Speaker 1: A media.
Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, it's James here. If you don't listen to
Speaker 2: it could happen here, you might not recognize me. My
Speaker 2: name is James Stout and I am the guy who
Speaker 2: pops onto this feed every few months to tell you
Speaker 2: something very sad and then ask for your money. And
Speaker 2: that's why I'm here today. A terrible earthquake struck me
Speaker 2: and Ma today the day I'm recording this, which is Friday,
Speaker 2: the twenty eighth of March, it was seven point seven
Speaker 2: on the Rigter scale. We know of more than one
Speaker 2: hundred deaths, but it's likely the death toll is much
Speaker 2: much much higher. Lots of the telegraph and internet infrastructure
Speaker 2: has been taken out by the earthquake, and the Hunter
Speaker 2: restricts internet and social media access, so we don't really
Speaker 2: know the full extent of the death but we can
Speaker 2: imagine it will be very high. As one of the
Speaker 2: areas most affected was Mandalay, which is the second largest
Speaker 2: city in Meammah. I've spoken to half a dozen sources
Speaker 2: in Memma today, people who Robert and I have interviewed before.
Speaker 2: They're all okay, but they all shared how terrible things were.
Speaker 2: They said things were as bad as they were at
Speaker 2: the time of Cyclonnagus, which would say terrible disaster in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. If you would like to support
Speaker 2: the people of Burma who are currently fighting against tyrannical
Speaker 2: dictatorship as well as dealing with the consequences of this
Speaker 2: natural disaster, there are a couple of ways you can
Speaker 2: do so. I was actually already running a fundraiser on
Speaker 2: my Patreon for MOBIAPDF. They are a casualty evacuation team
Speaker 2: in southern chance State right at the fiercest part of
Speaker 2: the fighting right now. They don't fight. What they do
Speaker 2: as they go and they evacuate people who have been injured,
Speaker 2: and they provide medical services to internally displace people. They've
Speaker 2: been doing this since twenty twenty one. They're incredibly brave
Speaker 2: people and they've saved more than three hundred lives. You
Speaker 2: can read more about them by going to my Patreon post,
Speaker 2: which also includes all the links for donation. The website
Speaker 2: for that is TinyURL dot com slash help hyphen Meanmar.
Speaker 2: That's TinyURL dot com slash h E l P hyphen m.
Speaker 1: Y A N M A R.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to donate somewhere else, An organization that
Speaker 2: you can donate to is a Free Burma Ranges. Free
Speaker 2: Burma Rangers dot org. They're a fantastic endio. They've been
Speaker 2: doing a lot of medical work in the liberated zones
Speaker 2: of BMR for a very long time. They've also worked
Speaker 2: in Java and lots of other place around the world
Speaker 2: where people need help. I spoke to Dave from FBR today.
Speaker 2: He's well and he told me that they're already starting
Speaker 2: to respond to the disaster. So to donate to them Free
Speaker 2: Burma Rangers dot org. Thanks very much, we appreciate your support.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where you
Speaker 1: know Mengesh our great guests for today. You know that
Speaker 1: you ever heard that that that quote come at the
Speaker 1: time cometh the Man.
Speaker 3: I haven't.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, it's a quote people say, and I'm saying
Speaker 1: it now because I've decided. I had a dream last night,
Speaker 1: you and I on you when I was not. Excuse me, Sophie,
Speaker 1: let's cut that out. No cometh the time cometh the Man.
Speaker 1: And I had a vision last night while I was dreaming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're really not helping this series.
Speaker 1: No, No, I had a vision while I was dreaming
Speaker 1: about how to save America. And so I'm gonna. I've
Speaker 1: decided I'm running in twenty twenty eight, and I'm running
Speaker 1: on a platform of Look, one of the big problems
Speaker 1: the liberals and the progressives have. They all think, if
Speaker 1: you make education better, you know, if you get enough
Speaker 1: dunks on people in public debates or whatever, you can
Speaker 1: stop parents in the like from like putting poison into
Speaker 1: their kids to try to treat ill understood conditions, right,
Speaker 1: and you can't. You can't stop people from wanting something
Speaker 1: to do. So let's give them something to do that's
Speaker 1: basically harmless. And that's why, as a presidential candidate, my
Speaker 1: entire platform is going to be legalize and subsidence using
Speaker 1: federal money. A seven dollars bar of xanax, the size
Speaker 1: of a Snickers bar. You just get them over the counter,
Speaker 1: any grocery store, any pharmacy, just a SNICKERX. You can
Speaker 1: lick it like a horse, you can do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with it, seven dollars flat. You know, that's how
Speaker 1: we're gonna fix things in this country. Look, every problem
Speaker 1: the seven dollars XANX Snickers bar solved, Right? He got
Speaker 1: a guy walks into a fucking public building wanting to
Speaker 1: do a mass shooting, reaches for his gun, finds a
Speaker 1: seven dollars snickers bar, a XANX bites it, forgets why
Speaker 1: he's there. Problem solved. You know, everything could be this way.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad. Yeah, this is this.
Speaker 1: Is how we save America. I'm convinced everyone vote Evans
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight for your seven dollars stickers bar of xanax.
Speaker 4: I mean, we went to both the RNC and DNC,
Speaker 4: and you know, at least somebody's got a big idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, again, we won't have any more elect They
Speaker 1: are gonna be like three votes that make it in
Speaker 1: every election, and none of them will have a legit,
Speaker 1: like a readable name. It's just going to be scribbles
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper. Who's the president? Fuck it?
Speaker 1: Uh So, let's get back into this less happy story
Speaker 1: of medicine. The Autism Research Institute and our buddy doctor
Speaker 1: Rimland wrote in to defend doctors Usman and Carrie after
Speaker 1: Tarik's death, writing in a post on the institute's website
Speaker 1: that Tarik had died not because of chellation therapy, but
Speaker 1: because of an error that had seen him dosed with
Speaker 1: a look alike drug dy sodium edta instead of calcium
Speaker 1: die sodium edta. Now, first off, I don't think the
Speaker 1: argument we didn't kill him with bad medicine. We killed
Speaker 1: him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the
Speaker 1: wrong drug makes things beat. Yeah, that's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't give him finanyl. I just shot him up
Speaker 1: with way too much heroin. Like, I don't really see
Speaker 1: how that helps. This is also untrue. Tarik was administered
Speaker 1: with the normal kind of DTA used in chilation therapy,
Speaker 1: which is the only client kind the clinic had stocked.
Speaker 1: In subsequent publications, doctor Rimland bragged that chelation therapy had
Speaker 1: consistently good results as rated by paraments who were surveyed
Speaker 1: by AR. In fact, it was the number one pick
Speaker 1: out of eighty eight approved interventions. A subsequent trist Yes,
Speaker 1: they love this because it's clearly is serious medicine. Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't help, It makes things worse generally, but it's
Speaker 1: it has a massive visible effect. I think that's honestly
Speaker 1: the whole reason why.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: A subsequent statement put out by Dan claimed that chelation
Speaker 1: was one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and
Speaker 1: related disorders. Now, aluminum, lead, and mercury aren't the only
Speaker 1: metals that got blamed. I found a Chicago Tribune piece
Speaker 1: that gives the story of a boy named Jordan King
Speaker 1: who was chelated for high levels of mercury and tin.
