Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Robert concludes the story of the Fake Autism Cure Industrial Complex and tells Mangesh about a doctor who tried to get rich selling spoiled blood to deranged parents.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
A media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, everybody, it's James here. If you don't listen to
it could happen here, you might not recognize me. My
name is James Stout and I am the guy who
pops onto this feed every few months to tell you
something very sad and then ask for your money. And
that's why I'm here today. A terrible earthquake struck me
and Ma today the day I'm recording this, which is Friday,

(00:23):
the twenty eighth of March, it was seven point seven
on the Rigter scale. We know of more than one
hundred deaths, but it's likely the death toll is much
much much higher. Lots of the telegraph and internet infrastructure
has been taken out by the earthquake, and the Hunter
restricts internet and social media access, so we don't really
know the full extent of the death but we can

(00:45):
imagine it will be very high. As one of the
areas most affected was Mandalay, which is the second largest
city in Meammah. I've spoken to half a dozen sources
in Memma today, people who Robert and I have interviewed before.
They're all okay, but they all shared how terrible things were.
They said things were as bad as they were at
the time of Cyclonnagus, which would say terrible disaster in

(01:05):
two thousand and eight. If you would like to support
the people of Burma who are currently fighting against tyrannical
dictatorship as well as dealing with the consequences of this
natural disaster, there are a couple of ways you can
do so. I was actually already running a fundraiser on
my Patreon for MOBIAPDF. They are a casualty evacuation team

(01:27):
in southern chance State right at the fiercest part of
the fighting right now. They don't fight. What they do
as they go and they evacuate people who have been injured,
and they provide medical services to internally displace people. They've
been doing this since twenty twenty one. They're incredibly brave
people and they've saved more than three hundred lives. You
can read more about them by going to my Patreon post,

(01:48):
which also includes all the links for donation. The website
for that is TinyURL dot com slash help hyphen Meanmar.
That's TinyURL dot com slash h E l P hyphen m.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Y A N M A R.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
If you'd like to donate somewhere else, An organization that
you can donate to is a Free Burma Ranges. Free
Burma Rangers dot org. They're a fantastic endio. They've been
doing a lot of medical work in the liberated zones
of BMR for a very long time. They've also worked
in Java and lots of other place around the world
where people need help. I spoke to Dave from FBR today.

(02:25):
He's well and he told me that they're already starting
to respond to the disaster. So to donate to them Free
Burma Rangers dot org. Thanks very much, we appreciate your support.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where you
know Mengesh our great guests for today. You know that
you ever heard that that that quote come at the
time cometh the Man.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
I haven't.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, well, it's a quote people say, and I'm saying
it now because I've decided. I had a dream last night,
you and I on you when I was not. Excuse me, Sophie,
let's cut that out. No cometh the time cometh the Man.
And I had a vision last night while I was dreaming.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, you're really not helping this series.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
No, No, I had a vision while I was dreaming
about how to save America. And so I'm gonna. I've
decided I'm running in twenty twenty eight, and I'm running
on a platform of Look, one of the big problems
the liberals and the progressives have. They all think, if
you make education better, you know, if you get enough
dunks on people in public debates or whatever, you can

(03:38):
stop parents in the like from like putting poison into
their kids to try to treat ill understood conditions, right,
and you can't. You can't stop people from wanting something
to do. So let's give them something to do that's
basically harmless. And that's why, as a presidential candidate, my
entire platform is going to be legalize and subsidence using

(04:00):
federal money. A seven dollars bar of xanax, the size
of a Snickers bar. You just get them over the counter,
any grocery store, any pharmacy, just a SNICKERX. You can
lick it like a horse, you can do whatever you
want with it, seven dollars flat. You know, that's how
we're gonna fix things in this country. Look, every problem

(04:23):
the seven dollars XANX Snickers bar solved, Right? He got
a guy walks into a fucking public building wanting to
do a mass shooting, reaches for his gun, finds a
seven dollars snickers bar, a XANX bites it, forgets why
he's there. Problem solved. You know, everything could be this way.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
I'm so glad. Yeah, this is this.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Is how we save America. I'm convinced everyone vote Evans
twenty twenty eight for your seven dollars stickers bar of xanax.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
I mean, we went to both the RNC and DNC,
and you know, at least somebody's got a big idea.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, yeah, again, we won't have any more elect They
are gonna be like three votes that make it in
every election, and none of them will have a legit,
like a readable name. It's just going to be scribbles
on a piece of paper. Who's the president? Fuck it?
Uh So, let's get back into this less happy story

(05:21):
of medicine. The Autism Research Institute and our buddy doctor
Rimland wrote in to defend doctors Usman and Carrie after
Tarik's death, writing in a post on the institute's website
that Tarik had died not because of chellation therapy, but
because of an error that had seen him dosed with

(05:42):
a look alike drug dy sodium edta instead of calcium
die sodium edta. Now, first off, I don't think the
argument we didn't kill him with bad medicine. We killed
him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the
wrong drug makes things beat. Yeah, that's like, no, no, no,

(06:04):
I didn't give him finanyl. I just shot him up
with way too much heroin. Like, I don't really see
how that helps. This is also untrue. Tarik was administered
with the normal kind of DTA used in chilation therapy,
which is the only client kind the clinic had stocked.
In subsequent publications, doctor Rimland bragged that chelation therapy had

(06:27):
consistently good results as rated by paraments who were surveyed
by AR. In fact, it was the number one pick
out of eighty eight approved interventions. A subsequent trist Yes,
they love this because it's clearly is serious medicine. Right.
It doesn't help, It makes things worse generally, but it's
it has a massive visible effect. I think that's honestly

(06:50):
the whole reason why.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
A subsequent statement put out by Dan claimed that chelation
was one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and
related disorders. Now, aluminum, lead, and mercury aren't the only
metals that got blamed. I found a Chicago Tribune piece
that gives the story of a boy named Jordan King
who was chelated for high levels of mercury and tin.

