It’s that time of year again.
What am I talking about? Regular readers know. They know that sometime around the Memorial Day weekend every year, usually beginning a couple of days before the extended weekend and into the weekend itself, there lands in the Chicago area a quackfest of such unrelenting quackitude that it has to be seen to be believed. Basically, it’s the antivaccine and autism “biomed” movement Woodstock, except that it happens every year. Any and every quack and die-hard antivaccinationist who still believes believes against all evidence that vaccines cause autism is usually there. Anyone who’s anyone in the antivaccine movement is almost certainly there now (at least that part of the antivaccine movement that aligns itself with Generation Rescue/Age of Autism, anyway).
This quackfest is known as Autism One.
This year, as the Memorial Day weekend approached, and the Autism One conference started up a couple of days ago, I wondered whether or not I should bother with it. I have, after all, been covering it every year for several years. It’s become predictable. Every year, I know that there will be quackery. There will likely be one or more skeptics trying to attend and, if they are recognized, getting kicked out to minimize the chances that a science-based or skeptical viewpoint about what goes on at Autism One will be published or posted anywhere. I didn’t know if anyone had planned on showing up at Autism One this year (although I do hope that someone did). Then I saw this comment after yesterday’s post. Yesterday’s post, you might recall, was ostensibly about a man who calls himself the Phaelosopher but quickly turned into a post about a form of quackery that I hadn’t delved into before and that I was quite surprised that I didn’t really know about. I had heard of it, but I had never actually looked into it. The Phaelosopher’s little broadside at me gave me the opportunity to educate myself. So I did.
The form of quackery, as you will recall, is known as the Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS). What it is, in essence, is industrial strength bleach, 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water. It is frequently diluted in acidic juices, such as orange juice, resulting in the formation of chlorine dioxide, which is, as the FDA characterized it, “a potent bleach used for stripping textiles and industrial water treatment.” According to its proponents, MMS can cure almost anything: cancer, AIDS, and just about any other serious disease you can imagine. Never mind that there is no biological plausibility and no evidence, either preclinical or clinical, that MMS can do what its proponents claim it can do. True, bleach can kill bacteria or cancer cells in a dish at a high enough concentration, but that doesn’t mean it’s a useful antibiotic or chemotherapeutic agent.
What condition, though, did I neglect? Well, given that this post is about Autism One, the answer should be obvious. Yep, as my reader pointed out, MMS is being featured in a talk at Autism One on Sunday by a woman named Kerri Rivera, who boasts of 38 Children Recovered in 20 months:
This presentation will outline the approach Kerri has used successfully to help recover 38 children from a diagnosis of Autism. She will explain how MMS (chlorine dioxide) has become the “missing piece” to the autism puzzle for so many of the families that she works with. MMS is available worldwide, and is extremely cost effective, bringing recovery in reach of all families, despite economic or geographic limitations. This presentation seeks to prove that Autism truly is curable.
Yes, Autism One is featuring a talk by a woman whose preferred form of therapy, besides hyperbaric oxygen, is to subject autistic children to industrial bleach in the deluded belief that she can “recover” autism with it. Rivera, it turns out, is a woman who runs a clinic in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico that she calls AutismO2 Clinica Hyperbarica. If her website is any indication, Rivera gives autistic children MMS by mouth and by enema. (Yes, she subjects autistic children to bleach enemas.) Here’s the protocol:
Enema:
10-15 drops MMS enabled and 500 mL water
In the colon for 12 – 30 minutes
Use pipette and syringe
Is applied 2 or 3 times per week
Elsewhere, we see this:
Kerri will be discussing recent protocol developments around MMS and Autism, such as loading the dose, the baby bottle, the baking soda mix, enemas, baths, and how to handle a fever.
So let’s see. It appears to me that proponents of MMS not only give MMS to autistic children orally, but bathes them in it and gives them enemas with it. For example, get a load of this webinar about using MMS Jim Humble (the originator of MMS quackery) himself! Predictably, it starts with a “medical disclaimer” (i.e., quack Miranda warning) and then devolves from there:
And here we have Kerri explaining how to administer the MMS by continually upping the dose:
The latter video is pretty appalling. Well, they’re both appalling, but the second one is particularly bad because in it Rivera is describing how, as you up the dose, you’ll see the autistic child do more stimming. She also discusses how they might get diarrhea, but that that’s OK as long as it’s “detox diarrhea.” She even talks about these children having a Herxheimer reaction, which is sometimes seen after the initiation of antibacterials for tick borne relapsing fever. It was first describe as a reaction to the treatment of syphilis with penicillin and is also seen after treatment of other diseases caused by spirochetes, such as Lyme disease and leptospirosis. They talk about the “72-2” protocol, which, if you look at the website, involves giving MMS every two hours for 72 hours. She also recommends “fever therapy” and argues that it’s a good thing that MMS can cause fevers because it’s “waking up the immune system” which realizes that there’s “autism in the house.” She also exults about how she “loves the enemas” so much for autism.
Somehow, I doubt that autistic children like them that much.
Finally, take a gander at the handout that accompanies Rivera’s talk at Autism One. After the predictable Shopenhauer quote about truth “passing through three stages” (whose use is to me one of the surest signs I’m dealing with a quack or crank) her presentation includes a lot of the same nonsense that is touted in the video about bleach being safe and effective. There’s more stuff about “fever therapy” and a lot of stuff about getting rid of parasites, which, if you believe Rivera, MMS does in conjunction with all the other pseudoscience she promotes. She even promotes in essence giving a hot bleach bath (“to tolerance,” as she puts it) along with her fever therapy. Biologists in particular will laugh (or cry) at her misunderstanding of electrochemistry. It’s madness. And what’s her evidence? What do you think it is? It’s nothing more than unconvincing anecdotes.
In retrospect, I should have figured that, if there’s any form of quackery out there, someone, somewhere will be using it on autistic children. MMS is, of course, no different. Two days later, I’m also still amazed that I didn’t know more about MMS. After all, I’ve been looking at quackery of various sorts for over a decade now. I guess that just means there’s always something new to learn and some new woo to hear about—unfortunately. True, many of them are variations on a theme, basically the same old nonsense with a fresh coat of paint slapped on it to make it attractive to the unwary. True, each new generation of quacks appropriates old ideas and tarts them up with the newest science-y sounding terminology of the era in which they operate.
This is also the second time that I’ve seen autism quacks subjecting autistic children to what is, in essence, potentially nasty industrial chemicals. A couple of years ago, I wrote about disgraced chemistry professor and mercury warrior Boyd Haley pumping autistic children full of an industrial chelator. Ultimately, Haley drew the attention of the FDA, which shut him down. Now, we’re seeing quacks douse autistic children in bleach, pump their colons full of it, and feed it to them until they start to have fevers and diarrhea, believing that the diarrhea and fever are evidence that the bleach is working to reverse autism. The diarrhea and fever might well be working to do something, but reversing autism is not part of that something. Making children sick is. Here’s a typical anecdote:
My 14YO son has autism. I’ve been treating him with a parasite cleanse system for 1.5 years (5 days on, 2 days off). He’s made some remarkable improvements, but every time I try to wean him off the cleanse, the parasite symptoms flare up. He is nonverbal and fairly low-functioning, so I don’t get any feedback from him as to how he is feeling. Last week, I started him on 1 drop of MMS then upped the dose to 1 drop, 2x a day this week. After about 4 days at 2 drops/day, he vomited once and had diarrhea all day. I am assuming it is the MMS. I decided to drop down to 1 drop/day again until he gets beyond this. He tends to have loose stools anyway, which I am guessing is related to this ongoing battle with the parasites. His gut tends to be very sensitive to anything I give him, so I have to go very carefully with anything new like the MMS. I am still giving him the other parasite cleanse (Systemic Formulas VRM 1-4). I would love to hear anyone’s ideas or insight into this. I am working with a homeopath who has done extensive research into parasite cleanses, but she has not researched MMS. I’m looking to get my son beyond these parasites once and for all. My homeopath and her colleagues are autism experts and do consults with parents from around the world. They have found that the children with autism who are considered “tough nuts” tend to also be parasite kids. With their compromised immune systems, it is difficult to eradicate parasites.
There’s only one word for this: appalling.
227 replies on “The lowest of the low: Trying to bleach autism away”
Even (appalling)^3 wouldn’t say it 🙁
what I’m wondering is, how does this parent know that her child has ‘parasites’? has she never wondered, over the last 1.5 years, where these recurrent ‘infections’ keep coming from?
WTF?!?!?!
Are these the same people complaining about dangerous chemicals in vaccins?
The irony.
The anecdote at the end sounds like child-abuse to me. And these people say they care for autistic children? If this is care, I wonder what the opposite would be.
Appalling and WTF just don’t have the muster to describe how utterly despicable anyone, ANYONE who would subject their child to this crap is. No small wonder they don’t want any critical eyes on their quackfest, to report on the various, horrific torture and abuse devices for autistic children.
And you know, as if my post at Harpocrates Speaks yesterday wasn’t depressing enough… This MMS crap is awful. I can understand that these parents want to help their kids, but what the hell!? Torturing them with bleach? If you’re going to tout bleach cocktails and squirting it up children’s butts, at the very least, do the f*ing research to show that it is a) safe and b) effective first!
At some point here this crosses the threshold from “sounds pretty much like child abuse” to “actionable child abuse” right?
True, bleach can kill bacteria or cancer cells in a dish at a high enough concentration, but that doesn’t mean it’s a useful antibiotic or chemotherapeutic agent.
Bleach can kill anything in a dish at high enough concentrations. Just saying…
As for what these people are doing to children with MMS, it’s child abuse pure and simple. They’re poisoning their kids because they’re “broken,” a word I’ve seen used many times by the anti-vax crowd, and which to me sounds like emotional abuse by a selfish parent. Instead of just giving them love and support, they turn their kids into guinea pigs for quacks who really should be in jail for the things they do.
As others have stated above, “appalling” and “WTF” are serious understatements here.
Alison @0635: It’s even worse: This mother has been using this parasite cleanse system for 1.5 years, apparently without answering the ringing clue phone that the system doesn’t work. She mumbles something about “compromised immune systems” in autistic children, which I suspect is a line being fed her (it may be true of her son for reasons unrelated to his autism) as being semi-plausible to somebody this deep in woo-land.
JohnV@0935: In a sane world, it would cross that line. But in a world that sane, nobody would be using bleach enemas on kids. And as long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony.
Andrew Wakefield’s new book defends such actions.
Two years ago, a mother killed her autistic son by forcing him to drink bleach – she was convicted of manslaughter. AOA condemned that murder, but I guess that mother wasn’t part of their club…
Every single one of these people claiming to have used bleach on autistic children needs to be reported to CPS. Every single one of them need investigation for child abuse.
And if the MMS doesn’t do the trick– if those autism causing parasites are just too darn tough–why not try Drano, or Liquid Plumr?
No wait–we’ll need a catchier name, Miracle or Magical something or other. After all, customers will think twice if we call it what it really is…
/sarcasm off
I suppose not only people claiming to have used bleach on autistic children should be prosecuted, but also the people advising them to do so. If this isn’t child abuse, I wonder what is.
Those people must be really out of their mind. They have been so openminded that their brains have fallen out a long time ago.
@Renate
Possible they could be charged with medical malfeasance or practicing medicine without a license…or both.
Hmm, I think my comment’s gone into a filter because of my swearing. Orac?
Sounds like MMSers (and the rest of the “cure autism now” crowd) believe that autistic children are brain dead subhumans and therefore ANY intervention is ok to try. Any suffering is (1) justified and (2) not experienced the way “normal” people feel.
And to think this crowd believes we pediatricians are unethical monsters.
elburto, if memory serves me right, PZ moved his more irreverent posting away from Sciblogs to FTB because NatGeo was going to bring in stricter guidelines about profanity, etc.
Which is a pity, because something like this deserves every profanity in the book.
Actually, I think we’ll have to make up brand new profanities to address it properly
Fortunately (?) if you cannot attend the conference, video coverage is available at Autism One’s website and at Thinking Moms’ Revolution. That is, if you’re a glutton for punishment or fashionably masochistic.-btw- There was a warning on their site about ID because they don’t want any
so-called disruptive persons milling about.
@ elburto:
I believe that the new system devoured my poetic introductory musings yesterday – and I don’t mean ‘devoured” in a good way. I have found that- on the previous system- swearing may be accepted if you dis-emvowell it by substituting @,#,& for vowells.
Someone could do a great public service by hooking these people up with the homeopaths. Their home remedies would do a lot less damage at a 200X dilution.
@ Greg Fish:
About those ‘broken children’:
on the 23rd, Ms Cupcake at Thinking Moms’ Revolution reported how difficult it is to force all of those supplements on her child and then, in a un-intended stroke of realism, described how her son says that he’s broken and cannot be fixed
.
Of course, she takes no credit for his low self-concept and pessimism- this is blamed on pharma and doctors just as autism itself is blamed on malfeasance rather than genetics or chance. They “stole his childhood”, she says.
Thomas,it depends on who is doing the abuse,and what the setting is.If itt’s done in a “clinic” in the name of “recovering” a child,where the parent shells out thousands of dollars per “treatment” it’s perfectly fine with them.
We can talk about how these parents ought to have their children taken away,or how they ought to be brought up on all kinds of charges,but I suspect most parents that do this sort of stuff would never be found out.They would only talk about it to like minded antivax parents,or “doctors”.
I’m reminded of this recent post at the Randi blog,linked by I Speak of Dreams,and other blogs.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1710-the-quack-clinic-checklist.html
Just Over the Border
Many dubious clinics are strategically located just over the border, in a neighboring country that has conveniently lax regulations. For this reason Tijuana, for example, is a favorite destination for dubious medical treatments.
Globalization, however, has spread such clinics around the world. There are now many countries (China and India, for example) with a cottage industry of dubious medical clinics trying to lure wealthy Westerners with their amazing claims.
Put the child abuse issue aside for a minute,and look at the garbage on Rivera’s site,and just what she believes.