Speaker 1: This is where there's a quote in there from like
Speaker 1: an expert on tin poisoning who's like, yeah, it basically
Speaker 1: it is for like industrial workers who are like welding
Speaker 1: tin for a living, you know, like, but not little kids.
Speaker 1: There's no way to get enough exposure to tin. Really,
Speaker 1: is your kid welding a shitload of tin? Then then
Speaker 1: we have other issues. It's not the problem you're letting
Speaker 1: your five year old world. What are you doing? Take
Speaker 1: that torch away from them? Now, the actual explanation for
Speaker 1: why this.
Speaker 3: Kid productive, like, you know, sure, why why not?
Speaker 1: Why not get that it's good for kids to have
Speaker 1: a hobby. There at least they're touch If they can't
Speaker 1: touch grass, they might as well teach touch hat in tin.
Speaker 1: Now again they do they do a test which shows
Speaker 1: high levels of mercury and tin in this kid's blood.
Speaker 1: But that's not the whole story about that and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there was something about why would they have elevated levels? Well,
Speaker 1: the explanation for why and for why all of the
Speaker 1: kids that get tested in order to justify this therapy
Speaker 1: have elevated levels of different heavy metals is because of
Speaker 1: the very the distinctly a scientific kind of lab test
Speaker 1: that they give these kids. Right, you would think, if
Speaker 1: you're like, this kid probably has high levels of heavy metals,
Speaker 1: we might want to administer chelation therapy. You're not a doctor, mangesh,
Speaker 1: would you first? What would you do first? If you
Speaker 1: thought they might have high levels of heavy metals? Get
Speaker 1: a blood tuft right, very basic science, right, Okay, you
Speaker 1: think this is true, Let's test their blood. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: The way you give these blood is, first you chilate
Speaker 1: the child. You shoot them up with this thing that
Speaker 1: strips heavy metals out of their blood and makes them
Speaker 1: pee it out, right, and then you test them. Right,
Speaker 1: so you give them a drug that provokes them to
Speaker 1: excrete heavy metals and then test them. And then you
Speaker 1: know what, You're gonna find some heavy metals because you
Speaker 1: gave them the drug that makes them excrete them. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing, there's no except because this isn't the
Speaker 1: way science. You don't do this otherwise. There's no accepted
Speaker 1: understanding for what normal results on a test given after
Speaker 1: chellation would be. So there's no actual medical case for
Speaker 1: like drugging people and then testing them like this. So
Speaker 1: the lab just shows back charged that shows scary spikes
Speaker 1: of different metals, and the clinician says, look, kids.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: You know we need to keep doing this now, doctor,
Speaker 1: in case you don't believe me, and you should not.
Speaker 1: A doctor, doctor Carl Baum, director of the Center for
Speaker 1: Children's Environmental Toxicology at the Yale Newhaven Children's Hospital, calls
Speaker 1: this quote exactly the wrong way to do it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now. Doctor Usman did ultimately face mild consequences. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, The Chicago Tribune featured her in their
Speaker 1: Dubious Medicine investigation, which helped push for a pro by
Speaker 1: the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. They alleged
Speaker 1: that she had provided medically unwarranted treatment that may potentially
Speaker 1: result in permanent disabling injuries to two boys. Quote from
Speaker 1: the Tribune and reaching a consent order with Usman. Medical
Speaker 1: regulators alleged that Usman failed to disclose to her patients
Speaker 1: her financial interests in the company supplying the hyperbaric oxygen
Speaker 1: chambers and in the compounding pharmacy that filled prescriptions for
Speaker 1: her patients. The state said that she also failed to
Speaker 1: obtain informed consent for the chelation there and did not
Speaker 1: keep adequate medical records for her patients. Usman, who practices
Speaker 1: out of the True Health Medical Center in Naperville, neither
Speaker 1: admitted nor denied the state's allegations, and signing the consent order,
Speaker 1: she agreed to pay a ten thousand dollars fine. Great, Ken,
Speaker 1: I love that this is the punishment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I know. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Now, the other boy that she is accused of harming
Speaker 1: in this case was a Chicago child, the son of
Speaker 1: James Coman. We don't get this kid's name because they're
Speaker 1: a kid who was engaged in a custody battle with
Speaker 1: his ex wife over there, kid who was a child
Speaker 1: with autism. Now, the kid's mom is a believer of
Speaker 1: these biomedical interventions for their son's autism. James is not.
Speaker 1: James recognizes this is pretty dangerous and he gets trapped
Speaker 1: in this nightmare of trying to advocate for his son
Speaker 1: against the wishes of the boy's mother. Here's how. A
Speaker 1: different article by The Tribune titled Autism's Risky Experiments describes
Speaker 1: his regimen of treatment. Quote, James Commen's son has an
Speaker 1: unusual skill. This seven year old, his father says, can
Speaker 1: swallow six pills at Once Diagnosed with autism as a toddler,
Speaker 1: the Chicago boy had been placed on an intense regiment
Speaker 1: of supplements and medications aimed at treating the disorder. Besides
Speaker 1: taking many pills, the boy was injected with vitamin B
Speaker 1: twelve and received in intravenous effusions of a drug used
Speaker 1: to leech mercury and other metals from the body. He
Speaker 1: took megados as, a vitamin C, a hormone, and a
Speaker 1: drug that suppresses testosterone. They're just doing everything to this
Speaker 1: kid again.
Speaker 3: Fact that he can swallow seven pills.
Speaker 1: He's able to take so many pills. That's not talent.
Speaker 1: Yeah now. The Comban boy also suffered extreme negative side
Speaker 1: effects from chillation, although thankfully not fatal ones. This provoked
Speaker 1: his father to sue, and his mother responded by complaining
Speaker 1: that any interruption of his complex, nonsense therapeutic routine would
Speaker 1: have a disastrous impact on the boy, setting him back.
Speaker 1: You know that Tribune article written in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine some up the scope of the biomedical movement at
Speaker 1: the time. Studies have shown that up to three quarters
Speaker 1: of families with children with autism try alternative treatments, which
Speaker 1: insurance does not usually cover. Doctors many link to the
Speaker 1: influential group Defeat Autism now promote the therapies online, in
Speaker 1: books and it conferences. Intensive regiments are so common that
Speaker 1: one doctor recently joked at an Autism one conference in Chicago,
Speaker 1: you know you have a child with autism. If your
Speaker 1: child takes more pills than your grandmother. He's joking about
Speaker 1: all the drugs you're giving kids.
Speaker 3: I love that. Like, you know, you're a redneck.
Speaker 1: If like is his the f share man that makes
Speaker 1: you sound good, sounds like you're a doctor great. It
Speaker 1: also made a point of discussing how the social media
Speaker 1: era had provided oxygen to the hyperbaric chamber fire that
Speaker 1: is the biomedical movement. Quote. Parents trade stories and advice
Speaker 1: about chelation on large internet groups. One Yahoo group has
Speaker 1: more than eight thousand members. The treatment takes many forms,
Speaker 1: including creams for the skin, capsule suppositories and intravenous infusions
Speaker 1: of powerful medicines usually reserved for people with severe metal poisoning.
