Something Causes Autism: shifting diagnoses

Monday, April 12, 2010

shifting diagnoses

Damn, the head in the sand strategy can't work forever...Was going along fairly well in the shadowy realm of non-diagnosis.
Maybe autism, maybe rett. Then one casual expert visitor drops the bombshell... 'You know you'll have to keep an eye on her for pneumonia.' Because of swallowing difficulties, rett girls often inhale what they're meant to drink.

It shouldn't feel like a bombshell because I've suspected it all along, from day one. (Damn google, it's so easy to diagnose, especially when the doctor says 'dunno, look it up'.) But so far the therapists have shrugged and said, 'All kids with autism are different.' Autism is her official diagnosis. Many times we raised rett syndrome with her paediatrician, but he didn't think it was likely.

Rett has a more troubling prognosis and it seems fairly common for rett kids to die of pneumonia or cardiac arrest in their teens.

The 'scientific' difference is that rett is seen as provably genetic (with autism they're still hunting for genes). But genetic tests don't pick up all rett cases, and just recently a second genetic mutation has been found, which implies that it's not a simple one-to-one relationship. Differences in syndrome severity are explained by which X chromosome controls neurons (one X chromosome being rett-affected) rather than by environmental contributions.

Researchers seem to work backwards from a belief in genetic causes to locate the genes 'responsible'. In the case of rett syndrome they have manufactured a similar (or, as they believe, identical) illness in rodents by mutating a particular gene. I can't help wondering what they used as a mutagen.

There may well be genetic predispositions and causes for various syndromes; I'm not arguing against that. However it may also be true that under conditions of non-exposure to particular agents the genetic mutations involved may never actually cause disease. Under the genetic model, we'll never know for sure.

Our girl underwent a massive improvement within 2 days of chelation. That's all I know.

Something causes autism.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Milli's story

My girl got a mercury-containing version of the Hep B jab when she was only hours old.

We took her home to an environment we now feel to have been laden with heavy metals and pesticides (the latter from prior inhabitants as I never use sprays). The local suburb had a coal smelter. The childcare centres all had treated pine.

She seemed to develop normally, though with a stiff neck but floppy lower body. However she began to use words at an appropriate time and learned to walk (though her gait was stilted). Progress stagnated and then began to go backward from about 14 months on. She was assessed at around two and found to be autistic; from that point after we switched diets to be gluten/casein free her ability to drink and eat began to collapse, she stopped recognising people and spent most of each day and a lot of each night crying and hitting her hands on walls. Words became scrambled and then completely disappeared. One day I looked into her eyes and there was nobody there.

We'd been seeing plenty of doctors, but had lately heard about a 'biomedical' approach, so took her to see a practitioner. A hair test showed aluminium and other heavy metals among the highest the lab had seen. Alas, before we could begin serious treatment she had 4 days refusing food or liquid, and the situation was suddenly dire. The biomedical paediatrician was a 6 hour drive away. We were on our own.

I decided to try one more thing before taking her to hospital, and that was chelation using alpha lipoic acid following protocols in a book called Children With Starving Brains.

I made sure to give a mineral supplement alongside. The local paediatricians refused to take part or oversee, and told me the hair test was 'fringe dweller stuff', so I followed the book.

In two days she could swallow properly for the first time in close to 18 months. We were syringing her vitamin tonic and she went very still and quiet and swallowed each mouthful normally. (It was only at that point that we realised why she hadn't been eating or drinking for so long.) Two weeks later her lopsided gait had normalised. Around that time I was putting her in the car when she took hold of my head, turned it to face her and laughed, looking into my eyes for the first time in ages.

What helped Milli? Aside from chelation with alpha lipoic acid we saw improvements with the following:

- fish oil
- vitamin B-12 injections
- mineral/vitamin tonic Hi Vita in liquid form
- probiotics

When her hair test had first showed the highest percentile for aluminium, I'd had our 2 water sources (bore and tank) and her rice milk tested. Both waters were within safe limits. The rice milk, according to the technician, appeared to have 'hundreds of times higher' levels of aluminium than the safe level for drinking water. It seems likely to me that Milli's 'leaky' gut was unable to seal out aluminium from that source. Naturally after her hair result and the lab test on water and rice milk I removed all tetra packages from the house.

So what causes autism?

I don't know. But it does seem to me inescapable that heavy metals have a part to play, in which case vaccinal mercury from her newborn Hep B jab must remain on the suspect list.

I've since read that mercury depletes B-12 (which makes gut lining). Other demyelating agents may be involved. Unless we stop looking to blame individuals via their genes, we'll never know the causes.