Recent peer-reviewed scientific/medical studies by Nataf, et al. (2006), and by Geier and Geier, leave little doubt that many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are indeed mercury poisoned. …
Autism is NOT a genetic disorder. Genetic disorders do not increase at the rate that autism is increasing. Genetic disorders are not recoverable. So, since we have recovered children (thousands documented) as well as adopted children with autism (2 children from different parents adopted into one home can have autism) it must be something else. A mother was quoted to say, “I believe that Christian`s regression and subsequent autism was the result of receiveing 6 vaccines during one office visit at 2 months of age. He screamed for 12 hours and had a 104 degree fever nearly the entire time. His vaccines contained Thimerosal.” (Thimerosal is the mercury-based preservative found in many vaccines). However, with the 38 vaccines received before the age of 2, has been connected to the autism epidemic.
“Too many too soon”,”The toxins gambit”,”The Autism Epidemic”,even thimersosal.It’s all there,the same old garbage over and over again.It does get tiresome after a while.I do think it goes back to what I said here last week,that a very real explanation for why these parents still continue to believe this stuff,is because they may have autistic tendencies,or undiagnosed ASDs themselves.Why else would they have such rigidity of thinking in the face of all evidence to the contrary?
Also,to repeat what I said here last week,there are now a lot of treatable causes of ASD,backed up by real science.Like I said,I now know I have one of these myself
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2011175a.html
But unlike what the Geiers and Kerri Riveras of this world offer,it is neither a cure,nor a quick fix,and finding out what the problem is,or how to treat it,and sometimes it’s the result of years of testing.
I understand desperate people do desperate things, but sweet baby Jesus Bleach?? Parasites? How about this is your child and you need to love him and work with his therapists. For once I wish these people would stop subjecting their children to obscene quackery and accept this came from their gene pool, maybe with additional help from environmental factors, etc. But at the end of the day, this kid was BORN WITH AUTISM. The stupid is killing me.
A crime against humanity is more like it. This is horrific and those who do it should be prosecuted for abuse and assault.
I have a write-up on what I think is the physiology behind resolution of autism during fever and it has nothing to do with toxins.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/01/resolution-of-asd-symptoms-with-fever.html
In my experience, just because someone uses the Shopenhauer quote doesn’t mean they are a quack. If that is the way you tell if someone is a quack, then you are doing it wrong. 😉
@ anon:
There are tons of homeopathy being used , often with diets and other whimsy-based therapies. A new one I’ve run acroos recently is CEASE ( see CEASE-therapy.com website) in which like-cures-like, vaccine damage is cured by diluted vaccines or suchlike.
But I agree: homeopathy- being nothing- can’t diresctly harm children. Interestingly, many who put their faith in woo also allow government sponsored reality-based therapies FORTUNATELY. Ms Stagliano is one of these parents.
daedalus2u @11:23 —
Of course not. But it’s very frequently used to justify mind-numbing stupidity.
It is sometimes the case that the conventional wisdom is wrong, especially when the conventional wisdom hasn’t been examined closely, but when we’re talking about well-tested scientific theories, the likelihood of them being wrong would seem to be pretty small.
To choose one debating point I’ve seen used, the heliobactor pylorii episode does not prove that scientists are wrong about anthropogenic global warming.
[…] found this via Orac at Respectful Insolence: using “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) as a “cure” for autism. Which is, quite simply, industrial strength bleach, as covered by Rhys Morgan during […]
Just a thought before I go to attend to diverse earth-shattering concerns on my Friday list –
while I am not entirely enamoured of that shade of green ( at left) and know that it’s probably random, I do like the other greens and green-ish ones I’ve scanned over the past few days’ comments.
Simply mind-boggling. I’m not sure whether this qualifies more as “child abuse” or “reckless endangerment” or even “attempted murder.” This really does need to lead to people getting locked up.
And not just the promoters, either. I’m willing to cut desperate parents a lot of slack, but there IS a line, and this is way over it. CPS nothing; I want criminal charges and major jail time.
I first became aware of MMS when Rhys Morgan made it his business to bring this quackery, being promoted for crohn’s disease, to the attention of our local government. http://thewelshboyo.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/bleachgate/
Andrew Wakefield et al, the colonic detox types now this charlatan? Excuse the vileness of this question but why are so many quacks intersting in inserting things into autistic children’s bottoms?
Thank you Orac for shining some light on this. I am the mother of a severely autistic (non-verbal) teenager, it brings tears to my eyes and makes me sick to my stomach to think of anyone doing this to any child with autism, let alone one that is unable to tell you how he is feeling. I just don’t understand how any parent could think this is a good idea. I thought Lupron was bad, but I believe this might be worse.
Excuse the spelling on that. Got a very well loved and accepted little autist “helping me” (i.e. waiting for me to put the duck song on)
This is simply hideous. As I have noted in posts here at RI on political-legal aspects of anti-vax activism and the pushback against it, children have rights & interests of their own, and parents are merely temporary defenders & advocates of those rights & interests until their children are grown.
Submitting children to quackery such as this, which clearly causes bodily harm, is an unequivocal violation of childrens’ rights and a complete abrogation of genuine parental responsibility.
Put me down for wanting parents & practitioners who subject children to this to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
This is just… depressing. I’m so upset for these poor kids. Their parents are poisoning them…
well then, if bleach cures autism why shouldn’t hydrogen peroxide cure cancer? Our homes must be filled with wonderful remedies, no?
http://www.cancertruth.net/hydrogen-peroxide-medical-miracle/
Geez! It sounds like something a certain ex-chicken farmer would cook up! Those poor kids!
Right gang, going lo try again!
Wow, RI has made me cry. I thought that 16 years on the internet had totally desensitised me to horror.
If by “cured” they mean “more compliant and tactile” all I can say is that I’d be quiet, I’d be using physical contact with my “care”giver, if I thought it had any chance of stopping them foxing assaulting my body with bleach.
But hey, what does it matter? They’re broken and damaged, not real children, possessed and parasite infested. Why not assault the evil changeling child by shoving bleach into every orifice? Gotta get that frustration out somehow.
Someone please, please tell me that these ableist, child-torturing. battleships at AutismOne can be punished by law for this. Please?
elburto – losing her faith in humanity, one foxing quack at a time.
Yay it worked!
The weeping has given way to rage. Even Mayim Bialik isn’t this infested with this much lunacy.
Adults can do as they please. Eat fistfuls of wasps. drink and bathe in their own waste, try and live on UVA and UVB alone, whatever floats their crazyboat. But kids are off-limits, or should be.
The thought of someone mixing bleach in a baby bottle, an object associated with nurturing and love, has. turned my blood to ice. It’s a horrific juxtaposition. To think of a child taking the teat in their mouth, expecting sustenance and getting toilet cleaner? Poor little bairns.
The TorturismOne brigade are lucky I’m just an immobile entity in the UK. I’d cheerfully throttle these. bleach-pushers if I could. Such a pity those new exoskeleton thingies are so expensive! I could stomp in there like the Terminator, NO! Ripley from Alien! Shame I can’t repeal what she said to the beastie without getting put in the spam-can. 😀
Here is an FDA bulletin on MMS.
As far as locking people up goes, there may be a reason this clinic is in Mexico.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know how quickly sodium chlorite and/or chlorine dioxide degrade once exposed to air or water?
are these treatments pier reviewed? by pier reviewed, i mean that the practitioners should be tossed off a pier.
Wow, and people think anal-bleaching is a harmful new fad…. As a psych, I have to wonder if these parents are actually suffering from mental distress, possibly a form of PTSD, chronic anxiety or depression brought on by their own self-loathing and the feeling of being “trapped” by a special needs child? Hmmm, to the library!
JayK, Munchausen by proxy?
At the upcoming AutismOne dog and pony show, I would love to see 60 minutes go in undercover, film this insanity and rip them a new a**hole
This is just too sad for words. I can’t believe loving parents would do that to a child. But then, they obviously don’t see a precious child, they see a “broken thing” – since changlings are out of fashion….
If the “parasite” mother really wants to know how her autistic son is feeling after the bleach enemas (“…I don’t get any feedback from him as to how he is doing…”) she should have a bleach enema 5 days a week for 1.5 years.
I like how the “church” lists the MMS protocols as “sacraments”
Reverend Jim has a YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/JimHumbleLive
I’m listening to his talk from February 9,2012,where he mentions using chlorine in an IV.
This page is especially good
http://genesis2church.org/mms-protocol-children-and-babies.html
A couple of web sites have written that you should not risk giving MMS to pregnant women or babies. One web site said, “Take this very seriously.” Almost as if babies were going to be harmed. Well all that web site is going to do is result in the death of some babies and pregnant women.
MMS has saved the lives of quite a few babies so far. If people read those web sites and are afraid to treat a sick baby that only MMS might have saved, the baby is not going to be saved. These people all of a sudden decide that for some reason they know best. They don’t bother to ask me, or review the evidence. They just start sounding off. If they really knew what they were talking about that would have been OK….MMS is a weak oxidizer that cannot oxidize normal body cells, or the beneficial bacteria in the body or in the digestive tract or any place else. I have used it on rashes and the most terrible things on the baby’s skin. It has never caused a bad reaction on the baby’s skin. I used a strong solution 3 times stronger than the strongest recommended dose by mouth to spray my own skin in the most sensitive areas of my body everyday several times a day for more than a year. At the end of a year there was absolutely no difference in my skin where sprayed as opposed to areas where it was not sprayed.
Pregnant women should have at least a maintenance dose of 6 drops a day. It will maintain their immune system at peak condition that is needed for all pregnant women.
Much more at the site.It has to be read to be believed.
Of course the good “reverend” goes on about how the MMS movement are “brave mavericks” being persecuted by “big pharma” and the FDA.It’s all so predictable.
As Ed sees it, the MMS Movement has a cancer growing on it. It’s the same cancer we see growing all over the world. It’s leading cause? Corporate interests like Monsanto, pharmaceutical companies, and the representatives of “We the People” who’d rather court those interests than the blood-bought liberties of their forefathers.
The US~Observer is committed, not only, to Daniel and the MMS Movement but to the fight against this modern day corporate sponsored “food and drug terrorism”.
….Government through the FDA successfully outlaws MMS as some “unapproved new drug”, the rest of the world will follow suit. If even one person is hauled off to prison, someone will be next. If the FDA wins jurisdiction over our kitchens, health freedom will be seriously impacted. Use of our own wisdom to treat our own body will be limited, and those limitations would be far reaching.
Consider, if armed government agents forced their way into one man’s home to steal MMS from his kitchen pantry, what could become of all the pantries of the world?
You might be thinking … it wasn’t your home that was raided. It wasn’t your finances that disappeared into a government hole. You’re not the one facing a lifetime in prison, like Daniel. But, in fact, it is you and me because it won’t stop with Daniel. We are all in this together.
More at http://jimhumble.biz/
Exactly Dawn. Why not abuse this “thing”? It’s not like the broken, soulless, un-children can pick up the phone and call social services. Nothing to lose!
I mean bleach is gluten and casein free, the perfect aperitif. The crying and helpless vomiting, the agonised writhing just means it’s working.
Ngh. I want to help these kids so badly, I feel so useless. Babies are dying of VPDs because parents of other kids have fallen for the “better dead than autistic, stolen by vaccines” lie. The autistic kids are suffering because their parents have been told “you did this to them”, and are subsumed with guilt, frustration and rage.
The only ones not suffering are apparently the McCarthy’s, the Bialiks, the Wakefields and their acolytes. The parasites feeding off fear, and ignorance. Growing fat and rich from peddling death and torture, and detrimental neglect with the potential to affect the whole world.
lsm – I’d be happy to restrain her. in order to assist with our little single subject case study.
Here in England we usually drink bleach when we want to top ourselves. Works reasonably well as long as you don’t throw up.
Having read the MMS BS and watched the BS MMS videos I feel compelled to forgo the Pinot Noir this evening and reach for the Domestos (presumably something like Clorox for you colonials).
In Bad Science Ben Goldacre talks about washing up liquid killing cancer cells in vitro but you could hardly swallow a bottle of Fairy Liquid and cure yourself of cancer (which would put you out of work Ora). . I think these morons might have read something similar and thought “what a fantasic idea”.
There would appear to be a very thin line between stupidity, crass ignorance and child abuse. One seemingly crossed remarkably easy.
Jim Humble is not only championing his MMS, he has come up with a simple more convenient, MMS II. All you have to do is buy pool shock, grind it a little more finely in a mortar an pestle and stick them in capsules! Much nicer!
Also, since it was pointed out to him that he could run into trouble regarding selling a supplement, etc., even though he pretty much directs people to people who have read his instructions and make the “Miracle Mineral Solution” on their own, he has created his own “Church of Health and Healing” and made himself “Bishop.” He instructs “church members” to never sell any MMS solution they make, but to only ask for donations, and has a lot of literature about HOW they are a church (i.e., the legal requirements to avoid any kind of “persecution by the state”), etc., and uses religion to help him and anyone who chooses to follow his dangerous craziness avoid prosecution for selling such a dangerous substance and promoting its use as a “supplement.”
Of course I meant “Orac” – this new site is very peculiar in terms of editing.
This whole bleach thing takes autistic kids from not merely damaged but dirty and infested with parasites. I do think a lot of the “treatments” pushed by quacks have cult of purity overtones and undertones come to that. The chelation, detoxing, anti-fungals, etc are some kind of chemical purging/exorcism and speaks more the parents’ sense of guilt than any underlying problem with their child.
The autism-is-lyme-disease crazies are getting louder here in the UK too. Sure they’ll find some doc greedy enough to prescribe copious amounts of antibiotics to satisfy this whim before too long:
http://autismum.com/2012/05/04/to-the-secretary-of-state-for-health/
apparently their little demonstration was like a fart in a thunder storm.
Mr Woo has had some MMS for quite a while and even gave some to someone who was on very strong antibiotics for a possible MRSA infection and told him the antibiotics would not cure MRSA and he would have to have his leg amputated, but that if he took really high doses of MMS he would be fine. The man, of course, kept taking his antibiotics, but was gullible enough to add the MMS and stick with it even with the terrible diarrhea.