Speaker 1: The hype was so big around this stuff in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six that the National Institute of Mental Health
Speaker 1: announced a randomized control style trial of chilation as an
Speaker 1: autism treatment. So an actual legitimate medical body says, let's
Speaker 1: do a trial. So many people are saying this helps
Speaker 1: their kids, let's look into it, right, and ultimately they
Speaker 1: cancel that trial in two thousand and eight because they
Speaker 1: can't find any evidence that there's benefit to it, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that even trying this will
Speaker 1: put kids at risk, right, significant risk, because chelation is
Speaker 1: not good for you if you don't need it. So like,
Speaker 1: it's actually unethical for us to study this because there's
Speaker 1: zero evidence that's helped anybody, and we know it hurts people,
Speaker 1: so we just can't do this to kids. Now. They
Speaker 1: also they've done some studies on lab rats that have
Speaker 1: showed that drugging lab rats needlessly with chilation therapy causes
Speaker 1: cognitive problems. Right, so they're like, this, we just really
Speaker 1: can't justify doing this, and this is good logic for
Speaker 1: ethical scientists, but the crazed parents and con artist doctors
Speaker 1: of the biomedical movement take this as evidence that big Side,
Speaker 1: Big Pharma has killed another attempt to uncover the truth. Right,
Speaker 1: that's why they don't care about hurting kids. They just
Speaker 1: want to They want to keep selling us expensive medicine
Speaker 1: that actually isn't as expensive as the fake medicine.
Speaker 3: That's so awful.
Speaker 1: You see similar stories wherever you look at these nonsense
Speaker 1: treatments for autism. In two thousand and seven, the Cochrane Collaboration,
Speaker 1: an independent evaluator of medical research, reviewed the efficacy of
Speaker 1: casin and gluten free diets as treatments for autism, which
Speaker 1: had become another bugbear for biomedicine. The idea that some
Speaker 1: of these biomedical people have is that gluten and casein
Speaker 1: interferes with kids' brain receptors, and advocates would cite studies
Speaker 1: which prove that proper diet could eliminate the symptoms of autism,
Speaker 1: But for scientific American cock And identified two very small
Speaker 1: clinical trials, one with twenty participants and one with fifteen.
Speaker 1: The first study found some production and autism symptoms, the
Speaker 1: second found none. A new randomized controlled trial of fourteen
Speaker 1: children reported this past May by Susan Hyman, an associate
Speaker 1: professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester School of
Speaker 1: Medicine and Dentistry, found no changes in attention, sleep, stool patterns,
Speaker 1: or characteristic autistic behavior. Slowly, the evidence is starting to
Speaker 1: accumulate that diet is not the panacea people are hoping for,
Speaker 1: says Susan E. Levy, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia who has evaluated the evidence with Hymen. Of course,
Speaker 1: logic and evidence never drives the reactions you want to
Speaker 1: see in cases like this. Right, Fitzpatrick's book includes a
Speaker 1: quote from an anti mercury campaign in the US Generation Rescue.
Speaker 1: This is what's her name? The Oprah Ladies, Jenny McCarthy's organization.
Speaker 1: Oh ye yeah. This statement was made initially in response
Speaker 1: to Tareik Nadama's death. You might want to recall here
Speaker 1: that Tarik was diagnosed with like high aluminum levels, not mercury.
Speaker 1: But whatever quote. We are not desperate parents willing to
Speaker 1: try anything. We are educated, caring parents who have done
Speaker 1: thousands of hours of research and administered dozens of medical
Speaker 1: tests on our own children under the care of knowledgeable physicians.
Speaker 3: Wow, great, wasn't it wasn't Jenny Mathey's kid also like
Speaker 3: like she said he was this autistic and then she.
Speaker 1: Said she's cured him. She says she's cured him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope that kid is okay. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: now this kind of talk is like, well, we've actually
Speaker 1: we're the experts. We've done so much, you know, to
Speaker 1: understand this. It's very common among the loudest mouthpieces of
Speaker 1: the movement, which includes Jenny McCarthy. We've discussed before her
Speaker 1: appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which played a massive
Speaker 1: role in igniting the anti VAXX movement in the US. McCarthy,
Speaker 1: whose son Evan was diagnosed with autism, describes herself as
Speaker 1: having a PhD. In Google She does not, but she
Speaker 1: did have a role to play in the death of
Speaker 1: that five year old who burnt alive in a hyperbaric chamber.
Speaker 1: And two and sixteen, Jenny pivoted from her successful anti
Speaker 1: vax campaign and started advocating a hyperbaric oxygen therapy as
Speaker 1: a treatment for ASD. The scientific argument she used was
Speaker 1: that people with ASD have and this is autism spectrum disorder.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD
Speaker 1: have inflammation in their brains, which is true. You can
Speaker 1: if you like, one thing you can see is that,
Speaker 1: like there's a level of inflation in the brains of
Speaker 1: people with autism. Inflammation in the brains people with autism.
Speaker 1: We don't know why, We don't know like how this
Speaker 1: relates to the like, we just know it's there. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of debate about this, but it
Speaker 1: is something you see. And it is true that hyperbaric
Speaker 1: therapy has decreased other kinds of inflammation, but not in
Speaker 1: the brain. Yeah, different, like stuff doesn't always it's not
Speaker 1: all the same, right.
Speaker 3: You know, even though right, the microbiome being different of
Speaker 3: autistic kids and diet not being able to affect the right.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it's hard. Yeah. And so it's this thing
Speaker 1: where like you are taking two unrelated facts and using
Speaker 1: them to put kids in these death tubes. Now, actual
Speaker 1: analysis of the evidence, because there have been studies on
Speaker 1: this shows that the only basis for hyperbaric therapy as
Speaker 1: a treatment for autism was one flawed study that showed
Speaker 1: a benefit. Per PubMed quote HBO two that's the name
Speaker 1: for hyperbaric therapy should not be recommended for ASD treatment
Speaker 1: until more conclusive, favorable results and long term outcomes are
Speaker 1: demonstrated from well designed, controlled trials. A write up from
Speaker 1: this time by the American Council on Science and Health
Speaker 1: states despite all of this caution in doubt, McCarthy believes
Speaker 1: that she knows better. Her organization, Generation Rescue, is holding
Speaker 1: the third annual Autism Education Summit this weekend in Addison, Texas,
Speaker 1: just north of Dallas, to promote HBO two therapy for ASD.
Speaker 1: This conference included an expert panel of chiropractice and osteopaths,
Speaker 1: as well as along with those August medical experts, a
Speaker 1: YouTuber named Lily who made have video about hyperbaric treatment
Speaker 1: helped her little sister. McCarthy was joined on the panel
Speaker 1: by Dell big Tree, producer of the movie Vaxed in
Speaker 1: one of the ladies from the Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Truly posy from the Greatest Minds in Medicine awesome. Another
Speaker 1: conference expert was doctor anju Usman, whose husband sells hyperbaric chambers.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I was not expecting that twelve.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, baby, Now this is all made especially infuriating
Speaker 1: because four years before this conference, in twenty twelve, a
Speaker 1: four year old boy and his sixty two year old
Speaker 1: grandmother died after the hyperbaric chamber the boy was in
Speaker 1: caught fire at the Ocean Hyperbaric Center in Florida. Francesco
Speaker 1: had cerebral palsy, which hyperbaric therapy does not treat, and
Speaker 1: he had traveled to South Florida from Italy, where the
Speaker 1: treatment is illegal, with his grand mother and he caught
Speaker 1: on fires. You tried to save them, they both die
Speaker 1: nightmarish deaths. Four years before this conference, where Jane McCarthy
Speaker 1: saying everybody should do this for their kids. Now, none
Speaker 1: of these deaths, none of these injuries, none of the
Speaker 1: illnesses caused by all this bullshit treatment means anything to
Speaker 1: most of these people. Their only interest is their children.
