An Open Letter to the Biomeddlers

I'm not going to couch this in the platitude, "I think you love your children but..." because I don't think you do.  That's right, I said it...

You don't love your children.

Sure you say you do, you go on about your sacrifices, how much money you spend "recovering" your children but you love you more and you may love the idea of the child you think is "trapped" inside but you don't love the child there in front of you.  You also lie about "us neurodiversity folks" who you say are just about accepting our children and having no hope.  False and you know it because it's been explained many times over.  Neurodiversity is about accepting your child as challenged or differently-abled but also providing the tools and treatments necessary to allow them to fulfil their potential and help them negotiate a neurotypical world.  It is the opposite of hopeless; we just don't treat our children as "stolen, souless shells who'll suck the life's marrow out of family members". And even though you'll try to defend this paraphrase as referring to autism, you can't because that's precisely what you see when you look at your children.

And neurodiversity folks aren't jealous of your "aspirations" and your "hope" and "recovery".  On the contrary, some pity your lack of empathy, your denial and your desperation but others, like me don't have it within to pity you any longer and see you for the inhumane, ignorant child abusers you are.  I don't think love is complicated at all, sure there are different kinds of love or different ways to love but reducing a child to a gruesome science experiment in the name of "recovery" isn't love, determination perhaps but your warped rationalisation for what you do to your children will never be love.  This ain't love:

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 cannot count the hours spent reading books and researching. I am please to say that almost every single thing we tried has been helpful in some way. Things that worked, like Chelations, TMG and vitamin support help my son to speak in 2 word utterances when he was 5, before that it was guteral sounds, finally be toilet trained at the age of 6, and to go on to make continual and significant recovery. Yasko and Enhansa helped hhim take the next step and today he is in 3rd grade, reading at grade level and talking in full sentences all the time. Just learned to ride a bike, is swimming, and even has a few friends. Cured? Recovered? No, not fully, not yet, there is still a ways to go, but he went from very severe Autism to a moderately high level of functionality. The immense amount of progress made so far gives me hope and I will NEVER quit trying to help my child.

"Worms and junk"?  Bullshit!  Your child didn't have parasites or heavy metal toxicity or any other imagined diagnosis you came up with.  You're bleaching your child you ditchpig and any developmental advancement is coincidental and in spite of you, not because of you.  It's all about you isn't it?  And where the hell are the spouses in all of this?  I'm going to say husbands because this is primarily perpetrated by women.  Do you blithely join in holding your child down for numerous blood draws for bogus tests, the infamous one two punch of chemical castration and chelation and enemas? Or have capitulated to your wife the care abuse of your special needs children because she spends so much time "researching" and shuffling them off to DAN! quacks?  Whether you are actively participating or enabling, you're still responsible for the abuse of your children.

And if it's not bad enough you are abusing and exploiting your own children, Teresa Conrick another Age of Autism luminary exploits a teenage autist for her own gain.

As fate would have it, I was to meet another inspiring and heroic man, this one was only seventeen-years-old, yet his mission and message equaled the two I have just described.  While I was waiting to talk to a presenter, I watched this young man make his way over to a space near me, talking to a nearby mother, I heard his words - "I am recovering myself from Autism."  I looked quickly as he smiled at me and I reached out to shake his hand, while I tried to hide my tears.  "How", I asked him, "are you doing this on your own?" He began to tell me his name, "Nicholas Glenski", and that he and his Dad were up from Springfield, MO.  (That's he in the photo with AofA's Jake Crosby.) I was so impressed that I asked if we could talk together, maybe I could ask him some questions for a blog about Autism?  He smiled again and was very happy to oblige.  Saying he was freezing in the air conditioning, with his dad's permission, we sat outside on a strip of warm, narrow grass, with the sun blazing above.

Congratulations, now you have indoctrinated a young man into believing he is "vaccine-damaged" and needs "recovery".   I'll bet it just thrilled you to hear this young man's beliefs because it validates your own.  You are positively shameful, gathering at that quackfest AutismOne for what passes as camaraderie with your fellow biomeddlers to share your bullshit recovery stories (even though you've been "recovering" your kid for years now) and swap "diagnoses' and "treatments" like baking tips you foist upon your children.

