By Sandra Chapman
If you have an autistic child you may never have heard of methylocobalamin B12. The following story is one that a Belfast mother wants told because this vitamin, she believes, is bringing her autistic son out of his twilight world and it could help others. To protect her son’s privacy she wants to remain anonymous.
Few medical conditions evoke as much controversy as autism, a complex neurodevelopmental disorder which presents in early childhood. The condition is thought to be influenced by genetics and environmental factors. Many parents blame the MMR vaccine for triggering the condition in their child.
Autism causes regression in children who were otherwise developing normally.
Doctors in this country are sceptical of ‘new’ treatments for autism.
And one of the those treatments is the use of the vitamin MB12 – methylocobalamin. Yet there is some evidence of its success.
Children with autism, according to one expert in America, have an impaired metabolic imbalance which damages cell growth through oxidation.
This can be treated with MB12.
Dr James Neubrander runs a private clinic in New Jersey and he was at a medical conference in the UK last month discussing his use of MB12 since 2002. He told the conference he has given more than 75,000 injections of methycobalamin B12 with 94 per cent of the children showing improvement. The treatment is available privately in Northern Ireland and this Belfast mother describes her experience with it.
A mother’s story …
My son was fine until he was about a year old. By the time he was 16 months he had lost all the words he had learned. I watched in despair as he regressed. The classic red flag signs appeared when I realised he had stopped pointing and wasn’t using language. He was also pacing up and down the room constantly. I knew instinctively it was autism. I kept saying to people that my son had autism just to prove what I was seeing. They kept saying to me that he couldn’t have. But I knew I was correct. Incidentally my son didn’t have the MMR vaccine.
My doctor told me he would grow out of it but I persisted. And when he was two years old I finally got the diagnosis. My son was autistic. I walked out of that doctor’s office with little or no help. I had no-one to turn to.
I looked up everything I could about the subject on the Internet and there was lots of it, including the work of Dr James Neubrander of New Jersey involving MB12. He was claiming 94 per cent success with it.
I tried my best to find a doctor who would prescribe it for my son but none would touch it at all. It’s the attitude of medical people in this country that autism is genetic and there is nothing you can do about it and you are being stupid in trying to prove otherwise.
I soon learned that the medical profession is rife with politics and ego. Then I heard of Dr Finbar Magee in Belfast who practises in environmental medicine and who has a private clinic. I approached him about getting MB12 for my son.
He had also heard of Dr Neubrander’s work and he explained to me the science behind the vitamin.
There was a lot of information about it on the Internet anyway; lots of case histories.
I already had an NHS metabolic profile on my son and when I showed that to Dr Magee he detected a high toxic metal overload in the results. I think many of us are full of toxins and it is possible we are passing them on to our children. On November 4 this year my son got his first injection of MB12 in his buttock to enable slow release. If it goes into the arm it is used up too quickly. Three days later he was due for his second injection.
On that day he appeared to be agitated and this I believe is a side effect which shows that the MB12 is working. Then I noticed he had starting pointing at things, something he hadn’t been doing. He was watching CBB television and he uttered the letter B. Later that day he went up to the television and said monkey because there was a monkey on screen. I also noticed an improvement in his eye contact.
I knew that if I took him to my GP he would attribute this improvement to the Applied Behavioural Analysis programme I had my son on.
He had his second injection three days after the first and by Friday last week he was sitting looking at a picture book, something he hadn’t been able to do before. He sat for 20 minutes with this book and his focus was good. To me this is miraculous. I would have been happy with any improvement. I certainly wasn’t looking for a miracle. I have always believed that intervention at an early age in this condition is the key but that’s not what the medical profession in the UK appears to believe. I’m ‘talking’ to other parents on the Internet and that’s their view too as they see progress with MB12. My son will have to have injections of MB12 every three days for the next 18-24 months. Many parents wouldn’t want that but then if their child was diabetic they would have to accept it.
As far as I’m concerned this treatment is creating my child’s life. In fact, I fully intend to recover my child from the autism that has been imposed on him. I’m more convinced that the toxins in our environment are causing this condition. By the time people get to my age – I’m in my thirties – we have a lot of toxins in our system and I probably have passed those on to my son.
MB12 has been in existence for a long time. Some doctors who have tried to use it in the UK have been shut down. Why is this? There is a lot of evidence that it is helping autistic children. I certainly don’t want to wait 20 years to help my son. Over 25,000 families in the United States are using this treatment with good results. And I feel every autistic child should be given the opportunity to have it.
I think though it cannot be used in isolation. It needs to be used alongside language therapy. These early years in a child are vital. They cannot be ‘lost’ to this condition. I want every parent with an autistic children to be aware of this information. It could be vital for their child’s health.’ For more information contact Dr Magee on 028 9070 9300 or The National Autistic Society on 020 7833 2299