A report in the Post Gazette includes an interview with Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She says that:
“without a doubt” that it was medical error, and not the therapy itself, that led to the death of a 5-year-old boy who was receiving it as a treatment for autism.
Which is very interesting on numerous levels.
First (for me) is the statement that clarifies exactly why Tariq was receiving chelation: *”who was receiving it as a treatment for autism”*. That nicely clears up any remaining doubts that Tariq was there for lead poisoning removal. He was there for treatment for autism.
Secondly (and unsurprisingly I take issue with a lot of what Dr Brown claims) is this claim that it was not chelation that killed Tariq. That, to me, is frankly bizarre. Its quite obvious that it is _exactly_ what killed him. If he hadn’t been chelated, he would still be alive. Thats just simple logic. Further, the fact that he was being treated with something that has no proven (or even evidenced) positive effect on ‘recovering’ or ‘curing’ kids from their autism speaks quite clearly to me that it was indeed the chelation that killed him: No autism = no belief in thiomersal poisoning = no chelation = no death. Again, this seems entirely logical to me. EDTA, which is a chelating agent, killed Tariq. QED.
Now, where the ambiguity creeps in is the fact that Dr Brown is claiming that chelation, as a course of action, does not intrinsically harm kids. In fact she said:
She said there have been no reputable medical trials demonstrating the effectiveness of chelation as a therapy for anything but lead poisoning. But if it were administered accurately, the procedure would be harmless.
This is quite a statement. The way I look at it is this: nobody knows the cause of autism. It is likely there are numerous potential triggers. Given that we don’t know what even the chemical composition of the average autistic brain is how can _anyone_ possibly claim that a procedure that removes chemicals is harmless?
And again, I make the point that since chelation has no proven or evidenced positive effect on autism in terms of its removal/curing/recovery/whatever that its use in this case is _directly_ responsible for Tariq’s death.
And there’s more:
“It’s a case of look-alike/sound-alike medications,” she said yesterday. “The child was given Disodium EDTA instead of Calcium Disodium EDTA. The generic names are Versinate and Endrate. They sound alike. They’re clear and colorless and odorless. They were mixed up.”
Mixed up? How can a trained Doctor who ostensibly was a chelationist mix up medications? I guess it could happen but it doesn’t seem likely.
At the end of the day, Dr Brown is offering conjecture. She may have read the autopsy report but her opinion on what Roy Kerry did and why he did it is a matter for an inquiry. At the end of the day a little boy is still dead because he was autistic. Chelation is still responsible for that death.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Calcium disodium EDTA
Disodium EDTA
Ca and Na act as salts for EDTA (or any other anionic substance).
Without the EDTA being “precharged” with Ca, the EDTA can bind the body’s Ca and induce the heart attack.
What I think Dr. Brown is trying hard to say and failing at saying is that Ca-EDTA won’t do anything unless there’s plenty of Pb or Hg floating around freely in the blood. That the child likely had neither free metal in his system, if Ca-EDTA was used instead then the only thing harmed would have the pocketbook and hopes of the payer.
Good thing the Chelati refuse to trust anyone from the government or CDC or they may interpret this as a case of simple human error rather than malpractice.
“Chelation stops a beating heart”
Wow, you nailed this one on the head Kev.
The title of the article is really misleading.
We know that the CDC are part of the “axis of evil”
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/browse/store/autismlink.26938737
That’s from “autism link” which claims to be neutral in the mercury wars.
So, we must conclude that if you play the words of the lead chelation expert at the CDC backwards they sound like, “DAN! is trying to kill your kids” or something… I mean how else could you explain the CDC’s cooperating with the mercury parents on this? Unless…. maybe the lady at the CDC has learned that if you bad mouth the mercury hysterics in the most remote way you get death threats and anonymous callers asking you on the phone if you know where you dog is.
Abubakar was snuffed. Light a candle for him. Then after a minute, spit on your thumb and finger tips and pinch the candlewick.
ssssszt. snuffed.
Probably not deliberately snuffed, but snuffed just the same.
Why?
From the same article
“Dr. Brown said the same mix-up happened in two other recent cases: a 2-year-old girl in Texas who died in May during chelation for lead poisoning and a woman from Oregon who died three years ago while receiving chelation for clogged arteries.
Dr. Brown said that in each case, the blood calcium level was below 5 milligrams. Normal is between 7 and 9.”
So, It is not just one person who died via chelation as some of the pro-chelation advocates claim.
Kev
I think Dr. Mary Jean Brown’s position is pretty logical, given her background. She’s stated as being an expert on chelation (I’ve no data to back up this statement) and as such ,she naturally would view chelation as a safe medical practice when carried out under a doctors supervision. I agree it’s surprising for her to say it’s Ok / harmless to administer it for off label use, when supervised, but I guess that is testament to her belief in what chelators do — mopping up heavy metals, and if none are present then they do nothing useful/harmful
The fact here is that the doctor administered the wrong drug to the child. This happens in medicine and is deemed either an accident or medical malpractice, depending on who wins the ensuing lawsuit. As for drug mixups – it’s human nature — people make bizare and random mistakes all the time in medicine, as in every walk of life. Doctors are falllible
Whether Abubakar should have been receiving the treatment is a separate, but important point.
Some licensed doctors believe it leads to improvements in the impairments that (from DSM 1V) define what we call autism. That is chelation has led to improvements in social interaction, communication, and a redutcion in stereotypical behaviour. There is empirical (some say anecdoctal) evidence to back this up, but there is no/little scientifically rigorous evidence.
The big propblem comes with the cure word. Most often it’s a lazy use of English, like the way the word “casue’ is often bandied around in pouplar reporting of medical issues. If your impairments reduce so that you no longer meet DSM 1V criteria, then you are no longer autistic/PDD, from a label point of view. You’ve not been cured, but you have lost your label. To many lay people that’s a cure, i.e they see improvement that they’d hoped for, but from a scienfic standpoint it’s not, it’s just a relabelling.
“Improve impairments to the point where one loses an autism label” doesn’t trip off the lips as easy as Defeat/Cure Autism Now.
I believe that the major goal of most parents of autistic childen is to reduce the impairments, through either just educational intervention or also biomedical. Parents are encouraged by physciatrist, doctors and educators to seek intervention to reduce these impairments. Perhaps this is wrong; I’m unclear as to what the neurodiversity movement feels about attempting to reduce the types of impairment that DSM 1V uses to categorize autism. Perhaps they don’t view them as impairments at all, but as gifts, but DSM 1V does view them as impairments, and it is against DSM 1V that parents are told to judge the success of any intervention.
Ian
This is basically what I posted to a Yahoo group on the subject of this news article:
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic3/edta.htm
Basically, almost no one should have Endrate in their toolbag, it’s very dangerous stuff. The reason why you or I can’t buy it in a do-it-yourself suicide kit, complete with
Endrate (disodium EDTA,) color co-ordinated IV bag, sterile saline, hypodermic syringe and lemon scented alcohol prep pads… is that only people with a high level of experience
with drugs and chemicals ought to have access to it.
One would think that people with access to this stuff, who can get it legally, would know how dangerous it is and definitely not give it to kids.
Endrate
Versinate
I really don’t believe that Kerry had bottles of each sitting next to each other on the shelf and accidently grabbed the wrong thing. I think he only ordered Endrate from his supplier (what’s his name Yasko’s partner was Kerry’s supplier and said he only sold Endrate- the killer stuff – to Kerry). So why would the supplier send him the bad stuff? Well, he says that the doc is supposed to take the disodium EDTA and mix it with some calcium if the doctor doesn’t order up the Calcium EDTA (like premixed). That sounds kind of weird, but anyway, that’s what the supplier says.
At any rate, to anyone who is slightly familiar with chemistry “disodium EDTA” and “calcium EDTA” are not easily confused. It’s like saying, “Mexican food” and “Chinese food” to someone who knows both, they aren’t going to mix them up.
Endrate and Versinate, do not sound that similar, either, and believe me, if I decided to become a chelationist tomorrow, you know on the side, sort of like Kerry took this up on the side of being an ear/nose/throat doc, I’d take a minute to memorize which was which.
This article makes the very point I have been making, Kerry made a mistake, a heinously gross inanely stupid mistake, but it wasn’t deliberate, not exactly… but he was chelating a kid who was not poisoned at all. That’s obvious. Kerry is an ear/nose/throat doctor, this is just incredible and it gets glossed over.
If a podiatrist kills a person whilst doing heart surgery on that person, who is going to be surprised by that? If a podiatrist kills a person whilst doing absolutely un-needed heart surgery, and it appears that the only reason that the podiatrist was convincing people he could do heart surgery is that the podiatrist wanted more money … wouldn’t the podiatrist be strung up by his toes?
