You know that thing Flint's always saying, about how when people piss you off it's because they remind you of you?

You make me lose my shit on this topic because you are everything I used to be, before I learned the hard way I was wrong. Do some searching and you'll find me making your exact same arguments as recently as a year and a half ago right here on this board. You think this argument is precisely on par with evolution versus creation. Because I did too. You think you have Science on your side, while I have nothing but desperation and irrational scapegoatism. Because I did too. We could have competed over who could be the most magnanimously smug, the most brutally martyred by our objectivity.

No, let's back up. I'm accepting this woman's problem, and I am only pissed because you are not. Maybe her dystonia wasn't triggered by the vaccine, that's certainly a possibility. But we left that topic several posts ago to instead discuss whether she even has dystonia. You say you are offering an "alternate explanation" for her symptoms, when in fact you are relegating her symptoms into nonexistence. I will readily face the argument that her dystonia was some sort of genetic time bomb just waiting to go off, and the timing of the vaccine was a coincidence. But don't try and tell me this is psychogenic. Psychogenic dystonia is a result of severe depression, anxiety, and/or existing personality disorders. The Dystonia Foundation themselves say that:

The group of doctors who came to the conclusion that her dystonia was psychogenic based on less than 5 minutes of video footage are playing a political game. It is not possible for them to come to that conclusion, and they should have said so when they were asked. But their entire goal with this assessment was damage control--when else would a group of doctors voluntarily start diagnosing patients via video, for free?--and once asked, it would be career suicide for them to conclude otherwise.

I am getting personal because I have experience being dismissed by doctors for political reasons. You are doing the exact same thing my pediatrician did when she told me my son doesn't actually have chronic diarrhea. She only narrowly missed trying to tell me that was psychological on his part too. You are not "seeking facts" to understand her condition, you are finding ways to pretend she doesn't have a condition. I can accept that it might be a coincidental case of dystonia. I will not let you try and claim that it's all in her head.

Oh, and

Don't fucking patronize me. I know what it's like to view science as a religion and pretend it's healthy skepticism. My point of view was challenged, and I found I was incorrect. I've switched sides, and I'm not coming back.

I know nothing I say is ever going to convince you, because nothing anyone said on this topic would have convinced me either. I was so much better at being skeptical than they were, you see. But I say it anyway, just like people kept saying it to me, because that's all I can do. Somebody's always listening, even if it's not people like me.

Bravo!

Thanks. I was trying to be as fair as possible.

Absolutely! But it's hard to even begin to get a sense of what a personal risk level might be when articles like the one posted above can put such a sensational spin on the overall numbers.

And you don't have a crystal ball. Try as you might, to send your kid down the right path, they'll live their own life. This is just one of the choices you have to make about preparing them.

Sensationalism doesn't generally help, I agree. But sometimes sensationalism can be an understandable response to the number of people in denial--people who, for example, can and do claim that the dozens of deaths were all completely coincidental. Sometimes it's useful to bring up the healthy girl who dropped dead an hour later, because it's harder to write off. The extremes help prove the middle ground.

You have changed your mind! This is HUGE! Originally you said:

Now you say:

*kisses*

We are in agreement.

Wait. You are against diagnosis that doesn't come from direct examination. How is it that you have made this conclusion? Against your own counsel, you are making sweeping assumptions about Desiree's condition.

You would have to be an expert on dystonia to say what conclusion they could draw. Are you? I am not an expert, but I can easily imagine how the video could have evidence that experts can see, that may not have even been seen by the original doctors; who may or may not have been experts in dystonia themselves (we don't know).

On the contrary, I *am* seeking facts and will *only* allow *facts* in my understanding of the situation. I am not claiming it's in her head. I'm claiming that's possible, maybe even probable, based on what we know.

I know you are angry about your own situation. It seems to inform you on everything you see on the topic. You're like a woman I met, who just knew that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill, because a black man had sexually harassed her. Q.E.D.? Not so fast. I am sorry for your situation and what you have gone through, and I understand that your experiences inform you in ways I am not informed. However, all that only matters in your own case. In other cases, it proves little to nothing.

You want to change my mind? Come up with an argument better than "Sure as fuck." Draw real causal relationships. I cannot defend against consistent, logical argument. That is the only thing that really changes my mind, and by the way, it happens all the time when I am discussing things with people who make such arguments.

