The form of Chelation that killed 5 year old autistic Abubakar Tariq Nadama is called EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid). It is administered by IV for ‘maximum efficiency’.
Amongst its other uses apparently is as an industrial chemical to clean scale from pipes in chemical plants and in fact is commonly found in cleaning products due to its ability to bind certain minerals very well. It is not however, very effective in binding to mercury. This makes its choice as a chelator to treat autism – who’s detractors claim is caused by mercury in vaccines – very peculiar indeed.
As someone wiser than me (and who wishes to remain anonymous) in matters of chemistry remarked –
perhaps (we) should take a look at the MSDS for EDTA and decide if injecting a high concentration of a real toxin to combat an imaginary toxin makes any sense at all.
Good point. Here’s the MSDS for EDTA.
Lets look at the MSDS for EDTA in depth. Here’s what we find:
THIS PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SMALL AMOUNTS OF NITRILOACETIC ACID (NTA) AND/OR ITS’ SALTS. ALL THREE FORMS HAVE BEEN *FOUND TO BE CARCINOGENIC TO MICE AND/OR RATS WHEN ADMINISTERED AT HIGH LEVELS*. NTA IS LISTED
UNDER THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA’S PROPOSITION 65 AS *A CHEMICAL KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER*.
So here we have the ultimate irony. Pro-chelationists have been using a method of chelation that a) involves injection of a known toxin and b) is a known cause of cancer. The depths of irresponsibility some people are prepared to sink to astounds me. Consider the hypocrisy of a bunch of people marching to rid vaccines of a toxin when one of the methods they utilise to get rid of this toxin (they claim) is…a toxin with a causative link to cancer.
This what comes of indulging your pet theory without scientific validity. People die needlessly.
With thanks to ‘S’ for sending me links.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Medical grade EDTA has very low amounts of nitriloacetic acid and is probably not a carcinogen…except in California.
That said, I have to agree that using a drug that has negligible affinity for mercury (and damn little for lead) is stupid, especially in light of the fact that a much better oral drug has been available since the 1970’s – DMSA.
EDTA does have high affinity for calcium, however, which is probably the reason that this young boy died. Once the EDTA chelated enough of his serum calcium, his heart stopped contracting sufficiently and he died. The doctor who did this deserves a criminal sentence for murder – and he might just get it, too. We can only hope.
Still, it is amusing (in a sick, cynical way) to see how fast the autism-mercury movement has “spun” this event. JB Handley made a point of detailing how many children have died from Ritalin, without – I must note – comparing how many children are on Ritalin. He might as well have noted that one of the all-time killers of children is the household bathtub. So, chelating with EDTA is safer than taking a bath?
Even DMSA, which has an admirable safety record, is not without complications. Long-term use has not been studied, nor has its potential interactions with drugs and “supplements” not widely used in the 1970’s and 1980’s (the heyday of DMSA treatment for childhood lead poisoning). How long before we hear about a child who has died from aplastic anemia, agranulocytosis or liver failure due to unsupervised (or poorly supervised – even worse!) DMSA therapy?
Many of the people advocating routine chelation of autistic children are the same ones bitterly criticizing the “drugging” of children. This is most evident in the writings of Bernard Rimland, who on one hand denounces the use of Ritalin (which by his own surveys has worked in ~30% of autistic children) and yet wholeheartedly endorses DMSA and a host of other drugs (often euphemistically referred to as “supplements”) to treat autistic children. What amazing hypocrisy!
Now, I had hoped that the autism-mercury movement will take this death as a “wake-up call” – but they won’t. They are too convinced that they are right to be swayed by a cautionary tale.
I wonder what it will take.
Prometheus.
Autism Diva supposes that what is needed is a new charming snake oil salesman with a prettier, shinier newer cure. Just like Lyn Redwood went from using secretin for her son’s autism to chelation (probably directly on the advice of Jeff Bradstreet) for her son’s autism (PDD,nos) if someone can get Rimland on-board a new protocol, hmmm, Kambucha tea, or craniosacral therapy (already being used by some) or yoga or Dead Sea mud baths, then maybe they can save face and move on to someone “more promising”.
