Autism's False Prophets by Paul A. Offit

Author:Paul A. Offit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2010-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

SEIDEL WAS ALSO APPALLED BY THE GEIERS’ AND J. B. HANDLEY’S constant promotion of chelation therapy as a cure for autism. In 2000, only a handful of children were chelated; by 2005, the number had purportedly climbed to more than 10,000 a year. Although many scientists and clinicians were concerned about the harmful effects of chelation, Handley was unbowed. He firmly believed that his Rescue Angels, who preached that chelation could rescue children from autism, were serving a valuable and noble cause. Indeed, when he learned that one of his Angels, a teacher, had posted some data on the increasing rates of illness, obtained from school medical records, and that the post was anonymously sent to the administrators at her workplace with a demand that they question the Angel’s professional and personal judgment, Handley posted the following message, addressed to the “neurodiverse crowd”: “I have no respect for your movement,” he wrote. “You are now spending your time actively hassling our Rescue Angels. We are spending our time constructively engaging doctors to help our babies. If you don’t like what we have to say, stop listening. We will bring the full resources of myself and Generation Rescue to stop this. We will sue you for libel and we will go after your homes and assets. My lawyers live to investigate and sue people like you. This will be your only warning.”

When Lyn Redwood and Sallie Bernard proposed that mercury in vaccines caused autism, no evidence existed to support or refute their claim; it was just speculation. But during the next seven years, scientists on several continents took this hypothesis seriously enough to examine it and found it was wrong. More important, the notion that chelation therapy can heal the brains of children who had actually suffered mercury poisoning is false. Once a brain cell has been damaged by a heavy metal like mercury, it is permanently damaged. The IOM, during its review of thimerosal, stated: “Chelation therapy has not been established to improve [kidney] or [brain] symptoms of chronic mercury toxicity and has had no effect on cognitive function when used for excretion of another heavy metal, lead. Because [chelation therapy] is unlikely to remove mercury from the brain, it is useful only immediately after exposure, before damage has occurred. Moreover, chelation therapy is not without risks; some chelation therapies might cause the release of mercury from [other parts of the body], thus leading to increased exposure of the [brain] to mercury.” So, it’s not only that chelation therapy hasn’t been shown to work; it’s also that it didn’t make sense that it would work. J. B. Handley had founded an organization dedicated to proselytizing the wonders of chelation therapy, recruiting scores of Rescue Angels to spread the word. And many parents swear by the wonders of chelating autistic children, claiming dramatic improvement within days. But because a cell damaged by heavy metal doesn’t recover—much less within a few days—this is simply not possible.

Then the unthinkable happened. On the morning

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