No matter how often I read about treatments like this, I still can't believe parents actually subject their children to them

This makes me sick. How can people do that to anyone, let alone their own children?

The cognitive dissonance must be massive.

Poor poor Jojo, how can any child deserve a mother like his?
Shouldn't she be in jail, for child-abuse?

@Renate - yes, yes she should. She's slowly liquifying her child's intestines.....where the hell does she think these "parasites" are coming from?

This is one of the main reasons that Quack kills - because these parents don't have a freakin' clue what they are doing to their children.

This is child abuse. Shouldn't some sort of child protection service be taking an interest here?

This really does count as abuse. I don't understand why any developed country would allow parents to harm their children in this way regardless of whether they had a "feeling" it was doing good or not.

I do volunteer work for a group that tracks televangelism fraud and collaborates with investigative news programs. I sent an e-mail to my main contact in this group and asked if he could have one of these shows infiltrate the Autism One conference to watch Rivera's talk and confront her. (I had already tipped off a couple of Chicago news stations, but they didn't reply.) This group doesn't normally solicit stories to the programs they work with, but they were horrified enough by MMS that they disregarded that policy and went to a certain syndicated newsmagazine with the story. The producer he knew was interested, but I never heard whether the executive producer felt the same way. I contacted them too short of notice for them to sneak into Autism One, but I definately did get Rivera onto their radar. I like to think I did what I could do.

As a parent of a NT child, I have a question for those who might be more knowledged on the matter. It sprang into my head while reading this. (Before the disgust fully kicked in.)

Could the "fever therapy" be attractive to parents because their child is easier to care for when they're sick? I know that my daughter just lays about when she has a fever and we generally just park ourselves on the couch for the day and rest. If a child is generally hard to care for and a so-called "educated" person is telling them that these fevers are good, would that attract some parents to it if a fever meant an easy way to just sit back and relax and call it a treatment?

Of course, I don't really know and my curiosity has the best of me here. My daughter being ill scares me so much, but I have recognized that those are days when we both tend to rest a lot.

@ Renate, Lawrence, nastylittlehorse, Adam

Definitely child abuse, just based on what is being given into the colon, but also on the picture at the top of http://jojosmmsjourney.blogspot.com/ , labeled "23 May 2013: PP2 Day 1" there appear to be some flecks of red blood in these mucousy pieces (and you could be certain a occult heme testing would be positive as well). Ironically, there is a "report abuse" on the menu drop-down under "More" up at the top, but I suspect it is referring, more likely, to some sort of "blog abuse" and not child abuse. Reading the intro to this blog (http://jojosmmsjourney.blogspot.com/2013/03/intro.html), this "mom" is (a) not in the US, (b) has a link to Malaysia, and (c) uses the word "Mum"--so perhaps is somewhere in the UK but came/from or has strong ties to Malaysia.

As a physician, I've recommended bleach baths for children with recurrent MRSA skin infections, but we're talking not much higher concentration than hot tub chlorination levels, and definitely never for internal use. But putting an enema with bleach up a child's rectum, as common sense should scream, cannot result in any good.

A few years back there was an 8 month-old infant who presented to an ED here in Tucson weighing 9 lbs and severely ill. She was a home birth and had never seen a physician (until the ED) and was a victim of neglect--if not also abuse. Her amazingly neglectful parents did the authorities a favor by posting to their facebook account many pictures of their infant in the month between birth and going to the ED and helped CPS clearly show neglect (sadly I don't know if these wretched parents were allowed to get their child back after her severe failure to thrive was corrected by physicians, nutritionists and foster parents). But I'd like to think wherever this mom is these pictures (and her detailed descriptions of what she's done) could also be used for a neglect/abuse case.

@Brittany #7:

Could the “fever therapy” be attractive to parents because their child is easier to care for when they’re sick?

Quite possibly. Having said that, when I'm sick I make Oscar the Grouch look like a paragon of civility. Yet illness does make me want to sleep a lot, so I could be considered more docile when ill.

@Chris -

Yeah, it mentions autism groups in KL and that sort of stuff. If she's malaysia based I have no idea what government body (if any) would care about it.

Child protection in the UK, of she is here, should certainly take an interest.

Horrific. This woman needs to be tracked down, and exposed as the demented child abuser that she is.

Enemas are horrible. The administration (by someone else) feels degrading and can make you feel so vulnerable. The sequelae can be agonising, with severe cramping, nausea, feeling flushed, and all manner of unpleasant things.

To think of a child (especially one who may lack typical communication capabilities) having this done to him daily, makes me feel simultaneously murderous and utterly helpless, because I want to save him, but I can't.

She isn't trying to "cure" JoJo. She's punishing him.

It appears that she is in Kuala Lumpur. She has a 'Sleepless in KL' tag on a couple of posts, and she makes reference to Malay war songs.

There's a 'KL Biomed' (puke) Facebook page, so some detective work could probably figure out who they are. Apparently there's a Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect team at Kuala Lumpur hospital.

I believe action has recently been taken to make teachers responsible for flagging child abuse (mandated reporters in the US, I think) but from what I can gather from the articles I've seen, the results aren't great, and UNICEF appear to be paying special attention to Malaysia.

It was incredibly discomfitting to read that Malaysian Meddler Mum gives JoJo enemas in his lunch break. Shouldn't he be coming home for lunch to, you know, EAT? She also mentioned that his teachers dish out his "medication" ( including bloody castor oil capsules) throughout the day, so they're clearly in thrall to is mother.

My thoughts are with you JoJo ' I wish I could help you.

One last comment for now*, and it's a harsh warning:

Do not play any kind of woo-spotting, biomeddling-detection drinking games while reading the following link. I love you all, and don't want you to die from liver failure:

thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2011/4/24/health/8513939&sec=health

*I'm agitated by the whole thing, and my first meds of the day are due, and I haven't had enough caffeine to slow me down, yet!

Malaysia is afaik British Commonwealth, so Britishisms like 'mum' might be expected, too.

Though it's rare, children have occasionally been killed by hypermagnesemia caused by Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) enemas e.g.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15759964
I hate to think what chlorine dioxide enemas might do.

My Mom used to give us enemas (soap, no bleach) if we didn't poo for more than a day or two. I hated it and luckily, she stopped this practice as we got older (12 or so) although I'm not sure why, but perhaps we made a bigger fuss as we got older?

My Mom was rather compulsive and had some kind of germ fear. She did use a lot of bleach for cleaning, but I guess I have to be thankful there was no internet then to further inspire her.

At least we could protest, I cannot imagine what a non-communicative autistic child must go through.

Unfortunately, obsessions/ delusions** about parasites are prevalent in woo-topia:

TMR has had a few posts about bugs and worms- rifling through their archives of madness, I immediately found "Bugs, Moon Cycles and Lunacy" ( courtesy of Ms Poppy, June 2012), not only does she firmly believe that her child has parasites, she also believes that the parasites become more active - and the child more affected- during the full moon. Commenters agree ( Rivera pops up there).

Recently, a PRN Talkback show featured the woo-bespoke host's insistence that SBM doesn't know anything about parasitical infestation in non-Third World countries- which is VERY common: these critters are under-the-radar and standard testing misses most of them. Of course, he has complicated herbal*** protocols and products to eliminate them. Obviously, *meat eaters* can pick up all sorts of horrible intestinal hitchhikers. "
"Go vegan".

Many alt med advocates link psychological and intestinal issues: perhaps in their case, it has somethig to do with those two areas being in closer proximity than is normal.

** and there's always a woo-meister/ maitresse ready, willing and able to cash in on delusional thinking

.*** Not sure if he still sells "Bug out!"

Tierra's "Way of Herbs" lists antiparasite herbs- including potentially harmful ones like chapparal and larkspur as well as garlic, rue, thyme, cinnamon oil and artemisia.

Ugh, I had an enema once as a child for severe constipation. I can't imagine getting them regularly!

I think this is not only abuse of the child, but horrible abuse by the practitioner of the mother. I can't imagine any woman, but especially a mom who already has so much on her plate dealing with the challenges of an autistic child, spending days upon days "poop diving." The occasional stool sample for a pediatrician in my house is gross enough.

I'm not a psychiatrist, and would be reticent to diagnose over the internet in any case, but does the Jojo's mom case sound to anyone like Münchausen syndrome by proxy?

Ugh. I had to skip over parts of the treatment descriptions above because it was upsetting me so much. One day this poor child is going to end up in the ER and a real doctor is going to have to try and repair the damage his demented mother has inflicted on him.

