Mercury in Childhood Vaccines Excreted Quickly

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"Until recently, that longer half-life was assumed to be the rule for both types of mercury. Now it's obvious that ethyl mercury's short half-life prevents toxic build-up from occurring. It's just gone too fast," Pichichero said.

"If you thought thimerosal was responsible for autism, you would be looking at mercury levels that were far below anything anyone's previously thought as being toxic," Treanor added.

"Though it's reassuring to affirm that these immunizations have always been safe, our findings really have greater implications for world health," Pichichero said. "Replacing the thimerosal in vaccines globally would put these vaccines beyond what the world community could afford for its children."

The findings were to be released Monday in the February issue of Pediatrics, but they were released early by the journal's publisher, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is requesting that the ABC network cancel the premiere episode of a new show Thursday dealing with the thimerosal-autism controversy.

The findings also follow a recent report from the California Department of Health that rates of autism continue to climb there even after thimerosal has been removed from childhood vaccines.

"A much more fundamental observation has been as mercury has been eliminated from vaccines in many countries the rates at which autism are being diagnosed continue to go up at about the same rate as before the mercury was removed," Treanor noted. "There doesn't seem to be any relationship between the frequency of autism and whether children are getting vaccines with mercury or not."

And they follow a series of studies, including a large-scale U.S. Institute of Medicine review in 2004, that failed to uncover a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The first report of a possible connection appeared in British study in the late 1990s; it has since been discredited.

Current estimates by the U.S. National Institutes of Health say that one American child in 150 has been diagnosed with autism, although experts wonder if that increase is due to better diagnoses and a broader definition of the disorder.