Yeah, but in this case the patient/victim was a little black autistic kid from England ,with a funky foreign sounding name, so who cares if he was killed by ourtrageously extreme
carelessness on the part of a an ear/nose/throat doctor trying to expand his clientelle base?
No big deal, lets move on right?
And what about the little girl in Texas? Was she autistic and misdiagnosed as lead poisoned and it just hasn’t been in the news? You gotta wonder with all these parents sending off hair samples to mail order labs and swapping recipes and ideas on how to chelate kids on the Internet.
_”the fact here is that the doctor administered the wrong drug to the child. This happens in medicine and is deemed either an accident or medical malpractice, depending on who wins the ensuing lawsuit. As for drug mixups – it’s human nature—people make bizare and random mistakes all the time in medicine, as in every walk of life. Doctors are falllible”_
Indeed, this is all true. But we don’t know – including Dr Brown – that this was a mix up. We might strongly suspect but as none of us were there and Roy Kerry hasn’t explained what happened that day, none of us know whether it was purposeful choice or an accident. Lets not forget that teh chelation community were on the cusp recently of trying the very dangerous Gold Salt chelation on the recommendation of a journalist. An inquiry is necessary before anyone can say with any confidence what Roy Kerry’s reasons for using that particular form of EDTA were.
_”Some licensed doctors believe it leads to improvements in the impairments that (from DSM 1V) define what we call autism. That is chelation has led to improvements in social interaction, communication, and a redutcion in stereotypical behaviour. There is empirical (some say anecdoctal) evidence to back this up, but there is no/little scientifically rigorous evidence.”_
And more important than eficacy trials is the fact that there have been no safety trials. I find Dr Browns’ statement that chelation is harmless if administred properly to be questionable. Certainly people like American Heart Association have reported death and serious injury through its use.
How can anyone say without safety trials that something is safe? So little is known about the root and cause of autism that I find it odd to say the least that anyone can claim with any degree of confidence that anything that hasn’t undergone safety trials is ‘harmless’ – when did we all aquire this perfect knowledge of how autitics brains function on a chemical level?
The Diva blog article “what killed Abubakar” has links to information on warnings attached to disodium edta (Endrate),
here’s something I just found for calcium disordium EDTA (Versenate):
Package Insert for Calcium Disodium Versenate
(edetate calcium disodium injection, USP)
WARNINGS:
Calcium Disodium Versenate is capable of producing toxic effects which can be fatal. Lead encephalopathy is relatively rare in adults, but occurs more often in pediatric patients in whom it may be incipient and thus overlooked.
The mortality rate in pediatric patients has been high.
Patients with lead encephalopathy and cerebral edema may experience a lethal increase in intracranial pressure following, intravenous infusion; the intramuscular route is preferred for these patients.
In cases where the intravenous route is necessary, avoid rapid infusion. The dosage schedule should be followed and at no time should the recommended daily dose be exceeded.
DESCRIPTION:
Calcium Disodium Versenate (edetate calcium disodium injection, USP) is a sterile, injectable, chelating agent in con-centrated solution for intravenous infusion or intramuscular injection. Each 5 ml ampul contains 1000 mg of edetate calcium disodium (equivalent to 200 mg/ml) in water for injection. Chemically, this product is called [[N,N’-1,2-ethanediyl-bis[ N-(carboxymethyl)-glycinato]](4-)-N, N’,O,O’,O N ,ON ‘]-,disodium,hydrate, (OC-6-21)- Calciate(2-).
CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY:
The pharmacologic effects of edetate calcium disodium are due to the formation of chelates with divalent and trivalent metals. A stable chelate will form with any metal that has the ability to displace calcium from the molecule, a feature shared by lead, zinc, cadmium, manganese, iron and mercury. The amounts of manganese and iron mobilized are not significant. Copper1 is not mobilized and
mercury is unavailable for chelation because it is too tightly bound to body ligands or it is stored in inaccessible body compartments.
The excretion of calcium by the body is not increased following intravenous administration of edetate calcium disodium, but the excretion of zinc is considerably increased [1].
Edetate calcium disodium is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. In blood, all the drug is found in the plasma. Edetate calcium disodium does not appear to penetrate cells; it is distributed primarily in the extracellular fluid with only about 5% of the plasma concentration found in spinal fluid.
The half life of edetate calcium disodium is 20 to 60 minutes. It is excreted primarily by the kidney, with about 50% excreted in one hour and over 95% within 24 hours [2]. Almost none of the compound is metabolized. The primary source of lead chelated by Calcium Disodium Versenate is from bone; subsequently, soft-tissue lead is redistributed to bone when chelation is stopped [3,4]. There is also some reduction in kidney lead levels following chelation therapy. It has been shown in animals that following a single dose of Calcium Disodium Versenate urinary lead output increases, blood lead concentration decreases,*but brain lead is significantly increased due to internal redistribution of lead*
[5]. (See WARNINGS.) These data are in agreement with the recent results of others in experimental animals showing that after a five day course of treatment there is no net reduction in brain lead [6].
INDICATIONS AND USAGE:
Edetate calcium disodium is indicated for the reduction of blood levels and depot stores of lead in lead poisoning (acute and chronic) and lead encephalopathy, in both pediatric populations and adults. Chelation therapy should not replace effective measures to eliminate or reduce further exposure to lead.
CONTRAINDICATIONS:
Edetate calcium disodium should not be given during periods of anuria, nor to patients with active renal disease or hepatitis.
WARNINGS:
See boxed warning.
PRECAUTIONS:
General Precautions: Edetate calcium disodium may produce the same renal damage as lead poisoning, such as proteinuria and microscopic hematuria. Treatment-induced nephrotoxicity is dose-dependent and may be reduced by assuring adequate diuresis before therapy begins. Urine flow must be monitored throughout therapy which must be stopped if anuria or severe oliguria develop. The proximal tubule hydropic degeneration usually recovers upon cessation of therapy. Edetate calcium disodium must be used in reduced doses in patients with pre-existing mild renal disease. Patients should be monitored for cardiac rhythm irregularities and other ECG changes during intravenous therapy.
Information for patients: Patients should be instructed to immediately inform their physician if urine output stops for a period of 12 hours.
Laboratory tests: Urinalysis and urine sediment, renal and hepatic function and serum electrolyte levels should be checked before each course of therapy and then be monitored daily during therapy in severe cases, and in less serious cases after the second and fifth day of therapy. Therapy must be discontinued at the first sign of renal toxicity. The presence of large renal epithelial cells or increasing number of red blood cells in urinary sediment or greater proteinuria call for immediate stopping of edetate calcium disodium administration. Alkaline phosphatase values are frequently depressed (possibly due to decreased serum zinc levels), but return to normal within 48 hours after cessation of therapy. Elevated erythrocyte protoporphyrin levels (>35 mcg/dl of whole blood) indicate the need to perform a venous blood lead determination. If the whole blood lead concentration is between 25-55 mcg/dl a mobilization test can be considered.7,8 (See Diagnostic Test.) An elevation of urinary coproporphyrin (adults: >250 mcg/day; pediatric patients under 80 lbs: >75 mcg/day) and elevation of urinary delta aminolevulinic acid (ALA) (adults: >4 mg/day; pediatric patients: >3 mg/ m 2 /day) are associated with blood lead levels >40 mcg/dl. Urinary coproporphyrin may be falsely negative in terminal patients and in severely iron-depleted pediatric patients who are not regenerating heme.9 In growing pediatric patients long bone x-rays showing lead lines and abdominal x-rays showing radioopaque material in the abdomen may be of help in estimating the level of exposure to lead.
Drug Interactions: There is no known drug interference with standard clinical laboratory tests. Steroids enhance the renal toxicity of edetate calcium disodium in animals.7 Edetate calcium disodium interferes with the action of zinc insulin preparations by chelating the zinc.7 Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility: Long term animal studies have not been conducted with edetate calcium disodium to evaluate its carcinogenic potential, mutagenic potential or its effect on fertility.
from chelationwatch.org, orginally from the “big pharma” manufacturer, no doubt.
Ian said: but I guess that is testament to her belief in what chelators do—mopping up heavy metals, and if none are present then they do nothing useful/harmful
Ian, I’m not sure if you are speculating about her beliefs or if this is what you believe but no part of this statement is accurate. If we had such a drug, one that could find it’s way through a living organism, safely and selectively “mop up” heavy metals to be safely excreted, there would be no cause for concern. Unfortunately, that smart drug hasn’t been invented yet, but when (and if) it is invented (by a pharmaceutical company), I doubt it will be an effective treatment for autism.
