Chemical Castration for Autism - The Latest Atrocity

[varkam]

Neurologica Blog. Steven Novella, MD.
Link

Mark and David Geier are a father and son team that have been pushing the claim that autism results from mercury poisoning from vaccines. They have produced a string of junk science, denounced by mainstream scientists for terrible methodology, reasoning, and statistics. They portray themselves as mavericks, but in my opinion they are just terrible and dangerous scientists.

Their latest atrocity raises their medical mischief to new levels. For several years now they have been pushing their testoerone hypothesis of autism. They claim, in short, that autism is caused by mercury poisoning, primarily from vaccines. Children with autism, especially boys, have high testosterone, which is partly the cause of their symptoms. But also the testosterone binds to mercury, preventing it from being removed from the body by chelating agents.

They have therefore conducted a study with the drug Lupron in addition to chelation. Lupron is a powerful drug that lowers testosterone levels. It is used for rare disorders associated with premature or high testosterone, or to treat prostate cancer in some men. It is also used as a form of chemical castration for sex offenders.

Each component of the Geiers claims are not only not proven, the scientific evidence is against them. It is pretty clear now from multiple studies that there is no association between mercury or vaccines and autism. Autism is not a form of mercury or heavy metal poisoning. Chelation therapy, which itself is risky, is of not benefit in autism. And high testosterone levels do no cause autism.

More after the jump.

[Heidi]

1. There will be people who defend this "miracle cure."

Wait and see.

[varkam]

2. And why not? These are just humble researchers trying to buck the establishment.

Nevermind the huge financial conflicts of interest.

[Heidi]

4. "Buck" = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in this instance, I suspect.

I found this part especially interesting: "Castrated males become more docile, calm..."

I guess some folks will mistake "docile, calm" for "cured." Sad, sad, sad.

[varkam]

11. Bingo.

"Doctor Geier! You cured my son's autism! He's no longer acting out like he used to! Thank you so much!"

Yeesh. You could get the same results with a heavy drip of benzos, but no one's claiming that cures autism

[elleng]

3. Yes, as there are people who 'defend' the mercury 'cause.'

(rfj, jr?)

Its a big country. Hopefully, many will recognize usefulness of techniques to ameliorate symptoms.

[varkam]

7. You're entitled to your own opinion. You're not entitled to your own facts.

RFK, Jr. may be an effective trial attorney and an advocate for the environment - but a specialist in neurodevelopmental disease he is not.

More to the point, though, this is a different hypothesis than the mercury-causation theory. Now, the Geier's are stating that testosterone is causing autistic symptoms. Of course, there's no science to support that and the treatment (Lupron) can have some very significant side effects...especially on children.

[HelenWheels]

20. I believe the "mercury cause"

If there was nothing to it why did the drug companies remove the mercury from the vaccines?

[varkam]

25. Probably because of the fear mongering that was going on about it.

But, if you look at the science, numerous well designed studies show zero correlation between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Hell, even Generation Rescue's own research shows that fully vaccinated children were less likely to develop any neruodevelopmental issues than those who were not vaccinated at all.

[LeftishBrit]

26. Because it seemed like a possibility; BUT...

if mercury were the cause, then why haven't rates of autism gone down since mercury *was* removed?

I think it's a good thing on general principle that it was removed, as the less mercury the better - but the evidence suggests that it doesn't cause autism; or the rates would now be lower.

[Heidi]

27. That's not what I said. I said there will be people who defend this "cure."

Are you defending chemical castration of prepubescent autistic males? If so, I'd like to recommend a book to you by renowned author/researcher Edwin Black. It's called "War Against the Weak: America's Campaign to Create a Master Race." There no doubt were many well-intentioned people involved in our country's eugenics movement, but that didn't make the sterilization of folks unable to decide for themselves any less horrifying.

[Heidi]

5. Chicago Tribune: 'Micracle drug' called junk science

'Miracle drug' called junk science
Powerful castration drug pushed for autistic children, but medical experts denounce unproven claims

<snip>

Four of the world's top pediatric endocrinologists told the Tribune that the Lupron protocol is baseless, supported only by junk science. More than two dozen prominent endocrinologists dismissed the treatment earlier this year in a paper published online by the journal Pediatrics.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in England and director of the Autism Research Center in Cambridge, said it is irresponsible to treat autistic children with Lupron.

"The idea of using it with vulnerable children with autism, who do not have a life-threatening disease and pose no danger to anyone, without a careful trial to determine the unwanted side effects or indeed any benefits, fills me with horror," he said.

Experts in childhood hormones warn that Lupron can disrupt normal development, interfering with natural puberty and potentially putting children's heart and bones at risk. The treatment also means subjecting children to daily injections, including painful shots deep into muscle every other week.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-lupron-may21,0,242705.story

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

Damn

[FloridaJudy]

8. There may be something to this, BUT

I know two women who have autistic children. Their kids were odd, but relatively mellow and even tempered as children. When the children hit adolescence, they suddenly had extreme mood swings, and unpredictable violent outbursts. All teens go through a bit of this - I suspect - but autistic ones seem to have fewer socially acceptable coping skills. So there may indeed be a connection between hormones and autistic behavior.

But to treat autistic children with Lupron is barbaric. It's a powerful drug with a host of dangerous side effects, and it has never been tested in children. It's another case of enthusiasm getting way ahead of the science. I find it baffling that some will bash "Big Pharma" for pushing unnecessary drugs on people, while seeking an untested and potentially dangerous treatment for their children.

[LeftishBrit]

9. Argh

I suspect that this is based on a distortion of some genuine research findings.

It was found by Baron-Cohen and his group that prenatal testosterone levels are somewhat predictive of later language skills in the preschool years. Most of this is just because boys have more prenatal testosterone and are also slower to talk than boys; but there is a slight predictive role even between genders. Some people in the media suggested that this would enable us to 'predict autism' in the womb.

But this is rubbish. None of the sample were autistic. Autism is not just a severe form of being slow to talk (there is actually a separate and much commoner disorder, Specific Language Impairment, which comes closer to that description). Moreover, even if it were found that prenatal testosterone predicts autism - which it doesn't - that does not mean it *causes* it; and certainly chemical castration is not a cure!

It reminds me of the awful physical abuse of people with mental illnesses in the past, aimed at 'driving out demons', etc.

[varkam]

10. Wonder how long before we get some ECT going for autistic kids?

Nah, probably would never happen. Jenny McCarthy wouldn't be able to shill for it and the Geiers wouldn't be able to make any cash off of it, so...

[Odin2005]

30. Brain-zapping should be banned, period.

[varkam]

31. Well, it has shown results for severe depression.

But it's generally a last resort sort of thing.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[varkam]

13. Did you really just refer to kids with autism as "psycho(s)"?

Sa-weet.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[varkam]

15. Notsomuch. Psychopathy != Autism.

You ever beaten up by one of them? I didn't think so.

That would be a mighty big assumption of you to make, especially considering that I have worked with people with autism in the past - but whatever floats your rhetorical boat. Note that many, if not most of the people that I had worked with had little to no incidences of violence in their past - and those that were really weren't prone on beating people up to the point of physical injury. Though, I guess, since you got beaten up by someone with autism, that makes you an expert. Given your charming personality, I really have no clue why someone would do that.

All of that is, of course, not to say that there are not individuals with autism who are prone to severe bouts of violence. However, you seem to be equating autism with such violence in every instance - which makes little sense.

And you didn't answer the question. What do you do when you have a violent psycho whom you can't cure? Do you kill him or give him a treatment that makes him less violent? All right, a third choice not too dissimilar from death; lock him away from the rest of humanity until he dies. Those are your choices, bunky.

Well, you should obviously give them a medication with significant side-effects (especially when considered in the light that it's a drug that's going to be given to children when they're going through the developmental stages) under the guise of "curing" autism whilst advancing a dubious hypothesis that the etiology of autism is related to elevated testosterone levels. Sounds sa-weet to me, especially considering your affinity with being "HON-est."

The possibilities that you offer are only constrained by your limited imagination in combination with your thinly veiled disdain for individuals with autism. I really am sorry that you have some bad experiences, but don't mistake that for a reliable accounting of the directions that need to be undertaken.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

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[varkam]

19. Do you hear the whooshing sound right above your head? It's the point.

If you care to try again to address anything that was substantive in my post, by all means. Otherwise, thanks for playing.

[Maru Kitteh]

16. Have you ever been beaten up by one of "them?"

I wonder how many "them's" exist in your world. I'm guessing quite a few...

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Odin2005]

24. Go to Hell.

[Odin2005]

23. I'm a high-functioning autistic and I couldn't hurt a fly.

Unless of course I get stuck in an environment that causes me a mental meltdown from sensory overload.

[Odin2005]

22. I am not "cursed" or "psycho" and I need no fucking "cure"

:grr:

[Odin2005]

21. This shit is exactly why THIS autistic person HATES these fuckers!

May they all rot in Hell, The Geiers, David Kirby, Jenny McCarthy, all of them, may they rot in Hell!!!

:grr:

[donco6]

28. Not autistic, but I agree totally.

These people are just modern-day Relic vendors. "Yes, come touch the wood of the Cross of our Lord and be HEALED!"

[Odin2005]

29. BINGO!

Good comparison! :)

[mr blur]

32. Well, "Touch it - but it'll cost you, of course"

Miracles always come at a hefty price these days. One feature of the "Alternative treatment"/Woo industry.

[mzteris]

33. Geier's = QUACKS!!!

"Mark Geier does research with his son, David Geier, who is president of MedCon, a medical-legal consulting firm that helps vaccine injury claimants get compensation. Dr Geier (Mark) was a recipient in the multimillion pound MMR expert witness payout.

In more than 10 of his legal cases, particularly the more recent ones, Dr Geier’s testimony was either excluded, or accorded little or no weight, after it was found he was testifying beyond his expertise. He had “largely irrelevant” qualifications, and acted as a “professional witness” in areas for which he had “no training, expertise, and experience”. His “speculation” was directly contrary to the conclusions reached in well-respected and numerous epidemiologic and medical studies ranging over two decades”. He was “neither board certified nor training in paediatrics and paediatric neurology”.

He was further criticised by judges for his work not being “based on scientific validity, valid methodology, peer review or testing, and more than minimal support within the scientific community”.

My favourite of all was the finding that his testimony was “intellectually dishonest” and his affidavit was “nothing more than an egregious example of blatant, result-oriented testimony”.

A recent academic paper of the Geiers has been retracted by the journal without explanation - so far - and some of their published “scientific” work is so laughable you can explain the flaws in a jokey national newspaper column.

In 2003, they published a paper in the journal of a Miami hospital using data from a voluntary reporting system for adverse events. They compared the number of reports of autism after use of the vaccine MMR and the vaccine DTP, and found the MMR jab was more likely to be associated with autism. . . " Ben Goldacre Saturday February 24, 2007 The Guardian


******

Judge Beaty sums up his assessment of Mark Geier’s ability to be an expert witness on the ability of thimerosal to cause autism thusly:

“Thus, while Dr. Geier’s presentation of the literature as part of his methodology might at first glance appear convincing, the disconnected literature he presents does not add up to the opinion and conclusion that Dr. Geier is offering.”

He then rips into the Geier and Geier dumpster-diving (VAERS database) studies in a most thorough fashion. Having dismantled them, he concludes that he need go no further in discrediting Mark Geier’s testimony and then, like an encore after a virtuoso performance, he proceeds to shred Mark Geier’s qualifications in general. He criticizes the elder Geier’s diagnostic abilities, points out that he is neither a pediatrician or a pediatric neurologist and brings up the painful (to Mark Geier - I found it delightfully ironic) fact that Mark Geier failed his pediatric genetics board examination. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:xHW7PoS_0TwJ:photoninthedarkness.com/%3Fp%3D78+geier+quack&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


********

Their bogus "research company":
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/98/an-elusive-institute-significant-misrepresentations-mark-geier-david-geier-the-evolution-of-the-lupron-protocol-part-two


**********


falsified "credentials" : David Geier had listed his affiliation with George Washington University in a number of other articles and conference proceedings, including his biographical sketch for various conferences at which he presented recently, including Autism One, Defeat Autism Now!, and the National Autism Association.

There's only one problem. David Geier is not a graduate student at George Washington University. Indeed, as far as Kathleen has been able to tell, he is no longer affiliated with George Washington University in any way, nor did he do any of the work reported in the papers listed above during his brief stint as a graduate student at GWU. . . . Dr. Goldstein stated unequivocally that David Geier has never served on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at GWU; that neither the "Institute for Chronic Illnesses" or its Institutional Review Board (that is, the committee that approves and supervises research on human subjects) are in any way associated with GWU; and that none of the research described in the article was sponsored by GWU or conducted in the GWU laboratories. He described the affiliation with the Department of Biochemistry in the Hormone Research article as "fallacious," and stated that it conveyed a "significant misrepresentation" of Mr. Geier's position in the field of biochemistry.



********

the father-and-son team of Mark and David Geier, who work out of their basement in Maryland (a quack house crammed with cast-off lab equipment that Mark Geier told the Washington Post is “every bit as good as anything at NIH”), publish copiously in fringe journals, and are frequently called on to testify in Vaccine Injury Compensation Program hearings. Their testimony has been regularly disqualified for its lack of credibility—one judge in 2003 admonished that Mark Geier was “a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise, and experience.” Although Mark Geier holds a medical degree and formerly worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, the mainstream scientific community views the Geiers as hacks whose work is sloppy, skewed, and, as the Institute of Medicine put it, “uninterpretable,” and mainly geared to their lucrative expert testimony gig. “The problem with the Geiers’ research is that they start with the answers and work backwards,” Dr. Steven Black, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, commented to the New York Times. “They are doing voodoo science.” http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shot-in-the-dark

[mmonk]

34. Speaking as someone who has been involved with autism for 24 years,

the world is loaded with quacks and their quack cures. Not only do they push false promises on people, they are dangerous. When people quit looking for "cures" and concentrate on constructive things, there will be more positive developments in our society for autistic citizens.

[DangerousRhythm]

35. Oh dear.

Waiting for Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey to enlighten the world about this woooonderful practice. It's probably green, right? Maybe she'll advocate for it on her new show?

These people just blow my mind.

:puke:

[KamaAina]

36. FSM knows I haven't had much use for my equipment lately

but I'll be double-damned if I allow these monsters to inject me with their liquid saltpeter!! :grr: :banghead: :argh: :nuke:

That being said,

It is pretty clear now from multiple studies that there is no association between mercury or vaccines and autism.

Actually, it is pretty clear now from multiple studies that there is no association between thimerosal and autism. One cause of autism (there is clearly more than one cause) could be another form of mercury (e.g. methylmercury), or something else to do with vaccines (e.g. adverse autoimmune reaction). But there's no compelling evidence to indicate that it is either of those things. So, pending lots of further research, the dangerous and expensive (i.e. highly profitable for leeches like the Geiers) chelation therapy is NOT indicated (and would not be for an autoimmune cause in any case). In the words of the immortal Nancy Reagan, Just Say No!

Off to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network this goes...

http://www.autisticadvocacy.org

[spinbaby]

37. Is this a plan to sell more Lupron?

My father in-law gets it for prostate cancer, so I know it's one of those astoundingly expensive high-profit drugs.

[KamaAina]

38. Can you say "eugenics"? Mr. KamaAina can!

They have therefore conducted a study with the drug Lupron in addition to chelation. Lupron is a powerful drug that lowers testosterone levels. It is used for rare disorders associated with premature or high testosterone, or to treat prostate cancer in some men. It is also used as a form of chemical castration for sex offenders.

Years ago, residents of large state institutions for people with developmental disabilities, including autism, were routinely sterilized. It will hardly surprise anyone at DU that this happened most frequently to women, and particularly to African American women. But that practice ended decades ago. Virginia and other states have even passed resolutions of apology to the victims. So, since we've come so far since then, there's absolutely, positively no way that anything like that could ever happen again, no matter what.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

edit: punctuation