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Bob Wright snubs autistic adults, the same group who live in poverty

23 Nov

The New York Post reported on Autism Speaks founder Bob Wright having a grumpy slap at adult autistic people who were protesting the fact that Autism Speaks still has no autistic representation on its Board.

Bob Wright had harsh words for protesters who tried to muck up the A-list benefit concert he put on at Carnegie Hall on behalf of autistic kids.

“The protesters are lucky,” said Wright. “They’re well off enough, healthy enough, to do it. I wish my grandson were able to join them.”

Wright runs Autism Speaks, which has raised over $200 million for research into a disorder that afflicts mainly children.

That didn’t stop a clutch of sign-carrying adult protesters from descending on Carnegie Hall Tuesday night, trying to disrupt a concert attended by Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Martha Stewart. Protesters complain that there’s not one autistic person on the board of the org, which produced an “offensive” ad suggesting that autism was a fate worse than death.

Wright, whose grandson cannot talk because of autism, said the disorder is exploding among young kids who can’t speak for themselves.

“This is serious business,” he said.

Note how the reporter states that the benefit was for autistic kids and further states that autism affects mainly children. This should give some insight into the silly one dimensional world that the Wrights, and by extension, Autism Speaks inhabit. Of course autism doesn’t affect mainly children. In fact, it would seem that the reverse is true.

I would like to suggest to Bobo that what is serious business is blindly misrepresenting autism either purposefully or (more likely) out of ignorance. I would also like to suggest that its about time Autism Speaks walked the walk and got aome autistic Board level members. I would further suggest that Bobo wakes up and smells the coffee. Young autistic kids definitely find it difficult to talk for themselves. Most kids of his grandsons age might find it difficult to form coherent opinions on high level concepts like the right to be who you are. In the meantime, having an autistic Board level member would be a step in the right direction. I’d happily accept Jake Crosby or Jon Mitchell. Two men who I vehemntly disagree with yet who’s opinion on autism I respect due to their diagnosis.

Maybe Bobo might take a look across the pond if his cheeks aren’t still smarting from the slapdown he got last time he came over here. Maybe the reality of life for autistic adults over here might cause him to get a bit of a reality check as to where his research priorities should lie. As he continues to steer Autism Speaks down the increasingly stupid looking anti-vaxx hypotheses,

A THIRD of Wales’ autism sufferers are unemployed and living in ‘poverty’ without benefits, a charity has said.

9,000 autistic adults are surviving (sort of) on handouts from friends and family. Not only are they subject to ignorance in job centres, they are not made aware of _how_ to make a claim:

She [Shirley Parsley] said: “It is scandalous, therefore, that thousands of people with this serious, lifelong and disabling condition are being consigned to poverty by a complex and counter-productive benefits system.”

This is the reality of life for autistic adults. Abandoned by a state system and also abandoned by Autism Speaks, an organisation focussed solely it seems on people of Bob Wright’s grandchilds age. Whilst Bobo complains about how autism is ‘exploding amongst kids who can’t talk for themselves’ (a factoid for which there’s no valid science), the adults he and his organisation turn their backs on are literally starving.

Autism treatment: Science hijacked to support alternative therapies

23 Nov

Such is the title of the latest article in the Chicago Tribune by Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan.

The article is subtitled: ‘Researchers’ fears about misuse of their work come true’.

Go now and read it. I’ll pull some examples here, but read the article. Send it to your friends. When a writer tells you to stop reading his own piece and go read something else, he means it.

The article reports on how the alternative medical community in autism has clearly misused some research to create and promote supposed therapies.

The prime example, the misuse of work by a John’s Hopkins team on neuroinflammation in autopsied brains of autistics (e.g. Neuroglial activation and neuroinflammation in the brain of patients with autism. by Vargas , Nascimbene , Krishnan, Zimmerman, and Pardo.)

The John’s Hopkins team showed that neuroinflammation was present in the brains of recently deceased autistics. What they did not show was that this was a cause of autism or that this was injurious to the autistics. As Dr. Pardo told the Tribune:

“We were concerned that the study would raise a lot of controversy and be misused,” Pardo said. “We were right.”

