More evidence against thimerosal-autism link; critics disagree

This paper in the Archives of General Psychiatry, part of the JAMA family of journals, reports that data "do(es) not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism."

Seemingly yet another piece of evidence refuting the thimerosal-vaccines-autism hypothesis, the paper led to coverage from ABC News, the Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere.

Advocates of the link between thimerosal and autism were not swayed, as this Baltimore Sun story explains. SafeMinds, perhaps the most prominent organization focusing on mercury-related vaccine risks, published its own analysis of the paper arguing that the imprecision of the data in the study prevented any variable (including thimerosal) from being ruled out as a cause of increasing autism rates.