When he was cured of his MRSA he of course told hubby how great it was that he had that MMS to give him (oh, the joys of anecdotal evidence!).
Jim Humble offends me with the whole turning it into a church idea. It’s very clever, though.
My guess is that their usual reaction against “chemicals” being put into their children has gone up against the romanticized view of Home Remedies that They Doyn’t Want You to Know About — and lost.
There is not a chance in hell that this would succeed as a defense. Indeed, looking at his open letter, one gets this whopper: “When you finish our MMS course (one week of intense training) you can legally call yourself a Reverend and use Rev. in front of your name.” Ah, Jim, I can do that already.
I cannot imagine being a child that is already disturbed by regular stimuli getting bleach enemas daily as well as getting diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and fever from the oral administration.
I suspect the misguided parents believe the child has to be “getting better ” and it is “worth their discomfort” because it proves they are improving. I wonder how many autistic children are going to die of severe dehydration in the coming year?
@Narad – it has been a while since I read any of his emails, but I believe that he has a longer (more expensive) course that qualifies you to teach others and certify them as reverends.
All (known) life being akin, it should be unsurprising if anything that kills bacteria kills or harms people too. But this sort of people seem to think of germs as not so much lifeforms to be killed as evil spirits to be exorcized. If one thinks in a good/evil dichotomy, it makes some sense that whatever’s bad for the bad is good for the good.
I would add that no woo is off limits for the Revolting Mums™. Even if a purveyor of “biomed” wouldn’t use a particular nostrum, they would NEVER condemn the use of it by others. Shove a pastry bag full of week old faeces into the rectum of their autistic child? Check. Lupron. Check. Chelation? Check. HBOT? Check. Now MMS (which I had no idea was being used to torture autistic children). It’s all good to them in the name of “curing” or “recovering” and it’s utterly vile.
They wail about “health freedom” but don’t see their own hypocrisy for being free to abuse their children in the name of “biomed”. I am not being hyperbolic either; it IS abuse. But this has simply got to stop. These children have rights and while the naming and shaming may be effective to a degree (perhaps dissuading new parents), it does nothing to prevent the current abuse committed on special needs children. That crazed band of parents just become more solidified in their beliefs. There has to be legal remedies for this blatant violation of children’s basic rights.
Nice post, I rly enjoyed reading it. For all German readers who want to read more about this topic you can do it on http://www.wiekannichschnellabnehmen.co
Ism- EXACTLY! I know in Chicago police who want to carry pepper spray must first get pepper sprayed in the face so they know how it feels like. I think any parent who thinks forcing bleach enemas on their nonverbal children is a good idea should get one first.
A while back I wondered if a great deal of the problems that these disturbed parents experienced derived from the fact that many years ago children who had severe autism/ developmental disabilities were indeed institutionalised, thus those who could not be ( or weren’t) toilet trained at a young age and remained incontinent would present a very difficult daily issue for any caretakers: a large, possibly non-verbal/ incommuncative child who needed changing and cleaning several times a day- as de-institutionalisation progressed, this problem often became that of the parents, not unseen caretakers.
If you recall, the parents’ group who sought out legal redress for vaccine-caused-autism caught the eye of AJW- the clever guy who sought a GI connection to vaccine-induced-brain damage – he probably saw into the depths of their struggles..
So many of the complaining essays I read in mothers’ awful entries @ AoA or TMR involve cleaning up poo. Is it any surprise that they should focus their so-called therapies on children’s intestines? AND unfortunately, strong bleach cleans up offending dirt and smells.
.
It’s not very original. Art Kleps did this with the Neo-American Church in the late ’60s. It didn’t work as a legal defense, although it wasn’t tested at a particularly high level. Bishop Jim might want to apprise himself that the RFRA doesn’t extend to the states (521 U.S. 507).
Denice, I clean up my fair share of poo from my little fella. Bleach: I use on the floor, not inside my child.
This post has properly upset me tbh, the last anecdote the most.
@ Autismum:
Exactly, but you’re entirely sane and decent.
My boy goes to special school and I know I’m only speaking from personal and, so, very limited experience but I just don’t hear of this level of quackery and abuse being inflicted on kids with other disabilities (Science Mom is far from hyperbolic – not sure there is hyperbole for how awful this BS is)
Big hugs Autismum. Could you please blow your little pudding a kiss from me please.
At least I know one kid is loved and cherished, and won’t be having Domestos shoved up his arce (sorry, had to fudge the spelling!) or Glitto sandwiches for tea. All because his Mammy loves who he is, and not some fantasy of what he might have been.
This has shaken me badly. It’ll take a good hour of back-to-back Big Barn Farm to cheer me up. Sure I’m 34, but talking baby animals are the best cure for the mental images of the TorturismOne Bleach Brigade, and their poor kids.
I cannot fathom what kind of person would advocate using bleach enemas or oral ingestion of bleach for their child. It is absolutely mind-boggling that, for all the protestations of ‘toxins’ ‘heavy metals’ and the like, they would look at bleach and say, “Gee, this will work!”
I can’t even bring myself to attempt to calculate the speciation of MSS in distilled water for Todd. I am thoroughly and unequivocally revolted.
Jim Humble was interviewed on the sadly now defunct Righteous Indignation podcast by Hayley Stevens and Michael Marsh. Well worth listening to the 2 episodes as the two hosts draw Jim out and you hear how self deluded the man is.
http://www.talkaboutstrange.co.uk/episode-68-jim-humble/
http://www.talkaboutstrange.co.uk/episode-81-jim-humble-ii/
Like many of the readers, I am speechless. I can’t quite tell if it is with rage, or with horror, or both.
Boyd Haley’s attempt at “curing” autistic kids with N,N’-bis (2-mercaptoethyl)isophthalamide
Kathleen Seidel’s masterful coverage:
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/209/
and the letter to Haley’s university
http://www.neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/168/
I am nauseated and literally shaking after reading this post. I can’t imagine the suffering that these children are experiencing, with no way to fight back and no way to express their pain.
Not being a parent, I can’t imagine firsthand how difficult it must be to realize that your child is different, But to take that struggle out on the child by forcing that child to undergo horrific suffering just because you, the parent, can’t accept your child? The mind boggles.
Autismum, I’ve talked to a number of other parents of kids with various disabilities (including pretty severe cognitive challenges) and while there have been some pretty gruelling pseudoscience “treatments” (like the dolman-delcato “patterning” — read No Time for Jello) nothing like the DIY mad-scientist “protocols” that the “autism is curable” brigade inflicts upon their helpless children.
Thanks Elburto. I just caught him and gave him a big kiss from you and one from me just cos I finally got hold of him (he’s having a run around like he does whenever he senses bed time is approaching).
Anyone else thinking “delusional parasitosis by proxy?”
It is just plain and simple criminal abuse. It is assault and battery against the defenseless. It is a horror.
I am on the autism spectrum myself, and it makes me want to cry to read this. It also makes me want to get a big bottle of Clorox, some rubber tubing, and a powerful industrial-strength pump, and invite some of these people to my house for a nice visit.
I breed Maine Coons (perhaps America’s best ever export).
Being extremely big cats they do extremely big t*urds.
Cleaning up their poops makes me feel like throwing up. If they ever get the liquid squits the resultant ouput actually does makes me puke.
I am now going to adopt MMS and both feed them Domestos and poke it up their jacksies (ass*es) so they can poop and disinfect at the same time. That should make my life easier and reduce the cleaning up.
After all, if it is good enough for kids and is clinically proven it must be OK for cats. Surely?
Pregnant women with cats should also adopt Feline MMS (FMMS – copyright me) as this will remove the risk of foetal problems like tox (I don’t mean women who got pregnant from cats or women who are carrying cats – I think you get the gist)
Begins to sound like Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Read Lloyd deMause on the child as “poison container.”
Is this where mother in WA state got the notion to put bleach in her child’s eyes?
Mom charged with putting bleach in her toddler’s eyes
msnbc.com – Apr 30, 2012
Mom charged with putting bleach in her toddler’s eyes. NBC News. A 29-year-old Washington state woman was charged Monday with …
Highly Cited: Wash. mom Jennifer Mothershead accused of putting bleach into … CBS News
I cannot think of words to describe how appalled I am by the thought of anyone giving chlorine enemas to any living creature……
To begin with the danger of recreational high colonics…. following through with damage to the intestinal walls due to chlorine…… and not to mention total devastation of the natural intestinal flora………
Autismum @3:25 pm:
That was one of my first thoughts.I have suffered enough my entire life from GI disease.These parents are keenly aware their children have this problem,and have seen first hand the suffering it can cause.How they can inflict such further suffering,not to mention intestinal damage,on children who are already sick and in pain is beyond me.These are not normal people by any stretch of the imagination.Clearly they have no sense of compassion.
Like the rest of you,my contempt for them has been brought to an entirely new level.
It is my contention that only a small (but vocal) minority of autism parents believe in “cure” and pursue “biomedical treatment” (or biomeddlers, as one of my friends says).
There are a great number of autism parents who accept their children for who they are, and follow rational, evidence-based methods in helping their children.
Unfortunately. as Orac has pointed out, this weekend’s woo-fest in the Chicago suburbs brings the biomeddlers together, making it appear that they are more numerous and influential than they actually are.
Kelly – I think Silvermaven really is mentally ill; her writing patterns show characteristics I’ve seen in other schizophrenic writings. What amazes me is that “Sharon Hanson” who steps in to poison the well against you and claim you’re the one arguing in bad faith AFTER (actually even in response to) you making the cogent point that prions have no genes and Silvermaven responding only with a crude sexual insult. That amazes me more: someone with no apparent mental illness choosing to buy into blatant mental illness because it pleases her preconceptions.
Basically, it’s the antivaccine and autism “biomed” movement Woodstock
Woodstock had some decent acts. Will anyone at Autism One outperform Hendrix?
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chlorite
are these treatments pier reviewed?
They have been rear-previewed…
@Liz ditz – thanks for clarifying. I know of some kids who get Reiki and such but nothing like bleach inserted or forced ingestion thereof for their conditions, I don’t know of any parents (in the flesh so to speak) besides autism parents who actively pursue cures for their kids.
As for the link between autism and GI issues, I’m sorry, Roger that you have such problems. I know a couple of people who have crohn’s and understand, if not know, how awful that can be. My son has tummy troubles but they are easily and clearly attributable to his self limited diet (garlic bread and toast and that’s it) and his pica (only actual food is off limits there) and I have seen no convincing evidence that people with autism are more likely to have underlying gut pathology than the rest of the population. Having said that, I totally agree that adding to GI distress (for want of a better phrase), whatever its cause, is horribly cruel.
When the Japanese resorted to shoving a hose up a prisoner’s ass during WW2 and inflating their colon it was called ‘the water treatment’ and recognized as torture. Practitioners of this method faced war crimes trials. These people improve on the level of inhumanity by adding bleach and doing it to their own children. Monsters.
I’ve read about this “treatment” on yahoo groups for many years. It is beyond shocking and appalling, but nothing those parents would do would shock me now.
If you want to make a difference, you could join a few of these groups and try to respond to these people. I’d advise creating a throw-away yahoo email account.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/miracle_mineral_supplement/
From the group description
“Please post your experiences with using this supplement.We are not experts or medical doctors and these are only our individual experiences. There is no medical advice here .We only can tell you what worked for us or what we might do if we were in your situation.
I am asking that any reference to the ages of minor children be kept off the list.Big brother is watching…If at some point the govt decides MMS is bad for us, they might decide to take custody of these chidren that are “put in danger”. You may wish to avoid the age issue by saying grown brother or grown son or even talk about your friend…”
It’s important to stress that parents who espouse these extreme views are probably rare but very vocal, If you look over their websites, you’ll notice a great deal of overlap: a person might be on AoA, the Canary Party, etc. For example, LKH is on AoA. has her own vanity groups ( NJCVC, CPR) and now works for Focus Autism.
AutismOne expects a live audience of 3000 ( with 130 speakers) A while back, I looked at Facebook figures and IIRC, saw that AoA and the Canaries had about 5000-6000 each ( I think TMR was in the same range). As of today, Generation Rescue lists about 12200 and AutismOne 3500 ( the first aforementioned sites were now closed to non-fb people like me). Altho’ Mr Segal might say in his letter ( @ AoA) that the coalition of autism groups for whom he speaks represent 100k, we can perhaps call * wishful thinking*- I imagine that I could also say that I represent ( via my extended family @ cousins.net) nearly a thousand if you include spouses, children, cousins once-removed, twice-removed et al but that wouldn’t be entirely honest would it?
Like alt med advocates, they pretend that they are more mainstream and popular than they really are.
There is also a very active discussion regarding MMS on this group:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/mb12valtrex/
Here’s a quote from one of the “leaders” of this group.
“I wanted to make another update on the MMS….really doin good….today his attention was off and i realized i forgot to give his binders….
my final issue I think is the impaction that he still has….bm’s are still not complete. so i will be starting MMS enema tomorrow…with this enema can i ordered online….apparently the small fleet enemas are not enuff.
anyone wanting to do this be careful as you dont want to injure the bowel with any forced liquids. yah fun stuff i think i would rather go thru root canal.
i am always lookin for the bottom line. im not interested in the names so much of this parasite that bacteria…ect ect….i just want to get rid of the why…are they here?
old feces in the intestines will keep a nice home for bactieria and parasites….metal also…….so im treating for metal and for the impaction….other then that i am still cookin all food from scratch as i dont trust any thing that doesnt come straight from a local farmers garden.
i bought some organic fries today bein in a hurry sick and wantin somthin qiuck for my son…ingredients were organic potatoes,canola oil,sea salt.
really ? they snuck in that GMO canola oil right in their.
it sucks bein so anal about all food. I am not an anal person…well I wasnt before autism.
I am still plannin to go back to andy cutler chelation which I had great gains from but for now MMS got rid of pandas…and I am reallt happy with that.
im still trying to get more details of all my notes in my blog.and the book that im wondering if it was ever meant for any one else to see:(
i will keep everyone posted…in this funjourney as it unfolds…
channa”
@Antaeus Feldspar. Sharon is real piece of work. When I said that around six million people have been saved in the last ten years by vaccines. She said it didn’t count because they were third world people and that should not drive US vaccine policy. She is a self centered idiot.