I know a quack like Kerri Rivera is small fry to the regulatory bodies, but could the blog posts mentioning Rivera giving "treatment" advice be reported to some authority as evidence that she is trying to practice medicine without a license? We know the autism quacks are completely impervious to shame, and their enablers in the biomed camp are never going to publicly criticize them either - because admitting that one treatment is bogus opens up the uncomfortable possibility that all of them are.

If a child is generally hard to care for and a so-called “educated” person is telling them that these fevers are good, would that attract some parents to it if a fever meant an easy way to just sit back and relax and call it a treatment?

I think you may be on to something here. Caring for an autistic child is difficult, and may well be too much for some parents. They hear about this so-called treatment, and in their desperation they overlook the obvious signs that this would be a Bad Idea. So when the people advocating the treatment say that fever and other symptoms we normally think of as bad are actually good, these parents push onward.

That's assuming that the parents actually have the best of intentions, which is not always the case. Some people have a martyr complex, and there is such a thing as Munchausen by proxy.

As an aside-
I adopted a small cat ( really a giant kitten) several years ago: he immediately began producing awful-smelling liquid poo and became weak and morose-looking, not wanting to eat or do much at all- nothing subtle about it.

A simple test revealed coccidia and liquid antibiotics helped quickly. Shouldn't a child get as much help?

Shouldn't an adult be able to understand that sometimes you need a professional to test and identify the problem?
IF any problem indeeed exists..
These woo-besotten parents want to attribute ASDs to external sources like vaccines, meds or parasites, not accept them as being the pathway of development that their child is taking.

Brittany -- possibly it's attractive because the child is more compliant, but I think more significant is the sense of accomplishing something. A treatment is administered, a change is observed, therefore it's working! So they keep doing it, and soon they start seeking the change that shows its working rather than worrying about the end point. It could be a little pavlovian -- sort of like clicker training a dog, you train them to associate the click with a treat and praise, and fairly quickly you don't need to do the treat and praise because the click is all it takes to make the dog feel rewarded. Even though the dog didn't get the thing they'd actually been wanting; they come to substitute the signal for the reward.

Combine that with the "warrior mommy" thing and it all becomes disturbingly attractive. They want to be Doing Something to help their child, because that is what warrior mommies do. Anything less is a sign of failure. So they really want to see signs of progress. This "treatment" doesn't work, but it *does* produce symptoms that the unwary can be deluded into thinking are signs of progress. So rather than these side-effects discouraging them, it actually encourages them instead.

My paternal grandfather was a general surgeon, but practicing in a small* town on the high prairies which meant he was often the only doctor on duty at their tiny hospital. Sometimes patients would come in and he could tell they were the "worried well". So he'd patiently listen to them, and then prescribe a medication. He warned that it might make them sick to their stomachs, but that would just mean it was working. Well, it was a sort of a placebo, really; he was prescribing them a mild emetic, with the intention that this would make them think it was working. And they were all satisfied, so it certainly *seemed* to work. Ethical? Certainly not by modern standards. But it's an illustration of how potent an "active placebo" can be in deluding someone (whether the patient or the caregiver) into thinking its working.

*Well, for a certain value of "small" -- what's small to a New Yorker is downright urban to a North Dakotan in the sixties.

Oh god. I read this before open of business at work and I'm still having a hard time not crying (or, um, stimming too openly) because of it. My husband has an ASD, and I have major issues with sensory overload, looking at people, and being touched by anyone not said husband.

The idea of having this done to a child is horrifying. I keep involuntarily imagining having this happen to me as a kid, when even a hug could melt me down, and I... it feels scary and nauseating and makes me feel powerless. I wish they lived in a county with better child protection services, so Jojo could be rescued. :(

(Also, hi elburto! I believe we knew each other on LJ, where I was kaowolfie. Chick with the migraines, trigeminal neuropathy, and a tendency to clue by four people about ableism and sexism?)

Calli #23,

Ugh, you're probably right about the reinforcement. I just cannot imagine anyone thinking a fever in a child is a "wanted" thing.

Chemical ----> Oooh, eeebil!

Natural chemicals -----> Mmm, nature!

Hippie logic ====> Where reality goes to die.

@ Elburto
Is that a newspaper-article, or an advertisement for some group, that is so deep into woo, that I don't understand it?
"Parents seeking effective treatments"? I don't think anything on that list is effective and some of those sound a bit dangerous. I don't see MMS listed, but every other woo in the book is.

Some years ago a (real medical) parasitologist told me about the "worms" people brought to him, that they had found in their feces, all of which turned out to be bits of undigested food. He also told me that a patient once brought him some actual worms. They had been given them by their colonic irrigation therapist, who had told them these worms had washed out of their colon. On examination he found they were the type of worms you can buy to feed tropical fish, and that could not possibly survive in a human GI tract. I don't know how common this practice is, but it does seem a good way of keeping the marks happy.

Air hugs for Nashira. I hope you're feeling better now.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried, and I almost vomited thinking about that poor kid. It's left me feeling distinctly anxious and triggered, especially coming so soon after the Alex Spourdalakis case.

In my former job I've made child protection referrals for so much less, and not being able to help is so frustrating.

When, for once, a dash of homeopathy would be a positive thing - homeopathic bleach is infinitely preferable to higher concentrations of it - the quack is not signed up for this One Woo...

Sorry for double post, I was catching up when this gem caught my attention.

Obviously, *meat eaters* can pick up all sorts of horrible intestinal hitchhikers. ”
“Go vegan”.

So we have the assertation - eating meat gives you parasites, eating plants does not.

But wait a minute! The animals we eat are of the herbivore variety, id est they eat plants. The same plants that are not considered a risk factor in catching a parasite.

Wherefore come the parasites in the meat of those herbivores than?

The really ridiculous thing is that getting a parasitic infection in the US is so rare these days that our children will likely never have one in their lives if they stay here and things continue as they are. Why worry about something like that?

@ Smith of Lie
Most of the parasites that our meat animals can be infected with have incredibly complex life cycles (that fortunately I'm not required to know anymore.) Sometimes (often) there is a larval form that lives in the soil (or in other inhabitants of soil) that can be ingested during grazing. Or it's as simple as having a parasite egg-containing pasture. And there you have it--intestinal parasites. Veganism doesn't protect you from gastrointestinal disease--just ask anybody who's had salmonellosis from some unwashed lettuce or sprouts.

God this is sad. The defense these parents use is also very disconcerting to me. I still don't understand the whole "gut flora" issue people keep bringing up, especially since old Andy's been discredited.

On a side note, does anyone else find the mms home page a little weird? Why is he standing there with a tiger?

@Janet

Yeah, I am pretty aware of that. I lack the vocabulary to describe the parasite I am thinking about, but I remember learning about ones most often contracted by eating unwashed veggies. I was just pointing out the wholes in the supposition that meat eaters are just asking to get infested up to the nose with parasites while vegans are immune to that (aside from other superpowers they boast, at least as long as they stay on the good side of Vegan Police).

No, no, no! Parasites are secondary to toxins! You've got to get rid of the toxins first, otherwise the parasites will keep coming back. The most powerful detoxifier is asparagus. The toxins come out in the urine, and boy do they stink! You've got to keep eating asparagus until all of the toxins come out. This could take a long time. I've been detoxifying for 5 years, and they're still coming out.

@elburto and Nashira

This may help.

Gah. Broken link. Let's try that again.

Mark -- a good start, but you really need to be chelating naturally. Oxalic acid is a chelator, so I recommend strawberry-rhubarb pie with every meal. No exceptions. ;-)

@ #28, Krebiozen-

As a resident I saw a toddler in the ER who had a "worm in her butt" (that was the exact chief complaint). When I looked, it did resemble a rather large, red translucent worm. I gloved, pulled it out (it was an in out with another 2-3 inches inside but came out easily). It reminded me of an artificial worm used in fishing. I asked the parents if she'd gotten into a tackle box and they said she hadn't but she had eaten a large amount of gummy worms the day prior--so I'm guessing if she swallowed some, at least one made it through relatively undigested. The worm was clear on cross sectioning (grossly-this wasn't anything like needing to look a GMO fed piglet tummies), and I did consider sending it to pathology for a laugh. I did not, however, taste it to prove it was a gummy worm (ugh).

It is child abuse...pure and simple. This utterly vile creature has been *treating* her autistic child for 8 years, with gawd knows what other invasive, painful *biomedical treatment protocols*, because she views her child as being a dirty infected/infested being.

If she does reside in Malaysia and her child's "therapist" at school is dosing JoJo with castor bean pills...it speak volumes about the non-existent safeguards in place, to protect little kids from their abusers.

