Desperation, Science, Charlatans and Alternative Treatments

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ASPartOfMe
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25 Feb 2017, 2:43 am

Company Peddling Unproven Autism Treatments Forced To Close

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A drug and dietary supplement maker has been ordered to cease operations after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that it was falsely marketing products as being able to treat autism and other conditions.

Louisiana-based Pick and Pay Inc./Cili Minerals must immediately halt business under a consent decree entered this month by U.S. District Judge Robert G. James.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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21 Mar 2017, 1:32 am

Advertising by some Manitoba chiropractors undermines public health, expert says

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A CBC News analysis of company websites and Facebook pages of every registered chiropractor in Manitoba found several dozen examples of statements, claims and social media content at odds with many public health policies or medical research.

Examples include:

Offers of treatments for autism, Tourette's syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, colic, infections and cancer.
Anti-vaccination literature and recently published letters to the editor from chiropractors that discourage vaccination.
An article claiming vaccines have caused a 200 to 600 per cent increase in autism rates.
A statement that claims the education and training of a chiropractor is "virtually identical" to that of a medical doctor.
Discouraging people from getting diagnostic tests such as CT scans, colonoscopies and mammograms.
An informational video discouraging the use of sunscreen.


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07 Jun 2017, 1:16 am

I guess it was inventible that a charlatan would use the Neurodiversity movement to sell his wares.

What’s Happening In The Brains of Autistic Children, According To The “Edgar Cayce of our Time”

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Anthony’s take on this issue is unique. He begins by mentioning that ASD kids (and other co-morbid labels that come with it like ADHD and Aspergers) are gifted, and that their conditions come with both upsides and downsides:

Children with these conditions often have a high level of intuition, are exceptionally creative, possess an extraordinary ability to see beneath the surface, and—though this goes against traditional thinking—actually have the ability to “read” people easily. Kids with ADHD and autism often think faster, feel more deeply, and are more intuitive and artistic than the norm, in part because of their limited patience for doing things in the “standard way.”

He then goes on to suggest that children with ADHD and autism are producing new generations of children who will grow up better equipped to solve our problems and chart the best course for humanity. He mentions Indigo Children here, brilliant children with exceptional gifts of intuition and, in some cases, paranormal skills like telepathy.

Too often are conditions like these discussed in a negative light, as though they are something people must suffer through rather than are gifted with. There are many examples of autistic savants who can do extraordinary things that are beyond our understanding. As far as ADHD goes, there are several studies showing that people who show characteristics of ADHD are more likely to reach higher levels of creative thought and achievement compared to those who don’t show these characteristics. (source)(source)(source)(source)(source)

“Our brightest, most creative children and adults are often being misdiagnosed with behavioral and emotional disorders such as ADHD, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder, Bipolar, OCD, or Asperger?s. Many receive unneeded medication and inappropriate counseling as a result. Physicians, psychologists, and counselors are unaware of characteristics of gifted children and adults that mimic pathological diagnoses.” (source)

These authors believe we need to stop wasting the lives of misdiagnosed gifted children, and start creating more awareness on the inappropriate treatment that often follows misdiagnosis.

Recent work in cognitive neuroscience has revealed that both creative thinkers and those with an ADHD diagnosis show difficulty in suppressing brain activity that comes from the “Imagination Network.” (source)(source) There are no school assessments that provide evaluation on creativity and imagination, as these are hard to draw up and measure and accordingly receive little attention in our education systems. And the sad reality is that most children with these labels are shut out of gifted school programs. You can look at some more studies and see some statistics in this CE article.

In his book, Anthony says that, “While being different makes life harder for indigo children—as well as for their families—it also increases their chances of living extraordinary lives.”

Anthony also offers his theory on what causes autism, saying it’s partly the result of a poor intestinal environment, a topic gaining increasing attention in science today. But, he says, the true underlying cause is heavy metal exposure: “Specifically, ADHD and autism are born from (primarily) mercury, plus aluminum, that settles in the brain’s midline cerebral canal, which divides the left cerebral hemisphere from the right.”