@Denise – you are right, there is great overlap between these groups.
On AoA, when they trumpet the 100K members, they also linked to the press conference on April 2, where speakers included Mark Blaxill, and Katie Wright. At the beginning, Mary Holland asks that questions come at the end of the speeches. Katie points out that her son is there, but the camera doesn’t pan back to him. In fact, it never pans the entire audience. The applause sounds like it is coming from no more than 20 people. And there are no (or not many) questions from the audience. Not a real press conference. Not a real number of 100K members.
Measles vaccine….
Hey, I was just kidding about the whole Church of the Extended Telomere (Restored) thing yesterday. What does Humble call his religion, the Church of the Immaculate Whites?
for now MMS got rid of pandas
Surely there is some easier way.
I thought we were trying to save pandas. They’re cute and all they want out of life is a little bamboo.
I’m so confused.
@ Pareidolius:
Um,, speaking,as an immaculate white, I wish you would call it something else.. Oh,. I don’t know.. isn’t there an old hymn**… “There is a fountain”?
** athiests DO know the titles of hymns, believe it or not.
Something *else* is really bothering me (aside from the utterly jaw-dropping thought of someone giving a child a bleach enema) — where is this kid’s father? Where are his grandparents? Where is someone, anyone, in his circle of family and neighbors with not just a shred of sanity but some vestige of decency to step in and stop this?
Seriously — one phone call to DCFS that she’s giving bleach enemas to her son and they ought to be knocking on her door.
Sure. Thanks to Joe Hill.
I was just browsing the 60-page program. (And had never before seen a picture of Wakefield fondling the American flag until p. 17.) Sadly, I’m not finding any performance by The Refusers, who could have lit all their instruments on fire, I suppose, even if that wasn’t Woodstock.
Karaoke Night does begin in half an hour, though.
Does two drops of bleach really make someone vomit? I’m not clear on how much bleach is involved with these “treatments”–which are absurd and abusive regardless, but I’m just wondering what the tolerance is for ingesting diluted bleach?
As to the enema fixation, it’s the same with the alien abduction crowd–they always get the old anal probing when they are taken into the spaceship. This must be some kind of psychological phenomena, no?
Archbishop Jim Humble – Chief inventor, totally sterile in regards to scientific knowledge, adherent to the persecutory delusion of Big Pharma [http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/mmsion] bribing everyone into allowing humanity to die of cancer in order to get rich, sitting at the rather extreme end.
Part of the theory is the belief, that cancer is caused by an infection with “pleomorphic orgnaisms”.
It also involves the belief, that:
“[…] electrons hold all compound materials together, which of course would include pleomorphic microorganisms. Electrons hold the materials of the universe together. Oxidation is the process whereby electrons are removed from the material being oxidized and thus the material comes apart and is destroyed.”
I’m sure every physicist will just love this stuff. Obviously, science education is a complete failure, if people believe this nauseating stuff.
The circular argument as to why he has been unable to come up with any evidence is the paranoia mentioned above:
“History has shown that soon after anyone presents a proven method of curing cancer they either meet a violent demise or go to prison. Of course, the method never becomes available or known. Thus I have made no effort to prove what we are discovering about MMS”
He goes on to say:
“Thousands have overcome the suffering and the cancer, but that doesn’t prove it. The FDA says antidotal evidence is of no value.” Don’t you just love the antidotal evidence. This guy hasn’t even bothered reading anything at all. Well, it should not surprise. After all, it’s a church…
Poppycock! The Church of the Extended Telomere (Restored)™ has the only True Antidote®. And it’s available in three easy payments of 149.95. Smooth operators are standing by. Besides, isn’t MMS only one letter away from MMR? Didn’t think of that, did you Mr. Archbishoppants. That must mean something . . . pleomorphically . . . ish.
The High Lords of Spam are attacking on all fronts.
Ok, there are some really strange posts coming through from what i am guessing are spammers. The best I can figure out is they are innocuous posts used as pathfinders to test the spam filters.
“You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I’ll try to get the hang of it!”
or
“I’m still learning from you, but I’m trying to reach my goals. I definitely enjoy reading all that is posted on your site.Keep the posts coming. I loved it!
or
“I actually wanted to send a simple word in order to express gratitude to you for the unique points you are giving out on this website. My time intensive internet lookup has at the end of the day been recognized with pleasant facts and techniques to exchange with my companions. I ‘d say that many of us visitors actually are rather lucky to live in a fantastic network with many outstanding individuals with beneficial secrets. I feel truly lucky to have seen your entire website page and look forward to tons of more enjoyable moments reading here. Thanks a lot again for a lot of things.”
Maybe they are just major butt kissers, but I doubt it.
The overlords have dropped the ball on the spam solution, and this problem is unlikely to abate until they finally get around to revisiting the question on Tuesday. Lovely. Just what I look forward to: A holiday weekend zapping hundreds of comment spam messages.
@Livos – I think that many of Humble’s marks er um marketing segments er whatever – those people that he wants so “desperately to help while never making a dime” are also people who haven’t been in a science class in twenty years or more. They don’t regularly read science magazines, current research, etc., so when big words are shown to them on the internet and in print (I go to a church where someone found this guy and made/bought two bottles for every member and handed out printouts of the most impressive-sounding points plus instructions on how to use it; print-outs were, in part, for the older people who really see no need for the internet), these people say, “Wow, research has come a long way! I can’t believe that this poor man is being censored…” If they happen to have a computer and want to check things out more carefully, the most commonly considered searches for MMS and/or Jim Humble have been already targeted by him and his many fans with SEO to be sure that the first few pages of most answers are all glowing testimonials (and usually the same exact thing repeated ad nauseum) of how wonderful the product is and glowing anecdotes of its many cures and wonderful safety, sprinkled with lots of “big bad Pharma/government” to be sure that any information coming from a balanced, scientific perspective is immediately considered suspect when the person finally comes across it.
Yes, it is a kind of lack of science education, but you have to realize there are people out there who didn’t go into that field, don’t keep up with it and have lost a lot of what they did learn so long ago. Others of us who have had a little more education or just a better memory look at it and know that it doesn’t sound “right,” but do not know enough to know where it is wrong, so we say “Oh, look, another snake oil salesman” and move on, or accidentally find skeptic blogs and hang out on them, sometimes even commenting if it is a type of woo that we’ve had some experience with (in my case, usually by watching Mr Woo or hearing things that he has read or that another equally alternative med-enamored friend has shared with him).
In a way it is “lack of education,” I guess, but I don’t hold it against the people who get taken in with this as much as I hold it against the people who “sell” this.
On something like drinking bleach water and/or using it as an enema, though, well, that’s just ridiculous and dangerous, and I have never been able to figure out the appeal…
Conferences like Autism One help consolidate diverse groups and invigorate flagging enthusiasm. Because I read TMR, I thought I’d share today’s epistle from the edge:
Ms Luv Bug describes how becoming involved lifted her from the isolation she experienced when her child received a diagnosis: now she is now amongst a group of activists who will learn** about research and doctors who will augment recovery. Friends and connections are made and batteries are re-charged HOWEVER there is a societal purpose behind the personal gains because they (direct quote) -need to stop more families from being initiated into our d@mned club. STOP AUTISM-( unquote)
Right you are: they are ‘prentice evangelists who, she instructs, should speak to others- strangers, family, friends- “whoever will listen”. And, she informs us, reducing autism is not equivalent to changing the DSM-5 but (altho’ she doesn’t actually say it, I infer) stopping so-called vaccine damage which means…. stopping vaccination.
On that depressing note, I think that I’ll prepare to drive over to the seaside to witness the on-coming storm wreck havoc- for some reason, atmospheric events seem to lift my spirits… then, we’ll have curry and drinks.
** it’s too much trouble to put in all the irony-markers- use your imagination.
[quote]”I am not an anal person…well I wasnt before autism.”[/quote]
…literally.
Doing a Google search for MMS, I found that it’s being sold in the UK, by a Stockport company called PH Health. Here’s their site: http://www.phhealth.co.uk/products-page/cds-replacement-for-mms
I’ve already whipped off a complaint to Stockport Trading Standards, pointing out that the FSA banned it from sale in the UK in 2010. A few more complaints to the relevant bodies (Stockport Trading Standards, FSA) wouldn’t go amiss.
When I was five and my parents took me to get my hair cut at a salon, it was a miserable experience. And I’m mildly autistic, who the AoAers wouldn’t count as autistic (except when citing prevalence figures). This is really sick and makes no sense. Even if it were true vaccines caused autism, I can’t think of even a semi-plausible reason for this to work. Parasites?! Where the world did that come from?
[quote]“I am not an anal person…well I wasnt before autism.”[/quote]
Trawling around the bulletin boards reveals at least one person who is taking MMS to treat her Obsessive-Compulsive problems.
I’ve heard of parents getting their kids removed from the home for illegal activities that are less cruel.
If these kids are supposedly getting better (thinking of the non-verbal child with “parasites”), maybe their behavior gets quelled because they’re terrified of the pain their parents inflict on them. These parents need to go to prison.
I really can’t understand why some of these guys are so hung up on wacked-out treatments. Occupational therapy, social skills training, speech therapy, support groups, etc. have evidence to back them up, can often get paid for through IEP or insurance, and don’t have a whole lot to do with “Western medicine” per many folks.
My best guess is that therapy requires parents to take some level of responsibility – it’s one thing to put poison in a sippy cup, it’s another to go therapy appointments three times a week plus a support group on top of every other obligation parents have. If the parents find therapy to not work, it’s a failure on their part because part of their job is to reinforce what the therapists are teaching – or even blame themselves because they picked the therapists. If poison treatment isn’t working, all that is needed is more poison or some hyperbaric stuff or an exorcism – a parent can blame behavior on a substance versus their own behavior.
I’ve noticed that there’s more emphasis on support for caretakers of kids with autism (and every other mental health deal) than there is for the emotional needs of kids – atleast in terms of advertising and getting donations/grant money. Don’t get me wrong, caretakers need support. But I think people forget kids that kids are the ones who live with this stuff more than their families – oh, and they grow up to be adults who live with this stuff more than their families.
Owning up to your mistakes as a parent sucks – I’ve had to do it more often than I’d like as of late – but in the end it’s best for your sanity. Ignoring your role in a child’s behavior will lead to behavior that is harder for everyone to deal with – turns into a nasty circle.
OT, but here’s a delayed response to the discussion of homeopathy on earlier threads.
That’s impressive. Normally, giant public-facing IT screwups kind of trump long weekends.
Chemistry in High School, dear anti-vaxers… How much?
I think it’s important to note who is not trying to distance themselves from such abuse. I’d like to think that some of the folks selling the garden variety pixie dust and foot magnets there would also find this appalling and, *hopes*, illegal.
Not going to happen; they will never speak out against another’s nostrums. You can only be a good martyr mummy if you are doing everything you can to recover your damaged goods.
Ugh, I just made myself puke a little.
It seems to me that parents of children with autism who fall prey to these kind of charlatans are looking for the magic bullet that will lead them right to “recovery”. Any “treatment” that claims to have recovered any child with autism, no matter how implausible or heinous, becomes desirable. The latest fad does seem to be “bacteria” and “parasites”, although somehow these are also connected to “metals”, so it all goes together in some deluded fashion.
18 years ago when Catherine Maurice wrote her first book “Let Me Hear Your Voice” about recovering her children with ABA, then that was the treatment du jour. Then there was secretin, GFCF diet, SCD diet, chelation, MB12, HbOT, Amy Yasko, etc., and I’m sure I have forgotten some. A few parents have done stem cell treatments, but that hasn’t really caught on like some other things have. Yeast always seems to be thought of as a cause of difficult behaviors no matter what else is going on, and now there is parasites and bacteria.
There is always something, parents will say, “well we have done a, b, c, d treatments”, and another parent will come along and say “but have you tried x treatment, we saw big “wows” with it”, or “amazing gains”, or “I know someone who has a kid who recovered with this treatment”. So they just keep going and going and going, and their child becomes a lab experiment instead of a beloved child. These kids don’t deserve to be treated like this, nobody does.
yeah I have some advice for that last psycho put you kid in a orphanage then go and administer 8.04g of lead to you skull via a the first locatable 9mm fire arm you foul excuse for a human.
I’d like to think that some of the folks selling the garden variety pixie dust and foot magnets there would also find this appalling and, *hopes*, illegal.
Google “mms scam” and you’ll find a least a couple of alternative health sites devoting space to detailed criticism of Mr Humble and his fraud. Like this one, for instance: http://trance-health.com/index.php?p=1_18_The-MMS-Scam
Funny link. Don’t buy this rubbish, but buy our own kind of rubbish.
You know, this is the first time that I can remember when no one has stepped up to defend a dubious treatment.
No wonder of course, but perhaps even most alties realize that this is just too much.
It’s funny how the anti-vaxxers and vaccines=autism people never seem to notice that the woo merchants have varying ‘answers’ to the ‘cure’; and that in the same breath they accept these variations, they scream at SBM for not being able to pin down either the cause or the cure. They don’t even notice that woo merchants have varying causes for autism. That’s some cognitive dissonance. Why do they excuse woo merchants of the same basic position towards autism as SBM?
… And evidently these people (who use bleach) don’t babyproof cleaning products in their house, seeing as how bleach works wonders. I’d love to see just how much they believe their PR just by checking out their cupboards.
Nor do they see that vomitting and dairhhea do not suitably exchange for verbal feedback…. Sigh…
I wonder also if this constant banging on about ‘broken’ and unwillingness to deal with the fact that their genetics ‘made’ their kid this way is a secret guilt: that if they knew the child was going to be autistic, they’d have aborted the child. It fits psychologically with their behaviour… And I know this kind of thinking (I mean, wanting to abort) has occured over kids with Downs. (To clarify, I don’t agree with that idea. I’m just wondering if they do)
@Autismum
“Excuse the vileness of this question but why are so many quacks intersting in inserting things into autistic children’s bottoms?”
