Talk:Thiomersal controversy

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This is Ombudsman's, he wanted it in the anti-vaccinationist article. Midgley 01:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

"An example involves the debate over the the removal of mercury from thimerosal containing vaccines (TCVs). Recently, but largely in the United States, it has been suggested that thimerosal in childhood vaccines could contribute to autism or the autism epidemic. This debate has escalated due to recent research indicating the chance that some individuals are less able to excrete heavy metals normally, and reports that the type of organic mercury used may be more toxic than other types for which exposure limits have been set. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies clearly have an interest in denying this, and there are potentially gains for litigants if a connection can be shown in court."

" TCVs are being phased out, although some TCVs (e.g., flu vaccines) are still routinely administered to children, as well as pregnant women and nursing mothers. Vaccines in use in the UK are largely free of it. There is no suggestion that it is required for the immunogenic effect of the preparations, therefore it is thought that TCVs will eventually discontinued entirely." " In 2004, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel favoured rejecting any causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. However, critics allege that the statistical evidence upon which the IOM based its conclusions has been difficult to independendently analyze, due in part the fact that access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink database has been restricted due to privacy concerns, and possibly because of the alleged secrecy surrounding the proceedings of the 2000 Simpsonwood CDC conference. " This is spreading out into yet another article that already exists and is reference from teh Thiomersal contro one. Midgley 01:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] not in use in USA?

CDC Director, Dr Julie Gerberding: ... looking for an association between thimerosal and autism in a prospective sense is just about impossible to do right now because we don't have those vaccines in use in this country. Midgley 06:25, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Go look on the FDA web site- u will find a list of vaccines that do indeed contain mercury, one is the tetnus injection. They are bing phased out.. i think another is the new bird flu vaccine.Cilstr 10:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "In recent years"

Surely someone can do better than that for line one? how about since {date}...

The article should perhaps bring out who said it first, do we not think? Midgley 12:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The opening section

Is not very good. Part of the problem is the buzz phrase "straight into the tissues". How do the the other participants in this stimulating discussion of a controversial artilc efeel about reducing that to a note that the suggestion is that Thimerosal produces mercury poisoning which produces autism etc? Midgley 23:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I noticed this evening that some citations in the very first paragraph were missing. I inserted these references, though admittedly they may not be the best. Better than nothnig certainly. Tony Stein 07:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New thirmerosal study

This month saw another publication (this time in the Medical Science Monitor) of another assessment finding (claiming) neurodevelopment disorders are coming down in line with the withdraw of thimerosal.(it's by the Geier's again) [http://www.usautism.org/PDF_files_newsletters /geiers_%20downward_trends_in_nds1.pdf] or [1]. Haven't really read it well enough yet to know whether its worth quoting from, so I will stick here in case any body else has the time. Gosh! June already; where does the time go?--Aspro 19:08, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

another study presented recently as well: [2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.1.34.199 (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

That one is already covered; see the recent change. Eubulides (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] State of the Controversy section: poor

Its present state does not suggest a high quality process might have produced it. Midgley 14:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

(Biting my tongue, trying to avoid a sarcastic remark). It's fine, Midgley, and better than any three sentences in Anti-vaccinationist. It outlines the issue, has references, and - apart from a few sentences in the end - written in good prose. I know the facts in this matter bother you to no end, but I really can't help that. --Leifern 16:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Then we agree that the few sentences near the end need cleaning up. Midgley 16:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal aspect

Sorry I did not cite when I first made this contribution. The info comes from the July 2006 of the American Bar Association Journal (page 12). Article discusses the legal aspects of this preservative. Sorry for the initial lack of citation. Also, sorry I did not insert this comment in the normal place - Wikipedia is telling me that a spam filter is preventing me from posting this comment. SOmething about tiny.url.com ??? Anyway, FYI. Thanks! Bundas 13:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I came to the page by accident and I know the subject is controversial but... I edited the legal section to replace most of the uses of 'vaccine court' by USCFC. While the repetition of 'so called...' sounds like an NPOV speech, I'm not trying to correct POV here, just grammar. However, looking at 'often referred to as "vaccine court"'. Google only has 742 references to that phrase, several of them on this page. USCFC gets 14,000 references. For comparison, choosing another US legal nickname - 'Scalito' has 203,000 references. Should maybe just be 'sometimes' rather than 'often'? - Bazzargh 00:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not most obviously related to "the thiomersal controversy" though, but rather to one or more other articles. Better to name it here, and leave the interested reader, or readers, to look up the detail of where some legal cases are to be held and how that came about in a more particular article.
"In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act established a no-fault system for litigating claims against vaccine manufacturers. Under this law, all claims against Vaccine manufacturers could not be heard in state or federal court, but had to be heard rather in the U.S Court of Federal Claims. This court, often referred to as the “vaccine court,” hears cases without juries and awards damages that typically are far below damage awards rendered in other courts. The damage amounts are often insufficient to compensate severely injured children."
Could usefully shrink to no more than "Under the no-fault system established by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act claims against Vaccine[sic] manufacturers have to be heard in the U.S Court of Federal Claims"
It appears that "occasionally called "the vaccine court" " might fit in, but is it necessary?Midgley 20:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Undue weight

