March 26, 2008

My Friend's Pediatrician: Jenny McCarthy's Son Never Had Autism

I got an interesting call yesterday. A friend of mine, who has read Jenny McCarthy's book, took her healthy baby into the pediatrician and began asking questions about vaccine safety. Her doctor got annoyed and told her that they were safe and had no link to autism.

Then she mentioned Jenny McCarty. "Medical people do not like Jenny McCarthy", my friend said to me.

Her doctor, now much more annoyed, then told her that Jenny's son Evan was not autistic, he was epileptic.

(I suppose since they can't argue with Evan's recovery, they want to argue that he was never had autism to begin with?)

She didn't believe the doc, and I further told her what the evaluation process is like to try to get services for a child in California (we were living there when Chandler regressed). An autism diagnosis costs the state a great deal of money (I added it up once and Chandler got almost $100,000 worth of services from the state that year), and they don't give 299.0s (the diagnostic code for autism) out capriciously.

So I am curious about this... is this the denial process of just one doctor, or was this information offered to said doc as some sort of 'talking points to counter the McCarthy vaccine backlash'.

Has anyone else heard anything like this from the medical professionals in their life?

13 comments:

Thing1Thing2Mom said...

This does not surprise me in the least.

I have had two doctors (family practitioners) ask me, when I expressed that my daughter is in recovery thanks to the biomedical treatment, "Well was she actually diagnosed with autism?" I too wondered if there were talking points being passed to doctors.

See I tell every medical professional I can, in the appropriate course of conversation, about my daughters recovery.

I told both doctors that, "yes, she was diagnosed with PDD which is, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, the same as Autism Spectrum Disorder and that she was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder and she has lost both diagnoses."

In the future I will add, "does it really matter...through her regression she lost eye contact, stemmed all day "spinning without getting dizzy", had mini seizures, echolalia and severe stuttering, aggression, and had lost any sign of ideation (the ability to determine the purpose of or what to do with an object)etc, etc... and all those symptoms disappeared as we implemented medical interventions. Do you have any more questions Mr./Ms. Medical Professional?"

This is just another example of the unbelievable disrespect that many in the medical community feel is acceptable to heap on us mothers. However, I will say that we have recently found a pediatrician, in a very large hospital system group that has been amazing. Very reasonable about our decision to delay vaccination for our youngest and very supportive of the work we are doing with the DAN! Doctor. They are out there.

cchrissyy said...

That happens to the mom in "a Real Boy" too.

I think the reason we haven't had a negative clash with a Dr is we wouldn't have picked Drs or therapists for our team in the first place who were combative about the idea of kids gaining skills, deserving full respect for their way of thinking, succeeding in mainstreaming, and that the associated sleep/gut/anxiety issues are treatable.

Unknown said...

Your friend's pediatrician is simply angry that someone is able to get media attention with a child with a confirmed vaccine injury. Yes Jenny's son, like many children with autism, has a dual diagnosis...the child suffered seizures as a result of the vaccine injury (a recognized adverse event in several vaccines) and the subsequent brain injury caused the development of symptoms on the autism spectrum. Thankfully Jenny had the means to seek the best care and her son is recovering.
I find it interesting that doctors are 'angry' and 'do not like' a mother who is outspoken and who is out there trying to help families get help for their vaccine injured children. Not every child with autism is vaccine injured and not every vaccine injured child is autistic - however both do occur and the medical community needs to take its head out of the sand and understand that by acknowledging these types of injuries that families will begin to trust the public health system again.

Just my two cents worth!

Ginger Taylor said...

Here, Here Elizabeth.

Unknown said...

Hi Its Jenny McCarthy, seriously.
Can you get me the number to that pediatrician so I can hand him the endless paperwork from Evans evaluation from UCLA and the regional center, and then Id like to slap him.. xxxoo

thanks Jenny

Ginger Taylor said...

Hi Jenny,

Will get that to you pronto.

Fight the power.

Ginger

Mark said...

hey Jenny
Please check out my blog
Mark

Unknown said...

Hi Jenny,
I'm dying to know the name of the pediatrician who gave Evan his immunizations. I have a sneaking suspicion that he may be my pediatrician because he's the ped.to the stars, located in BH and doesn't believe in an immunization/autism link.

Thanks

~*ss*~ said...

thank you jenny for being so outspoken! we need your voice!

one thing i wanted to point out about the bad stuff stuck in the gut of autistic kids is from my personal experience with my son when he was about 3-4 years old, my mom started taking care of him for 3-5 days, and when i got him back, i noticed he was looking at me and talking much clearer!
i asked my mom what he was eating, and she gave him the yogurt drink from the asian grocery stores.
later, i learned that the yogurt drink was a probiotic--the yogurt culture that is good for digestion.
and then when i was reading about the theory on how it was the body's inability to digest certain foods, then it hit me about the connection with the yogurt drink making my son much more attentive.
this was back in 2003-2004.
my son has come a long ways, but he still sometimes talks in repetitive ways.
however, i haven't eliminated dairy or wheat from his diet as he eats very little of that anyways, and won't eat some of the non-gluten foods.

anybody have the links to get the doctors that jenny used? the links don't seem to work.

thanks!
lili

wholistic midwife said...

