hypothesis-generating study. There's just too much potential interference from confounding variables that hasn't been accounted for.
Finally, it is important to note that Dr. Palmer may well be biased. For example, yesterday he spoke at a demonstration promoted by Safeminds and Autism United, both boosters of the "vaccines cause autism" lie. I tried to find an account that describes what he said there, but the best that I could find was this, which didn't say much. Given the poor quality of this study and his cozying up to antivaccination groups, one has to wonder. If he has an obvious source of bias, it may well explain much; if he does not I'm left with the less satisfying conclusion that he is just not a very good scientist at all. I also have to wonder about the quality of the peer review of this particular journal. After all, if I, who am not an epidemiologist, can spot the glaring flaws in this study, why couldn't the peer reviewers?
More deep criticism of the study from Joseph writing at LeftBrain/RightBrain: Association Between Autism and Environmental Mercury Exposure Disappears Once Population Density is Controlled for
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