William recommends making dietary changes as the primary course of action — eliminating processed foods, high-fructose corn syrup, and any GMO products. He believes children should be receiving ample amounts of fruit sugar, which is sugar in its natural form, and recommends cutting all wheat/gluten products from the diet. He also urges parents to “question everything” their child is exposed to:


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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20 Jun 2017, 3:49 am

Donnie Wahlberg hosted benefit concert for anti vaxx group Generation Rescue

http://www.dailyherald.com/entlife/20170619/donnie-wahlberg-hosts-benefit-concert-in-st-charles


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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24 Jun 2017, 2:31 am

Ad which claimed homeopathy treatment helped children with autism overcome symptoms banned

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A FACEBOOK AD which claimed homeopathy had alleviated the symptoms of autism has been banned.
The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) made the ruling against Almond Homeopathy this week.
The complaint from the public related to a Facebook post by the company which said:
“More and more children are being diagnosed on the Autism spectrum every day. Some predictions indicate that by 2032 as many as 50% of children will be on the ASD spectrum.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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24 Jun 2017, 5:23 am

The biggest shame that these charlatans are doing is discouraging any big breakthroughs or advances by looking at new and novel methods.

Imagine we had no antibiotics now, but someone said if you swallow this mold extract called penicillin, it would kill your infection. But recently someone has been going around peddling moldy bread as a treatment for infection, the guy who came up with penicillin from his mold would have no opportunity to pursue his good lead.

Most autism research now has bowed down to the mainstream consensus of it all being DNA and maybe testosterone in the womb, and billions of dollars go into ineffective big pharma research (read "erooms law").
Congratulations, you are winning not just against charlatans but also anyone who could find a big breakthrough in directly treating autism, which you don't want, after all, it's "comorbities" that are the problem? In other conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar, and such, they have a word for that, they are just called "symptoms part of the disorder".



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24 Jun 2017, 9:58 am

johnnyh wrote:
The biggest shame that these charlatans are doing is discouraging any big breakthroughs or advances by looking at new and novel methods.

Imagine we had no antibiotics now, but someone said if you swallow this mold extract called penicillin, it would kill your infection. But recently someone has been going around peddling moldy bread as a treatment for infection, the guy who came up with penicillin from his mold would have no opportunity to pursue his good lead.

Most autism research now has bowed down to the mainstream consensus of it all being DNA and maybe testosterone in the womb, and billions of dollars go into ineffective big pharma research (read "erooms law").
Congratulations, you are winning not just against charlatans but also anyone who could find a big breakthrough in directly treating autism, which you don't want, after all, it's "comorbities" that are the problem? In other conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar, and such, they have a word for that, they are just called "symptoms part of the disorder".


Besides environmental toxins I wish researchers would look at other envirmmental factors such as more multitasking and social skills required needed or not in our social media era.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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25 Jun 2017, 12:42 am

This Multimillion-Pound Charity Is Offering To Pay For Autistic Children To Have Pseudoscientific Treatments Caudwell Children, which was set up by the billionaire Phones4U founder John Caudwell, is offering to pay for children to attend clinics offering pseudoscientific treatments and which appear to endorse unfounded links between vaccines and autism.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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02 Aug 2017, 1:52 am

Pete Evans’ new doco The Magic Pill harmful and mean: AMA

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A new documentary by celebrity chef Pete Evans — which depicts the paleo diet as a treatment for chronic diseases as severe as diabetes, cancer and autism in children — has been slammed by the Australian Medical Association.
Evans’ The Magic Pill, which is currently screening at selected cinemas around Australia, follows people suffering from different chronic illnesses who adopt the ketogenic high fat, low carb diet for five weeks and are all shown to drastically reduce their symptoms and reliance on pharmaceutical drugs.
According to director Rob Tate, the film makes a case for “holistic land management with ethically raised animals” to aid human disease and better care for the planet.

AMA president Michael Gannon yesterday likened the film to controversial documentary Vaxxed, saying they were competing “in the awards for the films least likely to contribute to public health”.
“Elements of the discussion are just plain hurtful, harmful and mean,” Dr Gannon said.
“The idea that a high-fat diet can change a child’s behaviour in a month is just so patently ridiculous...and yet the reality is the parents of autistic children are so desperate they will reach for anything.
“I enjoy (Evans’) emphasis on protein because there’s no question that lean meat, eggs and fish are superfoods...but exclusion diets never work.”