In one example from the article, Dr. Rossignol, one of the luminaries of the autism alternative medicine movement wrote a letter to support the use of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to treat an autistic child. He cites the Pardo study.

From the Tribune story:

Rossignol did not mention that Pardo’s team had written in its online primer, using capital letters for emphasis, that intravenous immunoglobulin “WOULD NOT HAVE a significant effect” on what they saw in the brains of people with autism.

“THERE IS NO indication for using anti-inflammatory medications in patients with autism,” the team wrote.

Another of the Hopkins team, Dr. Zimmerman is quoted:

Meddling with neuroinflammation could actually be a terrible mistake, said co-author Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, director of medical research at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

“It may actually be an attempt of the brain to repair itself,” said Zimmerman, a pediatric neurologist. Suppressing the immune response “could be doing harm.”

Another alternative-medical practitioner, and colleague of Dr. Rossignol, Dr. Bradstreet is not deterred by the experts in the field who warn him off of applying this experimental and possibly (likely?) useless treatment.

“Every kid with autism should have a trial of IVIG if money was not an option and IVIG was abundant,” Bradstreet said. “It makes sense to try and would be ideal to give every young child a chance at it.”

The Pardo paper has also been used to promote hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). Another big name in the alt-med world, Dr. Neubrander uses the Pardo study in his presentations and claims that HBOT will reduce inflamation.

Dr. Neubrander appears to acknowlege the slim backing he has on science. In the Tribune article:

“Science is slow,” he said. “I will use the safety of the science and, no, I will not throw the science out the window. But the science has to be balanced against the wisdom. And science says, ‘There is no wisdom from you, the mothers or fathers of the world, who depend on anecdote. Only science has wisdom.’ “

I am at a loss as to how to respond to that statement other than to point out that Dr. Neubrander (and Dr. Bradstreet and Dr. Rossignol) will never, ever be allowed to treat my child.

Again from the Tribune:

Few treatments are completely benign, said Dr. Steven Goodman of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “Even an ineffective therapy is rarely harmless,” he said, “and sometimes that harm is worse than the disease.”

As an example, the Tribune article discusses how pure oxygen, assumed to be only beneficial, was given to premature babies. That is, until it was shown that it was causing blindness in a significant number of children.

The Tribune article concludes by acknowledging the fact that there is not a complete description of what is autism, or how or if it can be treated.

Research into autism has yet to find solid answers, but there is reason for hope, said Zimmerman, a co-author on Pardo’s paper.

“In the last five years, there has been a tremendous upsurge of activity,” he said. “It gives us a lot of new prospects. I think we will solve this problem in the next 10 to 15 years.”

And though autism advocates in the movement say they cannot wait that long for answers, a lack of options isn’t a valid reason to try something, bioethicists say.

“You have a duty to make sure there is good reason to believe it might work and not hurt your child,” said Douglas Diekema, a bioethicist at Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

It is difficult to be patient while science does its work, Zimmerman said. But, he added: “Above all, do no harm.”

This is one in a series of articles on alternative medicine and autism from the Tribune. I hope to backtrack and discuss the previous articles soon. But, the responses are already coming in. Many frame the Tribune as anti-parent, anti-progress, biased…all sorts of things that the article is clearly not. The Tribune obviously took a lot of time to prepare these articles. They cite the experts in the field.

Let’s face it, the supposed experts in the alternative medical “treatment” of autism are clearly misunderstanding or misrepresenting the research they rely upon. The Tribune did the work, talked to the experts and clearly showed this.

Eugenic Arguments in the Times

23 Nov

Today’s Times carries an article that suggests that people with learning difficulties should not be allowed to have children because it would cost to much to support them. The children would suffer and some of these parents are also autistic “which will make loving and consistent parenthood extremely difficult.”

The article is confused and wrong in so many ways. I do not have the time to take it on right now but I hope people can read it and add their comments.

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Boyd Haley brings the weirdness

19 Nov

On 12th Novemeber, Vueweekly featured the second part of an interview with Boyd Haley during which Professor Haley contradicted so many of the basic tenets of the autism/vaccine hypothesis – and also of good ol’ common sense (remember her?) that I was left wondering if he was in fact an Evil Neurodiversity spy sent to make himself look like an asshat.