(07:12):
This is where there's a quote in there from like
an expert on tin poisoning who's like, yeah, it basically
it is for like industrial workers who are like welding
tin for a living, you know, like, but not little kids.
There's no way to get enough exposure to tin. Really,
is your kid welding a shitload of tin? Then then

(07:39):
we have other issues. It's not the problem you're letting
your five year old world. What are you doing? Take
that torch away from them? Now, the actual explanation for
why this.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Kid productive, like, you know, sure, why why not?

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Why not get that it's good for kids to have
a hobby. There at least they're touch If they can't
touch grass, they might as well teach touch hat in tin.
Now again they do they do a test which shows
high levels of mercury and tin in this kid's blood.
But that's not the whole story about that and you're like, oh, well,
maybe there was something about why would they have elevated levels? Well,

(08:19):
the explanation for why and for why all of the
kids that get tested in order to justify this therapy
have elevated levels of different heavy metals is because of
the very the distinctly a scientific kind of lab test
that they give these kids. Right, you would think, if
you're like, this kid probably has high levels of heavy metals,

(08:39):
we might want to administer chelation therapy. You're not a doctor, mangesh,
would you first? What would you do first? If you
thought they might have high levels of heavy metals? Get
a blood tuft right, very basic science, right, Okay, you
think this is true, Let's test their blood. No, no, no, no, no.
The way you give these blood is, first you chilate

(09:06):
the child. You shoot them up with this thing that
strips heavy metals out of their blood and makes them
pee it out, right, and then you test them. Right,
so you give them a drug that provokes them to
excrete heavy metals and then test them. And then you
know what, You're gonna find some heavy metals because you

(09:27):
gave them the drug that makes them excrete them. And
here's the thing, there's no except because this isn't the
way science. You don't do this otherwise. There's no accepted
understanding for what normal results on a test given after
chellation would be. So there's no actual medical case for
like drugging people and then testing them like this. So

(09:50):
the lab just shows back charged that shows scary spikes
of different metals, and the clinician says, look, kids.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
You know we need to keep doing this now, doctor,
in case you don't believe me, and you should not.
A doctor, doctor Carl Baum, director of the Center for
Children's Environmental Toxicology at the Yale Newhaven Children's Hospital, calls
this quote exactly the wrong way to do it.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Now. Doctor Usman did ultimately face mild consequences. In two
thousand and nine, The Chicago Tribune featured her in their
Dubious Medicine investigation, which helped push for a pro by
the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. They alleged
that she had provided medically unwarranted treatment that may potentially
result in permanent disabling injuries to two boys. Quote from

(10:40):
the Tribune and reaching a consent order with Usman. Medical
regulators alleged that Usman failed to disclose to her patients
her financial interests in the company supplying the hyperbaric oxygen
chambers and in the compounding pharmacy that filled prescriptions for
her patients. The state said that she also failed to
obtain informed consent for the chelation there and did not
keep adequate medical records for her patients. Usman, who practices

(11:04):
out of the True Health Medical Center in Naperville, neither
admitted nor denied the state's allegations, and signing the consent order,
she agreed to pay a ten thousand dollars fine. Great, Ken,
I love that this is the punishment.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, I know, I know. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Now, the other boy that she is accused of harming
in this case was a Chicago child, the son of
James Coman. We don't get this kid's name because they're
a kid who was engaged in a custody battle with
his ex wife over there, kid who was a child
with autism. Now, the kid's mom is a believer of
these biomedical interventions for their son's autism. James is not.

(11:41):
James recognizes this is pretty dangerous and he gets trapped
in this nightmare of trying to advocate for his son
against the wishes of the boy's mother. Here's how. A
different article by The Tribune titled Autism's Risky Experiments describes
his regimen of treatment. Quote, James Commen's son has an
unusual skill. This seven year old, his father says, can
swallow six pills at Once Diagnosed with autism as a toddler,

(12:06):
the Chicago boy had been placed on an intense regiment
of supplements and medications aimed at treating the disorder. Besides
taking many pills, the boy was injected with vitamin B
twelve and received in intravenous effusions of a drug used
to leech mercury and other metals from the body. He
took megados as, a vitamin C, a hormone, and a
drug that suppresses testosterone. They're just doing everything to this

(12:29):
kid again.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Fact that he can swallow seven pills.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
He's able to take so many pills. That's not talent.
Yeah now. The Comban boy also suffered extreme negative side
effects from chillation, although thankfully not fatal ones. This provoked
his father to sue, and his mother responded by complaining
that any interruption of his complex, nonsense therapeutic routine would
have a disastrous impact on the boy, setting him back.

(12:56):
You know that Tribune article written in two thousand and
nine some up the scope of the biomedical movement at
the time. Studies have shown that up to three quarters
of families with children with autism try alternative treatments, which
insurance does not usually cover. Doctors many link to the
influential group Defeat Autism now promote the therapies online, in
books and it conferences. Intensive regiments are so common that

(13:19):
one doctor recently joked at an Autism one conference in Chicago,
you know you have a child with autism. If your
child takes more pills than your grandmother. He's joking about
all the drugs you're giving kids.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
I love that. Like, you know, you're a redneck.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
If like is his the f share man that makes
you sound good, sounds like you're a doctor great. It
also made a point of discussing how the social media
era had provided oxygen to the hyperbaric chamber fire that
is the biomedical movement. Quote. Parents trade stories and advice
about chelation on large internet groups. One Yahoo group has

(13:56):
more than eight thousand members. The treatment takes many forms,
including creams for the skin, capsule suppositories and intravenous infusions
of powerful medicines usually reserved for people with severe metal poisoning.
The hype was so big around this stuff in two
thousand and six that the National Institute of Mental Health
announced a randomized control style trial of chilation as an

