Then and now
David Gorski asks in 2006 why not just castrate them?
Ever since I found myself critically examining the claim that autism and autistic spectrum disorders are caused by mercury found in the preservative(thimerosal) used until recently in childhood vaccines, I thought that I’d heard of every dubious or quack autism therapy there is out there. Indeed, it is from that concept (that “autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning,”, which is not supported by epidemiological or preclinical evidence) that flows all sorts of dubious therapies to “remove” the mercury. Foremost among these questionable therapies is chelation therapy, using a chelating agent like EDTA or DMSA to bind to and remove this supposed mercury excess. This therapy is touted as being extremely effective in improving the behavioral abnormalities in autism, but, contrary to what its proponents say, it is neither efficacious nor safe. Indeed, six months ago it resulted in the death of an autistic boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama at the hands of a quack named Dr. Roy Kerry in a clinic near Pittsburgh.
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Yes, I thought I’d seen it all. I thought that no proposed treatment for autism could be so bizarre, so unbased in science, so risky, that it would shock me anymore.
Or so I thought until I read a rather lengthy account by Kathleen Seidel, who runs the Neurodiversity website about how the concept of “testosterone regulation” has risen from the underbelly of the fringe of the “mercury equals autism” community and started to make appearances in the mainstream press.
What caught my attention and shocked me so much? What therapy could once again make me wonder what these people are smoking or whether they’re on crack?
They’re talking about adding chemical castration with Lupron to chelation therapy as a “treatment” for autism.
Yes, chemical castration. Mark and David Geier, the father-son tag-team of VAERS database dumpster-divers who don’t seem to be too concerned about following Institutional Review Board guidelines while diving in, have latched on to the idea that lowering testosterone will “increase the efficacy” of chelation therapy. That’s why they want to give Lupron to children.
2006 that was.
Fifteen years is a long time, it seems.
He explains the few limited medical uses for Lupron – metastatic prostate cancer, endometriosis and uterine fibroids, and in vitro fertilization.
But we’re not talking about adults here. We’re talking about children. Are there any medically accepted uses of Lupron in children? Yes, but only one: Precocious puberty. Precocious puberty is defined as the onset of secondary sexual characteristics before 8 years old in girls and 9 years old in boys. It can be the result of tumors, central nervous system injury, or congenital anomalies.
The criteria for use of Lupron were strict – the idea was not to just start popping them for flimsy reasons.
Any bet as to whether the Geiers will adhere to these guidelines? (That is, of course, a sucker’s bet.) In my book, if you’re going to give a potent drug like Lupron to children, a drug that can almost completely shut down the synthesis of both male and female steroid hormones, you’d better have damned good evidence that it’s likely to help to make it worth the risk.
So……………………what makes it worth the risk now?
Presumably Gorski would say that in the case of curing autism, (a) Lupron doesn’t work, and (b) Lupron has the very bad side effect of chemical castration. But in the case of kids that don’t want to grow up into men or women, chemical castration is the whole point, not a bad side effect, so it’s OK. That actually makes some sense.
GW, if you read the whole thread Ophelia linked to on her previous post about this, you’ll see that Gorski’s words don’t allow him even that dubious bolt-hole.
What makes Lupron worth the risk now?
There is no agony on earth worse than knowing that you’re one sex on the inside when all people see are what you look like on the outside. It’s a psychological torture which knows no bounds.
“Why can’t they just behave how they want, look the way they want, love who they want, and not worry about what other people think? What’s so significant about whether you’re a boy or a girl if you’re always you? Love yourself,” people might say.
That is, people might say that if they were psychopathic monsters of cruelty intent on twisting the knife. Not MATTER if you’re a BOY or a GIRL? Why, that’s EVERYTHING! It’s our whole EXISTENCE. How else do we even start to develop a personality? Did we forget feminism?
If Lupron turned kids into disembodied brains resting in vats of formula with but a single eye floating on the surface attached to a single tendon, as long as they identified as either a Boy or a Girl and were validated as such… they would still be their authentic selves. So that’s why Lupron’s worth the risk.
The flippant answer is that there’s no money in that. I think a second answer is that the backlash against feminism is so strong, that the concept of being a personality outside of the bounds of gender is unthinkable. If a person doesn’t conform to the patriarchical ideals of gender, they simply must have the soul of the other sex and that can’t be countenanced!
MH: How do you tell whether you are channelling a backlash or channelling vanguardism? If you are sufficiently determined to keep ahead of the common herd, you will blind yourself to the fact that your your upward march has strayed on to an Escher staircase!