I have certainly faltered as a parent; I'll even go so far as to admit that I've spanked my children a couple of times.  I didn't do it out of love; I was angry and where this has a parallel with what you are doing, you are angry with autism; you hate it. Deny as you might, you can't separate the autism from the child, it is part of them.  Your hatred for autism has obscured your humanity and consequently, true love for your children.  Another parallel I can draw from my own meagre experience is the self-loathing I felt afterward.  Oh you haven't gotten to this part yet because you think you are helping your children.  I felt awful for intentionally inflicting physical and emotional harm upon my children; I still feel awful even writing this. I would imagine that actually having the realisation of the harm, physically and emotionally, you are inflicting upon your children would send you to the darkest depths of despair.  If that's where you need to go to stop this insanity, then so be it.  Get the help you desperately need and learn to love your children.

Meanwhile in London... (with update - day 6)

This boy is on day 3 of fever and chicken pox - new pox are still appearing (usually they do for 5 days after onset) - have a glimpse:



Mum had tried to get her two kids the varicella vaccine,  however,  the NHS does not offer varicella vaccine in their regular schedule. They say

"Chickenpox in children is considered a mild illness, but expect your child to feel pretty miserable and irritable while they have it."

No kidding: have another look at the boy's back - According to the NHS

"The chickenpox vaccine is not part of the UK childhood vaccination programme, because experts think that introducing a chickenpox vaccination for children could increase the risk of shingles in older people."

There are a number of papers, most of them from the same author, "independent computer scientist" Gary S. Goldman, violently arguing that the varicella vaccination programme has led to an increase in the prevalence of shingles, while not really protecting against chicken pox. However, actual data collected in various countries shows a different picture:
In Israel in a partially vaccinated population, shingles were associated with early (especially under the age of 1) infection with wild varicella and varicella vaccine was found to be protective. In Canada, shingles incidence in the vaccinated age group declined slightly, while it remained the same for older age groups. In Taiwan, the incidence of shingles started increasing before the varicella vaccine was introduced. The same was observed in the United States. In Australia, a slight increase on shingles rate occurred over the past 14 years, although this is not as ambiguous as the drop in varicella cases in the same time period, concomitant with the introduction of the varicella vaccine (see box 1 here). And finally, comparing countries with and without general varicella vaccine recommendations showed that shingles incidence seems to be independent of any vaccination programmes.

UK analyses come to the conclusion that a general vaccination programme for varicella may not be cost effective in the first 30 to 50 years after introduction. However, as the picture above impressively demonstrates and systematic studies also show, the impact of varicella on children and cost to carers is not necessarily captured by data available through health service usage.

The positive effect of varicella vaccination on pediatric health is undebated: between the introduction of the varicella vaccine in the US in 1995 and 2006, disease incidence fell by 57% to 90%, hospitalizations by 75% to 88%, deaths by >74%, and direct inpatient and outpatient medical expenditures by 74%. Varicella vaccination reduced the risk of pediatric stroke, a known complication of chicken pox also in the UK, by over 60% (similar observations were made in Italy).

What can I say? Have another look at that photograph - if you are in a country with a varicella vaccination programme, go get the vaccine. If you are in the UK, consider going private for the varicella - it is not fair that you have to pay out of pocket for a vaccination that will ultimately not only benefit your child's health, but also the NHS and your employer, but I would still consider this a good investment. If you are in the UK and you have gotten the varicella vaccine privately, please leave a comment and tell us where and how much it was as a resource for other parents.

ETA (6/6/12): this is day 6 - the young man (6 years old, no history of eczema or any other "condition") is feeling much better, the back is starting to crust over - take a look:

Measles go to University

As British kids, not vaccinated in the 90ies due to the MMR media hysteria grow up, measles catches up with them - as seen yesterday:

 

Lovely Dr. S said that while he was happy to actually see a case of measles (young doctor in the post-vaccine era that he is), people would tend to forget that measles can be a very dangerous disease. And indeed, in Merseyside, where they have had over 200 cases of measles this year, 25% of over 15 year old patients (15 of 61) were hospitalised, the highest rate of all age groups (<1s: 24%, 1-5s: 20%, 5-9s: 4% 10-14s: 8%).