“What about the argument that autism rates haven’t declined since thimersoal has been removed from vaccines?” I pose. “It’s a total deception,” he says. “We don’t actually know the autism rate for the last officially thimerosal-vaccinated cohort. And according to parents who asked to look at vaccine inserts, thimerosal was still present in childhood vaccines as late as 2004 in many places. Then in 2004, the flu vaccine, which contains thimerosal, was recommended for six-month-old infants. I don’t know if we even have a thimerosal-free time frame.”

Uh….what? Whilst Haley is literally right he kind of misses points so large they’d fit perfectly on the head of a stag. He claims we don’t know the autism rate for the last officially thimerosal-vaccinated cohort, whereas it might be more accurate to state we don’t really *know* the rate for any autism cohort, ever. No one’s looked. The latest estimates in both the UK and US come in at around 1 in 100. And really, he has the question bass-ackwards. What we need to know is how much thiomersoal was in official use during the last few years as the autism estimates have been rising. The answer to that is, aside from the voluntary flu vaccine and a trace amount used in the manufacture of one brand of vaccine, none. Doesn’t need a professor to work this out…lets go through it Boyd, no thiomersal, rising autism estimates…hmmmm….

We don’t _need_ a thiomersal free time frame. We simply need to compare the autism estimates for when there was a lot of thiomersal in use to now, when there’s pretty much none.

Cherry picking another bemusing quote, we get:

Autistic infants are totally incapable of excreting mercury. They’d be fine if they weren’t exposed to thimerosal.

Hmmm, a Professor of chemistry who’s not aware that even Jill James doesn;t claim that autistic infants are *totally incapable* of excreting mercury. And a professor of chemistry who’s not aware that mercury occurs naturally in humans in greater amounts than vaccines.

Haley then brings on a strawman:

Whatever is causing autism must affect boys more than girls, as autism rates are higher among boys than girls. It is well-known and documented that testosterone accentuates the effects of mercury…

Firstly, it is now suspected (I’ll try hunt down the link) that autism affects females in a much greater number than previously suspected. It should also be noted that whilst testosterone does accentuate the effects of mercury, no valid research has ever been done to show that testosterone is working with thiomersal to heighten the effect of the mercury. Haley is just making a specious correlation.

More weirdness:

“We know autism isn’t genetic,” he says. “You can have a genetic susceptibility, which together with an environmental toxin is what I believe is causing it, but autism went epidemic in all 50 states at one time. This isn’t the behaviour of a genetically caused disease.

Actually, a goodly proportion of autism *is* assocated with genetic abnormalities. Rett syndrome – a form of autism – is _entirely_ genetic.

Haley is also in error when claims autism ‘went epidemic’. Nobody knows wether the rates of autism have ‘gone epidemic’ because we have no base measurement. Nobody can say how many autistic people there were five years ago, let alone 20. And Boyd, really, doesn;t the fact that – as you state – something happened ‘at one time’ lead you to look for explanations closer to reality? Something like…oh, say, a change in the DSM criteria which massively expanded the definition of autism? Something that _did_ happen 20 yeas ago?

The rest of Haley’s piece is a pointed reference to himself as a hero whos truth is being hidden from us all by the nasty pharma companies.

Weird. Just weird. Haley needds to catch up with the rest of the anti-vax loons who have cottoned on to the truth that the thiomersal boat is full of massive holes and pretty much lies waterlogged somewhere off the coast of Stupidville.

Thoughtful House acknowledges that chelation can be dangerous and not effective

14 Nov

IV Chelation could cause death, and Thoughtful House acknowledges it:

From a recent story in the Austin Statesman:

Thoughtful House’s IV chelation consent form, which Juli Martinez provided to the American-Statesman, includes a long list of possible side effects that include intestinal disorders, joint pain and, in rare cases, “allergy, anaphylaxis, arrhythmia and even death.” It adds that the treatment offers no guarantee of success.

Wow, Thoughtful House admits that IV chelation, even as performed by them, could cause death.

