Quack Cures
At Forbes, Emily Willingham takes on five quack cures:
MMS. It stands for Miracle Mineral Solution, but it’s really bleach. I know because I tested it myself, destroying a perfectly good cloth napkin in the process. Take a look at what it does to cotton. Now imagine it on the inside of a child’s mouth, esophagus, stomach, or intestines–its peddlers encourage its administration as an enema. Horrorshow. Yet not only do parents try this bleach as a “treatment” for their children’s autism, but also a major autism conference actually featured a presenter flogging this stuff, and the claim that it “recovered” 38 children in 20 months remains on the conference site as I type this.
Chemical castration. Burning off the lining of an autistic child’s intestines might seem pretty horrific, but it can pale in comparison to the tragedy that is chemical castration to “treat” autism. I have previously broken down the background of this concept, introduced to the world of autism treatment by the now notorious father-son team of the Geiers.
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Chelation. Chelation is the process of using a chemical to strip metal from the blood. It’s a good thing if you have mercury poisoning, which autistic people do not have. Yet, the persistent association in some circles between mercury (as a component of the preservative thimerosal) and autism (a leap from MMR, which never contained thimerosal in the US, to “all vaccines,” most of which also never did) means that many groups still flog chelation as a treatment. It is not one. One of the metals in our bodies that we need to live is calcium–for example, it keeps our hearts beating–and at least one autistic child has died during a chelation “treatment” because it wiped the child’s blood of this life-supporting ion.
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Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Also a favorite with many of the alt-med-oriented autism organizations, this therapy has been target of an FDA warning to consumers. The bottom line is, laying down a lot of benjamins to subject an autistic child to ‘oxygen therapy’ is a waste of money, a likely torture to the child, and devoid of effectiveness.
Stem cells. Pro tip: If you have to travel outside the FDA purview for a treatment (as people have done for cancer “therapy” outside the US and also do for autism), you might want to think twice about it, or more times if the second thought doesn’t convince you otherwise...