Speaker 1: And one of the issues here is that because of
Speaker 1: the way autism works, for most people who have autism,
Speaker 1: you see, around the time the symptoms become evident, it
Speaker 1: seems like they're regressing. Right, They stop making eye contact,
Speaker 1: they stop engaging as much, and this can be very
Speaker 1: dramatic and very shocking to parents, right, But most people
Speaker 1: with autism, their symptoms then improve over time because they
Speaker 1: grow up and they get used to dealing with and
Speaker 1: engaging in the world, right, they just that's just life.
Speaker 1: You know, this is going to be the case with
Speaker 1: the majority of people who get diagnosed with autism. You
Speaker 1: will see the symptoms get alleviated. So if you're just
Speaker 1: dosing them with every random drug you can get your
Speaker 1: hands on, they likely show improvement in some ways just
Speaker 1: as they grow up and people convince themselves, I saved
Speaker 1: my kid. You know, at least they're better because of
Speaker 1: all of this shit I did. When like you could
Speaker 1: have just loved them with the help, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: gotten some dream of the gi issues or whatever, but
Speaker 1: like you could have just loved them, you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to do all this other shit. But it's
Speaker 1: just like you know, life, people find ways to interact
Speaker 1: and deal with the world, like David Lynch.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: This is again because people with autism are people. But yeah,
Speaker 1: as a result of this fact, many of these parents
Speaker 1: will go to their graves secure in the belief that
Speaker 1: they stood up for their kid and helped save them,
Speaker 1: even if all they did was make the world more
Speaker 1: comfortable for the kind of con men who encouraged children
Speaker 1: to avoid getting vaccinated for beaesels and speaking of connon, Nope,
Speaker 1: speaking of ads. Here they are, we're back. Good stuff,
Speaker 1: good stuff, good stuff. So every now and then when
Speaker 1: you read about the biomedical community, you do hear about
Speaker 1: the rare winds. Right, these cases where a parent gets
Speaker 1: pulled into this, they treat their kid with nonsense for
Speaker 1: a while, and they realize I fucked up, and they
Speaker 1: pull back and they take accountability. And those are good stories.
Speaker 1: There's a great article in the Atlantic about autism's fringe
Speaker 1: therapies and it gives a story of Emma's Zurcher and
Speaker 1: her family. Emma was born in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: when she started to show signs of autism at like
Speaker 1: age two and a half, right around the time to
Speaker 1: Reek would have died right Her mother, Erie Anne, later
Speaker 1: described the realization of her daughter's diagnosis as being like
Speaker 1: quote descending into hell. I was desperate to save my daughter.
Speaker 1: We went to everybody, We tried everything. For the Atlantic quote,
Speaker 1: she and her husband took immate neurologists, gastromineurologists, behavioral speech
Speaker 1: and occupational therapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, a shaman and a homeopath,
Speaker 1: a craniosacral therapist, and a quigong master. A developmental pediatrician
Speaker 1: who didn't take insurance, charged at least two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per visit and had a month long waiting list recommended
Speaker 1: they call a psychic. In Europe. The psychic ironically refused
Speaker 1: payment because she didn't pick up a signal from them
Speaker 1: when the psychics are moronics than the doctor's.
Speaker 3: Holy fuck, like oh.
Speaker 1: Won the psychics like now I don't want to rob you,
Speaker 1: you know, like holy fuck. They tried dozens of treatments
Speaker 1: that claim to have recovered children with autism, including numerous
Speaker 1: vitamin supplements, topical ointments, restrictive diets, chillation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy,
Speaker 1: brain scans, a so called detoxification system, and stem cell therapy.
Speaker 1: In other words, she went through all the con therapies
Speaker 1: we've covered in these episodes and a bunch more. She
Speaker 1: describes her mind state after each failure as I thought,
Speaker 1: I didn't do it right, Let me do it again.
Speaker 1: And this is the consequence of this. It's not unreasonable
Speaker 1: to say they're like, well, if if your kid has
Speaker 1: a condition or an illness, part of treating it properly
Speaker 1: is the parent needs to be an advocate for their
Speaker 1: kid and involved in the treatment. Not an unreasonable statement,
Speaker 1: but there's this attitude that that means that like the
Speaker 1: it's the parent is responsible for figuring it out. And like, well,
Speaker 1: but you're like a you're like a fucking accountant or something,
Speaker 1: like you don't know how to you you're not a
Speaker 1: medical expert. You know what you're doing, Like you know
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be diagnosing your kid here.
Speaker 3: Also you can see how like you you like slip
Speaker 3: from one to the next and next because you're increasingly desperate.
Speaker 3: But like, yeah, once you're dealing with like a shaman,
Speaker 3: and like it feels like someone in.
Speaker 1: A psychic shaman knows how to curas. The ultimate result
Speaker 1: of all these specialty diets was that Emma shed body
Speaker 1: weight at a dangerous pace, loosening fifteen percent of her
Speaker 1: weight in six weeks. Now, Emma's mom had by this
Speaker 1: point come to believe that her daughter had something that
Speaker 1: is another common line in biomedical HUI that GI problems
Speaker 1: like leaky gut might help cause symptoms of autism. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: None of her attempts to fix Emma's microbiome worked. Arianne
Speaker 1: kept going quote, I thought any treatment was better than
Speaker 1: doing nothing at all. It's this, I can't think of
Speaker 1: anything else to do better press the gas, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just not it's not smart, sometimes outbreaking. I have
Speaker 1: a friend who's in er news. She says, sometimes the
Speaker 1: best thing to do with the site of a disaster
Speaker 1: is like smoke a cigarette and just kind of think
Speaker 1: things out for a second before you get in there, right,
Speaker 1: And that sounds horrifying to a lot of people, but
Speaker 1: this is a person who deals with emergencies every day.
Speaker 1: Sometimes your best bet is like give it a sec. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially Threw.
Speaker 3: Everyone in the autism community is telling you that, like
Speaker 3: there's a ticking clock right, like you're trying to raise
Speaker 3: and beat the clock.
