Edinburgh update
Scots paper reports on the thimerosal conspiracy pushers' and biomedical salespeople's conference in Edinburgh
Autism Diva's recent article referring to this conference in Scotland.
Autism Diva
No argle-bargling
Controversy over vitamin jab for autism
By Rachelle Money
A CONTROVERSIAL vitamin injection claimed to help autistic children recover is to be promoted in Scotland by its American developer.
Dr James Neubrander, who will discuss the injection at a conference on autism in Edin burgh this week, has a private clinic in New Jersey where he says he has given more than 75,000 shots of methyl cobalamin B12 since May 2002, with, he claims, 94% of children showing improvement.
Methylcobalamin B12 is a type of vitamin B12 produced naturally by bacteria in the colon and then absorbed. Some scientists believe that people with autism are unable to absorb this material.
Neubrander said one injection is given every three days and the effects can be seen within five weeks. “My kids can lose their diagnosis [as autistic] within a year and a half to two and a half years and be in a normal classroom where nobody would know they had autism. When they stop the shots they regress in the same manner a diabetic who stops taking insulin would regress.
“When we first see these kids they can’t talk and now they are totally recovered. This is to the autism world what antibiotics was to the modern world.”
The doctor will discuss his work at the Treating Autism Conference, organised by Action Against Autism, at the Royal College of Physicians, this Friday and Saturday .
However, he points out that he is not suggesting his injection is the only treatment.
“I believe in other treatments, like behavioural therapy and speech and language therapy and I tell my patients to continue with them.”
Some UK doctors are already experimenting with the treatment, which is currently undergoing clinical trials in the US.
Dr Jean Monro, medical director of Breakspear Hospital in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, said the private hospital has been using the injections on autistic children for several months. She said: “I saw one boy in his early teens who, from having been a chap who couldn’t even sit down, can now co-operate with people. We’ve also not found any side-effects yet.”
But other medics are sceptical. Dr Iain McClure, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist with NHS Argyll and Clyde, is scathing of Neubrander’s claims.
“Dr Neubrander’s website claims his study provides ‘scientific validation for use of methyl B12’ in autism. I feel this cannot be scientifically justified,” he said.
Neubrander’s paper, published last year, reports findings from a study which compared 20 autistic children to 33 healthy children .
But McClure said: “Crucially, the study does not demonstrate any scientific evidence of clinical improvement in the autistic profile of children following these injections.”
However, a Hampshire mother whose seven-year-old son Alex has been having the injections – bought from a doctor in Chicago – since last November, claimed to have seen improvements. Christina Wood said: “We started to see more language, that’s been the biggest thing. He’d stutter at the start of a sentence but not anymore.”
A spokesman for the National Autistic Society (NAS) said many interventions for the complex condition had been developed, with various claims of success. “An intervention that may help one individual may not be effective for another . It would not be appropriate for the NAS to recommend any one practice or therapy.”
09 October 2005
Autism Diva's recent article referring to this conference in Scotland.
Autism Diva
No argle-bargling
posted by Autism Diva at 9:06 PM
23 Comments:
75,000 shots of B12 since May 2002?
How many does this Dr. Neubrander give per day to get in that many?
Autism Diva isn't the keenest mathematician, but she came up with an estimate of 83.3 shots per work day.
8 hour work day... 10+ shots per hour? Assuming that's 1 kid per shot, that's a little less than 6 minutes per patient? whoooo doggy!
Perhaps the kids just step on a conveyor belt when they reach the front door of the Neubrander clinic.
Please someone else do the math! This can't be right. Maybe, Neubrander works 7 days a week or 14 hour days.
Next question, what are the parents paying? Are kids getting out of school to go get their shots every 3 days? Or are the shots that Dr. Neubrander gives just the first one the kid gets and after that the parents do the rest? If so then he's spending 6 minutes per kid for the first visit? Charging what for that initial 6 minute visit?
The simplest explanation is that Dr. Neubrander was misquoted, that he hasn't really give that many shots in 3 and a half years.
The other point that none of these "researchers" ever seem to consider is the power of atypical development. It is very tricky to claim that it is a vitamin, a new diet, etc., that made this difference in a child, when that child is developing atypically. These children, like all other, are complex human beings who respond to countless different things in their environments, (my son has finally been able to tell us that he hates the change in season, the diminishing light, for example). You change one uncomfortable thing in these children's lives and then of course you see a burst in development! Who knows, maybe even the parents are more attentive than ever during the time of the injections, and they make the child more comfortable than he has ever been! But you never know for sure what caused it, especially if the child cannot tell you because of speech/language deficits.
Sorry for the rant.
The Breakspear Hospital are, not to put a fine point on it, a set of quacks. They get parents to send them blood samples in the post. Royal Mail. Not known for being terribly respectful of parcels, or fast. So they get a vial of warm, coagulated blood, collected by untrained parents. And then they make big diagnostic pronouncements on said blood.
M, too bad about Breakspear hospital being quacks. It's the patients that suffer for it.
Susan,
Exactly. Autistics can have regressions and sudden progressions in more obvious ways than normal kids, though if normal kids were watched through a microscope and had everything about them pathologized, they'd be seen to have regressions and progressions, too.
Which is not to say that regressions aren't scary and that progressions aren't exciting. Autism Diva's 25 year old ASD offspring suddenly started discussing news items in a more normal way, recently. Must have been that vitamin C, you know it's a chelator!
If someone can give the parents a concentrated dose of hope, the parents will see the child differently and pass on that hope and confidence to the child, add to that the fact that putting a kid on a wheat-free diet might make the kid feel much better and allow him to concentrate more on what is happening around him, that is IF he actually is having a physical problem with wheat protein.
The thing is the kids who "lose their diagnoses" are having the diagnoses removed by people who don't know what they are doing. School districts are more than happy to move a kid of their "injured" list. Autism Diva knows of a case where an ASD girl was moved from a special ed class to a normal class over the vehement objections of the girl's parents. The girl, at about age 11 tried to kill herself because of the stress she was experiencing in the new classroom.
Basically, the school district didn't care, even after the suicide attempt. Lots of school districts flat don't care. That's what Autism Diva thinks about when she hears teachers declaring the kid, "now normal!!!!"
Autism doesn't go away. If a kid was misdiagnosed as autistic, if he really fit "developmental delay" better, then he's going to become more normal no matter what, but he's not autistic to begin with.
A recent paper from somewhere in Europe...Autism Diva has to dig it up ... said that it's hard to tell "developmental delay" from "autism", but one thing that seemed to be a marker is that the autistic kids had better coordination and were more physically active. That's interesting. Some autistic kids are tremendously coordinated and strong. Alex Bain was one of them.
Dr. Neubrander teaches the parents how to give the injections as you pointed out in your previous post on Dr. Neubrander.
Check out the videos of recovered kids on his website here, and judge for yourselves.
The 75,000 shots have all been prescribed by him but not all administered by him.
Most of those kids that recover through Dr. Neubrander are also on Dr. Buttar's TD-DMPS protocol.
You're really digging aren't you?
You went to the bottom of the ocean on this one Diva!
Ok, now hit delete, bye, bye.
How far must one dig to reach the bottom of the ocean, metaphorically speaking?
Kevin Champagne! Autism Diva missed you!
You may post here so long as you mind your manners and don't act too psychotic or rage filled.
:-) Autism Diva knows you can do that. (pat, pat, pat.)
The article said that Neubrander has given 75,000 shots of B12 in 3 and a half years. There's no digging there, it's what the article said. Autism Diva recognized openly that Neubrander might have been quoted wrong. Still, if he's merely writing perscriptions at that rate, he's still spending less than 6 minutes with each patient if he's working 8 hour days, 5 days a week and taking a few Holidays days off.
Amazing fellow!
Digging to the bottom of the ocean... the problem with that is that the as soon as you scoop out a hole it fills in again ... that is if you start at the top of the ocean. Sort of Zen, like "what is the sound of one hand clapping", isn't it?
Thanks clone3g!
OH!
75,000 shots prescribed! Sorry, Kevin. So what's Neubrander charge for writing these prescriptions?
One prescription cost about $35.00 plus $25.00 for overnight shipping, and you get 8 MB-12 injections. Isn't that outrageous? Not!
I don't know what Dr. Neubrander charges for an appointment, but what I do know is last year you could get an appoinment with him in about 2 months, and now it's over 1 year to get an appoinment to see him just like Dr. Buttar.
What I meant by digging, is that you seem to take doctors that I use in my previous comments, and then you write a story about them and try your best to mock them or dig up some sort of dirt on them.
I could be wrong, but I don't thing you even knew who Dr. Neubrander was until I recently commented about him on Pat Sullivan's blog, and on my own joke of a blog. Now you seem to be taking him on, and you have already accused him of using MB-12 with cyanide, but that turned out to be false, and now you can't believe the number of shots that he's prescribed.
Another example, is when I mentioned a few months ago on Kevin Leitch's blog about attending a Dr. Buttar confernce in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. It was only a short time later that you put up your post about Kazuko Curtain, and CASD (Center for Autistic Sectrum Disorders). You questioned what business she was conducting with Dr. Buttar and I believe you criticized her spelling. Kazuko is one of the nicest and most helpful people we have ever met, and thanks to her and her not for profit organization, hundreds of children are being helped to recover. She had some misspelt words on her website because engilsh is her third language.
It seems that if someone is helping autistic/mercury toxic children recover, they will come under fire by you.
The problem, Kevin Champagne, is that Autism Diva has looked at the "evidence" presented by the pro-chelation, pro-methyl B-12 bunch and it's garbage.
The accounts that parents tell are compelling, but the accounts from parents who felt cheated or lied to or ripped off or dissapointed aren't out there. Autism Diva has heard of 2 parents who had bad experiences with Dr. Neubrander. Both parents posted their names and some information, one said anyone could contact her for more information on what went wrong with the Neubrander experience.
These were specifically patients of his, not just people using MB12.
There could be many parents who have just convinced themselves that the child got massively better after the shots started.
Autism Diva could set up a website that says 2 pots of Green Tea with honey per day, and aural lavage with lemon juice cures autism in 95% of those who try it. BUT the parents all had to buy special green tea, special honey and special lemon juice from Autism Diva or it wouldn't work,
There could be video of the parents saying how fantastic the results were, video of the children showing a big change...
Autism Diva could propose a mechanism by which the green tea/honey/lemon juice therapy works. It has something to do with changing the acid balance in the inner ear fluid and the addition of specific poly-phenols and glucose molecules and their synergistic effects....
Autism Diva could pay some Drs to give a thumbs up for the therapy.
It wouldn't mean a thing. Even if by some miracle the tea/honey/lemon juice therapy could rewire the children's brains NO ONE should buy it until it had been studied extensively. NO ONE should believe it without some kind of controlled study.
It's not that hard to set up a study and record the findings so that others can replicate it, those results with hard numbers on the ages of the kids, everything pinned down, could be published on the internet for free. That could be a start, then people can get funding for studies of various sizes, eventually with enough duplication it could be an accepted therapy.
Anything less looks exactly like quackery and thievery. There's no getting around that.
So long as these people mimic the behavior of quacks and thieves, Autism Diva will mock their behavior and remind people that all that glitters (and smiles and talks confidently) does not cure autism, parental report or no parental report.
Have you read the James, mb12 study? It's nothing. There's no reason there for all of these people to be injecting their kids, there's really not even enough justification for the MIND to be doing what they are doing, but thank goodness they are doing it in a somewhat controlled way. Autism Diva doesn't believe (so far) that they really have a double-blind situation, but that remains to be seen.
LOL!
1.- Vitamine B12 is only absorbed in the small intestine (ileum) so colonic bacteria have nothing to do with B12 intake
2.- They can't compare B12 with insulin. Vitamin B12 can be stored in the body for YEARS, so regular supplementation seems excessive and useless (maybe toxic?), especially in people without a documented definciency (there are laboratory test to make a proper diagnosis). Anyway, B12 defincency is kinda rare because "in a typical Western diet, a person obtains approximately 5 to 15 mcg of vitamin B12 daily, much more than the recommended daily allowance of 2 mcg."
3.- Vitamin B12 manifests mainly by pernicious anemia, periferic nervous system problems and coronary disease....as far i'm concerced, those symptoms aren't more frequent in autistic population.
Yes MadSerena but Nobrainer has a constantly evolving explanation for it's efficacy. First he claimed that it was deficiency, odd that a doctor couldn't just test that, then a transport defect, once again testable, and several other reasons why it might help. He's now calling it a dependency with no explanation for how someone can develop a B12 dependency. None of these kids are checked for B12 status though the parents should be entitled to that for the money they pay. Maybe Jim is the one with the dependency.
He's come up with this theory that oral meB12 doesn't work because it needs to be time-released so injecting it into the fatty tissue of the buttocks allows it to slowly diffuse. Yes, that must be it. A water soluble vitamin that gets trapped in fat. I guess that's where his pathology training comes in handy.
Hey, "if he's in it for the money why does he give away the protocol to anyone interested?" WHY???? The poor dear man just giving it away!! Breaks my heart.
as an onlooker..it seems that Kevin has fairly good manners..AUTISM DIVA seems to be very self-absorbed (e.g. the name AUTISM DIVA),sarcastic, and omniscience. My question is what are her credentials? I suspect an untrained self-proclaimed DIVA capable only of passing on poor opinions based solely on her "DIVANESS", who refers to herself in the third person. This is arrogant. Regardless of the treatment being used by Dr. Neubrander, a different approach may be in order. It would interesting to compare the cirruculum vitae of Dr. Neubrander to clone3g's as well. Perhaps clone3g should post it.
Science should be explored openly, an attacked with respect especially from people who attack from a weak position. Otherwise their attacks are futile to those they try and convince, and only successful if one can look past the moronic nature of their approach irregardless of the subject matter.
There seems to be a way that mercury presents at the blood brain barrier would oxidize any B12 passing by.
That would explain a lack of B12 deficiency in the blood, yet a lack of B12 in the brain.
Link about B12 and mercury,
http://www.whale.to/w/b12.html
B12 would not cure anything though, it would just be a patch. I'll stick with chlorella and my arsenal array of supplements.
Why aren't more studies done with the Asperger's syndrome instead? A better ability by the patient to communicate could help... Emotional mothers would be less of an issue.
HELLO?? This is Methyl B12 not B12.
The methyl part is what is used.....to kick start and maintain the methylation process. How this so called "autism diva" can extract the 'facts' and turn them into such a oh-so entertaining comedy article...is beyond me. Moron!
I am the parent of an autistic boy. I have attended the Breakspear clinic on several occasions. I have had blood tests / stool analysis and hair folicle tests done. All under excellently controlled conditions. All the tests were helpful showing several bio-medical deficiencies.
Yes they were expensive. BUT yes they were a must.....with the pathetic/zero (cross out where applicable!) NHS support in this country.
As a result of parental advice from American mothers and the Breakspear, our son has been having MB12 injections every 3 days.
The results are startling. His speech began noticeably improving almost immediately. He has the real potential to live an almost normal life!
Anybody wishes to look at the 'research' and make negative press about this....is probably one of the same breed of people who thought the world was flat.
Also , anybody wishes to postulate that my son would have got this language without improving his methalation process via the MB12.... How would YOU know?? This whole puzzle of autism is another huge challenge for medical science....and I for one applaud Dr Neubrander for his research.
Oh and the fact he earns money for it? SO WHAT.
I pay £30 for 2 months MB12 shots. Best money I've ever spent.
nb Susan Senator....these "researchers" you say....by that I suppose you class yourself as one also? Where is your research on this? I know hundreds of families in the USA who have had their lives turned around by this MB12.
Anybody who thinks autism is incurable better hope otherwise...or at least read some of the recovered children press in the states.....because I tell you now.....with the utter crap being fed to our children , being ingested by pregnant mothers , and being administered as medicine....it is going to get a whole lot worse.
Thanks for reading this.
Hi, I am the mother of 7 children, one of which has autism. Two have grown and gone and I am still raising a housefull of 5 from the ages of 2-13. I am a very busy woman 24 hours per day. I read about all the remedies out there that could "help" my little girl who is 6. I find myself looking at my child's face, how she looks when she smiles in genuine delight, or how she gets frustrated because she can't say something, but has learned to have patience with us stupid folk. I want her to learn her way in her time.... I never want to risk her life. A doctor honestly told me at her diagnoses that a child never outgrows autism. Fine with me, I love her regardless.
I would also like to mention that autistic children "feel" more acutely than "normal" children.... they pick up your emotions very strongly almost as easily as thought... that's my uneducated theory. If a parent is constantly feeling dissatisfied with the child, they know this and behavior can literally change. Yes, I believe that hopeful parents send the right messages, but what kind of hope are we peddling? A pill, or a shot, and my families life will be "normal" again... When it doesn't work, what's the message? When it works only as long as the child takes the drug, then what? The child isn't dependent, the parents are.
Peace Whisperer,
Thank you for your comments. Sometimes when people comment on older blog entries, Autism Diva can't find them. If you comment again and Autism Diva doesn't respond it's because she gets the comments as email's but without a clue as to where they were posted within the blog.
If you want to be sure of a response, comment on the most recent blog entry, even if your comment doesn't fit the topic at hand there. :-)
Your children are very fortunate to have such a smart mom, no flattery intended.
Autism Diva believes you are right about autistic children feeling other people's emotions and intentions acutely. Maybe not all the time, but often enough.
Hi,
I was just surfing to see how I could find some injectable methyl b12 for my autistic son and I fell on your blog.
The name of these doctors sound familiar to me. We are doing the protocol with Dr. Amy Yasko. She has determined, by genetics, that my son has mutations in his methylation pathways. She suggest lots of natural supplements, including RNA based supplements, usually lots of B12 , SAMe, DMG etc.. Yasko deals with metals using RNA supplementation and some very safe, low dose EDTA.
Her website is very extensive and she explains "The Puzzle of Autism" by "biochemically" going into detail on what she believes are the underlying causes of autism.
Yasko works with the genetic testing and also alot of other qualitative testing such as the CDSA, UAA, OAT. She taylors the program using these tests and the genetics.
I feel her approach is very gentle. No magic bullet here and the treatment is done in stages, the first one being to try to balance out the system which is very sick. When the body is in better balance, this is verified by test results, then we start dealing with metals , virus and bacteria. Dealing with these cause alot of detox so I feel it is good to do some clean-up and make sure systems are functionning better before undertaking this part of the program. Here website is holisticheal.com and also autismanswer.com. Take a look. Lots of info and, in my book, the most comprehensive autism treatment there is.
Lots of luck and hugs to all parents of autistic kids that are out there.
Check out the facts on the RNA drops nonsense.
Briggitg,
Autism Diva hates to be the one to break it to you but there's one word that goes with "Amy Yasko". It starts with "F" and ends with 'raud".
What is your definition of "fraud", Diva? I came across your Blog looking for info on Dr. Amy Yasko. Please share with me what personal info you have that would make you post this about a well educated scientist and doctor who is dedicating her life to helping families affected by autism. I can accept your disagreeing with her methods, treatments, recommendations, etc., but to call someone a FRAUD, you best have some serious FACTS to back up your statement. Thanks!
Kiradele
Autism Diva doesn't recall calling Dr. Amy a FRAUD.
What dear, precious, friend to autistic children Dr. Amy sells is a belief that RNA taken from yeast can affect the RNA in people's cells to the point of making a change, never mind that the RNA in the bottle can break down very easily if a little salvia touches it, and the drops in the mouth break down upon contact with saliva. Her whole schtick is really beyond the pale for anyone with a slight grasp of basic biology.
Autism Diva suggests you might want to take some lessons in what RNA is from Bartholomew Cubbins over on his blog. BC knows RNA inside and out.
Autism Diva is shutting the comments off on this blog entry.
Have a nice day, Kiradele.
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