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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17 Aug 2017, 1:03 pm

Chelsea doctor suspended over claims he administered 'dangerous' autism treatment to children

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Dr David O’Connell charged hundreds of pounds for sessions to provide consultations for parents hoping for a “cure” their child’s autism.

But he is accused of offering them injections which were proved to have no impact on the disorder and have even been linked to the death of a child.

He is being investigated by the General Medical Council after it emerged he was using unproven forms of treatment at his autism clinic at O'Connell Autism Clinic.

One treatment Dr O’Connell is accused of practising involves injecting the pig gut hormone secretin into patients.

The use of the hormone is based on the theory that autism is caused by the “autistic enterocolitis” disease – an illness invented by the now struck-off British doctor Andrew Wakefield.

The GMC is also investigating whether Dr O’Connell used the potentially dangerous treatment of chelation, which clears the body of lead and mercury.

'Giving cuddle hormones to kids with autism can improve social skills'

The method has been linked to the death of a five-year-old boy who was taken to the US for the controversial treatment in 2005.

Abubakar Tariq Nadama died after suffering from cardiac arrest during his third round of treatment.

It can cause kidney damage and dangerously low levels of calcium and is considered particularly dangerous in children.

Chelation as a form of treatment links back to another of Wakefield’s claims that childhood vaccines cause mercury to build up in the body which, in turn, leads to autism.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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28 Aug 2017, 11:11 pm

How Online Filter Bubbles Are Making Parents Of Autistic Children Targets For Fake “Cures”

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The group Layla joined recommended “biomedical” treatments – which included gluten-/casein-free diets, but also supplements, vitamin B12 injections, and, alarmingly, “GcMAF” or “Rerum”, a dangerous stem-cell treatment that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) calls “a significant risk to people’s health”.

Her practitioner also mentioned “chelation” – a potentially dangerous method of using chemicals to remove heavy metals from the bloodstream – and she was aware of another Facebook group pushing “Mineral Miracle Solution” (MMS), a much-hyped cure-all substance that is in fact a form of chlorine-based bleach, often given as an enema.

Layla’s story is not unusual. Pseudoscientific treatments exist for almost all diseases and conditions, but parents of autistic children seem to be disproportionately targeted by quacks and snake-oil peddlers, according to parents and experts spoken to by BuzzFeed News.

“The targeting of parents who have recently diagnosed children is very insistent,” says Sarah-Jayne Garner, a mother of an autistic son and campaigner for autistic rights, who is herself autistic. “It’s constant. The first thing anyone says to you is ‘Get them on a gluten-free diet.’ It’s not backed up by any kind of serious science, but parents who are new to autism just don’t have the tools and knowledge to assess what’s being presented to them as solutions to what they’re told are their problems.”

There are hundreds of websites and Facebook pages that claim that autism is caused by vaccines, and which promote “cures” – often substances that can be bought via that website. And the stories they share are often hugely viral.

Analysis by BuzzFeed News found that more than half of the most-shared scientific stories about autism published online in the last five years promote unevidenced or disproven treatments, or purported causes.

The analysis used data from BuzzSumo, a company that tracks social sharing across multiple platforms including Facebook and Twitter, to find the most shared webpages about autism over the past five years. It then manually extracted the top 50 that claimed to present scientific or medical information about autism, such as reports on research or stories that claimed to focus on causes, or “cures”.

Those that primarily promoted a disproven or unevidenced theory about autism (for example, ones that advocated for links with vaccines or glyphosate fertiliser, or which advanced pseudoscientific cures) were classified as “unevidenced”, while those that provided an approach based on good-quality research or objective reporting were classified as “evidenced”. The categorisation erred on the side of caution, putting ambiguous or speculative articles into the “evidenced” bracket.

It found that more than half (28 out of 50, or 56%) of the most shared stories published between August 2012 and August 2017, including both of the top two, were unevidenced. Between them, the unevidenced stories were shared 6.3 million times, compared with around 4.5 million for the evidence-based stories. The top story, “Courts quietly confirm MMR vaccine causes autism”, was shared almost a million times and appears twice on the list from two different sites. As this Forbes story from 2013 explains, it is false.

Of the top 10 most shared stories, five were unevidenced.