Speaker 1: And this is also it's another thing. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that gets people killed in war zones. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen it like this, this desire, this feeling, a need
Speaker 1: to do something. When again, the people who are the
Speaker 1: real veteran, it's the people number one, they also do
Speaker 1: react when they need to, but they also don't react
Speaker 1: all the time when they don't need to. They tend
Speaker 1: to keep to watch shit to think, you know, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you die horribly anyway, her kid loses a disastrous
Speaker 1: amount of weight, and none of these attempts to fix
Speaker 1: emma work at all. This is the state of mind,
Speaker 1: this idea, I've got to do something. That's most of
Speaker 1: what these parents find themselves in. And the market for
Speaker 1: quack cures has only grown. I stated in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine about seventy five percent of parents of children
Speaker 1: with autism reported using alternate medicine. Today's about eighty eight percent,
Speaker 1: nearly all of them if you have the money. They
Speaker 1: are a truly dizzy number of options available, like spect,
Speaker 1: a thirty five hundred dollars treatment that scans a child's
Speaker 1: brain to diagnose them and derive targeted treatments for their
Speaker 1: individual autism. This is in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: brain scans like spect can't reveal autism. They don't, you
Speaker 1: don't see it that way, and of course they can't
Speaker 1: like figure out this specific treatment has how to help
Speaker 1: your kid, right, But parents love that shit, like the oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get the exact kind of therapy for
Speaker 1: my individual kid. No, that's just you're not doing it
Speaker 1: this way. Sorry, maybe the therapy your kid needs is
Speaker 1: for you to just like them.
Speaker 3: Well. Also, also, once your kid has autism and then
Speaker 3: you get a skin, you can point to anything and say, like, sure,
Speaker 3: the cost of this thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but it says autism,
Speaker 1: you know, probably the most costly of these new interventions
Speaker 1: of stem cell therapy. And this might actually be there
Speaker 1: might be treatment derived from this in the future. It's
Speaker 1: very far from clear at this point. Right at the moment,
Speaker 1: it is not approved as a treatment in the US.
Speaker 1: There are several trials gathering data on whether it's safer effective.
Speaker 1: But again, the parents who think their kids have this
Speaker 1: ticking clock before their life is ruined don't want to wait,
Speaker 1: and as The Atlantic reports quote, several foreign clinics offer
Speaker 1: it for around ten thousand dollars. Sarah Collins credits the
Speaker 1: adult stem cell injections her two children received in Panama Seti,
Speaker 1: Panama with the recovery of her older son and improvement
Speaker 1: in her younger son. Both of them were diagnosed with autism.
Speaker 1: Her experience led her to co found the stem Cell
Speaker 1: Therapy for Autism Facebook group. She says one reason parents
Speaker 1: might not want to take part in clinical trials in
Speaker 1: the US is that their child might wind up in
Speaker 1: the placebo arm of the trial. They won't mess with that,
Speaker 1: They'll go right to Panama instead. Again, you get both
Speaker 1: the psychology of life. Well, I don't want my kid
Speaker 1: to be I want them to get the medicine now.
Speaker 1: But it's like, ultimately, your desire to do something now
Speaker 1: is making your kid and everyone else you love everywhere
Speaker 1: in the world less safe. Because good medicine relies on
Speaker 1: good double blind studies with placebos. That's how you do
Speaker 1: medical studies. And by delaying this number one, you are
Speaker 1: slowing down the process by which science will get done.
Speaker 1: But also by going to Panama to get whatever the
Speaker 1: fuck shot into your kid, will say that clinic doesn't
Speaker 1: have good standards. Say your kid gets hurt, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's not even because of actual stem cell therapeages, because
Speaker 1: something else fucked up happened, but there's this horrible public
Speaker 1: death or illness associated with it, and that shuts down
Speaker 1: research into a thing that may one day lead to
Speaker 1: treatments that help people right, that alleviate some symptom or something.
Speaker 1: You are doing nothing but harm by doing this out
Speaker 1: of this desire that like, well, but I got to
Speaker 1: focus on my kid, and it's like, no, it's this
Speaker 1: fucking no, no no. Emma's mom eventually made the right decision,
Speaker 1: after about seven years of trying this carousel of treatments,
Speaker 1: to reach out to an adult with autism and talk
Speaker 1: to them about her kid. This adult was Julia Bascomb,
Speaker 1: who has a blog called Just Stemming This. Talking to
Speaker 1: Julia Keeter her in on the fact that well, maybe
Speaker 1: autism isn't like, doesn't mean my kid has no life.
Speaker 1: Maybe they could be happy as a person with autism,
Speaker 1: and I should focus on that because it's just the
Speaker 1: way they are, Emma's mom wrote, quote, my entire focus changed.
Speaker 1: Instead of fighting against Emma's neurology and trying to cure
Speaker 1: this heinous disorder, I started finding ways to help her flourish.
Speaker 1: And that's it, really right, Like that's the ball game.
Speaker 3: I mean, just to just robbing yourself of like the
Speaker 3: joy of being able to enjoy your kid and see them,
Speaker 3: you know, is stunning because you're so worried.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, I mean, and it's it is tragic, like
Speaker 1: the amount of the wasted years you're so obsessed doing
Speaker 1: this that you're not actually having a relationship with your
Speaker 1: kid as your kid. You're having a relationship with your
Speaker 1: kid as a sick thing you need to fix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a guinea pig.
Speaker 1: It's sad now in this case. So one of the
Speaker 1: first things she does when she has this shift in mindset,
Speaker 1: she realizes, like, Emma's not great at talking. This is
Speaker 1: a big problem for her, that like, your kid can't
Speaker 1: really talk and like communicate verbally. And so instead of
Speaker 1: trying and shooting her up with more drugs and shit,
Speaker 1: she tries a different kind of intervention. She gives your
Speaker 1: kid a keyboard setup so Emma can type out her thoughts,
Speaker 1: and suddenly Emma starts communicating very clearly with people and
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. She gets on track to
Speaker 1: get her high school diploma. The fact that she now
Speaker 1: they figured out how she individually needs to communicate gives
Speaker 1: her a chance to advocate for herself and to live
Speaker 1: a life. While Zurchier told The Atlantic that she now
Speaker 1: views the money she wasted on quack treatments as insane,
Speaker 1: and Emma herself insists that only occupational therapy provided her
Speaker 1: with any benefit, and occupational therapy is a real thing
Speaker 1: that can help. She also insists she's not angry at
Speaker 1: her mom. Quote, you thought my autism was hurting me
Speaker 1: and that you needed to remove it, but you did
Speaker 1: not understand that it is a neurological difference. Fear caused
Speaker 1: you to behave with desperation.
Speaker 3: What an incredibly mature way to.
Speaker 1: Type on Jesus. Yeah, and that would be a beautiful
Speaker 1: note to end on. Mangesh, this is behind the bastards,
Speaker 1: so we're not gonna end on that uplifting note. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you a whole nother story about one
Speaker 1: of these quack bastards, one of the worst of these
Speaker 1: sons of bitches, an asshole named James Jeffrey Bradstreet. Three names,
Speaker 1: real serial killer. Shit for James Jeffrey Bradstreet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this episode and part one just the names.
Speaker 1: The name always the worst. Born in July nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four in Florida, Bradstreet was at one point a Christian
Speaker 1: preacher who got a medical degree from the University of Florida.
Speaker 1: We're doing great, knocking it out of the park so far.
Speaker 1: His postgraduate research was an aerospace medicine, and his actual
Speaker 1: career was as a family doctor. But In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: after he'd been practicing for a little over a decade,
Speaker 1: his son was diagnosed with autism. As Fitspatrick writes, Jeff
Speaker 1: Bradstreet abandoned his career as a family doctor to become
Speaker 1: a radio talk show host. Great Great start, Great start.
