THE CLEVELAND CLINIC NEEDS YOUR KID TO REMAIN AUTISTIC

A wonderful biomed Mom named Michelle O"Neil wrote the entry below on her own blog. The Cleveland Clinic runs an ABA school for autism. Now you can connect the dots.  The folks at The Cleveland Clinic (and many other major "autism" institutions and schools are ignorant, arrogant, they don't want our kids to get well and they are full of you know what. We know of an autism school New England that asks parents to promise not to use diet or biomedical interventions. And they have a wait list! Don't ask us how.

You can read Michelle's blog HERE. 

I spoke with the grandfather of a young child with autism yesterday. They'd been to the Cleveland Clinic for an evaluation and he said while there, they received a packet warning them of the "unproven" various bio-med therapies they SHOULD NOT try.

The family had no idea there were such things as chelation, methyl-b12, anti-virals, hyperbaric oxygen, etc. They didn't know about the GF/CF diet. They used the guide and googled all the forbidden therapies.

The morning after this child's second MB12 shot, his mother woke him up for school and he rolled over and said, "Good morning Mommy." They were the first words he'd ever spoken, to anyone. * Correction. I spoke to the grandfather again today to make sure I had my story straight. Did I hear that right? Actually, it was the morning after the child's first MB12 shot that he spoke, not his second one.

Comments

[lynn]

Hello my name is Lynn and i am a certified provider. I work with io waiver and level one and respite. I have been working with people with disabililtes over 20 some years and i work with all ages of handicapped .if yo u are intersested to meet me you can e mail me at challengeme87@aol.com and put disabilities as a subject or provider. I have a reference,fingerprint,resume, thanks lynn . I live in brunswick ohio.

[doodle]

"Until then you are just engaging in wars of words with the Neurodiversity camp who will never accept any evidence of treatment effectiveness."

Those are wise words Harold. The current atmosphere regarding autism causes and treatment is so radically different than it was just a year ago that it will take some time for everyone to adjust. Old habits of fighting on blogs with the neurodiversity camp, and even among people who basically are saying the same things, are tough to break. Let's just hope that some more research on diet, supplements, of course, any of the treatments for mito problems come out soon and get some support from the AAP. Frankly, that would have seemed impossible just last year at this time, but who knows now.

[Wake up Harold]

From Harold -

"If the quality studies are published supporting biomeds, some of which I did try without success with my son when he was first diagnosed, I would be happy to consider them in discussion with my son's pediatrician."

Harold you need to understand something - you are barking up the wrong tree. What you have going on in autism as per Yasko are 3 things - a genetic predisposition, an infectious agent (viral and bacterial) and an environmental trigger. You cannot expect a ped unversed in DAN treatment to expect to heal your child. You need to get on some autism treatment lists and read parent reports of improvements. Sure there are some who are non-responders, that does not mean its the end of life as we know it. It means you need to get your butt out there and figure out what else the non-responder parents are doing. UNTIL you get yourself out there to research the treatments yourself and get to practitioners who are treating these other kids (there are similarities, and there are some differences in the kids) your child will never get better. This is an auto-immune disorder we are talking about that your ped is not qualified to treat it.

There are many, many different treatment modalities. As far as mainstream medicine goes, what works now and is a fad, is gone in 5 years because several people died. Case in point (if you get the Mercola newsletter), the methyl testosterone treatments in the 40s and 50s dropped like a hot potato when people got liver cancer. The HRT of the 2000s dropped when women began stroking up. Big Pharma pays people to bring out research to make money. The studies they bring about are not about you Harold, or your welfare. If they did do the studies you want they would point the finger at vaccines. You will NEVER see these studies Harold. Who is going to fund them? Big Pharma? Wake up!!

Yes there are some studies some DAN docs have done but you will NEVER see them on your ped's desk or on TV (go to the Files section of the major autism lists to see them, Rossignol has a few for instance). The peds want to send the autism people to those who treat autism. Peds never ever want to treat autism, they just bring up the excuse to not have to do the work and this is the honest truth.

[A@T]

re this from Kim--"I know of ABA providers who have had epiphanies watching their kids who are using biomed and have become hybrid proponents."

