THE EXPERTS, THE TRUTH, AND GOLD SALTS

By DAN OLMSTED

I went to college at a time and place where, in the name of academic freedom and not riling up the students any further, one could avoid almost any unpleasant subject -- by which I mean the whole of math and science. So my understanding of the complexities of biology, neurology and statistics is seriously restricted. I tend to rely on logic and an English major's reading of scientific papers as my tools -- along with a few people whose knowledge and fair-mindedness I have learned to trust.

I'm sure it won't be long before that paragraph comes back to "haunt" me -- just like the idea of doing my own natural history of autism from scratch. Here's how one person described that: "I exchanged correspondence with Dan Olmsted when he started his autism series. In response to my citation of various materials for him to look at, he told me that he wanted instead to take a fresh look at things, and not be influenced by ideas that others had before him. In other words, he prefers to draw his conclusions in a vacuum, without doing any research."

Well, that's interesting -- taking a fresh look is the equivalent of "drawing conclusions in a vacuum, without doing any research." I suppose it could be, but what clearly unifies much criticism of independent-minded autism investigation is the idea that people with -- sniff, sniff -- simply no standing are venturing into areas that were previously the province of self-ordained "experts." Yeah, experts like the ones who maintained for decades that parents made their kids autistic. Now that the experts say it's genetic -- well, they must be right this time ... they couldn't have screwed up twice in a row, could they?

Compared to them, parents, activists, maverick journalists, advocates -- people who communicate and share information on the newfangled World Wide Webs, for God's sake -- are the know-nothings of the autism universe.

What their nervous condescension really conceals is the yawning gap in autism research that allows an unlettered yahoo (no B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) like me to drive a big ol' truck right through it. For instance, the quote above was in reference to my report that the first autism case in the medical literature -- Donald T. -- recovered markedly after getting gold salts treatment for an entirely different ailment (or perhaps not so entirely different): juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The "experts" at the time chalked up his recovery to the kindly farm family he had been sent to live with -- get the picture? bad parents! -- but Donald's brother told me in 2005 that the medical treatment is what made the difference. So even though the "parents-did-it" idea had long been discredited, it succeeded for decades in submerging the fact that a biomedical treatment helped the first child to recover.

But information wants to be free -- so says one of the better slogans of our age. And once actual facts -- as opposed to mere speculation masquerading as expertise -- are loosed upon the world, there is no getting them back in the multi-dose vial. So it goes with gold salts and Donald T., and before long I came upon a study that seemed pertinent. Here's what I wrote two years ago:
 

"A published scientific paper suggests gold salts -- the treatment that may have prompted improvement in the first child ever diagnosed with autism -- can affect mental conditions.
"'Although there is very little modern research on these applications for gold, historically one notable use of gold was as a 'nervine,' a substance that could revitalize people suffering from nervous conditions, a term we would today call neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as epilepsy and depression,' according to the paper, 'Gold and its relationship to neurological/glandular conditions.'

"The paper appeared in 2002 in the International Journal of Neuroscience, co-authored by four researchers at the Meridian Institute, a Virginia-based non-profit group. It is online  HERE.

"'Neither the causes of the disorders nor the mechanism of gold is known, yet there are reports pointing to a possible involvement of naturally-occurring gold in the nervous and glandular systems, and evidence from historical sources of a possible efficacy of gold in therapy for neurological disorders,' write authors Douglas G. Richards, David L. McMillin, Eric A. Mein and Carl D. Nelson."

I thought that was kind of interesting -- maybe a clue worth pursuing in light of Donald's treatment. If it's useful information, does it really have to be peer-reviewed to be pertinent? Right after I wrote about Donald, University of Kentucky Chemistry Professor Boyd Haley decided to do a little experiment. I wrote about this two years ago, Dec. 23, 2005:

"In a striking follow-up to our reporting on the first child diagnosed with autism -- and his improvement after treatment with gold salts -- a chemistry professor says lab tests show the compound can 'reverse the binding' of mercury to molecules.

"'This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts,' Haley said. "The potential significance: Donald T. -- Case 1 among children diagnosed with autism in the 1930s -- showed marked improvement in his autistic symptoms after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. That's according to his brother, who we interviewed earlier this year in the small Mississippi town where he and Donald, now 72, still live.

"One theory of autism -- strongly dismissed by federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups -- is that the disorder is primarily caused by a mercury preservative called thimerosal that was used in vaccines beginning in the 1930s. Some parents and researchers who believe autism is, in essence, mercury poisoning are using treatments designed to remove mercury from the body or offset its neurological effects.

