NIMH Cancels Chelation Study While Dr. Proffit Heads for the Bank

Guess what? A couple of days ago the media announced, "A government agency has dropped plans for a study of a controversial treatment for autism that critics had called an unethical experiment on children. The National Institute of Mental Health said in a statement Wednesday that the study of the treatment - called chelation - has been abandoned."

I'm shocked. (that's sarcasm)

Okay. After about ten minutes of research, here's what I found:

First, the NIH study was called off because an experimental psychologist at Cornell University found that rats who were administered a chelating agent (succimer) specifically meant to chelate lead, suffered from learning disabilities that are long-lasting if they were administered the drug when they did not have lead poisoning to begin with. Towards the end of the article, it notes that the most likely reason for this is because succimer depletes zinc and iron and the resulting deficiencies of these minerals are what probably caused the cognitive problems. DUH!!!

Two problems with NIH calling off the chelation study as a result of the above:

1. ANY doctor trained by the Autism Research Institute (Defeat Autism Now!) KNOWS that one of the FIRST things to do is assess the child's nutritional status, including testing for zinc and iron levels. AND, they know that chelation with ANY agent is NOT an option unless the child has DOCUMENTED heavy metals in the body. This is WHY we do hair analysis AND urine provocation AND fecal metal tests. Any physician who uses chelation to treat heavy metals in the absence of proof that there ARE heavy metals should NOT be using chelation. This is akin to prescribing chemotherapy for cancer to someone who LOOKS like they may have cancer, without ever doing the tests to determine if the cancer really exists. Chemotherapy drugs are some of the MOST toxic drugs on the planet, but nobody is suggesting that we not use them! (At least nobody in "mainstream" medicine)

2. A more appropriate design for the NIH study, instead of administering chelating agents to children who do not have heavy metals, would be to document that ALL children in the study have heavy metals in their systems and then administer ALL of the same interventions, including addressing mineral and nutritional deficiencies in ALL participants. The experimental condition should be those children who receive chelation, while the control group should be a group of children who are matched on all other interventions but do not receive chelation. In this way, there would be no problems associated with the fact that the control group did not have heavy metals AND there would be no problems associated with mineral depletion because, just as it is in the clinical setting in hundreds of Defeat Autism Now! trained physicians, THE MINERAL LEVELS WOULD BE CONSISTENTLY MONITORED TO ENSURE THEY ARE NOT BEING DEPLETED BY THE DRUGS! AGAIN, DUH!!!!!!

Why can't NIH figure this out?

I suspect this is because the powers-that-be do not understand clinical nutrition. This is most likely because traditionally trained physicians practicing traditional western medicine are trained in medical schools that are funded by pharmaceutical companies, and most M.D.s have never taken a SINGLE course in nutrition. It is NOT REQUIRED. No WONDER we have so many drugs that have been pulled from the market after significant numbers of patients have DIED because of side effects of the drugs, which WERE approved by the FDA.

Care for some Vioxx, anyone?

It seems to me that the reason the powers-that-be do not want chelation to become more readily available is because if they did, more children with heavy metal poisoning would have access to this very effective (and very safe) treatment. That would mean that there would be hundreds of thousands of children whose levels of mercury (and lead and antimony) would be DOCUMENTED, and doctors like Paul Offit, who happens to sit on the IOM (Institute of Medicine), which has declared that an association between thimerosal (mercury) and autism does not exist, can continue to rake in the dough at the expense of our children. For those who don't know, Dr. Paul Offit is not only the most vocal opponent of the mercury/autism connection, he is also one of the recipients of 182 MILLION DOLLARS, for royalties to the Rotavirus Vaccine, of which Dr Offit is a patent-holder. HMMMMNNNNN.........

Has anyone ever heard the saying, "The Fox is Guarding the Henhouse?"

WATCH THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Hw-Q23S_s

Once again, I advise parents to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH and do not rely on the misinformation being put out by those like Dr. Offit, who have SO MUCH to gain if our children remain poisoned by heavy metals.

To read more about chelation and the truth about the scare tactics, please visit the Autism Research Institute's website and read the following two articles:

http://www.autism.com/treatable/chelation/chelationsafety.htm

http://www.autism.com/ari/editorials/ed_chelationstory.htm

Marcella Piper-Terry