Our family experienced this first hand, I'll never forget it. It is burned into my memory.

We implemented biomed and dietary changes and saw global improvements in mood, he was just happier. Severity and frequency of his temper tantrums was drastically reduced. His sleep improved very quickly. It was heartening and we vowed to continue but our son still had no speech and little interest in interaction, didn't play at all-with anything.

Then about 1 month later we started ABA. The therapist had met out son and was familiar with him before we started biomed. At about her 10th session she got very excited at his rate of progress-she was practically crying and said "guys it just doesn't happen like this". This from a 20 year veteran therapist. I had to go in the other room to compose myself.

The therapist and the case manager are the only professionals (except the diagnosis team) that knew our son before biomed and they are both believers now.
They wanted to know everything we were doing so they could provide other parents with the information and we were happy to help!

[Jeanne]

Tanner's Dad,

We had similar results with MB12. That was three years ago and we are still utilizing that treatment. We do the shots at night, while our son is sleeping. He doesn't know he is getting them. The needle is tiny, so he sleeps right through it. You can go to Dr. Neubrander's site for more info: http://www.drneubrander.com/dev/index.html

[Kim]

Hi, Harold. I know your blog and I think it's terrific. I also know you've had kind words for me when others have not, so thank you. I think we're on the same side here - we agree ABA is important. Where I get chafed is that the ABA folks (many, not all) completely write off biomed to the point of shutting it down. That's not right. Can you imagine if some oncologists said, "I offer chemo. Radiation is pure junk science." Or vice versa? The two can work in concert for the kids. The biomed side embraces all treatments, the ABA side often does not. That tells me they are more interested in protecting turf than helping the kids.

MEanwhile, I know of ABA providers who have had epiphanies watching their kids who are using biomed and have become hybrid proponents.

Hope you have a cheerier Monday up North than we have here - rain!

Best to you, Harold.

KIM

[Harold L Doherty]

Kim and others:

I employ ABA with my son. Initially I did so because of the evidence supporting ABA as effective. I do not object to parents seeking other approaches. If you visit my blog site you would find a recent comment on the power plant- mercury-autism study and several other objective presentations of biomed and environmental aspects of autism. I have also applauded Jenny McCarthy for advocating her views even though I do not, at this time, share those views.

What I attempted to do here, obviously unsuccessfully, was point out that ANY autism treatment needs more than anecdotal evidence to be considered evidence based. Any therapy or treatment known has anecdotal evidence in support from swimming with dolphins to NAET. If you want to become mainstream with biomed treatments you have to convince people with proper studies. It is my understanding that the AAP is working with some of the DAN professionals now. If the quality studies are published supporting biomeds, some of which I did try without success with my son when he was first diagnosed, I would be happy to consider them in discussion with my son's pediatrician.

Attacking ABA, and ABA practicioners is the wrong way to go. Again, shore up your evidence in support of biomeds. Move beyond anecdotal evidence and establish whatever biomed, and there are many, intervention for which you advocate as an evidence based intervention. Until then you are just engaging in wars of words with the Neurodiversity camp who will never accept any evidence of treatment effectiveness. Few professional centers will advise parents to seek non evidence based interventions.

[Jim Witte]

"These people need to be jailed. Or something more horrible than that."

A bit of mercury perhaps? Or just give the 10 or 11 vaccines in one day. See how their immune systems like *that*.

[Robin nemeth]

I’ve been interested in autism since I first learned of the condition when I was about eleven years old. I’ve been interested in mercury in vaccines for the last four or five years. And I’ve been trying to find people in the Greater Cleveland area, since last fall, who are interested in vaccine damage. There is virtually no one in a leadership position within the major autism ‘support’ organizations, here in the Greater Cleveland area. It has been my opinion based upon the experiences I’ve had that the ‘support’ organizations here are, without exception, in the business of supporting not children or families touched by autism, but the vaccine makers and the public health officials who screwed up so badly in recent decades. I’ve often felt that the presence of the Cleveland Clinic has something to do with that. They throw around a lot of weight and they cast a very heavy shadow.