Because so many of them are caught up in old-fashioned ideas that have been discarded by actual SBM?
(You also have a great point about exorcisms. I wonder if this kind of thing actually replaces exorcisms in our modern society, just like many other fads that tap into ‘cutting edge’ stuff)
MMS must stand as one of the dumbest quack cures invented. Bleach kills germs so drinking bleach cures disease? Except bleach doesn’t care what it kills since it oxydizes anything such as the sensitive cells lining nasal pathways, oesophagus, and the stomach.
There is no proof it does anything at all and it has the potential for serious harm. What is funny is it’s defended by some of the most deluded people on the planet. Invariably their decision to drink bleach is motivated by extreme paranoia about “big pharma”. If you want to get under their skin ask why MMS does not have a single study to back up its claims. Given that it claims to cure aids, malaria, flu, cancer and everything else, why is there not a single paper written to support the claims. Surely every impoverished nation in the world would be using this stuff if it worked.
@ flip:
I feel that there is a reason ( altho’ with these folks, even using the word ‘reason’ might be stretching a bit) that there is acceptance of multi-pronged woo treatments: the underlying assumption has to rest upon a slippery concept like *soul* or *vital essence* : something is amiss and doctors who merely address the physical in their reductionist manner, entirely miss the boat.
I pick up the message often in the woo-meisters I survey: science is corrupt; doctors are ‘soul-less”; mental illness requires a spiritual approach or energy healing, not meds – it’s endless..
So ideas like changelings and exorcisms fit right into their numenous universe- not the cold, hard, soul-less one that’s run by laws of physics, chemistry, genetics and chance.
The magical world is infused with emotion- not thinking -opposites co-exist and wishes come true- logical inconsistencies are not rejected and data from well-done research can be pooh-poohed as being the product of reviled pharma-funded science while badly done and fixed studies are accepted because the researcher or his/her ideas are adored and venerated.
In the era of pre-scientific thought, mental illness was viewed as punishment from the g-ds or possession, rather than a manifestation of a bio-physical process.
I suspect that the deeper the woo, the more likely it will betray its roots in supernatural causation.
“It’s funny how the anti-vaxxers and vaccines=autism people never seem to notice that the woo merchants have varying ‘answers’ to the ‘cure’; and that in the same breath they accept these variations, they scream at SBM for not being able to pin down either the cause or the cure. They don’t even notice that woo merchants have varying causes for autism. That’s some cognitive dissonance. Why do they excuse woo merchants of the same basic position towards autism as SBM?”
The myriad of woo treatments for a given ailment is justified by alties on the basis that “we’re all unique and what works for one might not work for another” (this is the same line used to dismiss highly effective mainstream medical therapies; they’re just not “individual” enough). Thus we have umpteen woo cures, and sufferers are supposed to run through the full range of nonsense in hopes of finding the one suitable for their supposedly unique situation.
Autistic children are not broken, they are special children, children sent to special parents(usually), parents who take th e ti me to explore their childs Autism and try to let other less informed parents know what they found. I think this woman needs to get a nice tub soaking for 2 hours with bleach only, take her own enema and have a nice darn day of it.
Hey refusers. Have a nice holiday xx
http://therefusers.com/refusers-newsroom/pro-vax-trolls-are-impersonating-disease-injured-families-on-comment-boards/
Autismum…Well, I guess that means the *Refusers* (Losers) can read this blog. The question is can they comprehend?
As much as I hate to say it, the MMS bull has even permeated over here in Australia, too, on various altie discussion groups etc.
As with the antivaxxers, I always find it interesting how it’s all about the parent, and never about the child, no matter how much they bleat about doctors, health care professionals, scientists and the rest of Big Conspiracy not giving a damn about kids. People who care do not speak of their child as ‘broken’ or something to be fixed. I just don’t feel the love in these parents at all.
This post is upsetting, especially when you read the self-serving anectdotes from the parents. Those poor kids. It is child abuse.
@Autismom, thank you for reminding me that there are parents out there who really care 🙂
– Wendy
oh darn. First post and I make a spelling mistake!
*embarrassed*
*anecdote
I usually have my own regular pseudonym here but for this purpose, I’ll post anonymously.
I wondered if I should go to AutismOne next year with a camera, takes plenty of pictures and meeting the “great” researchers there and report back here; how many would be interested?
@ anonymous:
Altho’ I admire your daring-do, I would be careful if I were you: it may be a public event but there are firm warnings on this year’s site about ID et al. People have been unceremoniously ousted- they might seize your equipment Don’t misrepresent yourself.
I personally went to a free lecture/ book signing by a notoriously grandiose woo-meister: I wasn’t disappointed, I heard truly horrible things and have reported them on SB websites. Here’s the sickening part:
– more than 100 attended, applauded wildly and bought books by the armload
– he did make outlandishly unrealistic promises ( cures for AIDS,cancer, MS, SMI)
– the creature approached me smilingly and asked if I had a queation; I was able to manage an arch *WELL, not about HEALTH” but wasn’t able to challenge his fictional credentials and degrees because he responded by scurrying away from me.
I know that I will have to reveal my ID at the conference but this isn’t a problem; in fact, the only thing I need to worry about is my tendency to puke which I’ll need to supress during the conference.
It is a hard thing to imagine doing this to another human being. If the main component of MMS is actually known to cause brain issues, why give it to children who are already struggling? There is no logical reason for this if you look at the “wonders” of MMS. However, of course, when you deal with the “fact” that MMS “cures everything,” it was only a matter of time until someone, somewhere, came up with a ‘creative’ way to “cure” autism with it.
There have been snake oil salesmen since the beginning of time. I have this deluded hope, usually, that some of these people actually “believe” in their cures, rather than choosing from the beginning to take advantage of the hope of someone who cannot find sufficient medical answers to end their suffering.
I’ve watched my husband spend over a thousand dollars on cures for me and take me to various faith healings (The worst endings are when they assure me that the issue is that I want to be sick and/or am “possessed by a spirit” – thank goodness no one has suggested an exorcism for me yet).
Our grandson is on the spectrum and I adore him. The autistic children in the family at church seem to find companionship and peace with me. If I were healthy, I would be able to adopt some of these “lost” children that the parents are trying to “fix” – maybe we need to do that? Some of us need to say, “Look, we love these kids as they are – if you’re going to keep making their lives miserable, give them to someone who is capable of celebrating their lives and who they are.”
Definitely, if any of us know any parents attempting these treatments personally, DFS visits should be one of our first thoughts… 🙁
Sadly, since they are probably mostly non-verbal, it would be hard to “prove” to DFS something is going on… ~sigh~
For those who are listing possible bad reactions to MMS, you should include this one, someone whose blood chemistry went to pot after starting MMS and staying on it (while continually not telling their doctor WHY they were having issues with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea…
http://curezone.com/forums/am.asp?i=1236243
So sad.
Why is this person seeing a doctor, if he, or she doesn’t trust the doctor. Perhaps people taking MMS shouldn’t go to a doctor at all.
I mean, one takes something to improve ones health, but if one visit a doctor (who is more or less responsible for taking care of health problems) one isn’t giving the full picture, by holding back information.
@Mrs Woo.
That thread is frightening. They are poisoning themselves and yet they sit and dance around it. It’s a race to win the Darwin award.
Update on my email to Stockport Trading Standards on my complaint about the UK company that is selling MMS under a new name: they emailed me back first thing this morning to tell me they are aware of the MMS scam and will be investigating this outfit.
One small victory…
Well, I told g274 it would happen, and now it’s happened. Nice job, G! You engineered that black eye for us so successfully it’s really impossible to tell which side you’re actually playing for!
It would of course be ridiculous to expect The Refusers to notice (or report honestly if they did notice) that every time g274 comes up spouting this juvenile “Let’s impersonate anti-vax loons on their boards! Let’s plant electronic devices to disrupt their gatherings!” crap, for every one comment that finds something ‘nice’ to say about his idiocy (“Well, um, you certainly did spell out the possibilities clearly!”) there’s at least three telling him to stop all the nonsense, that he’s doing more harm than good.
And I for one am going to come out and say it: is “doing more harm than good” what g724 was aiming at all along? We told him over and over how certain his cloak-and-dagger-nevertheless-announced-in-plain-sight plans were to backfire spectacularly and yet he went ahead and did it. If we were to judge just by what he’s ACHIEVED, we’d conclude he might as well have been working for JB Handley all along.
It really is appalling that people could subject their children to such dangerous and sickening “treatments”. It really goes to show the threat of misinformation people can get from “legitimate” web sources. As a scientist, it is hard for me to understand how anyone could test such harmful chemicals as a means of treatment without any sort of evidence (besides anecdotal) that these chemicals have any beneficial effect on autism.
@Denice, May 27, 10:47am
I agree. I’ve had a family member mention something about a doctor we saw take a ‘holistic’ approach (even though they weren’t talking about spiritual aspects, they simply asked basic questions about health, background, etc). It seems as though people think doctors are only interested in knowing about the symptoms or about ‘the problem’, rather than taking an overall look at a person’s health and life. For myself, I think it has more to do with running into bad doctors than about SBM approaches.
I actually think this speaks to a broader problem: there’s still this mind/body idea (thanks Descartes) where they’re two separate entities. I caught myself thinking this way the other day. It’s easy to fall into this concept where the mind is separate from the body, because that’s how we percieve ourselves. But if more of us accepted or understood that ‘mind’ is a product of ‘body’, then there’d be less interest in ‘soul’.
I also see CAM as a ‘god of the gaps’ for medicine.
@Dangerous Bacon, May 27, 12:23pm
Yes how true, I forgot about the special little snowflake pleading. But they still yell at doctors for not being able to pin down a cause… so there’s some amount of dissonance happening.
[…] One Canada, which is basically the Canadian version of the yearly antivaccine biomedical quackfest held every Memorial Day week in the Chicago area, was being held at the University of Toronto. As I said at the time, “Say it ain’t […]
Race to the Darwin award indeed. I just now realized how much alternative practitioners are kind of like cult leaders and/or abusive spouses. While touting their product to their marks, they also reinforce the ‘us against them’ ideal, creating distrust of doctors and other authorities while assuring them that alternative choices are the only safe haven. It’s absolutely despicable.
If the doctors are the bad guys, any attempt at intervention regarding dangerous alternative substances is immediately just “the doctor is attempting to destroy my health freedom” rather than “the doctor is genuinely concerned this stuff might kill me.”
(okay, more like cult leaders, though the end product, isolating someone from people who could help and/or support them/remove them from the situation is the same)
Dear sweet mother of god. That’s just straight up horrifying – at least when they were hawking this shit as “Miracle Mineral Solution” for Crohns, it was grown adults inflicting it on themselves. But to force it on a non-verbal kid, who probably already has sensory issues….Christ.
Appalling isn’t the word I’d use. Sickening more like it.
The poor children, suffering through this. I desperately hope that authorities are able to step in and put a stop to all this. It’s just disgusting!!!
After reading the slides of the talk, I had to put my two pennies in. An open letter to Kerri Rivera
http://autismum.com/2012/05/30/re-uk-4-years-old-46-pounds/
Just when I thought I heard it all. I don’t know why I am surprised and appalled when I read this shiz. And I thought it couldn’t get worse.
This is why awareness isn’t enough. And why their campaigns to cure autism need to get the smack down.
Corina and Domestic Goddess. I hate to sound so doom and gloom but no authorities will step in to stop this systematic abuse of special needs children. It’s been going on for years and unless a parent brings charges or a lawsuit, then these charlatans are free to sell this crap and parents free to torture their children. And how many times have we seen a parent take action against one of these quacks? I can count on one hand how many I have knowledge of.
I don’t know what the solution is but want to do something to stop these “treatments” from being used to experiment on children. The FDA has been sufficiently neutered with regards to “alternative medicine” nostrums by special interest groups. The AAP, AMA and state medical boards seem completely uninterested of pursuing action against doctors who peddle this and other quack therapies to children again unless parents come forward. I am at a loss other than political pressure and massive negative attention on everyone and every organisation responsible for this continued abuse. Would petitioning venues who host these quack conferences work? I suppose if there can be enough support garnered.
We can cluck all we like and register sufficient disgust at these revelations but in the end, that’s all it is. What are we going to do about it?
I think it’s child abuse, as do many in the autism community. Actually I suppose any clear-thinking adult would think that unnecessary enemas are abusive, period.
Biologist Emily Willingham has started a petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/us-food-and-drug-administration-block-peddling-of-bleach-enemas-as-cure-for-autism-in-children
Could you help publicize the petition?
I know I will have a post about it up this evening. My thanks to you and Emily for getting this afoot.
@Liz Ditz
Signed and tweeted.
I came to your website as my son is autistic – he is fifteen now and has made remarkable progress over the past couple of years or so. I personally didn’t carry out any of the parasite, fungal things suggested by so many alternative health pracitioners but I have to say in the interest of fairness that modern medicine has bugger all to offer on the subject of autism! Maybe if doctors came up with some viable treatment parents wouldn’t feel compelled to look at alternative remedies. Or possibly you could look at the alternative remedies and assess them with an open mind?
My mind is totally closed when it comes to forcing bleach into my child’s rectum. Modern medicine doesn’t have much to offer but then not all people see the characteristics of autism as something to be medicated away.
There are therapies that are beneficial for some autists that help them learn to communicate and cope in a world in which they are so different but they’re no quick fix and require dedication from all parties involved, including parents. Obviously, for those seeking a quiet life and a quick fix, that’s way too much to ask.
Kate H:
Unfortunately the search feature is not functioning, but you can choose your favorite “alternative remedy” and put it into Google with the added “site:https://www.respectfulinsolence.com” to find where some of those treatments have been assessed with an open mind.
Some of those “remedies” included chemical castration with Lupron, stem cell therapies, using an industrial chelator called OSR, homeopathy and on and on. There are also several articles on a little boy, Tariq Nadama. You should really read those.
Do tell us which alternative “remedies” we need to have an open mind about. Because as far as I am concerned if anyone thinks making a child consume bleach has a mind so open their brains fell out!