Speaker 1: He immediately met up with the biomedical activists and founded
Speaker 1: the International Child Development Resource Center in Florida, or the ICDRC.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one. He appointed Andrew Wakefield to
Speaker 1: be head of research there. Brad Street was a big
Speaker 1: believer in merging his evangelical Christian faith with his treatments
Speaker 1: for autism, and so he created the Good News Doctor
Speaker 1: Foundation Now again. Bradstreet's training was two years of residency
Speaker 1: in obstetrics and some added training in aerospace medicine. He
Speaker 1: was not board certified in any specialty, yet he advertised
Speaker 1: himself as a biomedical expert in autism treatment who specialized
Speaker 1: in correcting biochemical imbalances as well as detoxification. Wow, again,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who's like qualified to help your
Speaker 1: kid with the flu. You know, right, not to like
Speaker 1: downplay family medicine, but this is not a guy who's
Speaker 1: qualified cure among other things nobody is. It's not a thing.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing that happens. In the book Deadly Choices,
Speaker 1: Paul Offatt describes Bradstreet's clinical approach this way. Bradstreet had
Speaker 1: promoted several cures for autism, including secret in chellation, immunoglobulin
Speaker 1: administered by mouth and by vain, and PREDDA zone, a
Speaker 1: potent steroid that suppresses the immune system. He also prescribed
Speaker 1: dietary supplements he sold in his office. As one expert
Speaker 1: put it, the nutritional supplements prescribed by doctor Bradstreet were
Speaker 1: also sold by doctor Bradstreet.
Speaker 4: That's fine, cool, and this is we're like the late nineties, right,
Speaker 4: this is yeah, yeah, this guy would be on TikTok.
Speaker 1: Oh my, oh he might have been. Actually, you know what, Sophie,
Speaker 1: good news. We're gonna talk about what this guy ends
Speaker 1: up doing in the present era. It's actually the best
Speaker 1: part of the story. So in nineteen ninety nine, Bradstreet
Speaker 1: began treating Colton Snyder, ultimately examining him more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty times and ordering a number of invasive
Speaker 1: lab tests that were not approved by the FDA. Among
Speaker 1: these were multiple spinal taps. If you've had spinal tap.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing you fuck around with. They're just
Speaker 1: stabbing this kid in the spine with needles. See that
Speaker 1: makes it better.
Speaker 3: One hundred and sixty times. Feels very, very feels.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of visits. Feels like a lot of visits.
Speaker 1: They also insert a fiber optic scope into Colton's stomach
Speaker 1: and colon as off. It writes all these tests and
Speaker 1: procedures were expensive, potentially dangerous, and, according to the opinions
Speaker 1: of expert witnesses, of no value to the child.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, Brad streets. This is not said directly, but his
Speaker 1: parents have money. This is not cheap. That's why Bradstreet's
Speaker 1: doing this. His medical documentation of Snyder ultimately runs to
Speaker 1: some six hundred and fifty pages. He diagnoses the boy
Speaker 1: over the years with autism, yeast overgrowth, a funk infection unspecified,
Speaker 1: and sepalopathy unspecified, unicaria, and a shitload of other things.
Speaker 1: And it's so many different things that it is clear
Speaker 1: that what's going on here is Brad Street has this
Speaker 1: is like a munchausends by doctor syndrome, right, And he's
Speaker 1: not doing it because he's deluded. He's doing it because
Speaker 1: he is a mercenary with the goal of keeping Colton's
Speaker 1: parents paying for very expensive tests and treatments for forever. Right,
Speaker 1: none of Colton's mercury tests wherever high, but still Bradstreet,
Speaker 1: who believed mercury contributed to autism, prescribed numerous rounds of
Speaker 1: chelation therapy. A rite up in Quackwatch summarizes broad Street
Speaker 1: conceded that Colton did not respond well to chelation. The
Speaker 1: medical records, including reports from missus Snyder, reflected that Colton
Speaker 1: did poorly after every round of chelation therapy. The more
Speaker 1: disturbing question is why chelation was performed at all in
Speaker 1: view of the normal levels of mercury found in the hair, blood,
Speaker 1: and urine. It's apparent lack of efficacy in treating Colton's
Speaker 1: syndroms and the adverse side effects that apparently caused. That's
Speaker 1: another thing you encounter where these parents and these practitioners.
Speaker 1: Practitioners will convince the parents, oh, yeah, if your kids
Speaker 1: having there, if they're responding negatively, that's the toxins leaving.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's ugly, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that's so hard, that's awful.
Speaker 1: It's real fucked up these people should all have god
Speaker 1: to prison. They should all still go to prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know who shouldn't go to prison? Our sponsors?
Speaker 1: Is that what we're doing. I'm saying they shouldn't, Sophie,
Speaker 1: what do you want from me? We're back. So. In
Speaker 1: one conference in the early aughts, after Bradstreet had become
Speaker 1: a DAN affiliated doctor, he referred to parents who didn't
Speaker 1: blame their kid's condition on vaccines or subject them to
Speaker 1: dangerous bio medical experimentations as apids or autism. Parents in denial. Right,
Speaker 1: if you just accept your kid and try to help
Speaker 1: them live their best life, you're in denial. You should
Speaker 1: be poised. Fitzpatrick notes that other experts in the field
Speaker 1: speak in similar ways. Quote Jenny McCarthy is dismissive of
Speaker 1: Woe is Me moms, though she is not above moaning
Speaker 1: about how shitty her own life is and reminding her
Speaker 1: readers that celebrities suffer like everyone else. Still, she finds
Speaker 1: it difficult to accept that other parents don't simply believe
Speaker 1: in alternative treatments. Was it she asked herself, that they
Speaker 1: didn't want to hope or that they enjoyed the victim role?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe they're just trying to do what's
Speaker 1: best for their kids. Yeah. When the Chicago Tribune interviewed
Speaker 1: Bradstreet about his use of ivy immunal globulin or IVIG
Speaker 1: as an autism treatment, he told them every kid with
Speaker 1: autism should have a trial of IVIIG if money was
Speaker 1: not an option and if IVIG was abundant. Bradstreet also
Speaker 1: became a vocal advocate for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, although he
Speaker 1: did later publish research arguing it was ineffective, perhaps because
Speaker 1: it wasn't a big money maker for his clinic. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, more than five thousand families enmeshed
Speaker 1: in the biomedical movement launched a lawsuit seeking compensation for
Speaker 1: vaccine related harm in the US Court of Federal Claims.
