Chelation Therapy kills 5YO autistic boy in USA

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It happened in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. A five year old autistic boy died while in the third of a series of chelation treatments.

Just search for the Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch and you will find several stories. This is sickening and deserves an international reaction from us.

Jerry Newport
Tucson, AZ

or you could read this thread.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... pic&t=5075

BeeBee

I'd normally not post anything from AFF on here but they have created a petition and I think it is something people should sign to get out the word against use of chelation and such toted by groups such as http://www.generationrescue.org -> Generation Rescue and DAN! drs. in the US and Canada and other places.

http://www.petitiononline.com/aff/petition.html

It is calling for a ban on chelation following the recently reported death of a 5 year old child. Please send the link to others if you can.

I fully agree with Jerry posting this seperately from the other topic, action needs to be discussed and done as a community, it is his reaction to the event and all.

I'm waiting for the full autopsy to come back. It seems likely that the chelation caused his death but I don't feel certain yet. If it did cause it, his would be the first dealth caused by it in the last 50 years, per the article. Of course, the amount of chelation has probably jumped so much in the last few years that we are now doing as much in a year as we did in a whole decade before.

BeeBee

I have found a link that deals with this form of therapy:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... ation.html

What I have not done yet is to look into the findings and results of parents who put their children forward for this treatment. There seems to be a considerable number of parents who are looking to 'cure' AS/ASD and as I am not a parent of a child with autism myself, I am not sure that I am really qualified to have a definite opinion on such a topic.

Of course, I am also inclined to question whether an attempted 'elemination' of autistic traits is either desirable, necessary or even ethically justifiable. My view is that such 'elimination' for its own sake is wholly unjustifiable.

I signed the petition posted above because I think that any therapeutic procedure that claims to be 'medicinal' needs to be subjected to the usual rigours of trials, peer review and adequate research methodologies. It would seem that the scientific community is still uncertain of the efficacy of chelation treatment as a viable therapy to start with and that is before the ethics of the matter are debated.

There was a story on the news here recently (charlotte, nc) about a doctor who was selling this stuff to parents of autistic children. It is quite expensive too of course. Apparently it is not approved by the FDA, but I am not sure what that means. In the second part of the story, they noted the MD's claims that the government had been spying on him due to his controversial views on autism. He seemed quite certain that he is the target of a vast conspiracy and governmental cover up.

Deleted

While not trying to justify the use of unproven, potentially dangerous treatment I dont blame parents that want a cure for heavily autistic children. They want them to live independant lives as adults do the normal things in life that NT's and even most of us take for granted. Lets not just presume that most autistics are happy that way either just because there are a lot of people here at the highest end of AS that claim it's not a disorder/disability and like having it.

I myself would rather not have AS even though im not anywhere near disabled to the point of my nephew with classical autism is for instance but since any cure is likely to happen anytime soon id be glad if more awareness was raised about autism and have more acceptance of behaviours that are deemed unnacceptable by NT's.

I agree with Eamonn. While I had a hard time growing up because of all of my differences from others and even have hard times now, when my learned socialization skills fall apart, I have two severely autistic children. both have severe learning delays. My eleven year old is non-verbal. Both are going to need supervision for their entire lives.

I am not at all convinced by the mercury argument for several logical reasons, and would never try chelation, but if there was a "cure" for autism, while I would not want it for myself, I would certainly want it for my kids.

Sorry if you cannot understand that.

I think its time to think about starting our own nation agian.

_________________
"we never get respect ... never a fair trial
[swearing removed by lau] ... as long as we smile"
Im tired of smiling.

Vote for me in 2020

i think there are people who are happy to be autistic/AS and that's fine, lucky them. i don't consider autism a disorder but i do think some of us are harmed more by it than others. i've gone through some amazingly cruel stuff in life because of my AS so i can say it's not all roses and sunshine. but still, i don't think parents should try to "cure" their kiddos using such risky methods. and they should always take into consideration if their kid is happy the way they are, and if the kid wants to change.

This makes me angry. I think it is the parents who have the problem.

I feel that the decision should be up to the Child. Not the Parent. If the Child is mute, but can write, he/she should write the request on a sheet of paper. If the Child is Low Functioning, the Parents should be able to tell if the Child wants to be "Fixed" by the pitches and tones of his/her grunts or vocalizations, when the topic is brought up. If the Child is High Functioning, the Parents should hear him/her out and go with the decision that is made.

I would just like to echo some of the sentiments in defense of parents.
While a "dash of autism" may have some very notable advantages.
There is most certainly, such a thing as too much autism.
Most of my problems have been due to people not understanding me, or simply expecting me to behave in a certain way, which I could not understand. Whereas the difficuties that some severely autistic individuals face are more fundamental such as basic self care skills.

While a person with IQ below 50 may be perfectly happy that way, would it be wrong for a parent to want a "cure" for this, so that they can live a more productive life?

I think what scares a lot of folks on the higher end of the spectrum is the very real possibility of prenatal screening, which might eliminate our type of existence all together.

this is such a difficult issue. i don't think i'd want to be cured (how would i know? - i have no idea what it's like not to be me), and i know people here say the same thing. but i have long known that parents of severely autistic children feel otherwise. and i'm so glad that litguy has expressed how he feels about this.

i've worked with severely autistic children and young adults, and i'm thinking of one 16 year old boy at the moment. he spent all day pacing up and down and taking off his clothes (this is in a school). his only way of expressing anything was to punch. he was a strapping lad, and his mother was small in comparison. every so often, he was taken into respite care, so she could recover from the physical damamge he was inflicting on her, not because he was violent in anger, necessarily, but because punching was his ONLY mode of expression - of fear, of joy, of love, whatever. she loved him to distraction, and refused to allow him to be taken into care on a permanent basis. and she worried constantly about what was going to happen when she was no longer able to meet his needs, through age, as he is going to need supervision for ever,

would i condemn this woman if she wanted a cure for her son? no, i wouldn't. do i condemn litguy? no, i don't.

i believe that i can say i don't want to be cured, and i can agree with people here who say the same thing. it's because we are able say those things that this is a moral dilemma. we function enough so that we are communicating on here, at least, no matter what other difficulties we have. how do we know if the boy i described would like to change things? how do we know he wouldn't? we can't, and so someone else is responsible for making those decisions. i wouldn't like to be in that position of responsiblity.

i still can't say i'm totally in favour of a cure, or totally against it. it needs to be considered in the light of individual circumstances. and i also support parents on here who do not wish their children to be cured. it's their decision, and they are the ones responsible.

as for the chelation issue - it sounds dodgy to me.