Sorry — this was sloppy of me. I was speculating about her beliefs — based on her reported language. Obviously the mechanism of chelators is complex and not very heavily studied, particular where the patient is a child. I believe she was giving the party line of the CDC for the case of heavy metal poisioned patients; that it’s a safe treatment, where properly supervised. That would be to be expected — if your kid turns up at a clinic with a blood lead level through the roof and removal of likely exposures is deemed to be not having an effect, then the standard approach is to administer EDTA (DMSA is used for lower lead levels, since it’s not as effective a lead chelator I believe).
I would speculate she knows little about it’s off label use for 40 years as a heart treatment (I’m sure she doesn’t attend the same sort of conferences or publications where results of such treatment are reported) . I’d also speculate she has zero direct experience of the effect of chelation on people who don’t have heavy metals, but is using her knowledge of chelatoting mechanisms to project for such a situation. I’m not a toxicologist, so I don’t know whether she’s wrong or not. She did however say it, and given her job title at CDC, that must count for something. Do you believe she was misquoted or is simply wrong? If the latter then I guess we’ll see an inquiry soon on her, since you can’t get away with making wrong statements like this when you’re in a senior position at the CDC.
Kev,
You said
“none of us know whether it was purposeful choice or an accident”
Either way if it was purposeful choice or an accident, it’s medical malpractice. If a doctor decides on purpose to give you drug X instead of drug Y, because his brains scrambled that day and thinks drug X has the effect that drug Y has, and you die, that is a purposeful choice, but the wrong one and the patient is still dead. An accident, might be of the form where he asked for drugX but the IV nurse filled up the IV with drugY because his handwriting is so bad.
Either way you’re dead and your family, if you’re in the US will be suing the doctor.
ian
Kev,
“And more important than eficacy trials is the fact that there have been no safety trials. I find Dr Browns’ statement that chelation is harmless if administred properly to be questionable. Certainly people like American Heart Association have reported death and serious injury through its use.”
Welcome to the US and experimental doctoring! No matter what field of medicine you’re in, there is experimental off-label drug use going on all the time. Safety studies can’t exist initially, by the very nature of it’s off label use. Efficacy trials come first, but require lots of money. Eventually, safety studies are done by pharmaceutical companies, if the perceived potential revenue stream looks sufficient (that’s not a put-down for drug companies — they are businesses first and formeost, and act acordingly). Thalidomide, for one springs to mind, as a drug that’s now been remarketed for use in treating a complication of leprosy ( completely separate effect from its sedating effect).
Perhaps one day, someone (a pharmaceutical company?) will take the anedoctal evidence of effocacy of EDTA on reducing impairment in children with autism, and begin safety trials. In the meantime, as in other areas of experimental medicine, doctors will supervise the off-label use of EDTA. Such doctors don’t wait for the results of safety trials to be in. If they have access to money they will start efficacy trials, if not they will follow their conscience and treat. Any area where the patients problems are pressing (time being pressing for development disorders or for say degenerative diseases) then doctors will experiment. That’s the nature of medicine, and has lead to the development of breakthrough treatments.
Ian
The underlying premise that children would be helped by IV EDTA is silly.
It’s one thing to have a reason to think something might help a child and risk the health of a few of them (hundreds…) for trials, but there has to be some kind of logical underpinning, they need some KIND of proposed mechanism other than “40% get better” because in autism, more so than any other condition I know of, people get suddenly better and suddenly worse and they react easily to the hopefulness/kindness/positiveness of people around them.
If you give a group of autistic kids yoga lessons or yogurt baths, 40% of them, at least will get “better”. This shows up in double blind placebo controlled studies and it just so happens that Lovaas claimed 40% of his carefully selected group became “indistinguishable” from their peers… this was before chelation became “the hot thing.”
Chelating is inherently dangerous because of the fact that you can’t send in a chemical that can selectively aim for one metal or mineral. Chelators have things that they are better at chelating, but none of them, to my knowledge gets “just lead” or “just cadmium” .
All the main chelators available are sort of “old fashoined”. Chemically it is possible to develop a “rational chelator” that would do a better job of chelating people who are truly poisoned, but I’d bet there are basically NO autistic kids who are poisoned with “heavy metals”, but that their parents have been duped into thinking that they have been. The commercial labs are notorious for giving misleading or poor results to their customers. You can’t just cast that aside, it’s true.
As far as I can see, no Institutional Review Board would ever approve of research into good chelators for kids based on the reports of commerical labs.
Funny thing, when regular pediatricians have looked for these metals in autistic kids, they don’t find them. There was a Dr. Joe Stegman, who worked with autistic kids who was interviewed in an expose a tv news program did on Buttar.
http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/stories/wcnc-0714-ad-autism.a7fa1a7b.html
He said, the parents asked him to test the kids and he had never found one that was poisoned. However (DAN!) doctors who use the commercial labs have reported (maybe they all say it) that they’ve never seen an autistic kid who wasn’t poisoned. Anju Usman comes to mind. She was one of Abubakar’s doctors. Well, ain’t that handy???
I wonder if Doctors’ Data in it’s entire history has ever responded to an initial test with results that said the person had no problems with any heavy metals.
No one questions whence their red yellow and green levels come.
If you think autistic kids are “poor excretors” of mercury you have been sold a bill of goods.
http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2005/12/dr-amy-holmes-was-just-trying-to-help.html
This is part of a blog entry I did called, “ratbags and slimeballs” It’s the letter that Kerry’s supplier of disodium edta sent out to his fans and customers.
—
Dr. Gary Gordon appears to claim he was the supplier of EDTA to Dr. Kerry, the man who seems to have killed Abubakar Tariq Nadama. Gordon looks like he is trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the death.
He says the kind of EDTA that Kerry ordered from him was “disodium EDTA”, which is the kind that would be most likely to stop a child’s heart if give in an “IV push”.
One thing about ratbags and slimeballs they don’t want to take the fall for each other.
—-
Dear Health Care Professionals:
You may soon read and hear the kind of hysteria and negative press that I expected to see, but it will get FAR WORSE before it gets better. As of this moment, I can only assume that there must have been a substantial deviation from the standard procedures that I, and all of you, have established for the safe administration of Calcium EDTA. As incredible as
it may seem to those of you belonging to this discussion group,
the possibility exists that the child was treated with Disodium EDTA administered by IV Push.
I am forced to consider this unfortunate explanation
unless there was some major undiagnosed illness in the child that no one suspected,
such as a major heart defect or perhaps an aneurism that ruptured at the
exact time the patient was receiving the IV Push of Calcium EDTA.
However, the autopsy has been completed and the results were inconclusive so that they have ordered additional tests, which may take up to 5 months to complete.
This means that there is no obvious explanation for the death of this child.
My fear is that if someone who is not knowledgeable in chelation
and has not learned that this is complex chemistry
assumes, for example, that all that they have to do to provide magnesium EDTA or Calcium EDTA
is just add either magnesium or calcium to a syringe containing Disodium EDTA.
We could have a serious problem because Disodium EDTA has a black box warning about rapid administration to children and simply adding something like Calcium or Magnesium does not fully convert Disodium EDTA to Calcium EDTA.
Then there is also a problem with discomfort,
if you tried to give yourself an IV push of diluted Disodium EDTA
the pain could be extreme
so you might wind up increasing the dose of Lidocaine
and again we can get into problems with the heart
if too much of a “caine” if given intravenously.
So let’s look at the big picture, there are NO DEATHS occurring when EDTA, either calcium or Disodium are PROPERLY administered. Now the media will try to make chelation out to be fraudulent and the tests that we do to measure lead etc as being meaningless. Amazingly they will bring out Quack buster Barrett who with a little more effort we may be able to one day put behind bars for his lies and incompetence.
Thus I have to conclude some error in rate of administration, dosage, method of preparation probably occurred; in fact, I now believe this is most likely rather than administering the correct drug, Calcium EDTA, intravenously, which even in children is safe and effective.
Doctors who have been providing this treatment to children can hardly stop talking about the remarkable successes they have been witnessing with children responding far more rapidly than we could ever do with just the oral Calcium EDTA that I have been advocating for so long.
We know that worldwide sales of all forms of EDTA have been steadily increasing and that based on logical calculations it appears that well over 10 million patients have been safely treated with either Calcium or Disodium EDTA over the past 32+ years without a single documented fatality, as long as the established protocols were followed. All the evidence to date that EDTA is perhaps the safest therapy offered in medicine, outside of placebos.
To my knowledge, EDTA has been safely administered for nearly 50 years with the only deaths occurring in the beginning, with terminal cancer patients suffering uncontrolled hypercalcemia where inappropriate doses of Disodium EDTA were administered by rapid infusion to patients with known compromised renal status.
