Thhe full set of charges against the people responsible for the death of Tariq Nadama have been posted online.
In particular, DAN! (defeat autism now) ‘doctor’ Roy Kerry has to face some very serious charges indeed.
At the time, various anti-vax apologists were saying it was a mix up of the chelating agent – that the wrong one was used. These charges kill that piece of silly rationalisation stone dead:
71. Respondent admitted to using Disodium EDTA to chelate Tariq.
72. Respondent stated to Investigator Reiser that Disodiun EDTA is the only formula of EDTA he stocks in his office.
Maybe someone could explain to me how it was a mix up when the guy only stocks one type of EDTA? Please, this I have to hear.
The list of charges against Kerry strike right at the heart of the whole quackery surrounding the use of chelation. Here’s a selection:
24. The aforesaid death of Tariq Nadama was caused by the negligence of Dr. Kerry in the following particulars:
a. In failing to make a diagnosis of the child which would justify the use of disodium EDTA;
b. In deciding to administer EDTA therapy to a child;
c. In deciding to administer disodium EDTA to “treat†autism when he knew, or should have known, that such therapy is not effective treatment for autism;
d. In administering disodium EDTA when he knew that such product was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in “treating†autism;
e. In administering the wrong type of EDTA, e.g. one that did not contain an appropriate calcium additive;
f. In ordering the administration of the EDTA in an excessive dosage and concentration;
g. In ordering the administration of the EDTA via IV push when he knew, or should have known, that said method of administration was too fast;
h. In failing to appropriately train, educate and instruct the employees of Advanced Integrative Medicine Center, Inc., who were involved in the administration of the EDTA;
i. In failing to advise the deceased’s mother, Marwa Nadama, of all of the risks of chelation therapy and all appropriate alternatives to such treatment;
This shows the autism/chelation cottage industry up for exactly what it is – dangerous psuedoscience with no regard for the children who are essentially experimented on by quacks with their parents approval.
I’m very seriously conflicted by the Nadama’s decision to sue these people. A large part of me is glad that Tariq will get justice and that RoY Kerry will join the ranks of his fellow DAN! Doctors who have injured people or who have court judgements against them. He deserves no less.
On the other hand, I think the Nadama’s bear some responsibility themselves – as do those who ‘advised’ her. The mother, Marwa, was a regular on various Yahoo/autism groups and had also posted to the (now defunct) guestbook of Autism Fair Media, Erik Nanstiel’s quack interview website. She was immersed in chelation quackery and yet her husband was a Doctor – a specialist registrar in respiratory medicine at an NHS hospital. It beggars belief that if they could find the quackery on this subject that they couldn’t find sites like mine which expose the quackery. A google.co.uk (the Nadama’s are British) for the phrase ‘autism chelation’ reveals Kathleen, Jim Laidler’s site, Stephen Barretts site and Diva’s site on page 1, this site on page 2. I simply cannot believe they did not know chelation for autism had a dubious reputation.
One thing that cannot be questioned is the dedication and skill of the investigators who have put long hours into putting this case together and (obviously) rescuing the Nadama’s from their beliefs in chelation/autism quackery. About the only positives to come out of this is the fact that the Nadama’s can now see autism/chelation for what it is. What a shame its two years and one life too late.
Left Brain Right Brain 
“What a shame its two years and one life too late.”
Sadly, I fear this will not be the only case that has to wait so long to be resolved… as far as I am concerned, chelation for autism is tantamount to reckless endangerment.
I am also conflicted over would be fair treatment of the parents. It looks like she got in with a bad crowd. The mercury parents have a whole patter of how it is that autism is just heavy metals or just mercury or just vaccines, depending on who it is that is playing parent “expert” at that moment.
If Mrs. Nadama wanted a cure for her son above all else, then she wouldn’t have spent much if any time on websites like autism-watch. If she asked any of the antivax parents online what they thought, they’d tell her to stay away from sites like my blog and your blog and autism-watch. The people playing “expert” at the time of Tariq’s death were people like Lenny Schafer with his “Autism Report” and of course,
David Kirby was big all about the time Mrs. Nadama was deciding to take Tariq to see Anju Usman in the US. He was over with his book spreading all kinds of false information like: “vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue” and “mercury is the second most toxic substance on earth” and Big Pharma or some portion of the conspiracy was thought by Lyn Redwood to have been bugging her phone…, there was a conspiracy and Mrs. Toast and all trying to stop the Geiers from finding the TRUTH, parents were claiming great cures from TD DMPS and other forms of chelation.
There was a mass of attractive information ‘we can cure your child’ coming from other parents…. and we know that the mercury parents would just NEVER lie…
and there was a mass of silent science, that Dr. Nadama must have been aware of very well,
and there were these tiny voices of reason saying that autism was not mercury poisoning, that the labs were bunk and that the quacks could kill kids with their snake-oil.
I imagine that right after Tariq’s death his mother was in shock and I imagine she got lots of “support” from DAN! quacks and mercury parents telling her that it was just a tragic mistake. I would think that one would try to justify that one had meant well in a situation like that. So right after Tariq died she said she’d do it again if she had the chance, maybe because it seemed like such a one in a million error that basically could not have been foreseen.
Then when she learned later that it was all a sham, maybe she felt differently about what had happened….