Speaker 1: Brad Street was one of their major witnesses. He provided
Speaker 1: expert testimony, which ultimately failed because the special Masters, which
Speaker 1: is the title name to the people who are like
Speaker 1: evaluating this claim, look into brad Street in part to
Speaker 1: determine if there's credible evidence to support the idea that
Speaker 1: vaccines cause autism. They conclude it doesn't. They reject the case,
Speaker 1: and one major reason is the case of Colton Snyder,
Speaker 1: which they examine at length and hold up as like
Speaker 1: this is an example of how the malpractice is coming
Speaker 1: from inside the house. It's guys like Brad Street. Right, yeah. Still.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and nine, Bradstreet had been in practice
Speaker 1: so long that he claimed his institute has records on
Speaker 1: more than four thousand patients. He got a California medical
Speaker 1: license in May of that year and established a branch
Speaker 1: of the ICDRC. Two years later, he got a Georgia
Speaker 1: state medical license and opened to clinic in Buford. Because
Speaker 1: staying competitive in the industry of fake autism treatments required
Speaker 1: constant innovation, Brad Street became an add the kit for
Speaker 1: a new autism cure late in his career. GcMAF. This
Speaker 1: stands for globulin component macrophage activating factor. And this is
Speaker 1: a thing. It's a protein and healthy blood that you
Speaker 1: can remove and concentrate and use it to treat certain
Speaker 1: kinds of illnesses. Some kind of people are sick in
Speaker 1: a way that injecting them with this concentrated factor can
Speaker 1: help them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing for stuff, not for this, but
Speaker 1: for stuff. In August of twenty twelve, he gave a
Speaker 1: presentation in England in which he described injecting forty patients
Speaker 1: with autism with this shit, declaring I shouldn't call it shit. Well,
Speaker 1: but the stuff he is selling is shit. There's a
Speaker 1: legitimate version of this, that's not what he's selling, declaring, quote,
Speaker 1: it's extremely potent in terms of its ability to work
Speaker 1: for children. He announced, many from this experiment have gone
Speaker 1: into basically lose the label of autism. They don't have
Speaker 1: autistic distinctions anymore. After sometimes as littlest twenty weeks of therapy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this just isn't the way this works.
Speaker 3: It's through the works.
Speaker 1: But Bradstreet tended to show up up in the kind
Speaker 1: of crowds where he wouldn't be questioned. He claimed that
Speaker 1: doctors in Japan and Italy were working on the same therapy,
Speaker 1: and he also cited a guy named David Noakes, the
Speaker 1: head of an Immuno Biotech, which manufactures GcMAF, and he
Speaker 1: in fact, he shouts this guy out and then offers
Speaker 1: attendees to the speech of twenty five percent discount on GCMAL.
Speaker 1: Sounds like medicine to me, bro I love it. Gives
Speaker 1: me a fucking cupon for Blood Factory.
Speaker 3: Well, it's coming from honestly because he's a radio host.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, of course it does come right right absolutely
Speaker 1: Pearl Washington Post piece by Michael Miller quote. What he
Speaker 1: did not disclose, however, was that much of the research
Speaker 1: he cited had already been discredited and retracted the journal,
Speaker 1: considering Bradstreet's paper was the scientific equivalent of self publishing,
Speaker 1: and Bradstreet had close ties to Noakes and Immuno Biotech.
Speaker 1: During the same UK trip, Bradstreet and Noakes made what
Speaker 1: was essentially a promotional video for Immuno Biotech and its
Speaker 1: brand of GCMF called First Immune. Quote. I'm here with
Speaker 1: doctor Jeffrey Bradstreet from the USA, the autism expert in
Speaker 1: the first Immune GcMAF laboratories. Nookes set on camera. Doctor
Speaker 1: Bradstreet has been using our GcMAF for in eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and we'd like to thank you for I think you've
Speaker 1: treated nine hundred children. Now not just children, Bradstreet boasted,
Speaker 1: So the spectrum of my parent patients with autism ranges
Speaker 1: from somewhere around eighteen months to goodness somewhere around close
Speaker 1: to forty. So we've treated many adults with autism, as
Speaker 1: well as chronic fatigue patients, cancer patients, So we found
Speaker 1: application for a fairly broad number of disorders for the
Speaker 1: product The Truth. The two trading compliments for four minutes straight,
Speaker 1: just gasing each other up for four minutes. Again, this
Speaker 1: sounds like medicine. Now. The transcripts for this are just
Speaker 1: impossibly fucking cringey, with Noakes saying We've never met a
Speaker 1: doctor with such an understanding at the microbiological level of
Speaker 1: how autism and cancer and other diseases work. Autism and
Speaker 1: cancer not really related, not alike, not at all alike
Speaker 1: other diseases. Again, not that I'm not saying autism is
Speaker 1: a disease, but like that's the way this guy's talking.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, this is this isn't medicine. I know
Speaker 1: doctors are never like, yeah, we figure like this thing
Speaker 1: helps with the flu and I don't know.
Speaker 3: Probably lunt cancer fucking and gout, yeah, gout.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, like Brad Street goes back
Speaker 1: to after Noakes gases him up. He's like, this is
Speaker 1: the most sterile lab I've ever seen, the best equipment,
Speaker 1: the best people. This is the perfect like environment for
Speaker 1: doing good medical science. Brad Street then pivoted to make
Speaker 1: the pitch that the greatest thing about GcMAF was that
Speaker 1: you could use it without the presence of a doctor.
Speaker 1: In other words, regular parents could just buy the stuff
Speaker 1: and shoot their children up with it. Quote it's accessible
Speaker 1: to anybody around the world through your internets. You've made
Speaker 1: it available very broadly. We've used it in South Africa, China, India,
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, South America and all over. That's been a
Speaker 1: wonderful experience to see parents have access to a therapy.
Speaker 1: And like, so there's this this this drug that's a
Speaker 1: cousin of Benzo's that was like Soviet Union xanax that
Speaker 1: they gave to their astronauts that is like unregulated in
Speaker 1: the US. You can order it by the kilogram like that,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, okay, but what if we just did that
Speaker 1: for children's medicine? You know? Oh man, it is so funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just don't understand, Like how like it's so shameless,
Speaker 3: like going from children to like help people with autism,
Speaker 3: to like everyone with cancer to like.
Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable. And again, the people selling Soviet xanax
Speaker 1: to strangers on the internet fundamentally an honest business. You know,
Speaker 1: by that shouldn't know what they're getting. You know, so
Speaker 1: this that like and you can give it to your kids.
Speaker 1: DIY was the ultimate pitch to the parents in the
Speaker 1: biomedical treatment community and the ultimate evolution of the founding
Speaker 1: principles that parents should be actively engaged not just in
Speaker 1: caring for their child, but in diagnosing and treating them. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there was no real evidence that GcMAF benefited children with
Speaker 1: asd as Baylor's skill, a School of Tropical Medicine dean
Speaker 1: Peter Hotez told the Post. And by the way, doctor
Speaker 1: Peter Hotez also is the parent of a child with autism.
Speaker 1: An initial safety test of GCMF injections had not even
Speaker 1: been completed. It was still trying to recruit participants. So like,
Speaker 1: the actual doctors are being like, we don't even know
Speaker 1: if this is safe. We haven't been able to get
Speaker 1: enough people to volunteer to prove that this isn't dangerous,
Speaker 1: not even to show that it works, and they're just
Speaker 1: selling this over the fucking internet. Even so, Bradstreet bragged
Speaker 1: about dosing more than two thousand children and claimed eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of them improved and fifteen percent had their
Speaker 1: autism eradicated. The initial hype was massive, but the actual
Speaker 1: comments from parents who use the treatment were standard. Some
Speaker 1: claimed small positive while others claimed hard to rate changes
Speaker 1: like while he's talking more. Many though, recorded disappointment. Quote
Speaker 1: we have recruited twenty shots of GcMAF so far, I
Speaker 1: am still waiting for the wow that everyone talks about.
