around 1930 contained an ethyl-mercury preservative called thimerosal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts say that concern is unfounded, but they recommended in 1999 that it be phased out of childhood vaccines in the United States as a precaution. The questions raised by Donald’s improvement are both simple and potentially significant: Did the gold-salts treatment alleviate his autistic symptoms, and if so, why? Did the juvenile arthritis – an autoimmune condition – and the autism improve markedly at the same time because both were responses to a toxic exposure? Did the gold salts help pull mercury from Donald’s body, and/or reduce an inflammatory immune response in his brain? Or is it all coincidence, or a memory blurred by the passage of 59 years? Such questions, or course, are speculative, and some have criticized us for even asking them, given the assurances of the CDC and medical groups and the importance of immunizations in preventing infectious disease. But something good did seem to happen to one autistic child who was about to die: Donald T. All we’re interested in is, why? Gold salts pass a test In a striking follow-up to our research on the first child diagnosed with autism – and his improvement after treatment with gold salts – a chemistry professor says lab tests show the compound can “reverse the binding” of mercury to molecules. “This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts,” says Boyd Haley, professor and former chemistry department chair at the University of Kentucky. The potential significance: Donald T. – Case 1 among children diagnosed with autism in the 1930s – showed marked improvement in his autistic symptoms after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
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ne theory of autism – strongly dismissed by federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups – is that the disorder is primarily caused by a mercury preservative called thimerosal that was used in vaccines beginning in the 1930s. Some parents and researchers who believe autism is, in essence, mercury poisoning are using treatments designed to remove mercury from the body or offset its neurological effects. Haley is among a minority of scientists who holds this view, and after reading about Donald’s improvement he set out to test whether gold salts have any effect on mercury. “You follow your nose in research, and when I saw that I thought, yes, this is a possibility.” Haley’s experiment was quite simple: He began with a coloured thiol-containing compound. Thiols are the class of molecules that contain a sulfhydryl group (a sulfur and hydrogen atom bound together) and, because of the affinity of mercury for sulfur, these molecules bind tightly to mercury. Thiols are found in most enzymes, and when mercury binds to them, these enzymes lose their biological activity, which is needed to maintain healthy cells, he said. Haley performed two tests involving inorganic mercury –
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“Regardless, the fate of the first child ever diagnosed with the disorder seems more relevant today than ever before. One reason: Some parents, under the guidance of several hundred doctors who have broken away from the medical mainstream, are trying a variety of medical interventions to treat their autistic children”
the type of mercury thimerosal breaks down to in the brain. Haley’s compound was designed to turn colourless when mercury binds to it. In the first test, he added the mercury, and the “optical density” measurement went from 0.23 units down to 0.11 units immediately, and down to 0.03 units in half an hour – a clear sign that the mercury had bound to the thiol. In the second test he premixed the mercury with gold salts for two minutes, then added it to the same solution. This time the optical density dropped to 0.11 but then slowly increased back up to 0.23 within about 30 minutes – “totally the opposite of the situation with mercury alone,” Haley said. “The only way this could happen would be for the gold salts to remove mercury from the thiol-containing compound.” The advocacy group SafeMinds – which opposes the use of mercury in medicines and provided Haley with the $142 prescription of gold salts to test – called the results potentially significant but cautioned against premature use of the compound to treat autistic people. “Clinicians have shown that some autistic children show strong recovery from their symptoms after biomedical treatment,” says SafeMinds’ Mark Blaxill. “So any time we discover a treatment that works in a child, we need to take it seriously. “According to his brother’s unprompted report, Donald T. recovered from autism after treatment with gold salts. We should be all over that, especially after Boyd’s work. But we need to proceed with care to make sure that this is a safe treatment.” Haley makes the same point. “Please note that I am not recommending using gold salts to treat autistics, but it would certainly be worth a project if carefully monitored by a physician in a good clinic.” Donald was given injections of the salts over a two- to threemonth period at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis at age 12 in 1947. Before Haley tested the gold salts, he told us why he thought it was worth investigating. “Nothing has a higher affinity for mercury than elemental gold. They form bonds that are very tight,” Haley explained. Devices designed to detect and filter out mercury routinely use gold, he noted – and they obviously would employ a less expensive element if gold weren’t so effective. Mercury was also used to extract gold from ore in mining operations. In the body, Haley said, gold likely is “attracted to the same places as mercury. They would probably make it to the same spot in the body. It (gold) would probably cross the blood-brain