Somewhat OT, but have you all seen this article yet?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/book-raises-alarms…

Surprisingly reasonable, although there's a slight hint of false balance. The comments, as usual, are a cesspool.

@lilady - Yeah,UNICEF voiced concerns about how seriously Malaysian teachers will take their reporting duties. Poor JoJo.

@Todd - fabulous, thanks! Puppies, sloths, kittens, the whole shebang. A guaranteed cheerer-upper.

@Chris Hickle - Before our elderly dad (my father in law) died he was obsessed with his um... evacuations. For some reason he was convinced he had, or would get, stomach cancer.

Tummy ache after eating a pound of Cheshire cheese? Cancer!

Diarrhoea after downing litres of milk? Cancer!

The high point was the shrieking call, 5am when we'd been asleep for an hour with all of our lovely medications kicking in and taking us to dreamland. Picture it, strident ringtone (yeah, Doctor Who theme), then howls of "IT'S BLACK OMG IT'S BLACK, THIS IS IT, I'M FINISHED!"

It took twenty minutes to convince him that the cramps and black stools were. the result of him eating the half birthday cake we'd left him in one sitting. Half of Other Mrs elburto's cake, a Tardis cake that was covered in blue royal icing. The cramps? Well who would get mere crampy, after wolfing down more than a kilo of birthday cake and blue icing, than a 75 year old man with diverticular disease?

He found 'worms' too (grape skins), 'blood' in his urine and faeces (he'd eaten a jar of pickled beetroot, the results terrified him!), 'blood clots' (cherries, and all manner of delights. We miss him, but not the middle of the night calls to get to the hospital because he'd had a 'heart attack'* after a weird bowel movement, and thought he'd die of cancer. Poor old thing. He never got cancer yet, and died at 77.

*Usually a panic attack which then triggered his AF, and required three days of attempted cardioversion by any means possible.

Re: gut flora, studying the human microbiome (not only gut but all the interesting little groups of beasties that live in or on us) is a hot area of basic science at the moment, and there is early evidence to suggest that they can play a role in many normal biological processes and potentially pathologies as well, including some intriguing hints on a role in emotion regulation. However, the difference is that the researchers in the field know it is actually very complex and we are still at the earliest stages of understanding it, nowhere near being able to tell how (or whether) an individuals microbiome could or should be manipulated to improve health. And I am pretty sure that not one of them would recommend bleach as a therapeutic strategy!
That poor child - it breaks my heart a little to think he is, in essence, being tortured by the one who he should be able to trust most will protect him.

@ elburto
Thanks for the laugh--I had to clean off the keyboard very quickly since I had a mouthful of water! Reminds me of my Dad who died a few months ago, in his sleep, at age 80. Ye gods and little fishes, could that man complain!

Anyone seen this crap yet:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-18/autism-tied-to-air-pollution-b…

Please tell me this has been debunked already.

Oh, from the abstract:

We estimated associations between U.S. Environmental Protection Agency modeled levels of hazardous air pollutants at the time and place of birth and ASD in the children of participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II (325 cases, 22,101 controls). Our analyses focused on pollutants associated with ASD in prior research. We accounted for possible confounding and ascertainment bias by adjusting for family-level socioeconomic status (maternal grandparents’ education) and census-tract-level socioeconomic measures (e.g., tract median income and percent college educated), as well as maternal age at birth and year of birth. We also examined possible differences in the relationship between ASD and pollutant exposures by child’s sex.

So basically they guessed....classy.

@ AdamG:

Dr Offit's recent book, the excerpt @ The Guardian and his NYT commentary have already been taken down briefly by Gary Null ( Friday's show, PRN/ 17 minutes in) - more is forthcoming I'm told..
Promises, promises.

Basically, he argues that Dr O is an ignorant pharma shill, the studies he cites are garbage and supplements are purity and the divine life force coalesced into conveniently-sized, easy to swallow tablets/ capsules.

Oh, and there's a paradigm shift of tsunamic strength about to engulf SBM and wash it clean..

Oxalic acid is a chelator, so I recommend strawberry-rhubarb pie with every meal. No exceptions.

Is potage germiny mandatory as a starter?

I saw this linked in the Alex thread, ugh it makes me sick.
On the rare occasion that my brother or I got threadworms as kids, all we had to go through was taking a chalky, orange flavoured pill from the chemists(the whole family did), with a repeat dose a week or so later, and everything was completely sorted. Seriously, what the hell? If it's taking months or years to treat supposed parasites, it's not working!
Of course, the sick thing is that the quack who sells this "treatment" knows very well what the results, the stripping of the colon lining, looks like and uses it to fearmonger and string these parents along into injuring their children even more, like a vicious cycle. Ugghh*vomit*

@kruuth: I know some people tried to link autism to coal-fired emissions, but I think that has been debunked.

Kruuth @#34, I think part of the drumbeat for 'gut flora' is that it's a popular subject even in mainstream circles now, with patients being advised by doctors to keep up consumption of yogurt, etc. during antibiotics courses. Like a lot of woo, it's a good idea (diet, stress reduction, cleanliness) taken to a ridiculous extreme.

The whole yogurt thing is a load of crap. It's just an urban legend that was never really proven. I had cancer sores for years and the only thing my mother ever did was tell me to "eat yogurt" all the while I was in agony. Never gave a damb to take me to a real doctor about it. 20 years later I'm in my oral surgeon's office and he sees one of these monstrosities in my mouth, gives me chlorhexidine and they almost stop completely. I get a few flare-ups but nothing like before.

I still haven't forgiven ma for that.

children have occasionally been killed by hypermagnesemia caused by Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) enemas

Showing once again that for any really stupid way of killing a child, there is a parent somewhere who will find it.

does the Jojo’s mom case sound to anyone like Münchausen syndrome by proxy?

Rivera's entire operation is basically Munchausen-by-proxy-by-proxy.

Half of Other Mrs elburto’s cake, a Tardis cake that was covered in blue royal icing

Why does that not surprise me?

Surprisingly reasonable, although there’s a slight hint of false balance.

"In the letter, Burzynski wrote that, 'based on the results of the phase 2 trials, the FDA has granted permission to proceed into two Phase 3 clinical trials in brain tumors.'"

@ Adam G. I must be "missing" the spot to comment on that USA Today link you provided about Dr. Offit's book. Could you provide it?

Narad:

Is potage germiny mandatory as a starter?

Well, for the fruit-reluctant, potage germiny could be an alternative to the strawberry rhubarb pie. Though heaven knows there's nothing better than rhubarb and strawberry. ;-) (Except maybe if you add chocolate.)

My husband is one of those who loathes cilantro, so I have found a couple of substitutes. One is lemon thyme. The other is wood sorrel, which grows in abundance around here, even if you don't want it to. It's a bit like dandelions in that regard. Though I don't think it's at all related to sheep sorrel, it also gets its tart flavor from oxalic acid, and is very tasty.

@kruuth- I feel your pain, literally. Not only on the mouth ulcers, but the mother. Mine "trained" as a homeopath. Any symptom (other than asthma attacks) was met with a proffered sugar pill, or a muttered "Buck up kid".

I'm glad you discovered the miracle of swilling chlorhexidine around your mouth! I adore pharmaceuticals in their many and varied forms, especially those which zap pain. They certainly beat having a manky sugar pill shoved under my tongue

Thanks elburto. My mom can't understand why I'm so curt with her on so many health things and then I remind her of the hell I went through with her bs diagnoses and yogurt to cure everything. I would go weeks where I couldn't eat anything because of that and she'd just laugh and claim it was a "swollen taste bud" and I just needed some yogurt. I can't even count how many times I lost weeks of school for getting sick from something she deemed wasn't that important. She sent me to school with strep more than once.

@hdb - We are almoSt painfully geeky. For her 40th birthday my friends made her a chocolate Dalek cake. Our entire belief system is essentially "If you're going to be weird, be really weird". Luckily for us our friends aren't exactly paragons of normality either!

@Calli - our garden is loaded with rhubarb, giant rhubarb. We sometimes get three foot long stalks. Unfortunately neither of us can eat it, I mean we can, but the side-effects are catastrophic, I'm sure I don't have to elaborate!

A few years ago, the Age of Autism folks were very upset about a mother who killed her child with bleach, but now that bleach treatment is part of the antivaccine memespace, it is vgorously defended. How long before current tragedies are transmuted into novel treatments that are flogged at antivax festivals, and defended just as strongly? Might MMS be replaced with MSS (miracle stabbing solution (how dare you show your ignorance by noticing that MMS is bleach, or that MSS is a knife!)?

elburto - send the rhubarb my way.

