(This was posted by Patrick Sullivan Jr.)
I just read the transcript of A Child Who 'Recovered' from Autism which was on Good Morning America today. (I don't know why the word Recovered was in quotes since the piece clearly talks about Jake Exkorn having complete reversal of symptoms.)
First of all, good on Jake's mother Karen Exkorn for deciding to STOP listening to her excuse-giving pediatrician (see the excerpt of her new book, 'The Autism Sourcebook') and finding some form of therapy to help her son who was clearly in pain and atypical from his peers.
From the end of the piece:
Jake, now 9, is one of the lucky children. Once again, he is functioning at the level of other children his age, and can even reflect about his experience with autism.
"Because your brain is disconnected, you can't control yourself," Jake said. "It's like something else is controlling you."
Wow...to hear a kid speak about their own experience with autism after they have recovered is very interesting!
Now, something that jumped out at me while reading this piece and the excerpt from Mrs. Exkorn's new book was that there was no mention of mercury or chelation therapy (ie. TD-DMPS, TD-DMSA) which at this point, are what I personally believe are the cause (mercury) and cure (chelation) for autism. (That comes as no surprise to anyone that has been reading this blog for any length of time.)
But according to the piece, 40-hours a week of applied behavioral analysis (ABA) for 2 years is what 'recovered' Jake Exkorn. I'll be the first to admit that on the surface, it appears that there is ZERO mercury connection here. I wouldn't be surprised if with a little digging, a connection could be made (mom has a few mercury amalgams, had flu shot during pregnancy, Jake had thimerosal-laden vaccines, etc.), but I would rather take this claim at face value in order to make another point.
TD-DMPS chelation therapy costs about $2700 ($150/month for 18 months following Dr. Buttar's protocol) plus doctors visits, plus lab reports, plus the monthly supply of vitamins and minerals that must be used in order to safely replenish minerals while chelating. This is a biomedical protocol and there are several variations being used by a few thousand parents, rather successfully I might add, to reverse autistic symptoms.
In comparison to the total bill for chelation therapy ($2700 plus doc visits, lab reports, vitamins), how much does 40-hours-a-week, one-on-one ABA therapy for 2 years cost? That's a full time job for a trained professional that is likely earning anything from $30K - $100K/year, right?
Now the clincher,
"ABA is expensive and grueling, but is considered the "gold standard" of autism treatment by experts. Its success is based on a variety of factors, including the age of the child and access to a qualified therapist.
(snip)
"Most of us in the field would say that occurs in 5 to 10 percent of children, and that is a generous estimate," McCarton said. "There are many children who have the diagnosis who get extensive number of hours of ABA therapy and they won't recover. They absolutely won't recover."
So it's between $60,000 and $200,000 over two years one-on-one with a professional therapist for 40-hours-a-week to give your autistic child a 5 to 10 percent chance of functioning at the level of other children their age?
And Mrs. Exkorn, using ABA to cure her own son, wrote The Autism Sourcebook?? For crying out loud!! How does a 5 to 10 percent success rate make ABA the "gold standard?" If her books does not mention mercury and chelation, how could it be the sourcebook??
Orac, Prometheus, Skeptico, AutismDiva, Kevin Leitch, Anne, DD, Kevin Greenlee, etc., I don't mean to switch roles and assume the "skepticism mantle" here, so please chime in and do your regular bashing of anyone who claims to "cure" autism and tries to profit off of it -- ie. write a book, promote expensive therapies, etc. (Coincidentally, Pat just wrote a post this morning about double standards.)
Much like TREATING cancer, diabetes, etc., TREATING autism through ABA appears to be big business. CURING it however, yields little but vehement criticism.
RELATED STORIES ON PAT SULLIVAN BLOG:
Autism - If not mercury, then what? (8/31/05)
Dr. Buttar on IV EDTA Chelation and the Autistic Boy's Death (8/29/05)
Dr. Buttar gets mugged by 6NEWS Investigators (9/1/05)
Dr. Buttar controversial? JB Handley of GenerationRescue weighs in (9/1/05)
Dr. Buttar on the Empirical Evidence of Chelation (9/1/05)
Dr. Buttar, *WHERE* is the Empirical Evidence (9/3/05)
Dr. Buttar Provides Numbers (9/16/05)
Dr. Rashid Buttar's Bio (9/25/05)
Tehcnorati Tags: Autism, Mercury, Skepticism, Chelation, ABA