I have read so many apologists for the doctor who killed Tariq Nadama with chelation. They typically read, “the doctor made a mistake” or “the doctor used the wrong drug” followed by statements that chelation is perfectly safe. And, yet, Thoughtful House seems to be saying that even the correct drug could result in death.

And there is no guarantee of success.

Parents in lawsuit over Thoughtful House treatement

14 Nov

Father takes ex-wife to court over son’s autism treatment is the title of a recent story on Statesman.com. The subtitle: Mother says intravenous treatment at Thoughtful House is unproven and too dangerous..

Yes, it’s about chelation. The kid has been undergoing chelation (suppository), but the father wants to do IV chelation. From the Statesman:

Mario Martinez wants his wife’s consent to let their 7-year-old son, William, undergo intravenous chelation — the use of chemicals to remove metals, such as lead and mercury, from the body. Martinez, 39, said he thinks his son is making steady progress at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin by undergoing a less invasive form of chelation and wants the boy to start IV chelation.

The parents are divorced, with the father having primary care of the child. However, Thoughtful House requires both parents to consent to IV chelation.

The mother states that the suppository chelation has been ongoing for two years (yes, years) without progress, but with adverse side effects:

Juli Martinez said in an interview that her son has been receiving chelation in suppository form for two years, which she claims has made him ill. She said chelation hasn’t helped his autism but being in a regular classroom has.

The father has taken the mother to court to get the approval for the IV chelation.

Chelation is the process of removing metals from the body through drugs. Alternative medical practitioners (such as Thoughftul House) use chelation on the assumption that “heavy metal toxicity” is a factor in autism.

It isn’t. This is based on an incredibly bad hyptohesis (Autism is a “novel” form of mercury poisoning), and idea that actual medical toxicologists reject.

Chelation therapy for real heavy metal toxicity is not a prolonged process. Two years is very long. Chelation by suppository is a relatively inexpensive therapy. By contrast, IV chelation at thoughtful house involves $400 every two weeks in testing:

While there may not be scientific proof that chelation helps autism, anecdotal evidence exists, Mario Martinez said. He is willing to spend an extra $400 every two weeks on tests to make sure the twice-monthly IVs are safe, he said.

The father says that the IV chelation is great:

Mario Martinez, who has had primary custody of the couple’s two children since their 2007 divorce, disputes that chelation has made William ill and said that the boy had an IV chelation test that showed he easily tolerated it. He said it brought “immediate, dramatic results,” in which his learning and behavior improved.

I wonder what an “IV Chelation test” is? Did they do a round of IV chelation, without the mother’s consent? What about their rules that the mother has to approve?

Frankly, the mother should be the one taking the father to court.

The court proceeding has been put off until Dr. Jepson of Thoughful House can appear or give a deposition.

The mother is representing herself. Frankly, a medical toxicologist should step in to offer her some support to end this travesty.

Another example of irresponsible blogging by David Kirby

14 Nov

Autism Speaks recently put out what I consider to be a rather irresponsible press release. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) added a new objective, and Autism Speaks chose to frame it as “IACC includes vaccine research objective in strategic plan for autism research“. I’ve discussed that already, so I won’t go into more details here.

Instead, I want to take a look at how David Kirby treated this story. He blogged this as Top Federal Panel Endorses Autism Research That Includes Vaccines – Dueling Press Releases Ensue. Mr. Kirby takes on the role of (misinformed) cheerleader for the vaccine-epidemic groups that sponsor the Age of Autism blog, where the piece was posted. As you will see, he probably should have checked with his community before posting.

On Tuesday, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), Washington’s leading arbiter for directing federal funds to autism research, unanimously voted to recommend studies that include investigations into possible links between autism and environmental triggers – including vaccines – in certain subsets of children.

Mr. Kirby is invited to check the actual process of federal funding of autism research and the role of the IACC. He could watch the latest video of an IACC meeting, where Dr. Insel (director of NIMH and chair of the IACC) makes it clear that the IACC is an advisory and planning committee only. They are far from the “final arbiter for directing federal funds”. That is a minor point compared to the fact that the IACC did not recommend studies into the possible links between autism and vaccines.