The article is interesting in a way, but it gives undue weight to the views of the people believing in a link between autism and thiomersal (this is reflected in the reference section). Also, it fails to mentioned the number of large scale international studies that failed to show a link. The article needs a cleanup, to make it more clear that a thiomersal/autism link is very much the minority position in the medicial/scientific community, and that it's mostly held by people with no, or little, peer-reviewed work in the field. --Kristjan Wager 19:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not our job to count votes in this fabled "medical/scientific community" and then assign weight based on such a count. This is an article about the controversy - there's a separate article on thimerosal. Please add citations to the "large scale international studies" that fail to show the link. In the meantime, the evidence for a link is pretty overwhelming, but there are some pretty good reasons why it isn't showcased, i.e., a massive public failure of confidence in vaccinations specifically and other public health programs more generally. --Leifern 20:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
There have been at least five large epidemiological studies conducted since 2001 (in the UK, US, Sweden and Denmark). All of these found no link. They are refered to in this 2004 IOM Report ( summarized here). As to the idea that we shouldn't count votes, I think it would be worthwhile for you to read the wikipedia policy of a neutral point of view. You should especially notice the part about not giving undue weight.
As I stated before, this article gives undue weight to the people who believes in a thiomersal-autism link, especially considered with the wight give to the mainstream researchers. I suggest we fix this somehow. --Kristjan Wager 21:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Have to agree with the undue weight. 1000 sites on poor evidence are no better than 1 site based on the same poor evidence. Scientific American recently noted that autism rates continues to rise in countries where thimersol containing vaccines have been banned-evidence that, at the very least, some other factor is partially responsible for autism.

"... may have, over time, exceeded federal guidelines for bolus (single-dose) mercury exposure, based on methylmercury (but not ethylmercury) studies." That needs work, what is the relevance of the comparison between chronic and bolus? Midgley 21:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's restrain the invisible hand from guiding this debate, shall we? The whole point is, this is controversial. Let the mud slinging continue; that's how we'll make incremental progress towards the goal. Why anyone would accept anyone else's redaction of a controversial perspective I have no idea; this smacks of an attempt to neutralize the debate. Tony Stein 06:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

== Anybody noticed this article? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16870260&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum

It could be referred to to add credibility. 193.141.244.42 08:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] let's get the name of the preservative spelled right

There are at least two misspellings of thimerosal here and throughout.

there are multiple accepted spellings.Geni 02:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
The correct - RINN - spelling however is Thiomersal. Midgley 17:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A hearing is expected in June 2007.

did this ever happen?

216.97.171.219

[edit] Article needs cleanup

It appears that this article needs a lot of work. Redundant references, references that point to dead links, paragraphs that would be more appropriate in other sections, poor prose, and most importantly, what appears to be undue weight given to the view that there exists a causative link between autism and thiomersal given its minority status in the medical/scientific field. Yobol 18:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I hope nobody minds, because I basically re-wrote the article, as trying to fix minor things was not going to work with the amount of hodge-podging there was in the article. I basically re-worked the prose, made the references manageable (as opposed to dead links to .pdfs on 3rd party website), rearranged some sections for better flow, and added lots more information for better NPOV. Probably lots more work to be done, but I think that's enough for now.Yobol 13:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thompson et al. 2007 is overemphasized / Autism Focus

This change causes the Thompson et al. 2007 study (PMID 17898097) to be emphasized over other studies, for no reason that I can see. The change uses peacock terms like "a recent study" and "New England Journal of Medicine" to highlight this particular study; why? The study is smaller than some of the other studies that are already mentioned as "smaller studies finding no association". If there is a good reason to highlight this particular study over the other ones, it should be explained; otherwise, the study should just be listed along with the rest (which it already is). Eubulides 20:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. However, I did notice that this study evaluated not just autism, but a spectrum of neurological disorders. Why was the section on consensus focused only on autism effects?