(14:17):
autism treatment. So an actual legitimate medical body says, let's
do a trial. So many people are saying this helps
their kids, let's look into it, right, and ultimately they
cancel that trial in two thousand and eight because they
can't find any evidence that there's benefit to it, and
there's a lot of evidence that even trying this will
put kids at risk, right, significant risk, because chelation is

(14:40):
not good for you if you don't need it. So like,
it's actually unethical for us to study this because there's
zero evidence that's helped anybody, and we know it hurts people,
so we just can't do this to kids. Now. They
also they've done some studies on lab rats that have
showed that drugging lab rats needlessly with chilation therapy causes

(15:01):
cognitive problems. Right, so they're like, this, we just really
can't justify doing this, and this is good logic for
ethical scientists, but the crazed parents and con artist doctors
of the biomedical movement take this as evidence that big Side,
Big Pharma has killed another attempt to uncover the truth. Right,
that's why they don't care about hurting kids. They just
want to They want to keep selling us expensive medicine

(15:24):
that actually isn't as expensive as the fake medicine.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's so awful.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
You see similar stories wherever you look at these nonsense
treatments for autism. In two thousand and seven, the Cochrane Collaboration,
an independent evaluator of medical research, reviewed the efficacy of
casin and gluten free diets as treatments for autism, which
had become another bugbear for biomedicine. The idea that some
of these biomedical people have is that gluten and casein
interferes with kids' brain receptors, and advocates would cite studies

(15:54):
which prove that proper diet could eliminate the symptoms of autism,
But for scientific American cock And identified two very small
clinical trials, one with twenty participants and one with fifteen.
The first study found some production and autism symptoms, the
second found none. A new randomized controlled trial of fourteen
children reported this past May by Susan Hyman, an associate
professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester School of

(16:17):
Medicine and Dentistry, found no changes in attention, sleep, stool patterns,
or characteristic autistic behavior. Slowly, the evidence is starting to
accumulate that diet is not the panacea people are hoping for,
says Susan E. Levy, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital
of Philadelphia who has evaluated the evidence with Hymen. Of course,
logic and evidence never drives the reactions you want to

(16:38):
see in cases like this. Right, Fitzpatrick's book includes a
quote from an anti mercury campaign in the US Generation Rescue.
This is what's her name? The Oprah Ladies, Jenny McCarthy's organization.
Oh ye yeah. This statement was made initially in response
to Tareik Nadama's death. You might want to recall here
that Tarik was diagnosed with like high aluminum levels, not mercury.

(17:00):
But whatever quote. We are not desperate parents willing to
try anything. We are educated, caring parents who have done
thousands of hours of research and administered dozens of medical
tests on our own children under the care of knowledgeable physicians.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Wow, great, wasn't it wasn't Jenny Mathey's kid also like
like she said he was this autistic and then she.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Said she's cured him. She says she's cured him. Yeah,
I hope that kid is okay. I don't know. But
now this kind of talk is like, well, we've actually
we're the experts. We've done so much, you know, to
understand this. It's very common among the loudest mouthpieces of
the movement, which includes Jenny McCarthy. We've discussed before her
appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which played a massive

(17:44):
role in igniting the anti VAXX movement in the US. McCarthy,
whose son Evan was diagnosed with autism, describes herself as
having a PhD. In Google She does not, but she
did have a role to play in the death of
that five year old who burnt alive in a hyperbaric chamber.
And two and sixteen, Jenny pivoted from her successful anti
vax campaign and started advocating a hyperbaric oxygen therapy as

(18:06):
a treatment for ASD. The scientific argument she used was
that people with ASD have and this is autism spectrum disorder.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD
have inflammation in their brains, which is true. You can
if you like, one thing you can see is that,
like there's a level of inflation in the brains of
people with autism. Inflammation in the brains people with autism.
We don't know why, We don't know like how this
relates to the like, we just know it's there. Right,
So there's a lot of debate about this, but it

(18:36):
is something you see. And it is true that hyperbaric
therapy has decreased other kinds of inflammation, but not in
the brain. Yeah, different, like stuff doesn't always it's not
all the same, right.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
You know, even though right, the microbiome being different of
autistic kids and diet not being able to affect the right.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Like, yeah, it's hard. Yeah. And so it's this thing
where like you are taking two unrelated facts and using
them to put kids in these death tubes. Now, actual
analysis of the evidence, because there have been studies on
this shows that the only basis for hyperbaric therapy as
a treatment for autism was one flawed study that showed

(19:18):
a benefit. Per PubMed quote HBO two that's the name
for hyperbaric therapy should not be recommended for ASD treatment
until more conclusive, favorable results and long term outcomes are
demonstrated from well designed, controlled trials. A write up from
this time by the American Council on Science and Health
states despite all of this caution in doubt, McCarthy believes

(19:38):
that she knows better. Her organization, Generation Rescue, is holding
the third annual Autism Education Summit this weekend in Addison, Texas,
just north of Dallas, to promote HBO two therapy for ASD.
This conference included an expert panel of chiropractice and osteopaths,
as well as along with those August medical experts, a
YouTuber named Lily who made have video about hyperbaric treatment

(20:01):
helped her little sister. McCarthy was joined on the panel
by Dell big Tree, producer of the movie Vaxed in
one of the ladies from the Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Truly posy from the Greatest Minds in Medicine awesome. Another
conference expert was doctor anju Usman, whose husband sells hyperbaric chambers.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Oh my god, I was not expecting that twelve.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Oh yeah, baby, Now this is all made especially infuriating
because four years before this conference, in twenty twelve, a
four year old boy and his sixty two year old
grandmother died after the hyperbaric chamber the boy was in
caught fire at the Ocean Hyperbaric Center in Florida. Francesco
had cerebral palsy, which hyperbaric therapy does not treat, and

