Anybody Have a Guillotine Handy?

For most people the idea of an “inner child” evokes innocence, playfulness, and wonder. Not me. My inner child is more like Chucky. This story reported by NBC News brings out my inner child:

When they aren’t working or taking care of their autistic children, Melissa Eaton and Amanda Seigler are moles.

Eaton, 39, a single mother from Salisbury, North Carolina, and Seigler, 38, a mom to six in Lake Worth, Florida, have spent much of their free time in the last three years infiltrating more than a dozen private Facebook groups for parents of autistic kids. In some of these groups, members describe using dubious, dangerous methods to try to “heal” their children’s autism — a condition with no medically known cause or cure.

The parents in many of these groups, which have ranged from tens to tens of thousands of members, believe that autism is caused by a hodgepodge of phenomena, including viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, parasites, heavy metal poisoning from vaccines, general inflammation, allergies, gluten and even the moon.

The so-called treatments are equally confused. Some parents credit turpentine or their children’s own urine as the secret miracle drug for reversing autism. One of the most sought-after chemicals is chlorine dioxide — a compound that the Food and Drug Administration warns amounts to industrial bleach, and doctors say can cause permanent harm. Parents still give it to their children orally, through enemas, and in baths. Proponents of chlorine dioxide profit off these parents’ fears and hopes by selling books about the supposed “cure,” marketing the chemicals and posting how-to videos.

Anybody have a guillotine handy? I recognize that people whose kids have autism are often desperate for respite let alone a cure but to injure one’s own children administering quack cures promoted by opportunistic halfwits. I have no words.

7 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    If you are open to suggestions, I would suggest that we first go after the quacks, celebrities, religious leaders and politicians who promote the false ideas and conspiracies about autism and lead the parents into harming their kids, some of whom have died with these “treatments”. Some of the parents are gullible or just plain stupid. The charlatans are liars.

    Steve

  • Yep. That’s where I’d start. Influencers. I have a little list…

  • bob sykes Link

    You might also want to go after the parents and doctors who mutilate children in the name of transgenderism and profit.

  • What people need to keep in mind is Dr. Theodore Woodward’s aphorism: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”. IMO a certain level of blame should be awarded to media figures for their incessant publicizing of the condition. After that the availability heuristic takes over.

  • Gray Shambler Link

    Makes me think about an earlier post, about crime. “Can we afford the country we live in”.

    Well, there’s crime and there’s crime. If someone steals my car, we all agree that’s crime.
    If someone sells desperate parents snake oil, harder to prove.

    If someone gets rich by selling fake nutritional supplements with a captive Senator, that’s just good business.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/opinion/the-politics-of-fraudulent-dietary-supplements.html

    If someone sells you fraudulent automotive oil additives, using fraudulent claims,

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140930135925-139119817-rampant-fraud-scam-nreality-in-the-oil-industry
    That’s just “buyer beware”

    We’re all aware of “man boosting formula” products that do nothing, is allowing these, not to mention “non profit”, tax exempt, tele-evangelists part of the cost of economic freedom and “the pursuit of happiness”?

    In other words, all of these frauds could be cracked down on, but would the price be too high in loss of freedom.

  • TastyBits Link

    The LinkedIn article is mostly gobbledigook. The vast amount of oil is bought and sold as futures, and a very limited amount is bought on the spot market. Other than the refineries and producers, the buyers and sellers are mostly speculators.

    Oil trading is like short sales and put options with stock traders. The author is bitching about being scammed because he has to go to the spot market to cover delivery contracts for crude oil he sold but never owned.

    This is why the predictions of oil going back to $150/barrel were a joke. The supply curve is based on the present market, but the demand curve is based upon future market.

  • I am one of the moms in the article and thank you for writing about it. I wanted to drop by and say you win the Headline Contest that I did not know was going on.

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