Hell Hath No Fury: "Regarding Caroline" and Her Parents' Relentless Abuse

It’s a photo circulating around social media, promoting “regardingcaroline.com.”

The image shows a pale little girl with large blue eyes. Between the lighting and her expression in that very moment, it’s clear that she looks sick. She’s supposed to.

The text reads, “Some day she will know why she needed 2,431 hours of therapy before she was six. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Watch out CDC. The ‘Greater Good’ children are recovering.”

Clearly, despite giving no indication that their daughter was diagnosed with a vaccine injury by a medical expert, Caroline’s parents believe that she is a victim of vaccines, and they equally believe that, one day, she will be angered by the realization that she was put through 2,431 hours of therapy to treat the injury.

But just what was her injury? Caroline’s family isn’t clear on that, despite keeping precise details and records of nearly everything about her on public space. Like most children with sensory processing disorder, the earliest signs showed up at around six months, when she would shake with excitement when overwhelmed. Later, she did as many SPD children do, and experienced a minor developmental regression (her parents themselves even describe it as “subtle”) and an interest in electronics that began at twelve months. Does that sound like a severe vaccine injury to you?

That pattern—a few little signs that cropped up at six months, and more noticeable regression starting at twelve months—is characteristic of autism and related disorders, which is why it is sometimes mistaken for vaccine injury despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism. Don’t trust “Big Pharma" to tell you the truth about it? Well, I can tell you firsthand that Caroline’s development closely mirrors the development of my autistic daughter, who did not have have any vaccines at that age.

Now let’s get into the torture treatment that Caroline was subjected to—the “2,431 hours” that she will supposedly be angry about in the future. I agree with Caroline’s family that she will be angry. But I don’t think she’ll be angry about her alleged vaccine injury. I think she’ll be angry at the unproven, dangerous, and even arguably abusive “treatments” that her parents admit to putting her through. Here's the play-by-play that they recount in excruciating detail on their website:

Let’s start with dimethylglycine. It’s funny that so many anti-vaccine activists swear they won’t put anything in their bodies they can’t pronounce, but they’ll make exceptions if the snake oil salesmen are convincing enough. It’s a relatively safe supplement, but it doesn’t work any better than a placebo-- so why take a chance? Why subject your child to a treatment with unknown side effects when it's been proven ineffective?

Next, Caroline’s parents put her on the dangerous gluten-free, casein-freediet, which is an unproven therapy for autism that may be dangerous. Not surprisingly for a child forced into an extremely restrictive diet during a period of rapid growth, she developed severe vitamin deficiencies—big shocker there—and needed B vitamin supplements and cod liver oil to correct these problems. 

Of course, since Caroline’s SPD didn’t magically heal overnight, so her parents fought even harder against her neurology. And what better way to treat a child for nutritional deficiencies than to further restrict her diet? With the approval of notorious naturopathic quack John Hicks, Caroline’s family decided to remove grain from her diet as well. No dairy, no gluten, no grain, no soy: they say her diet was “limited to meats, fruits, vegetables and eggs.”

That’s right: an extremely restrictive diet that, in an adult, would be considered severe orthorexia, for a child who is already a picky eater and already suffering from malnutrition. Not because it was recommended by a licensed pediatrician to save her life, but because her parents thought, despite an absence of any evidence whatsoever, that starving their daughter would cure her autism.

The next step for Caroline was a barrage of treatments for conditions that she clearly didn’t have. Her parents diagnosed her with “systemic yeast problems” and said that antifungals would “lift the fog.” This is despite the fact that systemic yeast infections are life-threatening diseases that cause sepsis and death, and are almost exclusive to people who are severely immunocomprimised. Despite the fact that a child with a systemic yeast infection would be in the critical care unit of a pediatric hospital on death’s door,  they decided to seek out someone who would treat her imaginary body-wide yeast infection. (Are you following their reasoning? If so, you might need some kind of medication.) She was treated with powerful antifungals because… your guess is as good as mine.

The story gets worse, beyond just being put on a nightmarishly strict diet and unnecessary drugs. Caroline’s family, still trying to cure her sensory processing disorder, took her to True Health Medical Center, an ironically named company, since there was little “true” about it. The people behind the medical center actually sent tests off to Doctor’s Data, Inc., a company that has since been sued because they knowingly falsified results, claiming that patients had high levels of heavy metals and other “toxins.” Dr. Anjum Usman, the doctor behind this clinic, seems to have been well aware that she was giving falsified results to patients that would enable her to justify using dangerous treatments.

And that’s when the truly dangerous stuff started—in the hands of Anjum Usman, who has been under fire for “extreme departure from rational medical judgment,” that endangered her patients.

Caroline was subjected to what would, in most contexts, be considered torture, not therapy. After “testing” through Usman’s fraudulent labs, she was forced to take long-term doses of Flagl, a powerful antibiotic, to fight “bad bacteria in her gut,” although her parents give no mention that she had actually been diagnosed with a bacterial gastrointestinal infection.

Usman’s “testing” further revealed, according to Caroline’s parents, that her body “can’t overcome the viruses from the vaccines” and that they are “causing inflammation n her brain and gut.” This is, again, with no outside medical doctors diagnosing this child with encephalitis (brain inflammation, which is a very serious emergency, not a chronic condition) or gastroenteritis (inflammation of the gut, usually caused by an infection).

To treat this inflammation, Caroline’s parents began giving her medication containing naltrexone. This is probably the most bizarre statement in the entire account of Caroline’s “recovery” from SPD. Naltrexone is not an anti-inflammatory. It is an opiate antagonist used to treat people who are suffering from acute overdose from prescription or illegal drugs—not something that treats “inflammation” related to sensory processing disorder. Naltrexone can cause a number of serious side effects including liver damage, but more commonly, it causes an upset stomach. Regardless, it’s not meant to be given out as a treatment for SPD, particularly in children.

It gets weirder. Caroline’s parents said that her “yeast flared,” which I assume means that they decided she had a systemic yeast infection again. So they did the exact opposite of what you would do to a child with a systemic yeast infection and gave her Vancomycin, one of the world’s most powerful antibiotics, reserved mostly for life-threatening bacterial infections. It is never used to treat yeast infections because it is an antibiotic, not an antifungal, and it encourages yeast to grow. And, like the other drugs Caroline was given, it caused diarrhea that her parents say lasted seven weeks.

Seven weeks of uncontrollable diarrhea, due to a medication being used off-label to treat a condition that wasn’t even there.

Next, I guess because they decided they hadn’t done enough damage, Caroline’s care team decided to treat her with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Mayo Clinic does not list SPD as a condition that can be treated by hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and I couldn’t find any studies suggesting it has any benefit at all for people with SPD or related conditions. While it’s a lot safer than some of the other experimental treatments Caroline’s parents put her through, it can go wrong, causing seizures, ear injury, and even lung collapse.

Her family goes on to continue her journey through “treatment” with antifungals, antibiotics, immune modulators, and opiate antagonists, none of which are FDA-approved for the treatment of sensory processing disorder. At one point, they experimented with Imunovir, which gave her terrible insomnia that caused her to miss school and sleep to the point that it was disrupting her education and her family’s sanity. Why? Because a naturopath suggested it, with no evidence that it would be beneficial.

Then Caroline’s family and health care workers took a route that can only be described as abusive—they pursued chelation therapy, a serious, often deadly treatment that is only ever recommended to treat severe cases of doctor-confirmed lead and iron poisoning. Since vaccines have never contained lead and Caroline’s family made no mention of a diagnosis of heavy metal poisoning at any point, it can be safely assumed that Caroline was one of many victims of chelation used as an “alternative” treatment for SPD and ASD.

Chelation kills. In warning cancer patients against its use, the American Cancer Society gravely warns, “Chelation products, even when used under medical supervision, can cause serious harm, including dehydration, kidney failure, and death. The drugs may also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and temporary lowering of blood pressure. Since the therapy removes minerals from the body, there is a risk of developing low calcium levels (hypocalcemia) and bone damage. Chelation therapy may also impair the immune system and decrease the body’s ability to produce insulin. People may also feel pain at the site of the EDTA injection.”

And this is in adults whose bodies are less prone to malnutrition and who are old enough to consent to the experimental procedure.

Was that the extent of Caroline’s torture? Not even close. Her parents kept going.

The next step, according to their blog where Caroline’s parents so bravely recount their abuse of her, was  to subject her to adrenal cortical extract. We have known for decades that this product, which is basically the isolated stress hormones of cattle, is extremely dangerous. In fact, it’s been banned in most countries, and the FDA and AMA have repeatedly declared it to be an unsafe product with no legitimate medical uses. ACE causes very serious side effects, most notably including severe infections at the site of the injection. People have been left severely scarred and disfigured by boils from ACE, and health care “professionals” who recommend the product have lost their licenses. So what do Caroline’s genius parents do?

They inject her with it, of course. To control her tantrums.

Next up, Caroline’s family decided to give homeopathy a whirl—a form of pseudoscience that can only be described as witchcraft, which relies on products containing heavily diluted poisons… so heavily diluted, in fact, that they don’t contain a single molecule of the substance whose “spirit” or “essence” they allegedly contain. And that’s a good thing, since Caroline’s family chose to give her homeopathic belladonna—a deadly poison that, if given as anything other than an “essence” or “spirit,” would have killed her. And, of course, it’s to no benefit: science has proven again and again and again and again and again and again that homeopathy doesn’t work. Not for autism. Not for sensory processing disorder. Not for anything.

But there’s still hope! After all, despite years of torture with only modest improvement—all of which could be explained by her evidence-based treatments like sensory therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy—there’s always camel milk, which has been Caroline’s family’s latest attention-whoring effort to experiment on their daughter. And when that fails to magically rewire her brain?

Well… They can always blame vaccines.

Caroline’s family says that she will one day be angry with the pharmaceutical industry because she was vaccinated and then (entirely coincidentally, since immunization doesn’t cause SPD) developed sensory processing disorder.

I disagree, and I think it’s a desperate attempt at finger-pointing because they’re afraid that their increasingly responsive and communicative daughter will one day look at them, see the horrific abuse she has been subjected to, and ask, “Why?”

I know that “Big Pharma” isn’t the reason, and one day, Caroline will realize that, too. Caroline is being mistreated by parents who can not and will not accept that she is wonderfully, uniquely, beautifully special. Caroline’s parents are willing to stop at absolutely nothing, no matter the side effects and no matter the danger, in a sick and brutal effort to rewire the neurology that makes her an individual human being. One day, Caroline with know.

And Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.