Julie Obradovic - An Unfortunate Coincidence: A Mothers Life inside the Autism Controversy

Copyright 2016 by Julie Obradovic

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Cover photo: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0462-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0463-3

Printed in the United States of America

For E.M.M.A.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I wanted a simple life. I planned on teaching high school for thirty-plus years at the same school in a nice suburb where I would get married, raise children, and vacation at my parents lake house or travel during my summers off.

Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate becoming involved in, nor did I want to become involved in, one of the biggest medical controversies in history. Never did I anticipate what the last twelve years of my life would entail, from blogging, to working for a documentary, to appearing on television, to testifying before Senate committees, to even working for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And never, ever did I imagine I would be able to tell the story in a book.

To be sure, what youre about to read is only my story and my opinion, based on the evidence I gathered, about how and why it happened, and later, what I chose to do about it. Its an explanation, not a thesis.

As I resent other people telling me how I should feel about my daughter and her autism, I know others feel the same. Under no circumstance should anyone take this account as the experience of everyone who has a child with autism or everyone who has autism. If you love that your child or you yourself are on the spectrum, I think thats wonderful. I am not advocating discounting anyone or telling anyone how to feel.

But our experience was very different, and now that we are entering an era of autism acceptance, where the move to embrace it as a mental difference, not a medical disability, is gaining traction, I feel obligated to tell another side of the story. For us, autism was a devastating, frightening, mysterious journey into physical dysfunction, heartache, and struggle. One that I believe was entirely avoidable and preventable.

And although I can only speak for myself, I feel confident that this is also the experience of thousands of other parents, children, and families that I have met and befriended over the years. Our voices have been drowned out, however, our stories cast aside as anomalies best explained by coincidence, nothing more.

I dont believe there was anything coincidental about what happened to my daughter. In fact, I believe exactly what should have happened, actually happened. She and the other children like her are the canaries in the coal mine, showing us that too much medicine and too many toxins are combining to disable the vulnerable.

But because the focus of autism causation has centered on vaccines for so longand rightfully so, I believeother environmental co-factors have largely been ignored. In our case, I am not convinced it was only vaccines that pushed my daughter to autisms door. I truly believe that too many antibiotics, too many anti-inflammatories, toxic breast milk, toxic exposures in the womb, pollution, aluminum, and anesthesia all combined with too many vaccines to finally push her over the edge. However, I also believe none of that would have resulted in as much damage for her were it not for being exposed to mercury in the first place.

I am not alone in my belief that it is more than vaccines leading our children down a path to autism. Many mothers, especially mothers of children on the spectrum who have never vaccinated, believe the same. And antidepressants have recently become identified as a possible contributing factor as well as pesticides. It seems we all come to autism with similar ingredients, but the exposures, the doses, and the timing tend to vary.

What we have learned, however, is that by addressing these issues in our children, we can vastly improve their well-being. In some cases, like ours, children can recover substantially from the diagnosis.

This should be cause for celebration, but unfortunately its not. The war over the paradigm of what autism iseither a lifelong, genetic, irreversible condition thats always been with us at a constant rate, or an environmentally caused, reversible condition that has exploded in epidemic proportionshas fractured the autism and medical communities, arguably to the point of paralysis. As a result, the vast majority of research remains in the genetic realm; the most often prescribed treatments are behavioral therapy and psychotropic medication.

We didnt choose to challenge the paradigm because we couldnt accept that our daughter might be genetically flawedan insulting claim often made about parents like us who choose to treat autism as a medical condition, not a genetic one. We chose to do so because thats what our daughter, through her medical history and her medical tests, showed us was wrong. We felt we had a responsibility to rule out anything at the root of her autism that could help her feel better, and yes, perhaps, recover. We make no apologies for that.

However, at no point in time did we do so without the guidance of a medical doctor. Although I briefly mention some of the interventions we tried, I have purposefully not gone into detail about our protocol. Nothing in this book should be taken as medical advice of any kind.

As I mentioned, its just a story. Its the real story of the parents so commonly demonized these days as conspiracy-theory, anti-science nutjobs that selfishly dont care if the world explodes in infectious disease with their anti-vaccine message. Thats the popular narrative, at least. Parents like me have been dehumanized and discounted, mischaracterized and stereotyped as reckless perpetrators of a medical myth to be outcast and dismissed. Unfortunately, the mainstream narrative is the actual myth. We have much to teach the world.

Moreover, other books in the past few years have claimed to tell the true story of the vaccine autism controversy, to significant acclaim and reward, even though an outsider has written them. I dont believe that calling an unaffected persons version of events the true story is fair.

This is the true story of the vaccine autism controversy from someone who lived it. And even thats not an accurate description. Its about so much more than vaccines and autism.

This is really a story about love, hope, heartbreak, success, failure, intuition, abandonment, missed opportunity, medical orthodoxy, bullies, and the impact of historical misogyny, scientific and government corruption, eroding parental rights, and government overreach in our childrens lives. Vaccines just happened to be the vehicle that exposes the underlying issues.