Is thiomersal linked to autism?
THIS WEEK the Government decided to remove the mercury-based preservative thiomersal from the controversial new five-in-one vaccine for diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, and meningitis. The move, according to health ministers, followed advice from “expert committees”. (Thiomersal is still used in the single whooping cough jab.) There are no plans to remove the heavy metal from flu vaccines because, the Department of Health says, there is “no evidence whatsoever that thiomersal is dangerous”. A growing pile of evidence has, however, led scientists to dispute this. Dr Richard Lathe, a molecular neuroscientist and director of Pieta, an Edinburgh bio-technology consultancy, says: “The theory that thiomersal is linked to autism is increasingly soundly based, certainly far more robust than the proposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism.” Richard Mills, a research director at the National Autistic Centre, says that though there is clearly no single cause of autism, “no one can
