Doctors of Scientism: "No Cure for Autism"

There's no cure for autism, and many parents are willing to believe anything if they come to think it could help their child." Mulick chaired a symposium on "Outrageous Developmental Disabilities Treatments" Aug. 20 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. The symposium included presentations by several of Mulick's students at Ohio State who participated in a graduate seminar on fad treatments in autism.....Some of the newer, more popular fad treatments for autism involve special diets or nutritional supplements. Megadoses of Vitamins C and B6 are popular, as well as supplements with fatty acids like omega-3s. A casein and/or gluten-free diet, which involves eliminating dairy and wheat products, has also gained favor with some parents. While many of these treatments have never been adequately studied, that doesn't mean they aren't promoted....Autism, like many conditions, has cycles in which symptoms get worse and then get better. Parents tend to search for treatments when symptoms are getting worse, and when their children get better - as they do in the normal course of disease - parents credit the new therapy. "It's natural to have this bias that the therapy you're trying has had some positive effect," he said. "People want to believe." - Science Daily, August 20, 2007

"An Associated Press review of records in Minnesota found that a doctor and a pharmacist on the eight-member state panel simultaneously got big checks - more than $350,000 to one - from pharmaceutical companies for speaking about their products. The two members said the money did not influence their work on the panel, and the lack of recorded votes in meeting minutes makes it difficult to track any link between the payments and policy. But ethical experts said the Minnesota data raise questions about the possibility of similar financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and advisers in other states."In the absence of disclosure laws, there's certainly no way to know," said Jack Hoadley, a research professor specializing in Medicaid at Georgetown University in Washington. "There are a lot of physicians in general who have at least some contract or grant funding out of pharmaceutical companies, and additional (who) do speaking engagements." - Martiga Lohn, Associated Press (August 21, 2007)

"Direct-to-parent marketing of ADHD drugs - - most of which are stimulants -- has grown pervasive over the last few years, despite a United Nations treaty banning most of it. Use of such medications increased by more than 60% from 2001 to 2005, according to the International Narcotics Control Board. This month's homemaker-targeted magazines, such as Family Circle, Woman's Day and Redbook, feature advertising spreads for Vyvanse, Shire US Inc.'s new entry in the growing stable of ADHD medications...... Children in the U.S. are 10 times more likely to take a stimulant medication for ADHD than are kids in Europe. In fairness, children in Europe are also somewhat less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD because of a stricter set of criteria. But that doesn't nearly account for the difference in prescription rates. The U.S., the only nation to violate the U.N. treaty, consumes about 85% of the stimulants manufactured for ADHD...." - Karin Klein, Los Angeles Times (August 20, 2007)

"State laws requiring proof of vaccination at early school entry are key to the U.S. vaccination program and help ensure that no child is unvaccinated," the [MMWR] editorial concludes. "Higher percentages of children are up to date at kindergarten entry than at younger ages, suggesting that early school-entry laws help maintain high coverage and ensure completion of the vaccine doses recommended for children by ages 4-6 years." - Laurie Barclay, M.D., Medscape, August 17, 2007

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

"There is no cure for autism" says pediatric psychologist James Mulick at a recent American Psychological Association (APA) conference where his Ohio State University grad students criticized parents of autistic children, who maintain their children's autism involves neuroimmune dysfunction that is treatable with nutrition and immune modulating therapies. It appears that some psychologists are afraid they will lose a good chunk of their business if they can't keep autistic children in chemical and behavior modification chains and out of the offices of enlightened health care professionals successfully treating autism another way.

Mulick is a proponent of the old and very expensive, long term Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) therapy performed by child psychologists on mentally retarded and autistic individuals, many times with simultaneous use of prescription drugs. Although this kind of intervention may work for some autistic children and parents, it is by no means the be-all and end-all of treatment for children who have experienced regressive autism.

How sad that doctors in teaching positions at major universities, such as Ohio State University, are instructing their young students to belittle parents, who search for non-toxic nutrition and supplement therapies to lessen their children's brain and immune system dysfunction. These Bettleheim wanna-bes cannot resist setting themselves up as high priests in the new Church of Scientism, where they preach a dogma that requires the promotion of pharmaceutical products and medical interventions sanctioned by the church they have created.

The high priests of Scientism feel threatened when they cannot convert those who refuse to believe and obey. Thus, the demonization of the unbelievers and a search for appropriate punishment begins. In this case, perhaps the idea that parents, who provide their autistic children with gluten and casein free food, should be legally prosecuted for "child medical abuse." This would allow the children to be made wards of the State so that doctors employed by the State could force them to drink cow's milk instead of soy milk, eat white bread instead of rice, take Ritalin instead of vitamin B and be subjected to extreme "behavior modification" techniques that would make a Marine beg for mercy. Our grandmothers may have given us an apple and a spoonful of cod liver oil every day to keep the doctor away, but the high priests of Scientism are going to make sure that vitamin and omega 3 supplements are branded "dangerous" so they can keep conning politicians into legally requiring babies to be injected with mercury and aluminum while convincing themselves that a little Prozac never hurt a toddler.

What really makes the Scientism devotees angry is that autism is not about bad mothering, as the late, great Bernie Rimland, Ph.D. demonstrated. It is not about "bad genes" as the parent bashing pediatric psychologists tell their students at Ohio State University. No, autism is mostly about loving parents allowing their perfectly normal, healthy babies to be subjected to 48 doses of 14 viral and bacterial vaccines at the hands of clueless pediatricians and then watching in horror as their babies regress into a spectrum of chronic brain and immune system dysfunction that finally ends with a diagnosis of "autism." And when enlightened health care professionals, who refuse to subscribe to the "incurable autism" myth, work with parents to provide healing nutritional and other natural therapies that lessen or sometimes totally eliminate the children's vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction, the apostles of Scientism are both jealous and worried they will lose paying customers.

Too many doctors of medicine have made a Faustian bargain with the pharmaceutical industry. And slowly, the people are figuring out that medical science has been hijacked by ideologues, who pretend to love "scientific truth" but love power and money more.

Abraham Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." It is time to take back our lives from drug and vaccine pushing doctors who worship at the alter of Scientism and exploit the people for power and profit.