With the extensive proof now existing that everyone today has nearly 1000 times too much lead in their bones and Harvard publishing that this bone lead will compromise vision there can be no argument that we all have some heavy metal toxicity. Then once we conclude that government cannot stop the mercury, cadmium, lead etc from going in the air, and thus into everyone anywhere on earth, then it becomes a matter of personal choice, live with these heavy metals or remove them. Oral chelation is clearly necessary since bone lead will take 10 years to turn over for the average adult, but some of us want results NOW. Nothing is as effective as the 147 fold increase in lead excretion over base line that IV Calcium EDTA, PROPERLY FORMULATED, was documented to induce by Doctors Data with the help of Dr Whitaker’s staff.
Thus I must extend my sympathy to the family of the deceased 5-year-old boy from Nigeria whose brave mother came to the Pittsburgh area from the United Kingdom to seek treatment for her autistic child. She was seeing clear improvements in her son. This was the third infusion he had received. He apparently had a cardiac arrest and was unable to be resuscitated immediately following this third infusion of what I fear was not Calcium EDTA, which is the ONLY form of EDTA that I have advocated for the
exciting
rapid infusion
technique.
I hope those who have experience with it in their practice are NOT GOING TO STOP USING it that you have the “rest of the story”, as best as we can establish it at this time.
Please understand that the involved doctors
cannot be expected to admit anything on advice of their attorneys.
I have only checked to see if they have ever purchased Calcium EDTA
and found the answer was
?no??
leading me to compose this email
in an attempt to diminish the harm
that the media will do to everyone who otherwise could have been receiving oral and or IV chelation and will now be afraid.
This email may be copied and handed to your patients in an effort to meet the need for a fully informed consent.
Sincerely,
Garry F. Gordon MD, DO, MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
http://www.gordonresearch.com
Ms Clark
You believe “the underlying premise that children would be helped by IV EDTA is silly”. Some (most) doctors agree with, other well qualified doctors don”t (plus some other less qualified doctors who believe/trust the latter group of doctors) Of the ones that don’t think that EDTA could have a positive effect some try out EDTA, and a few do IV EDTA. I’m not a doctor, but this argument seems to fall into the he says / she says category.
Likewise the commercial labs argument – -some doctors trust the results, other don’t. I’ve actually seen results from two labs (one is Doctors Data) that show nothing – repeatedly – even with a challenge. I can’t keep up with the arguments against these labs: is it that people think they’re just con artists, in which case a local beter Business Bureau investigation could shut them down in a week, or is the problem that their quality control is off. I’m guessing their equipment isn’t that expensive, such that there’s probably a university lab somewhere that could measure down to parts per billion and check the results. If their quality control is off, then again a lawsuit/small claims court could be used to get your money back. I’m surpised this hasn’t happened to Doctors Data, given the amount of negative press they get, unless people have tried and failed.
Also I don’t know whether you were being facetious, but I disagree with the statement ” you give a group of autistic kids yoga lessons or yogurt baths, 40% of them, at least will get “betterâ€. Perhaps we don’t disagree, perhaps it’s merely a matter of semantics. If by better, you mean “as reported by the parents”, or “as reported by the child” then perhaps you’re right. If you mean, as reported by professional pyschiatrists using DSM 1V clasifications, then I thing you are wrong. If you were right then I believe we’d see e.g. yoga on the Early Intervention program in every state, because it’s a damn site cheaper than one-on-one ABA, and it appears the desire to short change special needs kids is pretty high on agenda of most states these days (the old line about tight budgets really is pathethic)
Ms Clark
Sorry, but you can’t just make a statement like “Chelating is inherently dangerous”. Ok, I’ll return with surgery is inherently dangerous. True but equally bollocks – I don’t se that slogan on the walls at my local hospital. Chelation, like surgery is fine if carried out well. Carried out badly, it can hurt you. It’d be better to pursue the line of “chelating to reduce the impairements assocaited with autism ” is not substantiated by double blind, placebo studies in peer revieded journals. You’re not going to get support from mainstream doctors, if you trot out such inscientific statements . Mainstream doctors support on-label chelation for given symptoms (toxic metals showing up in blood). I don’t understand the need to rubbish chelation, unless either it’s simply a tactic to put off parents from chelating (it’s highly effective I can assure you!) their autistic children, or you’ve have a personal family tragedy involving chelation. If the latter, then I’m sorry to hear it. If the former, then I assume you must be passionate about parents not chelating – why? Why is that different from some people (GR as a group springs to mind) being passionate for chelating. Is it simply that you’re right and they’re wrong?
Ian
Hi Ian, I’d just like to say that I bet that most surgery isn’t elective (got no data to back that up). That could be the reason why you don’t see signs about it being inherently dangerous.
I read that Ms. Clark has huge issues with chelation to cure autism, not chelation to help a painter who was chronically poisoned with lead.
Hear, hear, BC.
Even in cases where chelation is truly indicated, it is still a risky procedure, and therefore has to be deal with as a risk-benefit analysis before being used: even with the poisoning for which it is being considered, is the chelation substance likely to do more damage than the poison is likely to. And in some cases it will.
As for the whole “autism=mercury poisoning” thing, which is how the most unscrupulous medics in the world have gotten this thing off the ground, there is bugger all evidence of autism being any sort of form of mercury poisoning… which is why at least one child has died of chelation. He didn’t die of autism… that doesn’t kill. People kill. And, when one strips away all the fancy talk of medical error and blah-di-blah, that is what happened to young Abubakar: somebody killed him. With an unproven, unsafe and inappropriate medication for what it was being used for.
His parents would, had he been truly lead-poisoned, have been able to get that treated effectively in the National Health Service in Britain. They wanted a cure for his autism, and were willing to take a risk that nobody should take with the child they had become parents to. So, they took him to America… corporate America, and now he is dead, and some shitty, unethical medical practitioner is now a lot richer for having killed that child.
I can see why MsC doesn’t like chelation for autism. I understand that she has no issue against it for its proper use: lead poisoning.
About time the chelationist doctors in the autism field were stopped from doing this. It is sickening to see the bastards carrying on as if nothing happened. And I truly feel that my use of language here is entirely appropriate.
They’re bastards. The lot of them.
From what I have read about chelation in peer reviewed literature, children who are lead poisoned are not always chelated because of the dangers associated with the uncontrolled or relatively uncontrolled shifting of minerals and metals around in the body.
That is what I mean by chelation is inherently dangerous.
There are scientists who post here, so perhaps one or more will correct me if I have something inaccurate here…
The thing about medicine is if it actually does something there’s potential for harm. Knowing this, what you do is you balance the dangers inherent in the treatment versus the dangers inherent in not doing anything or in comparison to another treatment.
If the kid is mercury poisoned, number one, you don’t use EDTA, there’s no reason to. If the kid is lead poisoned you don’t use EDTA, cuz there’s DMSA that works better and has fewer risks. If the kid is poisoned *sometimes* you don’t chelate becauses it’s actually more risky to chelate than to leave the metals in place and let them get cleared naturally.
If the kid for some reason is in a state of toxic overload on calcium, then by golly you whip out the IV EDTA and dose him or her in some sort of rational manner, BUT as Orac pointed out on his blog, you have a crash cart on hand in case the kid’s heart stops.
I don’t know if any child has ever had a toxic overload of calcium, though…
The package insert on *calcium disodium EDTA* mentions a problem with kids dying if they have lead poisoning and they are chelated with calcium disordium EDTA… the information is in the comment section of the blog entry that has the spinning models of the disodium EDTA on the Diva blog.
I have been suggesting strongly that parents who use commercial labs test them out. Dr. Laidler used to believe in the whole DAN! business, he used to be a DAN! doctor, maybe in some people’s view he was THE DAN! doctor at one point… he decided to test out Doctor’s Data. He sent 2 samples of mercury free false urine (distilled water and creatinine) in cups from Doctor’s Data, to them. The results came back as both high in mercury. Dr. Laidler pointed out that in real labs they take the platic cups and wash them with a special solution to remove the mercury on the surface of the plastic that can contaminate the sample.
Dr. Laidler says he believes that the false mercury readings came from using the cups that hadn’t been prepared properly.
I have suggested various scenarios by which parents can test out the labs, but to my knowledge no one has done it. I can’t afford to buy 2 test kits and people would say I was lying if I reported bad readings. But people can test this out for themselves, if you are chelating your kid and the doctor refuses to send the urine to a local lab at a hospital or associated with a clinic, why is that?
Why are all the flakes using the same 3 or 4 labs? This doesn’t ring warning bells to you?
Fine. If it doesn’t ring warning bells to you, then go for it. Trust the DAN! docs and trust their mail order labs. It’s your kid’s health on the line, not my kid’s.
There was a paper a few years ago that was peer reviewed it was from an agency in California and it found serious errors in the results from mail order labs on hair analysis. Its not that agencies don’t ever double check the accuracy of these labs, its that they don’t do it often enough.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11150111&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum
One of the labs that this study found was unreliable for hair testing is one of the big 3 used by the mercury parents. I know this because the lead author of this paper told me so.