Apparently, University Health Service are also seeing lots of mumps and chicken pox, several cases of rubella and whooping cough. The nurse I saw was very impressed with the recent case of whooping cough - the first she had ever heard. She said she had heard a lot of coughs in her career, but the second she heard this one, she knew it as pertussis and "really something else" (in the sense of something much more severe that a normal cough). 

So here is a public service announcement to students in the UK and elsewhere where Universities may not check your vaccination record:

Make sure you are immune against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough and meningitis. 

If you don't have one of these, contact your GP, they should have your shots on file. It is your responsibility now.

You can still get the vaccines, if you didn't as a child. Talk to your GP - they'll be delighted to get you covered before you walk into their surgery with measles...

Ban Miracle Mineral Supplement

Emily Willingham, the Science Editor of Thinking Person's Guide to Autism has started a petition on Change.org to end the use and distribution of Miracle Mineral Supplement (MMS) as an autism treatment.  It sounds harmless but what MMS really is is an industrial strength bleach that is being given as drinks, baths and enemas to autistic children to "cure" them of the toxins, pathogens and parasites that they have (I hope the sarcasm was noted).

The issue has received much attention this past week as AutismOne, the quackfest of "autism treatments" featured Kerri Rivera who enthusiastically promotes MMS to be given to infants, children and adults to "treat" their autism even though the FDA released this warning almost two years ago.  In my opinion, anyone in attendance at that conference who did not speak out against this (and none did as far as I know) is guilty of promoting child abuse.  But then again, we are talking about a crowd who knows no depths when it comes to "curing" their "vaccine-damaged" children.  People who blithely announce they sprinkle an industrial chelator, OSR#1 on their children's breakfast foods or stem cells, chelation and an unimaginable aggregate of pharmaceuticals (for imaginary maladies), chelators, supplements and diets are not going to speak out against anyone who wants to give their autistic child a bleach enema.

There is a segment of the autism community who have utterly dehumanised their children and abuse them, their protestations of love aside.  This segment congregates at AutismOne for "support", back-patting and proliferating more and more outrageous "cures" and "treatments" for autism.  They need a wake-up call for what they are doing to their children and it's abuse.

Please sign the petition and share it with everyone you know.

Measles in Europe: personal stories about coma, SSPE

Euronews has uploaded a video on measles in Europe, including the stories of Nastasia, a French teen who spent 12 days in a coma, needed 4 months of physiotherapy to learn to walk again and still suffers from a weak bladder, due to the muscle loss. Her mum believes in "building natural immunities" and in "treating with homeopathy". Max, a German boy, caught measles when he was 6 months old in his older sibling's kindergarten. SSPE caught up with him in 2006 - the family's life is centered around care for Max, who is a wake coma and needs round the clock care until he dies. Watch until the end... (and sorry for the annoying YouTube ad at the beginning)...

And Everything Stops for a Second...

The daily delusions, presented with the arrogance of ignorance and a degree from Google U, the smugness of those whose children are protected by herd immunity, afforded by the grace of having been born in a time when a lot of diseases are preventable by vaccines, are so tiresome to counter.

"No, by the time it is properly diagnosed, pertussis can not really be treated."
"No, SIDS did not disappear from Japan when the raised vaccination age to 2 years and stopped whole cell pertussis vaccination, instead, pertussis cases and fatalities soared."
"No, unvaccinated kids do not have the better immune systems."

The past week has been particularly bad, with media outlets thoughtlessly spewing anti-vaccine dreck (hat tip to Seth Mnookin). Despite State after State reporting pertussis outbreaks or even epidemics, every day there was a chance to whack-a-mole-of-the-day... oh, there is another.

So tedious.

And then, everything stops for a second:

Francesca Marie McNally

February 24, 2012 - May 17, 2012
Resided in Franklin, MI

FRANCESCA MARIE McNALLY, May 17, 2012, of complications from Pertussis. Age 3 months.

Most precious angel of Sean and Veronica. Dearest younger sister of, and inspiration to, Duke and Stephen. Cherished granddaughter of Thomas and Debra McNally and Stephen and Frances Valentine. Great-granddaughter of Phyllis Lanesey, Mary Jane McNally, and the late Robert McNally, George Holt, Frank Lanesey, Joseph and Joan Craig, and Bernice and Stephen Valentine. Goddaughter of Tyler Wesorick and Erin Goward. Also survived by eight cousins and many aunts and uncles.