(20:55):
he had traveled to South Florida from Italy, where the
treatment is illegal, with his grand mother and he caught
on fires. You tried to save them, they both die
nightmarish deaths. Four years before this conference, where Jane McCarthy
saying everybody should do this for their kids. Now, none
of these deaths, none of these injuries, none of the
illnesses caused by all this bullshit treatment means anything to

(21:16):
most of these people. Their only interest is their children.
And one of the issues here is that because of
the way autism works, for most people who have autism,
you see, around the time the symptoms become evident, it
seems like they're regressing. Right, They stop making eye contact,
they stop engaging as much, and this can be very
dramatic and very shocking to parents, right, But most people

(21:36):
with autism, their symptoms then improve over time because they
grow up and they get used to dealing with and
engaging in the world, right, they just that's just life.
You know, this is going to be the case with
the majority of people who get diagnosed with autism. You
will see the symptoms get alleviated. So if you're just
dosing them with every random drug you can get your

(21:58):
hands on, they likely show improvement in some ways just
as they grow up and people convince themselves, I saved
my kid. You know, at least they're better because of
all of this shit I did. When like you could
have just loved them with the help, you know, maybe
gotten some dream of the gi issues or whatever, but
like you could have just loved them, you know, you
didn't have to do all this other shit. But it's

(22:21):
just like you know, life, people find ways to interact
and deal with the world, like David Lynch.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
This is again because people with autism are people. But yeah,
as a result of this fact, many of these parents
will go to their graves secure in the belief that
they stood up for their kid and helped save them,
even if all they did was make the world more
comfortable for the kind of con men who encouraged children
to avoid getting vaccinated for beaesels and speaking of connon, Nope,

(22:49):
speaking of ads. Here they are, we're back. Good stuff,
good stuff, good stuff. So every now and then when
you read about the biomedical community, you do hear about
the rare winds. Right, these cases where a parent gets
pulled into this, they treat their kid with nonsense for

(23:09):
a while, and they realize I fucked up, and they
pull back and they take accountability. And those are good stories.
There's a great article in the Atlantic about autism's fringe
therapies and it gives a story of Emma's Zurcher and
her family. Emma was born in two thousand and two,
when she started to show signs of autism at like
age two and a half, right around the time to
Reek would have died right Her mother, Erie Anne, later

(23:30):
described the realization of her daughter's diagnosis as being like
quote descending into hell. I was desperate to save my daughter.
We went to everybody, We tried everything. For the Atlantic quote,
she and her husband took immate neurologists, gastromineurologists, behavioral speech
and occupational therapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, a shaman and a homeopath,

(23:52):
a craniosacral therapist, and a quigong master. A developmental pediatrician
who didn't take insurance, charged at least two hundred dollars
per visit and had a month long waiting list recommended
they call a psychic. In Europe. The psychic ironically refused
payment because she didn't pick up a signal from them
when the psychics are moronics than the doctor's.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Holy fuck, like oh.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Won the psychics like now I don't want to rob you,
you know, like holy fuck. They tried dozens of treatments
that claim to have recovered children with autism, including numerous
vitamin supplements, topical ointments, restrictive diets, chillation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy,
brain scans, a so called detoxification system, and stem cell therapy.

(24:37):
In other words, she went through all the con therapies
we've covered in these episodes and a bunch more. She
describes her mind state after each failure as I thought,
I didn't do it right, Let me do it again.
And this is the consequence of this. It's not unreasonable
to say they're like, well, if if your kid has
a condition or an illness, part of treating it properly

(24:58):
is the parent needs to be an advocate for their
kid and involved in the treatment. Not an unreasonable statement,
but there's this attitude that that means that like the
it's the parent is responsible for figuring it out. And like, well,
but you're like a you're like a fucking accountant or something,
like you don't know how to you you're not a
medical expert. You know what you're doing, Like you know

(25:20):
you shouldn't be diagnosing your kid here.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Also you can see how like you you like slip
from one to the next and next because you're increasingly desperate.
But like, yeah, once you're dealing with like a shaman,
and like it feels like someone in.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
A psychic shaman knows how to curas. The ultimate result
of all these specialty diets was that Emma shed body
weight at a dangerous pace, loosening fifteen percent of her
weight in six weeks. Now, Emma's mom had by this
point come to believe that her daughter had something that
is another common line in biomedical HUI that GI problems

(25:59):
like leaky gut might help cause symptoms of autism. It doesn't.
None of her attempts to fix Emma's microbiome worked. Arianne
kept going quote, I thought any treatment was better than
doing nothing at all. It's this, I can't think of
anything else to do better press the gas, you know, Yeah,
that's just not it's not smart, sometimes outbreaking. I have

(26:21):
a friend who's in er news. She says, sometimes the
best thing to do with the site of a disaster
is like smoke a cigarette and just kind of think
things out for a second before you get in there, right,
And that sounds horrifying to a lot of people, but
this is a person who deals with emergencies every day.
Sometimes your best bet is like give it a sec. Well,
I mean, especially Threw.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Everyone in the autism community is telling you that, like
there's a ticking clock right, like you're trying to raise
and beat the clock.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
And this is also it's another thing. It's the thing
that gets people killed in war zones. You know, I've
seen it like this, this desire, this feeling, a need
to do something. When again, the people who are the
real veteran, it's the people number one, they also do
react when they need to, but they also don't react
all the time when they don't need to. They tend

(27:08):
to keep to watch shit to think, you know, because
otherwise you die horribly anyway, her kid loses a disastrous
amount of weight, and none of these attempts to fix
emma work at all. This is the state of mind,
this idea, I've got to do something. That's most of
what these parents find themselves in. And the market for
quack cures has only grown. I stated in two thousand

