I began posting earlier versions of this paper in 2017.
In 2006, a two-year-old with delayed speech, high-pitched screaming and anxious behavior visited California pediatrician Dr. Toril Jelter's office with his parents. The boy hid under her exam table and would not make eye contact. Eventually, he was diagnosed with autism. An indirect test suggested that mercury was an issue-- perhaps because his mother had eaten lots of mercury-laden fish during her pregnancy. (She'd hoped that the fish oil would make her baby smarter.)
To address the child's behavior, a biochemist proposed chelating (eliminating) the mercury. The parents asked Dr. Jelter to monitor their son during this treatment. She declined: she'd never heard of such a treatment. Current standard of care recommends speech therapy and a reinforcing good behavior.
The family left Dr. Jelter's practice and found another pediatrician.
Three years later, the family visited Dr. Jelter again. To her astonishment, the boy-- then five years old-- made good eye contact with her and spoke normally. He had friends and performed above average in his classroom without an aide.
"If one child can recover from autism," Dr. Jelter thought, "so can many more."
Autism, metal toxicity and EMR exposure
Starting with a call to Andrew Hall Cutler, the boy's biochemist, Dr. Jelter began researching environmental and integrative medicine. She learned that exposure to electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from wireless technologies can impair a person's ability to expel toxic metals. In environments with less EMR, children with autism excrete greater amounts of mercury.
Dr. Jelter also reviewed hundreds of scientific studies and found over 50 overlaps between signs and symptoms of heavy metal toxicity and signs and symptoms of EMR exposure-- including genetic alterations, retina optic damage, increased inflammatory reactions, immune shifts, genotoxicity, increased oxidative stress, altered fetal development and increased auto-immune risks. Scientists get curious with an overlap of one biological dysfunction. She saw Clearly, more research is warranted.
The numbers rise
In the mid-1960s, one in 10,000 U.S. children was diagnosed with autism. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that one in 88 children had the disease. Two years later, in 2014, the CDC found a nearly 30% increase, with one in 68 U.S. children having autism.
Data collected in 2020 shows that one of every 36 eight-year-old U.S. children has autism. In California, one in 26 (3.9%) has autism. Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with the disease.1
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