The anti-vax crowd is susceptible to beliefs such as miniscule amounts of mercury being used in the manufacturing process causing autism.
Even though the mercury doesn’t contaminate the samples, they believe that since “it’s close” it does and, even in the smallest amount, can do extensive damage.
Even though mercury is dangerous, it takes more than a fractional exposure to have a problem.
So I see these folks similar to the same set of folks that have fallen for the government sponsored belief that trivial amounts of cigarette smoke are as harmful as radioactive waste.
Couple that with the hyper-reactive parent and you have an explosive combination.
You basically have someone who figures they “know better” and are pissed off when someone doesn’t follow their script.
These are also the same people who:
1) Will go up to smokers and give them crap on the street for smoking. (ironic, as they have to move closer to that dangerous smoke in order to do that).
2) Will scream at the top of their lungs at any car they think is driving to fast through their neighborhood. Some will even go into the street to try and flag down such drivers. (again ironic, as if the level of speed is that dangerous, you’d get away, not run towards it)
Who is keeping track of the mercury content issue? If the autism cause is right, as vaccines used less or no mercury, which would be an undesirable element for other reasons, the problem ought to have diminished or disappeared. Also it would be interesting to see how it was tied to other sources of trace mercury such as wild caught seafood.