(27:30):
and nine about seventy five percent of parents of children
with autism reported using alternate medicine. Today's about eighty eight percent,
nearly all of them if you have the money. They
are a truly dizzy number of options available, like spect,
a thirty five hundred dollars treatment that scans a child's
brain to diagnose them and derive targeted treatments for their
individual autism. This is in spite of the fact that

(27:52):
brain scans like spect can't reveal autism. They don't, you
don't see it that way, and of course they can't
like figure out this specific treatment has how to help
your kid, right, But parents love that shit, like the oh,
I'm going to get the exact kind of therapy for
my individual kid. No, that's just you're not doing it

(28:13):
this way. Sorry, maybe the therapy your kid needs is
for you to just like them.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Well. Also, also, once your kid has autism and then
you get a skin, you can point to anything and say, like, sure,
the cost of this thing.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
I don't know what it is, but it says autism,
you know, probably the most costly of these new interventions
of stem cell therapy. And this might actually be there
might be treatment derived from this in the future. It's
very far from clear at this point. Right at the moment,
it is not approved as a treatment in the US.
There are several trials gathering data on whether it's safer effective.

(28:47):
But again, the parents who think their kids have this
ticking clock before their life is ruined don't want to wait,
and as The Atlantic reports quote, several foreign clinics offer
it for around ten thousand dollars. Sarah Collins credits the
adult stem cell injections her two children received in Panama Seti,
Panama with the recovery of her older son and improvement
in her younger son. Both of them were diagnosed with autism.

(29:09):
Her experience led her to co found the stem Cell
Therapy for Autism Facebook group. She says one reason parents
might not want to take part in clinical trials in
the US is that their child might wind up in
the placebo arm of the trial. They won't mess with that,
They'll go right to Panama instead. Again, you get both
the psychology of life. Well, I don't want my kid
to be I want them to get the medicine now.

(29:29):
But it's like, ultimately, your desire to do something now
is making your kid and everyone else you love everywhere
in the world less safe. Because good medicine relies on
good double blind studies with placebos. That's how you do
medical studies. And by delaying this number one, you are

(29:52):
slowing down the process by which science will get done.
But also by going to Panama to get whatever the
fuck shot into your kid, will say that clinic doesn't
have good standards. Say your kid gets hurt, and maybe
it's not even because of actual stem cell therapeages, because
something else fucked up happened, but there's this horrible public
death or illness associated with it, and that shuts down

(30:15):
research into a thing that may one day lead to
treatments that help people right, that alleviate some symptom or something.
You are doing nothing but harm by doing this out
of this desire that like, well, but I got to
focus on my kid, and it's like, no, it's this
fucking no, no no. Emma's mom eventually made the right decision,

(30:36):
after about seven years of trying this carousel of treatments,
to reach out to an adult with autism and talk
to them about her kid. This adult was Julia Bascomb,
who has a blog called Just Stemming This. Talking to
Julia Keeter her in on the fact that well, maybe
autism isn't like, doesn't mean my kid has no life.
Maybe they could be happy as a person with autism,

(30:57):
and I should focus on that because it's just the
way they are, Emma's mom wrote, quote, my entire focus changed.
Instead of fighting against Emma's neurology and trying to cure
this heinous disorder, I started finding ways to help her flourish.
And that's it, really right, Like that's the ball game.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
I mean, just to just robbing yourself of like the
joy of being able to enjoy your kid and see them,
you know, is stunning because you're so worried.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yep, yeah, I mean, and it's it is tragic, like
the amount of the wasted years you're so obsessed doing
this that you're not actually having a relationship with your
kid as your kid. You're having a relationship with your
kid as a sick thing you need to fix.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Yeah, it's a guinea pig.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
It's sad now in this case. So one of the
first things she does when she has this shift in mindset,
she realizes, like, Emma's not great at talking. This is
a big problem for her, that like, your kid can't
really talk and like communicate verbally. And so instead of
trying and shooting her up with more drugs and shit,
she tries a different kind of intervention. She gives your
kid a keyboard setup so Emma can type out her thoughts,

(32:06):
and suddenly Emma starts communicating very clearly with people and
the rest of the world. She gets on track to
get her high school diploma. The fact that she now
they figured out how she individually needs to communicate gives
her a chance to advocate for herself and to live
a life. While Zurchier told The Atlantic that she now
views the money she wasted on quack treatments as insane,

(32:29):
and Emma herself insists that only occupational therapy provided her
with any benefit, and occupational therapy is a real thing
that can help. She also insists she's not angry at
her mom. Quote, you thought my autism was hurting me
and that you needed to remove it, but you did
not understand that it is a neurological difference. Fear caused
you to behave with desperation.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
What an incredibly mature way to.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Type on Jesus. Yeah, and that would be a beautiful
note to end on. Mangesh, this is behind the bastards,
so we're not gonna end on that uplifting note. Instead,
I'm gonna tell you a whole nother story about one
of these quack bastards, one of the worst of these

(33:14):
sons of bitches, an asshole named James Jeffrey Bradstreet. Three names,
real serial killer. Shit for James Jeffrey Bradstreet.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
Yeah, this episode and part one just the names.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
The name always the worst. Born in July nineteen fifty
four in Florida, Bradstreet was at one point a Christian
preacher who got a medical degree from the University of Florida.
We're doing great, knocking it out of the park so far.
His postgraduate research was an aerospace medicine, and his actual
career was as a family doctor. But In nineteen ninety seven,

(33:48):
after he'd been practicing for a little over a decade,
his son was diagnosed with autism. As Fitspatrick writes, Jeff
Bradstreet abandoned his career as a family doctor to become
a radio talk show host. Great Great start, Great start.
He immediately met up with the biomedical activists and founded
the International Child Development Resource Center in Florida, or the ICDRC.

