“So you think this preservative in the multi-dose vials has something to do with autism?”
Trent tapped his fingers repeatedly on the table for several seconds, looking as if he wanted to choose his words very carefully. “Yes. I think the vaccinations could be one of the contributing factors to the increases. We are beginning to see more autism because children are receiving far more vaccinations than any time in history. It just makes sense. The mercury is building up. I’ll need some time to develop and research a database to confirm it. I can postulate all I want, but until we can prove the supposition and have it reviewed by competent medical and scientific experts, the theory is worthless. Right now, it’s just speculation. Meanwhile, the world is blindly pumping what I believe to be unsafe levels of mercury into their children believing they are doing the right thing. The mercury issue needs to be addressed now but making that happen is another thing altogether.”
Crockett raised his head slightly, jutting his jaw toward Trent. “How long have you had this theory?”
“Since 1945!”
“What happened then?”
“That’s when the first recorded case of autism was documented. I became suspicious when I read the study.”
Crockett was confused. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said with a smile. “The compass in my head has been out of order since I asked you my first question. I’m a bit of a slow learner. Are you saying that, prior to 1945, autism did not exist?”
“Not necessarily. What I said was that there was no recorded history of autism. Autism was formally identified in 1945 by a John-Hopkins psychiatrist named Leo Kanner after documenting the case histories of a group of eleven unrelated children. They all had mental disorders that were strikingly similar to each other. Kanner could find nothing in recorded history that compared what he was witnessing. Those children gave him the impression they were trying to escape from reality. What caught peaked my interest was that all the children in Kanner’s study were born after 1930.”
“What’s the significance of that?”
“That’s when multi-dose vaccine vials with the mercury-based preservative came into play. All of the children in Kanner’s clinic studied were under eleven years old, part of the first generation to grow up with the new vaccines that had the preservative. What I find interesting is that the discovery of what was eventually termed autism did not exist until after the mercury preservative was added to childhood vaccines.”
“So you believe that is what’s causing autism?”
“Contributing, but vaccines alone are likely not the sole culprit.”
“What do you mean by that?”
‘Think about it! Kanner wrote his study in 1944. He only found a handful of children in the world with what he decided to label as autism and you could count them on two hands. A few years later, in the 1950’s, autism rates in the country were eventually documented to be around one in ten thousand. Based on that, Kanner should have found millions of children with autism to study. He only had a handful to study.”
“Why was that?”
“Not sure, but I have a theory.”
Crockett leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table and cradled his head. “I’ll bite. I am all ears.”
Trent leaned back and moved on. “I believe there are other environmental issues besides fish that began surfacing and are likely to be contributing factors to the problem. Around the same time mercury was added to vaccines in the U.S., it was also introduced as a fungicide for wood in a lumber mill down in Mississippi. That practice quickly spread through mills nationwide. People began moving into houses unaware that their new homes were laced with mercury used to preserve the very lumber used to build their home. To make matters worse, mercury was also introduced as a seed disinfectant in the agricultural industries all across the country. Mercury was suddenly being treated as some sort miracle compound and nobody bothered to consider the consequences. Hell, mercury has been used for hundreds of years in medicine. The Chinese and a whole bunch of other countries used it to treat a variety of diseases and a huge mining industry was born. In Europe, the Romans used convicts to mine mercury because they considered it to be a death sentence. Most of the prisoners sent to the mines would eventually die of unknown causes. Before penicillin, mercury was even used to treat syphilis and leprosy. Many of those patients were eventually labeled as insane. Looking back, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”
Crockett sat back in his chair, realizing that Trent was suddenly proving himself to be a walking mercury encyclopedia. Hesitant to show his ignorance, he decided to jump in feet first anyway. “Then you think the Department of Education’s huge learning impaired increases I showed you two weeks ago could be tied into the vaccination schedule?”
Nodding his head, Trent only smiled.
Crockett persisted. “Convince me!”
Trent didn’t hesitate. “During the fifties the incidence of autism in the United States was around one in every ten thousand births. In the seventies it escalated to one in two thousand births. That’s a five hundred percent increase in just twenty years! The stats you got from the Board of Education confirm that those increases are multiplying as we speak. I believe those numbers will become even more alarming if we don’t do something.”
A nagging question that had been swirling through Crockett’s mind for days wouldn’t go away. He needed an answer. “What brings you out of the cornfields in Minnesota now to see me at this time in your life? You’ve obviously been thinking about this a long time.”
“Simple! Last year, the CDC implemented a new schedule for childhood vaccinations by adding hepatitis B to the inoculation schedule. Even before that change, I felt the exposure to mercury in the vaccination schedule was already dangerous. Hell, mercury is already all over the world. Problem is that it doesn’t break down. It never dissolves or goes away. As the world keeps mining the crap, mercury exposure levels go up every year. A lot of emissions float through the atmosphere to the U.S. from the Far East where they burn loads of coal and that just adds to the equation. Since the Industrial Revolution, mercury levels across the globe have increased dramatically every year and it’s all self-induced by man. With major increases in autism in the U.S. already a problem, adding another series of mercury-laced vaccinations to the CDC schedule just pushed my patience level over the top. I can’t do anything about what the rest of the world is doing to pollute the atmosphere with mercury vapors but I sure as hell can do something about presenting my case about vaccines and mercury. We’re blindly spinning a roulette wheel with our children’s lives and that doesn’t sit very well with me. I’ve been beating the bushes with the CDC and the FDA for the last year without much to show for my efforts. I was in DC in April when I heard through the grapevine that you were there doing a little homework of your own. I thought we might have a fit. As they say, two heads are better than one.”
The fact that Trent was having trouble with the bureaucrats didn’t surprise Crockett. The Feds might look into such a theory but would want no part of a national exposure to such a hypothetical premise. A mercury scare would cause parents to keep their children away from mandatory pre-school vaccinations leaving the Center for Disease Control with a real challenge on their hands. The CDC’s primary function was to prevent disease and they were doing a fine job, but a mass exodus from mandated vaccinations would put their program back to the stone ages.
When Crockett returned to Angel’s Camp, he found sleep elusive. A simple conversation he had in a Georgetown restaurant during his April trip to Washington DC