This fact that the IACC was not committing to vaccine-autism research was not missed by some of his readers, who are quoted in the conclusion of his recent blog post. A conclusion which is rather confused in tone:

So, just to recap: The Federal Government’s top autism panel has voted unanimously to support studies into autism and its possible environmental triggers – including vaccination. In turn, Autism Speaks has cheered “including vaccine research objectives in the IACC plan” while its supposed rival, ASF, has equally cheered that “vaccine research (is) out of the IACC autism plan.”

Some parents I spoke with grudglingly accepted ASF’s view of events, however. “IACC took out ALL proposed vaccine research studies; They specifically elimated A) a vax unvax study, B) an unvaxed or partially vaxed sibs study and C) an adjuvant study – all gone,” one mother wrote. “They only left the word “vaccine” in a along laundry list of POTENTIAL future possible (translation never) study topics.”

Whether the IACC has recommended specific vaccine-autism research, or environment-autism research, vaccines remain on the list of possible contributors to autistic regression as far as the US Government is concerned.

And that is just how Congressional leaders intended it to be.

If parents are telling Mr. Kirby that the IACC is not really committing to fund vaccine research, how can this “just how Congressional leaders intended it to be”, since Mr. Kirby is asserting that the congressional intent is to include vaccine-autism research? It reads a bit confusing to me.

Well, it’s confusing because David Kirby has once again edited his post after the fact. Take a look at this screenshot of the original post:

kirby_backpedal

Yep, it’s different. Sometime after he posted his piece, he added the entire paragraph :

Some parents I spoke with grudglingly accepted ASF’s view of events, however. “IACC took out ALL proposed vaccine research studies; They specifically elimated A) a vax unvax study, B) an unvaxed or partially vaxed sibs study and C) an adjuvant study – all gone,” one mother wrote. “They only left the word “vaccine” in a along laundry list of POTENTIAL future possible (translation never) study topics.”

Yes, David Kirby wrote a post praising the IACC’s actions as funding vaccine research and then backpedaled when autism parents emailed him with the reality of the situation: the IACC did not commit to funding vaccine research.

He also edited out a comment where he refers to a statment by Alison Singer of the Autism Science Foundation as “And there was this, almost Orwellian statement: ”

I guess it was Orwellian until his own readers agreed with it?

Can you find where Mr. Kirby notes his change in that piece? Neither can I. A major change like this should be noted in the piece.

I’ll take a side-trip here into discussing Mr. Kirby’s mistakes and the way he handles them. Unfortunately, Mr. Kirby has a history of changing blog posts after the fact, even to the point of leaving clearly erroneous posts online without a comment.

A few examples:

He wrote a post, “CDC: Vaccine Study Design “Uninformative and Potentially Misleading“”. After Blogger (and epidemiologist) epiwonk showed the mistakes in that post, Mr Kirby rewrote the post, complete with a note about the error. In an odd move, he left first the erroneous post online. As epiwonk showed, even the second post was seriously flawed, but Mr. Kirby chose to leave it online.

Mr. Kirby made a serious misquote in his presentation to congressional staffers. No mention of the error was made in the power point slides he posted online.

He made a factor of 10 error in reading a graph for a blog post. He copied the blog post from the Age of Autism blog to the Huffington Post, and corrected the error in his Huffington Post piece without correcting the Age of Autism piece.

He made the rather simple error of mistaking the Obama transition teams Change.gov website for the change.gov website. Again, he posted to both the Age of Autism blog and to the Huffington Post. Mr. Kirby added a comment to the Huffington Post piece, but just deleted the erroneous post on the Age of Autism blog.

I make mistakes. Sometimes pretty spectacular mistakes. But I think it shows a certain level of disrespect from Mr. Kirby in how he handles his mistakes.

But, I’ve digressed from the main topic here: how Mr. Kirby handled the press releases from Autism Speaks and the Autism Science Foundation about the IACC’s new objective. Even without the confusing conclusion and the changes made after the fact, Mr. Kirby’s post is irresponsible.

It is one thing to take on the role of cheerleader/journalist as Mr. Kirby has done. But he gets to walk away from this community. He’s tried to walk away once, and he is now about to embark on a new career path taking on factory farming. In a few years when parents are complaining that the government hasn’t funded vaccine-autism research like David Kirby told us the government would…in a few years when the bitterness comes to the surface…where will David Kirby be? Will he be here to take responsibility for the mess he has created?

