Roy Kerry is an alternative medicine practitioner (he runs
the Advanced Integrative Medicine Center in Portersville, Pennsylvania), member
of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (a pseudomedical organization), and one of the foremost champions of chelation therapy as a treatment for autism. Now, chelation therapy, in addition to being
ineffective against autism, is a rather dangerous affair, and in 2006 a boy
died during a chelation therapy regime administered by Kerry,
which finally led officials to scrutinize the use of this particularly insidious treatment.
Kerry (who was an M.D. at the time) had his license temporarily suspended, was
barred from chelating children under age 18 in the future, and sued by the
victim's parents (the suit was settled in 2010 with payment of an undisclosed sum). At least the
case is one of many counterexamples to people who are prone to claim that
although alternative therapies may not have been proven to be efficacious, at
least the do no harm.
Kerry, in this case and others, is apparently convinced that
autism is linked to heavy metal poisoning, and admitted to using bogus tests in this case to back up his diagnosis.
Diagnosis: Living proof of the fact that alternative
treatments are actually directly harmful (and not just that accepting them
poses a long-term danger). Kerry is still afoot, however.
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