Speaker 1: One person wrote even worse. They described side effects including
Speaker 1: crying and pains in his chest and stomach. For at
Speaker 1: least the first three we are doing GCMA of injections,
Speaker 1: I have not seen any gains at all. Another person wrote,
Speaker 1: I have seen worse behaviors in tantrums. So after spending
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred for no gains and living in hell, I'm
Speaker 1: done with this wow.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine, Like, I can't imagine ordering something online
Speaker 3: and being like, yeah I should, I should send to
Speaker 3: my shot with a needle twenty times.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that child will be a So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I know you you quote unquote love your kid,
Speaker 1: but that sounds like child abuse to me. Yeah, I like,
Speaker 1: obviously little kids don't understand. Sometimes you have to if
Speaker 1: they're sick. You have to give the medicine that they
Speaker 1: don't like that may have negative side effects, because that's
Speaker 1: just necessary sometimes, right, I get it, But like to
Speaker 1: do that for no reason, none at all.
Speaker 3: Also, like, like, I'm sure some of this was causing
Speaker 3: some sort of delirium and the kids were talking as
Speaker 3: a result of that.
Speaker 1: Kid's not doing nothing because by the way, Mango, we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about where this blood came from. Oh God,
Speaker 1: because I know, I know, I know. The first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was like, Wow, Christ, this is fucked up.
Speaker 1: This is not fucked up because they're like shooting kids
Speaker 1: full of blood that doesn't do anything, or maybe it
Speaker 1: hurts them. But also, like blood is rare, there's not
Speaker 1: enough of any of these blood factors. People need this,
Speaker 1: and you're not getting this stuff to people who need it.
Speaker 1: The good news is that's not an issue here.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid, so so nervous.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of these episodes talking about what
Speaker 1: a bad idea it is to make parents with that
Speaker 1: medical training part of the diagnostic and treatment process in
Speaker 1: this way. But the brad Street story does have a
Speaker 1: positive ending due to a mom of two sons with
Speaker 1: autism named Fiona O'Leary. She came upon his scam and
Speaker 1: she gets angry. Right, she is not one of these
Speaker 1: moms who buys him the bullshit. She's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is fucking dangerous. Fuck this guy. She looks into his
Speaker 1: business and the web of shady, undisclosed financial interests he
Speaker 1: had with Immuno Biotech. She files complaints with regulators. I
Speaker 1: think this is over in the UK. I believe she lives.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she's in the UK proper Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1: given the named Fiona O'Leary, but she fought. This leads
Speaker 1: to the UK's equivalent of the FDA does an investigation
Speaker 1: that culminates in a raid on a First Immune g
Speaker 1: CMF production facility near Cambridge. This is the lab where
Speaker 1: he filmed that video where Bradstreet films the video with noakes,
Speaker 1: where they casting each other up.
Speaker 3: I heard was pristine you.
Speaker 1: So while Brad praise the Labis sterility, UK regulators described
Speaker 1: it as making g c MF out of quote Blad
Speaker 1: blood plasma labeled not to be administered to humans or
Speaker 1: used in any drug products. They're getting this out of
Speaker 1: the shit, But does that make it better? Because at
Speaker 1: least regular like people who need blood aren't losing it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: we say here?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so sad.
Speaker 1: Eventually she succeeds. It's so fucked up right, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: where was this blood coming from? She succeeds eventually in
Speaker 1: getting US regulars to look into Brad Street, which brought
Speaker 1: the Feds to his door in Buford on June eighteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Had he been indicted properly, Bradstreet might have
Speaker 1: faced twenty years in prison according to the suspected charges
Speaker 1: of the search warrant. Rather than endure that, Bradstreet fled
Speaker 1: town the next day, driving to North Carolina. As he
Speaker 1: checked into his hotel. Swiss papers reported a story from
Speaker 1: Switzerland that he Firststmune clinic in that country, run by Noakes,
Speaker 1: had been shut down after five patients being treated with
Speaker 1: GcMAF had died. Some had paid almost as much as
Speaker 1: six thousand euros a week for treatment. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: we don't know that the GcMAF killed those people. These
Speaker 1: were terminal patients, right, But this was billed as helping
Speaker 1: terminal conditions and it didn't, right. So there's a big
Speaker 1: raid on his partner, Noakes, that and the raid on
Speaker 1: his own facility in Buford probably contributed to Jeffrey's decision
Speaker 1: to take his own life on June nineteenth. His body
Speaker 1: was found by a fisherman that afternoon, floating like a river,
Speaker 1: and the gun he used was found nearby in the water.
Speaker 1: This immediately became a conspiracy for biomedical advocates, including the
Speaker 1: CEO of him you Know Biotech, who insisted that Jeffrey
Speaker 1: was murdered by pharmaceutical companies for stating that the MCAR
Speaker 1: vaccine causes autism and hurting their profits with his GCMFA therapy.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately what happens here is kind of the best
Speaker 1: case scenario in this world. One major agent of harm
Speaker 1: faces a teeny bit of justice and then makes a
Speaker 1: choice to take himself out of the the picture. Right
Speaker 1: to this day, though, Bradstreet remains a focus of vaccine conspiracists.
Speaker 1: And I found this in a Reddit post on the
Speaker 1: our Conspiracy Commons board from twenty twenty two, and it's
Speaker 1: like a picture of this guy in a suit. This
Speaker 1: is Jeffrey Bradstreet. He found the cure for autism using
Speaker 1: oxygen chamber therapy, chillation, and protein shots for tea cells.
Speaker 1: After having cured thousands, he was shot in the back
Speaker 1: twice at his mansion, and the FBI raided and destroyed
Speaker 1: his cure center the day after. Now, none of that's accurate.
Speaker 1: They raided his center the day before. He's not at
Speaker 1: his mansion. He tries to check into a hotel and
Speaker 1: can't check in, and then he goes to the river,
Speaker 1: Like this is just all wrong.
Speaker 3: But it's also like such a hydra right, Like it
Speaker 3: feels like you cut off the head and like all
Speaker 3: these others emerge. It's awful.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's our story for the week. Great stuff.
Speaker 3: It's super uplifting.
Speaker 1: Betrails everybody. They you know, you got any plugs to plug?
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I did a show called Skyline Drive, which
Speaker 3: is about a skeptical look at astrology.
Speaker 1: And it's really good and.
Speaker 3: I would love for people to check it out if
Speaker 3: they had the time. But uh, honestly, Robert Sophie, this
Speaker 3: is just so fun. I know, I was like just
Speaker 3: shocked and saying, oh my god, more than I probably
Speaker 3: should have. But it was both horrifying and and I
Speaker 3: don't know, really enlightening.
Speaker 1: Yep, well, glad to be horrifying and enlightening, horror enlightening.
Speaker 3: And now I see that Snickers bars.
Speaker 1: X that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now again, this is the the solution to all of
Speaker 1: our problems is the seven dollars snickers bar of xanax right. Look,
Speaker 1: yeah again, vote vote Evans Snickers b x X in
Speaker 1: every pocket. And honestly, none of us is gonna know
Speaker 1: what happens next, but that's of the benefit rights. And look,
Speaker 1: are some people gonna die? Absolutely, And we're going to
Speaker 1: knock down the Washington Monument and replace it with a
Speaker 1: monument that's just a four bar four bar in the
Speaker 1: sky problem solved.
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