But now they’d have to admit they were wrong and have nothing dramatic or “cutting edge” to do, just speech therapy and occupational therapy, and other more conventional stuff like ABA or Floortime, but they don’t get to play crusader if they do that.
The DAN! docs are trying to make a move on England. They are planning a conference there for October, I hear. One of the speakers is to be Dr. Usman, who was said to be the little boy’s doctor,also. Perhaps this awful news will stop them in their tracks as far as the UK.
This lilttle boy didn’t even get the American vaccines, and obviously, neither has any other British child under the care of the British medical system.
I’ve read the little boy was being treated for lead poisoning. If he HAD mercury in his system, and it didn’t come from vaccinations, it may have come from his mother. If She were vaccinated during pregnancy, or had a mouth full of amalgams, her mercury burden would shunt to the fetus.
This tragedy will NOT stop the practice or promotion of chelation anymore than children who die while getting their tonsils removed will stop tonsilectomies! I can make so many parallels of accidents from potentially-harsh treatments resulting in very few deaths that didn’t end in the stopping of such treatments.
That’s just wishful thinking on the part of the “neurodiverse.”
No one thought for a moment this would stop people like you Erik. Hopefully though it will stop those who haven’t sunk too far into the reality you inhabit.
The results of chelation will keep people interested in its use to treat heavy metal toxicities.
When those results come out, you will be sure to tell us, right? Because as of yet there is no real evidence that has passed medical or scientific review… and one dead child. All that seem to be presented is a cream huckster’s website and his testimony to gullible politicians, plus a bunch of unverifiable testimonials. Those just don’t cut it.
Even some stuff that is actually published can be seriously flawed:
http://photoninthedarkness.blogspot.com/2005/07/pefect-example-of-how-not-to-do-study.html
and
http://photoninthedarkness.blogspot.com/2005/07/perfect-example-of-how-not-to-do-study.html
I’m still trying to figure out why someone with legitimate lead poisoning needed to come to the United States for treatment. They don’t offer heavy metal detoxification in the U.K.?
I’m asking this question seriously.
That’s a good question, JP. Perhaps they came to the states for a variety of other things in addition.
You should know this is the ONLY chelation related death ever reported in the media…since IV-EDTA was approved for lead poisoning by the FDA in 1973.
So chelation has a much better track record than, say, radiation and chemotherapy treatment…which is very harsh on the body and has killed many people. But it usually works.
Chelation has always done its job, without casualties. This little boy appears to be the first.
So I’m not worried in the slightest. We should be offering our support and condolences to the family, rather than make this a precedent to yank away an effective treatment for heavy metals poisoning!
JP – I can’t find anything about private healthcare offering this. I doubt he’d get it on the NHS as they would’ve made him undergo proper tests and found he didn’t need it – Erik’s backpeddaling notwithstanding, this little boy was being treated because he was autistic.
Erik doesn’t want to face that fact because it means facing up to some uncomfortable truths and responsibilities.
Kevin, I don’t recall backpedaling on a damned thing. NO DOCTOR prescribes chelation without toxicology indicating heavy metal poisoning.
It’s just that with Autism, it is becoming increasingly common practice to test for metals poisoning. If they don’t find it, they don’t chelate.
Kevin, you seem to have trouble understanding that.
Oh, and about me being “fast and loose” with numbers…that 1 in 6 statistic I cited was from the CDC. I didn’t make that up. 1 in 6 children have a learning disability in the U.S. Visit a typical public school and the principal will tell you his or her numbers probably correspond with that.
I did NOT say that we are being overrun with autistics. I said that if we continue to poison children, it could happen. Not like “Dawn of the Dead” where you have to run into a shopping mall and lock the doors to keep them out… but in terms of the financial burden on society. It is already (despite the low percentage of the population) becoming too much for our educational budgets. It also affects the insurance industry.
