Taking a detour....

I spent this weekend's computer time reading about something that has nothing to do with schooling, but I'm going to blog about it here anyway. I was reading about autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), mercury poisoning, and the process of removing heavy metals from the body by chelation.

Some parents of autistic children and a few MDs and DOs believe that autistic spectrum disorders with late onset, in which a child appears normal until they begin regressing as toddlers, are the result of mercury poisoning. The body can excrete mercury, but several factors have to be in place: you need enough glutathione, you need healthy gut flora (intestinal bacteria, which convert mercury to inorganic forms so it can be excreted), you need metallothionien (whatever that is). Some kids aren't bothered by mom's mercury dental fillings, the tuna she ate while pregnant, the thimerosal in their vaccines-- they can get rid of most of that mercury. Other kids cannot, and the symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning are the symptoms of autism (caution, pdf file).

I expect people to look at me like I have a third eyeball if I bring up the dental fillings issue, but it's pretty clear-cut. Try here for details, including this stunning sentence:

California recognized this risk in November 2000 when it became the first state to require dentists to inform their patients that amalgam fillings may cause birth defects.

Ignoring the mainstream medical opinion that autism has nothing to do with mercury, hundreds (maybe thousands) of autistic children have undertaken heavy metal chelation therapy. In chelation, a medication is given which binds to the mercury in the body, hauls it out of tissues, and allows it to be excreted. It's a bit complicated, since you want to slowly begin removing mercury while supporting the excretion system through glutathione precursors (like N-acetyl cysteine), probiotics and related substances, and hefty doses of antioxidants. (You don't want to free up the mercury from the kidneys only to have it float around in the blood and wind up stored in the brain.) Chelators (the big one is DMSA, also alpha lipoic acid) remove lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals, but unfortunately, they also remove zinc and copper, so patients require supplementation. Many more treatment details here and here.

Does it work? One MD who treated 85 autistic patients had these results following chelation, though the therapy had not yet been completed for most of these patients:

Improvement (%)
Age	Number	Marked	Moderate	Slight	None
1-5	40	35	39	15	11
6-12	25	4	28	52	16
13-17	16	0	6	68	26
18+	4	0	0	25	75

This doctor found that mercury excretion happened much more quickly in the youngest patients than in the older ones, which might explain part of the difference in effectiveness. Additionally, younger kids have more ability to "catch up" developmentally.

The New York Times ran an article about mercury in vaccines and autism, which (wouldn't you know it?) was dismissive of the proposed link. A parent replied:

I was very upset because I have doctors who have backed me up on it, yet this (New York Times) piece made me sound like a lunatic, and that I'm hurting my child and just desperate for hope.

It never mentioned, once, the amazing improvement that my daughter has shown on chelation and the metals that were coming out, so much so that the Mayo Clinic was concerned about it.

They never once talked about the fact these kids are actually recovering when you take the mercury out of them. That's where I didn't think it was fair at all. OK, you can report the other side, there are lots of people who disagree with us, but the fact is there are thousands of children who are undergoing this treatment that are getting better....

And the other thing is they flat-out said chelation is dangerous. Our county chelates children with lead poisoning. I have had the county out to my house numerous times. They said if they found a kid with high lead, they put them in the hospital and they chelate them. How is this that dangerous if our county is doing that to children? ...

[Our doctor] has repeatedly said he doesn't understand the improvements my daughter is making -- "These kids don't improve." When we're in there, he is sometimes speechless about the improvements in her and can't explain it from what he's doing. His patients don't improve like that....

He told us when we first came down there that he's seen mercury poisoning and this isn't it, but he's repeatedly asked us if we live on a toxic dump, because we bring him our tests and we say, "Look what's coming out of her."

We've been chelating her since she was 15 months old and she is now 4. She just started talking in February. She does imaginative play. She does pretend play. She has empathy. She plays with toys appropriately. She likes to play word games -- if you sing, "Twinkle, twinkle little shoe," she'll laugh. Things that autistic kids just don't do -- and at this stage she's doing more and more typical things.

Here is an entire page full of stories of children who have partially or entirely recovered from a previous autism diagnosis using dietary changes, supplements and chelation to normalize the digestive tract and remove heavy metals. Read a few, they are amazing, and they are angering. The medical community is denying many autistic children these treatment options out of a stubborn refusal to admit they have been poisoning children with mercury fillings and unnecessary thimerosal.

It is daunting to feel that when it comes to raising a child, parents have to look into everything themselves, that there is no institution that can be trusted, and that when taking a non-mainstream view one can expect to face dismissive condescension. Of course, that is all outweighed by doing what's best for your child and seeing them thrive.