The study in question addressed the neurological symptoms of autism, one at a time. It did not address whether the subjects in question had a diagnosis of autism, but it is a mistake to characterize the study as one that attempted to address general neurological problems. It was focusing on autism's signs, it was motivated by autism, and it did not at all address neurological problems in general. So I'm afraid this change made things worse. Eubulides 04:11, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I attempted to fix the problem with this change. Eubulides 06:09, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unjustified changes

This change caused the first sentence of the article to become ungrammatical and meaningless. The thiomersal controversy is between two sides; it makes little sense to omit one of the two sides in the initial statement of the controversy.

This change removed a claim that is directly supported by the cited source. Offit 2007 says, "Although the notion that thimerosal causes autism has now been disproved by several excellent epidemiologic studies, about 10,000 autistic children in the United States receive mercury-chelating agents every year. Furthermore, this notion has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the real cause or causes of the disorder."

Neither change was justified in the revision history. I've reverted them. I'm sure the article can stand improving, but these changes were not improvements. Eubulides 08:17, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The article certainly says that the notion has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the real cause of the disorder, but - speaking as someone who agrees with that sentiment - it's very clearly the article writer's opinion, not an objectively verified fact; people who believe that thiomersal is the real cause of autism would obviously disagree. That sentence has no buisness being stated as fact in a supposedly NPOV encyclopedia article. 70.189.12.96 22:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, you've lost me. How would one "objectively verify" that the thiomersal theory has diverted attention and resources away from efforts to determine the causes of autism? Are you saying that the Offit paper doesn't count as an reliable source because it doesn't include NIH budget figures? Eubulides 23:23, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, if you're gonna argue that budget figures would help, but what really makes the statement not obective is that it says "real causes." That assumes that thiomersal itself isn't the real cause of autism. And, again, I agree that it isn't, but obviously people on the other side of the controversy don't, so that isn't NPOV. It would be totally appropriate to note that this one specific expert - or lots of experts, or lots of people on our side of the controversy, if you can get more cites - argues that the thiomersal controversy is a distraction. But just stating it as a fact violates NPOV. 70.189.12.96 00:59, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
The phrase "real causes" is not in Thiomersal controversy. It's just "causes". I hope this addresses the NPOV objection. Eubulides 04:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with recent changes to the lead

This change introduced several problems:

  • It replaced a citation to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with a citation to an IP address. This is substituting a less-reliable source for a more-reliable one.
  • It reworded the text to make it claim that 4800 plaintiffs have filed in 2007. As far as I know, this claim is incorrect.
  • It rewords the 1st sentence to make it sound like the only concern is about TCVs in children. This isn't correct; it's all TCVs.
  • The reworded lead confusingly jumps from thiomersal to organomercury without explaining why the two concepts are related. We can't assume the reader knows this stuff.
  • It inserts NPOV text like "adherents of mainstream medical opinion".

The only justification listed for this change was in the log, which said "Modification of Introduction to be more neutral. Correction of link/validation of references." I read through the change looking for link fixes and changing the wording to be more neutral, and came up with this change, which I applied instead. If I missed something let's please discuss this on the talk page. Eubulides (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