(oh, good grief… I made a comment hours ago and it is telling me I am doing it too fast!… changing to old email address)
“Alternative health pracitioners” (or let’s be honest – quacks) ALSO have “bugger all” to offer. They simply are willing to lie and claim they do. BY DEFINITION they have no credible evidence for their claims; that’s what makes them alternative.
And in this particular case, the sheer lunacy of a “might as well try it” attitude is simply criminal. Literally. Would you also defend a recommendation to chop off the kid’s head because real medicine doesn’t have much to offer?
I have to say in the interest of fairness that modern medicine has bugger all to offer on the subject of autism!
Unlike alternative medicine which offers bugger all in the way of treatments, at least those which have been subjected to clinical trials and shown to actually…you know…do something.
@ Liz Ditz
Petition signed, blogged and tweeted.
I thought that would get you going!
You see as a parent of an autistic child I personally wouldn’t dream of administering this treatment and had never heard of it until yesterday (no child abuse in this house fyi) but my question is what exactly are doctors offering to improve the lives of autistic children and adults?
Most doctors I know see autism as genetic and untreatable. There is a family element to it undoubtedly but surely genetics wouldn’t entirely account for the huge swell of numbers in the past thirty years – any genetics experts out there please tell me if I’m wrong about that! Doctors tend to explain that away by saying that diagnosis has got much better – well I just don’t buy that! Were doctors and teachers really so crap at spotting seriously odd behaviour in the 1960’s and 1970’s … I doubt it. A few would have been locked away in mental institutions but not enough to account for the rise in numbers. My gut feeling (scientists – dose yourselves up with smelling salts now!) is that there is something else involved and that traditional medicine is too entrenched in the “untreatable/genetic model” to really look at it openly.
You see it is my first hand experience that some alternative remedies have greatly helped my son – backed up by his school, members of the family who only see him occasionally and pretty much everyone who comes into contact with him. Of course it is all anecdotal and I don’t ask you to believe in it – you could tell yourselves that it is his hormones or speech and language therapy etc or just one of those weird things about autism – my husband thinks it is God! It is just that when doctors use terms such as “quack” it kind of hints at the territory that we are in here and it doesn’t seem that open minded to me – it seems like the medical establishment has made up its mind in advance.
Some mention the whole vaccine thing – again I have chosen to have my children vaccinated and don’t, for a minute, think that my son’s autism was related to the MMR shot – I delayed him having it until he was three and in retrospect the signs of autism were already there. BUT some vaccines have been preserved with Mercury!!! Again I’m not defending the whole bleach enema thing but get your own house in order first.
Many on this post show limited understanding of autism and a really quite shameful understanding of parenting an autistic child (“damaged goods” – see above) – shameful, really shameful. But hey on a positive note, having an autistic child thickens the hide! In my experience most parents are prepared to put huge amounts of money, time and effort into helping their autistic child – way way way beyond the demands of parenting a neurotypical child (and I have two of those as well). I agree this particular treatment seems out of order and I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole BUT by not looking openly at alternative remedies and rubbishing them at every turn the medical community leaves parents vulnerable to any wacky alternative therapy.
Doctors are brilliant in many areas of medicine but autism definitely ain’t one of them!
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Why should *doctors* “do anything about it?” Helping any child learn social skills is not in the a doctor’s job description. Speech therapists, occupational therapists and parents themselves are much better placed to do this. From the tone of your post, it seems to me, you want meds. Some magic bullet to unautisticify children. Doesn’t exist. Won’t exist.
No one is arguing that genetics accounts for the apparent rise in people being diagnosed with ans ASD though, in large part, this can be accounted for by the change in definition and awareness of autism and better diagnostic criteria and screening picking up children at ever earlier stages in their development.
If scientists were, as you say, “too entrenched in the “untreatable/genetic model” to really look at it openly” why the recent studies looking at parental age? maternal BMI? maternal use of antidepressants? Why all the studies that explored the proposed role of vaccines? You are “too entrenched” in your own view that science is immutable on various issues. It is not.
” Were doctors and teachers really so crap at spotting seriously odd behaviour in the 1960′s and 1970′s” some probably were and there were huge numbers of kids institutionalised and misdiagnosed as having either childhood schizophrenia or simply, mentally retarded.
How many of those institutions still exist? Look at the prevalence data for the UK and France. The latter has a much lower prevalence. Why? still relatively large numbers of kids being diagnosed as schizophrenic and diagnosis of autism commonly being much later than in the UK or USA. Incidentally, France also has vastly more disabled children in institutional care than the UK (2007 figures France 108,000 UK 2,247)
Of course I want to help my autistic son learn more efficient ways of communicating but this is my job with the help of experienced experts. It is not my doctor’s job to give him some meds that will make him more compliant or manageable. Everything, without exception, that has helped my son and so my whole family has been about changing the way DH and I see things or do things. No magic cures. Hard work and understanding.
Having an autistic child may “thicken your hide” but for me, having an autistic child brings me joy everyday.
@kate h
“Were doctors and teachers really so crap at spotting seriously odd behaviour in the 1960′s and 1970′s … I doubt it”
It’s not that doctors and whoever were bad at diagnosing autism historically, its that the clinical definition has changed to something that encompasses a wider range of behaviors.
“that traditional medicine is too entrenched in the “untreatable/genetic model” to really look at it openly.”
A condition having a genetic causes does not mean that it is untreatable.
“BUT some vaccines have been preserved with Mercury!!! Again I’m not defending the whole bleach enema thing but get your own house in order first.”
Fail on several levels here, but perhaps you’d like to explain the nature of your mercury comment. Perhaps you have a refreshing take on the matter that hasn’t been brought up and dealt with several thousand times already.
Why don’t doctors offer help with autism? Well, that’s actually a more complicated question than it seems. Which doctors are we talking about? A primary care physician (family practice doc, pediatrician, etc) isn’t likely to have much to offer. But fair’s fair; they don’t treat depression or cancer either, apart from at a very superficial level. They lack the specialized expertise to do so. Their job at this point is to *refer*. (Not all do; some try to treat out of their league, and some just dismiss the complaints, but there are bad apples in every bunch.)
My daughter’s pediatrician does not treat her autism nor offer a cure. However, when we raised our concerns following the early childhood screening performed by the school district, she referred us to the local pediatric hospital’s developmental psychology department. She underwent screening, and received her diagnosis. They in turn referred her to a mental health clinic covered by our insurance, where her care is directed by a pediatric psychiatrist (and dang, it’s hard to find a good pediatric psychiatrist — not many specialize in that, since it’s easier & more profitable to treat adults). She has received talk therapy there as well, but the real core of her treatment actually hasn’t come from the medical system at all, but from the educational system. Her school is blessed with a particularly good special ed department, and their training and gentle encouragement has helped her to make considerable progress whilst giving her a safe place to learn. (She was overwhelmed in the regular classroom, and vulnerable to bullies. She is much safer and more successful in the special ed classroom. They expect her to transition out of that within a few years, though, assuming her current pace of progress is sustained.)
It is actually true, incidentally, that doctors and teachers were crap at spotting seriously odd behavior. Severe cases were noticed (though often diagnosed “mentally retarded” rather than “autistic”), but most got different labels — lazy, uncontrollable, mean, disrespectful, cold, antisocial. As with other conditions, these were believed to be either choices the child consciously made, or the result of bad parenting, or some combination of the above. Rather than diagnosing children, they were judged. That hasn’t really ended, but at least some of the professionals to whom we entrust our children have started to understand.
BTW: yes, some vaccines are preserved with mercury. It’s a tiny amount, far too small to be harmful to humans. But it keeps out germs that could really make a child very seriously ill or even kill them.
I think Kate H is disappointed that real medicine does not have a quick fix for autism. She sounds like she would rather not deal with the years of speech and occupational therapy that many of us have provided for our children, plus the endless IEP meetings. All the while dealing with any and all medical issues with the child (like my son’s cardiac issues).
Note that she has not identified any “alternative treatment” by name, though she screams “BUT some vaccines have been preserved with Mercury!!!”
Except not for over ten years.
Kate H, if you wish to be taken seriously you must name the specific alternative therapy you wish to discuss, plus tell us which pediatric vaccine is only available with thimerosal (remember half of the influenza vaccines do are thimerosal free).
RE: “preserved with mercury”, you mean that some vaccines incorporated thimerosal, right?
Thimerosal when used as a preservative in vaccines is incorporated at very low, demonstrably non-toxic concentrations. Following injection thimerosal rapidly dissociates to form ethyl (not methyl) mercury and is rapidly eliminated from the body, primarily by fecal excretion–it will not accumulate as the result of receiving multiple immunizations according to the recommended routine childhood immunization schedule.
In infants following vaccination ethyl mercury has a half-life of less than 4 days and blood mercury levels return to pre-vaccination levels by 30 days after vaccination. (see Mercury Levels in Newborns and Infants After Receipt of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines, Pichichero et al, Pediatrics Vol. 121 No. 2 February 1, 2008 pp. e208 -e214)
If you’re really concerned about your child’s exposure to mercury, keep him away from tuna fish–there can legally be twice as much mercury in a can of tuna fish (up to to 0.1 milligrams of methylmercury in a 100 gram can of tuna) than in any vaccine shot–and with tuna we’re talking about methyl, not ethyl, mercury.
I’m not sure why doctors didn’t diagnose autism in the past as much as nowadays, but I could look at myself. When I was young I had some problems. My parents went to parental help services and got some booklet about the ‘troubled child’. This was from 1971 and I was considered to have a minimal brain disfunction. Some years ago a job-coach, considered I might have some autism-related problems and wanted me to be tested for it, which I refused, because I didn’t really want another label. She had read the booklet my parents had gotten and because of this and the fact that I hadn’t many friends and had a pretty high IQ, she considered me a candidate for having some form of autism.
In case your comment goes to moderation, please read this:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/06/02/time-to-throw-the-switch-open-thread/
And patience, my readers. Thanks.
@KateH: True, as has been pointed out above, 40+ years ago, there were far fewer diagnoses of autism. Between the “refrigerator mom” theory, the “shame” of having a “mentally disturbed” family member, and few therapies set up to work with this developmental delay , people didn’t seek out a diagnosis or treatment for the higher – functioning children. They were simply bullies, problem children, weirdos, or (those kids in the retard room).
In my mother’s family’s case, the child was referred to as “so smart, but so naughty”..these days, he’d be considered autistic – non-verbal, not toileted, and impulsive. He ended up institutionalized at about age 12 or so.
20 years ago, when my children were born, the change was in the wind. The DSM-III was becoming the DSM-IV, and we were all agog at the amazing changes. I saw my first officially diagnosed autistic child then – he was just like several boys I knew from my childhood.
Autism has always been around. It has just been hiding under many different guises – changling, childhood schizophrenia, mental retardation, “just all boy” (for the very verbal, no social skills, impulsive, sometimes rough to the point of injury to others).
I’ve gotten to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised by anything anyone believes. This post doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s shocking, disturbing, and these people just simply shouldn’t be parents, but it’s not surprising.
And I’m only 19… lol. It’s largely because I’m gay (not going to get into an argument about that) and have encountered people that believe the strangest things about homosexuality… so strange beliefs of people don’t surprise me anymore.
At one point, I realized, that there truly are people that are truly, truly just that stupid, that crazy, that demented, or all of the above…
Thankfully, I think it’s a minority that believe ingesting bleach is a good idea.
Say, do you live in Florida? You can hear Kerri McDaniels yourself!
http://www.gmautismfoundation.org/event-detail.php?id=7
1st Conference Recovering from Autism
GM Autism Foundation 1st Conference Recovering from Autism MMS Protocol – The truth behind the myth With Special Guest Speaker – Kerri McDaniel – Rivera DAN Clinician And Special Guest Mother- Miss World International -Heidi Scheer Mother of a recovering autistic child July 14th, 2012- Marriott Miami Dadeland -9090 South Dadeland Blvd. Miami, FL 33156 Event starts at 9:00 am Coffee and refreshments will be served Space is limited- FREE ADMISSION- Reservation strictly enforced Please register for this event
Today at The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism:
http://thinkingautismguide.blogspot.com/2012/06/dangerous-interventions-mms-and-autism.html
In addition to your points:
I am not confident that AutismOne will do anything…
Ms Rivera’s ever so polite response to my ever so polite letter was a bit of a let down. So predictable.
http://autismum.com/2012/06/06/mms-for-autism-a-reply/
Health Canada issued an updated warning on MMS a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/advisories-avis/_2012/2012_74-eng.php
There are several warnings on the Health Canada site about MMS, which cannot be sold in Canada for human consumption. So this company in Edmonton, promoted by some lunatic who calls himself the “Phaelosopher” is selling MMS as “water purification drops”:
https://www.subtleenergytherapy.com/xcart888/home.php?cat=253
There was a recent story in the National Post about the owner of an MMS site in Calgary who claimed he was being ‘bullied” by the authorities. He claimed MMS is good for everything from cancer to diabetes. Here’s a modified link so I don’t get held up in moderation:
http://news.nationalpost.KOM/2012/02/16/owner-of-miracle-cure-website-shut-down-by-health-canada-claims-hes-been-bullied/
(Change KOM to com…)
How is this even legal? Humble is out-and-out saying he can cure ALL cancers:
http://www.genesis2church.com/mms-protocol-use-for-all-cancers.html
Check the “Full Sacrament List” for the complete list of what Humble claims MMS can cure/has cured. AIDS-free in three weeks? Yup, with some MMS.
Also read the instructions on how to administer enemas.
Sorry—I just realized Orac dealt with this “Phaelosopher” lunatic in a post a few days ago. I didn’t realize he was so well-known here!
[…] En artikkel i Science-Based Medicine tok opp (mai 2012) vanviddet med å gi MMS mot autisme. Ikke bare som drikke, men også i badevannet og som klyster.Helt ærlig foreldre som utsetter barna sine for dette burde miste retten til å være […]
Today’s post at The Clown Blog read in part,
The author apparently was referring first to Seth Mnookin’s criticism of the fawning Sun-Times article over Mother’s Day, and second to Kristina Chew’s post which quoted this post at length.