These stories are often shared via Facebook groups. The Facebook group “AutismCD” advocates the use of an MMS-like bleach product called chlorine dioxide or CD. Another Facebook page, Healing The Symptoms Known As Autism, promotes the sale of a book of the same name, which in turn promotes a clinic in South America that treats autistic children using CD. BuzzFeed News has written in the past about Autism Mothers, a UK-based Facebook group whose users discuss various alternative treatments and link to websites selling MMS and GcMAF.

Outside Facebook, there are major websites that promote false or misleading claims. Natural News, a big US site, has repeatedly linked autism with vaccines and promoted unscientific treatments, such as chelation, GcMAF, and MMS. SafeMinds, a site “focused on identifying the environmental factors” behind autism, has likewise repeatedly linked vaccines and autism. Generation Rescue, a site set up by the US celebrity and anti-vaccination campaigner Jenny McCarthy, has also promoted both vaccine–autism links and treatments including chelation and gluten-/casein-free diets.

Parents inside these bubbles can find themselves being swept along by the flood of possible treatments. A writer on the anti-pseudoscience blog Left Brain Right Brain infiltrated several such groups in the early 2000s and found the story of a mother who had subjected her 7-year-old son to 49 different treatments, including chelation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and various gluten- and casein-free diets, over a period of several years.

This isn’t an academic concern. Some of these treatments can be dangerous – there have been deaths linked to both MMS and chelation, and medical practitioners have been struck off for prescribing them. Earlier this month, a doctor was accused of treating autistic children with chelation. Police are investigating a Cheshire woman who apparently gave her son “bleach enemas”, using MMS or chlorine dioxide, because she believed his autism was caused by parasites; it is alleged that these enemas have damaged the lining of her child’s gut. There’s a blog called One Drop at a Time that documents “the CD journey of a child with autism”, in sometimes unsettling detail.

Discussion around autism can be seen as an early example of the filter bubbles online, where algorithms and content shared by like-minded people mean that many of us unknowingly see only things that reinforce our existing beliefs, leading us towards a polarised view of the world.

The rise of social media has made it easy for these bubbles to form in recent years. But for parents of autistic children, it started much earlier – before Facebook even existed, and years before it reached its current ubiquity. Parents swapped stories via email and message boards, especially a bunch of sites on the Yahoo Health groups that sprang up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They included places like as Environment of Harm, a Yahoo group set up to discuss “vaccine damage and mercury poisoning and other environmental toxins as it relates to autism”; GFCFKids, “a discussion forum for parents of children on the autism spectrum who are avoiding gluten and casein and other substances in their children’s diets”; Chelatingkids2, “for parents and/or family members of children with autism who are seeking biomedical intervention”; and Autism-Mercury, focusing on “the increasing incidence of autism [and] the potential link between excessive mercury exposure via thimerosal in infant vaccines”.

At their peak these groups had thousands of users each and thousands of posts a month. These numbers have since dwindled significantly. That is partly, says Fitzpatrick, because the anti-vaccination movement has lost a bit of momentum in the last 10 years – but it’s also because much of the Yahoo groups’ traffic has since moved to Facebook or the wider internet.

The origins of this rebellion against the medical and scientific establishment may be understandable. That establishment’s role in the history of autism has not always been glorious and if any group is entitled to distrust scientists and doctors, it’s the parents of autistic children. Parents have been “blamed” for their children’s autism, which was thought to be psychological or even caused by parental neglect, and disbelieved when they disputed this. Parents had to do the spadework themselves to show that autism is a neurological condition.

This confusion and misinformation stretched back years. “The name ‘autism’, from the Greek ‘autos’, self, was coined in the early 20th century, to suggest that a person was locked inside themselves,” says Green. “It’s a misnomer, but it’s stuck.”

A psychiatrist told me once: ‘We told them it was refrigerator mothers, and the parents proved us wrong. Now we’re saying that vaccines don’t cause autism, and they’re determined to prove us wrong again.’”

In an example of how complex this history has been, one of the very people who helped to overturn the refrigerator mother theory, Bernie Rimland, became an anti-vaccine advocate. Rimland was an American psychologist and father of an autistic boy, Mike. His 1964 book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, was instrumental in moving mainstream science to treating autism as a physical, neurological condition.

