Reply #114: Yes, you are right. It is "hard to trust the study...

[RedOnce]

when they don't even get a basic fact right." Thank you for pointing this out. I attempted to track down the full study text without success. I was hoping to find out what the authors meant. The fact that a 2005 text isn't available online even for a price is a little bit suspicious.

Regarding the second study:
This study is about mercury exposure. Mercury in any form is toxic. The authors selected this method "To test the immunotoxic effects of mercury in humans". Methylmercury is the form of mercury that is most easily bioaccumulated in organisms. This and the availability of a "population exposed to methylmercury by fish consumption" simply makes it easier to study "the immunotoxic effects of mercury in humans".

The study conclusions were interesting: they report "immunologic changes, indicative of autoimmune dysfunction in persons exposed to mercury".

Autoimmune dysfunction is suspected in Autism.

The UC Davis study also sites immunologic changes "in addition to being a direct neurotoxicant, thimerosal may also be an immunotoxicant, leaving the immune system vulnerable to microbes and other external influences".

So, we have people with immunologic changes due to exposure to methylmercury and mice with immunologic changes due to thimerosal exposure.

Make of it what you will. It seems a bit suspicious to me.