The funny thing is that this doctor wanted to start my son immediately on 2 things - milk thistle and DHA. He is already on both! This doctor will also be testing for everything that the pediatric neurologist is not - to include defective mitrochondria. After testing his blood and urine, I will then begin other supplements that were recommended.

Homeopathic and “alternative” health modalities are prescribed by yet another pseudoscientific practitioner. The stage is set perfectly. The diagnosis has been made by a “DAN” doctor. For those of you that don’t know, DAN stands for Defeat Autism Now!, a ridiculously fringe “alternative” and “holistic” autism treatment organization. In other words, its an organization of quacks. 

So lets use good science to form a hypothesis about the path of events that will play out here. We’ll make a prediction, and see if it bears out. Dr. Herbchewer diagnoses autism. Dr. Herbchewer prescribes milk thistle and DHA for the treatment of the autism. Magically, the child is “cured” of all of his autistic symptoms!

A cure! Right? Wrong. Occam’s razor. What is the simplest explanation for a cure being attained by the usage of a totally implausible treatment method? I’ll give you a moment…

… Got it? Thats right, the condition was never present to begin with. SO, if things work out, Dr. Herbchewer gets a nice hefty check, and the parent gets her child back, “cured”. If things go wrong, and the weeds don’t “cure” the autism, well then the vaccines were simply too powerful in their evils! I conclude with:

My son hasn’t had a vaccine in 15 months and he is still slipping backward!

A look inside the mind of a true believer. There is no set of circumstances where they will question their beliefs. If they think A causes B, it doesn’t matter *how long* it takes for the symptoms of B to present themselves, it will not shake them.

The case cited in the article is that of an American man in Berlin, Germany. He apparently was suffering with the HIV virus, and underwent a bone marrow transplant to attempt to eliminate the virus from his system. The interesting bit is that he received a transplant from someone who was immune to the HIV virus. These types of mutations of the gene that makes the protein that HIV uses to gain entry to one’s system were discovered in the late 1990s. After the treatment, the patient stayed off of retroviral drugs, and has since been HIV-free.

On the surface this seems like a really amazing breakthrough in the research for a cure. However, upon closer inspection, its actually not all that its been cracked up to be. The process by which a patient is prepared to receive a bone marrow transplant involves essentially destroying their immune system with radiation. This is a taxing process for the patient to go through and most HIV patients, already sick with the disease, could probably not undergo such a procedure safely.

Furthermore, finding a bone marrow donor for a patient is difficult enough. This procedure requires you find a donor that not only is a match for the patient, but also inherited (from both parents) the mutation of the gene that grants them immunity to HIV. This would simply not scale well out from one patient to the HIV-positive population as a whole. 

The vaccine has markedly reduced hospital and emergency room visits, medical costs, and the number of cases of disease caused by rotavirus…

…There’s also evidence that the vaccine, approved by the FDA in 2006, is creating a “herd immunity” that’s protecting even some children who haven’t been vaccinated.

However, all these silly results of these silly studies have been nullified by a poignant post by the good people over at AutismMercuryLink.com:

The Rotavirus vaccine, Hib vaccine, HPV vaccine and the various multi virus vaccines being introduced without any kind of testing is only because the vaccine manufacturers and the doctors administering them want to ensure a good income from them.

Interesting. It sure seems like they’re testing the vaccines.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported measles cases had spiked; 131 cases were reported nationwide for the first seven months of the year, compared with an average of 63 cases per year since 2000.

Of the infected, 91 percent were unvaccinated, most because of “philosophical or religious beliefs,” the CDC report said.

Homeschooled children accounted for 25 out of 30 cases in an outbreak of measles in suburban Chicago in May, according to the CDC. In Grant County, Washington, public health officials tied 11 of 19 measles cases to unvaccinated home-schooled children.

It will be interesting to see how anti-vaccinationists twist this story to prove their point. My bet is they’ll focus on the 9% of vaccinated children that also contracted measles as proof that vaccines are ineffective. 

Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC’s Immunization Division, states: 

“Somebody who has taken an exemption from school laws, like a philosophical or religious exemption, is 35 times more likely to get measles … and 22 times more likely to get whooping cough.”

But, of course, he is part of the vast conspiracy to austism-ize our nations children. And surely he is in the (seemingly infinite) pocket of “big pharma”. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that the innocent will have to suffer along with the guilty, I wouldn’t mind. Let the parents who choose to neglect their children, and fail to get them immunized, contract the disease. Not the children, who’s only crime is being born to gullible, intellectually lazy parents. 

The only bit of solace coming out of the news in recent weeks has been a push by the AAP (American Association of Pediatrics) to have pediatritions ask parents to sign a release when they refuse to vaccinate their children. Autism quackery websites have, as one would expect, been resoundingly critical of the form, amidst fears of it causing them to lose their children for neglect. While I can find no mention anywhere of this having ever happened, I see no issue with it. 

If you, as a parent, are unable to have even the most basic knowledge of safety regarding your children, or if having that knowledge, you choose not to act for them, you are unfit to be a parent.

Apply Directly to Forehead!

First, to believe the product works as advertised, you must lack even the most rudimentary knowledge of how absorbtion through our skin works. Their advertisements contain numerous well-shot depictions of commercial models rubbing what appears to be a deodorant stick on their forehead. This is shockingly, shockingly stupid. I assume what they’re infering is that since your head is hurting, you apply their product to the skin…of your head? And the product will then, of course, penetrate through your skin, through your skull, and drip directly in to the gaping void you must have where your brain should be.

There is absolutely no viable mechanism by which this chain of events can occur. Your skin does most definitely absorb things applied topically to it. However the location of the topical application, in so far as rate absorbtion goes, much less final location of chemicals, is mostly insignificant. There are areas of your skin that have thicker layers, and thus take longer to absorb anything topically applied. However, once a chemical is absorbed, it is entered in to your blood stream and circulated through your body. Regardless of what portion of your skin it was introduced from. 

As if all of that wasn’t enough, the active ingredients in HeadOn are, as I stated before, homeopathic. The product is almost entirely comprised of wax. It has a few herbal ingredients at absolute trace amounts; nothing that could in any way “cure” a headache. It does, however, contain trace amounts of potassium dichromate, which (in larger doses) may cause cancer. 

A fact that is telling is that there are no dosage restrictions listed on the packaging. This betrays intellectual dishonesty on the part of the company. If they were true-believers, and they actually believed their product work, they would have to assume that whatever chemical properties it has to stop a headache may — in larger doses — also cause harm. Then, if for no other reason, they would include a dosage restriction and controindications.

The packaging contains nothing of the sort.

It is also telling that their research page contains much information on their packaging methods, and not a shred about the ingredients, or how they stumbled upon this “cure”. They mention being an FDA Registered Drug Establishment, but since HeadOn (and all their other *on products) are considered dietary supplements, there is no oversight by the government with regards to chemical composition and/or efficacy.

The disturbing truth is this product is selling quite well. In fact, they have an entire line of *on products for everything from scars to itch relief. Each more homeopathic and quackish than the next.

Cure for cancer.

Its a complex series of mystical beliefs and practices that amount to believing water will hold the “energy” of whatever substance it comes in contact with — even after that substance is gone. This, coupled with a like-cures-like mentality leads to some seriously flawed thinking.

Boiling it down, its essentially claiming that if you’re, say, suffering from insomnia, you might dilute a molecularly insignificant bit of caffeine in a cup of water. You would then pour this cup of water in a swimming pool, and stir the whole thing with a canoe paddle. After waiting a few moments (to insure that the caffeine has properly mixed), you would scoop a cup full of the pool water out and guzzle it down in one quick gulp. 

You would then, presumably, immediately fall in to a blissful slumber. 

The problems with this seem incredibly apparent, but lets go through them anyway. First, the entire like-cures-like modality has no basis in real science -whatsoever-. You aren’t going to cure your insomnia by taking stimulants, you aren’t going to cure HIV by infecting yourself with more of it, you aren’t going to get rid of a headache by dashing your head against an anvil. It doesn’t work. 

