Science Times journalist Kirby addresses the burgeoning number of U.S. children diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and speech delays with as much detachment as possible, given what appears to be overwhelming, though anecdotal, evidence of a connection between those diagnoses and a mercury-based preservative. Long considered a genetic disorder, autism was recently reclassified because its incidence has reached epidemic proportions; from 1 in 5,000 infants in the 1980s to 1 in 166 in two decades. With that increase, more parents began taking matters into their own hands when previously healthy infants suddenly began to radically regress. Conducting their own research and demanding scientific information, these parents eventually sniffed out mercury, "the second most toxic substance on earth" and an additive to vaccines. The more they pressed for explanations, the more vehemently government agencies and pharmaceutical companies, supported by their own data, denied a connection. Some facts Kirby asserts seem hard to refute, however, and the juxtaposition of heartrending parents' stories and disengaged rhetoric of official agency and company documents makes anything but refutation unconscionable. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Read this book! Could thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in pediatric vaccines, be the cause of the world-wide epidemic of autism? David Kirby's superb, even-handed account of the investigation into this ongoing, high-stakes controversy is fascinating and compelling. The poignant personal accounts of the families of autistic children are heart-wrenching. A thoroughly researched, well written, and important book."
- Bernard Rimland, director of the Autism Research Institute and founder of the Autism Society of America
About the Author
David Kirby has been a contributor to The New York Times for eight years, where he writes articles about science and health, among other subjects. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Evidence of Harm
1. Mothers on a MissionLYN REDWOOD KNEW she was pregnant at the first sip of white Zinfandel. In her previous two pregnancies, the taste of alcohol had taken on an unpalatable, almost metallic quality, and now, here it was again. Lyn gagged and set down the frosty wineglass. Her husband, Tommy, looked at her with a slight note of alarm. But Lyn just closed her eyes and waited for the nausea to subside. Then she stood up and smiled."I'm fine," she said quietly to Tommy. "Everything is just fine." It was Memorial Day Weekend, 1993, and the couple had driven from their home outside Atlanta across the steamy deep South to the hamlet of Columbus, Mississippi, for a visit to Tommy's parents. On the five-hour ride home, Lyn could think of nothing but the taste of that wine. She was excited, but wanted to make sure before saying anything to Tommy.Lyn smiled at the prospect of a new child. She knew that Tommy adored her children, Drew and Hanna, from her previous marriage. But she also knew that it must be difficult at times to raise someone else's kids.When they got home, Lyn ran upstairs to the master bathroom where she kept some pregnancy tests. The Zinfandel had not deceived her. She really was pregnant.Lyn went downstairs to tell Tommy the news. He was overjoyed. Now hewould have a child who would call him Dad instead of Tommy. The new baby would complete the happy picture.Lyn was an attractive woman with cocoa-colored hair and soft, almost catlike brown eyes. She met Tommy in 1986, in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was completing her MS in nursing and he was a young med student from the University of Mississippi with a handsome smile, dark hair, and an athletic physique.The two were married in 1987, and Tommy wholeheartedly accepted Lyn's children, Hanna and Drew, as his own. In 1991, the young family moved to Atlanta, where Lyn began work as a family nurse practitioner, and Tommy got a job in the ER at Newnan Hospital, outside Atlanta.The past six years had been almost dreamlike for the Redwoods. They had recently put the finishing touches on a three-story, wood and stone contemporary home on nine acres of hardwood forest in tiny Tyrone, Georgia, thirty minutes south of Atlanta. A rural small town, Tyrone looks a lot like Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show (except for the Confederate symbol on the old Georgia state flag that still flutters above the American Legion hall).The kids had never been happier. Hanna and Drew were excelling in the gifted program of the local school, where Drew entered kindergarten at the third-grade reading level. Life was sweet in the new house, with its free-form pool and flat stone terraces, its hiking trails through Georgia pines and open pastures, and the covered wooden bridge that Lyn and Tommy built over Trickum Creek, which meanders lazily across their land.Lyn's third pregnancy was perfectly normal, by all measurements. The only thing to set it apart from the first two was that Lyn, whose blood type is RH-NEGATIVE, was given two injections of Gamalin brand Anti-Rho(D) globulin, at fourteen weeks and twenty-eight weeks of gestation. About 15 percent of all women have an RH-negative blood type and, if the fetus is RH-positive, as was the case with Will, the mother could produce antibodies against the child's blood type. This in turn could create potentially deadly complications in subsequent pregnancies. Anti-Rho(D) globulin staves off that disaster. (Lyn received a third injection immediately after Will was born, in case there had been any undetected mix of blood during delivery.)In Lyn's third trimester, she was told the pregnancy was breech. When she entered labor, in February 1994, a baby boy appeared with two feet sticking out. It was Groundhog Day, and the Redwoods would later joke that their son had seen his shadow and tried to run back in. The doctors