(34:14):
In two thousand and one. He appointed Andrew Wakefield to
be head of research there. Brad Street was a big
believer in merging his evangelical Christian faith with his treatments
for autism, and so he created the Good News Doctor
Foundation Now again. Bradstreet's training was two years of residency
in obstetrics and some added training in aerospace medicine. He

(34:35):
was not board certified in any specialty, yet he advertised
himself as a biomedical expert in autism treatment who specialized
in correcting biochemical imbalances as well as detoxification. Wow, again,
this is a guy who's like qualified to help your
kid with the flu. You know, right, not to like

(34:56):
downplay family medicine, but this is not a guy who's
qualified cure among other things nobody is. It's not a thing.
That's not a thing that happens. In the book Deadly Choices,
Paul Offatt describes Bradstreet's clinical approach this way. Bradstreet had
promoted several cures for autism, including secret in chellation, immunoglobulin

(35:17):
administered by mouth and by vain, and PREDDA zone, a
potent steroid that suppresses the immune system. He also prescribed
dietary supplements he sold in his office. As one expert
put it, the nutritional supplements prescribed by doctor Bradstreet were
also sold by doctor Bradstreet.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
That's fine, cool, and this is we're like the late nineties, right,
this is yeah, yeah, this guy would be on TikTok.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Oh my, oh he might have been. Actually, you know what, Sophie,
good news. We're gonna talk about what this guy ends
up doing in the present era. It's actually the best
part of the story. So in nineteen ninety nine, Bradstreet
began treating Colton Snyder, ultimately examining him more than one
hundred and sixty times and ordering a number of invasive
lab tests that were not approved by the FDA. Among

(36:09):
these were multiple spinal taps. If you've had spinal tap.
That's not a thing you fuck around with. They're just
stabbing this kid in the spine with needles. See that
makes it better.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
One hundred and sixty times. Feels very, very feels.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Like a lot of visits. Feels like a lot of visits.
They also insert a fiber optic scope into Colton's stomach
and colon as off. It writes all these tests and
procedures were expensive, potentially dangerous, and, according to the opinions
of expert witnesses, of no value to the child.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Now, Brad streets. This is not said directly, but his
parents have money. This is not cheap. That's why Bradstreet's
doing this. His medical documentation of Snyder ultimately runs to
some six hundred and fifty pages. He diagnoses the boy
over the years with autism, yeast overgrowth, a funk infection unspecified,
and sepalopathy unspecified, unicaria, and a shitload of other things.

(37:05):
And it's so many different things that it is clear
that what's going on here is Brad Street has this
is like a munchausends by doctor syndrome, right, And he's
not doing it because he's deluded. He's doing it because
he is a mercenary with the goal of keeping Colton's
parents paying for very expensive tests and treatments for forever. Right,
none of Colton's mercury tests wherever high, but still Bradstreet,

(37:28):
who believed mercury contributed to autism, prescribed numerous rounds of
chelation therapy. A rite up in Quackwatch summarizes broad Street
conceded that Colton did not respond well to chelation. The
medical records, including reports from missus Snyder, reflected that Colton
did poorly after every round of chelation therapy. The more
disturbing question is why chelation was performed at all in
view of the normal levels of mercury found in the hair, blood,

(37:49):
and urine. It's apparent lack of efficacy in treating Colton's
syndroms and the adverse side effects that apparently caused. That's
another thing you encounter where these parents and these practitioners.
Practitioners will convince the parents, oh, yeah, if your kids
having there, if they're responding negatively, that's the toxins leaving.
Of course, it's ugly, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's so hard, that's awful.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
It's real fucked up these people should all have god
to prison. They should all still go to prison. Yeah,
but you know who shouldn't go to prison? Our sponsors?
Is that what we're doing. I'm saying they shouldn't, Sophie,
what do you want from me? We're back. So. In

(38:36):
one conference in the early aughts, after Bradstreet had become
a DAN affiliated doctor, he referred to parents who didn't
blame their kid's condition on vaccines or subject them to
dangerous bio medical experimentations as apids or autism. Parents in denial. Right,
if you just accept your kid and try to help
them live their best life, you're in denial. You should

(38:59):
be poised. Fitzpatrick notes that other experts in the field
speak in similar ways. Quote Jenny McCarthy is dismissive of
Woe is Me moms, though she is not above moaning
about how shitty her own life is and reminding her
readers that celebrities suffer like everyone else. Still, she finds
it difficult to accept that other parents don't simply believe
in alternative treatments. Was it she asked herself, that they

(39:19):
didn't want to hope or that they enjoyed the victim role?
I don't know. Maybe they're just trying to do what's
best for their kids. Yeah. When the Chicago Tribune interviewed
Bradstreet about his use of ivy immunal globulin or IVIG
as an autism treatment, he told them every kid with
autism should have a trial of IVIIG if money was

(39:40):
not an option and if IVIG was abundant. Bradstreet also
became a vocal advocate for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, although he
did later publish research arguing it was ineffective, perhaps because
it wasn't a big money maker for his clinic. In
two thousand and eight, more than five thousand families enmeshed
in the biomedical movement launched a lawsuit seeking compensation for
vaccine related harm in the US Court of Federal Claims.