But having forced scientific thinking off one false path, he started down another. “After he’d disposed of refrigerator mother theory, he started looking for biological markers,” says Stanton. “He got hooked into things like gluten-casein intolerances, or special diets and megadoses of vitamins to cure autism.” And, perhaps most damagingly of all, he started believing that autism was linked to vaccines. “There’d been an anti-vaccine movement in the US for a long time,” says Stanton. “They latched on to the warrior parents, and persuaded at least some of them that scientists had always been wrong about autism, and that they were wrong now.”

Rimland’s conversion appears to have been, at least in part, driven by the early Yahoo chatrooms. According to Age of Autism, a post on one of these groups helped bring him into the anti-vaccination camp.

Rimland gave the vaccine conspiracy, and biomedical approaches to autism, a major boost, especially in the United States. “He was a charismatic figure, one of the founding parents of the US autistic community,” Fitzpatrick says. “When he endorsed the vaccine stuff, promoted all sorts of treatments, because of his status in challenging the refrigerator mother theory it had quite an influence.”

The prevalence of unevidenced stories about autism, and parents’ vulnerability to them, can also be explained by the nature of the condition itself. A diagnosis often hits parents without warning, and leaves them desperate for some control over their children’s lives and their own. That combination can leave parents looking for answers, and looking for solutions, that mainstream medicine is unable to offer.

And what makes parents more desperate, says Fitzpatrick, is that they often feel like they have no way of helping their child at all. “If you bring your autistic child to your GP and say you’ve got a problem, the GP will say ‘We don’t know what causes it and we can’t treat it.’ That’s very hard to live with,” says Fitzpatrick.

“So if someone comes up to you and says ‘Your GP is useless. I know what causes it,’ or ‘take these tablets’, or ‘swim with dolphins’, or whatever, then at least you’ve got something.”

And most important of all, there are devastating, human consequences when autistic people are subjected to these treatments, which are often intrusive or even dangerous, and have no good scientific evidence for benefit. One autistic woman, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of online retribution from anti-vaccination campaigners and would only speak to BuzzFeed News via an intermediary, said that she had been subjected to cold baths – a procedure known as “packing” – and bleach enemas. “Some enemas were with castor oil and diluted bleach,” she said. “Bleach burns, and has a pungent odour. The enemas were once a week and I would run to get away as I couldn’t tolerate it. They’d hold me down. The enemas were very painful and had awful stuff that hurt. It made you s**t a metre of poo.”

She was also forced to eat MMS: “My foster parents used to soak my food in it. They said it was to purify my insides.” Her experience is not uncommon: Garner says that she knows practitioners who offer MMS or chlorine dioxide enemas for their children.

She told BuzzFeed News that being told she needed to be cured made her feel “awful – like I’m somehow not worthy or good enough to be treated as equal by so-called ‘normals’.”

The message that this gives the wider autistic community is psychologically painful as well – they are being told that they are “damaged”

BuzzFeed News spoke to Fiona O’Leary, an autistic woman and anti-pseudoscience campaigner who has five children, two of whom are autistic. She agrees that the suggestion that she and her children were “damaged” was enormously painful. “It hurts us a lot personally,” she says. “I feel outraged, and I fear for the autistic community. I don’t think that people see us as worthwhile.

“My son is 13, he’s autistic, and he’s able to read this stuff. He’s scared. It’s making unnecessary mental health issues for people, adding to the challenges we have – and we do have challenges. The quacks are waging a war on us.”

She says that the rhetoric around the biomedical and anti-vaccine movements makes it sound like “autism will come in the night and change your child in the crib. It hurts when people say these things about your child, and it hurts him too. People don’t think autistic children are aware, but they are. Every day you get a new scar.”


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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30 Aug 2017, 1:59 am

Irish father fed bleach to his autistic son as a “treatment”

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The shocking case emerged after the man posted updates and tips in a Facebook group called CD Autism, followers of which believe that bleach - chlorine dioxide - is a treatment for autism.

Autism campaigner Fiona O’Leary became aware of the posts, which indicate that the man has been feeding his son bleach since 2014, and reported them to TUSLA, Ireland’s child and family agency, as well as the police.

The man - who cannot legally be named yet - is believed to be a banker, based in Dublin.

In posts and updated dating back to 2014 he described his son as “continuously vomiting and feeling very sick” and “Looking very weak and losing weight.”

Bolding mine
My lord how can a person smart enough to be a banker not know that you can't keep on doing the same thing for three years and expect different results or think making your kid so sick is a lesser evil then autism?