We have 1.77 million autistics in this country. Most of which are under the age of 17. We’re averaging about 1 in 166 children, or greater. We used to average 1 in 2,500 in the mid 1980’s. Again, these aren’t “my” numbers.
And it’s not because of greater or wider diagnostics. It’s pretty hard to miss a child on the spectrum!
You should know this is the ONLY chelation related death ever reported in the media…since IV-EDTA was approved for lead poisoning by the FDA in 1973.
Actually, there’s a pending lawsuit against a doctor who chelated a man who had a heart attack while undergoing the therapy. Evideince is that the therapy contributed to the heart attack. The man didn’t die because they were able to revive him, but he’s got permanant heart damage.
I think the process is not as safe and harmless as people think. In fact, there are known risks.
1 in 6 children have a learning disability in the U.S.
I have one that went undiagnosed until I was nearly 30. I know others with the same learning disability who were similarly undiagnosed until adulthood, and others with other learning disabilities who went undiagnosed.
Just because it wasn’t reported or understood “back in the day” doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Most of us just got labelled “uncooperative” or were told we “didn’t apply” ourselves or whatever.
How many people get chelated a year?
How many people get chemotherapy a year?
I bet I know which number is higher.
And, of course, there’s the issue that cancer *kills*, and malignant cancer does so at essentially 100%. Chemotherapy is near-unilaterally better … and even so, some people choose not to use it.
Chelation … doesn’t have evidence that it helps except when applied shortly after severe heavy metal expose (after all, how would removing metal undo damage?). So what’s the *measureable* benefit?
Chemotherapy, they measure the percentage of people who survive 5 years. It’s higher than those who have cancer and went without chemo. Thus, chemo’s empirically better.
Where’s the empirical evidence for chelation?
“Kevin, I don’t recall backpedaling on a damned thing. NO DOCTOR prescribes chelation without toxicology indicating heavy metal poisoning.”
Yeah, right. Thats why this little boy had to come over from here to there – if it was lead poisoning he could’ve been treated here. He was being treated because he was autistic. The family neighbours over here say it, I’m pretty sure the mother herself claimed she was chelating for mercury (or so she thought).
“It’s just that with Autism, it is becoming increasingly common practice to test for metals poisoning. If they don’t find it, they don’t chelate.”
Bullshit. If you go to a quack he’ll tell you whatever he thinks your wallet can stand. Chelation’s a good year and a half to two year money earner for them.
“Kevin, you seem to have trouble understanding that.”
Nope, no trouble. I have trouble _believing_ it.
My own personal opinion – she read Evidence of Harm (note she came over to the US around the same time as Kirby’s book was published) saw that ‘chelation cured autism’ and went for it. Chelation’s mentioned on more than 5 sperate pages in Evidence of Harm – Kirby doesn’t make any more distinction between _types_ of chelation than Generation Rescue who state:
_”Chelation therapy is safe. The side effects of chelation, at the dosing levels used with children, appear to be both mild and manageable.”_
GR.
That page mentions EDTA two or three times but fails to mention that its for lead poisoning. It states that a) its a viable chelation therapy for mercury poisoning and b) chelation is safe.
Yeah, very mild and manageable. Now, instead of getting your science from a journalist and an investment specialist try a doctor of medicine.
_”Because there are no good studies that demonstrate its efficacy in treating autism, chelation therapy for this purpose should be considered at best an experimental therapy (at worst it is a completely ineffective therapy). As such, chelation is not and cannot be considered the standard of care. Also, it is generally considered dubious at best and unethical or even malpractice at worst to administer unproven experimental therapies outside the context of properly designed and conducted clinical trials”_
I just had to comment on Erik’s statement:
“…it is becoming increasingly common practice to test for metals poisoning. If they don’t find it, they don’t chelate.”
I found that hilarious, especially in light of the oft-cited (by the autism-mercury movement) Holmes et al paper, Reduced Levels of Mercury in First Baby Haircuts
of Autistic Children.
