Lorenzo's Oil for Autism

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I can see we disagree on several points, but I am not interested in changing your mind on any of the points. I am just interested on expressing myself about how I see what your thoughts evoked in me.

I am not convinced that I don't have the right to endanger or even end my life at my choice. I didn't sign any social contract nor do I buy into any religious schema that would have me live other than my own situation dictates.

and also, one is not given a specific time of life. MS might cause one to expire before others may, but even someone with a fatal disease can get hit by a bus and expire before their shortened lifetime. One has no 'right' to a specific length of life, it's pretty much a twirl of the dice.

just sayin'

Merle

Exactly what I was thinking.... I don't have the right to endanger anyone else, but endangering my OWN life, or even ending it, is strictly up to me. I believe that I own my body and my life, and that's it. What I do with them, is my business and no one else's. I do NOT have the right to endanger someone else, or harm them. Peacefully ending my life should be my right under law as well as under ethics.

I'm not a liar. Here is the statistics:

cardiovascular disease (from American Heart Association): 64.4 million
arthritis: 50-70 million
alzheimer's disease: 4 million
parkinson's disease: 1.5 million

"Chronic illnesses account for 70% of deaths and for the expenditure of over 75% of direct health care costs in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1). Direct costs are now estimated at over $1.5 trillion (2). Indirect costs of chronic diseases, in the form of lost productivity and nonreimbursed personal costs, add several more hundreds of billions of dollars each year. In a landmark study published in 1996, Hoffman et al (3) reported that in 1990 90 million people in the United States lived with a chronic disease or condition"

http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/235/1/9

Last edited by zendell on 27 Feb 2008, 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not sure what your point is. More people have illnesses like that today because people live LONGER and also because we can TREAT people with illnesses like that.



Of course cancer existed. Again, people live longer so more people can get it. It's also talked about now. Some types of cancers that were death sentences even back in the '80s are now treatable with fairly good prognosis (or whatever the plural of that word is ).

One theory is that viruses in vaccines, mercury from dental amalgams, and fungal infections caused by antibiotics cause may of the chronic diseases I listed above. There are probably thousands of testimonials of people recovering from many of these diseases with dental amalgam removal, chelation to get rid of mercury and anti-infective drugs to get rid of viruses and fungal infections. Many alternative doctors treat autism just like other chronic diseases.

I think type 2 diabetes is cause by antibiotics. I think antibiotics cause an overgrowth of Candida albicans, which can transform into a fungal infection and infect the beta cells of the pancreas. The immune system attacks the fungus and destroys part of the pancreas in the process resulting in the person being dependent on insulin. Right now, it's just a theory. It hasn't been proven but clearly something is responsible and it's not old age since the age of onset is becoming earlier every year and now children get it.

A few studies have shown that a very safe treatment called chelation improves autism and cancer. Many doctors report that chelation improves Alzheimer's disease, allergies, and eczema. Dental amalgams increased mercury exposure and antibiotics drastically reduce the body's ability to get rid of mercury. More studies are needed before it is considered conclusively proven. The good news is that NIH is conducting a large $30 million study involving 2,372 patients using chelation to treat heart disease due to its potential benefit and low risks. http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2002/chelatio ... elease.htm



The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was convinced enough to put on their website that rubella is a known cause of autism. That's enough for me. Researchers were convinced enough to stop studying it. I only posted two of several studies. Tell the CDC they made a mistake.



This seems to be a game alot of people here play. Anytime someone recovers, they weren't really autistic to begin with. The problem is they had the exact same symptoms and couldn't be differentiated from other autistics. I know people say no two people are alike but the criteria for autism is so vague and non-specific that many conditions can cause autism. Autism is similar to depression in that it's one condition with multiple causes. People who are depressed because they lost their job will often recover when they find a new job whereas if someone is depressed due to a chronic, incurable disease, they are much less likely to recover.

I'll tell you a little secret. Some of these autism recoveries are people diagnosed with PDD-NOS and because it's considered part of the spectrum, they can validly say they recovered from autism. When they say autism they mean autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and NOT autistic disorder.

PDD-NOS is used "when there is a severe and pervasive impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction or verbal and nonverbal communication skills, or when stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities are present, but the criteria are not met for a specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder." http://www.autism-society.org/site/Page ... DD#pdd-nos

I'm sure most experts agree that there are numerous causes of impaired social interaction and communication skills. I believe lead poisoning is a known cause of these symptoms and can be treated safely with chelation. There is no chance that everyone diagnosed with PDD-NOS has symptoms due to genetics.