There are people here who will say that they believe that vaccines have damaged their child. But they utter the words as if they’re saying the names ‘Sauron’ or ‘Voldemort’—in a whisper, as if the mere mention of the words will bring harmful repercussions down upon them. I’ve experienced this reluctance to stand up against what I call the mercury apologists from the leadership of all of the major organizations, from Autism Speaks to the local chapter of the ASA and even, I am sorry to say, the local chapter of the NAA. Most of these local chapter organizations and the leaders of them seem in fact to me to be, even now after the Hannah Poling case has come to light, intent on supporting the mercury apologists. I can’t for the life of me understand their unwillingness to speak about certain matters, except perhaps that some of them feel either that their children have not and will not be helped by the biomedical/diet/chelation approach (While I do believe that these approaches are among the best hopes for children with severe autism I do also believe that there continues to be a portion of children, somewhere between one third and two thirds, who probably won’t ever benefit much from them, at least not with the current science that’s available that I’m familiar with) and so they are willing to do anything in order to get support elsewhere (and I do mean anything. I was threatened with arrest once for simply standing on a public sidewalk politely asking people if they’d like information about vaccine safety—and this was by women who purport to want to help those touched by autism), or else they feel that the money, the really large sums of money that are available that might help them in their situation, can only be had by being obsequious to those who in reality have done this to their children, or aided and abetted the people who were responsible, to begin with.

Let me state that I’ve never received a dime from anyone for voicing my opinions on these matters. I’ve nothing to gain financially from the results of any PR efforts either pro or anti autism/vaccine connection. I have never been diagnosed on the spectrum, nor have any of my four children. They would never stand to gain a penny in a vaccine lawsuit. I am probably in fact doing my own children more harm than good by speaking of these issues at all, if you want to talk about sacrifices versus benefits. Although I’ve been interested in autism since childhood and lately have been interested in it with a passion, I never want to be in a position where I’m making money in any way within the field. I’ve seen too many people whose only purpose it seems—whose only means of making a living—is to say (much like the white house press secretary) what they are told to say. I never want to be one of those people. And I certainly don’t ever want to find myself in a position where my own beliefs on this matter are challenged and I find myself in a position where I must either admit that I’ve been wrong, or else face financial loses.

I’m not going to bother going into my reasons for my interest in autism. I will say that I have an engineering degree from Cleveland State University although I haven’t worked outside of the home for years. I was at one time a registered Professional Engineer in Ohio, although I let that lapse shortly after my first child was born. My husband is also an engineer. (We have the geek genes. Yes I’ve heard the ‘geeks get lucky’ theory. I don’t buy it, that it could be a very significant factor in the horrendous upswing in ASDs. I think the increase in autism happened before there were really that many people connected online.) I am now a stay at home mother with four children who doesn’t get out much and has a very limited social network. It won’t be the end of the world if one day I’m proven wrong about vaccines and I have to eat some crow. But so far, from what I’ve seen, it’s going to be very hard indeed to convince me that I wasn’t poisoned by the vaccines that I received as a child. And then, thirty years later, my children were as well.

There has been a lot of buzz recently about Kathleen Seidel, of neurodiversity fame. I understand that there was an attempt recently to look into her books. A subpoena was issued which she fought and won. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t understand exactly what that means but I presume that it means that she isn’t going to be forced to reveal where she gets her money from. I would like to say that if a similar subpoena were to show up requiring me to do likewise, I would have no problem whatsoever letting anyone who is interested know where every last dime that my husband and I own came from. And I have to say that while I respect the rights of people like Ms. Seidel to speak her mind and to post what she likes on the internet, I am very skeptical of her motives. I will let her reluctance to have her source of funding made transparent speak for itself.

Does anyone know about the Shoemaker lawsuit—why Ms. Seidel was not required to provide information to the court?

All I have seen from the mercury apologists is fear. While everyone is busy acknowledging their rights to speak about what they believe, and to raise millions of dollars in order to fund even more genetic research and to suggest that other research come to a halt, nobody seems to want to talk about what to me looks like obvious desperation on the part of these people to silence anyone who disagrees with what they are saying.