Ever since that paper came out, the autism chelationists have been saying that if the hair mercury is high, you need to chelate and if the hair mercury is low or normal, you need to chelate.
Same thing with yeast – if you see yeast in the stool, you need to treat – and if you don’t see yeast, you still need to treat.
It’s a great system – I just wonder how they manage to keep a straight face. How can they justify doing all those expensive tests if their treatment decisions are unaffected by the results? Oh, I know, they use the tests to guide the treatment and monitor progress…right!
Some real doctors that I know say that if the results of a test won’t change the treatment, then you shouldn’t order it.
I had an autistic child who both had a hair test and a DMSA provoked urine test that showed high lead and mercury. We DMSA chelated and not only is my son responsive, loving and free of styms he has been rotated back into mainstream school – not something there was even hope for prior to the chelation (we did this along with other nutritionals). It has been documented by both his DAN doc and Enviro doc. This type of chelation works! I’m not familiar with the procedure the family of the poor child here was doing so perhaps that was the difference. Oh, by the way, after the chelation both the lead and mercury were in the green zone (or within the normal range). I’m not so sure why you are so hostile toward something that has helped soooo many people! You are acting like the only ones out to make a buck are the DAN doctors/alternative doctors – my God, there are money grubbers in this world in EVERY profession, including regular docs and regular docs make mistakes too! What about the guy this week who gave the poor woman a hysterectomy for no reason?
“I’m not so sure why you are so hostile toward something that has helped soooo many people! ”
Two reasons: firstly you and you people like you continue to advocate chelation even after it has killed someone and even after you freely admit that ‘I’m not familiar with the procedure the family of the poor child here was doing’.
Secondly is your unspoken assumption that only autistics who’ve been chelated can be responsive and loving. You don’t need chelation to have a responsive and loving child, you just need to put time and effort and patience in. Devlopment is _delayed_ with autism, not halted. In my opinion you have made a massive error by stopping your childs stimming. Autistics need to stim for a variety of reasons. Its not bad behaviour or obsessive or compulsive, it helps orient senses and people. You’ve taken that away from your child apparently. Lets hope s/he has no call to need it eh?
Chelation is unproven and dangerous. The only thing we know for sure about chelation in regards to autistics is that there’s a high degree of probabiity its killed this one.
Because it’s killed someone? How many medical procedures have killed people? People have died having their adnoids removed. So we should outlaw that procedure? How many thousands haven’t. Every procedure has risks and every profession has good and bad practitioners. Perhaps this doctor wasn’t one of the good ones, or someone made a mistake and didn’t monitor something – God knows THAT’s never happened in the medical field before! You hear of all sorts of things like docs pulling out the wrong kidneys, amputating the wrong limbs, prescribing the wrong medication.
And what does my not being familiar with this particular procedure have to do with it? I am familiar with some form of chelation therapy – DMSA – one that worked for my son.
My assumption was not that only autistics that have had chelation therapy are responsive and loving. MY child was UNRESPONSIVE and UNLOVING – and sat stimming through most waking moments. He is going to a mainstream school now – he is still very delayed but knows who I am and can give me a kiss good morning and good night and SMILES at people – something that NEVER happened before! If he still needed to stim he still would be doing it. He isn’t because he doesn’t need to anymore. Do you have an autisctic child? Do you know what it means to have your own flesh and blood now recognize you as MOM? It is the most wonderful thing! I have answered all your questions and accusations – but you haven’t answered mine – why are you so hostile? Are you equally hostile to all errors of medicine or just chelation?