* I made a mistake with the Address. When I was following the citation earlier, I was being led to a site that had no relation to the topic. Don't ask me how that happened, but it works now.
  • As for the addition of "Since 2007", that is when the class action suit began. I think a date reference is important here.
  • It was also my understanding that autism is never developed in adults, however I will defer on this point.
  • You can't call someone "mainstream medical opinion", they have to be defined further on this point. I chose to define it as someone who adheres to mainstream medical opinion. It's grammatically inaccurate at present.
  • I also wanted to make the introduction an easier read. Right now, it's grammatically clumsy (the first line for example... controversies are defined by a topic, not by who is fighting over it) --Waterspyder (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The class action suit did not begin in 2007. It began many years ago.
  • There is also concern that TCVs given to pregnant women may help cause autism in their children.
  • If I understand you correctly, the grammatical problem is that the previous version said that the controversy was between "critics" and "opinion"; if one side of the controversy is a group of people then the other side should be too. That makes sense, but I think it's better and more neutral to describe the controversy as being between two positions (i.e., two opinions) rather than between two groups of people, so as to not personalize the dispute. With that in mind, the revised lead paragraph gives too much emphasis to people: it talks about "critics" in several places.
  • The revised version gives, by my count, about 130 words to anti-vaccination arguments and about 80 words to pro-vaccination. This skews too far to one side of the dispute.
  • The revised version uses the word "thiomersal" 3 times in the 1st sentence and once in the 2nd; this is too much repetition.
I attempted to fix the above problems with this change. It adds a few more citations about the court cases, and spruces up existing citations. Eubulides (talk) 22:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Again, I cannot iterate enough that a controversy is on a subject and not between sides. To say "abortion" is a controversy between Catholic Pro-life advocates and Pro-choice mothers is limiting and actually makes it more biased. To state that "abortion" is a controversy regarding the right of a mother to terminate a pregnancy, is actually more neutral. In this case, you cannot simply state two sides. There are more sides, but there are two main opposing sides, each with a main core group. --Waterspyder (talk) 13:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The current wording is subject-oriented, not side-oriented, so I don't understand the criticism. Also, I don't agree that it is more neutral to state that abortion "is a controversy regarding the right of a mother to terminate a pregnancy". That wording is pro-choice, and it is less neutral than saying that the abortion controversy is between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. As the abortion example illustrates, subject-oriented wording can be more biased than side-oriented wording. If you take a look at the lead to Abortion debate, you'll see that it uses side-oriented wording and is relatively neutral. Eubulides (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific consensus changes

These changes by User:137.28.185.19 to Thiomersal controversy #Scientific consensus on controversy introduced a lot of duplication, some poorly-formatted (and duplicative) citations, and some misspellings. I think the intent was to give more detail about studies refuting the connection between autism and thiomersal, but the overall effect was to make the article worse (the introduced text makes the resulting section drone on and one without letup, and puts at least this reader to sleep). There are some good ideas in the change, but it really needs to be thought through better: this article is supposed to be a readable summary of the controversy, and not a mind-numbing list of studies. I see that others had reverted the change as vandalism and then User:137.28.185.19 brought them back. I'm going to revert them now and point to this section in the changelog, in the hopes that we can figure out how to improve the article via discussion rather than via edit wars. Eubulides (talk) 06:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] New Reliable scientific study shows a clear connection to Autism

Here is something to integrate in the article [3] "Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: An assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink." from Journal of the Neurological Sciences May 14th 2008. I think that this well designed study settles the controversy. MaxPont (talk) 12:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It's authors include the Geier pair so no.Geni 14:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The study is published after a blind peer review in a credible academic journal. The fact that someone dislikes one of the authors should not affect the decision to include the reference in the article. And by the way, the lead author is Young, not Geier. MaxPont (talk) 07:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
The Geier's have had papers pulled in the past. Their involvement is enough to make the paper largely worthless unless replicated.Geni 11:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
And in spite of that the Journal of the Neurological Sciences published the article. Plus, this time the lead author is Young, not Geier. The lead author is the person that takes the largest responsibility for the publication.MaxPont (talk) 13:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Heather Young? oh much the same conflict of interest issues as the Geiers. That the Geiers are trying to hide behind someone with much the same conflict of interests issues is of no import.Geni 14:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
In the past, similar work by the Geiers has been widely discredited, and its use in Wikipedia has caused Wikipedia itself to lose credit. See, for example, Goodman 2006 (PMID 16915200). The new paper is too new to have been reviewed; in the meantime it is prudent not to play it up, considering its source. Come to think of it, I suspect the work cited by Goodman should be added here, so that readers know what kind of source they're dealing with. Eubulides (talk) 14:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
This study seems problematic too because it flies in the face of the much more detailed and expansive analysis of the data being performed by the CDC itself [4]. Tmtoulouse (talk) 15:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
That study is already cited in this article, in Thiomersal controversy#Rationale for concern. I agree with Geni that the study has not affected scientific consensus. Eubulides (talk) 16:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Another study of the vaccine autism link

Presented at the 2008 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR)[5] "Infant Primates Given Vaccines on U.S. Children's Immunization Schedule Develop Biomedical and Behavioral Symptoms of Autism" [6] MaxPont (talk) 13:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That research hasn't appeared in any publications yet, as far as I know. We can wait until it's published. Eubulides (talk) 16:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Was it a poster presentations or an oral presentations? Poster submission to IMFAR would not really qualify as a reliable source, and the fact that the abstract is not available for review and the only sources that talk about it are hyperbolic press releases from the mercury militia all add up to this being not worth bothering with. Tmtoulouse (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)