Wolfpup is right zendude....

Look, EVERYBODY dies... first of all accept that. Second, EVERY death certificate lists a proximate cause of death and "contributing" causes. Every single one. "He was older than dirt" is not an acceptable answer. They're going to list something like "Heart Failure" a chronic disease, or "Respiratory Failure" a chronic disease, or a fast cause such as myocardial infarction (heart attack) and coronary artery disease as a contributing factor....

Oh and HELL yes cancer existed 100 years ago... it existed thousands of years ago too... The difference being, when you got cancer 100 years ago, you DIED. Period. End of story. Most of the time no one could see WHY, without cutting someone open and that wasn't done all that often. When someone died you buried them, usually within a day or two unless you had a cold storage area to put the corpse in, like outside in sub-zero weather. Corpses rot fast and spread disease, and in a highly religious time, death was often considered "God's Will". The REASON for death wasn't questioned. A case history from 100-150 years ago might mention "chronic wasting" for a few months prior to death. Very often that wasting was caused by cancer.

Some people may have more than one of those, so you've not proven anything about your original claim.



Interesting, but again this is vague. "Chronic condition" can mean a lot of things, and not all of them are serious. And this doesn't address my point that part of the reason we have so much chronic illness is because more people are surviving rather than dying. You've not proven a single thing with regards to the causes of these conditions. I also would note that while 90 million is a lot of people, it's not half of the US population. That was your original claim.



Is there any problem in the world which can't be traced back to vaccines, in your view? The idea that cancer didn't really exist until vaccines were introduced is flat-out wrong, BTW. The Ancient Greeks knew about cancer. People in the so-called "Dark Ages" knew about cancer and attempted to treat it, albeit in a primitive way. Various discoveries about cancer were made long before the twentieth century. Your theory is provably wrong, plain and simple. I acknowledged in my previous post that carcinogenic pollutants have made cancer more of a problem in modern times. Tracing it to the viruses in vaccines is a crackpot conspiracy theory, plain and simple. If that were the case, then wouldn't actually getting these viruses cause cancer as well?

Oh crud, people STILL say that. I had people saying things like that when my brother died. I was like "no it wasn't". Which probably wasn't what I was supposed to say, but geez

A teacher told a story about a guy like that. He left a tire standing up on his driveway while his son was playing outside. The tire fell on top of his son and killed him. He didn't seem like he felt responsible. Instead, he said it was God's will.

Yes indeed, because clearly there was no way to predict that a tire would tip over. After all, the theory of gravity is just a theory, it's not a fact!




(This was extreme sarcasm for anyone who didn't pick up on that )

Zendell, do you want to look up testimonials for the efficacy of witchcraft? Testimonials without external corroboration are, well, as believable as witchcraft.
Saying that chelation is perfectly safe is a dangerous and blatant lie - it is dangerous and should only be carried out when people really have severe heavy metal poisoning, not as a (profitable) placebo (maybe your source is the people that sell this treatment?).
Would you say that a deaf person that learned to speak and read lips 'recovered' from deafness? Of course autistics can learn about social cues and at least partially (depending on severity) compensate for a lack of social intuition. That does not mean the fundamental condition is gone, just that the person has learned to work around the disadvantages.
As others have pointed out, in the past people used to die of things like plague, leprosy, syphilis, smallpox, tetanus, etc well before they got a chronic illness.

I disagree but believe what you want.



Everything I read about chelation from several reliable sources states that it is practically harmless. Do you have any evidence that chelation is dangerous?

From wikipedia:

The Supreme Court of Missouri found that chelation is a reasonable treatment for heart disease that doesn't harm the patients receiving it.

"In 2003, the Supreme Court of Missouri...overturned a decision of the State Board of Registration sanctioning a doctor who used chelation therapy for the treatment of heart disease. The Court held that the therapy was not harming patients, and the standard for determining repeated negligence in using an alternative therapy such as chelation is not whether it is popular or commonly accepted by the medical community, but rather whether heart specialists would consider its use to be reasonable."

The American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) recommends chelation. They claim that 800,000 patient visits for chelation therapy, with an average of 40 visits per patient, were made in the United States in 1997. If it is still used just as often, that means there were 8 million chelation visits in the past 10 years.

