Officials call off chelation therapy study - (mentions mercury/autism link)

[MrsJez]

http://www.reuters.com/article/healt...30890720080917

I'm wondering who paid them off? Of COURSE they're not going to want to have ANY links between metal poisoning and autism. By doing this study, if it's found that chelation therapy proves to be beneficial for autistic children, their standpoint that mercury and autism are not related could be completely blown out of the water, correct?

*If this isn't where this post belongs, I apologize.*

[Ophelia]

Yes, that is....suspicious. And so true, they don't want to know what they might find.
the article also has wrong info:

Since 2001, with the exception of some influenza vaccines, the mercury-containing preservative has not been used in routinely recommended childhood vaccines

NOT true, it's still in there.

[tanyalynn]

But this has 2 sides. From what I understand of the details of how they were going to administer the dmsa, it may very well have made a lot of kids worse. It sounds like they were going to give it for 12 weeks straight (I don't know how many times per day, I doubt they think that's important) and their end measurement (blood mercury concentration) isn't a good measure of body mercury.

All in all, part of me is glad that it was stopped. Because if it made kids sicker, instead of assuming that wow, there's a lot of heavy metals in these kids (and if stirring them up adds symptoms, then carefully getting the metals out may decrease or eliminate symptoms) and make them consider doing this right, they'd assume that chelation is an altogether bad thing and I'd worry that the harassment of parents chelating their kids (or themselves) would step up.

ETA: I also wonder what was going on behind the scenes that made them drop it. I doubt they just decided to re-think how they're going to administer the dmsa.