I have a google news alert set for desiree jennings. I will post any updates I find, no matter whose "side" they seem to be on.

You have changed your mind! This is HUGE! Originally you said:

Now you say:

*kisses*

We are in agreement.

You misunderstood, I am not saying which conclusion they must draw, I am saying it is impossible for them to have come to any conclusion, and they should have admitted that. I do not find it imaginable that a video clip could have subtle evidence for experts to find when the Dystonia Foundation says that multiple, extended psychiatric evaluations are necessary before reaching the conclusion they say they reached in five minutes of video. It's unethical and irresponsible for doctors who haven't examined her to announce to the press that she doesn't have what her doctor says she has.

Her doctor did give her a direct examination. He diagnosed her with dystonia. Until I hear *facts* otherwise, that's the conclusion I'm sticking with.

I have been trying to honestly evaluate whether my distrust has unfairly spread, and I don't believe it has. Your friend was harassed by a different man. Merck Pharmaceuticals makes the Gardasil vaccine, and the MMR vaccine, among most other childhood vaccines. While it's true that "prior bad acts" are often not allowed to affect judgment in a court of law, I don't think it's on the same level of judging an entirely separate entity on the actions of another. I believe Merck to be an untrustworthy and corrupt company, who does not adequately research the safety of their vaccines before rushing them through FDA approval, and I will judge all their products, research, and actions with that in mind.

Heh heh, well played. Apparently we are both guilty of a little rhetoric.

Hoax, self-hoax, or evolving symptoms?

Generation Rescue shipping her to their LA doctors. Her speech sounds much better here.

Well at least we now know what Hitler would have thought about Desiree Jennings. :rolleyes:

I find this video silly, to be honest. (edit: the first video) It basically compares three clips, claiming all three are significantly different. Except in clip 2 she is specifically saying the tongue/neck problem is new, so it doesn't seem that she's trying to hide anything. Maybe the focus of muscular spasms can shift around in real dystonia, maybe they can't, I don't know. If they can't, that would certainly be evidence that it's psychological, though still not necessarily a "lie" as the videomaker implies.

2 and 3 look the same to me; the video creator is claiming her grammar is somehow affected now when it wasn't before. But I don't find the phrase "It started with me not being able to eat without passing out" to be at all unusual. Maybe that's just because I'm from Texas, people talk like that down here.

And yeah, the video loses a lot of credibility by quoting Hitler, putting "cheerleader" in scare quotes (what--she's not really a cheerleader either?,) and overtly mocking her speech pattern.

Like I said, if the muscle spasms can't shift focus in clinical dystonia, then maybe that really was the only clue they needed to declare it was psychological. But it seems to me that a disorder of unpredictable muscle movement would cause the muscle groups to move... unpredictably.

You do see where this is going, right? If her symptoms can be improved, "mom4education" and those like her will say it is proof she was faking all along. If her symptoms can't, they will triumphantly point to it as proof that these treatments they're using on autistic kids don't really work.

The Inside Edition segment says she was training to be a Redskins cheerleader. Since then every report has said she IS a Redskins cheerleader. She's actually an "Ambassador", which means she doesn't cheer on the field but goes around the stadium greeting fans and stuff.

http://www.redskins.com/gen/articles/Desiree_59767.jsp

Did you think I was crazy? It doesn't really matter (and maybe you still do, lol) I'm just curious, in a self-absorbed kinda way....

Not crazy, just wrong. Foolishly misguided by people whose overriding philosophy was really just anti-government. I figured you were cherry-picking flawed studies that proved your point, while holding as rock-solid the assumption that my federal studies couldn't be flawed because they were done by proper scientists using proper scientific methods. When your studies did look really convincing, then I fell back on the safety net of "well of course there are dangers, everyone knows that, but the risks are tiny and the benefits outweigh them." I don't honestly remember you getting into the autism/vaccine connection specifically, more just warning of the problems with a lot of marketed drugs, which I've always agreed with. In my head, drugs for profit were one thing, and scientific studies were another, and never could one be used to influence the other.

what is the risk dying from cc after you've had the vaccine?

I think it's too soon to tell, but the vaccine only eliminates some of the causes of the cancer.

Thanks clod, I appreciate the perspective.

Clod, maybe a leading question... based on your new understanding, if you yourself got, say, H1N1, would you think differently about the treatments that you were prescribed?

