Autism Vox

Soft Pedaling on Heavy Metal Treatment

by Kristina Chew, PhD on April 17th, 2007

In a post today on Stats.org at George Mason University, Maia Szalavitz takes CBS to task for featuring DAN! doctor Kenneth Bock, M.D.. She notes that CBS anchor Harry Smith

1. failed “to even mention that Bock supports the idea that autism is caused by mercury in vaccines – a connection which is not supported by scientific evidence, despite repeated studies of the issue.”
2. did “not question Bock about his use of chelation to treat autism, a method of removing heavy metals from the blood that has already killed at least one autistic child, and is completely unproven as a treatment for autism.”

Indeed: As I noted yesterday, Dr. Bock himself writes in his newly published book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders, that two children have died during chelation treatments: You can read about “safety first” and chelation on pp. 308-310 of his book. Dr. Bock emphasizes that the children’s deaths are not attributable to the chelation treatments themselves, but because the children “were mistakenly given the wrong drug during chelation treatments” (p. 308-9). That is, the children were chelated by someone who (unlike Dr. Bock, it is implied) did not know what he was doing.

When asked for research to back up his mention of children who have “recovered” through his “Healing Program,” Dr. Bock referred to “more and more scientific literature” in support of the “varied treatment modalities” that he uses; he also noted that he is “involved in several studies.” That was about as specific as he got (in his book, research by Mark Geier and David Geier is cited; go here to read Kathleen Seidel’s series of critical analyses, Significant Misrepresentations:Mark Geier, David Geier & the Evolution of the Lupron Protocol on the “elusive institute,” their “questionable terms,” and more.) As Scalavitz writes:

It’s one thing to cover a controversial new medical book by exploring both sides of the issue and by letting the audience know that the author’s ideas are contentious. It’s quite another to claim extraordinary results without requiring evidence and fail to even inform viewers that some treatments promoted by the book’s author have resulted in death and are far outside the medical mainstream.

Detoxification, according to Dr. Bock, “is no longer on the fringes” and “is something that needs to be done with all the toxicity that we’re exposed to.” Szalavitz’s post is entitled CBS Softballs Doctor Promoting Dangerous Therapy for Autism; if I may extend the metaphor, it does seem that CBS went soft on heavy metal detoxification as a treatment for autism, and on one of its practitioners.

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