I am more surprised by the thinking of mainstream society that the doctors wouldn't be like that! I am a midwife and you wouldn"t believe the insane questions and remarks I receive from the medical world. That is why I am going to med school. I am not going to join them but I will beat them at their own game. If they don"t chose to educate and involve themselves in modern medicine with intergration and holistic principles than they will stay in the dark. DONT stay there with them! Find a good doctor. They are out there. Keep asking questions. You will find someone who will welcome your mindfulness. I always do with my clients. I take the extra few minutes it takes to answer them.
Wholistic Midwife

Chelsey said...

And how do you all feel now knowing that her son never had Autism? I'm not a Dr. but my profession is Occupational Therapy so I work directly with a lot of children who have Autism. I applaud Jenny for bringing a lot of attention to a cause, and for all the great resources and types of therapies she brings to light in her book.

However, given the new information that he never had Autism (which I was skeptical of to begin with due to all the circumstances leading up to his diagnosis and his being "cured") and the information that the whole vaccine study was a fraud, does this affect your stance on vaccines?

Purely looking for opinions out of curiosity.

Ginger Taylor said...

Chesley,

Jenny's son never had autism according to who?

This is not a true medical fact, this is a whisper campaign that pharma started. What doctor examined Evan and found he never had autism?

Don't let Jenny hear you repeat it. As you will note in the one of the comments above yours, She was not to happy with this. I sent her the info on the practice that was telling their patients this and my understanding is she faxed them her son's autism evaluations from UCLA and asked them to stop spreading lies about him. (funny thing is, I didn't know it when I wrote this piece, but it turned out to be the SAME practice that my son got his own vaccine injury in).

If you are an OT, I am sure you know how hard it is to get an autism diagnosis. Especially in California. It qualifies a child for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in state services and the CA regional centers don't like to hand them out. I speak from experience as that was where my son was when he was diagnosed.

Evan McCarthy had autism, and no one has proved otherwise. If you can find where that claim came from, pleas post it here.

The medical industry had DECIDED that autism is incurable (because they can't treat it and cure it with their drugs) so when a child does recover, they then have to declare that he must have not had autism in the first place to preserve their definition of "autism". Stone age thinking.

And to see my reaction to the garbage put out this week, see my current post and my long list of research that supports the vaccine/autism connection, the list that has never even referred to the study mentioned.

You have to do a lot of digging to tell the difference between real new facts and pharma PR. But you only have to scratch the surface to see that safety claims on vaccines, and these hit stories don't have much holding them up.

When you hear this stuff, look for the original source of the information. You will almost always find Pharma and not the 'objective doctor or reporter' you thought you were listening to.

Sanchez Thompson said...

My son was diagnosed with a rare form absence status epilepsy. His seizures show no symptoms until the seizure has lasted for hours! The only warning we had was he started acting only tired at first then gradually he started acting confused and from there for 24 hours he didn't know what year it was, where he went to school, or even what grade he was in etc. his motors skills were perfect and he talked to everyone normal the entire time, he just couldn't answer certain questions. The hospital kept him overnight and gave him fluids and in 24 hours he slowly started remembering and they said he was good and sent us home. We know now that he was having a constant seizure the ENTIRE TIME of his confusion! Almost 3 months later he begins having the same symptoms when I woke him up for his 2nd day of school. we are sent for an EEG, which revealed at 10 am he was actually having what the neurologist referred to as the worst EEG he had seen) we then were sent to a different children's hospital where they observed him until 8:00pm, all this time my son passes every test, he is talking and his motor skills are completely normal! They finally begin his EEG around 9:00pm. It reveals he is still in seizure! They are blown away. Say they have never seen an absence case like his and they quickly gave him a big dose of adavan which immediately stops the seizure and he is able to regain his memory immediately. Does anyone have a child who has these same symptoms? His neuro doctor ordered a brain glucose test, but when we went for a follow up last week they said the test had been canceled and they had no idea what happened? When I asked if they were going to draw his blood and re do the test, they said that his medicine was controlling the seizures so far so they didn't feel the need to do the test! I need advice and some direction. I searched further; visited epilepsy websites, blogs. I find info about someone having the same symptoms. I was really determined. Fortunately for me, I stumbled on a testimony of someone who had epilepsy for several years and was cured through herbal medication. I read awesome stories of people whose condition were worse . But due to numerous testimonies. I was more than willing to try it. I contacted the doctor Gabriel, and my son used the Nectar herbs. It became a miracle for my son free from rare form absence status epilepsy within 3 months. The Nectar medicine worked without any trace of side effects on my son. totally cure. I decided to share my son story to tell people out there, that there is a hope for those with epilepsy using nectar medicine and anyone who suffers from seizures can be cured. Email dr.gabriel474@gmail.com