Acceptance. It is a word that some use to describe their relationship with the reality of their children, or their own, autism. We accept the fact our daughter is autistic.
For people who claim to ‘fight autism’ this acceptance is a weak passivity. An act of giving in.
This, of course, is rubbish. Those who have accepted the reality of their own or their children’s autism know that the work starts right there. We do not attempt to carry on deluding ourselves and using quack treatments such as chelation etc as shields against the reality of who our kids really are.
Parents like Brad Handley of Generation Rescue claim at one point in time that:
“autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning…..The whole notion of autism is mythical. It didn’t exist before thimerosal in vaccines”
and then later say:
The argument is being spun by focusing exclusively on a single ingredient used in vaccines, Thimerosal (which is made from mercury), while forgetting to mention a number of key points about the differences between the vaccine schedule of 20 years ago and today….Thimerosal is only one of the possible ways that the vaccine schedule could be the primary trigger behind the autism epidemic…
are simply in denial. When their first belief is established to be untrue, they simply move on to another belief.
From the videos I posted a link to above, Brad is asked:
Q: This therapy (chelation) is it something he (Jamie) will be on the rest of his life?
Brad’s answer is:
A: Absolutely not. Its at maximum a two year process. Probably less.
As of next month, Jamie Handley will have been undergoing various treatments for three years. His story is not, as far as I can tell, listed anywhere as a ‘recovery’ story. He is still autistic.
Brad has made no effort to go back onto TV and explain this inconsistency. This is because he cannot. It is not explainable. I will be honest. Brad and I regularly exchange verbal barbs but I often feel sorry for the Handley’s. Because of their inability to accept the reality of their sons autism they have been unable to move on. They have instead – as I think is the case with a lot of the autism/vaccine parents – sublimated their failure to ‘cure/recover’ their kids in a proxy-fight with the ND’s, the CDC, the FDA – whatever.
I read a lot of blogs from the likes of Wade, Ginger, Kim Stagliano etc and whilst I often read about their anger and I often read about their love for their kids, I never ever read about them being happy. Do they love their kids? Of course they do. Do they enjoy their time with their autistic kids? I don’t know. I don’t think so.
There is a curious emphasis in a lot of these blog posts. Take Kim Stagliano’s most infamous blog entry – The Crappy Life of the Autism Mom – in which she says:
Recovering your kids doesn’t mean denying their value as people. To the contrary, it means we are willing to devote our lives, our savings, our sanity to their improved health, development and well being.
The jarring difference between stating that she is not denying their value and describing her life as their mum as crappy never occurs to her. It is also sad beyond belief that Stagliano feels that the measure of a persons value is the suffering of their parents.
Of course, the truth is that any decent parent will devote their lives, savings and sanity to their kids well being. That is not a situation that is the sole province of autism or even disability. Just parenting. However, I think that as well as lives, money and sanity, a parent should also invest respect and reality. Sublimating a continued tilting at the windmill of your child’s condition into an increasingly dirty and violent fight against a giant conspiracy is sad. Not sad in a sneering way but genuinely sad. It must be so miserable to be simply unable to accept the reality of the nature of your child.
This inability manifests itself in some strange ways. There have been a spate of articles fairly recently which examine the possibility that older parents are more likely to have autistic kids, or that autism might be due to a ‘corrupted’ (in the medical sense) gene. The outbursts these research papers have generated on EoH are amazing:
You forgot to mention that we’re damn old TESTOSTERONE-laden refrigerator mutant moms……………Here’s more from Autism Speaks funded research. So now the theory is it’s you damn old moms with your refrigerator mutant genes that causes autism. You are such horrible people. Tsk-tsk. Clearly, you aren’t feeling guilty enough, no matter how misplaced.
Any hypothesis which mentions or refers to parents is given equally short shrift. It doesn’t take much to work out why. Even when there is no hint of ‘blame’ (as in dear old Bettlehiem) to parents, any intimation that the genetic/physical make up of parents might have something to do with causes is pounced on and denounced in increasingly hysterical overtones.
Personally I don’t see the issue. Does it matter? No, not to me. But it seems to these parents that the idea that they might carry some responsibility for the fact their kids are autistic fills them with an utter horror. Even to the point that they have to delude themselves.
Take the cases of Erik Nanstiel’s daughter and John Best’s son. Here are two fathers who regularly sing the praises of their children’s doctors (the Geier’s and Andy Cutler respectively) and yet…
When we look back at everything we pay out of pocket… and for everything we pay as a co-pay… it’s several THOUSAND a year.
Why are we still doing biomed after six long years? Because we’ve seen our daughter go from failing-to-thrive to a pretty healthy kid. From a kid who couldn’t balance her copper and zinc… who had lead and mercury through the roof, with very little glutathione… who had constant diarrhea and wouldn’t sleep at night… and terrible eyesight…
to a kid with darn-near normal mineral levels, whose heavy metals have been more than half depleted, is thriving on a good nutritional program… and whose glutathione levels are now higher than daddy’s… is sleeping wonderfully through the night and has seen a 60% improvement in her eyeglass prescription.
She’s also nearly lost her tactile-defensiveness, loves attention (much more than before), stims a LOT less… is beginning to potty train and needs less “prompting” from us for life skills that she’s learning (like using silverware at meal time and dressing/undressing, etc.)
She is still considered low-functioning…
Like Brad and I, Erik and I have also had our fair share of verbal jousts but when I read this I want to weep. How can a man who so obviously adores his daughter fail to see that which is right in front of his face? They’ve been doing biomed for six years and his daughter is still low functioning (Erik’s words). The improvements he describes have little to no bearing on autism.
I waste no pity on John Best but once again, his denial is as plain as the autistic son in front of him:
I’ve done 55 rounds of chelation safely following the advice of Andy Cutler. My son keeps improving. I advise everyone that contacts me through GR to read what Cutler has to say and consider his protocol over what some DAN doc’s say. He has answered all of my questions at no cost and this chelation for a severely autistic child is working.
Whereas today, John made a post on EoH that stated:
In the time it took me to type my last reply, my son smeared feces all over himself and his room again. I’ve long since lost track of how many hundreds of times this has happened.
By the standards of Kim Stagliano – smearing (A Crappy Life remember) equals not cured. How exactly is the chelation working for John’s son? Or is it merely a panacea for the denial that ails his dad?
Left Brain Right Brain 
Recent Comments