I admit, this is minor compared to the mess he made with convincing parents that autism was caused by thimerosal. How many children have been “treated” with chelation who wouldn’t have if Mr. Kirby hadn’t taken on this cause? How many of them regressed or were otherwise harmed? We will never know.

And he will never accept his role in this and his responsibility.

90% of autistic kids bullied?

13 Nov

A story just out from the Boston Herald state: Survey finds 90% of autistic kids bullied. The story starts out with:

A shocking new online survey has found that nearly 90 percent of autistic children in the Bay State have been targeted by bullying so violent and ruthless that a state lawmaker says teachers and school systems must be held accountable.

All kids are bullied to some extent, but I have no doubt that autistic kids get much more than their share of bullying.

I have to admit that the survey did not use the most rigorous methods as it was taken to convince legislators:

About 400 Massachusetts parents responded to the online survey between Sept. 23 and Oct. 12. The survey was prepared as part of an effort to pass legislation requiring that autistic children be taught bullying coping tactics as part of their individual educational plans.

With that acknowledgment, I’ll say it again, autistic kids get bullied more than typical kids. In some cases a lot more. A lot of us feel like our kids have great big bulls-eyes painted on them. Our kids have a hard enough time coping in schools.

I hope the Massachusetts legislature takes notice. I don’t know if including “bullying coping tactics” into IEP’s is the best response, but I know that doing nothing is the wrong response.

Edit to add: a second story from the Herald: Parents say schools look the other way

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Ineffective Treatment for Children with Autism

13 Nov

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) has grown in popularity over the last few years. This growth has occurred without any evidence that HBOT is at all beneficial.

A recent study, published in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders entitled Randomized trial of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for children with autism, explores this question.

The study was performed by CARD, the Center for Autism and Related Disorders and ICDRC the International Child Development Resource Center. CARD is a very large ABA provider run by Doreen Granpeesheh. Dr. Granpeesheh is also associated with Thoughful House, the Clinic founded by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield, is the prime proponent of the notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism. ICDRC is the clinic run by Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet, a prominent name in the autism alternative medical community.

As you might surmise from their press release, Center for Autism and Related Disorders Study Finds Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Ineffective Treatment for Children with Autism, they did not find HBOT to be effective.

Children were given 80 1 hour sessions in a Vitaeris 320 inflatable chamber (a model used commonly in HBOT treatment). 6-10 sessions/week were performed. Children were split into two groups matched by age and number of ABA hours already received. Parameters like supplement use and diets remained unchanged during the time of the study. For the treatment group the chambers were inflated to 1.3 atm, with enriched oxygen air (24-28% O2, compared to 21% for regular air).

The children were given multiple assessments:

All assessments were conducted by trained assessors who were blind to group assignment. To maximize the study’s ability to detect change in any symptom area relevant to autism, a large variety of assessments were used, including the following: the ABC (Aman & Singh, 1994), ADOS (Lord et al., 1999), Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF; Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000), Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI; Guy, 1976), Parent Stress Index (PSI; Abidin, 1995), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997), Repetitive Behavior Scale (RBS; Bodfish, Symons, & Lewis, 1999), SRS, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales—Second Edition (VABS-II; Sparrow, Cicchetti, & Balla, 2005), and the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration—5th edition (VMI-5; Berry and Berry, 2004 K.E. Berry and N.A. Berry, The Berry-Buktenica developmental test of visual-motor integration: Administration, score, and teaching manual, NCS Pearson, Minneapolis, MN (2004).Berry & Berry, 2004). The ADOS, BRIEF, PPVT-III, SRS, VABS, and VMI-5 were administered pre and post-treatment. The ABC, CGI, and RBS were administered weekly. The PSI was administered four times, once at baseline, twice during treatment, and once at completion.

The study was relatively small, with 46 participants.

