is it a kind of dream?

I've been reading a LOT of Wakefield's particular brand of quackery, his Thoughtful House stuff, autismyesterday.org, DAN, Autism Speaks, Jenny McCarthy's stuff, and lots more.  Wakefield's history is very dodgy and Brian Deer seems to have an especially big hard-on for Wakefield. Hence Wakefield fleeing Britain and setting up camp in the US where he can get by with selling autism like some sort of dastardly disease that needs to be cured, and peddle his quackery without the GMC breathing down his neck. Deer's website on him is especially enlightening, and I wouldn't trust Wakefield as far as I could throw him, which is probably less distance than in the 90s when he became hot shit, as he has put on some weight.

The kids that parents seem to describe when they talk about their child and the biomedical therapies they are using, seem to be immune system compromised, with a heavy metal problem and diarrhoea/constipation/gut issues. Those children may very well improve with chelation therapy / diet / etc even though everything I read says that chelation is dangerous, and I feel it leans towards quackery myself. Perhaps those children are indeed suffering something more biological than autism as I know it, and can indeed be helped by some of these biomedical therapies that are so often touted.

I find myself steering far form that sort of stuff because it sells autism as the next big disease to be cured, which is find offensive, and resent tremendously.

Many (DAN comes to mind) doctors in the states prey on vulnerable families suffering al sorts of guilt including vaccine guilt, feeling horrible over something they are being told they may have done to their child and therefore they are even more vulnerable than most, and fall for some of the quackery that is sold as 'autism cures.' There's nothing more close to a person than their child - nothing a person would want to help more than their own flesh and blood, and as a parent myself, i'd give pumpkin my heart, brain, guts, whatever, if she would benefit from it. That vulnerability is what the vultures are preying on, and peddling snake oil at desperate parents.

That said, perhaps some of these parents are seeing true changes. I would have said before than they are simply seeing the passage of time and maturing of the child - certainly pumpkin has changed enough without us 'doing' anything to her apart from some therapies and help in classroom. She is so vastly different in a year than she was this time in 2007, that i'd swear it was a different child. It isnt, she's just a year on.

Who knows? Only the people doing the research can tell us if chelation really helps or if it is simply the passage of time that makes the parents think they are seeing benefits.

Many white europeans benefit from the removal of gluten / casein from the diet, and especially those with bowel problems that may be either Coeliac or Crohn's, the removal of gluten from the diet would reap many many benefits. Lots of hypothyroiders remove gluten from their diets because Coeliac and Hashimotos are so closely related, and they swear they feel better for it. I have no recource but to believe them, since I love bread/wheat too much to do it myself.

Interestingly enough, both of the autistics in my immediate family are healthier than myself with superb immune systems, the ability to fight everything that comes their way with far less misery or protracted puniness than myself, and neither one of them have any gut issues whatsoever, with better working bowels than myself.

What is there are two kinds of 'autism' happening here - some sort of reversible curable 'autism' which isnt really autism, but some kind of poisoning, which those parents manage to work on, and the entirely and completely different situation of my family, who only have autism, not gut issues or poor immune systems?

What if 'autism' as I know it is pure autism, and autism that these curable/recoverable children have is something else that presents with autistic symptoms, like mercury or lead poisoning? That the reason those parents are seeing a recovery is that the children do not have true autism to begin with, but something that produces an autism-like syndrome in the brain, some process that is pathological rather than congenital/neurological?

It may also behoove me to point out that neither of my autistics have ever had a vaccination. Better half grew up here in Britain in the 70s and caught the diseases like everyone did - MIL, for all her uselessness, did something right, by refusing vax for both her sons. Pumpkin as we all know has never had a jab and I'm still debating doing it, ever, although we have an appointment coming up with a private doc to do just that, catch her up on vax privately. Would my autistics be different if they had been vaccinated? Would we now be dealing with those biomedical problems due to the vaccination itself, not the autism? That seems to be the difference here, is that my autistics weren't vaccinated, and despite being autistic, neither of them have that cluster of medical problems. Who knows.

I get irritated at those out there who insinuate that i ought to be doing more to cure my child, when i feel adamantly that i should NOT be wasting money and efforts to cure something that ISNT a disease.  She is  simply different, that's all.  I have attracted a lot of criticism lately because allegedly my refusal to investigate curing my child is simply my way of holding onto my attention whore status, because if she was cured, what else would I have to attention whore about. Or so it is claimed. I'm a bad mom for not wanting to cure her.  Etc. I'm doing her a disservice and failing her as a parent by not trying to cure her.

Perhaps the disservice is the sheer volume of researchers etc who do not differentiate between the children who have autism as a symptom of a cluster of medical problems including the aforementioned diarrhoea and gut issues and immune system problems and heavy metal toxicity, and the children who are simply autistic, with nothing else on top of it / causing it, just autism as a neurological difference?

What about the loads of studies out there that have found differences in brain scans, in the structures of autistic brains?How would you reconcile those differences if you somehow managed to 'cure' the autism? How could a 'cure' work on a true autistic, not one of these medical cases? The implications of taking away autism from the true autistics, and not those ill with the syndrome of gut issues / bowel problems / immune system problems  / heavy metal toxicity, are staggering, and in my mind, do smack of eugenics, of the elimination of variety in the neurological wiring of the brain, and therefore of the human being itself . Something i'd never pursue for my family, ever.

Those children with the bowel problems and heavy metal issues and so on desperate need legitimate help for those issues, and i would never deny that to them. The safety of chelation isnt established, and children do not need to be made into guinea pigs by desperate parents and doctors with their priorities in the wrong place.

I think Jenny McCarthy may well believe that she is doing the right thing for her son. And that's great for her, and the rest of the curebies. And perhaps THEy have a disease there that needs curing - their flavour of autism  certainly seems to be a different flavour than ours is. But for my autistics, pushing for a 'cure' or telling me i'm bad or wrong or neglectful for not pursuing it, is baseless, and unfair.

They need to figure out how many different kinds and causes of 'autism' that are going on in this old world, and differentiate them to people, so the confusion can be sorted out, and all those parents who do pursue a cure do not need to be trying to make those of us who don't pursue cures feel bad about it.