05:10 PM EST on Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Evan Riggle's autism is a puzzle – a puzzle his parents say is being pieced together by doctors, therapists, prayer warriors and family. His sister and brother help with his speech.

“He hasn't even spoken a word, but he has the potential to change more lives than we ever could,” Evan’s father David says.

Evan's infant appearance in the Southeast Christian Easter pageant is now a source of inspiration.

Also Online Mercury and thimerosol fact sheet

“Just as Joseph had lifted him to the father with his hands, I had to lift him to the father with my heart,” mother Emlyn says.

Home video of his first birthday shows Evan alert and aware making eye contact and acting like any 1-year-old.

But a week later, he appears confused, with a blank stare his parents say wasn't there before.

That puzzle piece was realized much later.

“The day after his first birthday, he received the worst possible vaccine at the worst possible time,” Emlyn says. “He had this much stuff to fight, but only this much stuff left to fight with.”

Emlyn says Evan's system couldn't handle a mercury preservative in vaccines called thimerosal. She says once those vaccines had worn down Evan’s immune system, his one-year measles, mumps and rubella or MMR shot was a knockout punch.

Evan's medical and spiritual path is chronicled in copious detail. His dad's pipe fitter background tells him that understanding the system is the key.

“So we attacked it just like that. We sat down and laid all the cards out. What we didn't know we educated ourselves on. What we did know we just added that to the puzzle,” David says.

One significant puzzle piece is proving that the MMR shot injured Evan. His parents think the live measles virus will show up in tests of his spinal fluid.

In addition to a barrage of at-home therapies and injections, once a month Evan gets a rare IVIG blood transfusion gleaned from thousands of donors to boost his immune system.

And the next big puzzle piece indicates a genetic susceptibility in some children to mercury-triggered autism.

“Maybe we can push to start screening newborns in the nursery for this defect, to know if they have that defect,” says Emlyn.

They've outgrown their home, exhausted their savings and now lost an appeal to Medicaid. But they derive joy from the smallest of puzzle pieces and gradual victories: a look, not a blank stare; a spontaneous thought; the prayers of friends and their love for Evan.

“I had a son ‘til he was 1 and I lost him. And I feel like we're getting him back -- slowly.”

The puzzle is far from solved, but maybe where conventional medicine has failed, parents like Emlyn and David Riggle will lead the way.

A 2000 study from the Centers for Disease Control said it was inconclusive whether mercury in vaccines is behind the autism spike.

Thimerosal has been reduced in some new vaccines, but old vaccines were never recalled.

Parents of newborns can check the package inserts from vaccines to make sure they don't contain thimerosal.

Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.