That being said, even if this modality was effective, the dosage is so diluted that it can have no significant effect on your body chemically.

Homeopaths get around this troubling little issue by claiming that water will retain the “vibrations” of whatever substance is dissolved in it, even after that substance is removed. This, as you might guess, is also entirely unsubstantiated.

If you think about it though, if you want to get in to woo, this is the kind of woo to get in to. If you’re a chiropractor, you might make a mistake and paralyze someone. Homeopaths are essentially giving their patients pure water. So unless you’re unlucky enough to somehow manage to drown a patient, you’re probably in pretty good shape as far as lawsuits go.

So why do I bring this up? Well, proponent of all things woo NaturalNews.com has a wonderful list of 50 facts you may not know about homeopathy. Some of my favorites:

Fact 2 - Homeopathic theories are based on fixed principles of the Laws of Nature which do not change — unlike medical theories which are constantly changing! 

I must say I absolutely love when claims such as this are made. To think that somehow, the fact that science based medicine adapts to new information it gleans is a bad thing, is just….flabbergasting. I’m not sure what “fixed principles of the Laws of Nature” homeopathy is supposed to be based on, but I would be skeptical of any statement so vague. 

Fact 5 - The Homeopathic provings of medicines are a more scientific method of testing than the orthodox model.

Again, this is of course an unsubstantiated claim. I fail to see how their “provings” of medicines are more scientific. When I get a headache I take ibuprofen, after a short amount of time, my headache is gone. The JREF has had a million dollar prize waiting for anyone who can prove homeopathy can do just that much. It is still unclaimed.

Fact 7 - Homeopathic medicines work by communicating a current/pattern/frequency of energy via the whole human body to jump start the body’s own inherent healing mechanisms

I always find these types of claims interesting as well. I like how it exhibits a complete lack of knowledge of how the body works. The idea that there is some hidden healing mechanism within the human body that is just evolutionarily “switched off”, and only in need of a little prodding from your glass of water is completely insane. And, obviously, untrue. 

There would be no evolutionary pressure to not have such a mechanism switched on, if it existed. Our bodies have selectively evolved traits to insure survival. Why would it voluntarily handicap itself on the defense front?

* Fact 15 - Homeopathic medicines have no toxic side-effects.

* Fact 16 - Homeopathic medicines are non-addictive.

Byproducts of:

* Fact 17 - Every true homeopathic medicine is made using one substance 

Yes, that one substance is water. 

Fact 31 - Big Pharma does not want the Public to find out how well homeopathy works!

This is another one of those oft-repeated claims. I’m not sure why, if homeopathy worked, “big pharma” wouldn’t just synthesize the treatments and sell those with exorbitant markups. 

Fact 39 - Scientists agree that if and when homeopathy is accepted by the scientific community it will turn established science on its head.

The same thing is true of magic dentistry. When its finally accepted by the dental community, it will turn established dentistry on its head. I’m not sure who these “scientists” are (they’re never named). Probably because if they were, they’d be immediately exterminated by big pharma.

Fact 50 - The media as a whole has been unwilling to air a defence of the efficacy of homeopathy and the validity of this 250 year old profession.

This is a really great twisting of the facts here. The fact that the media has not aired a claim that your modality works is PROOF that it does, and theres a coverup. Well then. Theres really nothing anyone can say. Any study that disproves your theory is a flawed one, paid for by big pharma. News outlets that don’t air stories that are favorable to your claims are in the pocket of big pharma. Its amazing how deep this conspiracy goes. 

The bottom line is, to believe that homeopathy works you have to swallow a mountain of incredibly far-fetched claims, along with an awful lot of water. From the cover-ups to the modality itself, its all very difficult to fathom. Occam’s razor certainly seems to point to its pseudoscience.

So in honor of all the recent attention my blog has attracted from NJ anti-vaccinationists, I thought I’d take a moment to point out what NJCVC really is: A coalition of, at best, misinformed parents, and at worst, intellectually dishonest fear mongerers. 