Also, no one in legitimate medicine EVER does a provoked metals test to figure out if a person is poisoned. They test the blood or urine without provoking the metals with a chelator. Quacks use provoked tests and then compare the provoked results with the levels that legit docs are using for unprovoked samples. There are other dodgey things that commercial labs do, but the thing is if you love the labs and you love what they are doing for you, it won’t matter what I say, because as far as you are concerned, you’ve got it all figured out.
“Because mercury is ubiquitous, the body reaches a steady state in which tiny amounts are absorbed and excreted. Thus, it is common to find mercury in people’s urine. Mercury can also be found in the blood, because this is the major medium for transporting materials around the body. Large-scale population studies have shown that the general population has urine-mercury levels below 10 micrograms/liter. Industrial workers, and dentists, who have regular exposure to mercury vapor also have low values. Because urine-mercury levels represent the chronic, steady state, exposure to the body of mercury, they are fairly reliable indicators of past exposure, since they tend to even out the peaks and valleys of transient rises and falls in the blood level. Urine measurements should be performed on the first urine specimen of the day, which would be the most concentrated, or (preferably) on a 24-hour urine specimen.
Urine mercury levels can be artificially raised by administering a mercury scavenger (chelating agent) such as DMPS or DMSA, which collect the small amounts of mercury from the body, concentrate them, and then force them to be excreted. In other words, mercury that normally recirculates within the body is now bound and excreted. The urine level under such circumstances is artificially raised above the steady-state level. A study of urine mercury levels in people given DMSA or a placebo has found no association between the mercury levels and the number of dental amalgam surfaces [1]. The use of a chelating agent before testing—”provoked testing”—should be considered a scam. Anyone told that a urine-mercury level produced after taking DMPS represents a toxic state is being misled.
In February 2005, the State of Cennecticut obtained a consent order barring psychiatrist Robban Sica, M.D., from using provoked testing to diagnose “heavy metal toxicity.” [2] It would be good if all state licensing boards did the same.”
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/mercurytests.html
The thing is, that top to bottom the mercury autism hysteria is a big scam with a few sincere people sucked into it. There has been no epidemic. Without the epidemic, why suspect mercury? What else are the kids with autism exposed to? tons and tons of stuff. It’s the freaked out antivaxers who are leading this bunch around by the nose, essentially. Without Wakefield’s hype-othesis introducting parents of autistic kids to the tin-foil hat world of psychotic antivaxers, there would be no one looking at mercury. Folks would be looking at causes that are more logical or perhaps just another cause hyped to the max.
Quacks jumped in on this and started to promote chelation for autism because chelation is a long-time quack favorite an they offer it for everything else, why not autism?
I predict that if folks are as stubbornly in love with chelation as the mercury parents seem to that more children will die of chelation by the end of 2006. Lets hope that I’m wrong.
If you think that all the parents will stick with “gentle” chelators think again, the quacks want to offer the extra strength chelators to parents so they can charge more. The parents are told essentially, “look, it’s up to you, we can cure your kid in 6 weeks with IV or in 1 to 2 years with the lotion…”
http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2005/12/take-your-pill-sugar.html
Autistic kids get “better” when people invest hope in them, as opposed to when people give up home in them. They also get “better” when their parents want to think that they are getting better, they also get better just because they are growing up every day. Lovaas therapy has been hyped to the max. If the school districts ever figure out how unscientific the studies were that proved that he could “cure” 40% of the kids with dog training (sorry, I realize not everyone thinks of ABA as dog training, but it’s dog training also known as operant conditioning), if the school districts figure out that it’s a lie, they’ll stop paying for it. Maybe they’d pay for something that has some real science to back it up, even. Though, school districts mostly just wish handicapped kids would go away.
I made the point in my post that we really know next to nothing about how a chemical process such as chelation might affect autistic children. I don’t accept Dr Browns naked assertion that it is intrinsically harmless.
Today I read an abstract that is a general ‘catch up’ on the state of our genetic knowledge of autism. It contains the following:
_”This review focuses on recent advances in the in vivo study of the whole brain in idiopathic autism…..Diffuse abnormalities of brain chemical concentrations, are…found. Abnormalities of ….brain chemistry…are evident by early childhood…. (c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.”_
Autistic people have differing neurochemical makeup. Chelation is a chemical process. For that reason alone, I believe chelation is always potentially dangerous to autistic people. However, we won’t know for sure until someone does some safety trials. Eficacy trials are important, yes, but safety trials are *vital*.
Ian said: I’m not a toxicologist, so I don’t know whether she’s wrong or not. She did however say it, and given her job title at CDC, that must count for something. Do you believe she was misquoted or is simply wrong?
I don’t think she is necessarily wrong but when you paraphrase; “what chelators do—mopping up heavy metals, and if none are present then they do nothing useful/harmful” gives the impression that chelators somehow bind only toxic elements and have no physiological effects in the absence of these toxic metals. By that logic I could take a handful of Tylenol® everyday and it won’t matter unless I have a headache.
Here’s something to consider:
Toxicol Sci. 2006 Jan 18;
Dithiol Compounds at Low Concentrations Increase Arsenite Toxicity.
Jan KY, Wang TC, Ramanathan B, Gurr JR.
Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan, ROC.
Inorganic trivalent arsenicals are vicinal thiol-reacting agents, and dithiothreitol (DTT) is a well-known dithiol agent. Interestingly, both decreasing and increasing effects of DTT on arsenic trioxide-induced apoptosis have been reported. We now provide data to show that at high concentrations, DTT, dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), and dimercaptopropanesulfonic acid (DMPS) decreased arsenic trioxide-induced apoptosis in NB4 cells, a human promyelocytic leukemia cell line. In contrast, at low concentrations DTT, DMSA, and DMPS increased the arsenic trioxide-induced apoptosis. DTT at a high concentration (3 mM) decreased whereas at a low concentration (0.1 mM) it increased the cell growth inhibition of arsenic trioxide, methylarsonous acid (MMA(III)), and dimethylarsinous acid (DMA(III)) in NB4 cells. DMSA and DMPS are currently used as antidotes for acute arsenic poisoning. These 2 dithiol compounds also show an inverse-hormetic effect on arsenic toxicity in terms of DNA damage, micronucleus induction, apoptosis, and colony formation in experiments using human epithelial cell lines derived from arsenic target tissues such as the kidney and bladder. With the oral administration of dithiols, the concentrations of these dithiol compounds in the human body are likely to be low. Therefore, the present results suggest the necessity of reevaluating the therapeutic effect of these dithiol compounds for arsenic poisoning.
Hi Kev
The same point you presented in your post is What make me think that we know nothing really about how vaccines and environmental insult in general affects autistic people, born autistics because of genetics. And, in the same way , I can say that what I concerned about relating to autistics, is efficacy and safety of vaccines and other medical procedures-anesthesia? antibiotics?, other, including chelation- because they are different from birth. So I repeat my question What is the potential of harm of vaccines, antibiotics without care, etc in ASD?
There are published manuscripts about chelation in poisoned children – non-autistics- and it seems that oral is safer than IV, but any procedure done improperly is unsafe, even oral and safety of these both methods properly done depends of the opinions.The issue of efficacy is another point. Oral chelation seems safe, depending on the heavy metal, the chelator, dosing and proper procedure, as usual and the degree of the poisoning and the impact at an individual level. Efficiency I think is related more to improvement obtained and not about so much is excreted, although the objective is to excrete as much as you can.
Mrs Clark. I am not a doctor and my knowledge about the topic of heavy metal poisoning come from my personal research about so is related to the literature available to me and is a personal opinion, only. From what I read, in some cases, beyond mercury and with no challenge test present, Pb, Al, Cd, As, Ni and others have been detected in ASD children (hair, blood, etc). . I also think that the opinion of a serious toxicologist doctor with experience in the treatment of people poisoned with HM would be of high help to understand the safety and efficiency of applied procedures and chelators. Unfortunately I couldn find such doctor in my country.
Personally I have issues with all of the most used chelators: DMPS, DMSA, EDTA, BAL. But we tend to overprotect our children so as a parent my personal feelings affect my view of IV procedures for anything and I am extremely conservative. Also personally I have issues with IV chelation, but this is different to say that ALL chelation is bad or ALways will produce harm or ALL IV chelation is bad or harmful so I sustain my words, especially in the interpretation. I am being honest with you. I respect other parents decission and I think that we must have the most wide safe options available when you have HM poisoning confirmed. The selection of these procedures depends on the parents and the doctor they choose. And here is the point. The doctors, again.