Hilary
Oh my GOD! I just went to your web site. There is absolutely no talking to someone like you – you have done NOTHING to help your daughter Megs – NOTHING! Irregular bowel movements are not normal – they are a symptom and yes, maybe not of poisoning but of allergy!!!! If a “normal” adult goes to the doctor with chronic diarrhea – they get treated! My son had major allergies to soy, dairy, gluten, bananas, citrus, corn and dyes. We took those out of his diet (yes, I know it seems like not much is left but there is – rice, proteins, amaranth, tapioca flour, potatoes, all veggies and all other fruits) and his stools are perfect! Just accept the autism – yes accept that he had it but all his deficiencies that were apparent from a blood test were unacceptable, the lead and mercury were unacceptable. Have you done blood tests? Have you treated any deficiencies? Have you seen if she has heavy metals? I couldn’t stick around on your website to find out as it made me SICK! Every medical procedure is untested the first time it’s tried – why do you insist that just because it’s not peer reviewed its not valid? Have you met a DAN doctor? Our doctor is the most giving, caring, open minded doctor I have ever met. He is passionate about helping kids and he and his peers (other DAN doctors) have reviewed the protocol they advocate and are having amazing success. When I brought the protocol to our GP he was clueless but very open and told us that he didn’t doubt the results but that we needed someone who was trained to help with it and told us to run not walk to UCLA. He admitted he’d never seen or called for a heavy metal test in his life. The first time some one put a pace maker into someone – people like you let their mother’s die because it was an unproven procedure. How is medicine supposed to grow? I’m definitely not going to be the first in line for unproven procedures but chelation has helped millions with lead poisoning and my son HAD lead and mercury! It’s FDA approved for lead and mercury! And he is recovering! I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to help Megs! You talk about her projectile vomit after her shots – what the? That’s normal? Are you so overcome by some misplaced guilt that you erroneously feel you have to follow through on the initial course of trusting your doctor? Even the doctors have pulled thimerosal out of the vaccines! I can’t even believe I’m wasting my time writing this to you. The doctors/pharmaceutical companies made a mistake using thimerosal, I don’t blame them or want to sue them – they were doing the best they could given the information they had – now they have better information and so do we. We as parents of autistic children need to act on that new information. How many people died because doctors didn’t know that the bacteria on their hands was harmful – they were trying to help heal people and just didn’t know. USE THE NEW INFORMATION or at least test Megs for yeast, bacteria, metals, deficiencies – she needs you to not bury your head in the sand because you are so desperate not to admit that someone made a mistake!
Hillary asked Kev:
“Do you have an autisctic child?”
Yes, he does. A beautiful girl, and she’s “classically” autistic, if there is such a description.
The whole reason that chelation is considered for autistic children is based on a few carefully crafted lies.
Lie #1: There has been an autism epidemic in the US.
There has been no such thing. You can even see the ridiculous Mady Hornig explaining that she agrees that no one knows if there even has been ANY increase, but that she thinks that there has been on Eric Nanstiel’s ridiculously named website.
Now think about that for a minute. If there is an increase that people can’t agree on whether it exists or not, that means what?
That it has been a very small increase. RIGHT? Like if you look at your son and you aren’t sure he has grown or not, is it because he grew 1 foot in height overnight? No. That increase would be obvious. A small increase in his height – like an 1/3 of an inch would be hard to see.
That is the kind of increase that MIGHT be there, MAYBE.
On the other hand MAYBE there has been NO increase at all, Right?
Lie #2: That there is a known mechanism by which mercury poisoned brains can turn into autistic brains, and not cerebral palsied brains, as Dr. Hornig pointed out in the kids who were slammed by MASSIVE amounts of mercury in Minimata Bay, they had CEREBRAL PALSY, but no AUTISM. GET IT? And that’s after being totally bombarded with MASSIVE amounts of mercury by comparison to what the AMERICAN kids got from shots at one point.
IF, thimerosal was so destructive, then there should have been a noticable increase in SUDDEN ONSET mental retardation in otherwise normal children, regression into Cerebral Palsy, regression into all kinds of signs of brain damage all in exact parallel of the rise in autism, WHICH as we know was non-existant or very small.
Lie #3, Chelation can take mercury out of the child’s brain and thus allow a kind of rewiring that was never seen before on the face of the earth EVER.
If you take a big stick and smash it into a skull (as an example) do you think that there is something that can make the brain inside normal again? A study on chelation of lead poisoned children, removed lead from them but didn’t change their intelligence level.
Lie #4: The only explanation for regression is an environmental insult.
