And yes, the supplement hawkers do go to other disability groups. If you want to explore this, familiarize yourself with groups.google. Before Google I used deja-news, and found through searching something other discussions, which is where I encountered the bit.listserv.down.syn (if you look it up you have to go back a few years, it like most of Usenet has been hit heavily with spam). I found that there was people pushing the same oil supplements, and even the intensive physical therapy regime that cropped up on the listserv I was on (I vaguely remember a particularly funny posting on the down-syn listserv about tuna fish supplement sushi burgers that I pointed the listserv I was on to).

Oh, about that “intensive physical therapy”, that is “patterning” which was championed by Glenn Doman decades ago. This is also how I first encountered Dr. Novella. In 1996 he wrote an article detailing the limitations of the Doman-Delacato method titled: “Psychomotor Patterning: A Critical Look”. I found it when it was being brought up in the listserv I was on during the late 1990s (I remember because we were still on dial-up… and the way I know that is because the computer was temporarily upstairs while we repainted the den/office, and the room it is in still only has a phone line, we switched to a cable modem early in 2000).

Which leads into a good short book that beautifully illustrates what parents of disabled children go through when trying to do their best: “No Time for Jello” by Berneen Bratt. It is a great read, and what is important to note are all the various types of kids who were supposed to improve with this therapy, and more importantly how if the therapy did not work it was all the parents’ fault!

As I said, I have been dealing with this for a long time, starting with our Compuserve dial-up service we got at around 1995. I found their disability forums early on, and then ventured out on to Usenet by using the AltaVista search engine on an early version of Netscape. I can’t find my first Usenet posting because I cannot remember my weird totally numeric Compuserve username! I can tell you that this is how I first “met” Orac of Respectful Insolence.

Have you found that anti-vaxers are also claiming that cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and Down syndrome are caused by vaccines?! Or just that they’re hijacking the site {excuse me again, the listservs/chatboards/whatever} for spamming about their panacea?

A listserv is not a “site”, it is email based (I joined in the mid to late 1990s). And it wasn’t even on autism, it was about a fairly rare neurological based speech disorder, but was taken over by some of the autism folks, including one woman who worked for Jeffrey Bradstreet (they try to sell their supplements to parents in various disability networks, you’ll find them pushing their crap on cerebral palsy places, epilepsy, Down Syndrome and others).

Not to go all PC, but I think the proper term is alternative knockers.

It does not require a subscription, and the appendices and slide sets have some very interesting bits of information.

Ignorance of evolution is so prevalent it hardly surprises when I see it, but this guy would clearly allow his own children to become vectors for potentially fatal communicable disease, for no other reason than he chooses to remain ignorant of very basic science, especially where it conflicts with opinions he formed without regarding readily available information. That is absolutely frightening.

Hard to say with so little a sample, but he seems to be APAS (a priori anti-science). Contempt prior to investigation is among the surest pathways to error.

I’m sure his blood pressure rises reading these last few entries, having posted himself into the corner of “I won’t post again.”