So it may be that it's no use at all. it could be that eliminating those causes leaves room for other causes to step in. We don't know. Or it could be that the women who die from cervical cancer die from the type caused by non HPV factors.

It's not as clear cut a decision as those stats would suggest is all I'm saying.

Not to mention the fact that it's 100% irrelevant until the girl is sexually active or about to be. It's not a now-or-never proposition; one can always get it later.

It's a hard hypothetical to examine, because I feel pretty certain that I'd never know it even if I did get H1N1. The vast majority of cases display basic flu symptoms, and then they get better. I don't go to the doctor when I have mild illness, so I'd never have the chance to get tested. But if I were one of the rare ones who spiked a high fever, or developed breathing complications, and then I went to the hospital and confirmed it... nothing would change for me, because I never got the flu shot before all this happened either. I would definitely be a lot more cautious about being contagious around my kids now than I would have before, but that's a direct result of the fact that they're immuno-compromised (aside from whether a vaccine triggered it or not, their blood tests currently show severe immune dysfunction.) If one of my kids got H1N1, from me or somewhere else, it would be the same situation as if I got it, because I never gave them flu shots before either, so it's not like the events of the past year would have changed anything in that regard. So no, I wouldn't feel like I had somehow made the wrong choice, or anything.

To go ahead and follow the lead, the meat of the issue is of course what I would feel if they got a disease they might have been vaccinated against but weren't. But again, it's not a realistic hypothetical: Minifob got all his shots through age 2, so he's actually just in booster territory from here on out. And the only major one that Minifobette missed out on is Varicella A, or chicken pox. The incidence of severe complications from chicken pox in children is so low, I would honestly probably attribute any severe reaction on her part to the fact that she's already immuno-compromised, not as an indication that she should have been vaccinated after all.

Chicken pox is much more dangerous in adults, of course, so let's say my daughter gets it when she's in her twenties instead. By that time, she will either be recovered from autism, or still basically in my care. If she's recovered, I will have left the decision about whether to get the shot to protect herself late in life up to her, knowing what she knows about her genetics. If she's still in my care, I will have a good idea of what her immune system is currently doing, and can base a later decision on that. I would hope that by that time the increasing public outcry will have led to safer, perhaps airborne vaccines that do not require the use of adjuvants, at which point I would have to completely re-evaluate the safety of the new products.

It's all about the personal risk, not the average risk. I know my specific children cannot handle any kind of assault on their immune system at the moment, so there is basically a 1 out of 1 chance that a shot right now would be detrimental to them. Whatever the chances of severe complications from any actual disease are for them, they are less than that. So if they get the disease, I won't have any regrets because I took the lowest risk I could given where they are right now.

Now, let's say I have another baby, and I keep that child completely unvaccinated at least up until they are 4 or 5 (which I would.) And let's say that child gets a devastating disease they could have been vaccinated for. I would feel terrible, certainly, but given what we know about that child's genetic tendencies, I'd still feel like we took the lowest risk option for that particular child. I think I'd honestly feel worse if I had a friend who chose not to vaccinate their child based on our experience (and we have several--not because we pressed our views on them at all, but because they knew our kids well and they watched the sudden changes in my daughter's health right alongside us) and their kid got sick.

Well, the link Clodfobble provided in post 416 says Gardasil is "a vaccine that is highly effective in preventing infection with types 16 and 18, two “high-risk” HPVs that cause most (70 percent) cervical cancers."

So it's supposed to be "highly effective" for the viruses that cause 70% of cervical cancers.

The question, as Clodfobble has mentioned elsewhere, is if the women who would be getting the vaccine are also the same women who wouldn't be dying in huge numbers of the cancer because they would be getting regular pap screenings and might not be sleeping around so much.

You know, the whole "cervical cancer as punishment for being a slut" is really tiresome. I've read the same thing in another forum.

You can get aids from one sexual encounter.

I don't care if you slept with one guy or 5000 guys. I bet the perspective on the disease would be different if men were dying in droves. I'm surprised there's even an attempt at a vaccination: why hasn't it gone the way of ovarian cancer, in terms of breakthroughs being made? This makes the vaccine all the more suspicious, imo.

Eradicate Cervical Cancer: never ever have sex ever with anyone...never, ever.