So I wrote a roundup post of all the coverage of MMS as a cure for autism: http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2012/06/miracle-mineral-solution-mms-as-an-autism-therapy-dangerous-quackery.html.
I think most of the “isn’t MMS great for autism” discussions are occurring on closed or private discussion boards.
There is an “alternate” petition up now at Change.org…in response to Emily Willingham’s petition to stop Kerri Rivera’s MMS treatment for autism:
http://www.change.org/petitions/emily-willingham-stop-telling-people-that-mms-is-bleach-because-it-is-not
What a lying scumbag. “Achieve normalcy”, coming from deviants like Humble and Rivera, it would be laughable if children weren’t being tortured.
Here’s a post on AoA, from a parent who has been using MMS on her child…
“Thank you for writing this article! We have been using MMS now for 3 weeks and have only seen positive results. I have to say the amount of worms and junk coming out of my son now is really what has convinced me to stay the course. Who knew our kids were harboring such horrific parasites inside their little bodies. I am one of the Moms who for the past seven years has seen multiple DAN docs, attended conferences, had $1000’s of dollars of tests done and spent 10 times that on supplements and treatments…..”
I’m willing to bet that this “parent” is doing these “treatments” surreptitiously and that no one, with the exception of the groupies at AoA, knows that her child is being subjected to this bizarre abusive “treatment”.
“Thank you for writing this article! We have been using MMS now for 3 weeks and have only seen positive results. I have to say the amount of worms and junk coming out of my son now is really what has convinced me to stay the course. Who knew our kids were harboring such horrific parasites inside their little bodies. I am one of the Moms who for the past seven years has seen multiple DAN docs, attended conferences, had $1000′s of dollars of tests done and spent 10 times that on supplements and treatments…..”
The best part of this comment is the tacit acknowledgement that the DAN doctors and supplements endorsed by AOA were totally useless.
WTF is wrong with these people?! They don’t have parasites other than their DAN! practitioners. There are actual tests for parasites and not the ones from whatever dubious labs they use.
@ Science Mom:
“There are actual tests for parasites and not the ones from whatever dubious labs they use.”
Those would be the same dubious labs that test for heavy metals poisoning and ALWAYS find toxic levels
Besides, the AoA parent doesn’t need no stinkin’ Ova and Parasite stool tests…she’s actually seen the “junk and worms” coming out of her child, following the MMS enemas.
@Liz – I signed & FB’d the petition.
I had to giggle a bit – the petition started against the anti-MMS petition was started by Bishop Humble himself (and has all of six signatures).
As Mrs. Woo, I have known about MMS for well over a year now. We have two bottles of it and citric acid in one of our cupboards. Hubby is certain it was the MMS, and not the strong antibiotics a friend was getting that saved them from a staph infection…
Right and not the poor child’s epithelial lining sloughing off and being puked or pooped out.
@ lilady
I would just LOVE to know exactly what kind of parasites these delusional parents think they are recovering from the fecal matter of the children they’re abusing. I’ve spent the past 12 years working on parasites; the first 6 on worms and the last 6 on protozoan parasites (cause malaria, toxoplasmosis, and a whole bunch of other diseases). There are only a few species of intestinal worms that are large enough to see by eye, and you can forget about seeing ova. This is why you have to do a Baermann (fecal float) to purify larval stages before looking for them UNDER A MICROSCOPE!
Of course, the notion of parasites causing autism is such utter nonsense that I’m sure a logical argument would not get far with this AoA parent.
qwerty: Her child doesn’t have any worms; what she may be seeing is mucus from the upper bowel. After so many irritating enemas, her child may have frank blood in his watery stool, as well.
And hey, if her child starts acting out against her, because she has destroyed the child’s sense of security…she’ll be trying some other “biomedical” intervention.
I bet Kim Stagliano at AoA has been lurking here and on other science blogs. Here is Stagmom’s feeble attempt at damage control, posted a few hours ago:
“It’s good to have dialog on MMS and other prospective products for treating the medical illnesses that are co-morbid with the behavioral diagnosis of autism. A few years ago there was a protocol with a type of parasitic worm that was helping repair the gut in some children. Stem cell treatments are controversial. I was raked over the coals in The Trib a couple of years ago for giving my children a product that was working quite well for them – my apple cider vinegar bottle is loaded with Bible verses which I find to be a bit odd. A friend’s 4 year old is about to embark on chemo and radiation for a brain tumor – which we know will kill most of his body if not kill the poor child himself. We prioritize based on risk, lack of other choices and yes, a deep need to help our kids. Not every family used Secretin or chelation – not every family will use MMS. AofA isn’t endorsing the protocol or slamming it – just providing perspective via one of our wonderful contributors.
Posted by: Managing Editor | June 10, 2012 at 08:14 PM”
Kim, if you’re still lurking here…sorry but your lame explanation comes too late. Tell J.B. and Jenny that their enabling Kerri Rivera and other quacks to hawk their pseudoscientific “treatments” at their conference has been discussed extensively on science blogs. Tell them also, that we are advocating for the safety of children whose parents are mistreating and abusing them with bogus damaging industrial chemicals…because the quacks were provided with a forum at the Autism One Conference.
@ lilady,
Of course, I know their children aren’t infected with parasitic worms…..my comment was just meant to emphasize my sheer disbelief that these parents and the ‘professionals’ they consult with regarding MMS are so poorly educated on infectious diseases that they could confuse mucous and sloughed epithelium with some gigantic, sci-fi-esque parasitic worm.
I think this whole situation: AutismOne’s willingness to feature Rivera as a keynote speaker; the desperation of parents commenting on AoA about their use of MMS; and Kim’s pathetic attempt to defend MMS collectively highlight what a weak grasp these parents have on even the most basic aspects of science. I guess it’s far easier to believe in total bogus non-sense than to actually apply some critical thinking skills.
I am the mother of a boy with autism. He also has liver damage, bacterial dysbiosis, mitochondrial dysfunction, fatty acid oxidation disorder, absence seizures and brain inflammation. These are just a few of the serious medical issues that so many of our children are living with. Most of us parents have educated ourselves beyond the scope of anything that you could imagine. We are so much more educated in the science and medical aspect of autism that your minds could never grasp it. We learn of mastocytosis, cerebral folate disorder, neurotensin/inflammation and enzyme mutations as they pertain to the methylation pathway cycle. My child is sick. Medically sick. Yet, shame on me for wanting to recover him. If he had cancer, none of you would scorn my putting him through dangerous chemotherapy. If he had a brain tumor, I’d be put in jail for not seeking potentially life-threatening surgery. But, my stars, just because he has the diagnosis of *autism* (which, if you will do your research is an injury TO THE BRAIN), I’m labeled as a twit, a quack..and that I have “a weak grasp on the most basic aspects of science.” My son’s body cannot stop making antibodies to rubella and because of this, he suffers from seizures, night terrors, joint pains and migraines. He has the HSV-6 virus. I’ll sit and wait as you come up with explations on how he obtained these viruses.
I am currently working with a metabolic specialist on how we can recover this boy.
This being said, I am NOT a proponent of MMS. I think it is the works of a couple of scam artists who are aiming this product at parents so desperate to see their children get out of pain that they are willing to do ANYTHING. Have any of you ever SEEN a child with autism who screams because of the pain he is having? How they posture to stop it? No, because all of you are still equating autism with Rainman, and this type of moronic thinking needs to stop. These children are sick. Medically and physically SICK.
I wish I could stop the parents that I know from falling into the MMS booby trap, but they are reaching for the stars to heal their children. None of you get that, because either you don’t have children or because you think yours aren’t ill.
Doesn’t matter. Sitting back and judging is what you types do best. It’s easy to do that when you’re not in the trenches, isn’t it?
By the way, I notice that all you have to do in your life is go after children with autism. What’s next? Going after kids with cancer? Diabetes? Do you have a page for THAT?? Gee, fifteen years ago I bet you had nothing to do. Now that autism is the epidemic that it is, you’ve made it your life’s mission to go after us. Perhaps you need to find a new hobby, because our children are becoming the norm, and morons like all of you are the freaks.
Have a great day.
Kelly, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and frankly I’m insulted at this accusation. Many of us who frequent this blog have children, friends, and relatives on the spectrum. Many others are doctors and scientists who have devoted their life to the study of autism in order to better the lives of these children and future children as well. I happen to fall in both categories. It’s precisely because of our experience with autism that we frequent this site, as there are many individuals out there who are simply misinformed and taken advantage of by charlatans out there to make a buck. So yes, we are in fact ‘in the trenches,’ much more than you can ever know. I understand from your comment that you are angry but the real enemy here is those who subject their children to dangerous procedures and those who seek to make money off of these desperate parents.
@ Kelly: You’re ranting at parents here who have children with developmental disabilities…including autism. Some of the other posters here, are on the “spectrum”.
If you had taken the time to read other threads on this blog, you would realize that many of us are quite educated in biology, chemistry, infectious diseases and epidemiology. We are, in fact, are licensed health care professionals.
“We learn of mastocytosis, cerebral folate disorder, neurotensin/inflammation and enzyme mutations as they pertain to the methylation pathway cycle. My child is sick. Medically sick. Yet, shame on me for wanting to recover him.”
Yes shame on you Kelly, if you are using quack practitioners who prescribe dangerous, invasive and painful treatments to “recover” your child.
I see that the D-list celebrity/scientist publicity hound, has garnered some *publicity* for her Autism One quackfest…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Rescue
“One of the speakers at the 2012 conference was Kerri Rivera, the proprietor of an autism treatment clinic in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Rivera hosted a presentation promoting the Miracle Mineral Solution, or MMS, a liquid product containing chlorine dioxide that she claimed had cured thirty-eight children of autism.[25] Several bloggers criticized the presentation, noting that MMS consists of the same chemical compound as industrial strength bleach and was thus potentially harmful to children being given the product, both orally and through enemas.[26][27] MMS has been subject to a warning by the Food and Drug Administration, and by government health agencies in the United Kingdom and Belgium; MMS was banned outright in Canada in February 2012.[28]
Lilady,
I know exactly at whom I was writing my post to, I’m not a moron.
And please do your research, the methylation cycle in the body is crucial to health – my son has the MTHFR-5 enzyme mutation, as well as the CBS mutation. We are seeing an MD who specializes in metabolics to help with the problem, or do you not see an issue with a boy who cannot excrete ammonia out of his sytem?
There is nothing invasive, dangerous or painful to to things like a sublingual form of methylfolate B-12. Those are the things that will be used to recover his health. Notice I don’t use ” ” around the word recover. He’s sick.
And nice job in quoting Wikipedia. If you had noticed, I am not a fan of MMS. Did you notice on the MMS page that they also say it cures malaria, aids and cancers? Are you kiddies going after THOSE patients who are using it? I bet not.
And Lilady…the only invasive, dangerous and painful procedures I ever let my child suffer through were his vaccines. Thanks for your concern, however, but I won’t do that to him ever again.
@AdamG,
I am only infuriated at those on here who do not have a child with autism, or other medical disabilities who have no idea what this life is like. Who do not see the pain that these children are in. Like I said, it’s easy to sit back and judge. No one ever judges cancer patients for trying a last and potentially dangerous treatment, do they? Nope. So yes, I am angry at Kerri Rivera and Jim Humble for aiming their scam at desperate parents…and that is EXACTLY what MMS is…a snake oil. It’s the new Noni Juice.
@ Kelly:
I can’t help but notice that you provide not a whit of evidence that any of the methods to “recover” autistic children actually work. That you want them to work I don’t doubt, but that doesn’t mean they do.
What we’re after is safe and effective treatments for children like your son (who’s certainly lucky to have a mother who cares so much about his welfare). But they DO have to be scientifically demonstrated to be safe and effective, or they really aren’t in his best interests.
@ Kelly
I don’t need to have an autistic child, or a child with any disability, to know that it’s tremendously stressful. That said, “you can’t comment unless you’ve experienced it personally” is just a convenient way of dismissing things that you don’t want to hear. I will grant you a particular perspective, but that doesn’t invalidate anything I say, even if what I say infuriates you.
I don’t need to have an autistic child to know that:
1) MMS is not going to “recover” someone from autism; and
2) MMS is incredibly harmful.
If you believe that MMS (or really any treatment) is good, you need to show that it is effective and that it less harmful than an equally effective alternative. Accusing us of being meanies (no matter how true it might be) shows neither of those things.
@Kelly
Tone it down some. As already pointed out, despite your arrogant claims that you know more than all the other commenters, many of the people who comment here do actually know a fair bit about autism and its treatments. They are parents; they are on the spectrum; they are health care providers; they are scientists. So before you get all high and mighty again, take some time to get to know the people you’re addressing and treat them not as hopelessly benighted ignoramuses, but as people who actually do know what they’re talking about.
Your castigation of people for focusing on parents of kids with autism, rather than on parents of kids with all those other conditions listed as being able to be treated by MMS is, quite frankly, rude and misguided. The subject here was parents of autism using MMS and promoting its use at an autism conference. If the original post had been about MMS and cancer or MMS and malaria, the commenters here would still be roundly condemning any parent administering it to their children. We can’t be in all places at once. To criticize us for this is like condemning a police officer for stopping an armed robbery in progress while across town there’s a brawl in a pub.
Your semi-defense of parents using MMS is rather disgusting to me, quite frankly. Your concern doesn’t seem to be that parents are harming their children, but rather appears to be that they are being scammed. “Oh, they just want to do anything to fix their children!” I’m sorry, but wanting to help your child does not give anyone carte blanche to try anything and everything.
Why would you deny your child protection from infectious diseases, when he is already suffering so many maladies?
“I am only infuriated at those on here who do not have a child with autism, or other medical disabilities who have no idea what this life is like. ”
And, as the parent of a child born with a rare genetic disorder, which caused multiple and profound developmental disabilities, along with pronounced autistic-like behaviors, medically fragile and with pancytopenia, I know only too well, what “life is like”.
