10 Most Batshit Autism Treatments

Trigger warning: this stuff is disturbing, especially if you are a survivor of child abuse.

When the news about parents using enemas of Miracle Mineral Supplement-- also known as chlorine dioxide, or bleach-- to treat autism made the rounds over the last few months, I was relatively quiet about my feelings on it. This will be the first time I admit why I didn't say or write something sooner.

You see, back in my crunchy days, I messed up in a lot of ways,and this was one of them.

I knew that this was happening six whole years ago, and I did nothing to stop it. 

No, those aren't worms. They're pieces of a child's intestines.

I even personally knew one of the victims. She was seven. Her name was Danielle. When her grandmother, a friend of mine highly involved in alternative-medicine, told me that they were using chlorine dioxide enemas to treat her PDD-NOS (now known to be a form of autism), I thought that sounded strange and worried about what it might be doing to the Danielle, but I ultimately looked the other way and figured it was none of my business and her family was doing what was best for her.

Since then, I've seen graphic photos of bloody diarrhea and chunks of intestinal tissue pop up in parenting groups, where mothers using MMS asked if these results were normal or a sign that MMS was working. I feel sick-- not just from the horrors of the treatment, but also from knowing that it happened to a child I knew, and that I didn't do anything to stop it.

MMS bleach enemas have become the most notorious quack treatments for autism, but there are many more that are equally dangerous. Here are nine others, which are often (in cases like Caroline's) components of Munchausen-like cases of abuse.

1. Dolphin Therapy

This one might seem harmless enough, but swimming with dolphins is deadly and cruel-- not just for the dolphins held unfairly in captivity, but also for the children who are endangered by the practice. As I discussed in a previous post, dolphins are 300-pound predators who, when confined to unpleasant lives in captivity, can become unpredictable and deadly. You wouldn't treat autism by tossing your kid into a tiger cage, would you?

2. Chelation Therapy

Chelation therapy is a dangerous treatment that pulls heavy metals out of the bloodsteam. For people with extreme, life-threatening cases of heavy metal poisoning, it is sometimes worth the risk. However, even children with severe lead poisoning are almost never subjected to it, because it can cause lethal side effects including infection and organ failure. Using it to save the life of a child who ate an entire box of iron supplements might be sane. Using it to treat autism-- a condition that has nothing to do with heavy metals-- is deadly and abusive.

3. Chemical Castration

Parents actually do this to their children. Lupron is the trade name of a powerful drug that blocks the production of testosterone. It has no accepted medical use for children, except for sometimes delaying puberty in children with serious hormonal disorders. Parents request it for their autistic children largely because it can prevent what they call "testosterone-related behaviors" like masturbation and curiosity about sex. It doesn't appear to matter to these parents that the treatment has severe long-term physical and psychological consequences.

Some parents train their kids with shock collars.

Others use starvation and treats.
Others use clickers and rewards.
Others think their children are human.

Minor difference of philosophy.

4. Dog Training
In addition to "neutering" children with autism, some parents and medical experts also advise the use of dehumanizing therapies that are in practice nearly identical to dog training. Applied Behavioral Analysis is evidence-based in that it does "work" to make autistic kids more compliant and communicative, but it comes at a cost to the children's mental wellbeing. One ABA method, for example, involves making children go hungry and then rewarding them with food when they speak. Another involves the use of clicker training. It's not surprising that ABA is wholly condemned by most autistic adults who were "trained" with these techniques.

5. Shock Collars

In one disturbing form of autism treatment, popularized by a leading facility, children with  autism are forced to wear backpack-like devices that administer electric shock when he child misbehaves. Noticing a pattern here? Many of the most deranged forms of autism treatment are cruel even compared to the way we treat animals. It's not surprising that the ASPCA recommends against shock collars to punish barking dogs. Why treat your child worse than you would treat your chihuahua?

6. Holding Therapy

Holding therapy sounds benign enough-- nothing wrong with holding a child, right? Right-- unless you use the form of "holding therapy" commonly prescribed by quacks to treat autism. In a previous article, I discussed just why this "therapy," which involves restraining children against their will and forcing them into physical contact and eye contact, is actually very dangerous and inhumane. Not only is there no evidence supporting the use of holding therapy, but it's psychologically traumatizing and even deadly. Children have actually died as a result of injuries incurred from holding therapy and related forms of abuse.

7. Restrictive Diets

Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with limiting your kids' intake of junk food, regardless of their neurology. And, of course, parents have an obligation to avoid certain foods when the child has a bona fide allergy to their ingredients. The problem is that restrictive diets for autism go far beyond what could be considered safe or healthy. I discussed here why I will absolutely never use these restrictive diets for my children. In short, they can cause serious nutritional deficiencies and can worsen food-related compulsions in autistic children, who as a group are already highly susceptible to disordered eating.

8. Adrenal Cortical Extract

Adrenal cortical extract-- essentially the stress hormone of cows, in the form of an injection-- makes no sense as an autism treatment. There is no conceivable reason that it would treat autism and no evidence that it does so, yet parents like Caroline's gladly inject it into their children. I'll never understand why these parents, who are so terrified of injecting their children with researched, sterile, life-saving vaccines, eagerly inject them with cow hormones. The side effects of ACE can be very serious, and most often include painful infections of the site of the injection. Why do that to a child?

9. Putting Children in Refrigerators
It sounds like a bad joke, but it's real. Parents who use "packing" to treat autism strip their children down to their underwear, wrap the children up in cold towels so that they can't move, and then actually put their children into refrigerators. They do this several times a week. The treatment, which is most heavily promoted in France, has no known effective uses, and while proponents claim the risk of hypothermia is low, I can't imagine that it is healthy or safe.