ordered a C-section and the procedure went well. A beaming baby boy, named Will Redwood, arrived into the world happy and healthy.Will, with his brown hair and cool, gray-blue eyes, was an exceedingly good baby. Rarely fussy and almost always smiling, he seemed alert andengaged in his new world. Will chuckled and grinned whenever Lyn tickled him, and he loved to play tag with the family cat, crawling around the living room and squealing with delight whenever he "caught" the kitty. He was an unusually inquisitive and adventurous boy. At eight months, he learned to use his baby walker, and wandered around the ground floor of the house exploring every corner he could get into.Will breast-fed without trouble and met, or exceeded, normal developmental landmarks. He began speaking right on schedule, and learned new words like mama, daddy, and kitty cat almost daily. By twelve months, he could play Little Tykes basketball with his brother, Drew. Lyn and Tommy watched in awe as Will toddled to the hoop and slam-dunked the ball home. Each time, he turned to his parents, clapped his little hands, and cried, "Yea!!"Lyn, the experienced nurse, made sure that Will received every vaccination on the U.S. Childhood Immunization Schedule. She couldn't help but notice that kids were getting a lot more shots now than Hanna and Drew had received in the 1980s. At two months, four months, six months, and one year, Will was brought in for a "well-baby" visit, each time receiving multiple injections against dangerous diseases like hepatitis-B, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), or diphtheria-tetanus (DT).Shortly after Will's one-year visit, he developed strep throat, which is rare in young infants. Then he developed rotavirus, a gastrointestinal bug that can cause severe pain and discomfort in a child. One Saturday, while Lyn had a good friend visiting for the weekend, Will vomited on the living room floor. Lyn didn't think too much about it, but a few hours later Will vomited again, and it quickly got to the point where he couldn't keep food down at all. Worried, Lyn called her pediatrician, who prescribed an antinausea suppository. The pediatrician said that rotavirus was fairly common in children. He was not unduly alarmed.The next day, the diarrhea began. It quickly got so bad it would fill the toddler's diapers and run down his legs in burning, acidic streams. But there was no treatment for rotavirus, and the only remedy Lyn could think of was to give Will rice-and-glucose water every hour or two, to replace the electrolytes he was losing. The diarrhea drained from him like foul floodwaters and the vomiting wracked his small body. Even though the worst symptoms abated after a week or so, Will never really made a recovery to full health. He ran periodic and unexplained fevers. He seemed under the weather all the time.At around seventeen months, Will developed an upper respiratory infection, like a very bad cold, and began wheezing uncontrollably. The Redwoods rushed him to Peachtree Regional Hospital, where he was immediately admitted and given IV antibiotics, steroids, and other medications. Lyn stayed with her son for two days, sleeping with Will inside his misty respirator tent.Will also lost an alarming amount of weight. He had, for all practical purposes, stopped eating. Lyn put him on a strict regimen of vitamins and supplemental nutritional treatments. And even though she had weaned him from the bottle, she found it was now the only way to get real food (in the guise of meal-replacement shakes) inside the boy.Once spritely and impish, Will now sat motionless in his infant seat, gazing at videos in dogged, unnerving repetition. And there was something else, something ominous that transpired during this period--something that Lyn and Tommy noticed only gradually, and didn't pay much mind to because Will had been so darned sick.But there was no denying it. Will had stopped talking."Oh, don't worry about that," Lyn was told by friends and family. "Boys always talk late." Tommy, for instance, hadn't started speaking until he was three, and he turned out to be a skilled physician. Lyn's first son, Drew, hadn't been a late talker. So maybe it was something in Tommy's genes.There were other signs of trouble, of course, signs that Lyn only realized several years later. One weekday morning, when Will was in his infant seat, staring at space, Lyn walked directly in front of him, bending down until her face met his, her deep brown eyes just inches from Will's. She smiled, she waved. But Will just sat there, looking straight through his mother."My," she marveled. "You have incredibly intense concentration!"Years later, Lyn would scoff at her own naïveté. Loss of speech and lack of eye contact are classic symptoms of autism. But the disorder, still so rare at the time, was way off her maternal radar screen. Despite her medical background, Lyn had never met an autistic kid in her life.
AUTISM CONTINUED to be the last thing on their minds as Lyn and Tommy witnessed Will's increasingly baffling behavior. He grew acutely sensitive to sound, and would cover his ears and yelp in pain if the TV were turned up. Going to Drew's basketball games was always an ordeal. When the buzzer went off, Will threw his hands to his ears and screamed loudly enough to pierce the crowd's roar. Lyn learned to watch the timer and cover Will's ears in advance.Then there was the incident at the Little League game. One muggy evening in Tyrone, the Redwoods were at the local ballpark taking in one of Drew's games. Will, the restless toddler, kept trying to get up and wander around the bleacher area. Finally, after several attempts at trailing her son and returning him to his seat, Lyn decided to let Will go, just to see what would happen."I'm going to just sit here and see how far he goes before he realizes he'sout of the ten-foot radius or so," she said to Tommy. Will just kept wan...
