Boxing With Shadows: Biomedical Intervention

One treatment that we explored with Stovie is called “Biomedical Intervention.” This type of treatment has a moderate amount of success with children who are thought to have environmentally-induced Autistic symptoms. The thinking behind this type of intervention is that children who are suffering from environmentally-induced symptoms have difficulty throwing off toxins, and eliminating them from their system.

All of us take in a certain amount of toxins through our environment and food every day. For example, tuna contains mercury, a heavy and toxic metal. If you eat tuna, you are very likely eating a small amount of mercury. However, most of us are able to discharge that amount of toxicity through normally functioning filtering systems like the liver, kidneys, the bowels, sweating and so on. When our body is unable to “throw off” these toxins successfully, they accumulate and begin destroying our body. In the case of Autistic children, it is thought that the toxins destroy part of the brain and/or corrupt the bowel system. Proponents of biomedical intervention believe that through a special cleansing protocol, called chelation (kee-lay-shun) the body can be assisted in throwing off toxins. That, in addition to taking in the correct nuero-support supplements, is thought to increase brain function and overall health. To find out more in-depth information about biomedical intervention, click here.

The case for the effectiveness of biomedical intervention is, of course, not corroborated by the FDA. It is not covered by insurance, and only certain doctors are even familiar with the protocol. I don’t know if there are any in Jacksonville who are familiar with it, as we used a doctor from Wisconsin who made visits to Jacksonville periodically. He no longer makes visits at this time. We were strongly discouraged by our pediatricians from participating in biomedical intervention, but we knew others who had experienced a degree of success with it so we thought we would give it a try.

One of the reasons we chose to move forward with this type of treatment was because until the age of 6-8 months, Stovie was developing typically. It was only after he began the intense rounds of vaccinations that he began to show signs of delay. At the time, our pediatrician was using vaccines stored in thimerisol, a derivative of mercury. It is thought by Autism activists, but denied by pharmaceutical companies, that the thimerisol somehow permeates the containers when stored in less than perfect conditions, and is shot directly into the child’s blood stream when they are vaccinated. This allows the toxin to bypass typical layers of filtering (skin, mucus, saliva) and go straight to the nuerocenter where it can do the most damage to the child’s fragile developing brain. Again, this is denied by pediatricians and the pharmaceutical companies which produce the vaccines.

I chose to change pediatricians to one who would allow me to be in control of my child’s vaccination schedule and who uses thimerisol-free vaccines (Progressive Pediatrics in Jacksonville). Biomedical treatment included three rounds of testing, 30 supplements per day (mostly Omega 3s, B vitamins, and other brain-functioning supplements), plus periodic IVs of B complex concentrate. We noticed an improvement in the first eight months of treatment, particularly following the IV treatments. But after that, the results leveled off. It seemed as if the doctor we were working with had no clear goal in mind, so we discontinued treatment at one year, and focused all of our efforts on ABA (Boxing With Shadows: ABA).

If I had to choose between biomedical treatment and ABA, I would choose ABA hands down. However, many parents report that they couldn’t even get their children to respond to ABA therapy until after they commenced with biomedical intervention. That’s one of the things that makes Autism so difficult to deal with. Each child is different, and you never know what treatment will work until you try it. Hopefully if there are any of you out there who are considering BI for your children, this will help with your decision. As a side note, BI has not proven to be effective for children with purile Autsim.