Autism Street

Greetings, Autism Street visitors and skeptical bloggers.

Skeptics’ Circle time is fast approaching at Autism Street, (scheduled to appear Thursday, December 7th), so it’s time to start submitting your best skeptical blogging for the upcoming 49th meeting.

I know the holiday season is upon us, and for many us, including myself (aka Do’C), that can mean scarce free time. In an effort to avoid delays or mixup, I have arranged for the services of a psychic medium over the next week or so. Regardless of my availability, this medium claims to be able to contact me through psychic means, or through someone in the spirit world who may know me.

The medium is supposed to be able to relay entries to me in just about real-time, as they are submitted, but please don’t delay. I should be back in a week with the Skeptics’ Circle. Please submit your entry links along with your blogger name (or pseudonym) to:

the.medium@autismstreet.org

An entire chelation panel interview video (that features Dr. Quig as a participant) can be viewed at the DAN! webcast site (See 2006 Washington D.C.). In the interest of context, in addition to differing metal tolerances from person to person, Dr. Quig seems to suggest a synergystic effect of metals as another reason for absence of provoked reference ranges on urine toxic metals reports from Doctor’s Data. He adds that interpretation is left to a (presumably DAN!) doctor. It’s possible that there are differing degrees of tolerance to heavy metals, although I’m not convinced there is any scientific proof of this for, or among autistic children. It’s also possible that heavy metals (or other metals) could exert a synergystic effect, but I haven’t seen conclusive descriptive scientific evidence to that effect for children with autism either.

In my opinion, the discussion of individual tolerances and synergystic effects of different metals sounds a lot like the “what about all the other ingredients?” position that seems so common among the hardcore anti-vaccination crowd, but I could be wrong. One thing is certain, there is a reference range for urine lead levels post-provocation available from LabCorp, and it looks a lot different from the Doctor’s Data lab report’s non-provoked reference range for lead.

What do you think?

Just when you thought you might wind up with nothing…Fear not, the Decorabilia blog may have left a little something for you in a last will and testament - which is also the 48th Meeting of The Skeptics’ Circle.

Drop on by for a collection of some of the best of the past couple of weeks’ skeptical blogging.

I’m also pleased to announce that Autism Street will be hosting the 49th Meeting of The Skeptics’ Circle in a couple of weeks. I’ve got some special plans, so please stay tuned for special entry submission instructions (coming the middle of next week).

And last but not least (for those in the U.S.), have a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday!
 

Note: The following is an excerpted page from www.coping.org. It is reproduced here with permission from Dr. and Dr. Messina (who happen to have a “feel free to use it completely, we really mean what we say in our blanket permission” reprint policy). I haven’t looked around the rest of their website yet, but thought this page was interesting. I think this might be difficult to come to terms with for anyone who might actually be in such a situation, so perhaps this post is more for grandparents’ and family friends’ potential enlightenment/awareness.

Exploitation: Beware Of The Parent’s Trap

What is exploitation?

Exploitation is the taking advantage of parents who are vulnerable and willing to do whatever it takes to “cure” their children who have developmental delays or special needs.

What makes parents of children with developmental disorders vulnerable to being exploited?

When parents are in shock and denial about their child’s disorder and delays, they can lapse into magical and fantasy thinking and seek a “cure” or “silver bullet” to make their children “normal.” This makes them very vulnerable to offers of help from professionals who “claim” to have the “magical touch,” or “miracle cure” to help make their children “better”, “cured,” or “healed.” These parents are unfortunately often willing to “pay whatever it takes” to get the “magical cure” to make all things right for their children.

Read more…

Introduction

“There is no doubt that this was an unintended use of Disodium EDTA. No medical professional would ever have intended to give the child Disodium EDTA,” Dr. Brown said. - Pittsburg Post-Gazette

The Order To Show Cause by The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs before the Pennsylvania State Board Of Medicine (the complaint against Dr. Roy Kerry, the Pennsylvania doctor who prescribed the chelation therapy drug that resulted in the death of Tariq Nadama) leaves little question about whether or not Dr. Kerry prescribed the very dangerous and seldom used DISODIUM EDTA.

69. Respondent spoke to Professional Conduct Investigator of the Bureau of Enforcement and Investigator concerning his treatment of Tariq.

70. Respondent admitted that EDTA is very rare to use on children.

71. Respondent admitted to using Disodium EDTA to chelate Tariq.

72. Respondent stated to Investigator Reiser that Disodium EDTA is the only formula of EDTA he stocks in his office.

73. Respondent admitted that CaNa2EDTA is available but that he has never used this agent.

In mainstream medicine, this drug is apparently quite uncommon, and used only for the emergency treatment of hypercalcemia and control of ventricular arrhythmias associated with digitalis toxicity. Tariq Nadama apparently had neither of those - he was autistic.

What follows, was submitted by an anonymous Autism-Hub guest science blogger.

Read more…

Pediatric Grand Rounds is collection of interesting blogging from, or related to, fields in pediatric medicine. It’s hosted by a new author bi-weekly on Sunday mornings.

Edition 15 is up at the Tales From The Womb blog.

The Tales From The Womb blog is written by Dr. Philip Gordon, a neonatologist from the University Of Virginia and author of Cherubs In The Land Of Lucifer.

Read more…

It has been mentioned already, and it’s definitely worth bookmarking if you haven’t.

In addition to her website, Michelle Dawson, autism researcher and human rights advocate, is writing a blog.

Please visit The Autism Crisis blog.

Yesterday, she published the first in a potential new series called “Verbatim” that she describes as:

This may be the first in an occasional series of direct quotes (varying greatly in content) from peer-reviewed papers or scholarly books reporting or reviewing autism research. Sometimes a paraphrase just doesn’t do it.

The first up in what could become an insightful series indeed - is a direct quote from Simon Baron-Cohen. Get ready to examine your possible filters of perspective in very short time. A new look at strengths vs. weaknesses is only about 2 minutes of interesting reading away.

Here’s Simon Baron-Cohen: