Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry: Disciplinary charges filed

A story about Dr. Roy Kerry and the death of Abubakar Tariq Nadama

[Pennsylvania] files disciplinary charges in autistic boy's death
10/30/2006, 2:04 p.m. ET
By JENNIFER C. YATES
The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH (AP) — State officials have filed disciplinary charges against a doctor who prescribed a therapy for people with lead poisoning to a 5-year-old autistic boy who had a heart attack and died.

Dr. Roy E. Kerry, 68, of Greenville, was charged Sept. 8 with six counts that include engaging in unprofessional conduct and breaching the standard of care. Abubakar Tariq Nadama died in August 2005 following his third chelation treatment at Kerry's clinic, the Advanced Integrative Medicine Center in Portersville, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Kerry didn't immediately return a call to his office Monday from The Associated Press.

The Department of State alleges, among other things, that Kerry prescribed an IV push — meaning the drugs are administered in one dose intravenously — despite warnings that this method can be lethal. He also prescribed the wrong formula of the drug, officials said.

If the State Board of Medicine finds any of the charges to be true, Kerry could have his medical license revoked, suspended or restricted and could pay up to $10,000 in fines for each violation.

Chelation is often used in patients with sickle cell anemia, lead poisoning or other maladies. During chelation, chemical compounds are injected or given orally and latch onto metals in the body and carry them out through urine or feces.

Some people believe autism can be linked to a mercury-containing preservative once commonly used in childhood vaccines. Chelation therapy has been advocated as a remedy.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved chelation only for acute heavy-metal poisoning that is confirmed by blood tests. Critics call the treatment risky and say there isn't enough evidence to link autism to mercury or lead toxicity.

One of the most common uses for chelation is lead poisoning, in which a synthetic chemical called EDTA is given to patients. EDTA is the same compound that was administered to Nadama.

John Gismondi, an attorney who represents Nadama's family, said they were pleased with the charges. The family's hope is that no other family has to go through a similar experience, he said.

"The family's main goal had always been to get to the bottom of what happened, and if these charged shed more light on things then that is a positive development," Gismondi said.

It's strange that the reporter didn't comment on there being more than one kind of EDTA. EDTA is far from the first line choice, even for proven cases of lead poisoining, and no child should ever, under any circumstances be given an IV "push" of disodium EDTA, what Kerry administered to Abubakar. It would be a very likely thing to kill a child.

More here,

The following is from a previous Autism Diva blog entry, but bears repeating now, since many current readers might not be aware of it. Here Dr. Gary Gordon explains how he was Dr. Kerry's disodium EDTA supplier. Gordon seems to try to distance himself from Kerry and the death of Abubakar while trying to maintain his customer base:

Dear Health Care Professionals:

You may soon read and hear the kind of hysteria and negative press that I expected to see, but it will get FAR WORSE before it gets better. As of this moment, I can only assume that there must have been a substantial deviation from the standard procedures that I, and all of you, have established for the safe administration of Calcium EDTA. As incredible as it may seem to those of you belonging to this discussion group,

the possibility exists that the child was treated with Disodium EDTA administered by IV Push.

I am forced to consider this unfortunate explanation

unless there was some major undiagnosed illness in the child that no one suspected,
such as a major heart defect or perhaps an aneurism that ruptured at the
exact time the patient was receiving the IV Push of Calcium EDTA.

However, the autopsy has been completed and the results were inconclusive so that they have ordered additional tests, which may take up to 5 months to complete.

This means that there is no obvious explanation for the death of this child.

My fear is that if someone who is not knowledgeable in chelation

and has not learned that this is complex chemistry

assumes, for example, that all that they have to do to provide magnesium EDTA or Calcium EDTA

is just add either magnesium or calcium to a syringe containing Disodium EDTA.

We could have a serious problem because disodium EDTA has a black box warning about rapid administration to children and simply adding something like Calcium or Magnesium does not fully convert Disodium EDTA to Calcium EDTA.

Then there is also a problem with discomfort,

if you tried to give yourself an IV push of diluted Disodium EDTA

the pain could be extreme

so you might wind up increasing the dose of Lidocaine

and again we can get into problems with the heart

if too much of a "caine" if given intravenously.

So let's look at the big picture, there are NO DEATHS occurring when EDTA, either calcium or Disodium are PROPERLY administered. Now the media will try to make chelation out to be fraudulent and the tests that we do to measure lead etc as being meaningless. Amazingly they will bring out Quack buster Barrett who with a little more effort we may be able to one day put behind bars for his lies and incompetence.

Thus I have to conclude some error in rate of administration, dosage, method of preparation probably occurred; in fact, I now believe this is most likely rather than administering the correct drug, Calcium EDTA, intravenously, which even in children is safe and effective.

Doctors who have been providing this treatment to children can hardly stop talking about the remarkable successes they have been witnessing with children responding far more rapidly than we could ever do with just the oral Calcium EDTA that I have been advocating for so long.

We know that worldwide sales of all forms of EDTA have been steadily increasing and that based on logical calculations it appears that well over 10 million patients have been safely treated with either Calcium or Disodium EDTA over the past 32+ years without a single documented fatality, as long as the established protocols were followed. All the evidence to date that EDTA is perhaps the safest therapy offered in medicine, outside of placebos.

To my knowledge, EDTA has been safely administered for nearly 50 years with the only deaths occurring in the beginning, with terminal cancer patients suffering uncontrolled hypercalcemia where inappropriate doses of Disodium EDTA were administered by rapid infusion to patients with known compromised renal status.

With the extensive proof now existing that everyone today has nearly 1000 times too much lead in their bones and Harvard publishing that this bone lead will compromise vision there can be no argument that we all have some heavy metal toxicity. Then once we conclude that government cannot stop the mercury, cadmium, lead etc from going in the air, and thus into everyone anywhere on earth, then it becomes a matter of personal choice, live with these heavy metals or remove them. Oral chelation is clearly necessary since bone lead will take 10 years to turn over for the average adult, but some of us want results NOW. Nothing is as effective as the 147 fold increase in lead excretion over base line that IV Calcium EDTA, PROPERLY FORMULATED, was documented to induce by Doctors Data with the help of Dr Whitaker's staff.

Thus I must extend my sympathy to the family of the deceased 5-year-old boy from Nigeria whose brave mother came to the Pittsburgh area from the United Kingdom to seek treatment for her autistic child. She was seeing clear improvements in her son. This was the third infusion he had received. He apparently had a cardiac arrest and was unable to be resuscitated immediately following this third infusion of what I fear was not Calcium EDTA, which is the ONLY form of EDTA that I have advocated for the
exciting
rapid infusion
technique.

I hope those who have experience with it in their practice are NOT GOING TO STOP USING it that you have the "rest of the story", as best as we can establish it at this time.

Please understand that the involved doctors

cannot be expected to admit anything on advice of their attorneys.

I have only checked to see if they have ever purchased Calcium EDTA

and found the answer was

?no??

leading me to compose this email

in an attempt to diminish the harm

that the media will do to everyone who otherwise could have been receiving oral and or IV chelation and will now be afraid.

This email may be copied and handed to your patients in an effort to meet the need for a fully informed consent.

Sincerely,

Garry F. Gordon MD, DO, MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com

Autism Diva looks forward to something like justice being done in this case, though human justice will not bring back Abuabakar, it's at least a message to quacks and others who think "better dead than autistic," and therefore justify all kinds of extreme attempts at "cures."




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