Second Full-Page Ad Also Highlights New Book that Offers Supporting Evidence

PORTLAND, OR, June 8, 2005 – Today, Generation Rescue, a nonprofit organization of parents of autistic children, ran a full-page advertisement in the New York Times showing the identical symptoms of autism and childhood mercury poisoning. This is the second full-page advertisement in a national newspaper from the organization in the past three weeks.

The print ads, as well as Internet advertising, are part of a campaign to help other parents learn the truth about the connections between autism and mercury poisoning. Generation Rescue parents are successfully treating their children biomedically and removing mercury from their bodies through a safe and proven detoxification treatment known as chelation therapy. 

“Every day, another 50 kids are diagnosed with autism,” said J.B. Handley, father of an autistic child and a founding parent of Generation Rescue. “Too often the parents receiving this life-changing news are not aware of the real, medical treatments available to reverse autistic symptoms. The parents, and media, are also not aware of the growing number of physicians, researchers, elected officials and other leaders who have mounting evidence to lead this fight.”

The advertisement includes quotes from numerous leaders who recognize mercury as the potential cause for autism, including key Republicans and Democrats in Congress. A central message in the ad is a how the symptoms of autism and those of mercury poisoning in children are identical, confirming the mounting evidence that the similarities are more than just coincidence. Those symptoms include loss of speech, social withdrawal, reduced eye contact, repetitive behaviors, temper tantrums, hand flapping and toe walking, sleep disturbances and seizures.

“The symptoms of early infant mercury poisoning and autism are virtually the same,” said Dr. Boyd Haley, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “Furthermore, research indicates that autistic children genetically have a harder time excreting mercury from their bodies. This is why chelation has become such a powerful key for unlocking and undoing the disorders associated with autism.” 

Chelation (KEY-lay-shun) has been used for decades to detoxify people of dangerous levels of heavy metals, due to industrial accidents or other causes.  According to the CDC, 60,000 Americans underwent some form of chelation last year, and the therapy is currently under clinical trial with heart disease patients. In autism treatments, chelating “agents” may be administered orally or transdermally (through the skin). Once in the bloodstream, the chelating agent binds to heavy metals and removes them from the body.

“When we realized that our son’s autism was nothing more than mercury poisoning, the next step for treatment was clear,” said Handley, one of the organization’s founding parents and father of a son diagnosed with autism. “With the removal of mercury, Jamie’s autistic symptoms melt away. Getting the mercury out is giving us our son back.”

The advertisement also encourages parents, the media and doctors to read journalist David Kirby’s new investigative book, Evidence of Harm, which explores how a mercury preservative in vaccines – Thimerosal – has been linked to the autism epidemic.  Publishers Weekly gave the book three stars, calling it “one of the most thoroughly researched accounts of the Thimerosal controversy thus far.”