Chelation Study Cancelled

So who canned the NIMH chelation study as "too dangerous?" Children are given huge doses of chemotherapy and radiation in a desperate effort to save them from cancer - fully knowing the side effects themselves can be deadly.  It's a fair risk most parents are willing to take to help a sick child.

If your child is full of lead, the doctor will chelate him as a standard protocol. (Children.WebMD.) If removing the source of lead and balancing nutrition do not reduce lead levels, or if the blood lead level is very high, chelation therapy may be used. Chelation therapy is a process that rapidly reduces the amount of lead stored in the body. Drugs called chelating agents cause metals like lead to bind to them, and then they are eliminated from the body through urine. Because chelating agents increase the absorption of lead and other metals, it is essential that sources of lead exposure be removed before a person is treated.

But if your child is full of mercury, too bad.  The mainstream docs won't chelate him. After all, he might just get better and then all the people who've railed against autism treatments and screamed at us that our kids are "uncurable!" would be wrong. 

Read the blip HERE.

Comments

[rileysmom]

John
I'm 5'1" and I guarantee you I can take Peter Hotez,lol!!! Thanks for the laugh!

[John]

Hey Probe,
The reason Peter Hotez doesn't grab a parent and shake them is strictly size.. I've met him, attended a press conference where he lied, stared at him and watched him slither out of the building away from the parents..

By the way he's about 5'6"

Very much like Paul Offit, cornering pettite mothers and screaming at them , when no one is looking. Then running off when a father rounds the corner.

You should know the people you defend better.

[TheProbe]

Managing Editor's Note: I sent an email to this commenter apologizing for using his first name when I commented back to him. The Probe is welcome to complain for my inadvertent error. It wasn't my intention to out him, as I addressed him in what I thought was a civil manner, by using his name. No harm intended. I'm damned if I publish these comments. And damned if I don't.

Kim, you are an unethical shit. I post under TheProbe to protect my self and my family from the evil doers like (deleted to avoid WWIII.)

You have absolutely no right to "out" me. You call yourself a journalist, but do not act like one.

Age-Of-Ignorance is a far more appropriate name.

As for what Dr. Hotez said, yes, the research money has gone to prove vaccines cause autism, when there is no scietific evidence to even suggest that.

You lack facts and logic, just like you lack ethics.

Why am I not surprised.

Note that if you censor this post, as I expect you will, I will, as usual, post it on several blogs of people who understand your evil.

[kat23]

"I ALMOST feel like there's some kind of plot to just make the parents of Autism children feel like NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT OR THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT really cares whether our kids get better or not."

above posted by Matt

Matt,
from where I sit, they don't:(

[Stagmom]

Probe, Cure Autism Now and NAAR had millions and years to move us along. How'd that work out? Autism Speaks has what, $60,000,000 or some such figure, devoted primarily to research, I believe. And you're quoting this doctor as saying that raising questions about vaccine safety is what's holding back his daughter? That's laughable. Sure, blame the discordant group. I'm sure the handful of people with SafeMinds, as opposed to the thousands working hand in hand with AS, Yale Study, U Washington, Kennedy Krieger are not at fault at all for the lack of usable info for autism. No, not at all. Back to SPAM you go. Happy trolling.

KIM

[TheProbe]

Censor this one:

Peter Hotez is the Walter G. Ross Professor and chairman of
Microbiology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University
School of Medicine. He is also the father of an autistic daughter,
now a teenager.

"One of the reasons that I believe that we are at least ten years
behind in providing the right kind of services for autistic children
is because of the distraction that this whole vaccine-autism debate
has caused. It's led to a lack of focus on what's really needed. I
get very angry at a lot of these autism groups, like Safe Minds. It's
so difficult for me not to want to shake them and say, 'Don't you
realize that you're really doing a disservice to parents, not a
service?' And they're so self-righteous. They don't speak for all
autistic parents. They're certainly not speaking for me."