(40:02):
Brad Street was one of their major witnesses. He provided
expert testimony, which ultimately failed because the special Masters, which
is the title name to the people who are like
evaluating this claim, look into brad Street in part to
determine if there's credible evidence to support the idea that
vaccines cause autism. They conclude it doesn't. They reject the case,

(40:24):
and one major reason is the case of Colton Snyder,
which they examine at length and hold up as like
this is an example of how the malpractice is coming
from inside the house. It's guys like Brad Street. Right, yeah. Still.
By two thousand and nine, Bradstreet had been in practice
so long that he claimed his institute has records on
more than four thousand patients. He got a California medical
license in May of that year and established a branch

(40:46):
of the ICDRC. Two years later, he got a Georgia
state medical license and opened to clinic in Buford. Because
staying competitive in the industry of fake autism treatments required
constant innovation, Brad Street became an add the kit for
a new autism cure late in his career. GcMAF. This
stands for globulin component macrophage activating factor. And this is

(41:10):
a thing. It's a protein and healthy blood that you
can remove and concentrate and use it to treat certain
kinds of illnesses. Some kind of people are sick in
a way that injecting them with this concentrated factor can
help them.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Right.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
It's a real thing for stuff, not for this, but
for stuff. In August of twenty twelve, he gave a
presentation in England in which he described injecting forty patients
with autism with this shit, declaring I shouldn't call it shit. Well,
but the stuff he is selling is shit. There's a
legitimate version of this, that's not what he's selling, declaring, quote,
it's extremely potent in terms of its ability to work
for children. He announced, many from this experiment have gone

(41:46):
into basically lose the label of autism. They don't have
autistic distinctions anymore. After sometimes as littlest twenty weeks of therapy. Yeah,
this just isn't the way this works.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
It's through the works.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
But Bradstreet tended to show up up in the kind
of crowds where he wouldn't be questioned. He claimed that
doctors in Japan and Italy were working on the same therapy,
and he also cited a guy named David Noakes, the
head of an Immuno Biotech, which manufactures GcMAF, and he
in fact, he shouts this guy out and then offers
attendees to the speech of twenty five percent discount on GCMAL.

(42:21):
Sounds like medicine to me, bro I love it. Gives
me a fucking cupon for Blood Factory.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Well, it's coming from honestly because he's a radio host.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Sure, yeah, of course it does come right right absolutely
Pearl Washington Post piece by Michael Miller quote. What he
did not disclose, however, was that much of the research
he cited had already been discredited and retracted the journal,
considering Bradstreet's paper was the scientific equivalent of self publishing,
and Bradstreet had close ties to Noakes and Immuno Biotech.
During the same UK trip, Bradstreet and Noakes made what

(42:55):
was essentially a promotional video for Immuno Biotech and its
brand of GCMF called First Immune. Quote. I'm here with
doctor Jeffrey Bradstreet from the USA, the autism expert in
the first Immune GcMAF laboratories. Nookes set on camera. Doctor
Bradstreet has been using our GcMAF for in eighteen months,
and we'd like to thank you for I think you've
treated nine hundred children. Now not just children, Bradstreet boasted,

(43:19):
So the spectrum of my parent patients with autism ranges
from somewhere around eighteen months to goodness somewhere around close
to forty. So we've treated many adults with autism, as
well as chronic fatigue patients, cancer patients, So we found
application for a fairly broad number of disorders for the
product The Truth. The two trading compliments for four minutes straight,

(43:39):
just gasing each other up for four minutes. Again, this
sounds like medicine. Now. The transcripts for this are just
impossibly fucking cringey, with Noakes saying We've never met a
doctor with such an understanding at the microbiological level of
how autism and cancer and other diseases work. Autism and

(44:01):
cancer not really related, not alike, not at all alike
other diseases. Again, not that I'm not saying autism is
a disease, but like that's the way this guy's talking.
It's like, no, this is this isn't medicine. I know
doctors are never like, yeah, we figure like this thing
helps with the flu and I don't know.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Probably lunt cancer fucking and gout, yeah, gout.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
And one of the things, like Brad Street goes back
to after Noakes gases him up. He's like, this is
the most sterile lab I've ever seen, the best equipment,
the best people. This is the perfect like environment for
doing good medical science. Brad Street then pivoted to make
the pitch that the greatest thing about GcMAF was that
you could use it without the presence of a doctor.

(44:50):
In other words, regular parents could just buy the stuff
and shoot their children up with it. Quote it's accessible
to anybody around the world through your internets. You've made
it available very broadly. We've used it in South Africa, China, India,
Eastern Europe, South America and all over. That's been a
wonderful experience to see parents have access to a therapy.
And like, so there's this this this drug that's a

(45:14):
cousin of Benzo's that was like Soviet Union xanax that
they gave to their astronauts that is like unregulated in
the US. You can order it by the kilogram like that,
Like yeah, okay, but what if we just did that
for children's medicine? You know? Oh man, it is so funny.

(45:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, I just don't understand, Like how like it's so shameless,
like going from children to like help people with autism,
to like everyone with cancer to like.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
It's just unbelievable. And again, the people selling Soviet xanax
to strangers on the internet fundamentally an honest business. You know,
by that shouldn't know what they're getting. You know, so
this that like and you can give it to your kids.
DIY was the ultimate pitch to the parents in the

(46:09):
biomedical treatment community and the ultimate evolution of the founding
principles that parents should be actively engaged not just in
caring for their child, but in diagnosing and treating them. Meanwhile,
there was no real evidence that GcMAF benefited children with
asd as Baylor's skill, a School of Tropical Medicine dean
Peter Hotez told the Post. And by the way, doctor
Peter Hotez also is the parent of a child with autism.

(46:32):
An initial safety test of GCMF injections had not even
been completed. It was still trying to recruit participants. So like,
the actual doctors are being like, we don't even know
if this is safe. We haven't been able to get
enough people to volunteer to prove that this isn't dangerous,
not even to show that it works, and they're just
selling this over the fucking internet. Even so, Bradstreet bragged

(46:52):
about dosing more than two thousand children and claimed eighty
five percent of them improved and fifteen percent had their
autism eradicated. The initial hype was massive, but the actual
comments from parents who use the treatment were standard. Some
claimed small positive while others claimed hard to rate changes
like while he's talking more. Many though, recorded disappointment. Quote

(47:12):
we have recruited twenty shots of GcMAF so far, I
am still waiting for the wow that everyone talks about.
One person wrote even worse. They described side effects including
crying and pains in his chest and stomach. For at
least the first three we are doing GCMA of injections,
I have not seen any gains at all. Another person wrote,
I have seen worse behaviors in tantrums. So after spending
thirteen hundred for no gains and living in hell, I'm

