Commentary on Current Media

You may have heard or read about the 5 year old boy in PA that died during a chelation treatment. Concerns from family and friends have sparked my commentary on this.


First, I do not fault the parents for their choice of chelation, I do not fault any parent for their choices with dealing with autism. Studies are limited on all accounts, from treatments to therapy and sadly us parents are forging the way to helping our kids. We don't get billions of dollars in funding like juvenile diabetes or leukemia, though 1 in 166 kids are on the spectrum, more kids have autism than juvenile diabetes or leukemia. Its a very sad situation to be in, to loose your child right before your eyes and no one will help you do anything about it because there are no studies or the disease itself is so politically charged. I've never seen a childhood disease be fought about so much instead of people banding together and just try to help.

The media has taken this story and only a few reports have got close to a correct story. They are taking something that the reporter knows nothing about and talking to one sided sources, and not even coming close to doing their homework.

This boy was using an IV chelation method, using a chelator called EDTA. As you all know, I am against IV chelation, I personally feel it is too harsh and too fast. In some cases, and I don't know about this one, but children are given a large dose of the chelator over a 24 hour period to see how much metals are removed from the system. My feeling on this is that this is too much stress on the body, and can leave the metals to retransport themselves to body organs and cause more damage than good.

The media is mainly talking to sources that are against chelation. I've read ONE story out of 15 last night that talked to parents who have an organization that are pro chelation. Just ONE. The next thing the media is reporting incorrectly and I've read this in all articles is that chelators are given under the skin or orally. This is not true, as you know in my case all of Derek's chelation medication is given topically either a cream or drops put on his skin and rubbed in. His chelators are not given in mass but rather in very small doses that require me to give them as often as every 3 hours including through the night. My philosophy is to take the metals out slow and allow the body to recoup each time for at least a week before chelation is done again.

The media also has not mention at least four other chelators that are used, leaving the average reader to think there is only one. The other four commonly used are DMSA, DMPS, ALA and TTFD. All of these can be administered in different methods as well from IV, oral and transdermal (skin).

Lastly, the media has failed to mention that this is the first death that we know of since 1950's using IV chelation for autistic children. I think that with thousands of parents using this method thats a pretty small ratio.