Regression is preprogrammed into autistic kids. Most forms of “regression” are actually the child stopping progressing, though very infrequently the children actually lose language and other skills that they had gained.
In the case of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, what Dougie Flutie has, the child regresses very rapidly after the age of 2 and basically stays where he is after that. That Disintegration apparently has been reported as late as 9 years of age. In Rett syndrome the girls also regress, but there are other clues, such as a slowing in growth that mark Rett syndrome. My point, there are genes that can preprogram “regression”. Just like Parkinson’s disease is “preprogrammed”. So we don’t NEED an environmental insult to have a regression.
Only 20 -25% of all autistic kids regress, and that includes the non-dramatic cases of kids who don’t regress but reach a plateau and stop for a while.
Very few parents blame vaccines for their children’s autism.
They basically all live in the United States and those few zealots have spread these lies to England, we know that for a fact.
The parents of Abubakar believed the lies and the mom took their son to Pennsylvania and he was killed by a man using a form of chelation that is
“de facto malpractice” when used on any chid for either lead or mercury toxicity or both.
This is a scenario that many people predicted would happen, not necessarily that the child would be foreign to the US, but that a child or children would be killed by fools and charlatan’s pushing a stupid idea that chelation cures autism.
And now we who predicted that a child COULD be killed as a result of the lies, are sad and terribly hurt and angry because we were right, and would rather have been wrong.
The good news is that the family has a lawyer and the police are investigating. We don’t know that the doctor will be arrested for negligent homocide, but it’s a possibility.
It’s also a possibility that he will point the finger at those who told him chelation could cure autism and so forth.
Perhaps the vultures will have to move on to another scam.
Hillary, whether you want to believe it or not, you were scammed. Only a con man would have you use a chelator to provoke the dumping of metals BEFORE the test. It’s a famous con man trick and you fell for it, along with many others. They provoke high levels and compare them to non-provoked levels, basically. The mail order labs will be exposed for what they are soon enough.
In the mean time I hope you enjoy your child. Be glad you didn’t take him to see Dr. Kerry or any other doctor using “IV push disodium EDTA” because it’s a known method of chelation of calcium that can easily be deadly to children.
Some day you may understand the rage some of us feel at the frauds and quacks. Because we love our autistic children and don’t want to see any children harmed.
The line crossed through one part of a sentence is because of how I put a hyphen at the begning of the line and at the end, it wasn’t meant to cross out that section.
Hillary, you have been brainwashed. Prometheus just told you that the tests don’t change what the DAN! practitioners do, they just make money for doctor’s data and Great Plains and Great Smokies laboratories.
Kev’s daughter will be fine and is fine. She lives in the UK and is pretty much safe from the likes of your quack DAN! organization, the one that Dr. Kerry was supposedly using as a model according to another one of his patients.
You have some nerve to talk about burying one’s head in the sand.
You might go read what Dr. Laidler says about his experience as a prominent DAN! doctor on autism-watch.org.
His description is called, “through the looking glass into the world of autism quackery”, or something like that.
Er, interesting rant Hilary. You’ve just ably demonstrated the inherent dangers in reading one thing and taking it out of context.
If you want to read through the _whole_ of my site to get a fuller picture then be my guest but until you do don’t presume to comment on my daughters specific health progression as you know nothing from one very old post.
To those nay sayers on edta:
FACT-The boy in Monroeville,PA who died received theWRONG form of Edta chelation. His had a calcium base which is a definate no-no to chelation of this sort. Chelation of the proper Edta is very effective.
Evidence?
Something other than anecdotes, please.
geez Jag, at least get the facts straight before you attempt to set others straight.
Chalk one up for the Nay-trium sayers. Damn straight!
Oh, and check up on this blog the comments on it:
and elsewhere:
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2006/01/cdc-flubs-it.html
(oops, good catch clone3g… I didn’t notice that Jaguar was claiming the kid had CA-EDTA instead of the stuff that sucked the Calcium out of the blood… an element needed for the heart to actually work!).