I don’t know if the parents should be punsished somehow. I do know I’ve been stupid and believed in some alt med stuff in the past. I was not quite as stupid as someone trusting DAN! docs, but then I wasn’t a target for quacks because I didn’t have much money at any point. On the other hand I was never married to a doctor, either, you’d think some of his training would have gotten rubbed off on to her…
Anju Usman is just an inhumane liar. I think that’s pretty obvious. Usman sent Tariq over to Kerry an ear/nose/throat doctor of all things to chelate Tariq for lead poisoning that didn’t exist… Usman said on her site (it used to be there anyway) that all autistic children she’d ever seen were mercury poisoned. All of them? All of them? I’d say after they fillet Kerry and his partner and the makers of the EDTA (Apothecure, a compounding pharmacy) then they can go after Usman, and then DAN! and then Kirby and Schafer, SAFE MINDS, NAA and then Nanstiel or any other specific people who urged her onward toward Kerry’s office, and then they can find what guilt the parents have in it. I guess, in my mind they could redeem themselves a bit by exposing everything that happened to them so that it could be a warning to others.
Hi Kevin,
How difficult this subject is….but, I must agree with all that you wrote.
I am also curious….who is going to sue the parent’s for taking their child to see this doctor? I think someone needs to stand up for the victim…when are the parent’s who decide to chelate their children going to have to account for their behaviors?
I had major surgery 2 weeks ago…I had to sign a release that if something happened the doctor was not liable. I asked my husband, if I had died, would he have sued…..
My very logical husband answered, “that depends..did they remove the wrong organ, or did a fluke of nature happen and there was no fault of the doctor….?”
My surgery, like the young boy who died, was not for a life-threatening procedure. I chose the route I took…as did this boy’s parent’s….
I know I am in the minority, but I still believe the parent’s hold some responsibilty in their child’s death….Just MY honest opinion.
Jeanette
As a parent , I know you can be absolutely ridiculed if you don’t fall in line with the DAN way of thinking; with Lenny and Rollens; with ARI & Company. In fact, I’ve been personally ridiculed by Lenny Schafer for not going along with the group — and they’re very vicious if you don’t join them. You see, they think they’re smarter, that they have secret knowlege and that knowlege will “save” their child. Go up against them and, as some of here know, they go for the jugular. It’s a fight to the death for them. I think a lot of parents have been strong-armed, by the vocal and known chelation-parent advocates, to go along with the quacks and the frauds. They need numbers, because it makes up for their lack of science. We won’t be safe until no one subscribes to that ridiculous “SAR”; and not until SAFE MINDS, DAN!/ARI, NAA and the rest are all dissolved.
Jeannette,
I understand the idea that the parents should face consequences. Someone should have been protecting Abubakar from his parents at the moment they jumped on the DAN! bandwagon… but part of me says that the parents have already paid the biggest price of all. Their son died, and they have to carry some of the blame forever. Their daughter was traumatized as were the parents. Does it really serve more justice in this case to punish them? Maybe it does. I just can’t quite wrap my head around what the appropriate punishment would be. Maybe public service of some kind… I don’t know. Maybe they need to face a bigger punishment. I don’t know. Right now, I want to see them to explain what happened, above all else. As “Case of the Vapors” points out there’s an ugly peer pressure on those internet groups. We know that some of the malicia have told us that we are child abusers if we don’t chelate. The thing with IV chelation (as opposed to oral or something else) is that they promote it as the faster way to get your kid “back.”
Parents involved in any way in the mercury militia need to be isolated so it can be established if they acted for the right reasons. It’s a subjective situation which is why one can’t use a single punishment for all parents who chelate to cure Autism. Some may be completely blinded through whatever the reason – and those reasons can vary from completely understandable to a complete joke. Then there is the issue of parents who go further (a la JBJnr) – they’re the ones who should certainly be punished, not just because of what they are doing to their own children but also because they are openly promoting the idea as far as they can go. And parents aren’t even qualified to do that (that’s the job medical practitioners are responsible for).
If this is the same case that has been mentioned by the mercury militia – they’re saying that this guy got the technique all wrong, and they are apparently disowning him saying the doctor concerned fouled up and there’s nothing wrong with chelation when it’s done right.
Make of that what you will!
Unfortunately, I can see all too easily how you could be drawn in. If you catch a parent at the beginning when everything is confusing…..if your husband is a doctor! That poor child.
Best wishes
But they didn’t “disown” Kerry, the oddest thing of all is they let him in the club _after_ this tragic event occured. Now why did they do that?
Kevin, kindly email me regarding recommendations of sources for podcast hosting.
As someone who has taken the heat on some grouplists and gotten “child abuser” hate-mail for not chelating, etc., what is the responsibility of these “parent experts” who play amateur doctor and dispense medical advice and recommendation? Making a decision in good faith on behalf of one’s own child under the care of a physician licensed by a jurisdiction is one thing, but being harrangued and pressured to jump on the bandwagon by people who have no particular medical expertise except their “right to their opinion” is another. How do these people sleep at night?
Even real doctors have various disclaimers that are posted on their websites about diagnosis and treatment without direct observation of the client/patient. Are there such on the EOH yahoogroup?
I would cut Tariq’s parents more slack if they had not thrown in that statement about “doing it again”. More unqualified medical advice. Let the court do its job and sort it out sans spin.
The whole thing is just dreadful.
I feel like a complete outsider in my local autism community for not going to a DAN doctor and not doing GF/CF. I just don’t care anymore. The kind of support I found there was not what I needed. It made me scared, freaked out, and did little to help me understand my son’s needs and strengths.