Forty six participants began the study and 12 withdrew, resulting in 18 previous HBOT participants and 16 placebo participants completing all 80 sessions and follow-up measures. The primary reason reported for withdrawal was the travel required to the clinic. One participant in the placebo group withdrew after having a seizure for the first time. Mean participant age was 6.18 (previous HBOT 6.11; placebo 6.25) and mean number of ABA treatment hours per month was 109 (previous HBOT 114.7; placebo 103.3).

I won’t go into details about the specific outcomes, but the conclusion was pretty straightforward: HBOT had no effect.

No significant differences between the previous tHBOT and placebo groups were found on any of the outcome measures. Thus, the results of this study indicate that previous HBOT delivering 24% oxygen at 1.3 atm did not produce a therapeutic effect for the children who participated in our study. Therefore, previous HBOT at this dose is not recommended for the treatment of ASD symptoms.

I found it interesting how they referred to a previous HBOT study by Rossignal (another prominent member of the autism alternative medical community):

The results of this study corroborate the findings of the only other published study on previous termHBOTnext term which included a control group (Rossignol et al., 2009 D.A. Rossignol, L.W. Rossignol, S. Smith, C. Schneider, S. Logerquist and A. Usman et al., Hyperbaric treatment for children with autism: a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial, BMC Pediatrics 9 (2009) 10.1186/1471-2431-9-21.Rossignol et al., 2009)—albeit, not the study authors’ interpretations of their findings. In both the Rossignol et al. (2009) study and the current study, both treatment and control groups improved over time, but the difference in improvement between groups appeared insignificant. In addition, the current study employed dependent measures which were far more comprehensive than in previous research on previous HBOT for ASDs, thereby increasing the probability that a therapeutic effect would have been detected if indeed one had been present.

Yes, the current study is consistent with the Rossignol group’s results, just not their interpretation.

Commentary:

There was much discussion and excitement earlier this year when the Rossignol group study came out. Do’C at the Autism Street blog compiled a list of many of the skeptical discussions. There has not been anywhere near the interest in the newer CARD study.

Will this mean the end of HBOT treatments for Autism? I sincerely doubt it. Take a look at Dr. Bradstreet’s website (Dr. Bradstreet being one of the coauthors of the current study showing no effect). The first page of the site still links to the older study by Dr. Rossignol’s group (claiming that HBOT is effective) and not his own study (which shows HBOT to be not effective).

Of course, it is all the more complicated since Dr. Rossignol is also one of the ICDRC doctors. The alternative-medical community is a pretty small pond, isn’t it?

Back to the question: will this mean the end of HBOT in autism? I wish I could make bets this safe. Of course not. No alternative therapy is abandoned. As shown above, one of the authors of this study showing that HBOT is not effective for treating autism and he hasn’t stopped.

Give Thanks for Your Healthy Child

13 Nov

healthy-kids-thanks-a-thon-logoGuest Blog post by Dawn A. Crawford, Communications Director at the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition.

At the height of the H1N1 scare it’s easy to forget why we are vaccinating children in the first place. We vaccinate children with the flu vaccine and all childhood vaccine to keep them healthy. We vaccine children to keep kids out of hospital ERs. We vaccinate children to keep them playing and, simply, being a kid.

This Thanksgiving season the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition (CCIC) has created a simple and free way for parents to share their gratitude for healthy children with the CCIC Health Kids Thank-A-Thon.

Parents, grandparents and mommies-to-be are encouraged to submit gratitude statements, photos, videos and blog online explaining why they are grateful for a healthy child on the Health Kids Thank-A-Thon website – http://www.childrensimmunization.org/thanks.

From these submissions, CCIC will spread gratitude for healthy kids all Thanksgiving weekend long (November 26 – 29) by tweeting parent’s gratitude on Twitter, creating a video for YouTube and updating their Facebook Fan Page.

How to Participate

1) Visit the CCIC Healthy Kids Thank-A-Thon website to tell us why you are grateful for your healthy child. We encourage you to include a picture of your family or a video of your healthy child.

2) Spread the word to co-workers, patients, neighbors, and friends by posting this flyer and forwarding this blog post

All submissions are due Monday, November 23.

Make sure to join CCIC for the Thanksgiving weekend in sharing gratitude for all our healthy kids.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

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