About labs selection and tests. I think that this depends on personal options and personal experiences, especially depending the info you have available and the labs you use.
Besides tests and procedure I am interested on the idea underlying, that is the root of all. Under the assumption than Hg/Al has not be excreted, being sequestered in tissues in SOME ASD children -please let me present the idea as a fact for now-you will not find Hg in urine, blood, hair or FS upon testing under normal conditions (in the sense of unchanged conditions in diet, supplementation, etc). So I wonder, who is designing a study to demonstrate that this is not so in the case of Hg at least in ASD? If you use a test that , by definition of the subyacent problem, will give you no information you will find nothing “abnormal”, even if the poisoning exists because it is not shown, because the heavy metal is not available to the fluids /biological material you test. BTW, again let me present the idea as real-nobody published a manuscript demonstrating that this is not so, nobody published a manuscript demonstrating that this is so, so it is not proven by published science neither the positive neither the negative BUT there are a lot of so called anecdotical evidence. If the excretion of metals is hindered ( because of genetics or combination of genetics with environmental insult and epigenetics in some ASD children) you can find heavy metal poisoning ( supposed Hg and Al from vaccines and other sources and others by bioaccumulation:Pb, Cd, As, etc) and also accumulation of essential metals than can become toxic (Cu, Fe) because of the particular pathways that the body has to rid off metals that are not totally understood. Also we have the possibility of unknown biochemical imbalances affecting the excretion. If ASD children are different from birth and we have all kind of imbalances/differences, even unknown today, this is a possibility that must be researched with care.
In Wilson disease Cu is accumulated.Obviously, ASD is not Wilson, I am focusing in the idea of imbalances that produce accumulation.
You can find here a manuscript about the complexity of the issue
Environ Health Perspect. 2002 Oct;110 Suppl 5:689-94.
http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1241226&blobtype=pdf
Transport of toxic metals by molecular mimicry.
Ballatori N.
Who has researched biochemical imbalances-genetic or adquired- that can produce essential or toxic metals accumulation in ASD with these ideas in mind? There is some (work of Dr James and others) but we need more studies related to genetics and epigenetics, also. Recent manuscripts (2005, 2006) present some evidence on relation of genetics to Hg impact, relating CPOX4 (coproporphyrinogen oxidase) and BNDF polymorphisms with increased susceptibility to Hg I included in Kev´s forum ( from Echeverria et al of Dec 2005). In this sense, there are other tests that can be related to heavy metal poisoning, for example particular forms of porphyrins in urine and other biochemical parameters that after careful analysis can help to diagnosis a particular kind of poisoning, for me and under the analysis of several of the information available.
Again, what doctor, after an Autism diagnoses and after testing for HM with normal values, think in the possibility I present above or look for not so obvious signals of heavy metal poisoning-prophyrins in urine for example, other biochemical imbalances? Before any procedure of chelation the poisoning must be detected for sure bECAUSE CHELATION IS A TREATMENT FOR HM POISONING. So you need not only accurate testing, but also a test that is done taking into account the subyacent physiology of the problem, considering the biochemistry of ASD children, that is far to be known. But if you deny the possibility I presented above? you find nothing.
I agree with the confussion and the way many unescrupulous people USE unconfirmed results to make money. BUT this is different to deny that there can be SOME truth, that needs further research and validation.Science begins with observation or anecdotal evidence. And there is plenty of sum ups of anecdotal evidence of improvement upon biomedical treatment. Even the contribution of the placebo effect needs to be considered in these improvements but when you have a correlation with changes in biochemical parameters the improvement can be the result of several factors, including emotionals.
What if there are many genetic polymorphisms that made our children weak to deal with xenobiotics? What if they are not KNOWN today (the exact ones)?
Because of the same reasons I think that xenobiotics and environmental insult provoke harm in ASD children I think that a lot of care in proper procedures of any medical procedure done to ASD children must be considered.
My question- and therefore is a personal attitude- for any procedure is
If there is potential of harm in healthy people how much is the potential of harm in ASD people?
and therefore you must done the procedure the most safe posslble available.
MarÃa Luján
Sorry I wanted to say
I agree with you in that the situation today present is confussion and disagree profoundly with the way many unescrupulous people USE unconfirmed results to make money. I agree that this is a common situation.
I noticed that the meaning was NOT the one I wanted to present. I apologize. I hope you undertood me well.
MarÃa Luján
I think many here are not aware of how mercury poisoning is usually “diagnosed” by hair tests. The link is here
http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/HOW_TO_hair_test.html#counting_rules
If you read this, you will see that they say:
“A PERSON WHO IS MERCURY TOXIC will usually (in most cases) have a NORMAL reading for mercury on tests of hair or blood or urine or feces. You cannot go by that. ”
and
“To be just slightly more technical about it, mercury poisoning usually causes impaired “mineral transport”. Mineral transport is the ability of cells to pull minerals into themselves and pump minerals out of themselves selectively.
If mineral transport is normal then someone with too much mercury will have high hair mercury levels. This happens with about 1 person in 10 who have a mercury problem. This person will have a HIGH reading for mercury. In this case, it is easy to see they have a problem with mercury. These people have normal mineral transport, and can move mercury from the large pool in the body into the hair. For the other 9 people who are mercury toxic, it is harder to figure out if they have a problem or not. The normal level of mercury present in their hair could mean they don’t have much mercury in their body (they are okay), or it could mean they have impaired mineral transport due to mercury poisoning, and that is why there is little mercury in their hair.
Since mercury impairs mineral transport, examining hair for the level of many minerals lets us determine if mercury has left its signature in the hair’s biochemistry even if the mercury itself doesn’t show up. ”
If you read further, you will see that they add up the values of a bunch of other elements, and somehow, that is supposed to tell you if you are mercury toxic. I am not aware of any peer-reviewed science suggesting that any of the above statements are reasonable, let alone well accepted.
And one more thing. Mercury parents will claim that Tariq had lead poisoning. Instead, I think the following scenario is more likely to be what happened. I’ve read this scenario many times. A child is chelated with oral DMSA, often for several years. The lab tests do not show that any mercury is coming out. But because autism MUST be caused by mercury poisoning, it must be that other metals need to be removed before the mercury can be “pulled”. Many parents believe, because they have been told by their doctor, that you have to get the lead out before you can pull that bad mercury. That’s where the asssumption is made that they child must be lead poisoned. I doubt that any blood tests were used to prove that.
In some ways it was neither “drug error” nor “chelation therapy”. Would it not be more appropriate for the newspaper headline to state: “Chelating Agent Killed Boy”
/may he RIP
A drug error is mixing up, say, Zantac with Xanax. In this case, Endrate is a chelating agent, there is no way around that and Endrate is what was used.
Hi Jennifer
I agree with you than Hg poisoning can not be “diagnosed” by hair test ONLY. In my personal opinion, I think that hair analysis is of limited use but can give some clues. But if you read published science, it can be used as a clue for not only heavy metal poisoning. If you are interested I can share with you the information I have about what kind of tests are available to confirm heavy metal poisoning in mainstreamed medicine (MANY, I assure you). Please contact me.
An example of a recent published paper
Biol Trace Elem Res. 2003 May;92(2):97-104.
Studies of five microelement contents in human serum, hair, and fingernails correlated with aged hypertension and coronary heart disease.
Tang YR, Zhang SQ, Xiong Y, Zhao Y, Fu H, Zhang HP, Xiong KM.
College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 430072 Wuhan Hubei, China.
Using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), five microelements in human serum, hair, and fingernails of aged hypertension, coronary heart disease (diseased group) and aged health control (healthy group) were detected. Results of the t-test are as follows: The iron, zinc, and cadmium contents and Zn/Cu (mol/mol) ratio of the diseased group were significantly higher than that of the healthy group in serum (p
I do not know why the post was cut, I did the usual.
Well, the continuation
(p
It’s the (p
Maria,
I must take a historical view of all of this.
No one would be perseverating on all the arcane possiblities of mercury having an impact on autism if:
Dr. Wakefield hadn’t entirely wrongly pointed a finger at vaccines as a cause for autism
and then
Dr. Bradstreet hand’t taken after Wakefield’s ideas and promoted them to the increase of his own status as a demigod and pushing him up a tax bracket or three
and then
the orginal mercury parents hadn’t gone after Bradstreet and Wakefield in a cult following manner and because they were sure it was a vaccine that had made their children autistic — children who would have been autistic even without a vaccine and who all are still autistic as much as they ever were after years of “cures”… and if these same orginial parents hadn’t “drunk the antivax Kool-aid” and started to suspect that all vaccines were bad all the time…
and then
if they hadn’t decided that anything that disproved their wild-eyed suspicions that vaccines cause autism was part of the “great worldwide conspiracy to protect manufacturers of thimerosal and the vaccine programs which are purely
SATANIC”
and then if they hadn’t had enough money to do extensive PR work in the media (such as getting PR man David Kirby on board) and if they hadn’t been so afraid of people finding out that they had “bad genes” and felt the need to point the finger at an outside SATANIC force
No one would be looking at mercury now.