"Haley is among a minority of scientists who holds this view, and after reading about Donald's improvement he set out to test whether gold salts have any effect on mercury. "You follow your nose in research, and when I saw that I thought, yes, this is a possibility," said Haley. In the test tube, anyway, the effect was pretty dramatic: The gold pulled the mercury off the enzyme in 30 minutes flat.

Another rare researcher whose nose twitched was Mady Hornig. I wrote about that, too:

"A Columbia University scientist plans to test whether gold salts improve the functioning of autistic mice -- a step toward finding whether they could help children with autism. Dr. Mady Hornig of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health will give the compound to mice that have been bred to be susceptible to thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's immunizations until recently."

First, though, she needed the grant money. As far as I know, neither the medical establishment nor cash-stuffed Autism Speaks has seen fit to fund this project, which would require less than $100K (that's lunch money for AS). Genes are where the glamour and grants are.

But gold salts just won't go away. People keep reading about their effect and making connections that appear to elude the established experts. Age of Autism's Kent Heckenlively recently wrote:

"Scientists at the Duke University Medical Center, led by Dr. David Pisetsky, chief of the division of Rheumatology and Immunology recently tested the mechanism by which gold salts may treat inflammatory disorders.    

"The researchers were aware that the HMGB1 molecule provokes inflammation in the body and is associated with arthritis.  The scientists at Duke stimulated mouse and human cells to produce HMGB1 then treated them with gold salts.  The researchers found that the gold salts interfered with the activity of interferon beta and nitric oxide, leading to a significant decrease in HMGB1 over time.  This was consistent with reports that gold salts were effective in treating arthritis, but took several months for the full effects to become apparent. 

"Researchers in Korea and Italy have reported that HMGB1 is released in great quantities following an ischemic injury and induces neuro-inflammation in the brain.  In the body HMGB1 generally acts as a cytokine, promoting inflammation. 

"Many autism researchers have noted the signs of neuro-inflammation in the brain as well as other signs of inflammation in the body.  Our medical field is full of specialists, but few who can put the pieces together and look at the entire body. 

"Donald T. had severe arthritis as well as autism and apparently recovered after treatment with gold salts.  Researchers at Duke may have now uncovered an explanation for that event. Wouldn't it be ironic if parents who have had their bank accounts emptied by the necessity of caring for their autistic children found that gold really did (help)?"

Well, "ironic" is one word for it -- "grotesque" would also work.

Just this week I got an e-mail from a reader named Martin Cowen: "Hi Dan. The Wall Street Journal today, 12-18-07, page D-1, has a story about this lead poisoning treatment. Of interest to you, I think, will be the fact, stated in the article, that the treatment was originally for rheumatoid arthritis. As you have reported, Autism case number 1 was treated for rheumatoid arthritis with gold salts. Maybe there is a connection between autism and rheumatoid arthritis?" 

Lo and behold, the article says that this lead-chelating drug, called d-penicillamine, was originally only for "rheumatoid arthritis and adults with a rare genetic disorder." But years of off-label use showed it could also lower blood lead levels, the article said. So I went to Wikipedia (can't you just hear the "experts" hyperventilating?) and looked up the drug. One use is for "Wilson's disease, a rare genetic disorder of copper metabolism ... (the drug) relies on its binding to accumulated copper and elimination through urine." 

I sent this off to my AOA colleague Mark Blaxill, and in a few minutes he fired back a 2007 scientific study that looked at thimerosal and mercury in mice brains and showed "d-penicillamine as a chelator decreased the mercury contents in the cerebrum." So here's a drug that likes to lap up mercury in the brain, escort lead out of the bloodstream, help people with a metals efflux disorder get rid of copper, and kick the dickens out of rheumatoid arthritis, all at the same time. Not only that -- the scientist profiled has come up with a nice grape flavored d-penicillamine so kids will drink it. He just can't get any pharmaceutical company to make it.

So here we are back to chelators, metals, mercury, rheumatoid arthritis, autism and inflammation -- back to Case 1, with links and cross-currents that seem to get more interesting all the time, at least to laymen like me and my correspondents. That's why I'm still talking about gold salts and reading about HMGB1 and citing that 2007 study on d-penicillamine by Minami et al from the Journal of Environmental Toxicity and Pharmacology titled "Effects of lipopolysaccharide and chelator on mercury content in the cerebrum of thimerosal-administered mice." 

