List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the thimerosal controversy

The scientific consensus is that thimerosal, a preservative formerly used in vaccines, does not increase the risk of autism in children, with major medical bodies noting, among other things, that autism rates continued to increase even after thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in the United States. However, a number of scientists remain convinced that there is, or may be, a link. The following list consists of scientists who have made statements that thimerosal may cause autism, often based on their own research.
*Mady Hornig--associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Conducted a study in 2004, funded in part by SafeMinds, an anti-vaccination advocacy group, which looked at how thimerosal exposure affected a particular strain of mice, SJL/J, which is unusually susceptible to autoimmune disease.
*Richard Deth--Northeastern University pharmacology professor. Conducted a study in 2004, also funded by SafeMinds, that looked at how thimerosal inhibits methionine synthase in vitro. This paper had originally been submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but had been rejected because, the journal's editors said, the paper failed to meet standards for "exceptional importance and novelty."
*Boyd Haley--retired chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky. Conducted a study in 2003, which concluded that autistic children had lower levels of mercury in their hair. Haley is an outspoken critic of mercury not only in vaccines, but also in dental amalgams, and has stated, based on the aforementioned study, that "There appears to be a subset of the population that cannot excrete mercury and is at greater risk from mercury exposures than the general population."
*H. Vasken Aposhian--retired toxicologist at the University of Arizona. Has published much research on people exposed to large amounts of mercury in forms including mercury vapor, as well as mercurous chloride. Testified in the autism omnibus trial that autistic children "lack an effective mercury efflux system," based in part on the 2003 Haley et al. study.
*David Baskin--former neurosurgeon at Baylor College of Medicine, who currently works at Houston Methodist Hospital. Conducted an in vitro study showing damage to human neurons and fibroblasts from thimerosal exposure. Testified in support of a thimerosal-autism link before the Institute of Medicine in 2004.
*Mark Geier--Geneticist who runs the Center for Chronic Illness in Maryland. He, along with his son David, has conducted much research on the potential link between mercury and autism. His research has been met with much criticism from the scientific community, however, with a 2006 review stating, with regard to one study by the Geiers, published in 2003, that "there were multiple methodological concerns with the paper, seriously calling into question the validity of their conclusions. One problem is that the VAERS is a passive reporting, system; thus anyone can report an adverse event after vaccination, including health care providers, parents, patients etc. Another concern is that the diagnoses are never validated."
*Jose G. Dorea--Professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Brasilia. Has contended that "The evidence continues to mount that mercury in vaccines is not safe, that negative effects happen even with vaccine levels of exposure."
*Mary Catherine DeSoto and Robert T. Hitlan--Two researchers from the University of Northern Iowa, they came to public attention in 2007 with a paper reporting an association between blood levels of mercury and autism. A number of bloggers, however, criticized their paper's methodology. They followed this up in 2010 with a review article which concluded that there was scientific support for the link between autism and heavy metals, particularly from "empirical investigations".
*Laura Hewitson--Primatologist and former assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she published a study in 2010 concluding that exposure to the entire vaccine schedule, including those vaccines which contained thimerosal, caused brain changes similar to the whole brain growth seen in autistic children. This research had previously been reported at the International Meeting for Autism Research in 2008, and according to critics, suffered from a number of flaws. Previously, Hewitson and other researchers from Thoughtful House, including Andrew Wakefield, had published a paper in Neurotoxicology which concluded that monkeys receiving the thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine exhibited delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes. The paper has since been retracted.
*Jane El-Dahr--Professor of pediatrics at Tulane University School of Medicine. El-Dahr, like Dr. Baskin, gave a presentation to the IOM in support of the thimerosal-autism link. However, El-Dahr has not published any research explicitly linking thimerosal to autism, though she has conducted research on the use of chelation therapy as an autism treatment.
*David W. Austin--Associate professor in the department of life and social sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Victoria. Conducted a study in 2011 which reported that rates of autism were much higher among people with a family history of pink disease than in the general population. Also published a perspective piece that same year arguing that a link between mercury and autism was biologically plausible.

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