Autism Vox

Turning a Negative Into a Positive

by Kristina Chew, PhD on April 17th, 2007

It was a cold, wet, blustery Monday here by us. It was tragic. It was why the words of the poet can seem to sound too true:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

It is never just a “spring rain,” but it pours: It was a nor’easter came through this weekend making manhole covers pop in Jersey City, leaving mud and muddy puddles, and flooding. I left work early to make sure I got home in time for Charlie and found my in-laws and their live-in nurse watching TV coverage of what happened at Virginia Tech (and they kept the news on until it was time for Jeopardy). Where is it safe anymore, a friend emailed me (she has a child in college); I thought of the lockdown drill I had found myself participating in the last time I went to observe Charlie at his school.

If you caught the CBS Early Show on Monday morning, you would have heard that autism, being a “biomedical and neurological disorder,” is “treatable” via (according to DAN! doctor Kenneth Bock, M.D) a special diet (gluten-free, casein-free), various nutritional supplements, and detoxification—i.e., chelation—which was described as no longer being “on the fringe.” Many children with one of the “4-A disorders” (not only autism and ADHD, but also asthma and allergies) have shown at least “mild” to full recovery, it was noted.

As Dr. Bock notes in his just-published book, Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders,

“The primary reason that there are some rumors circulating among the public that chelation might be dangerous for kids is because two children died during recent years when they were mistakenly given the wrong drug during chelation treatments. Some news reports, particularly those that appeared immediately after the deaths, gave the mistaken impression that the deaths occurred because of the procedure itself, rather than because the wrong drug was used.

“Chelation, like every medical procedure, must be done properly. If it is not, it can harm patients.” (pp. 308-9)

(The specific names of the two children—one of whom was Abubakar Tariq Nadama , who died in August 2005—are not referred to.)

I don’t know if detoxification might move off the “fringe” as an autism treatment. We have tried the special diet for Charlie and some nutritional supplements; we have been experimenting with the occasional hamburger bun or bit of flour tortilla when eating out, and seen no ill or lasting effects in Charlie. He still takes a pro-biotic once a day, but missing a day or two of this does not seem to make a huge difference one way or the other. What counts more and most for Charlie now is what he is doing—school, piano lessons, swimming, ABA sessions, speech, walks, trips to the grocery store, walks in New York City. More and more, what matters most is—over and above what we can do for Charlie—-what Charlie himself shows us he can do.

This afternoon, Charlie told me “this way” and pointed left out of the driveway: However gray and cold spring-like it was, he wanted to walk to the center of our town, and off we went. Along the way we encountered some puddles that were approaching pond status and Charlie—-good thing he was wearing his boots—-plunged right in and stomped and sloshed and soaked the bottom half of his pants, and ran smiling ahead of me into town (after shoving the “extra layer” I had brought for him into my hands). Occasionally he would stop, push up the right-hand sleeve of my coat, and say, as I prompted him, “Can I hold your hand, Mom?”

This kid knows how to make a negative into something very positive; for such a positive view of autism by the parent of an autistic child, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker and author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism, see this CBS2 Chicago video interview.

And so, mixed into a wet and sad Monday in April, new roots are stirring.

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