That wasn't the lead, and I made a really bad choice of example maladies. Let's say instead that you get Lupus. The doctors prescribe for you a combination of five different drugs: an anti-inflammatory, two corticosteroids, an immunosuppressive, and an anticoagulant. You'll take these as pills. Furthermore they want to begin a round of experimental treatment using monoclonal antibodies. (disclosure: WTF are monoclonal antibodies?)

Is there any difference between what you would say/do next now, as opposed to what you would have said two years ago?

Actually it may not be such a leading question, but like Jinx's question I am just interested in your thoughts on it. Regardless of whether it leads to more conversation.

Generation Rescue has taken down its Desiree Jennings page. You won't find it here:

http://generationrescue.org/desiree_jennings.html

It's cached here by Google:

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:...&ct=clnk&gl=us

I assume you're referring to my comment about sleeping around. I guess I worded it wrong if that's how you took it. I didn't mean it that way. I meant only that each time someone has sex with a new person or a person who has has sex with a new person, they increase their odds of getting the viruses that cause cervical cancer. It's not a blame thing or a punishment thing. It just is.

Neurologist/skeptic blogger explains why GR dropped DJ:

I realize that, and I don't think for a minute that you would think it was punishment. It kind of points back to the subtlety in our language I alluded to in the "man's inhumanity to man, or woman" thread.

And also, you were not the first person I heard saying something like that.

It, to me, is kind of like saying that capital punishment is a deterrent. Do we really think that, with all the risks unprotected sex has always brought about, all of a sudden young women will be thinking, as a whole "no I won't have sex, I might get cervical cancer"?

This is not in keeping with the thread, and I'm sorry, but I do think there is an underlying "if you didn't sleep around so much you wouldn't have gotten cervical cancer" thought process that is just generally accepted. I find that sexist and unacceptable.

So though I know better than to think any of you really feel that way, I took the opportunity to point it out as it has been a recurring theme in other forums where I've read similar subject matter.

I didn't mean to point at you glatt. I know you're one of the good ones. I just seize opportunities to bark.

:)

OK, I'll quit hijacking.

There is, a bit. I'm not sure if you picked an auto-immune disease on purpose, but my understanding of auto-immune diseases specifically has changed pretty dramatically. The short answer is yes, I would eventually take the drugs to alleviate the symptoms, after I first attempted to fix the underlying problem through some treatments I wouldn't have known about two years ago.

It's actually a close parallel to how I feel about traditional autism therapies. They are great tools to help heal the wound, but the biomedical treatments take the knife out. Do that first, and the therapies (i.e. symptom treatment) are going to be that much more effective.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't (possibly).

Funny thing to say, "at least 19 confirmed." It sounds like there were 19 confirmed, and maybe some others were also H1N1, but hadn't been confirmed.

Some deaths might be from the regular flu. Some might be from pneumonia, which seems to get hold of people when their lungs are compromised by H1N1.

Here's an example of the stupid shit that gets research funding while the obvious avenues go unexplored.


I received an invitation today to participate in a study. They want to know if I have any home video footage of my autistic children, under the age of six months, that happens to show them crying or fussing. Because they're going to get a bunch of people in a room and see if they can isolate a difference in the sound of the cries of future-autistic babies and ones that turned out normal.

Let's even pretend for a moment that it's not stupid on its face. Say they do happen to find some completely unexpected, subtle difference in these babies' cries. This information will be diagnostically useless. How do you train every pediatrician in the country to discern the auditory difference? If your pediatrician is tone deaf, are they no longer qualified to be a pediatrician? Maybe it will become standard practice to record 5-10 seconds of crying at every baby's 4-month checkup, and then we can just send the millions of mp3s over to India for faster processing?

They're running out of ways to try and prove the autism was always secretly there from the beginning, and this is apparently what they have left to spend their money on.

But what if they play in backwards... at 78 rpm? :rolleyes:

Generation Rescue has put up an alternate Desiree Jennings page.

This has probably been answered before, but are most autistic children born that way or do they become autistic because of some outside assault on brain function, i.e. flu shots or what have you?

Because a doctor will not hear the difference, then we should remain ignorant. You are confusing fundamental research with application research. Fundamental research only determines relationships, facts, and concepts. Makes no effort to make any of it useful. That is why the laser, transistors, satellites, and Unix were developed. Nobody had a clue what practical applications these would eventually have.

