Deetee
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2003
- Messages
- 3,789
CurtC
Illuminator
That's a good article, but told a little too much with anecdotes instead of more general facts. But with anecdotes, you get a sense of the hopelessness parents of autistic kids must feel.
Lisa Simpson
Unregistered
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2004
- Messages
- 21,960
I understand the helplessness. My brother is autistic and when I was a kid, my mom tried all kinds of quack nonsense to 'cure' him. Thank Ed the internet wasn't around in the 70s, because mom would have had more ridiculousness to buy into.
DrMatt
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- May 10, 2002
- Messages
- 1,414
My uncle went to his grave insisting that he had a secret cure for autism, all made of nutrition and allergy treatment. His pursuit of alternative medicine, M.D., Ph.D., and devotion to far-right-wing politics got him invited to present his scientific results twice to the same group--the Vatican.
I tried hard to find some salvagable science in his work when I saw him last, but the stuff he was getting ready to publish was video of testimonials from 5 parents of partially-recovered autistics. It was eery how similar the kids were once they became verbal--they all spoke in run-on sentences, they all had memorized the planets in the solar system, they all had short attention spans. A brief check on the web showed me that a certain number of autistic kids spontaneously recover. My uncle's stuff-planned-for-publication didn't include any mention of that, nor the all-important demosntration that MORE kids recovered through his treatment.
His offices were about a mile from the JREF. He swore by the Counterfeit Detector Pen, and insisted it had found him some fake money--which might also have been real money spray-starched by none other than J.R. He was terrified of fruits and vegetables except for those labeled "organic", but meats were all okay in his book. A heart attack took him down suddenly.
I tried hard to find some salvagable science in his work when I saw him last, but the stuff he was getting ready to publish was video of testimonials from 5 parents of partially-recovered autistics. It was eery how similar the kids were once they became verbal--they all spoke in run-on sentences, they all had memorized the planets in the solar system, they all had short attention spans. A brief check on the web showed me that a certain number of autistic kids spontaneously recover. My uncle's stuff-planned-for-publication didn't include any mention of that, nor the all-important demosntration that MORE kids recovered through his treatment.
His offices were about a mile from the JREF. He swore by the Counterfeit Detector Pen, and insisted it had found him some fake money--which might also have been real money spray-starched by none other than J.R. He was terrified of fruits and vegetables except for those labeled "organic", but meats were all okay in his book. A heart attack took him down suddenly.
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TriangleMan
Graduate Poster
From the article in the OP:
So how can one say it's the chelation that is making the difference?
At least the article also presents an example from a family who tried the chelation and diet route and found it did nothing.
and a few paragraphs later . . .
So how can one say it's the chelation that is making the difference?
At least the article also presents an example from a family who tried the chelation and diet route and found it did nothing.
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
I have a special personal hate for these "we can cure autism" scum (and that is exactly what they are, they've caused a lot of pain and trouble for parents of autistic kids with their scams).
My SO's younger son has Asperger's syndrome. For those that don't know, it's a form of "high-functioning" autism. A moderately severe case; and he has had some serious problems interacting with others when he was younger (he's in High School now). Because my SO is disabled, she's currently on Disability assistance, as is her son. In order to maintain her son's assistance, he was required to see a therapist regularly. She lives in a small town out in the boondocks, and there is only one clinic available to her; and at the time, only one person there who claimed to be experienced with autistic-spectrum kids (which later turned out to be a lie). This therapists was also a proponent of a variant of the Bodytalk System[/b].
My SO is a very intelligent and pretty skeptical person, and immediately recognized this for the woo-woo nonsense that it is. However, since she wouldn't go along with it, the therapist called in Child Protective Services with a trumped-up complaint, and managed to get her son removed and institutionalized (there's a big long story behind that, that also involves clashes with idiot teachers and school admins as well).
Fortunately, the only institution nearby who would accept autistic-spectrum kids was strongly anti-woo. He was only there for a few months, and the therapists managed to teach him some useful coping skills in the meantime.
The therapist eventually lost her position at the clinic. The official word was that it was due to budget cutbacks, but the word from the grapevine (gotta love small-town gossip) was that she was "asked to resign" due to complaints about her woo-woo "therapy".
My SO's younger son has Asperger's syndrome. For those that don't know, it's a form of "high-functioning" autism. A moderately severe case; and he has had some serious problems interacting with others when he was younger (he's in High School now). Because my SO is disabled, she's currently on Disability assistance, as is her son. In order to maintain her son's assistance, he was required to see a therapist regularly. She lives in a small town out in the boondocks, and there is only one clinic available to her; and at the time, only one person there who claimed to be experienced with autistic-spectrum kids (which later turned out to be a lie). This therapists was also a proponent of a variant of the Bodytalk System[/b].
My SO is a very intelligent and pretty skeptical person, and immediately recognized this for the woo-woo nonsense that it is. However, since she wouldn't go along with it, the therapist called in Child Protective Services with a trumped-up complaint, and managed to get her son removed and institutionalized (there's a big long story behind that, that also involves clashes with idiot teachers and school admins as well).
Fortunately, the only institution nearby who would accept autistic-spectrum kids was strongly anti-woo. He was only there for a few months, and the therapists managed to teach him some useful coping skills in the meantime.
The therapist eventually lost her position at the clinic. The official word was that it was due to budget cutbacks, but the word from the grapevine (gotta love small-town gossip) was that she was "asked to resign" due to complaints about her woo-woo "therapy".