A quick look at their web page finds that if you attended yesterdays rally, you may have been one of the 200 to receive a free Gary Null DVD. I’m so sorry I missed that.

For those of you that don’t know, Gary Null is a pretty well documented quack. Boasting bogus credentials and pseudoscientific research methods, one would wonder why any association would want to align themselves with him in any way. I suppose, however, that when a quack’s findings line up pretty well with your own beliefs, you tend to deny his quackery. 

I especially love the portion of the page dedicated to sign ideas. They include such gems as “Too Many Sick Kids”, “1 in 60 NJ Boys Autistic”, and “Vaccine Choice: Moms Know Best”. And yet, I continue to receive comments and emails telling me that NJCVC is not “claiming that vaccines cause autism”. Interesting, it seems like they are. 

The entire site is much too rife with non-sequiturs and vague allusions to “toxins” to debunk all the claims made. The irony is organizations are taking donations and wasting money on a completely useless endeavor, chasing a causal link that doesn’t exist. I really and truly feel sorry for those parents of autistic children whose bills for their development might be helped by the money wasted by organizations such as this one.

I apologize to those who have had comments deleted, but I am not trying to assist you in spreading your misinformation. So if you post a comment that does not contain any claims different from another, I will not approve its posting.

There is a lovely little gathering just wrapping up in NJ’s state capitol of Trenton this afternoon. Somewhere near 1000 200 protesters are rallying for the passing of a pair of new proposed bills (A260 and S1071) that would allow for conscientious exemption by parents for their children’s routine vaccinations. It is just one more example of unfounded allegations leading to a hysteria of the uninformed.

The organization at the forefront, organizing the rally and pushing hard the agenda, is the innocuously-named New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice. They have a perfectly distilled down list of reasons why vaccination should not be mandatory, distilled down for the simple folk who might not understand all the complicated study results regarding the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines. And, without fail, coming in at number 8:

Vaccination has been proven to cause Autism.

This is exciting news! They’ve obviously conducted some sort of clinical trial, and found a causal link?! Nope, guess again. They just regurgitate the same tired claims; including the incredibly scientific SurveyUSA study. Conducted by telephone. And I quote:

“of more than 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys.”

Well, lets take a look at this claim. What is it really saying, if anything. 

First, the survey is limited to California and Oregon. So we have not eliminated the possibility of a geographic factor. Second, and as I said before it was a telephone-based study. This relies on people responding honestly to a telephone soliciter — this is not how real scientific studies are conducted. Any number of factors could be at play here, conspiring to create this result. Perhaps a certain percentage of the respondents lied. Still more may have self-diagnosed their children.

Furthermore, I find the wording of the statement interesting. Why do they only mention the statistics for boys? Could it be because the statistics for girls do not make their case for them? If you whittle a dataset down enough, cherrypicking your limiters, you can find a correlation between almost anything. If you look at a specific enough sample group, you can probably find a positive correlative link between cigarette smoking and Olympic achievements.

Another telling portion of their statement is that they say a “neurological disorder like ADHD or autism”. Like is a weasal word; your definition of like may not be my definition of like. Who knows how many different self-reported-by-telephone disorders were marked as an autism “hit”?

The organizations entire premise is based on worthless studies and conjecture. The other 9 reasons autism shouldn’t be mandatory range from being patently false, to creating straw-man arguments for vaccination proponents and tearing down positions they don’t hold. 

In conclusion. If you’re for vaccination choice, thats just fine. We live in a democratic society, and what the people want they should get. But, they, along with organizations such as NJCVC have a responsibility to be informed.

“She has a lot of [nerve] to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong,”

Interesting statement. Peet has a lot of nerve to vocally oppose your….vocal opposition to vaccination, because, you have an “angry mob” on your side. 

I think its ironic that McCarthy chose that phrasing. I would add “torch-wielding”, but otherwise I think its a perfect fit for the anti-vaccinationists.