So now you’re telling me that the Cleveland Clinic is trying to discourage parents from seeking alternative treatments. Why does this not surprise me? I’ve heard Wiznitzer speak on PBS. I believe that he is with University Hospital but maybe he is with the Clinic. It is the same old same old. Do I give a rat’s rear end if people like these people stand to lose money if chelation/biomedical/diet treatments are found to be beneficial or are one day routinely funded by health insurance? You better believe that I don’t. Not after what I’ve seen in the last four years.

[Autism mom]

"During a recent interview, she wore a floppy black hat over her dark frizzy hair and a T-shirt that said: "What we need more of is science.""

John Best your Concord Monitor friend is a nut case. And here I was thinking I was losing my mind. Not even close. Thanks for making my day.

There is now hope - for my family!! Bio-medical treatments will save us, once we get the garbage out.

[John Best]

Here's a lovely article in the Concord Monitor about a friend of mine who also wants our kids to remain autistic.
http://tinyurl.com/6zyd64

Lots of rebuttals would be nice.

[Jenna]

Hi-

A few things:

1. ABA is an enormously effective therapy and is better studied than most pharmaceutical agents on the market today. Come to New Jersey where high quality ABA has been more available for a longer period of time than just about anywhere and you will find a good number of children that have completely recovered with ABA alone. I am tired of hearing people say this is not possible. I know several of these children personally. They were autistic, they aren't anymore, and they used zero biomed.

2. That said, my son would never be at the place he is today without biomed. His immune system and gut were a mess. For him, both ABA and biomed were necessary. This may very well be true for most kids with autism.

3. It infuriates me that several of the private ABA schools in NJ (and in fact it is often the most prestigious ones) actively discourage parents from seeking treatment other than ABA. The really hard core ABAers don't just diss biomed, it is anything other than ABA--AIT, vision therapy, social skills groups, Floortime, RDI, even speech and occupational therapy. My son attended one of these schools, and the director actually required that OT be removed from his IEP as a condition of accepting him into the school. The director also wanted to take my son off the GFCF diet because it would "impair him socially". I believe he conceded to allow the diet only after we characterized it as a "medical directive" from "one of the foremost pediatric gastroenterologists in the world" as "part of a treatment regimen for severe colitis". I also think it made him nervous that I am a lawyer. Another child at the school was in fact taken off the diet, but was allowed to go back on it when the director himself noted the resulting regression. I gave this director tons of information, but only from Tim Buie, because of the Harvard affiliation.

4. This all has to stop. Everyone has to realize that they may have the entire answer for a given child, but probably not. Each intervention is most likely just a piece of the solution.

Jenna

[Woelife]

"Even a lowlife named Orac admits this."

Thanks for the laugh. With my son battling his nth asthma attack this AM I badly needed a laugh.

[Greedy blood-suckers]

These money making blood suckers need to keep the kids on the spectrum so that they keep coming back and paying them. People need to stop going to these places. I heard on one of the autism lists that the RDI whiz Steve Gutsein made similar claims along the lines of (paraphrasing here) - there's no need to do bio-med as long as you are doing RDI.

These people need to be jailed. Or something more horrible than that.

[Alison Davis]

Realizing this post is not just about mB12 shots, I'd like to share what happened with my youngest. When he was 3, he was so severely autistic that very few assessments and tests were able to be completed on him. He did not start speaking words until he was almost 5. At 9 y.o., through a Defeat Autism Now! doctor, we started mB12 shots in the a.m. THAT FIRST DAY he began initiating more appropriate conversations, his conversations lasted longer with more turn-taking, he was making comments through INFERRING, and overall joint attention was so much more consistent. I encourage parents to seek docs who are knowledgeable to navigate treatments options. And yes, act locally.

[John Best]

Harold,
Chelation has been the evidence-based, mainstream medicine solution for mercury poisoning since about 20 years before Lovaas dreamed up ABA. Even a lowlife named Orac admits this.

Chelation is the only reason that educational approaches are now useful for kids like my son who was in a vegetative state for about 7 years.