Autistic kids have heavy metals and toxins in them, but at no higher rate than normal kids. This is what the bulk of science has shown. This is what the stinking Amy Holmes, Blaxill, Haley paper showed, it’s just that they deliberately twisted the meaning of the data to show that the opposite thing was true. OR Doctors’ Data lab that did the testing on that baby hair is just thoroughly corrupt OR the samples were tampered with in some way OR someone just made up the numbers for the heck of it
Autistic kids have NOT been shown to be particularly sensitive to heavy metals. This is a lie. Kids who get vaxed are NOT more likely to get autism.
The whole “let’s look at vaccines, let’s look at metals” is bogus and distracts people from looking at more promising areas of research.
Prenatal exposure to stuff is FAR more likely to cause autism than antenatal exposure.
If everyone want’s to get all up in arms over chemicals causing atuism they should start with alcohol and pesticides, terbutaline (a drug that seems to be used by a significant number of moms who later had autistic kids )and flame retardants. START with those, rule those out first. Viral infections, like rubella very early in pregnancy and newborn encephalitis are associated with autism. I guess, so far they don’t know what causes it, but in Australia, newborn encephalitis it is significantly associated with ASDs. they don’t get the Hep B vaccine in Australia, at birth, according to Alyric.
The labs have a history of bad acting.
Just like used car salesman are KNOWN to be liars, as a group, the commercial labs are KNOWN to be dicey. There’s no reason for all these parents to use them, and they are absolutely constrained by DAN! docs in almost all cases, from what I hear, to use the mail order labs.
Dr. Mielke must have privileges to use local labs, she has an MD she’s a psychiatrist. BUT she is setting up a room in her office suite to collect samples to be sent off to Doctor’s Data lab, presumably, since she is JB Handley’s doctor and his kid’s lab results are from DD.
The smell of corruption is rank all around DAN! I refuse to ignore that stench. They lie, they manipulate, they fudge the facts.
Real scientists are making headway in understanding autism, and oddly enough they make headway in treating autistic children without drinking the antivax Koolaid.
Dr. Bauman has helped kids by focusing on the pain they may be experiencing and not able to communicate. she is able to help them without chelating them, and without giving them antibiotics for imaginary gut infections.
The fact that autisic kids can get better without chelation or spinal taps looking for measles tells me alot.
There is NO reason to link autism with heavy metal toxicity.
There is no reason to trust a mail-order lab, especially when using provoked tests.
There is no reason to think that autistic kids are “poor excretors” of metals.
This is all part of the hysteria brought on by a small group of parents who refused to accept that they got “stuck with” kids that weren’t normal.
If you want to follow their beliefs, Maria, that’s fine with me.
Chelating your son in any manner will not make him less autistic. There’s no reason at all to believe that.
I could tell you that taking him to Australia and have a Vietnamese shaman pray over him would improve his autism for sure. He’d be just as likely to improve as he would be with chelation.
If you want to randomly move metals and minerals around in his body and move some of them out of his body just to see if it would make him feel better, be my guest. I won’t try to stop you.
B-)
Maria,
My point is not that hair testing is necessarily useless. My point is that the mercury parents do not just look at the mercury level in the hair. They make a convoluted, and (in my view) unreasonable argument that even if there are normal mercury levels in the hair, this means that there is still a good chance that the child is mercury poisoned.
Kev,
Did you realize that is what JB Handley was offering you when he offered to have your child’s hair tested? He wasn’t just going to make a conclusion based on the actual mercury level in the hair sample – he was going to make a complex argument based on “mineral transport”. I have a feeling that under this set of counting rules, almost everyone’s hair test would indicate mercury poisoning.
Mrs Clark I assure you, as I assure you before, that my thoughts are mine under my own research and my own responsability, not from someone else. In the same way, if you think that the science now is in position to declare that all what I pointed is ruled out beyond any doubt is your privilege. It is my option to choose another approach.
MarÃa Luján
BC,
http://engrish.com/recent_detail.php?imagename=on-the-verge.jpg&category=Clothing&date=2006-01-12
Maria,
I hope you figure out great things for your son. I mean that sincerely, I just don’t think that your following lots of arcane ideas is that helpful to the majority of autistics and if your son is mercury poisoned it has nothing to do with autism or vaccines.
Mrs Clark
Your post is about your beliefs, not my post. If you think that my ideas are arcane, please go and see the KEvin´s forum and my recent activity there and the science I posted/ discussed, involving many fields, not only environmental insult, but also genetics/epigenetics.
I am not following arcane ideas. In fact, they are based on the most recent research in terms of genetics/epigenetics and immunology/biochemistry interactions in ASD, under a personal interpretation. However, I am open to learn and to exchange in a productive way and the possibility to be wrong. You told me explicitly that consider that the discussion or consideration of my ideas was and are for you evidently a waste of time. OK, I can accept your position, even when I consider it a disrespect to my own position and consideration of YOU. But this is up to you. You did not discuss the ideas I presented in my former post.
I consider my ideas and discussion about ASD enough science-based to be respected. I consider that myself deserves the same respect I give /gave you and I give to anyone with who I interact. My cause is my son´s health and I do not follow the ideas of any of the doctors you mentioned as for sure. This is not about to be right, but about to learn. In this sense, we are all multifacetic. The fact that a doctor can have a misconduct does not invalidate that his ideas can be right or deserve research. The fact that your personal style is aggraviating many times does not invalidate the fact that you are an intelligent woman.
You say
I just don’t think that your following lots of arcane ideas is that helpful to the majority of autistics and if your son is mercury poisoned it has nothing to do with autism or vaccines.
My consideration of my son´s health condition is privative of the approach I selected for him and what I found. I understand you do not share my interpretation but you can not make statements like these because you have not enough information to discuss my son´s health.
If the ideas I presented has the potential to be helpful in the future to ASD will be a question to solve with further research to come, not now, beyond your or my opinion. The interpretation about If the Hg poisoning of my son has to do with vaccines or not is privative of me. You do not have enough information to make an opinion, even if you present your belief about. I have.
Sincerely
MArÃa Luján
Maria, I said, “if” your son is poisoned by mercury it has nothing to do with vaccines. I stand by that. “if” your son is Hg poisoned the mercury must have come from somewhere else because there is not enough mercury in vaccines to “poison” anyone. I’m talking about logic, not about details about your son’s health.
I see no reason to believe any of the stuff that DAN! promotes, simply because DAN! promotes it, it is suspect.
Arcane does not mean archaic. Arcane means little understood, it’s like estoteric. What I see in your ideas is that you have far too many that you are chasing, and there’s no way to tease the overlapping effects of 20 different genes, 20 different environmental effects each at 20 different developmental stages each impacted differently by 20 different potential treatments. Viruses, heavy metals, bad or good germs in the gut, genes, drugs, pollution, diet. Sure they all impact the brain but you have to start with something that can be pinned down. You have to start with the most solid piece of information.
I don’t dislike you Maria, but I am aggravated at the fact that you don’t seem to care about the level of corruption going on here and the fact that children are definitely being harmed, killed even by side effects of that extreme corruption.
Take away these corrupt,stupid and/or greedy individuals and no one would think to look at mercury because there’s nothing to connect mercury to autism.
Mrs Clark
The question of logic depends on opinion. The amount of Hg/Al my son received with vaccines was very high, as bolus dose and in accumulative amount.
You say
You have to start with the most solid piece of information.
OK, I agree that genetics is the root and we have to start there. But this fact does not invalidate the other potential contributions. I mentioned several factors because I am trying to get an overall picture. Science works dividing things in pieces and studying them. I hope that a real global and complete view of autism is going to develop. The relative importance ( or not) of the things I mentioned/presented would be more evident in time.
You say
I am aggravated at the fact that you don’t seem to care about the level of corruption going on here and the fact that children are definitely being harmed, killed even by side effects of that extreme corruption.
I care about. VERY. What I tried to make you understand that my tone and my way to demonstrate my position is different than yours, but not less deeply involved about care.
Why when I try to be just you understand my position as I am defending something? As I told you, I criticise everything I find criticisable of anyone from any side, at my particular style.
I care about all you mentioned and also I care about doctors dismissing parents concerns about any other things that for you are not important: vaccines effect , GI issues, pain, viral infections. I care because I was one of them. As I told you many times I care about teens and adults with probable pain leaving with all these physical pain and medical conditions because ” they are autistics”. I care about the lack of understanding of the autism of my son and of many children/teens /adults. I care about all the aspects emotional sociological and politics about autism and how these can impact autistics.