Side effects and safety concerns
"There is a low occurrence of side effects when chelation is used at the dose and infusion rates approved by the U.S. FDA. A burning sensation at the site of delivery into the vein is common." Other side effects are rare. Most docs recommend oral chelation and a recent study using chelation in autism found it was effective and practically harmless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation_therapy

Here's ACAM's homepage

http://www.acamnet.org/site/c.ltJWJ4MPI ... D/Home.htm

Frankly, after reading what they say, I'd stick with the witchcraft if I were you.... you're safer with a witch, some of them are damned hot, and if you're lucky they'll do a ritual for you skyclad. It appears to be a nicely designed page for a bunch of "alternative medicine" nutjobs. Now I'll go wait for my check from Big Pharma, since I'm one of their biggest fans... they must be paying me to say good things right? It has nothing to do with the fact they keep me alive....

A nice webpage with impressive graphics and writing doesn't mean they know what the HELL they're doing....

I don't mean to offend anyone, but what gets hurt is the patent's pocketbook.
I work with older folks and their Medicare the old age medical insurance in The States. I hear from their own lips how the chelation therapy is necessary for their health, how it is going to help this ailment or that disease.
They call me because the durable medical equipment for the therapy is paid for by medicare, but the chelation serum is not, and that comes directly from the patient having the therapy.

the singular common thread in all those chelation patients is their nearly rabid desperation because they have been convinced they need the treatment, and secondly, how narrow minded it is that Medicare did not spring for the rather expensive chelation catalyst.

anecdotal, but perhaps 30 calls in the last year, that I remember working with their claims.

Merle

Pbcoll, I agree with both you and Zendell on this topic, even though you are at opposite ends of the argument. How that's possible baffles me, but I agree with you.

I do think modern medicine plays a critical role in healthcare and longevity. However, I agree with Zendell on the point that there are natural ways to heal the body as well. Sometimes, both medicine and natural healing can work together. Since the article is on Autism snake oil, I wanted to mention this. When we got our diagnosis they offered us Ritalin. A good 60% I'd say of the parents we know with spectrum kids have them on drugs. However, we chose to go the dietary/supplement/behavior therapy route and are achieving the same results that Ritalin does. That may not work for everyone, but it works for us.

So, Ritalin (modern med) does a good job for many people we know, but our route serves our kid just as well. Both have their places in Autism treatment and both costs money. Nothing in life is free. I must tell you, however, our route is very expensive. Insurance will pick up the tab for Ritalin, but the dollar figure on the dietary/supplement/behavior therapies would buy you a new car.

How come some children have died from it? It's news to me that a "safe treatment" may cause death. And don't tell me it was an accident, anything safe by definition cannot cause more than a slight allergic reaction.

We do not know how many people suffered a serious mineral deficiency upon undergoing chelation, either.



I respect the opinion of these US researchers. However, I do not live in the US, and I am very much aware that research is carried out elsewhere as well, and that many researchers in other parts of the world (not to mention in the US itself) have a very different opinion. But it seems like you prefer to conveniently ignore it, simply because it doesn't coincide with what you personally believe. This is called bias.

On the whole, I feel this is not a case of "expert opinion" vs. "erroneous beliefs", this is a case of "your experts" vs. "my experts". There are plenty of gray areas in science (autism just happens to be one of them), and within each of these gray areas, one may find many theories which state completely different things. Some may contradict each other. One is basically free to choose any theory one likes and support it until it is proven true (or false).

I am not trying to prove that some types of autistic or autistic-like behaviors are not caused by the rubella virus or some other infection. It's possible. But to try to claim that autism, as a whole, is caused by infections, seems rash at best, especially given the research that suggests otherwise.



People are sceptic for a good reason - few or no no recoveries have been documented in such a way that would actually be believable.



Even the death of that one boy (forget his name - but I am sure you would know, since you have extensively researched chelation) is EVIDENCE ENOUGH.



How about taking pollution into account? The unimaginable combination of chemicals we take in every day (if you live in the USA, just think of the smog over a large city) is enough to cause the widest array of diseases, and it is not at all surprising if cancer rates soared throughout the last century in developed countries. I really don't think it is worth searching for some obscure, mythical causes and forget the plain fact that, quite simply, nothing in our environment is clean anymore.

Besides, I am sure that cancer existed since the dawn of time, and it definitely exists in developing countries as well (where it is fatal far more often than in developed ones due to lack of medical services).