[Lila White]

Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing after all. Do we REALLY want a government agency doing this test? They'd either botch it and get the results they want or they'd end up hurting some kids because they didn't boost their nutritional status prior to chelation. ARI or DAN! are the only agencies qualified to do this anyway.

[Patrick]

Obtuse MODs: Nice censorship, particularly considering the desperation of your readers.

Managing Editor's Note: Patrick, per our moderation guidelines, we do not allow advertising of products in our comments. Your comment here is rude and offensive to our readers, whose children are in dire straits. Please peddle your hangover cure elsewhere. We don't have the time to party and get drunk, we're too busy with our kids.

Kim Stagliano

[Garbo]

Maybe we should think about pitching it as a reality show. Two groups of families dealing with autism. One group does biomed treatments including chelation etc. and the other group doesn't. By the end of the season, what do you suppose the rest of America would see? Of course, no Pharma-sponsored network would dare touch it. Maybe PBS.

[Carolyn M.]

Foxnews.com has this story as well, but their version of it has a quote from Rebecca Estepp of TACA. Unfortunately, they also included a quote from Dr. Offit (and mentioned his book). They did not use the word "fringe" until about halfway down the first page.

[Matt Kaufman]

When I saw this news, I just couldn't believe it. What, are they worried that the study might make our kids' brains not function correctly? HELLO, many parents are going to chelate anyway, so why not test the effectiveness of the treatment. I ALMOST feel like there's some kind of plot to just make the parents of Autism children feel like NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT OR THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT really cares whether our kids get better or not.

[Garbo]

CNN.com now has the story up. The word "fringe" is prominently featured here, too. NO attempt to contact anyone who might think that cancelling the study was a bad idea. Totally unbalanced reportage/press release regurgitation. And there's this, about the proposed study:
"The researchers had proposed recruiting 120 autistic children ages 4 to 10 and giving half a chelation drug and the other half a dummy pill. The 12-week test would measure before-and-after blood mercury levels and autism symptoms."

Maybe it's better that they cancelled it. As we all know, 12 weeks and testing blood levels before and after would do NOTHING to prove or disprove whether it was working. Or to measure mercury burden. What about urinary porphyrin tests before, during and after? For that matter, what about a study just comparing urinary porphyrin profiles in ASD and non-ASD kids?

Oh, and did you know that mercury's been out of all kid vaccines since 2001, except for the flu shot? Because that's what CNN says.

[Jim Witte]

Anne Dachel said:

"Notice the studies they WON'T do: ..
Studies to find the misdiagnosed adults with autism to prove there's been no increase."

You'd think that's one they'd WANT to do - Fombonne et al. go on and on about how there hasn't been an increase.. I actually wonder how many mis-diagnosed adults there might be - and if autism is not only increasing but getting worse (more GI problems, more severe sensory problems, etc), then it's quite possible that his "hidden hoarde" doesn't have the kind of *severe* autism that kids today are getting, but do have autism nonetheless.

Which begs the question - why is it getting worse? Perhaps that's what they don't want to know. Of course, if they did do such a study and DIDN'T find adults.. Out goes Fombonne!

[Jim Witte]

From the AP story,
".. other potential therapies for autism.."

WHAT other potential therapies??! Prozac? More Risperdal? Or given that study showing that the atypical antipsychotics have at least as many if not more side effects than older ones ("Risks Found for Youths in New Antipsychotics",http://tinyurl.com/6oeagr, also posted to on ABMD by Teresa Binstock).. Perhaps we'll just go back to good ol' Haldol. Sheesh!

And using the word 'fringe' to describe the mercury-autism theory is not exactly unbiased journalism. But since when was the AP unbiased?

[Garbo]

I believe that we need another big paradigm shift -- like when the refrigerator mom theory was finally discarded. As long as autism is classified as a mental illness, under the purview of niMh, all we are going to get is more of the same studies of existing patented drugs designed to alleviate symptoms but not cure the underlying pathology. The drugs they're testing are for things like schizophrenia, ADD, CFS, ALS, MS and Alzheimers. So now the researchers want to apply existing drugs for other diseases to autism to see what might stick, instead of testing DMPS, which is not patented but has a profound clinical history of helping autism patients. Imagine if instead they were willing to test DMPS chelation therapy for autism and all those other chronic syndromes -- the pharmaceutical company would lose an entire sector of profit!