Application research later takes that new knowledge to ring something useful from it. The minute one combines application and fundamental together in a conclusion, as you have done (ie "How do you train every pediatrician in the country to discern the auditory difference?"), then research is stifled.

Shameful are the so many who 'know' what causes autism only because they ‘feel’. The same "I love to screw the world" logic that also proved Saddam's WMDs. We are supposed to have learned from that history how to think logically. Blaming autism on vaccines has been demonstrated to be from the same mindset that proved Saddam's WMDs: "I feel, therefore it must be true."

Electricity leaking from electrical receptacles also causes arthritis. Same logic that so many believed 100 years ago - therefore it was true.

Electricity also causes childhood leukemia. Also proven by the same hearsay.

Hey tw? I'm not going to discuss this topic with you. Just so you know. Your discussion style is harmless and amusing most of the time, but this is not one of those times for me.

That's the whole debate. Two very opposed sides, and one side has a lot more research funding, but neither has been able to definitively prove anything to the other's acceptance.

A small handful (approximately 5-10%) have been identified as having a provable, genetic link--those who are afflicted with Fragile X Syndrome, for example, which can present with autistic symptoms. The understanding is that these account for the cases of autism that were seen in past decades, as the rate of Fragile X in the population has held steady. But the rest have been statistically ruled-out as not having those genes.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13791-Balt...to-flu-vaccine

Desiree Jennings' case has found its way into the VAERS database, in which all (known) adverse effects of vaccines are cataloged.

Remember, Desiree can tell the media whatever she wants. The original diagnosing physicians aren't going to discuss it. Why: they could lose their license. They're prohibited by medical privacy laws.

Desiree immediately much better after chelation therapy



Desiree has own website

Neurologica blog interprets:

I find the speed of her treatment to be pretty implausible, too. Usually chelation is a long process and requires repeated treatments. I've seen kids improve a surprising amount with just a single chelation treatment, but for Christ's sake, you at least have to pee first.

So where are all the people who helped her plan this, like with the Heene's? They're gonna miss their 15 mins if they don't hurry up...

Desiree Jennings' doctor, Dr. Buttar, tweets that Jennings has been seizure free for a week now, down from 60 seizures per day.

Robert Scott Bell, on the Michael Savage show, is supportive, happy that holistic and detoxification treatment medicine cured her, while Johns Hopkins can't cure dystonia, only treat it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pnI-dDH7s

Link

Is that really proof or just supposition?

Desiree update: interviewed by Fox affiliate that first aired her story.

Dr. Buttar offers a lot of diagnostic detail:

* He probably said "encephalopathy", but the writer of this article is a moron.

VAERS describes acute encephalopathy as
VAERS is not interested unless your condition is chronic, lasting six months (48 hours is RIGHT OUT):

tl;dr: Desiree was turning purple but was much better after 24-48 hours of alternative medicine treatment and almost completely cured in two weeks. Typical acute encephalopathy patients recover in a matter of six months.

No, "typical" acute encephalopathy patients don't recover at all. The six month mark is just when they consider the condition to be a neurologically chronic one, as opposed to a short-term physical injury that heals on its own, like from a concussion. You also seem to be confusing your timelines: it was 48 hours after the start of treatment that she showed major improvement, but how many weeks/months had the symptoms been present before she started treatment? There's your measurement for whether her condition lasted long enough to be considered chronic.

It's also important to understand that encephalopathy is an incredibly broad term that really just means some kind of neurological dysfunction. Autism, epilepsy, and a host of other diseases all fall under the encephalopathy umbrella.

There are many types of encephalopathy. Some examples include:

