Aspies For Freedom

The November 2005 issue of Parents Magazine had an article about the dangers of alternative medical treatments on children.  It specifically discussed the widespread use of chelation and other alternative treatments for autism that have not been shown to be safe or effective.

In the paragraph about chelation, the article bluntly warned:

Parents Magazine is a mainstream publication with a circulation of over 15 million.  Let's hope some readers will pay attention to the article.

Good! I'm glad. I read the article "Quackery Kills" to my U.S. Government class. They were horrified about the death of the boy and couldn't understand why the FDA doesn't do something.

I'm glad to hear about this magazine article. I will look out for the magazine, but I'm not sure if it is sold in Australia.

I think what might be the case with the more responsible journalists, especially medical journalists of repute, is that they are loathe to write about potentially harmful quack therapies such as chelation, because in doing that they are giving some kind of free publicity to the charlatans, and potentially enlarging the number of children exposed to these dangers. So there might be a lot more opposition to such quackery amongst the knowledgeable and the powerful than is obvious.