I don't even know what lipopolysaccharides are, but I wish someone who did would order up a big, blind, double-placebo thing to figure all this out. Until then, I'm afraid, we're going to have to take a page from Pogo. We have met the experts, and they are us.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

Comments

[Donna Rode]

Dan, thank you for your most interesting article on gold salts and d-penicillamine as chelating agents. Thanks to the research you and the other "experts" are doing, I have great hopes for my vaccine injured family members. Hoping not to sound like a broken record on my support of Dr. Ron Paul, I strongly believe that he is the only presidential candidate that will address these issues head on! As a ob/gyn who has delivered more than 4,000 babies, he certainly has a personal interest in their health and well-being. Donald Trump's statement was posted on a Ron Paul website yesterday - never thought I could support anything he had to say. . . . . One other thing, I don't need to wait to have a double-blind study to be done to try the d-penicillamine - find it for me, we'll try it!

[Gayle]

Hey Twyla,
Any chance you will run for Governor of New Jersey any time in my lifetime? If so, you've certainly got my vote. But seriously, as an enlightened individual in these unenlightened times, I sure wish someone with your knowledge would run for public office. Maybe that is the only way to keep the ever growing, dangerous wave of vaccines from wiping out our children. We need to return back to our policy of true informed consent in vaccination, and add in philosophical exemption in all states. So what if the few children of enlightened parents need to stay home from school for a month or two if there is an outbreak. As vaccines are never 100% effective in a population, shouldn't all students stay home anyway during any outbreak? I hear that atypical measles kills children 15-20% of the time and it only occurs in vaccinated children.

[Heidi Roger]

Well, Twyla is a really tough act to follow! I will just say thanks to Dan O for hitting the ball out of the park once again, we are so lucky to have you and all of the AOA regulars on our side. In the words of our favorite Guardian Angel now gone two years today, "Never give up". Wishing you and everyone in our fight against autism a good year in 2008!
Heidi

[Twyla]

Thank you so much for this very interesting information and for continuing to pursue these avenues of research in the face of staunch numbing blind indifference on the part of so many large scientific, medical, and governmental establishments and even autism groups and most of the media.

If there had always been so much resistance to people using their own minds and eyes to observe reality and develop new knowledge, we would still be living in the stone ages, or at least in the Medieval age. The Renaissance would never have occurred.

I am thinking, for example, of Nicolaus Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543. He proposed the “heliocentric hypotheses” that the earth is not the center of the universe, that instead the earth rotates around the sun, and that the appearance of the motion of the stars and sun around the earth is actually caused by the rotation of the earth around its own axis.

Per Wikepedia, “Although Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus, his publication of an observation-based, mathematically-supported scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, was a landmark in the history of modern science that is known as the Copernican Revolution.

“Among the great polymaths of the Renaissance, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classical scholar, translator, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. Amid his extensive responsibilities, astronomy figured as little more than an avocation — yet it was in that field that he made his mark upon the world…

“Throughout his life he performed astronomical observations and calculations, but only as time permitted and never in a professional capacity.”

I can just imagine if Copernicus were making these novel observations in today’s environment. He would encounter less opposition from religious sectors today than, for example, that encountered by Galileo in the 17th century. But from the scientific arena – if astronomers were like those responsible today for research on autism -- I imagine this dialogue:

Scientists: “You are not an astonomer. Your work has not been published in a reputable scientific peer reviewed journal. Therefore anyone who listens to you is an of an inferior mental capacity and does not understand science.”

Copernicus: “Well, gosh, just read my article and do the calculations for yourself. Come look through my telescope. I think I’m on to something here. I’d like to know what you think.”

Scientists: “We won’t even look at or think about your work until ten years after it has been proven to be true. Once it has been proven for ten years, it is worthy of our consideration. Maybe you should start by getting a grant to have 1,000 people look through your telescope and see whether a statistically significant number come up with the same observations.”

Or what about Benjamin Franklin observing electricity using a kite and a key during a thunder and lightening storm? What about Thomas Edison’s work?

Why has science become viewed as the domain of an insular “Secret Society”, as Anne Van Renssalaer so aptly put it? One reason is because we have had an accumulation of so much information over the years that now it takes years of training to be up to date on a particular field. But, this should not mean that we close our eyes to novel observations and conclusions. This should not mean that mere mortals without “MD” or “PhD” after their names are viewed as incapable of observation and thought -- especially in regard to the current widespread autism epidemic which (I am quite sure) is new and never before in human history experienced on this scale. Even the observations and research of MDs and PhDs are being ignored if not in keeping with the mainstream gene-brain-centric views.

This is not scientific skepticism. Skepticism makes one more open minded to observing reality as it is, without preconceptions. What we are seeing today is just plain blinding prejudice.