Stop Autism Now! A Parent’s Guide to Preventing and Reversing Autism Spectrum Disorders
By Dr. Bruce Fife
Piccadilly Books, Ltd.
We have heard from a number of sources that there is an important connection between the gut and the brain, and this book supports the validity of that relationship. This book is also in general agreement with diet protocols that can help solve the problems of gut and brain disorders.
Dr. Fife covers the importance of medium-chain triglycerides in great detail. The best source of these fatty acids is coconut oil, which is a major theme of his book.
His coverage of disease extends a bit beyond autism and includes several case histories of seizures that were successfully treated with a ketogenic diet. While the original ketogenic diet has been successful, that diet was restrictive and hard to follow over the long run. Adding coconut oil makes it less restrictive and easier to follow.
The analysis and recommendations for dealing with autism and other disorders in the spectrum are good, but what makes this book stand out is the coverage of what is really going on in the scientific and medical world. Fife goes into detail in the case of Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998, published a peer-reviewed study suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. While not implicating problems with all vaccines, Wakefield’s evidence was nevertheless damaging enough to the pharmaceutical industry to trigger a ferocious backlash. The industry then funded studies designed to refute Wakefield’s findings. Industry-funded studies are not science, nor is it science when the final conclusion is already predetermined, but apparently the pharmaceutical industry has enough money to convince medical journals like The Lancet otherwise.
A tremendous smear campaign resulted in the revocation of Wakefield’s license, and he was dismissed from the hospital where he worked. He ultimately had to leave the UK, move to the United States and start over. This is what happens when you cross the Big Pharma mafia—if you’re lucky.
It looks like the pharmaceutical industry has good reason to be concerned about too much negative vaccine publicity. I keep seeing stories like the one about a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which finds that 80 percent of whooping cough patients received multiple (at least five) Tdap vaccinations. Italian courts have ruled more than once that there is a link between MMR vaccines and autism.
The Wakefield fiasco is not an isolated incident of misconduct in the industry. Pharmaceutical giant Merck was taken to court for concealing evidence that Vioxx caused heart attacks. They were condemned by their own emails. Company emails identified doctors who questioned the safety of Vioxx, and the emails described plans to neutralize those doctors. One quote is, “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.”
I first learned about the Vioxx scandal when a company-wide email was sent out at the defense contractor where I worked at the time. It explained that when you delete something from a Microsoft Word document, for example, it may not be displayed in normal viewing mode anymore, but that information is still stored in the file in case you change your mind and undelete the information. That hidden information is called metadata. Metadata from a document that Merck sent to the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that Merck knew Vioxx caused heart attacks and chose to put it on the market anyway. I found it interesting that we heard about that in a company-wide email in an unrelated industry. I think that is a clue to the mindset of all big industry.
Another pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, tested a new drug on children in Nigeria. They did so without permission or authorization by the Nigerian government. They also neglected to mention to the test subjects that they were test subjects and that this was an unproven drug. Even though eleven children died and dozens were disabled, Pfizer went on to seek FDA approval of the drug for use in the United States in 1998 for adults only. Approval was granted, and reports of liver failure quickly surfaced in adults, which led to more restrictions but not complete removal of the drug from the market. When Pfizer was sued in Nigeria, their response was to assassinate the character of the attorney general on the case.
Dr. Poul Thorsen headed research in Denmark which produced studies that claimed to show mercury in vaccines was not harmful. Those studies were later discredited and found to be deliberately fraudulent, but pharmaceutical companies continued to use them to defend the presence of mercury in vaccines. By the way, mercury is still used in some vaccines, including the flu vaccine. Dr. Paul Offit, a very outspoken proponent of vaccines, claims vaccines have been conclusively proven safe based on these fraudulent studies. He has even made the statement that it is perfectly safe to take close to one hundred thousand vaccines in one day. He was not joking or exaggerating. Perhaps he should put that to a personal test and see how it turns out. Anyone who believes the pharmaceutical industry about health has failed to escape their cocoon of ignorance.
The CDC likes to scare people into getting flu shots by telling us that around fifty thousand people per year die from the flu. The British Medical Journal blew the cover on that when they analyzed the numbers and revealed that flu cases are combined with pneumonia cases. In 2007 there were 52,717 deaths from pneumonia and flu combined. Of that total number only 411 were from the flu. The rest were from pneumonia. So the CDC is just adding to the confusion.
The importance of fat and fat-soluble vitamins is mentioned in the book. The value of coconut oil in particular is covered extensively. Cod liver oil is also recommended but there is no explanation or mention of the importance of balance and interaction between the fat-soluble vitamins, so I don’t recommend the book as a source of information on that topic specifically. This book gets a thumbs UP.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2013.
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Thank you Tim!
With the dramatic increase of “the spectrum” (most especially among children) the need to know causative factors has become most urgent. This book makes great contributions toward meeting that need and for that I am truly grateful! This is a book for parents as well as for parents-to-be given the part that the biological pre-disposition of the mother at conception and during pregnancy can play in the combination of factors contributing to the neurological inflamation that Dr. Bruce Fife presents. Nutrition-minded Chefs and others in food service who determine menus could benefit their customers and clients by adopting the nutritional recommendations included in this book. However the ideal would be a dedicative approach to prevention and that would need to be directed to young people probably stating in about the junior year of high school.