A misleading headline on autism story

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Boy, I think debate means..well, debate. It did not say proved, caused, etc. Again, the defensiveness reflects fear over what is coming as the evidence is mounting. Denial aint a river in Egypt, doc. If anyone would care to add a rebuttal : letters@.... http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/opinion/14214265.htm Posted on Wed, Mar. 29, 2006 email this print this LETTERS TO THE VALLEY TIMES A misleading headline on autism story Your front-page headline of March 22 asserts that a new study done at UC- "fuels debate over autism." The subsequent article goes on to describe the effects of thimerosal (a mercury-containing agent used as a preservative in some vaccines) on dendritic cells of mice in tissue culture. Interspersed with these scientific findings are hints at an alleged connection between the use of thimerosal in vaccines and an apparent increase in the incidence of autism in recent years. On Page 21 near the end of the first section of your newspaper, when most of your readers are likely to have lost interest in the substance of the story, you finally get to the reality that the investigators in the study were not only not saying that thimerosal caused autism but that the study failed to reveal whether it would have the same effect on a mouse's body as in tissue culture, whether it affects human cells the same way as it does mouse cells, or whether the immune system dysfunction found in the study has any connection at all with autism. In other words, there was no evidence in the study that related to autism at all in spite of your front-page assertion that the study fueled debate over autism. Whether this headline and the accompanying

article was the result of deliberate deception, scientific ignorance, or an inability to reason on the part of the writer (and editor) is unclear, but given the deception on other issues so often found on the front pages of your newspaper one cannot be sanguine about your paper's intellectual honesty. Roland Butnick, M.D., J.D.

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