(47:34):
done with this wow.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
I can't imagine, Like, I can't imagine ordering something online
and being like, yeah I should, I should send to
my shot with a needle twenty times.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
I don't know. Maybe that child will be a So
I'm sorry. I know you you quote unquote love your kid,
but that sounds like child abuse to me. Yeah, I like,
obviously little kids don't understand. Sometimes you have to if
they're sick. You have to give the medicine that they
don't like that may have negative side effects, because that's

(48:10):
just necessary sometimes, right, I get it, But like to
do that for no reason, none at all.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Also, like, like, I'm sure some of this was causing
some sort of delirium and the kids were talking as
a result of that.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Kid's not doing nothing because by the way, Mango, we're
about to talk about where this blood came from. Oh God,
because I know, I know, I know. The first thing
I thought was like, Wow, Christ, this is fucked up.
This is not fucked up because they're like shooting kids
full of blood that doesn't do anything, or maybe it
hurts them. But also, like blood is rare, there's not

(48:43):
enough of any of these blood factors. People need this,
and you're not getting this stuff to people who need it.
The good news is that's not an issue here.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
I'm afraid, so so nervous.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I've spent a lot of these episodes talking about what
a bad idea it is to make parents with that
medical training part of the diagnostic and treatment process in
this way. But the brad Street story does have a
positive ending due to a mom of two sons with
autism named Fiona O'Leary. She came upon his scam and
she gets angry. Right, she is not one of these
moms who buys him the bullshit. She's like, oh, this

(49:15):
is fucking dangerous. Fuck this guy. She looks into his
business and the web of shady, undisclosed financial interests he
had with Immuno Biotech. She files complaints with regulators. I
think this is over in the UK. I believe she lives.
I don't know if she's in the UK proper Northern Ireland,
given the named Fiona O'Leary, but she fought. This leads
to the UK's equivalent of the FDA does an investigation

(49:38):
that culminates in a raid on a First Immune g
CMF production facility near Cambridge. This is the lab where
he filmed that video where Bradstreet films the video with noakes,
where they casting each other up.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
I heard was pristine you.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
So while Brad praise the Labis sterility, UK regulators described
it as making g c MF out of quote Blad
blood plasma labeled not to be administered to humans or
used in any drug products. They're getting this out of
the shit, But does that make it better? Because at
least regular like people who need blood aren't losing it.

(50:15):
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what
we say here?

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Oh my god, so sad.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Eventually she succeeds. It's so fucked up right, Oh my god,
where was this blood coming from? She succeeds eventually in
getting US regulars to look into Brad Street, which brought
the Feds to his door in Buford on June eighteenth,
twenty fifteen. Had he been indicted properly, Bradstreet might have

(50:45):
faced twenty years in prison according to the suspected charges
of the search warrant. Rather than endure that, Bradstreet fled
town the next day, driving to North Carolina. As he
checked into his hotel. Swiss papers reported a story from
Switzerland that he Firststmune clinic in that country, run by Noakes,
had been shut down after five patients being treated with
GcMAF had died. Some had paid almost as much as

(51:08):
six thousand euros a week for treatment. And to be clear,
we don't know that the GcMAF killed those people. These
were terminal patients, right, But this was billed as helping
terminal conditions and it didn't, right. So there's a big
raid on his partner, Noakes, that and the raid on
his own facility in Buford probably contributed to Jeffrey's decision
to take his own life on June nineteenth. His body

(51:28):
was found by a fisherman that afternoon, floating like a river,
and the gun he used was found nearby in the water.
This immediately became a conspiracy for biomedical advocates, including the
CEO of him you Know Biotech, who insisted that Jeffrey
was murdered by pharmaceutical companies for stating that the MCAR
vaccine causes autism and hurting their profits with his GCMFA therapy.

(51:49):
And unfortunately what happens here is kind of the best
case scenario in this world. One major agent of harm
faces a teeny bit of justice and then makes a
choice to take himself out of the the picture. Right
to this day, though, Bradstreet remains a focus of vaccine conspiracists.
And I found this in a Reddit post on the
our Conspiracy Commons board from twenty twenty two, and it's

(52:10):
like a picture of this guy in a suit. This
is Jeffrey Bradstreet. He found the cure for autism using
oxygen chamber therapy, chillation, and protein shots for tea cells.
After having cured thousands, he was shot in the back
twice at his mansion, and the FBI raided and destroyed
his cure center the day after. Now, none of that's accurate.
They raided his center the day before. He's not at

(52:31):
his mansion. He tries to check into a hotel and
can't check in, and then he goes to the river,
Like this is just all wrong.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
But it's also like such a hydra right, Like it
feels like you cut off the head and like all
these others emerge. It's awful.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Anyway, that's our story for the week. Great stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
It's super uplifting.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Betrails everybody. They you know, you got any plugs to plug?

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yeah, definitely. I did a show called Skyline Drive, which
is about a skeptical look at astrology.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
And it's really good and.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
I would love for people to check it out if
they had the time. But uh, honestly, Robert Sophie, this
is just so fun. I know, I was like just
shocked and saying, oh my god, more than I probably
should have. But it was both horrifying and and I
don't know, really enlightening.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Yep, well, glad to be horrifying and enlightening, horror enlightening.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
And now I see that Snickers bars.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
X that's right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Now again, this is the the solution to all of
our problems is the seven dollars snickers bar of xanax right. Look,
yeah again, vote vote Evans Snickers b x X in
every pocket. And honestly, none of us is gonna know
what happens next, but that's of the benefit rights. And look,

(54:04):
are some people gonna die? Absolutely, And we're going to
knock down the Washington Monument and replace it with a
monument that's just a four bar four bar in the
sky problem solved.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(54:45):
at Behind the Bastards