• Mitochondrial encephalopathy - Metabolic disorder caused by dysfunction of mitochondrial DNA. Can affect many body systems, particularly the brain and nervous system.
• Glycine encephalopathy - A pediatric metabolic disorder
• Hepatic encephalopathy - Arising from advanced cirrhosis of the liver
• Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy - Permanent or transitory encephalopathy arising from severely reduced oxygen delivery to the brain
• Static encephalopathy - Unchanging, or permanent, brain damage
• Uremic encephalopathy - Arising from high levels of toxins normally cleared by the kidneys -- rare where dialysis is readily available
• Wernicke's encephalopathy - Arising from thiamine deficiency, usually in the setting of alcoholism
• Hashimoto's encephalopathy - Arising from an auto-immune disorder
• Hypertensive encephalopathy - Arising from acutely increased blood pressure
• Lyme encephalopathy - Arising from the Borrelia Burgdorferi bacteria.
• Toxic encephalopathy - A form of encephalopathy caused by chemicals, often resulting in permanent brain damage
• Toxic-Metabolic encephalopathy - A catch-all for brain dysfunction caused by infection, organ failure, or intoxication
• Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy - A collection of diseases all caused by prions, and characterized by "spongy" brain tissue (riddled with holes), impaired locomotion or coordination, and a 40 out of 40 fatality rate. Includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), scrapie, and kuru among others.

Encephalopathy alters brain function and/or structure. It may be caused by an infectious agent (bacteria, virus, or prion), metabolic or mitochondrial dysfunction, brain tumor or increased intracranial pressure, exposure to toxins (including solvents, excess animal protein, drugs, alcohol, paints, industrial chemicals, and certain metals), radiation, trauma, poor nutrition, or lack of oxygen or blood flow to the brain.
The hallmark of encephalopathy is an altered mental state. Depending on the type and severity of encephalopathy, common neurological symptoms are loss of cognitive function, subtle personality changes, inability to concentrate, lethargy, and depressed consciousness. Other neurological signs may include myoclonus (involuntary twitching of a muscle or group of muscles), asterixis (abrupt loss of muscle tone, quickly restored), nystagmus (rapid, involuntary eye movement), tremor, seizures, jactitation (restless picking at things characteristic of severe infection), and respiratory abnormalities such as Cheyne-Stokes respiration (cyclic waxing and waning of tidal volume), apneustic respirations, and post-hypercapnic apnea.


I don't believe that autism falls under encephalopathy.

I can understand your angle of of toxic-metabolic encephalopathy in regards to autism which would be symptomatic but autism in itself is asymptomatic.

You just Googled that 15 minutes ago, didn't you?

Sorry, but you're not a neurologist. My son's current official diagnosis is actually "encephalopathy with autistic symptom presentation." The underlying hypothesis of the treatments we are pursuing is that most cases of autism are actually combinations of mitochondrial encephalopathy, atypical Glycine encephalopathy, and toxic encephalopathy. In addition, many autistic kids have been found to have chronic Lyme infections and thiamine deficiencies, both of which can also lead to encephalopathy, but these seem to be relatively small contributors compared to the other conditions.

I have no idea what "autism in itself is asymptomatic" is supposed to mean.

lol yes flint I can too be an instant expert hehheh

asymptomatic =

People can be on the autism spectrum without having any symptoms. In other words there is nothing to cure.
It is not a disease.


No I am not a neurologist.I am not talking about your experience. I get that.
I am not sure how pointing that out is helpful or respectful since you don't even know who you are talking to. As far as you know I could be a parent just like you with a child deemed autistic/pdd/aspergers.
I might be a special ed IA working with autistic kids.
You just never know and your experiences are true for you as I said but you are about treating organically the toxins that create reactions in your kids. I say great!

No, by definition they can't. They cannot prove what causes autism spectrum disorders, and there is no test for it. It is by very definition the presentation of the symptoms. There are many on the spectrum who can certainly function in day-to-day life just fine, and who would not be considered in any way disabled, but they still have certain classifiable symptoms, or they are not on the spectrum.

It's not about one experience versus another. You wrote an incorrect statement regarding the neurological definition and scope of encephalopathy. It wouldn't matter if you were an ASD parent, a special ed IA, or an actual degreed neurologist, your statement would still be factually wrong.

I should have said not having any symptoms of a disease.

Just because some people have trained themselves to function day to day they still may be on the autism spectrum. One can train oneself not to present those traits but still be on the autism spectrum.

I am trying to say and not very well is that the encephalopathy is a symptom and the autism is not. One is symptomatic and one is not.

So I agree with UT. The symptoms of encephalopathy can be treated but autism in itself is not a treatable disease. Autism isn't a symptom so it is not a disease referring what you said here:

[/quote clodfobble]
It's also important to understand that encephalopathy is an incredibly broad term that really just means some kind of neurological dysfunction. Autism, epilepsy, and a host of other diseases all fall under the encephalopathy umbrella. [/quote]


ps. I'm tired so lets just agree to disagree. :) -peace

I'm sure UT is thrilled to have you lend your credence to his side.