Do you have any citations for your allegations that vaccines are harmful, Kelly? Or, are you just trolling here?
No one ever judges cancer patients for trying a last and potentially dangerous treatment, do they? Nope.
No, there would never be a blog where a cancer specialist criticised fraudulent and potentially dangerous treatments for cancer, and the people who fall for the lies of the fraudsters. And it would never be called “Respectful Insolence”.
Four days after “Stagmom” at AoA closed down the MMS thread with a lame *disclaimer* about *providing a “forum” for biomedical autism treatments, comes this:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/06/autism-one-is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house.html
“MMS sounds wonderful! Its really nice to hear that the parasites are visible to even us parents who pharma and the shill scientists can’t dismiss so easily now!!!
Since we know the worms and can see them though we must have studied them. Do we have more information from the research? Where do they come from? Personally I’ve always been more of a fan of prevention and can’t wait to see where the research goes from for here so we don’t lose another generation of children to becoming souless train wrecks. Has any of the autistic research started investigation into these worms so we know what they are?”
Since we know the worms and can see them though we must have studied them
It’s abdominal Morgellons, lilady!
Coincidentally, “The Abdominal Morgellons” is also the name of my next band.
The poster at AoA is still labeling children as “soulless train wrecks”. Once you dehumanize a child, once you think of a child as being infested with parasites…does it become *easier* to de-worm them…no matter that you are maiming and inflicting pain on a defenseless child?
Hmmn, this comment at AoA
I’m calling a Poe. I think it’s the “souless train wrecks” that tipped me off. Jenny McCarthy said “the soul was gone from Evan’s eyes”. Jerry Kartzinel has also said “Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child; then, if allowed, relentlessly sucks life’s marrow out of the family members, one by one.” (In the forward to JennyMac’s first book about autism.
If there really are “worms”, or “parasites”, that are visible to the naked eye, why haven’t they been identified by competent experts? If they actually are parasites, it is trivial to identify them.
If autism is “caused” by parasites, why has it taken so long to identify them?
I know, maybe people with autism have a deficit in excreting parasites, so the parasites accumulate internally. That is why parasites can’t be detected through all the normal tests that medical science knows. It is just like the mercury that couldn’t be detected until it is “challenged” with chelation.
That is why MMS has to invoke such terrible symptoms to work. The parasites will only leave if they think the host is about to die. The parasites need to be “challenged” with bleach. [/sarcasm]
@ Liz Ditz: If it is a *Poe* who posted at AoA, it is a poorly constructed one.
[…] a number of people out there, most of them my idols, persuading people out of bleach enemas (no, seriously) and into the officers of degree-holding docs. I admire them immensely, and the work they do is […]
@Daedalus2u 5:55pm: What you intended as sarcasm is in fact the typical explanation given to patients. Patients are indeed told that parasites need to be coached and ‘challenged’ out of the body and that no “normal” test can detect high mercury levels unless “challenged” with chelation..
@ Qwerty June 10, 8:54 pm:
I would just LOVE to know exactly what kind of parasites these delusional parents think they are recovering from the fecal matter of the children they’re abusing.
These same diagnoses and dangerous treatments are being prescribed to Lyme disease patients by their so-called Lyme-literate medical doctors. Many of these patients are actually getting this bogus information from their U.S. licensed medical providers.
You can search the words like “parasite” or “worms” on the Lyme Disease Association’s patient support forum Lymenet.org for some insight. Reports of liver flukes and 6 foot tape worms are common. Some people even post photographs of their findings, fresh out of the toilet. As yet, I have not seen a single photo that looked like anything other than partially digested food.
Clarification:
Qwerty asked: “I would just LOVE to know exactly what kind of parasites these delusional parents think they are recovering from the fecal matter of the children they’re abusing.”
Sialis replied: “These same diagnoses and dangerous treatments are being prescribed to Lyme disease patients by their so-called Lyme-literate medical doctors. Many of these patients are actually getting this bogus information from their U.S. licensed medical providers.
You can search the words like “parasite” or “worms” on the Lyme Disease Association’s patient support forum Lymenet.org for some insight. Reports of liver flukes and 6 foot tape worms are common. Some people even post photographs of their findings, fresh out of the toilet. As yet, I have not seen a single photo that looked like anything other than partially digested food.”
@ Sialis: I think quacks offer chelation, to bind up the *heavy metals* in an autistic child’s body…at first it was just the nasty mercury (Thimerisol) preservatives contained in vaccines. Now that all childhood vaccines are available Thimerisol-free…the *nasty heavy metal* is aluminum. After all, oral and IV chelation is prescribed by real doctors for children who chew on, or who inhale lead-based paint chips, when parents have older homes renovated, that exposes the lead-containing-paint used in homes, built before 1978…when the United States banned its use in homes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint
Licensed reliable laboratories can accurately test for blood lead levels and it is recommended by the AAP, to test children in early childhood for elevated blood lead levels.
As you know, quacks do not use licensed reliable labs…they have their own unique tests…which always produce toxic blood levels of metals.
Quacks also use *different* types of tests to test for candida overgrown, parasites, viruses and bacteria…which always yield *positive* results; ergo, quacks treat for a host of metal overdoses, pathogens and parasites with an arsenal of medicine and more noxious substances such as MMS.
@ Sialis: Good point. Many of the LLMDs have *branched out* now. They are now *treating* Morgellon’s disease, as well as kids *damaged by vaccines*.
When that “last and potentially dangerous treatment” is purest woo on the same grand scale as MMS enemas for autism, sure they do–quite vigorously in fact.
Just search this website for ‘Burzynski’ or ‘antineoplastins’ if you doubt this.
[…] deste caso foi a adição do autismo como doença “curável” por este veneno. Tal como denuncia o Orac no blog Respectful Insolence, uma das convidadas para o evento Autism One, que teve lugar no mês passado em Chicago, advoga o […]
[…] dispute is that a woman named Kerri Rivera, operating out of a quack clinic in Mexico, has been touting MMS as a “biomedical” treatment for autism. As part of the treatment, she advocates feeding MMS to autistic children every two hours over the […]
I must admit, the FDA warning almost scared me off. The way it’s worded is nothing short of extreme manipulation. Do you people really trust the FDA? You shouldn’t. They let thousands of patented drugs through that later cause extreme trauma & death. It’s insane. The scientists who work at the FDA are great, they try to help, but are silenced by those with money & political power – because of the money. Just look how they’ve been infiltrated by former Monsanto workers & other corporations that produce products that can be consumed or used on plants & food, & the legislation that would benefit only Monsanto & similar corporations, not us citizens, they’ve helped push through by putting their “stamp of approval” on it. It’s truly disgusting. The FDA also allowed Genetically Modified Food through to the public after they refused to do testing on the harmful affects they could have. Monsanto HID the data pointing to these harmful effects & when the scientists at the FDA got upset & demanded they perform these tests to know what the public will be consuming, a court ruled that the authority’s(FDA) work was clean & independent! I believe nothing the FDA says because of their bias towards making money & throwing our safety out the window by doing so. Are you enjoying the meats you eat daily? They’re pumped full of anti-biotics, growth hormones(bovine & others) – mainly produced by Monsanto – and other horrendous additives added solely to increase profits. Watch the documentary “Food, Inc.” I guarantee you will become a vegetarian. I did. Everyone should be Vegan because of these atrocities committed on our animals we eat. Even if you don’t care about animals, you should care about what’s being put into your body. So back to MMS. The simple fact the FDA got into such an uproar this product tells me it’s worth looking at. The FDA is bought & paid for. They are essentially politicians who are paid to do dirty work. They have sold their souls while selling the health & well being of the citizens of the USA for money. Disgusting. The Pharmaceutical industry does not like anything that helps people & isn’t making them money. They’re the ones who pressured the FDA into releasing this warning or statement. the truth is no one has died form consuming MMS. An upset stomach or diarrhea at the worst. That’s usually a sign you’ve ingested too much. Everyone’s different. Think for yourselves, people, just don’t think for one SECOND the FDA has got your health & well being in mind. It’s solely a tool used to give stamps of approval to products that could be lethal for huge corporations. I get so upset when these people don’t do research for themselves & just jump on a band wagon. That’s apparently what we’ve been acclimated to do. Think for yourself. Do independent research. lets see how long this comment stays up before it gets taken down. The FDA is bought & paid for just as your Government is. One more thing, do you see how many warnings/lawyer commercials & disclaimers are on TV nowadays for people being hurt or KILLED by bad drugs approved by the FDA? They are f-ing crooks and should be treated & regarded as such. Especially their warnings & statements. Do a little research on who the Presidents, Vice presidents & higher ranking officials are(past & present) & where they’ve worked in the past, especially right before they cam to the FDA, then where they went afterwards – AFTER they’ve implemented policies favorable to corporations. As well as the EPA. You will be shocked & disgusted with our government & the lack of effort they put into protecting us. They only protect their interests: Money. I know this sounds cliche, but wake up, people. the government’s been taken over & you have no power, at least very little if any at all.
These phrases you people use, “Feeding” MMS to children. You guys are no different or better than the “quacks you proclaim to abhor. You are extremely biased. First of all MMS is NOT industrial bleach! In high quantities it can be used as this, but the amount to ingest while doing MMS treatment is nothing compared to this. This is nothing short of a scare-tactic used by the FDA & those who disagree with it. You don’t have to use it & no one’s dying from it. If you don’t agree that’s your choice, just as it’s our choice to use it. I was just looking online for a source when I stumbled across this website & saw these claims. Every person has a choice to medicate, treat or use anything they think may improve their health. You must stop telling people lies. Use some REAL research to back up your claims rather than picking apart claims from people who may not be very smart or good speakers. You should attack the product, not only the people who sell these products or the people who use/swear by them. I will be buying some MMS later tonight & once I use it for a while I will update you all on my condition & experience. Keep an open mind & stop using such biased & disgusting language to scare people. If this product is ‘lethal’ then the product would do all the scaring itself, you don’t have to help or push it. This makes me think you’ve got a bias or motive behind what you’re doing. Maybe the Pharmaceutical Industry has paid you to do such prejudiced & partial columns/reports as to convince people to stay with “traditional treatments” that make billions for them.. I’ve heard many, many testimonials on behalf of this product from regular people. God Bless & I hope you stop such disgusting & deceiving reports.
What kind of dressing would you like for that word salad Jaseeka? How about a little MMS on top of your greens?
We personally don’t care if you sniff, snort, drink or stick MMS industrial bleach up your bum….so don’t bother to come back to describe the *benefits*.
But we do care if you do it to kids.
So you believe that heritage breeds should be wiped from the face of the earth? Good to know.
Jaseeka1986, what do you have against paragraphs? Are you afraid of white space, grammar, and coherent rhetoric?
@jaseeka1986
Ah, going to the old Pharma Shill gambit, almost always a sign of a quack and one with no coherent argument.
And since when is putting industrial strength bleach into a child’s bum an actual medical indication?
Answer that, quack.
So,wait, things that the FDA has allowed have been dangerous, so that which the FDA says is dangerous must be safe?
The FDA also warn against pregnant women and children consuming too much mercury in fish so by Jaseeka’s logic mercury is good for pregnant women and children. I guess that’s the real reason they took the thimerosal out of vaccines.
Jaseeka:
“Think for yourselves, people, just don’t think for one SECOND the FDA has got your health & well being in mind.”
What, and you do?
I don’t need the FDA to tell me that ingesting this stuff is harmful. That’s the whole reason it’s used to treat swimming pools and purify drinking water and sanitize cooking equipment — it kills stuff. Heck, I actually still haven’t read the FDA notice. No point. I paid attention in chemistry class, and can tell for myself that this stuff is very dangerous and should not be taken internally because it will hurt you. I can’t imagine it *not* hurting you.
And incidentally, it isn’t the strength that makes it industrial bleach. It’s the fact that it is a bleach. Many things are bleaches — Chlorox, Pool Shock, Oxyclean, Aosept contact lens cleaner. What they have in common is that they are potent oxidizers. They bleach by breaking up pigments, but they’ll just as happily break up a lot of other chemicals as well, including the chemicals that make up your cell membranes. This is why you can get a chemical burn from exposure to various bleaches, even the low concentration hydrogen peroxide sold in drugstores.
@Jaseeka –
Mr Woo has taken MMS. When he was first told about its wonders, he did the protocol as described by er um “Bishop” Humble (back then he wasn’t doing the church thing, though, and was just Mr. Jim Humble, gold prospector, inventor and genius at large). Mr Woo (if you can’t tell by the name) loves everything alternative, and would have applauded your “brave” post calling out the money-hungry, bought-and-paid-for-by-Monsanto FDA/US government.
He was incredibly disappointed by Food, Inc. – not enough new information, I think.
Anyhow. Long story short – he got terribly ill doing the MMS protocol and, unlike the way it was promised, did NOT get better as time went on. He finally gave up on it.
He did use it again (while taking very strong antibiotics at the same time) when he got a staph infection. He is sure the antibiotics would not have cured the staph infection without it (if you were a skeptic, you would understand the irony of this).
Mr Woo does not recommend MMS except when people are very ill because of how sick it made him. He has been sick enough from it that he has decided there is something misleading in its marketing, so to speak.
And he loves everything alternative, trust me.
MMS is not safe. Better yet, next time you’re whipping up your own capsules of “MMS 2,” read the first aid information farther down. It recommends that you do not induce vomiting for accidental ingestion. It’s been a few years, but what I remember from First Aid training way back when was the ones that recommend not inducing vomiting do so because the substance is caustic enough to cause damage to the tissues of the esophagus throwing it back up again.
I know you believe you already do, but think about it and think outside of the box, just this once.
The stuff is dangerous, and definitely shouldn’t be forced on children.
I was taught that here’s even more danger when the stuff has dangerous vapor – when vomiting, it’s severely difficult to avoid aspiration, with the resulting damage to the lung tissue as well as the esophageal.
One might reference the use and results of chlorine gas in WWI.
[…] covered is something called “miracle mineral solution” (MMS), which is in reality nothing more than a powerful bleach. Parents make their autistic children drink diluted MMS, bathe in it, and even take bleach as an […]