[Sonja]

Harold

I, personally do not like to attack any intervention because each child will react differently to each intervention and you do not know what will work for your family or your child until you try it. That being said, after five decades of studies of this evidence based intervention that is still today considered "best practice" I have yet to see these kids from these studies succeeding in life. The goals of having a job, having a friend, and living independently is still not being achieved by most of these kids. Is the ABA world tracking these kids into young adulthood? Are they achieving even one of these goals? I cannot find anything on the long term success of the ABA program and I really want to see that success...perhaps you know where I should look? This is the data that needs to be distributed....it may be out there but I have not found it yet.

[Managing Editor/Kim]

I wrote this post. I'm not bashing ABA. ABA + biomed = success.

I know the value of ABA and I know NE Ohio. I lived there with my three kids from 1999 - 2005. We didn't GET proper ABA in school until we moved to Massachusetts. It has helped two of my three ASD children tremendously. I lament that fact that when my girls were in preschool, our school distict had ZERO ABA therapy to offer and no trained staff. I supported a parent in my district who fought like hell to get the Cleveland Clinic into our district to add ABA.

What I am against is the ubiquitous refusal of ABA therapists and schools who refuse to acknowledge that there are other highly effective treatments that when used, can make the ABA work EVEN BETTER.

Hey, a kid SPOKE - you need a double blind study from Walla Walla U to confirm that? Come on, sir. Our kids are losing precious time. This is about the kids. Not therapy "teams."

You can't train a child who has gut issues. You can't expect a child to attend when she has internal medical conditions that wreak havoc on her neurology.

It's time for the ABA world to learn about biomedical treatments.

Think of biomed as a SpeedPass for tolls. With it, the child can cruise through the ABA training faster and better. It can only HELP the ABA therapists - it won't take away your business. Unless you don't want the kids to get better. I rather doubt that's the case for individual indivudual therapists. I'm not so sure about large, heavily funded institutions.

Clearly the Cleveland Clinic is not on board yet.

Thanks for commenting.

Kim

[Jim Witte]

From Michelle's blog comments:

"There is a private ABA center in New England that now requires parents to sign documentation forbidding .. This center is quite sucessful at brainwashing parents into thinking anything biomedical is all 'psuedoscience'."

Odd, because that's almost the same argument used by the NDers (well, one of them - I don't venture into those waters often) *against* ABA - that is is little better than brainwashing or training a dog.. (in a way, it is - it *is* based on behaviorist theory - but maybe that's the level that ASD kids need to start at)

So - now a form of ABA "brainwashing" being used on the parents too? Who are these people? I wonder if one of these places could get sued - by some parent to blithely signs the contract (believe all the "voodoo talk" about Biomed), then a year later see another parent's kid making relatively incredible progress, pull their own kid out of the school and starts biomed.. And loses a year of "brain time" in the process.. And then sues the school.

Or better, what if a *state* sues the school for potentially increasing the number of future (potentially) "non-recovered" (or less-recovered) autistic children that will be a "burden" on their state financially? Especially since the APA has at least *on paper* sort on endorsed DAN!, that might give the state leverage to say that this is sort of accepted as "real medicine, not voodoo"

As Ginger said, ACT LOCALLY!

[Tanners DAD]

Wow that would be a dream come true if my son spoke. That(B12) is the next thing we are going to try. I was a very nervous when the doctor said MB12 shot. He did say there was a cream we can use. Does it make a difference? Is this shot considered safe?

Like all modern medicine... Basically a money machine. You pay for them to make you sick and then pay for them to make you think you need the pills to survive.

[Harold L Doherty]

Attacking ABA will not advance your argument for biomed treatments. ABA has been well documented as an effective intervention for autistic children.

Biomed interventions, including chelation, are not currently supported by a significant body of evidence demonstrating their effectiveness as autism interventions. When you attack ABA and those who discourage unproven interventions you are really attacking the evidence based approach to autism interventions. Even if an unproven intervention is not directly harmful if it is not effective it can waste a child's valuable development time, family finances and ..... hope.

Shore up the evidence in support of chelation or any other biomed intervention for which you advocate. But please don't add your voice to the often irrational attacks made against ABA which, after five decades of studies, remains the only evidence based effective intervention for autism.

[Holly]

No suprise, so does CHOP.