Another Bogus Autism Treatment

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

At WIRED, David Gilbert reports on how a Facebook group hawks a bogus - and dangerous - autism treatment.

This group is just the latest example of how the anti-vaxxer community has used platforms like Facebook for more than a decade to prey on vulnerable people by pushing bogus and dangerous pseudoscientific products—especially those targeting children. These same communities have in the past pushed bleach as a cure for autism and during the Covid pandemic promoted ivermectin as a treatment for children. Despite repeated exposés of these groups, they continue to flourish on major social media platforms.

The Facebook group was first set up in September 2022 by a woman named Julia Czelazewicz, who is known online as Detox Mama. Czelazewicz pushes group members toward her website, where she sells Pure Body Extra as well as a number of other products.

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For decades the bogus claim that childhood vaccines were linked to autism was promoted widely within the so-called alternative health community. It was given a major boost in 2005 when Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who will be a member of Donald Trump’s transition team if he is elected next month, published an error-ridden article in two mainstream publications. The claims gained even more traction during the Covid lockdowns when conspiracies around vaccines surged once again.

Czelazewicz told WIRED that she has “never made a claim that this product cures autism” and that she has “no control how others choose to express their experience with PBX.” However, when asked if she would state clearly that Pure Body Extra does not have any impact on the symptoms of autism, Czelazewicz did not respond.

She also failed to respond to questions about the negative side effects being reported in the group by parents of children being treated with Pure Body Extra, and did not provide any evidence when asked if the product was suitable for children.

One of the most troubling aspects of the group is the way it seeks to prey on vulnerable parents of autistic children who appear at a loss as to how to treat their children’s behavioral problems.

Repeating the Myth in Louisiana

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Some of the spreaders of misinformation have credentials.

Skafle et al. at Journal of Medical Internet Research

A well-known false claim is that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism [9]. The claim has since been empirically refuted many times but is still stated as a major concern for some parents [10]. Motta and Steccula [11] examined American public opinion data on MMR safety collected before and after a retracted 1998 study linking autism to MMR. The researchers detected a statistically significant increase in public concern about MMR safety following the retracted study and the media attention it received. This suggests that misleading vaccine information can impact public confidence in vaccines and cause skepticism about vaccines in general.

Piper Hutchinson at Louisiana Public Radio:

Dozens of anti-vaccine bills have died in the Louisiana Legislature since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultra-conservative lawmakers are gearing up for another fight.

In the process, truth has become a major casualty.

In two days of hearings last week on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security heard hours of testimony from doctors with fringe views on the COVID-19 virus. They included the state’s chief medical doctor, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who himself amplified misinformation. Abraham is a general practitioner who is also a veterinarian.

“It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, counterproductive and antithetical to the core principles of a free society,” Abraham said last Thursday, citing mask use and vaccines as examples of ineffective measures.

Abraham’s deputy surgeon general, ophthalmologist Dr. Wyche Coleman III, went a step further, touting the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations cause autism.

“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” Coleman told lawmakers.

Vance's Dog Whistles

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.   Even before COVID, they fought vaccine mandates and other public health measures. 

J.D. Vance is one of them, as last night's debate confirmed.

 Ashley Parker and Caroline Kitchener at WP:

Venturing into territory that some Democrats instantly flagged as anti-vaccine, Vance offered a more benign spin to those skeptical of the anti-vaccine movement, referring to his own three children and saying: “Look, so many of the drugs — the pharmaceuticals — that we put in the bodies of our children are manufactured by nations that hate us. This has to stop, and we’re not going to stop it by listening to experts.”

He also gave a shoutout to the infamous antivaxxer, RFK Jr.

Now I'm really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue collar Democrats to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition.

Michael Hiltzik at LAT:

Vance, as has been widely reported, has carried on fatuously for years about how childless people have an insufficiently heartfelt interest in democracy and the republic. He has argued for higher tax rates on the childless, denigrated political and business leaders as “childless cat ladies,” etc., etc.

Yet when Vance was asked about vaccine mandates on Fox News during his Senate campaign in 2021, here’s what he said: “I am sick of these bureaucrats experimenting on my children because that’s what they’re doing.... If you want to experiment on somebody’s kids, Kamala Harris, AOC, and so forth, have your own kids, lay off of mine.”

As part of that same spiel, he put in a pitch for “bodily autonomy,” one of the catchphrases of anti-vaccine fanatics. “This is about doing what you want to do with your own family, with your own rights,” he said.

It Runs in Families

  In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition. 

As early as the 1940s, Leo Kanner noted that autism tends to run in families.  But why?  Is it only a matter of genetics, or is it also that members of a family tend to have similar environments?