Whoa, wait a damn minute here.
asymptomatic = adjective: having no symptoms of illness or disease.

If there are millions of kids with Autism, and Autism in asymptomatic, how the fuck do we know they have Autism? That makes no sense at all. :headshake

Thanks for the corrections C. Desiree developed symptoms in early September and was treated by Dr. Buttar in late October.

Totally unfair leading question: based on what you know, would you have Dr. Buttar treat your son?

Based on what I know, I'd consider it, but I'd have to meet with him individually and discuss things with him to know for sure. He is following a general treatment path that I agree with; however, like any medical procedure, it's entirely possible to screw it up in very dangerous ways. The thing that is novel is not the treatments he's using, but rather what he's using them for. Chelation drugs have been around forever, and are the standard accepted treatment for known cases of heavy metal poisoning. Anti-inflammatories are accepted as routine for a host of diseases. Mitochondrial dysfunction has likewise been on the medical books for decades. The only "alternative" part about it is that he (and hundreds of other doctors around the country) is using these treatments on conditions that are not generally accepted to be rooted in heavy metal poisoning, or inflammation, or metabolic imbalance. But there are of course lab tests to definitively confirm these conditions, and responsible doctors in Dr. Buttar's field perform them and treat based on their results. (On the other hand, it's been my experience that mainstream doctors will refuse to even consider testing for these other, known conditions, because that would be a tacit admission that they could somehow be connected to the neurological symptoms, which is a great big political minefield that they all want to avoid.)

So I would need to find out what sort of tests he runs and what medical justification he uses for each treatment. For example, there are some DAN doctors who will immediately prescribe antifungals for any autistic child who comes to see them, because that is a commonly needed treatment. But if they are not running the stool and urine cultures to determine that there actually is an infection, what strain it is, and what is the most appropriate drug and dosage to use in that case--which is something I can (and would continue to do, in this hypothetical case) confirm with other mainstream doctors, even while they shake their heads at the lab reports and marvel at what a complete coincidence it is that my son happened to have all these underlying conditions like I said he did--then I would not let him treat my child.

Actual conversation with my pediatrician:

Me: So if I brought my daughter to you, and said that I caught her eating paint off an old building, what would you do?
Her: Well, we'd want to run some tests on the paint to see if it contained lead.
Me: What if we ran across it on our vacation, hundreds of miles away, and you couldn't test the paint?
Her: In that case we would need to go ahead and test her for lead poisoning.
Me: How would you do that?
Her: The only way to do it would be to give her a small amount of the drugs used to pull lead out of the body, and if elevated levels of lead came out in her urine, then we'd know she needed to continue to be on those drugs until it was gone.
Me: So if I showed you a lab report that showed she had a bunch of lead in her system, you would be totally fine with treating that?
Her: Yes, that would be proof the paint had lead in it.
Me: What if I lied, and she hadn't eaten any paint?
Her: Well the lab test would then show--
Me: No, the lab test still shows she has tons of lead in her system, but I'm telling you she didn't come in contact with any major known sources of lead in the last few weeks.
Her: Well the lead must have come from somewhere.
Me: Right. So would you order the tests for her right now?
Her: No, if she isn't showing symptoms of lead poisoning, and you didn't see her come in contact with any, then there's no point in ordering the test.
Me: What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?
Her: Well, they're hard to detect, but things like confusion, abdominal problems, cognitive problems...
Me: My daughter has all those things.
Her: But your daughter has autism, so that explains them.
Me: So if I got another doctor to order the lab tests, and brought them to you, would you be willing to treat her for lead poisoning then, if the tests showed she needed it?
Her: Well... no I would recommend you have that doctor treat her. I'm not going to be comfortable treating her for a condition I know she doesn't have.
Me: Even if the lab tests--the same lab tests you would order if I lied and said she had eaten lead paint--showed she did have the condition?
Her: Yes.

Assuming Dr. Buttar is responsible in his use of testing, the only difference between him and the rest of the medical community is he's actually bothering to investigate what might be wrong, rather than writing it off as something tragic and unknowable.

Followup A: Do you believe Desiree had acute encephalopathy?

Followup B: Do you believe that Dr. Buttar's treatments solved it?