You say
there’s nothing to connect mercury to autism.
This is your opinion, with your basis.
I have another opinion with different basis. I did not need none DAN! doctor, no commercial lab, no challenge test to find what I found.
Please let me guess. Guess that the point about HM accumulation is true, but not as a CAIUSE, vut a comorbility. In this sense, soon or later, HM was going to be an issue to research.
MarÃa Luján
From the article linked by MsC:
” ‘If this is snake oil and what they’re doing is medicine, then I choose to practice snake oil. And I have no embarrassment with it,’ said Buttar.”
And any self-respecting (and respectable) medical practitioner actually would have ambarrassment with it. Lots of embarrassment.
Says a lot about Buttar’s ethics, doesn’t it?!
Ms. Clark, it’s time someone just simply said to you “SHUT UP!“
The following is what AutismDiva/Camille Clark has to offer to the Autism communtity!
Young man, please stop flapping your hands.
I said, young man, please don’t stare at the fan.
I said, young man, stranger in a strange land
There’s no need to be autistic.
Young man, there’s a place we can go.
I said, the DAN, but we’ll need lots of dough.
You can’t stay there, but I’m sure you will find
Many things they say are white lies.
It’s time to chelate with E-D-T-A
It’s fun to mix it with D-M-S-A.
They have everything , but you won’t have a choice,
You can be just like all other boys …
It’s time to chelate with E-D-T-A
We’re saving money with No-A-B-A
We can make your child clean, and we’ll send you our bill,
We will sell whatever you need…
Young man, are you listening to me?
I said, young man, you’ve been poisoned you see?
I said, young man, we can rub on this cream.
But you can’t try just this one thing!
No DAN, does it only wealth.
I said, No Ma’am, there’s old shots on the shelf,
And just go there, to ICDRC.
I’m sure God can help you today.
It’s time to put in the E-D-T-A
See you later and, have-a-nice-day.
We add everything, but it’s only a ploy,
He won’t space out and play wrong with toys …
It’s fun to chelate with E-D-T-A
It’s fun to mix it with D-M-S-A.
You can get your brain clean, and learn how to feel,
I tell you recovery’s real…
Very profound isn’t it?
Camille you’re offensive and you’re an idiot with way, way, way too much time on your government funded ass!
777, you what???????
You are one of the most offensive people on the planet and you say *that* about Camille…. yeh, and i’m the fucking pope!
As for government funded… um… no, she’s not. To be honest, her posts have consistently made more sense that yours ever will. Why? Because she actually researches her posts very well. Rather than go with stuff put out by scaremongers and quacks… unlike you, who swallow that stuff hook, line and sinker.
Um… I don’t find her posts in the least bit offensive, and nor are they crass (as you’d seem to suggest). They are scientifically accurate and stand up well to scrutiny.
Unlike any from your camp.
Maybe it’s you who should – as you said it – *SHUT UP!*
KC – got anything to say about the subject under discussion? No? Then give your ego a rest my friend. Nobody cares.
TripSev 300
Even when I can have disagreements -even strong- with Mrs Clark,- and I do and I told her the most respectfully I could- I think that to use my words as an excuse to attack here in such a way is awful.
I can´t avoid that someone use my words and an exchange where I am participating as an excuse to attack others, whatever the side, but I can complain strongly and I do.
I see myself in the need to clarify that I have nothing, NOTHING in common with your style, your tone or your comment. I remember that this is Kev´s blog and we are his guests.
Even if for me Mrs Clark can be hurting or aggresive – even personally -, you are as much as her and equally- or worse- wrong in your style to present disagreement.
It is very tiresome to try to construct another place of discussion with a person thinking different to be destroyed in a second by comments of such character. The reaction to this kind of post is generally worse- and is logical- escalating in such way that any calm, just or quiet consideration is lost. In this sense, David your comment is not just to many of us that are deeply interested on science.
MArÃa Luján
Kev, apparently you have a lot to say but get over yourself, because you are accomplishing absolutely nothing!
David BA-status, PgCertSpEd (pending) :Andrews, finds me offensive? That means a lot coming from him.
“As for government funded… um… no, she’s not”.
Um …actually she is government funded. Not big pharma, but she’s on the government dole and she has way to much time on her hands because she doesn’t have to go out and earn a real living and balance a family like the rest of us.
Kev, you need to grow a pair, and get control of you blog back from Camille because this blog is becoming AutismDiva the sequel.
Kevin Champagne,
I can understand that why are angry and offended by the Y.M.C.A. song parody but think about it, there is no way Diva could have known in advance that you are a devoted Village People fan.
MarÃa…
The science is not on the side of autism=mercury-poisoning. Period. It isn’t on that side. The science is on the side of people such as… um… well, me, and Camille. The whole chelation thing is basically a health fraud, and Buttar is one of the biggest offenders, as is that idiot whose “treatment” of Abubakar killed the lad.
Period.
And TripSev… you need treatment, man. Seriously.
Wor Kev: “KC – got anything to say about the subject under discussion? No? Then give your ego a rest my friend. Nobody cares.”
I really don’t think he can handle that he’s pitifully wrong. So pitifully wrong that he’s marginally delusional… he doesn’t want to put anything serious out; he just wants to demolish anyone he can here, and then call anyone who disagrees with him as many bastards as he can get away with.
What’s his problem?
David
You say
The science is not on the side of autism=mercury-poisoning. Period. It isn’t on that side. The science is on the side of people such as… um… well, me, and Camille.
As I have a position that is not “yours” of “theirs” but “mine”, I apologize. You were not talking about people like me.My comment, in this context, was not pertinent. As you have surely read, I also do not agree with the idea of Autism as ONLY Hg poisoning and nothing more.
The whole chelation thing is basically a health fraud,
Chelation for HM poisoning is not a health fraud for me. It all depends on who diagnosis it, what are the labs used , based on what series of tests and why chelation is choosed and how a particular form of chelation- and by who is recommended/ checked/supervised in terms of credentials- is done.
Returning to the topic I have some comments about doctors, mainstreamed or not in the ASD field. Please let me know if you are interested about. Please I do not want to defend anyone, only to present some thoughts to consideration as an overall situation about doctors in ASD.
MarÃa Luján
To clarify, if chelation is recommended as ” a treatment for autism” without adequate testing and care and only because,without HM adequately confirmed , then I agree with you that can be considered a health fraud.
MarÃa Luján
MarÃa: “Chelation for HM poisoning is not a health fraud for me.”
If a child is not heavy-metal poisoned, but a medical practitioner is claiming that the child is (and treating the child for this fictitious poisoning), then that – in legal parlance – constitutes an act of fraud against the funding party. This isn’t opinion, nor is it subject to opinion. It is a legal fact. Period.
MarÃa: “It all depends on who diagnosis it, what are the labs used , based on what series of tests and why chelation is choosed and how a particular form of chelation- and by who is recommended/ checked/supervised in terms of credentials- is done.”
Given the scientific research on this matter, chelation for autism, since autism is not (and never has been) a form of mercury – or any other heavy metal – poisoning, the diagnosis of Pb- or Hg-poisoning when a child is not poisoned is (legally speaking) an act of fraud, as well as being malpractice… and it doesn’t matter two hoots what the qualifications of the diagnostician are: if they knowingly make a false diagnosis, they are committing an act of malpractice. If they knowingly do this with intent to have a funding body pay for a treatment which has no validity, reliability or safety (as in, for example, chelation therapy for autism)… then that is most definitely an act of fraud as well as malfractice. There is no dependence upon one’s qualifications for the veracity of a diagnosis and the appropriateness of the prescribed treatment. If a wrongful dx comes about, so that an inappropriate treatment can be administered, and so that this treatment can be funded – when all along the real diagnosis would not secure that funding for that inappropriate treatment – nobody is going to persuade me that such an action is not fraud,and malpractice; and, furthermore, given the safety issues involved, that such an action does not represent the recklessness required in law when malice aforethought cannot be proven for – quite frankly – a charge of murder or at least manslaughter to be brought against a medical practitioner who engages in such an action and where the patient dies; or that such recklessness (which is what it is, in the absence of clear, scientifically acceptable evidence) should not lead to endangerment charges whenever that action is engaged in by any medical practitioner in regard to a patient.
MarÃa: “As you have surely read, I also do not agree with the idea of Autism as ONLY Hg poisoning and nothing more.”
I’m sure you are aware that the “symptomatology” of autism and that of mercury poisoning are actually very different, and this is requisite knowledge for any medical practitioner. No two ways about it, MarÃa… the claim that autism even MAY be mercury-induced is basically not even wrong. It’s outrageously inaccurate and falls under quackery when applied to real life cases.