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating for tone....

I've drunk bleach in reasonable dilution. Sodium hypochlorite bleach works fine to sanitize drinking water if you dilute it to a safe concentration. This is useful in some circumstances when camping or otherwise out in the wilds. The problem with MMS is not just that people are making their children drink bleach (or giving them enemas with it) - it's that the bleach doesn't do what they say it does.

If there were good evidence that chlorine dioxide mixed with a weak acid and used as an enema actually did something useful, I'd be in favor of it. As there isn't and it appears it tears up the intestines, that's abuse.

I've known about the idiocy that is MMS for a couple of years and I still look upon the imbeciles who use it with incredulity. But the talk of intestinal worms got my reminiscence gland secreting vague memory hormones.

It's a long time since I've mentioned my training in the RN but the mention of anthelmintics reminded me of one treatment which was taught (but never to my knowledge, prescribed);

Male Fern Extract.

Anyone else heard of it?

Apologies for the slight off topic detour.

Dr. Offit was on the CBS Morning News: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50149140n

OT, I had pinworms as a kid 60+ years ago, and I remember taking pills that made your mouth purple if you didn't swallow them quickly. We were living in Alaska in a house without running water. I assume that had a lot to do with it.

@Trends: When Kerri Rivera first appeared at Autism One a year ago, Julie Obradovic defended her on AoA. She was forced to furiously packpedal when she was called out on it by a "HuffPo" (!) contributor. This year, AoA completely ignored Rivera, probably because they knew discussing her would arouse negative publicity for Autism One and themselves.

Chris Hickie (#40): "The worm was clear on cross sectioning (grossly-this wasn’t anything like needing to look a GMO fed piglet tummies), and I did consider sending it to pathology for a laugh."

Well, a gummy worm would be better than some of the foreign objects that docs fish out of various orifices and bodily organs and send us in Pathology. My favorite was the steel girder that a construction worker impaled himself on after falling from a great height (as I recall, he was fine after they extracted it from him, or vice versa).

"Oh, gird your loins. I could have sworn you said 'girder'."

I went to that blog after Liz Ditz posted the link a couple days ago in a previous post here. I tried to read it but I just couldn't continue. The arrogance and ignorance of that woman and what she is inflicting on her son! And then boasting about her torture online for all the world to see? Why is Child Protective Services not beating down her door and removing him from her 'care' immediately? What state and county does she live in? I'll call them and make a report and give them the link for them to read for themselves that she's systematically giving her son a chemical colectomy. She has self diagnosed him with something she imagines is true and really she's just dissolving his colon. This makes me truly sick and ache with pain for the children subjected to this by their 'parents'.

I have an almost completely off-topic question, but don't know where else to ask. I have just been told that amber teething necklaces "work" because they produce succinic acid when the beads rest against the skin. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, what the mother probably means is spirit of amber - butanedioic acid - which used to be used topically for rheumatism.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to my question, but you are educated, which I am not. My question is: would either butanedioc acid or succinic acid be produced by resting amber to the skin & would either be able to ease teething pain? Is there someplace on-line I can reference (besides here) when I give her my reply?

I truely appreciate any help you can give me - and thanks so much for the free education I'm getting! :)

Bonnie: This article http://autismum.com/2012/10/29/amber-teething-necklaces/ has some of the information you want

:( Self teaching is hard! I reread the wiki article & I think the two acids are the same thing.

Is there someplace on-line I can reference (besides here) when I give her my reply?

This seems like a reasonable summary at first glance.

@ Bonnie:

Amber appeals to those who believe in the power of the natural world and the wisdom of the ancients:
going back to the Romans, it was coveted as protection against evil and witches and as a healing substance; later European folklore involved making tinctures from amber.
TONS of lit on amber.

In other words- woo- but it can also be nice worn as a necklace FOR AN ADULT who won't eat it.

Amber appeals to those who believe in the power of the natural world and the wisdom of the ancients

A quick scan of the MDC forums quickly reveals that a good number of even this self-selected population thinks amber teething trinkets are a load of crap.

Bonnie

I think the two acids are the same thing.

You are correct. They are the same compound. Succinic acid is the older, “common” name. Butanedioic acid is the systematic name – the one assigned by the folks who set standards for things like completely unambiguous names for chemical compounds (the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). The “but-“ means 4 carbon atoms, “-ane-” in the middle means each carbon in the center has 2 hydrogen atoms attached to it, and “-di-“ before the acid part of the name means there are two of those (one at each end).

Food for thought: the skin is an organ designed to keep things out of your body. There aren’t that many substances which are effective via topical application.

Thank you all SO much! It may not convince the mom - she's a true believer - but hopefully it will alert her to the strangulation/choking hazards.

It's amazingly difficult to explain placebos to people. I even know a vet who uses homepathy & accupunture on animals - he says it works. Those poor animals! :(

The thought that always goes through my mind when I think of amber teething things is that amber is not the most structurally sound of substances; wouldn't there be a risk of it shattering in a child's mouth? I don't know how sharp the bits would get, but it really just doesn't seem like my first choice. Oh, and a lot of the necklaces are rather small beads (since big pieces of amber can get a bit spendy for a teether). So "choking hazard" was my first thought with these.

Autismum's "friend" Martine at Skeptoid also wrote about amber teething beads and the choking hazard. Her second blog with links to her first blog is here. That Martine O'Callahan is just as feisty as Austismum, when it comes to child advocacy and safety. :-)

http://skeptoid.com/blog/2012/12/31/amber-for-teething-update/#comments

My daughter, when she was a few days before entering kindergarden, managed to swallow a penny. (She had "never" put a teething toy or any other toy in her mouth, before). She was hoarse and just to be cautious (toddlers manage to completely swallow quarters), we took her to the E.R. We were assured by the doctor that the coin was in her stomach, but the penny was lodged in her esophagus, according to x-ray. She was sedated and the doctor tried to extract it, but couldn't because she was a very petite little girl and the esophagus was swollen from the irritation. After an overnight stay in the hospital under mild sedation, a repeat x-ray located the penny at the juncture of the stomach and small intestine.

Yeah, I had to "retrieve" the penny.

I railed about the amber teething things - in particular, necklaces - in a previous thread here sometime ago - but I never did write Harriet Hall et al. at SBM to try to alert more people (American Academy of Pediatrics, etc?) to this woo-fad. There is some other commentary on the net - autismum had an excellent post on this, as did Jean Mercer. Dig it - parents wrap their babies' necks in choker necklaces. The rationale ranges from nonsense "biochemistry" (succinic acid) to complete woo of magnets & amber & folk wisdom. My stepson's wife is an associate professor of early child education and she does this amber crap - it's a crunchy-yuppie-hip fad. The amber necklace on the baby is a placebo for the parents. I think it's a strangulation hazard.
I've mentioned this to a few docs I know & they've not encountered it. But it's an established & growing fad.

@ Kruuth: I saw that study and other studies about exposures to traffic fumes, while living close to major highways, and exposures to herbicides and pesticides, increasing the risk for fetuses to be later diagnosed with ASDs. I'm not extremely impressed with those studies.

Offtopic: a new blog post with an advices for bookworm like me:

http://www.securivm.ca/2013/06/amazon-you-sometime-amaze-me.html

Alain

Veganism doesn’t protect you from gastrointestinal disease

No kidding. The last FBI outbreak I read about was traced to a frozen "organic" berry mix.

kruuth, my mother was a yogurt-for-canker-sores zealot as well. I wonder where that particular bit of folk wisdom originated.

Offtopic, I'm on a roll:

http://www.securivm.ca/2013/06/the-previous-post-made-me-think.html

Alain

Amazon sells a number of books advocating MMS, and a number of products which reference MMS while pretending to be something else.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-key…

Bonnie, here is something even better than amber necklaces for teething:
frozen bits of terry cloth

Take cheap terry fabric washcloths, get them wet, then put them in the freezer. When a teething baby fusses, give them one straight from the freezer. The cold numbs the gum a bit, and the rough terry cloth helps make the teeth break through the gums.

Make sure you have a few in reserve. The fabric is thin, so it thaws quickly.

Unfortunately it is not perfect. One child preferred to "teeth" on the breast. This one child took the longest to wean. Even as a college student she is still quite annoying, she refuses to take calculus. On the plus side she is the most reliable with finances. Go figure.

The thought that always goes through my mind when I think of amber teething things is that amber is not the most structurally sound of substances; wouldn’t there be a risk of it shattering in a child’s mouth?

