ACT (acquired childhood toxicity)

[Guest guest]

I agree with Becky that we have to be very careful not to overstate

our case in saying that all autism=mercury poisoning. Autism as a

diagnosis is a dumb idea and getting dumber every day. To diagnose

an illness that has neurologic, immunologic and GI components on the

basis of behavior is just plain stupid.

I still use that label sometimes because it's easy and it identifies

us with each other and it helps the newly diagnosed find us and find

doctors and find answers. Overwise, it would be worse than useless,

because it is also confusing and divisive and leads many people down

the wrong paths.

Sometimes I say that my son is neurologically damaged due to toxic

exposures and sometimes I just say he is young at heart (like when

he's acting like a 5 year old in the grocery store and he clearly

looks like a 12 year old).

We can't give up the old label of autism entirely for the reasons I

mentioned above, but we need to also help redefine the illness by the

language that we use. (i.e. When late term pregnancy termination

began to be called partial birth abortion it totally reframed the

debate. And whether you were for or against legislating that

procedure the very fact that you used the phrase " partial birth

abortion " was a vote in a sense for banning the procedure)

I don't know what the hell autism is, and I sure as hell don't know

what has caused every case of diagnosed autism out there, but I know

that hundreds of thousands of our children are suffering from a

variety of toxic insults which add upon each other and multiple the

effects of each other.

Kathy