CEASE therapy

I've been pretty active on twitter lately and I'm increasingly amazed at how quickly the spambots can get to you after each post. On 23rd Jan, I read the following tweet concerning Prince Phillip:

Andy Lewis @lecanardnoir

Very wealthy old man has been quite healthy. In unrelated news, believes nonsense like copper bracelets & homeopathy http://qako.me/A4lNQx

To whit, after reading said article, I replied jocularly with:

Majikthijs @majikthijs

@lecanardnoir the article curiously omits to inform us of the result of said bracelet and hpathy despite the continuing limp-wristedness

Within a few hours I was being followed by @ceasetherapy who are based in The Hague and who hold the mistaken view that vaccinations are the cause of autism. This view has been discussed extensively here, here and here (in Dutch). The 'founder' of the therapy, and father of current head of the CEASE organisation, was given a formal warning by the Dutch medical association for prescribing an unproven homeopathic treatment for whooping cough instead of the vaccination, thereby exposing the individual patient treatment misusing his position as a physician and engendering fear of vaccination which could lead to endangerment of



I noticed that @Ceasetherapy unfollowed me today, so I decided to look at their twitter stream and I noticed the following tweet:


https://twitter.com/ceasetherapy/statuses/161850896941199360

Study by @GenRescue: vaccinated boys have a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD, Autism than unvaccinated boys

I followed the link to @GenRescue's website (www.generationrescue.org) and it looks very slick and the language appears at first glance to be neutral, but with phrases like "Educate before you vaccinate" and "Generation Rescue is a community ... who have vaccinated their children and now believe in informed consent.", you kind of get the idea where it's all leading. The organisation is run by Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Jerry Kartzinel: they both come up with no canards in the quakometer, but my gut tells me that they're using some very cleverly couched language.

There is a resources page (http://www.generationrescue.org/resources/) and under the science banner are a number of references to research in (hopefully) peer reviewed journals. I am not a medical professional, so I have no real way of assessing either the reputation or affiliation of the journals in question or the efficacy of the content. With titles like Altern Ther Health Med., it doesn't bode all that well. There is one promising looking paper: The ScanBrit randomised, controlled, single-blind study of a gluten- and casein-free dietary intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders. The abstract at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20406576 concludes that "dietary intervention may positively affect developmental outcome for some children diagnosed with ASD" but in the absence of a placebo they were "unable to disqualify potential effects derived from intervention outside of dietary changes." i.e. limited or no effect.