[Randy]

"What the FDA approved of harmed my son, what the FDA doesn't approve of has given my son back to me."

Kinda sums it up very nicely - if I might just add to that point:

From the notebook Dr. Nathaniel S. Lehrman, MD, regarding the SSRI conference hosted (ironically?) in Philadelphia in Oct 2002: "The conference amply demonstrated the dangerous effects that SSRI anti-depressant drugs can have. Despite confirmation of that claim in one court of law, and, as compared to the general population, the 68% higher suicide rate among those given SSRIs in experimental trials, the Food and Drug Administration nevertheless claims that it "has made repeated determinations that there is no scientific basis to show the drugs cause violence or suicide."

Last Feb the CBC Radio One show "As It Happens" interviewed Professor Irving Kirsh, University of Hull, regarding his study of SSRI's ( Public Library of Science Medicine).

http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20080226.shtml

Listen to part 1 for the interview with Kirsch (about 8 minutes duration) - particularly the last couple of minutes - where they discuss the "difficulties" getting the less-that-favorable data out of the hands of the FDA.

Don't look, don't let anyone else look, cherry-pick, - this is what the FDA helps it's customers do best.

People (kids) loaded up on SSRI's with no apparent clinical benefit can go out on rampant murder sprees, while Lilly brags about it's particular flavor being the "best seller", but a chelation study (with thousands of parents attesting to the treatment's efficacy) is "unethical". There might be a side effect. Like what, grabbing up all the guns one morning, offing your family, and then loading up and heading off to school?

FDA and NIMH (in this case, anyway) are to Pharma what the big red "easy" button is to Staples customers.

No offense, Staples....

[javsmom]

my son does the dmsa for 4 days every two weeks and one thing i notice is he is actually giddy during this time. he even laughs in his sleep!! as long as you keep an eye on their liver and watch for any signs that it may be bothering them, it will be fine.

i will never forget the day we came home from the appt where i let them poison my son with a crapload of shots. god i was SO STUPID to let those murderers touch my son. i will carry this with me forever.

[Scott Shoemaker]

Why does this not surprise me? These ass clowns are obviously tied to the pharmaceutical industry. Think about the ramifications if such a study was done -- Lost revenue and more studies done linking environmental polution and vaccines as part of the autism problem, not to mention the liability issue at hand.

Yes, those chelators have a horrible, nasty side effect much worse than mercury, aluminum, antimony and all the other shit that is pumped into our air, water, and food. BEWARE!!!

TD-DMSA changed my non-verbal, non-responsive son into a child that started speaking in complete sentences and losing 70% of his "autism" symptoms in less than 5 months. That is a "side effect" I can live with.

Who do I contact to try and get this study rolling again? I have some great video to send them of the horrible side effects that some of these kids and parents could look forward to.

[SaraD]

While I understand that they are concerned with the effects chelation is having on the non-toxic rats, why are they halting the study when the toxic rats in the study improved? That's just the point of why the study needs to be done. Our children's labs are showing they ARE toxic. We're not chelating non-toxic kids.

[Kathy]

GET THE MERCURY / HEAVY METALS OUT OF THESE KIDS! Jesus ... what will it take? Maybe they need to take the mercury *causes*( autism out of the freaking equation so the pharmaceutical companies and the government don't feel so threatened ... mercury posioning symptoms and autistic symptoms are the SAME, PERIOD. My son has improved tremendously over the past year with DMSA. I get great joy watching him get healthier each day ... my heart aches for the kids who are caught in the web of this deception and aren't getting the proper treatment ... criminal, just criminal.

We need to do something ... THIS IS WRONG TO STOP A CHELATION STUDY.

I just can't believe I live in America and this is happening ...