I am scared as hell about the probable permenent damage done to the kid.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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30 Aug 2017, 2:17 am

The words I would like to write about this would get me banned.

Commentary from the net:
"On the MMS Ireland website, you can still register to become a "Health Minister" in Jim Humble's church. The ex-scientologist, described as a "former aerospace industry engineer and gold miner" is credited with developing lunar vehicles, atomic weapons and apparently he even invented the first automatic garage door.

Humble recommends parents give their children up to 60 drops a day and claims the nausea that follows in a signs the treatment is working. Sickness and intestinal bleeding are explained away as "pathogens being destroyed" while parents are encouraged to check the feces that follows ingestion for "worms" which are supposedly excreted, which is meant to prove that MMS is working".

These people and their adherents are evil.



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30 Aug 2017, 8:32 am

As a society, we could do SO MUCH to stop this simply by tossing the stigma surrounding autism on the trash heap where it belongs.

It's a product of a perfectionistic, judgmental society built around advertising and the illusion that we can erase human suffering if we just make the right choices.

That last part is particularly sad, because we CAN ease a great deal of misery simply by making different choices, but we persist in making all the wrong ones in pursuit of perfection. We CANNOT, however, create some illusory perfect world. Outside the Kingdom of Heaven (whatever THAT is), IT DON'T EXIST. Never has, never will.


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30 Aug 2017, 11:59 am

BuyerBeware wrote:
As a society, we could do SO MUCH to stop this simply by tossing the stigma surrounding autism on the trash heap where it belongs.

It's a product of a perfectionistic, judgmental society built around advertising and the illusion that we can erase human suffering if we just make the right choices.

That last part is particularly sad, because we CAN ease a great deal of misery simply by making different choices, but we persist in making all the wrong ones in pursuit of perfection. We CANNOT, however, create some illusory perfect world. Outside the Kingdom of Heaven (whatever THAT is), IT DON'T EXIST. Never has, never will.



RANT:
Agreed. Kids are viewed today like computers. They are expected to "just work".

If they miss a marker it is viewed in a similar manner as a software bug. I don't know how many times here on WP we have parents posting in a panic that their kids are not making eye contact or walking when some book or website says they should. Most frustrating a lot of the time they comment as an aside the kid is happy. Think about it, the fact that kid shows a few autistic traits is more important to them then their kid is happy(SMH).

When software is bugged computers code has to be modified and sometimes the operating system or the hard drive needs to be replaced. ABA has similarities to modifying code it is modifying brain wiring, bleach enemas are like rewriting or deleting an entire software package to fix a bug that could have been fixed by changing a few lines of code. As anybody who has modified software or used WP software knows fixing one a bug often causes numerous bigger ones.

Unlike fixing software the consequences of giving someone bleach enemas can be completely foreseen.

When the computer owner becomes convinced that the machine is broken beyond repair it is discarded. When some parents believe their kid is broken beyond repair they commit filicide.


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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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19 Sep 2017, 11:52 pm

Korean-American Professor Couple Identify Major Cause of Autism

Quote:
couple who are both working as professors at prestigious U.S. universities proved the main cause of autism.

The couple found that certain bacteria in the mother’s digestive tract can lead to having an autistic child. Furthermore, they found the exact brain location linked to autistic behaviors, which can be used to find a cure for autism.

Science journal ‘Nature’ published the couple’s two research studies on the 14th. The couple are Harvard Medical School’s professor Huh Jun-ryeol, and MIT’s professor Gloria Choi.

The studies vividly explain the detailed process of a pregnant mouse, which is infected by a virus, having offspring that shows autistic behaviors.

The researchers found out that certain bacteria in the mother’s digestive tract can develop immune cells that directly influence the baby’s brain cells development. When the researchers removed the bacteria with antibiotics, the mouse had a normal baby mouse.

Professor Huh and Choi said that there is a synergy effect when a scientist couple work together on a research.

He continued, “our major fields of study are different as they are each Immunology and Neurobiology, and it actually helps us researching on Neuroimmunology.”


I was reluctant to put this in this thread dispite the similarities to “causes” peddled by quacks because they come from Harvard and MIT. That no information was given about this study and it was published in a consumer magazine not a professional journal means likely means nonsense study.


_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman