Updates on Thalia Vida Gardner

I was going to wait until there was an arrest to give further updates on this case-- a baby girl whose death was blamed on vaccines-- but it's been brought up recently in anti-vaccine groups and has gotten us a renewed wave of hate mail,  so I'll go ahead and share what (little) information I have. This information is based on what's publicly available on Thalia's mother, father, and grandparents' Facebook and crowdfunding pages.

Here is what I know:



-Tyler Justin Gardner is still awaiting and expecting criminal charges.

-Tyler does not have custody or care of his children right now; their son is in CPS custody.

-Tyler says he needs donations because he no longer has money to pay for the lawyer he was going to hire in his criminal defense.

-Karla and Tyler are no longer together.

Post by Thalia's grandmother. The translation is poor but the message gets through.

-Karla's family has a very negative opinion of Tyler and does not believe that Thalia's death was a vaccine reaction. They have not said much because they are legally limited in what they can say.

-The toxicology component of Thalia's autopsy is not yet complete. This process often takes months and it is not unusual that there is not an arrest yet.

-There is still no compelling evidence that Thalia died of a vaccine reaction.

-Tyler is still requesting money for a private autopsy to "prove" that his daughter died of a vaccine reaction. He clearly does not expect her initial autopsy to show a vaccine reaction, or he would not already be preparing for the outcome.

-In the months since Thalia's death, I have received hundreds of comments on the topic. They fall into three categories: rabid anti-vaxxers claiming that vaccines killed Thalia and that I'm a terrible person; angry (and, frankly, embarrassing) messages from Tyler and his mother showing wild inconsistencies in their story and claims about what happened... and dozens, like these, from people who say they are close to the family and know that vaccines did not cause her reaction. I have no way of confirming their authenticity, but they often include detailed information about the family that I was unaware of, that isn't public record.

No, there are no arrests or convictions yet. I can't say definitively that Thalia Vida was murdered by her father. But I can say that she absolutely, positively, did not die of a vaccine reaction, and that in the very least, the authorities have found reason to believe that her father is dangerous and an unfit parent. There will be no justice for Thalia until her toxicology results are complete and her father is given trial through due process, but I remain firmly by belief that her death had nothing at all to do with immunization.

For more information about this case, see our previous posts here.

4 Reasons Not to Use Holding Therapy for Autism

There are many unscientific treatments for autism, but few are as dangerous or ill-informed as the use of "holding therapy." In theory, holding therapy for autistic kids works by forcing children to bond with their parents or caregivers, repairing supposed damage that was caused by their parents' inability or refusal to form a healthy attachment. Holding therapy involves restraining a child (sometimes violently) and forcing him to make eye contact or to give and receive affection. This method is not only ineffective; it can be deadly. Here are four reasons to never use holding therapy as a treatment for autism.

1. It's based on misconceptions and bad science. The use of holding therapy for autism arose in the 1950s, when mothers were almost always blamed for the challenges of their special-needs kids. Psychologists believed that autism happened because of "refrigerator mothers" who weren't affectionate or interactive with their kids. We now know that "refrigerator" parenting has nothing to do with autism. Most children with autism are parented affectionately and attentively, and the causes of autism are now believed to be entirely, or almost entirely, genetic. Given that the hypothesis behind holding therapy for autism has been proven incorrect, there's no reason to encourage or use the therapy at all.

2. Holding therapy ignores everything we know about autistic children. The idea that autistic children don't enjoy being held is a stereotype, and a harmful one, at that. Many autistic children are highly affectionate, often seeking out human contact excessively and inappropriately. There isn't a reason to force a child into something that she would seek out willingly. We also know that autistic children tend to become very upset by unwanted touches and unwanted eye-contact, and this could actually cause behavioral and developmental regressions.

3. It creates confusion about rules and body contact. Regardless of age, development, or emotional structure, all children need to know the rules for safe touches and contact with other people. A child needs to know that she is not allowed to touch people without their consent, that they cannot touch her without her consent, and that some types of touch (specifically, hitting and sexual contact) are never acceptable. When you restrain an autistic child against her will as part of holding therapy, you tell her that it's okay for one person to restrain another person and that adults don't have to respect a child's personal space. This can set up a dangerous precedent and could lead to the child being abused, or abusing someone else, due to confusion about touching rules.

4. Holding therapy kills children. Many special-needs children have died as a result of injuries incurred from holding therapy. This is probably the most serious and worrisome consequence of holding therapy for autistic children. Children have suffocated, starved, and been physically crushed by adult caregivers who were using holding therapy in a deeply misguided attempt to cure developmental or psychological problems in children. There is no reason to subject children to these dangerous practices because of a flawed and outdated understanding of the needs of autistic children. If you have, or know, a child with autism, contact his pediatrician for help with evidence-based therapies, rather than resorting to holding therapy and other dangerous practices.

13 AIDS Denialists Who Died of AIDS

When I was 19, I met a woman in Saint Louis who called herself Brenda. Brenda was open about the fact that she had HIV. She was also open about the fact that it was "nothing serious," that she did not have AIDS, and that she was never going to get AIDS. I found out through a friend-of-a-friend that Brenda passed away a year and a half ago from pneumonia, after two years of wasting and suffering.

Rest in peace, you poor, misguided woman.

AIDS denialism-- a loosely conglomerated movement comprised primarily of HIV-positive conspiracy theorists-- has its appeal. Who wouldn't, after hearing the grim diagnosis of HIV, want to believe that the virus is innoccuous? Proponents of AIDS denialism believe that HIV is a harmless "carrier virus" and that it has nothing to do with AIDS. They attribute AIDS symptoms to recreational drugs, smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise-- even things like too little sunlight. Like other medical conspiracy theorists, this one kills-- many.

One would hope that, over the last three decades and after millions of AIDS related deaths, the conspiracy theory would be over, but it's still alive and well. Unfortunately, thousands of HIV-positive people still skip condoms and avoid treatment because they refuse to accept the virus's link to AIDS. 

The list is extensive, but here are just a few outspoken AIDS denialists who have died of AIDS.

1. Christine Maggiore

The founder of "Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives," Christine Maggiore successfully convinced thousands of HIV-positive people to avoid treatment and to practice unprotected sex. After refusing to take antiretrovirals during pregnancy, she gave birth to daughter who appeared to be HIV-positive. The girl was severely underweight and frequently sick, but Maggiore denied that her daughter could possibly have AIDS. Tragically-- and predictably-- Maggiore's daughter died of AIDS at age three. Her death could have been prevented by proper treatment.

Christine Maggiore herself died a few years later of pneumonia and a systemic yeast infection-- two opportunistic infections characteristic of advanced AIDS.

2. Marietta Ndziba

A classic example of someone who trusted multi-level marketing in lieu of effective medical care, Marietta Ndziba was one of many South African AIDS sufferers who believed claims that multivitamin supplements could cure HIV and prevent AIDS. Shortly before her death, she claimed that she was extremely healthy despite her AIDS diagnosis, attributing her success to micronutrient supplements.

Marietta Ndziba died of AIDS while pursuing her multivitamin regimen. Her relatives, desperate to stand by her AIDS denialism, claimed that she died of a stress headache.

3. David Pasquarelli

The leader of the AIDS denialist group ACT UP San Francisco, David Pasquarelli was a good-hearted but deeply misled activist. Pasquarelli believed that HIV and AIDS were completely unrelated phenomena. He believed that AIDS was the product of a homophonic and eugenic government conspiracy, and that people with HIV could lead healthy lives without medical treatment.

Pasquarelli died of AIDS at age 37. His causes of death read as a nearly all-inclusive list of AIDS-defining conditions. Among his terminal diseases were anemia, thrush, meningitis, mycobacterium, CMV and PCP.

4. Casper G. Schmidt

AIDS denialism is even scarier when its proponents include medical practitioners. Dr. Casper Schmidt, a licensed psychiatrist, authored an article entitled, "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS," which suggests that AIDS is nothing more than a massive case of "epidemic hysteria." Schmidt believed not only that HIV did not cause AIDS, but also that AIDS itself did not exist. (Note that this was in the mid-1980s, when AIDS denialism might have still appeared somewhat plausible.)

Predictably and tragically, Dr. Schmidt died of AIDS ten years after authoring his AIDS-denialist article. Proponents of his theories still cite his "research," even though Schmidt's death itself reveals the fallacy of his theory.

5. Jody Wells

An outspoken AIDS denialist, Jody Wells founded the UK-based AIDS denialist newsletter "Continuum." He and the other editors of Continuum promoted the notion that AIDS was a conspiracy and that it was unrelated to HIV. Wells believed that AIDS fears were founded in homophobia, not science.

Jody Wells died of AIDs in 1995.

6. Tony Tompsett

One of Continuum's most prolific contributors, Tony Tompsett wrote for the AIDS denialist movement from 1993 until his death in 1998. At age 39, Tompsett passed away from Kaposi's sarcoma, pneumonia and toxoplasmosis-- three diseases utterly characteristic of HIV infection and AIDS.

7. Huw Christie

A gay rights activist and AIDS denialist, Huw Christie also wrote and edited the denialist magazine Continuum. He died in 2001 of Kaposi's sarcoma-- a herpes-related tumor viewed as one of the classic AIDS-defining illnesses.

All of Continuum's editors have now died of AIDS, so the denialist newsletter is no longer published.

8. Sylvie Cousseau

An extremely vocal AIDS denialist, Sylvie Cousseau gathered testimonials from "healthy" people who were living with HIV and refusing medical treatment. Most, if not all, of the people who contributed testimonials to Cousseau's list have developed AIDS and/or died from the condition.

Cousseau himself died of AIDS in 2001, passing away with all the characteristic symptoms of the disease.

9. Scott Zanetti

One of the contributors to Cousseau's list of "AIDS-free" HIV sufferers, Scott Zanetti was active in the AIDS denialist community. Shortly after authoring a heartwarming testimonial about his medication-free, illness-free, HIV-positive life, Zanetti in 2002. His cause of death? Yes, you guessed it. AIDS.

10. Peter Mokaba

South African politician Peter Mokaba, a prominent AIDS denialist, was the ruler of the ruling political party known as the African National Congress. Mokaba was HIV positive, but refused treatment because he viewed pharmaceutical drugs as poisonous. He died in 2002 of AIDS-related pneumonia.

11. Raphael Lombardo

A regular poster to the "Virusmyth" AIDS denialist message board, Raphael Lombardo wrote in May of 1995 that he was HIV positive but not at all sick. He claimed that he was extremely healthy and knew that his HIV was harmless, so he refused any treatment with conventional drugs. Lombardo died of AIDS only a year after claiming that he was in extraordinarily good health.

12. Jack Levine

Jack Levine's story is a haunting example of how dogmatic conspiracy theorists can turn violently on a person who questions their assessments. Jack Levine was a regular contributor to the Virusmyth messageboards also frequented by Raphael Lombardo. When Levine fell ill, he began to question AIDS denialism and fellow board contributors turned aggressively on him. He died of AIDS in 2002, and the messageboard was removed to hide the shocking record of other members' cruelty toward him as he dealt with advanced, untreated AIDS.

13. Kelly Jon Landis

A self-proclaimed "dissident saint," Kelly Jon Landis believed that AIDS drugs themselves caused every symptom of AIDS. He was an avid cycist, health food fanatic and fan of holistic medicine. Unfortunately, he carried his assumptions about "healthy" living a bit too far, assuming that his lifestyle could protect him from the development of AIDS. Landis died of AIDS in 2007 after a long battle with advanced infection.

Unfortunately, these deaths are only a small fraction of the AIDS denialists who have died of AIDS. More can be seen at AIDStruth.org. Although these deaths were tragic, some good may have come from them. They have demonstrated the inherent fallacy in AIDS denialism and other forms of blind conspiracy theory. Because of the examples they have set, more people with HIV may seek effective treatment-- and, equally importantly, may take measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

No, Anti-Vaxxers, I Don't Have Munchausen By Proxy-- But You Might.

Anti-vaccine activists have hurled a number of false, and often strange, accusations at me since I first began publicly advocating for vaccines. Mostly, I hear that I'm not a real person; I'm a sockpuppet for the pharmaceutical industry. I also hear pretty often that I'm a shill. Most recently, a number of anti-vaccine activists informed each other that my daughter does not really have autism. They say that I conditioned her to act autistic, either because I crave victimhood or because I get paid by the pharmaceutical industry for it. They have publicly stated that I suffer from Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

MBP is a very serious form of child abuse. It involves a caregiver (usually, but not always, the child's mother) claiming that a child has symptoms of serious illness, and either behaviorally forcing the child to act sick, or actually poisoning, starving, or injuring the child to cause sickness. The victims of MBP are in and out of hospitals with mysterious symptoms. They miss school. They're underweight. Many of them die from their mothers poisoning or starving them. If I had MBP, it would mean that my kids were in very serious danger, and for their sake, I would hope that someone would intervene if that allegation were true.

So let me at least clear this one thing up: no. My children are healthy and very well cared for. My youngest's biggest health problem is that he's cutting his teeth too early and it bugs him. My oldest child's biggest health problem is that she makes poops the size of submarines that I can't flush. They see their doctor routinely, are up-to-date on their immunizations, have never had an unexplained illness, and have never been hospitalized except at birth. My oldest was diagnosed with autism by a team of well-qualified experts who conducted over a dozen tests and closely observed her at home and on the classroom. There is absolutely no merit to that accusation.

The thing that I would find funny if it weren't so tragic is that this accusation came from the anti-vaccine movement, of all places. Not all anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant parents have MBP-- I was once anti-vaccine, and I did not have MBP then and don't have it now-- but almost all people with MBP are anti-vaccine. The anti-vaccine movement provides a safe haven for parents with MBP, both because these parents can often get fraudulent diagnoses from unlicensed health care providers, and because the conspiracy-theorist culture of the anti-vax movement encourages them. It's easy to hide medical abuse when you're among conspiracy theorists who claim that the government hides vaccine injuries and kidnaps babies for no reason.

Many might recall Lacey Spears, the notorious "mommy blogger" whose son spent his entire short life under the care of naturopaths, bouncing from one vague diagnosis to the other, before finally succumbing to poisoning by his mother. And just recently, we wrote about Caroline, a little girl whose parents have been subjecting her to nothing short of medical torture in an attempt to cure her alleged vaccine injury. Caroline's family shows classic symptoms of MBP, right down to their attention-seeking Facebook pages and blogs where they discuss her "struggle."

The anti-vaccine movement is so filled  with Munchausen by proxy that it's alarming. In fact, anti-vaccine websites, forums, and Facebook pages have support forums specifically set aside for parents who say they are being "falsely" accused MBP. Anti-vaccine support groups are full of people giving accounts of what can only be described as MBP symptoms. They diagnose with own children with food allergies, autism, brain damage, encephalitis, heavy metal poisoning, chemical sensitivities, autoimmune disease, systemic yeast infections, and intestinal parasites. They imagine that their children's bodies are delicate snowflakes that can't withstand the vaccines safely tolerated by all but one in a million kids. When their doctors tell them that that their children do not have these conditions, they go elsewhere. They accuse their doctors of fraud and seek naturopaths who back up their misdiagnosis.

Again and again and again, anti-vaccine activists claim that their doctors are involved in fraud or cover-up. When they diagnose their children with lead and mercury poisoning, and the doctors say that the bloodwork doesn't show it, they seek the aid of labs that willfully falsify test results-- enablers of Munchausen by proxy. When they diagnose their own children with encephalitis and their doctors say that crying after a vaccine is normal and not a sign of brain inflammation, they spread conspiracy theories about cover-ups-- neverminding, of course, that children with untreated encephalitis invariably die. When they diagnose their own children with vague food allergies and insensitivities, restricting their diets to the point of causing severe malnutrition, they insist that doctors just "don't know" and that their claims as parents matter more than the results of diagnostic tests.

I would be writing this post for weeks straight if I found all the accounts that sound like Munchausen by proxy by anti-vaccine activists, but here are just a few screencaps of just a few of them.

The thing that's crystal-clear is that the most prominent members of the anti-vaccine movement show all the most worrisome signs of Munchausen by proxy. Their children tend to suffer from vague symptoms that can not be explained through medicine or science. They diagnose their own children with conditions that doctors say they don't have. They put their children through experimental treatments that are condemned by mainstream medical experts. They hop from one "expert" to another when caregivers begin to notice signs that the parents may be responsible for the illness. The scariest thing is that many of them are successful not only in abusing their own children, but also in convincing others to do the same. Anti-vaccine forums have largely become support groups for people with Munchausen by proxy who are helping each other maintain abuse without prosecution or accountability. It's dangerous and it's deadly.

I have two very happy, healthy children. I am grateful for that every single day. My oldest has autism, but I not only don't consider that to be a disease, but her form of autism would be impossible to "condition" or create. There is no way to condition a six-month-old to have gross motor delays or to condition a two-year-old to have echolalia, or to condition a five-year-old to write entire pages of text in perfect mirror-image. These traits are not the result of my conditioning, but of a unique and beautiful neurology that I joyfully accept and embrace. If you could possibly accuse me of having Munchausen by proxy, it might be time to check and make sure that you're not in fact looking into a mirror.

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.

Extremist Natural Parenting Creates Horrible, Unhappy Children

(Stock image- this is NOT one of the children discussed in this post.)

When I was eighteen, I met a family that at first seemed to be exactly who I wanted to be one day. They were radical, natural-living parents with three kids who spent their days picking berries and playing outside. At the time, they were eight, seven, and four years old, and they seemed like the happiest family I could imagine. For the sake of protecting their privacy, we’ll call the kids A, B, and C.

I was thrilled. I told the parents all about my aspirations to be a mother one day and to do all the things they were doing: natural birthing, alternative medicine, cloth diapering, homeschooling, gentle discipline. I even told the mother that she was exactly the kind of mom I hoped to be one day. And at the time, I meant it.

Much to my excitement, they hired me as their babysitter… and I found out what radical “natural” parenting is really like, in all its horrors. To be clear: there is nothing wrong with gentle discipline. There is nothing wrong with homeschooling. There is nothing wrong with green living. These are all choices that I whole-heartedly support. But what this family did was so extreme that it rocked my world, and, luckily, taught me a thing or two about how not to parent.

The first time I babysat for them, I was eager to read books to them. But, for a homeschooling family, they had very few—maybe fifteen altogether. Worse: the kids not only couldn’t read the books, but the older two, at seven and eight years old, barely knew how to identify any letters at all.

“Do your parents not read to you?”

“Sometimes,” B explained with the severe speech impediment she shared with her two siblings, “But they think it’s better for us to see the real world.”

“I don’t like the real world,” A said sharply, “I like video games.”

“Oh?” I was a little surprised. Too natural for books but they played video games, “Your parents don't have rules about video games?"

“We don’t really ave rules.”

“You don’t have rules at all?”

“Mommy makes requests but we can choose whether or not to do what she asks.”

I tilted my head a little to the side. That seemed strange to me, but then again, these people were over a decade older than me and seemed to know what they were doing. They were confident in their parenting skills, and if it was working, it was working, right?

The next time I babysat for them, A played violent video games the whole time. Because he couldn’t read, he kept demanding that I read the dialogue to him. When I reminded him to say please and thank you, he refused and threw the controller at me. I told him he wasn’t allowed to play any more video games until his mother came back—a decision that triggered a wild, flailing, screaming tantrum on his part. He told me that he hated me and called me a “mother*cking b*tch”—this from an eight-year-old, mind you-- and told me to go “f*ck” myself. His little brother and sister cowered in a corner, looking like they had seen this many times before.

When his parents came home, I was shaking and explained to them what happened. They shrugged as if I had told them he’d eaten too many cookies and said that “He’s like that sometimes.”

Then they blew my mind by telling me not to ever use punishments like that again.

“In our family, we operate by consensus and compassion,” the mom sanctimoniously explained, “We don’t tell people to do anything; we ask them nicely. If they don’t do it, they have that choice.”

“So what about when he doesn’t obey me?” I asked, incredulous.

“He doesn’t have to.”

“So when I ask him to say please and he refuses…?”

"He doesn't have to."

"And if he curses at me again?"

“It’s his choice in how he communicates.”

She pointed to a print-out on the wall from a gentle-parenting website and told me to read it to her kids whenever I was asking them to do something. I can’t remember it verbatim, but it said something like, “I want you to do this only if you can do it with the joy of a child feeding ducks. I don’t want you to do this because you fear me or because you think I you will disappoint me."

The next time I babysat for the family, I found myself reading and reciting the line over and over, to no avail. The pattern continued: A had tantrums, B was afraid, and C obliviously played with little toddler-toys and didn’t seem to notice the state of turmoil in the family.

One day, C was crying inconsolably the entire time I was there. He kept pointing to his genitals and crying, “Ouch!” I asked him if I could look and saw one of the most horrifying injuries I’ve ever seen—his scrotum bright-red and swollen to nearly the size of a softball, clearly infected. A and B informed me that four-year-old C had gotten a tick bite on his scrotum that had become infected, and their parents were treating it with homemade plantain-leaf salve.

When they came home, I brought my concerns to their attention, and, much to my relief, they took him to an actual pediatrician the next day and got him a prescription for antibiotics. I’d like to think that they would have done it even if no one had found out about their son’s infection, but I have a sinking feeling that they would have let the infection fester until it made him sterile or dead.

Eight-year-old A’s violent tantrums grew worse and worse, and eventually, at wit’s end, I finally said, “Look, your parents don’t believe in punishment, but I do. You are going to stop acting like this. You are going to sit down, behave yourself, and practice writing your name. Do you understand me?”

He screamed, “F*ck you!” to me and ran outside.

The next time I came over, I saw him sitting smugly on the couch with his arms crossed.

“I can’t let you past the door,” his mother said apologetically, “Because you’re not allowed here anymore.”

“Not allowed? What did I do?”

“Our family operates by consensus, and you don’t have A’s permission to be here anymore. B and C still like you a lot and want you to babysit, but A won’t allow you in the home so you’ll need to do it somewhere else if you’re still interested.”

I tried. I really tried. Because somehow, I had really started to love those kids. After a few months, I eventually taught B how to read short sentences—she was very smart and caught on quickly-- and I was playing fun make-believe games with C. I grew close with their father and tried to understand his parenting choices. I suspended disbelief and tried to convince myself that the parents knew what was right for their own kids. I had to make sense of it. It couldn't be as bad as it seemed, could it?

Then it got even more disturbing. I saw that their mother, completely covered in bruises. She looked like a stereotypical victim of domestic violence, but I knew her husband wasn't the one who did it.

"Are you okay?" I asked her quietly, feeling truly sorry for her. How awful, to be assaulted by your own child.

"I'm trying not to make a big deal about it," she said.

I had been biting my tongue for a long time, wanting to believe that this family knew more than me about parenting because they were older and more experienced, but I couldn’t hold my words in any longer.

“Your kids need help,” I told her, shaking.

“I already have a therapy appointment for A,” she conceded. I wondered what else she wanted to say. I wondered if her experiment in permissive parenting had ended and if she had finally concluded that she had messed up, terribly, and that her kids were hurt because of it.

About five years ago, I spoke to someone who knew the family and I was disturbed, but not surprised, by what I found out. B had desperately wanted to go to school and was enrolled in public school that year—that was the good news—and her little brother C ended up coming along. After hearing how much fun they were having, A asked to attend school, too, where he was quickly expelled for his frequent violent behavior. B and C were doing okay, but A had become so dangerous and volatile—a threat to his parents, his peers, and his siblings—that his parents were struggling to decide what to do with him.

I wish I had never met those children, not because they were “bad,” but because it absolutely broke my heart that their parents had made such reckless decisions in the name of “nature.” Their children were hurt by their negligence and dedication to a laissez-faire parenting attitude that eschews discipline and education in favor of allowing children to make their own rules.

A, B, and C are all teenagers and young adults. I think about them often, because they gave me an opportunity that I couldn’t have gotten from anywhere else. I learned how to care for kids because of them—and I learned how not to. They were difficult children, but they were still children, and they were children who I had ultimately loved deeply and completely.

Children deserve to be loved, and part of love is disciplining, not just “gently” and passively, but sometimes firmly and authoritatively. Children need guidance. Children need to sometimes be told, “No.” Children sometimes need to be punished. And children sometimes need to know that the world isn’t always going to care about their feelings or dignity, and that sometimes they have to do as they’re told because it’s what’s necessary.

Thank you, A, B, and C, for what you did. Thank you for letting me know you and love you. And above all else, thank you for showing me exactly how I don’t want to raise my own children.

An Open Letter to Karla Gardner

Karla,

I know you loved your daughter. The pain you were in when she was dying was apparent with every word you posted. It unnerved me when I read about her tragic death. My youngest is only a couple of months younger than Thalia, and looks a bit like her, and when I saw her eyes I could think of nothing besides how I would feel if it were my own child. I can’t imagine the pain you’re feeling, and if there was anything I could do to bring your daughter back, I would do it. Mother to mother, I want you to know that I am truly, deeply sorry for your loss.

Your husband, Tyler Justin Gardner, was arrested on charges of battery and domestic violence in May of last year. I’ve been abused before. I know what it feels like. I can’t be sure of what convinced you to take your husband back when he was released from jail, but I can guess. You wanted to think that he could get better. That it wasn’t one-sided; you somehow provoked it. That it wouldn’t happen again, and that it certainly wouldn’t happen to your children. You felt guilty about your kids witnessing violence but the idea of raising them without a father—especially your youngest—was scary and inconceivable. And, really, you loved him. Drug addiction, violence, and questionable parenting aside, you really loved your husband.

Your daughter got her shots when she was eleven months old. Some of them were delayed—I know what that’s like, too, because I used to delay my kids’ shots. Vaccines are scary. You can’t go online without encountering horror stories of things going wrong. She had a fever that night and was fussy, but the next day, everything was back to normal. You went through a move and dealt with your daily life the same as always. The people caring for Thalia said she was well, and you were relieved, and the world moved on.

Then, at some point, your daughter was in your husband’s care, and the next thing you knew, she was in the hospital with opiates in her bloodstream and what the doctors later diagnosed as shaken baby syndrome. I won’t carry you back through what I’m sure was the most horrible day of your life. But you lost your baby. And every arrow was pointing to the idea that your husband was responsible. I can’t even conceive of how much that would hurt: not just losing your baby, but facing the distinct possibility that your husband is a murderer.

But, then, wait—your husband swears that the opiates in Thalia’s bloodstream were caused by naloxone (strange, since naloxone doesn’t cause a positive drug screen). Maybe the hospital was wrong, after all, right? And suddenly a bunch of friends online are telling you that they’ve heard of vaccines causing shaken baby syndrome. It doesn’t sound like it makes sense (because it doesn’t, and has been disproven by actual scientists) but in your grief and pain, you wanted to believe it.

After all, she did have her shots nine days before she died. And nine days is practically the same thing as eight days, which you might as well go ahead and call six days. And four vaccines is pretty much the same as six, which might as well be ten, and you’ll accept it when someone online tells you that it’s really twenty. Grieving minds don’t follow reason or logic. Plus, there are lots of parents who have been accused of shaken baby syndrome who say they didn’t do it. And your husband is a changed man, right? He’s different now. He couldn’t have done this. He loves you, and he loves your children, right?

And that’s what motivated you to support it when the internet collective co-opted your daughter’s death as a means of fueling their stance against vaccines, right?

Physicians are professionals. They don’t attend college, med school, and residency to do guesswork on Google about how to diagnose a dying child. They would diagnose her with shaken baby syndrome only if she had characteristic symptoms of SBS that could not otherwise be explained. And doctors don’t, despite claims to the contrary, receive kickbacks by giving vaccines. There isn’t a doctor in the world who would fabricate evidence of child abuse for no reason. And even if there was, the doctors, nurses, and paramedics who treated your daughter weren’t even the same ones who administered her vaccines. Why would they protect the career and reputation of the doctor who vaccinated Thalia? These questions are in your mind, but you’re pushing them back. You don’t have the answers and you’re afraid because part of you knows the answers aren’t there.

I understand how it happened. I really do. And, honestly, Karla, I think that pretty much anything someone says or does while grieving a child is excusable. I don’t blame you at all for supporting the people who say vaccines killed your daughter. But I do want you to one day realize that their motives are deadly, and that more innocent children will die if they use your daughter’s death as an excuse to not vaccinate their children.

You believe that, despite her diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, your daughter’s death was actually caused by encephalitis. Did you know that the most common causes of encephalitis are vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles and Hib? Vaccines are extremely effective in preventing these conditions and we’ve seen a tremendous drop in death rates among babies by vaccinating them. Even considering the remote possibility that vaccines cause encephalitis, a reaction estimated in fewer than one in a million children, the most effective way to prevent encephalitis is still vaccination. Children can, will, and do die when their parents buy into fear-mongering and avoid immunization.

I think that the odds that you’ll react well to this open letter are even slimmer than the odds of a vaccine causing encephalitis, but I’m writing this because of the remote possibility that you might see it and redact your support of the people who are exploiting your daughter’s death to fit their agenda. You can save the lives of other children by accepting, as painful as it is, that someone shook your daughter to death.

You can go ahead. Yell at me, threaten me, tell me you hate me, call me a bad person, wish harm on my kids, correct my mistakes, insist that I’m wrong. Or don’t respond at all. You can say, or not say, whatever it is that you need. But I hope that part of me gets through to you, because children’s lives are at stake.

I sincerely wish you strength, healing, and safety during this difficult time. You’re stronger than you think.

Juniper Russo

Why Trust Vaccines if Pluto Isn't a Planet?

After the tragic death of baby Thalia Vida Gardner, I was hit with a number of attacks from anti-vaccine and anti-science activists, who claimed that her death—ruled by the hospital as shaken baby syndrome—was in fact a vaccine reaction. All of the comments were dangerous. Some of them were infuriating. A few were down-right hilarious.

It takes a lot to be able to laugh at anything when you’re in the middle of a discussion about a dead baby. But somehow, a warrior against science by the name of Matthew Amore managed to get me to do it. He posted:

“When people are single minded, there is no point in conversing with them. People are so easy to say that science is right, and trust these people.. And that's fine.. I just would never live like that. I make decisions because I want to, not because I am told to. Science is NEVER wrong.. Remember the planet Pluto?"

In other words, Mr. Amore doesn’t trust science because it’s sometimes wrong. Or: “How do you know that vaccines are safe, if Pluto isn’t a planet anymore?”

It’s not a question that deserves an answer, or at least, that’s what I told myself at first. And then I remembered that there was a time when I had similar thoughts. I was anti-vaccine once upon a time. I was ignorant, but I wasn’t stupid. My reasoning was that cover-ups and bad science had happened before. For centuries, otherwise-intelligent scientists believed that lead pipes were safe. At one point, cigarettes were prescribed as a treatment for asthma. Men of science once believed in humors, and in blood-letting, and in astrology. As Matthew Amore pointed out, scientists classified the dwarf planet Pluto as a planet beginning from 1930 to 2006.

With scientists being wrong about so many things, was it really so far-fetched to believe that today’s scientists could be wrong about vaccines?

Was it really so hard to believe that science, as a construct, might be flawed, and that the answers to health and sustainability might lie not in laboratories and universities, but in crystals and plant oils?

No. It wasn’t. And that’s why so many people, like me, fall for it when people question science. We know it’s been wrong before. We know it can be wrong again.

But here’s what it comes down to, and what turned me from a “fence-sitter” who bought into pseudoscience, to a skeptic and rational thinker. When science has been proven wrong, it has always—every single time, with no exceptions—been proven wrong by more science. Every time there has been a mistake or misunderstanding within the scientific community, it was found out by brilliant researchers working together using the scientific method. It has never once been proven wrong by a spiritual vision, a surprise visit from a deity, or an act of magic.

Am I willing to accept criticisms of currently accepted science? Oh, yes, absolutely. Changes and criticisms are the foundations of science. Scientists love to wonder and love to have questions with no answers. They love to search, and research, and experiment. So, when I see a headline about a groundbreaking new study carried out by leading scientists, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be the first to read it and analyze it. Sometimes it will be a good study and sometimes it will be one of the bay studies that passes peer review. If it’s a good study? Great, let’s look into it some more. If it’s a bad study? Also great. Let’s pick it apart in skeptic forums and find out how to repeat the research.

However, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be interested in reading or analyzing things that are fundamentally not science. “Ohio Grandma Finds the Miracle Cure for Eczema!” with no researchers backing her supposed claims, isn’t science. “Natural News Reveals 30 Ways Vaccines Can Kill You!”, based on anecdotes from Facebook, isn’t science. “How Reflexology Can Cure Your Depression,” without a single citation of peer-reviewed evidence, isn’t science. And, Matthew Amore: when the internet goes wild blaming a baby’s abuse-related death on vaccines, when no medical experts back the diagnosis of vaccine injury made by his alleged abusers, that’s not science, either.

I don’t doubt that the day may come when we find out that some things about conventional medicine are harmful. In fact, we’re already seeing some of it. The overuse of antibiotics (particularly in livestock) in past decades has created an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The over-prescription of addictive narcotics has created an entire subculture of addicts, and of physicians who enable it. The medically unnecessary use of cesarean section has caused some women to undergo the complications of surgery when it wasn’t wanted or warranted. These are issues that are real, and they may, one day, look just as primitive to medical experts as blood-letting looks to us now. But at the end of the day, solutions aren’t going to come in the form of quacks selling herbs from their garages. They’re going to come from leading scientists who practice science.

Can science be wrong? Yes. When it is, it’s proven wrong by logic and reason. If you can give me evidence, using logic and reason, that vaccines are dangerous, we’ll talk. If not, I’ll keep vaccinating my kids.

Even if Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.

Thalia Vida Gardner: Did Vaccines Really Kill Her?

In the days in which I feared immunization, there were few things that panicked me more than what I saw today: stories of children killed by vaccines. Today, I saw them in the form of screenshots from the Facebook account of Karla Gardner, a mom whose eleven-month-old baby died after receiving routine immunizations. The way the screenshots are selected and placed by those sharing the story makes it clear that vaccines were to blame, and it's a chilling thing to witness:

A healthy baby girl goes in for her shots...

Spikes a high fever...

Becomes very, very sick...

Needs a miracle...

Won't make it through the night...

And passes away.

These stories are sacred to the anti-vaccine movement. When you see or read about a dead child, you don't care about numbers and statistics. You're consumed by fear that it could happen to you. You want justice for the child and the parents. You want to know that it won't happen again. You'll gladly donate to the pages set up to fund-raise for the child's funeral.

Through all the fear, you might not notice, for example, that on the mother's Facebook page, the posts about her daughter's death appear on March 6th, an entire nine days after she was vaccinated. You might be so distracted by the grief and agony that you don't see that, in the nine days between the check-up and her daughter's death, Mom wasn't posting about having a critically ill daughter, as she would be if her child were in the throes of encephalitis.

She was posting selfies:

You might also fail to notice that, in a conversation with a caregiver, the caregiver said that Thalia Vida was "100%" and was hard to keep up with her because she was being so active. She had only a small red bump at the site of the injection:

She was actually quite well in photos taken on February 28, halfway between the shots and her hospitalization:

Dig a little deeper and you'll find some other things that are rather troubling-- like that, immediately, Karla Gardner's friends kept the details of the story hushed:

You might discover that Thalia's father has been insistent that he had nothing to do with his daughter's death:

Or you might find the page where he's asking for money to help him  defend himself against murder charges find the real cause of her death, since he says the hospital was wrong.

You might find that Thalia Vida's mother didn't say that vaccines were the cause of her daughter's death until several days later, at which point it came up because the hospital had a specific accusation:

Or you might find Thalia Vida's aunt's account of what happened, starting with the day of the incident:

And continuing later:

According to her aunt's account, Thalia Vida was hospitalized after she overdosed on an opiate. Police found a substance scattered on the floor of her home that matches the description of black tar heroin. Hospital staff later discovered that her brain swelling was actually consistent with injuries associated with shaken baby syndrome, which was her final cause of death.

I'm not a judge and I'm not on the jury for this case. But I will say that it seems to me that one of two things happened:

1. Thalia Vida suffered a severe reaction to a vaccine, which is something that happens in fewer than one in a million cases, and died of vaccine-induced encephalitis. She was for some reason well between when the shot was given and when she developed encephalitis a full eight days later. The doctors, nurses, coroner, and police all engaged in a cover-up of her vaccine-related death. To cover for a pharmaceutical company that none of them have any connection to, they accused the parents of shaking Thalia Vida and/or allowing her to access dangerous prescription drugs, including scattering them through the child's home after her death. The parents are now being prosecuted because of this cover-up. Thalia Vida's aunt was also in on the conspiracy and lied from the moment of her hospitalization in order to accuse two innocent people of child abuse.

2. Eight days after a check-up that found that she was well, Thalia Vida's father left drugs where she could access them and shook her, both of which caused her to experience swelling and bleeding in her brain. She died a horrible, premature, and unnecessary death the next day, a full nine days after her immunizations. When the parents realized that they could get sympathy, money, and help covering up the crime by calling it a vaccine injury, they began promoting the idea that vaccines killed their baby.

I'll let you decide for yourself which is more likely.