Oddly enough, there seems to have been an attempt to study this (or rather, study if parents know this):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=22925538

It's in French so I can only interpret what Google Translate's giving me, but it seems the parents they interviewed didn't care at all about the choking risks.

@Chris and Bonnie - a few people I know swear by mesh feeders filled with frozen fruit or vegetables.

Apparently, one of the babies in question will lay on the "OMG what is this? I'm dyyying mammy!" routine, until she is offered some frozen fruit or veg. Howling, flailing, eye-rubbing, and fist-gnawing that stops within. a millisecond of the stuff appearing. Peas, chunks of banana or apple, chunks of carrot, and the most hilarious (to me) - broccoli florets.

That's one way to get kids to eat veg I suppose, as something they associate with feeling better. Well that, or making vegetables verboten!

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GK5XY2/

Elburto, remember we must introduce food sequentially, just to make sure their tummies are ready. The under one year age teething bit is before most of this happens. I don't think it is a coincidence.

It would be interesting to make a rice cereal popsicle. Though I suspect that frozen fruit and veg would be fun. Something like frozen apple, pear or even green beans. Though they do no have the abrasive qualities of a terry cloth bit of fabric.

Peas, chunks of banana or apple, chunks of carrot, and the most hilarious (to me) – broccoli florets.

No batter? No deep-frying? Madness!

Has anyone tracked this woman down and called protective services?

Amber teething beads also carry the risk of the child ingesting small amounts of dinosaur DNA. If traces of HPV DNA can kill, who knows what dinosaur DNA might do? ;-)

Chris Hickie,

The worm was clear on cross sectioning (grossly-this wasn’t anything like needing to look a GMO fed piglet tummies), and I did consider sending it to pathology for a laugh.

OT, but some years ago I was working in clinical biochemistry in my favorite 'special functions' section, which did all the odd tests that didn't fit in anywhere else, including renal calculi analysis, which I especially loved - grinding things up in a pestle and mortar and doing chemical tests on them made me feel like a medieval alchemist.

One day I received a small stone that a patient had passed. The first step was to measure it and describe its appearance. It was at this point I realized that the 'stone' looked remarkably like a Rice Krispie. Further investigation, including a starch test, definitively confirmed my hypothesis. Sadly my boss censored the biting comment I put on the report.

I don't think this was a joke, I suspect that someone had dropped the stone and picked up the Rice Krispie instead by mistake.

I did not, however, taste it to prove it was a gummy worm (ugh).

Thankfully Benedict's solution replaced the old test for diabetes mellitus (and insipidus) before I started working in pathology.

elburto,

It took twenty minutes to convince him that the cramps and black stools were. the result of him eating the half birthday cake we’d left him in one sitting.

I used to volunteer to help out in the welfare tent at hippie festivals, which involved looking after lost children (and parents), giving minor first aid, talking down people having bad trips etc., which was often a lot of fun. On one occasion someone managed to blag us our own Turdis (chemical toilet), to avoid us having to use the public ones or the compost toilets.

Taking a leak in the said Turdis I noticed what looked like a huge amount of fresh blood, as if someone had just had a massive gut bleed. Realizing that if I was right, the person responsible required urgent medical attention, I returned to the tent and asked the assorted waifs and stray, and other volunteers, who had last used the Turdis as I was concerned they needed to see a doctor. Eventually a young woman sheepishly explained that she had eaten a very large amount of beetroot earlier that day.

It was a little embarrassing, not for me, as poking about in other people's poo is part of my job, but to her. I was relieved that was all it was, but I was later given a dressing down by one of the volunteer organizers, who told me I had behaved in a very unprofessional manner, embarrassing the poor woman like that. I asked her if it would be better for someone to bleed to death or face some minor embarrassment, for which she had no answer.

@elburto
Enemas are horrible. The administration (by someone else) feels degrading and can make you feel so vulnerable. The sequelae can be agonising, with severe cramping, nausea, feeling flushed, and all manner of unpleasant things.
-snip-

While I completely, completely agree with you about what that woman is doing being horrible, and about her likely motivations (I think a lot more of these autism 'treatments' are punishments than anyone wants to admit), I do take a bit of an issue with your characterization of enemas as universally horrible things. I don't think any kid should be subjected to regular, let alone daily, ones without a sound medical necessity, these aren't horrible to everyone, and whoever's administering it really shouldn't make you feel degraded, (Though I admit, that's probably hard to avoid when you're talking about a child who doesn't to take their medicine, so to speak. I utterly, utterly despised taking suppositories as a child, but frankly the meds I needed weren't available orally, and it maybe saved my life. But I digress.)

I'm just struck by remembering that when we covered klismaphilia in school, the textbooks were pretty explicit that most klismaphilia had its' roots in regular enemas administered during childhood, and how the person associated the sensation of being loved and cared for with the enema. It was highlighted as one of the few paraphilias that we actually know how it develops. I can't see how this would be the case if childhood enemas were routinely horrible things.

tl;dr: I agree this woman is horribly abusing that poor kid, but we shouldn't conflate enema-as-punishment with enema-as-beneficial-treatment

Even more OT, do moms who want all natural to prevent allergies know that the natural rubber teethers they give their babies are made from latex?

Yes, the dreaded “mommy instinct” strikes again.

That's one thing that irritated me since I started arguing with anti-vaxxers and autism quack followers: The deification of parents. Most of my life, it's been a relatively subtle meme. Only a foo doesn't respect his mama. Then it came into focus when trolls expected me to take a parent's memory as if it were as objective as a camera's recording. Some people have good parental instincts and intuition, but those things are not a substitute for medical or psychological knowledge, nor do they immunize parents against cognitive biases or bad memory.

It’s in French so I can only interpret what Google Translate’s giving me, but it seems the parents they interviewed didn’t care at all about the choking risks.

Along with the horrors of the main post, it's parents like that who scare me. And they're much more common. I'm not a parent, but I know that infants are especially vulnerable to things like that. It reminds me of a version of "sharks at the beach" issue of human estimation of risk: Which is more dangerous to an infant? A teddy bear with button eyes or a real bear? One encounter with a real bear would be deadly, but pretty unlikely to happen with most people. The teddy bear's button eyes, however, are a choking hazard and the infant is going to be around the teddy bear on a much more regular basis. There's a reason why so many toys have those warning labels.

@Bronze Dog - as there are whole sections of my childhood that I either don't remember or through the haze of time, don't know events actually occurred, I don't trust memories very much any more.....at least not as some concrete timeline of fairly subtle events.

Then it came into focus when trolls expected me to take a parent’s memory as if it were as objective as a camera’s recording. Some people have good parental instincts and intuition, but those things are not a substitute for medical or psychological knowledge, nor do they immunize parents against cognitive biases or bad memory.

My memories of Son of Prickly's infant/toddler years are mostly a blur now, and he's only six. I recall the few episodes when he was seriously ill, but what happened before and after? Pfft! That's why doctors keep medical records. Parental recall cannot be trusted, and I say that as a parent.

the woo-bespoke host’s insistence that SBM doesn’t know anything about parasitical infestation in non-Third World countries

Because it makes perfect sense that mainstream doctors and big pharma - well known for their aversion to money - would concentrate on providing for the bits of the world were patients are generally poor.

Also, why's this nonsense called "biomed"? There's nothing particularly biological about bleach, is there?

@Kruuth [#91]: Some clues point to the woman living in Malaysia. I don't know what authorities could bust in on her.

You guys are an utter disgrace to intelligence. MMS has never ever killed anyone - and Rivera has so far recovered over 93 children COMPLETELY of their autism symptoms.

Here is a video testimonial showing a kid and his mom that used Riveras method, which also involves pharmaceuticals like Mebendazole, not just MMS. Diet is also a huge part of her protocol.

http://mmsautism.org/index.php/Menu/miraculous-video-testimonies.html

@elburto

"@Chris and Bonnie – a few people I know swear by mesh feeders filled with frozen fruit or vegetables"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GK5XY2/

That's exactly what I recommend over age five months or so. Safe, tasty and easy.
Amber necklaces give me pause because I can't imagine how they might help and I worry about foreign body ingestion. I really dislike necklaces of any kind around babies' and toddlers' necks.

@Chris: I also like frozen wash clothes for teething babies. Add a little breast milk to make them taste familiar. Works better than whatever amber might do.

woot - if you have any valid studies that show that MMS provides significant benefit for some medical condition, please share. From what's been discussed above and in previous discussions on this site, it sounds like it tears up the digestive tract for no good purpose.

Has Rivera published the results of her efforts including the healing protocol and success rates?