 A July release from the MIND Institute:

Siblings of autistic children have a 20% chance of being autistic themselves — about seven times higher than the rate in infants with no autistic siblings.

That’s the key finding of a new paper by UC Davis MIND Institute researcher Sally Ozonoff and the Baby Siblings Research Consortium. The consortium is a collection of more than 20 research groups at universities worldwide.

Ozonoff is a distinguished professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She has studied the recurrence of autism in families for decades.

The new study is based on a large, diverse group of families at research sites across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It confirms the same research group’s 2011 findings about the likelihood of autism in siblings.

The new research was published this week in Pediatrics.

Increasing autism rates prompt new study

“The rate of autism diagnosis in the general community has been steadily increasing since our previous paper was published,” Ozonoff explained.

The latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that about 1 in 36 children has autism. In 2011, the estimate was 1 in 68.

Ozonoff noted that there have also been changes in autism diagnostic criteria over the past decade. In addition, there is a growing awareness of autism in girls.

“So, it was important to understand if these had any impact on the likelihood of autism recurrence within a family,” she said.

The 2011 paper found a recurrence rate of 18.7%, while the new paper found a rate of 20.2% — a small but not significant increase.

“This should reassure providers who are counseling families and monitoring development. It should also help families plan for and support future children,” Ozonoff said.
A larger, more diverse study

The new study included data from 1,605 infants at 18 research sites. All infants had an older autistic sibling.

“This study was much larger than the first and included more racially diverse participants,” Ozonoff said. The original study included 664 children.

Researchers followed the children from as early as 6 months of age for up to seven visits. Trained clinicians assessed the children for autism at age 3 using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2), a well-validated tool. The data were gathered from 2010 to 2019.

Sex of first autistic child, multiple autistic siblings key factors

Researchers found that the sex of the first autistic child influenced the likelihood that autism would recur within a family.

“If a family’s first autistic child was a girl, they were 50% more likely to have another child with autism than if their first autistic child was a boy,” Ozonoff said. “This points to genetic differences that increase recurrence likelihood in families who have an autistic daughter.”

The researchers also found that a child with multiple autistic siblings has a higher chance of autism (37%) than a child with only one sibling on the spectrum (21%).

The sex of the infant was also associated with the likelihood of familial recurrence. If the later-born infant was a boy, they were almost twice as likely as a girl to be diagnosed themselves.

“The familial recurrence rate if the new baby was a boy was 25%, whereas it was 13% if the new baby was a girl,” Ozonoff explained. “This is in line with the fact that boys are diagnosed with autism about four times as often as girls in general.”

Race, maternal education level influence recurrence

The researchers found that race and the mother’s education level were likely factors as well. In non-white families, the recurrence rate was 25%. In white families, the recurrence rate was about 18%. In families where the mother had a high school education or less, recurrence was 32%. With some college, the rate was 25.5%, and with a college degree the rate was 19.7%. When the mother had a graduate degree, it dropped to 16.9%.

“These findings are new — and critical to replicate,” Ozonoff explained. “They do mirror the recent CDC findings that autism is more prevalent in children of historically underrepresented groups.” She noted that this reversed a longtime trend of lower prevalence in those groups.

Most importantly, said Ozonoff, if these findings are replicated, they may indicate that there are social determinants of health that may lead to higher rates of autism in families. She emphasized that this study was not designed to answer those critical questions, and more research is needed.

Tracking outcomes

Unlike the first study, the researchers also tracked families who dropped out of the three-year study to see if their outcomes differed from those who did. “We wondered whether families who stayed in the study may have had children who were more affected — making them more worried about their development,” she explained.

That could have biased the estimates of recurrence to be higher than they really were. The current study showed that was not the case.

“So, now we have two large, independent studies that report familial recurrence in the same range,” Ozonoff said. “This reinforces how important it is that providers closely monitor the siblings of autistic children for delays in social development or communication. This is especially true in families who have reduced access to care, because early diagnosis and intervention are critical.”

 

Additional Information:

Study co-authors included Gregory Young and Rebecca Schmidt of UC Davis; Jessica Bradshaw of the University of South Carolina, Tony Charman of Kings College London; Katarzyna Chawarska of Yale University, Jana M. Iverson of Boston University; Cheryl Klaiman of Emory University; Rebecca Landa of Johns Hopkins University; Nicole McDonald of UCLA; Daniel Messinger of the University of Miami; Carol Wilkinson of Harvard University, and Lonnie Zwaigenbaum of the University of Alberta.

See paper for full list of funders.