Memorial Mass Wednesday 11 a.m. at Shrine Chapel of Our Lady of Orchard Lake, 3535 Indian Trail, Orchard Lake. Visitation at church begins at 10 a.m.

In lieu of flowers family suggests memorials to C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, 301 E. Liberty, Suite 400, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. A.J. Desmond & Sons, 248-362-2500. 

My heart goes out to the McNally family. No one should have to bury a child. Let's whack another mole and save a life or three...

Letters: Dear Doctor - Dear Parent

The Thinking Moms' Revolution blog (not to be confused with the very useful Thinking Person's Guide to Autism) is written by a number of mothers who strongly believe in "healing" their children's (vaccine-induced) autism. Overall, they seem to be very angry, which is beautifully reflected in a recent post - "The letter I wish I could send to my old pediatrician". There is, of course, no reason why the poster could not send that letter, although her chances of the pediatrician actually reading it might go up, if she find another address than "Dear Dr. Asshat". Orac does a good job in taking the fallacies in the letter down, however, as often the case, one of the commentators takes the cake with a response letter, which deserved to be showcased:

Dear Ignorant Parent:

We are well aware that you pulled your child out of our practice, since we've seen a marked decrease in the volume of ignorant questions that our nurses have had to answer as of late. Trust us, you won't be missed.

Will we lose an ounce of sleep over you deciding the vaccines are wrong for your child? No. However, if your young, and unvaccinated little one comes down with measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, or rubella then we would wager that you will. We've treated all of them in our tenure as doctors and be assured, while modern medicine can reduce the risk to your child after infection, the results can still be daunting.

Blindness, paralysis, deafness, and even death are some of the results of not vaccinating your child from diseases that once killed millions around the world. By not allowing us to vaccinate you are saddling your child with plenty of risks, none of which he should or need bear.

We all understand that the internet is a treasure trove of information. The problem with that is that not all the information is correct. Certainly you can find information claiming vaccines cause autism and a host of other developmental problems. Guess what else you can find? People that believe the earth is flat and that nobody has ever been to the moon. You claim there's evidence to support your claim? How nice. So do the people that believe the earth is flat. A cursory internet search on vaccines being bad does not make you an expert. Years upon years of medical training does, and that learning process is ongoing.

If you thought we were curt with you when you started asking these questions then it's most likely because we've been inundated by questions from you. Asking the same thing a hundred times but slightly changing the wording isn't going to get you a different answer. You decided long ago that vaccines were evil and now you simply want to try to get us to go along with you. We aren't going to. When we rolled our eyes at you for citing a study that was twenty years old it was because there was twenty years of newer information that supported our point of view.

Your claims that we broke your child are ludicrous. When you showed us an outdated study that linked autism with vaccination we showed you a dozen that did not. Our data was somehow tainted in your mind because you believe that we're all in the pocket of some shadowy conspiracy group. We aren't. Your claims that we're running a business and that we make money off vaccinations are also completely unfounded. Be assured that treating a child who has contracted the mumps is going to be a lot more lucrative than simply vaccinating against it. Yet, that's what we do. The Hippocratic Oath says do no harm, you like to say that, but there is another important part of that oath you missed, where is states that prevention is preferable to cure. In our tenure as medical professionals we have come to believe in that statement after treating scores of children permanently harmed by diseases the should never have been stricken with but for their parent's misguided good intentions.

We wish you the best of luck with your family and hope only for the best for you all. We also hope nothing bad comes of your decision.

I am not sure that time could mend the communication breakdown between mothers who think of their doctors as "asshat" and doctors who think of their patients' mothers as "ignorant", but lack of communication is one of the main reasons why parents take their children (or adult patients themselves) to charlatans. We know that time with the patient/parent influences continuity in care (i.e. how long the patient will stay with a health care provider), there are good recommendations in the literature how to address the concerns of parents who refuse vaccination, which also have time as an essential component to build trust and establish and maintain communication channels. More and more physicians dismiss non-vaccinating parents from their practices. They perceive the risk for their other patients as too high. This does mean though that the children of these parents are likely to end up in suboptimal medical care reinforcing their unrealistic views of vaccine dangers. Do you think an insurance-reimbursed hour per new child in a pediatrician's practise would be a solution?