Dr Gordon - those sound like great recommendations. A frozen washcloth sounds very old fashioned, yet effective.

Here is a video testimonial showing a kid and his mom that used Riveras method, which also involves pharmaceuticals like Mebendazole, not just MMS. Diet is also a huge part of her protocol.

http://mmsautism.org/index.php/Menu/miraculous-video-testimonies.html

And what do I find on the site's home page? A big ol' Quack Miranda warning:

Medical Disclaimer:
The information presented on this website is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this website is for general information purposes only. Kerri Rivera, Autismo2 and affiliates make no representation and assume no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the accuracy of information contained on or available through this website, and such information is subject to change without notice. You are encouraged to confirm any information obtained from or through this website with other sources, and review all information regarding any medical condition or treatment with your physician.

You are ultimately responsible for your own choices surrounding your health and the health of your children.

Sounds like she's really confident about the effectiveness of the "protocol," doesn't it? Nice try woot, but video testimonials are marketing tools, not scientific evidence.

The only thing that worked for our kids when teething was what my grandpa liked to call Tincture of Time. Or, as my wonderfully blunt great-aunt says, "This too shall pass." She's particularly fond of using that phrase when discussing digestive upset, due to the double entendre, but it works for most of the things parents have to deal with. Kids not sleeping, kids wetting the bed, kids wetting their pants, kids teething . . . most of these things pass on their own. It gets harder, not easier, as they get older; I think we intuitively understand that teething pains go away when teeth are done erupting, but remembering that adolescent angst is also temporary and not a permanent condition is rather harder -- especially since the child is old enough by then to notice you're just waiting them out rather than doing taking away their pain.

BTW, my great-aunt also likes to point out that bourbon is a great treatment for teething. Not for the child, but for the parent. :-D

Orac,

I'd like to hear your take on the latest Harvard study linking areas of higher pollution to rates of autism incidence two- to three- times higher.

Sample size? Subgroup analysis? Higher pollution areas typically being urban, therefore higher education rates, therefore higher awareness and ultimately higher rates of diagnoses? Or, finally, is there something to it?

The link to the report was on cnn.com, although I know SB doesn't favor hot-linking.

You guys are an utter disgrace to intelligence.

And this sentence is an affront to the English language.

MMS has never ever killed anyone

What happened to Silvie Fink?

– and Rivera has so far recovered over 93 children COMPLETELY of their autism symptoms.

So Rivera is practicing medicine without a license? Thanks for the tip.

"Here is a video testimonial showing a kid and his mom that used Riveras method, which also involves pharmaceuticals like Mebendazole, not just MMS. Diet is also a huge part of her protocol."

Holy Sh!t woot,...Rivera, who is not a doctor, is using a prescription antihelmintic drug to treat her patients for imaginary worms, before she prescribes industrial bleach enemas.

http://www.rxlist.com/vermox-drug.htm

Dr. Gordon:

@Chris: I also like frozen wash clothes for teething babies. Add a little breast milk to make them taste familiar. Works better than whatever amber might do.

I actually winced in pain when I read that. If I were still breastfeeding, the last thing I would want associated with chewing would be breast milk! It was bad enough that the youngest caused me to get several breast infections, but I would hate to think about her biting and chewing, especially as a two year old. (she is now a college student, and now prefers lattes)

Lurkers: you will note that both who thought that was a good idea do not have the capacity to breastfeed. I think I would still suggest just water on the terry cloth.

What happened to Silvie Fink?
According to Jim Humble, her husband murdered her and is using MMS as a scapegoat.

According to Jim Humble, her husband murdered her and is using MMS as a scapegoat.

Thank goodness he's using secure channels: "From his location in Africa, Jim Humble sent me, in encrypted form, his own assessment of Mr. Nash’s accusations...."

I'd like to think that this involves a one-time pad.

Chris,

To be clear, I left the concept of milk on the washcloth out of my comments on Dr. Gordon's recommendations. I don't know if it would have the effect you describe or not.

BTW - I find the term "breast milk" to be ambiguous. Wouldn't "human's milk" be more accurate and a clear parallel with sheep's milk, goat's milk, or cow's milk?

Fair enough, M O'B!

M O'B, sheep, goats and cows have teats.

Chris - very true. However, other primates have breasts.

Chickens and turkeys also have breasts, but as birds they do not produce milk.

BTW - almond milk, soy milk, and milk of magnesia do not count.

Actually, the analogous ruminant organ to human breasts is an udder. Teats are the things on the end.

I don't think Kerri Rivera was the only MMS pitchman at Autism One last month. I just found a slide show on the Autism One website for a presentation by an associate of hers, Andreas Kalcker. It is horrifying and the subject of a blog post in itself: http://www.autismone.org/sites/default/files/kalcker.pdf

My vocabulary has been expanded, and corrected. There were times when I felt too close a kinship to dairy cattle. It did not help that I had the short story "In the Barn" in Again, Dangerous Visions by Piers Anthony.

Human mammary gland nutritional secretion.

Or not.

I miss you all. I'll read David's notes about Paul's new book and come back tonight.

Best,

Jay

Scroll on down Sebastian Jackson's link to see the slide show featuring the butt and thighs of someone with a string in her rectum.

http://www.autismone.org/sites/default/files/kalcker.pdf

"What is in the gut?

Mucus in the stool?

Wait a moment
 
What mucus gland is
able to produce this?
 
Mucus is hydro soluble
 
At least it should be
 
If it is not mucus it can
be..."

lilady - that's just sad, and validates all the bad things that Edward Tufte says about PowerPoint.

Scroll on down Sebastian Jackson’s link to see the slide show featuring the butt and thighs of someone with a string in her rectum.

The depiction of the liver in the "Ammonia" slide is, ah, impressive. It's also a combination of two Wikimedia images.

OT (sort of) Jenny McCarthy likes to crunch the nuts in her salad commercial.

http://t.entertainment.msn.com/video?videoid=91920bcc-95ca-4400-b92c-33…

Jay Gordon @124

Human mammary gland nutritional secretion

I just have to say: thank you! Reading that gave me a much needed laugh.

@Passerby, #95:

@elburto
Enemas are horrible. The administration (by someone else) feels degrading and can make you feel so vulnerable. The sequelae can be agonising, with severe cramping, nausea, feeling flushed, and all manner of unpleasant things. -- SNIP --
I do take a bit of an issue with your characterization of enemas as universally horrible things.

I don't recognise your moniker, Passerby, and I'll assume you aren't a regular contributor. If you were, you would know elburto is extremely qualified to speak about the nature of enemas. I'm also left wondering if you've ever actually had one yourself. Although elburto is more than capable of defending herself, left me enlighten you on both points.

elburto, like me, suffers from Crohn's Disease. This is a painful, debilitating condition where part of the digestive tract becomes inflamed and ulcerated, and if it's bad enough, the ulcerated bit has to be cut out (I've had this twice). Sufferers get to manage a lifetime of gut cramps, nausea, weight loss, severe lack of appetite, diarrhea... and severe constipation. I categorise it as "severe" because we're not talking a couple of days, we're talking several days or even weeks.

And when the constipation is severe, enemas get employed. And I assure you, elburto is entirely correct in categorising them as horrible and degrading.

An enema is a liquid that's injected up the backside via a syringe or pipette device. It liquifies and flushes out whatever's up there, and if constipation is severe, several might be required.

What, I ask you, is not humiliating about someone shoving something up your backside to make you poo? If you're lucky, you can get the thing up there yourself. More often though, it's lying on your side with backside bared while someone else shoves the enema in.

And because enemas are designed to liquify whatever's up there, yes, the results are explosive, painful and disgusting.

I'm glad you at least recognised the appalling abuse this mother is subjecting her child to. For elburto, and me, who've had to endure these things quite a bit, they are bad enough. At least we know why it's happening, and have given consent. For a child who may not have the verbal skills to question, and probably doesn't know why.... trust me, the horror we feel is unbelievable.

Christine,

I've certainly been here long enough to know about elburto's situation, but I got what Passerby was saying. Though for a lot of us, even the *idea* of an enema is profoundly disturbing (to say nothing of actually receiving one), it cannot be denied that there are people who actually do enjoy them. Indeed, Rule 34 being what it is, I'm sure one can find rather more evidence to this fact than any of us really would care to see. People are just plain weird sometimes....

Actually, Mephistophes O'Brien, some birds (and according to my friend who did this research, there may be many more) DO produce 'milk'. http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/birds-produce-milk-simil…

Please, tell me CPS can be involved. Please.

May just be mucus but Jojo's happy :) Better out than in!

Our friend needs educating on what the normal physiological role of mucus is.
It's there to protect the bowel, and lubricate the stools.
Why would it be "better out than in"?
How "un-natural" can you get.
Might as well bleed out someone's circulation by slitting their wrists, joyfully shouting "Better out than in!"

And is Jojo happy? Really, really happy? Harsh to say, but if Jojo is getting a real kick out of these enemas, then I don't hold out much hope for sexual normalcy in future relationships. Indeed, a pattern of repeated child enemas might leave Jojo open to future exploitative abusive relationships and abnormal behaviour.
However, IANAP, so what do I know.

PS: I see she has tagged her pics as "Ascaris lumbricoides" (round worm). These clumps of mucus and colonic mucosal casts are not round worms, any more than bits of vomited, semi- digested spaghetti are round worms.

accidie,

Well, that just changed my entire world. Thanks.

#133 - accidie

Are the milk producing birds members of the Paridae family?

About those awful Autism One PowerPoint presentation slides....

http://www.autismone.org/sites/default/files/kalcker.pdf

Dr. Andreas Ludwig Kalcker's day job is working with Kerri Rivera and Rev. Jim Humble...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItXb6yXntNY

Kalcker's blog; knock yourselves out...

http://andreaskalcker.com/index.php/en/health/autism

Is there anything I can do to land these criminal in jail? I'm dead serious.

Alain

@ Denice,

You survey these blogs and websites about practitioners of woo and also, parents (TMR spring to mind) who subject their child to woo. Do you have a list these websites? Mailing list and groups would be useful too.

Thanks
Alain

@ Alain:

Right now, I'm only regularly surveying a select few ( AoA, TMR, Natural News. Progressive Radio Network/ Gary Null.com)...
but I often look at Mercola, Gaia Health, Green Med Info, ANH, Natural Solutions Foundation, Bolen, hiv/aids denialists.. and others which presently escape me.

I might suggest looking at some of the anti-vax sites' facebook pages/ blog comments- which often lead to websites belonging to their readers- some who sell products and advertise services..

I see a few dynamic players emerging from the crowd @ TMR- MacNeil, Goes, Jameson- all of whom are pushing hard against the stony walls of reality.

I called the RCMP and the local police department and regarding the local police did not want to do anything regarding that. the RCMP was more forward looking. I will also consult with the sister of my best friend; she's a police officer.

Alain

Agreed, Calli. There are some *interesting* people in this world (asexual myself so I really don't get it).

My later thought was Passerby might be an advocate of colonic irrigation, which is basically one prolonged enema... which would really earn my wrath. If you have a healthy bowel, you don't *need* a colonic, no matter what their advocates say. And if your bowel ain't healthy, a colonic can make things worse.

Regarding the local police, every time I had a complaint to fill, they never were interested. Never. Matter of fact, I was vastly more often interrogated by the police than the reverse situation (having a complaint taken seriously) and it's frustrating.

Alain

WRT what the "worms" really are: The problem with the phrase "colonic mucosa" in this context is that most people don't know right off whether you would want to keep that in or get it out. While the phrase "shreddy bits of intestine" is less precise, it's horrifying in proportion to the reality with fewer A&P credits.

I think you're being a bit hard on Passerby. I reread the comment, and I don't think s/he was advocating enemas or colonic irrigation, just observing the interesting fact that some people really do enjoy them, specifically mentioning klismaphilia as a paraphilia.

The curebies inflict them on defenseless children, but there are adults who willingly seek them out. That was an observation, perhaps not all that relevant here but not advocacy by Passerby.

Passerby also mentioned that whoever administers an enema *shouldn't* make the patient feel degraded, which applies as much to enemas as to all the other things medical personnel do to patients. I'm sure professionals do their best not to make the necessary treatment degrading. Curebies, though -- I suspect they have less desire to avoid making the victim feel degraded.

@Sebastian: "When Kerri Rivera first appeared at Autism One a year ago, Julie Obradovic defended her on AoA. She was forced to furiously packpedal when she was called out on it by a “HuffPo” (!) contributor. This year, AoA completely ignored Rivera, probably because they knew discussing her would arouse negative publicity for Autism One and themselves"

I'm delighted to hear that AoA is distancing itself from the MMS folks - maybe they'll continue the policy of distancing themselves from disgraceful people and eventually become an organization that does good for autistic people and their families, but I don't expect such a radical change in approach anytime soon, I'm afraid.

#95, I get what you're saying, but I'd think it's WAY less likely for an autistic child to like (or just not be completely miserable) getting an enema. I haven't gotten an enema myself, but I am autistic and going to the salon for a haircut (water sprayed on my head and clips put in my hair) was agonizing. I was crying and in lots of pain and at first my parents thought I was acting up (not diagnosed yet), so it was awhile before they called it off, and by then I was crying and crying. So even if the person performing the enema is extremely kind and loving and respectful, it would still be highly likely to cause a great deal of pain and anxiety.

While there is still no video of RFK's speech at Autism One, there are testimonials about MMS working. I haven't looked at these - I'm not sure I could stand it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MMStestimonials?feature=watch

Also, please note that it seems that MMS is sometimes known as CD treatment.

My son has autism.

He's cute and incredibly violent, but you know, he's cute and also he can read very nicely so most people overlook his occasional punches to the face. As I sincerely doubt that this gentle forgiveness from strangers will last longer than his milk teeth, I find myself reading everything I can about autism.
It's clear that there are many unscrupulous folks making a fine living from the mild to severe torture of children and desperate parents. I am fortunate in that I possess a few nicely laid out boundaries concerning how I approach the more unacceptable aspects of my lovely lad's reasoning system and precisely when the 'cure' is completely disgusting and unethical. Although I know full well that there are vile people out there who would (and do) induce sickness in their own offspring for the sake of manageability , it did break my heart that few commenting here realised that the mother was also suffering from some kind of crazygodawfulproblemsofherown.
Having a child with few visible symptoms, no sleeping pattern to speak of and the occasional wash of euphoric fully capable interactions is very, very hard on any parent. The uncertainty of the future is particularly difficult to bear. Hating on a sleep deprived, desperate parent will only send that person running to their (actually very evil money making quackeriffic) 'friends' for comfort and validation.
No good person wants that.
Don't be enemies, you bold, brave, reason filled science bods! Be soothing to the victims, even the very stupid ones, it will bring more people to their senses (I know, I know that sticking bleach up your child's bottom should be fairly counter intuitive - but some people swear by dolphin brain wave repatterning exercises and the like - humans are broken). The quacks deserve the prison sentences and the rage. They deserve plenty of things I might consider quietly and yet eventually decide against because I am not some monster-god with acid spurting digits.

But. Someone needs to point out that the parents need help too.
It's very painful and confusing and full of guilt, this process of finding the right way to open up all the glory of the world to a disabled child.

Clever, rational people of the world, we need you! Desperately! You wonderful thinkers - you are our heros, don't you know?

This just popped up in my Facebook feed from a company that sells flavored coconut butters asking people to share as the project is promoting gluten free, soy free, etc diet to cure autism. Ugh! http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-road-to-recovery-healing-the-symp…

This is my number 1 pet peeve with so called "healthy food" people as they seem to throw science out the window. Tired of sites that are supposed to be about food touting anti-vax and no this! I don't see what the point of feeding your child healthy is if you are going to then feed them bleach.

Say what you will, but the protocol works. It's not bleach. It's got a dioxide molecule attached, making it benign to our tissues, and lethal to pathogens. Not child abuse at all. I've taken MMS, my liver enzymes are fine, my skin cleared up, my foot fungus is gone and my toothache went away with MMS. Chlorine Dioxide, not bleach. Sodium chloride is table salt. Not bleach either. Learn some chemistry, and learn about oxidation, the magnetics and Ph of chemicals. Then it will make sense. Suffer with all your ailments and keep telling us who have experienced wellness and are recovering our sick kids that we are hoodwinked. Take some Tylenol (which hospitalizes 26,000 people a year and kills nearly 500 a year taken as prescribed), it's legal, so it must be OK. Drink the FDA cool aide, go to a doctor who knows medicine (but not health, thanks to the AMA, The Rockefeller Foundation, and big Pharma). http://youtu.be/FrwZN1cPfX8

@Stacey Kirkland:

It’s not bleach.

Just because it's not the stuff you buy at the store doesn't mean it's not bleach. Napalm is soap, even though it's not sodium stearate.

It’s got a dioxide molecule attached, making it benign to our tissues...

