From Mother Blaming to Mercury Blaming
Although research continues to establish that there is no causal link between thimerasol and autism, fears about a connection between vaccines—thimerasol being a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines—and autism remain, and not only among the parents of some autistic children. Parents of very young children—babies and toddlers—are more than concerned (despite the fact that thimerasol has long been gone from vaccines).
One friend did not get a flu shot for her young son because of “those vaccines“: Her son was born premature and, due perhaps to his lungs being underdeveloped, he has caught one cold or respiratory illness after another, and may well have benefited from a flu shot. This week, the parenting website Babble is featuring an essay by Tara Bishop, M.D., an “Ivy-League-educated, mommy-tracked housewife” doctor who notes “the latest research on autism and vaccinations” as a topic she specifically discusses with her children’s pediatrician. Evidence to the contrary, concerns about a vaccine-autism link remain and seem to lurk on the list of fears of parents at the start of the 21st century.
The notion that some distinct thing (like a vaccine or something in a vaccine, or in the environment) can cause autism is straightforward and simple to understand, and it is the very simplicity of such explanations that makes them so appealing, and so readily believed. As Majia Holmer Nadesan notes in Constructing Autism: Unravelling the ‘truth’ and understanding the social, there was another theory of autism causation in the 1950s and 1960s which also was possessed of a “readable simplicity.” This would be the theory that autism was caused by bad parenting, by cold-hearted, emotionally distant people—the “refrigerator mother” theory of autism that was promulgated by Bruno Bettelheim. Nadesan also notes that
….. Bettelheim blended his psychoanalytic appropriations with “scientific” findings from ethological theories very much in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s. Because ethological approaches used the empirical methods of the natural sciences to establish parallels between animal behavior and human behavior, they no doubt added legitimacy to Bettelheim’s ideas during a period in which positivism was dominant in the social sciences. Thus, although Bettelheim’s text can be faulted for its gross simplifications, distortions, and eclectic appropriations, his “mother blaming” occurred in a popular and scientific environment already receptive to such arguments. (pp. 98-99)
Can it not be said that “mercury blaming” as a cause of autism has alike arisen in a “popular and scientific environment already receptive to such arguments”? Today we are “concerned about the environment,” about global warning and climate change, about such inconvenient truths. You can buy fruit in the produce section of the supermarket, or you can buy organic fruit in a special section at higher prices. We worry about air quality, chromium contamination, the pesticides that make the grass green and lower the dandelion count. Perhaps it is of the times that there is a tendency to see autism as more than partially caused by something in the environment. How else could autism and asthma both be described as the “new childhood epidemics,” and both be treated according to the same “healing program,” in Dr. Kenneth Bock’s book?
Both “mother-blaming” and “mercury-blaming” point to a single cause for autism. By implicating one causal agent, it seems that the solution for “solving the puzzle of autism” should be so simple to uncover—but this is far from the truth.
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POSTED IN: Cause, Environment, Parenting, Psychology, Vaccines
10 opinions for From Mother Blaming to Mercury Blaming
Laura Collins
May 25, 2007 at 6:42 am
Bravo!!!
Minnie Matta
May 25, 2007 at 7:41 am
You wrote: “Although research continues to establish that there is no causal link between thimerasol and autism”.
It’s hard to believe someone paid for such a flawed study. Read why here:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=26477
You wrote: “despite the fact that thimerasol has long been gone from vaccines”.
That is not true. Flu shots contain plenty of thimerosal. 25 micrograms for the adult shot, 12.5 for the children’s shot, and it’s recommended that the first year the person should get two doses.
Kristina Chew, PhD
May 25, 2007 at 7:54 am
To clarify, the mention of thimerasol being “long gone from” vaccines
refers to the MMR (which, of course, has been linked to autism) andlinks back to chapter 10 of Arthur Allen’s Vaccines: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaverand is made in reference to the MMR.While do not yet know what exactly causes autism, the flu vaccine has yet to be cited.
Club 166
May 25, 2007 at 8:17 am
When will those hanging on to the “Autism=Mercury Poisoning” theory learn that they are behind the times, as they were supposed to switch to the “Autism=Heavy Metal and Aluminum poisoning from vaccines, plus whatever other toxic elements we can find in the environment” theory?
Get with the program, people!
Minnie Matta
May 25, 2007 at 9:19 am
You wrote: “To clarify, the mention of thimerasol being “long gone from” vaccines refers to the MMR (which, of course, has been linked to autism) and links back to chapter 10 of Arthur Allen’s Vaccines: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver and is made in reference to the MMR.”
MMR never had thimerosal, it’s a live virus.
C
May 25, 2007 at 10:57 am
Minnie is correct. MMR vaccine induced autism is a different … phobia. Sorry, I can’t bring myself to use the word theory.
Kristina Chew, PhD
May 25, 2007 at 1:06 pm
And an equally simplifying one.
“From Mother Blame to Mercury and MMR Blame.”
Quinoline Blue
May 26, 2007 at 7:57 am
I must agree. So many pegs to hook autism onto - mercury, toxic metals, dietary issues… While I’m not saying these don’t contribute, as dietary intervention has helped ny son enormously, they are not the one cause. We don’t yet know what that is. Science hasn’t got there yet. It is perfectly obvious from the complexity of each individual with autism that the cause will never be simple. What therapy works for one will not work for another. Individual biochem workups are what is needed. Autism should be treated like any other illness, surely that’s just a common courtesy. Every time another theory comes along, it is going to be THE answer. Strange it never turns out that way…
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May 26, 2007 at 11:08 am
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