"The EPA has set a maximum contaminant level of 1 milligram of chlorite per liter (1 mg/L) in drinking water." Also "Sodium chlorite is a strong oxidant and can therefore be expected to cause clinical symptoms similar to the well known sodium chlorate: methemoglobinemia, hemolysis, renal failure." As for Chlorine Dioxide:
"The EPA limits exposure to 0.8 mg/L for chlorine dioxide in drinking water and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets maximum exposure at 0.1 ppm in air for a maximum of 8 hours." Harmless? I don't think so.

I’ve taken MMS, my liver enzymes are fine, my skin cleared up, my foot fungus is gone and my toothache went away with MMS.

And what is your proof that the MMS was responsible for your improvements in health? All your symptoms can clear up over time unassisted.

Learn some chemistry, and learn about oxidation, the magnetics and Ph of chemicals.

You're adorable.

Sally, none of your claims are true. Chlorine dioxide is bleach (industrial-grade bleach at that), it isn't benign to human tissue, and forcing a child to injest it or recieve it as an enema is abuse.

@ Stacey Kirkland: Citation via a You Tube video...featuring "Reverend" Jim Humble. How quaint:

Cripes you are ignorant about the properties of MMS:

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm220747.htm

Stacey Kirkland,

It’s not bleach.

If you are truly convinced of this, please take your favorite piece of colored clothing, activate 15 drops of 'MMS' with citric acid, pour this over your much-loved clothing and leave it for a few minutes. Then come back here and tells me this stuff isn't a bleach. Also, consider that if this does that to your clothing, what does it do to your body?

It’s got a dioxide molecule attached, making it benign to our tissues, and lethal to pathogens.

Like fluorine dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, all of which are lethally toxic? If chlorine dioxide is benign to our tissues, I suppose you would be happy putting the activated 'MMS' in our previous experiment undiluted on some sensitive skin, or inhaling the gas. Dropping a few crystals of vitamin C into a few ounces of 'MMS' will generate lots of brown chlorine dioxide gas, and I can assure you that inhaling a lungful will instantly convince you it is not at all benign. If you inhale enough you will permanently damage your lungs and might even die, so I don't recommend this, I'm just pointing out how foolish it is to claim that chlorine dioxide is benign.

I’ve taken MMS, my liver enzymes are fine, my skin cleared up, my foot fungus is gone and my toothache went away with MMS.

Your liver enzymes are unlikely to be affected by MMS, even if you take enough to make yourself sick. It is a gastrointestinal irritant which will nauseate you and give you diarrhea in small doses, and cause methemoglobinemia in higher doses. Methemoglobinemia is the result of oxidation of hemoglobin which happens when people drink powerful oxidizing agents such as bleaches like chlorine dioxide. It can be fatal in extreme cases, and babies under 6 months of age are particularly susceptible.

As for foot fungus, you can also get rid of this with a blowtorch, or by soaking your feet in domestic bleach, but you are risking damage to your health by doing so, just as you are by using MMS. Why not use a fungicide which is designed to be more harmful to fungus than health human tissue?

Chlorine Dioxide, not bleach. Sodium chloride is table salt. Not bleach either.

You apparently don't understand the difference between hypochlorite, chlorate, chlorite and chloride, and actually believe it when people tell you that chlorine dioxide is not a bleach, when by every chemical or layperson's definition it is.

Learn some chemistry, and learn about oxidation, the magnetics and Ph of chemicals. Then it will make sense.

You should really have learned some chemistry yourself before coming to a science blog and embarrassing yourself by asserting such nonsense about chemistry.

I have worked for more than two decades in clinical biochemistry, so I know more than enough about "oxidation, the magnetics and Ph of chemicals" to know that what passes for "chemistry" touted on MMS websites is almost entirely nonsense designed to convince the ignorant and gullible to drink bleach.

I also have a rule never to take chemistry advice from anyone who can't spell pH, since that strongly suggests they don't have a clue what it means. Hint - pH relates to hydrogen ion concentration.

Take some Tylenol (which hospitalizes 26,000 people a year and kills nearly 500 a year taken as prescribed), it’s legal, so it must be OK.

That's not true. In the US acetaminophen causes 450 deaths and 56,000 emergency-room visits a year due to accidental or deliberate overdose. It is a very safe drug and certainly doesn't kill hundreds of people each year "taken as prescribed", though labeling could certainly be improved.

Consider that 19% of the US population use acetaminophen at least once a week, that's billions of doses each year. If billions of doses of MMS were taken each year I would be willing to bet their would be thousands of deaths, since it has no demonstrable benefit, and poses very serious risks.

See my post at # 139 above and the activities of Andreas Kalcker promoting MMS for autism treatment:

He's run into the long arm of the law and there are multiple change.org petitions up on the internet. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

http://dotmedia.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sweet-revolution-conference-aft…

Sigh. Hopefully the blockquote fail is obvious.

Apologies for misspellings and errors in my next to last comment. In an indignant rush.

Stacey, it appears you joined the MMS for Autism discussion board a few weeks ago. I urge you, for the child's sake, to read Krebiozen's post above with an open mind and seriously consider whether you want to inflict MMS on a child.

Learn some chemistry, and learn about oxidation, the magnetics and Ph of chemicals.

Says the Art major to the chemists!

She says dioxides make it safe, and then goes on to lecture us about learning chemistry?

Good gracious.

Wanna taste some fluorine dioxide? Never mind, you can't -- it ate through the container and then set the floor on fire. (It's actually got the insane quality of being able to set *ice* on fire.) "Having a dioxide attached", as you so quaintly put it, does not magically make a molecule safe. It really only means it has two oxygen atoms.

"Bleach", Stacey, is not a single chemical. It is a class of chemicals which can be used to remove pigment. Most do this through oxidation; one popular bleach is hydrogen peroxide, which has absolutely no chlorine at all in it. Some people try claiming that will cure all your ills too, but apart from some effectiveness as an antiseptic (and there are safer choices for that), it's really pretty nasty because it is so happy to oxidize things. (So happy you can even use it in rocket propellant. But I digress.)

Chlorine dioxide, meanwhile, is most definitely used as a bleach. That is its main use, worldwide -- bleaching wood pulp at paper mills, mainly, but also bleaching flour. The second most common use is disinfection of swimming pools (which is where most MMS users get it from) and treatment of drinking water to kill pathogens. It is very effective at killing pathogens, after all. At sufficient concentrations, its good at killing almost everything. Which is why you maybe should consider whether or not it's a smart thing to put in your body. It's certainly no better than unnecessary antibiotics -- and, if you care to look at more than just what the sellers are telling you, you'll see it might actually be a good deal worse, depending on how much of it you're taking.

Stacey (apologies for getting your name wrong above) you sugest we learn some chemistry. I suggest you do so, by examiningg the Material Safety Data Sheets for sodium chlorite (which can be found at http://www.cleartech.ca/msds/sodchlorite.pdf) and for
chlorine dioxide (which can be found at http://www.puremash.com/pdfs/MaterialDataSheetCIO2.pdf)

Clearly actuall, trained chemists don't agree that it's 'benign to our tissues'.

I have said this before here, but it bears repetition. When you are looking at a substances that will kill pathogens, which is the main use for MMS (unsubstantiated and implausible claims about "immune system stimulation" notwithstanding), the important things are:

1. How toxic the substance is to the target pathogen.

2. How toxic the substance is to the patient.

1. For chlorine dioxide the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for Staphylococcus Aureus is about 200 mg/l. For ciprofloxacin the MIC for S. Aureus is less than 4 mg/l.

2. Ciprofloxacin is also far less toxic to mammals than chlorine dioxide. LD50 for chlorine dioxide in rats is 165 mg/kg, LD50 for ciprofloxacin in mice and rats is in excess of 5,000 mg/kg. Assuming humans are equally susceptible, a lethal dose of MMS in a 70 kg human would be 12 grams, a lethal dose of ciprofloxacin greater than 350 grams.

In summary, MMS is 50 times less toxic to S. Aureus than Ciprofloxacin, but 30 times more toxic to humans. In terms of therapeutic index, MMS is 1,500 times less safe and effective than ciprofloxacin.

This is not surprising since chlorine dioxide is a powerful oxidizing agent, like all bleaches, that specifically attacks the electron-rich centers of organic molecules, those comprising normal, healthy cells as well as pathogens. Any drug company would throw this out as a potential antibiotic, preferring to look for chemicals that target structures or processes that occur only in pathogens, not in healthy human cells as well. It seems insane that some people are claiming this non-specific toxic, cytocidal substance is a natural medicine.

All figures are from reputable sources, and can be provided should anyone dispute them - I don't want to send this comment into moderation by including them.