Welcome to Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy's autism research and treatment advocacy organization. Generation Rescue was formed by parents to help parents searching for answers about preventing and treating childhood neurological disorders.
My son Ethan was diagnosed with autism at 20 months old. Only another parent who has been through a diagnosis can understand the devastation. When I was finally able to bring myself to research autism I found that some parents claimed that autism was reversible. "How could that be?," I thought, "If autism was reversible my pediatrician would have told me!" Another voice inside somehow knew that parents were more invested in recovery than anyone else.
It didn't take long to realize that many children had greatly improved and some children had recovered from autism! The proof was as simple as meeting the families and their children, hearing their stories, seeing their diagnosises, watching "before and after" treatment videos and even reading the medical literature dating back to the 1980s. Thousands of children have recovered from autism. Thousands! I'm not talking about a misdiagnosis; I'm talking about full-blown undeniable autism. I was going through the same process as people learning that the world wasn't flat. Traditional belief was screaming at me through the mouths of my doctors, my family and my friends. The tone of their words and their energy plagued my self confidence. It would have been easier for me to believe what my doctor told me, but how could I let my son suffer when there might be a way to help him?
Those who do not believe in recovery have not researched it enough or with the proper intention. It is not a controversy, it's just simply a fact. Meeting a recovered child is a life-changing event.
With information scattered throughout literature and spread across the Internet, it took me more than year to feel I knew enough to change my child's diet and begin biomedical treatment.
Two weeks after pulling out foods like gluten and dairy that can affect these children his speech doubled. It was then that I made the decision to only listen to parents and doctors who had actually recovered children. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the most important decision for my child's future. Four months later my son's soul was returned to him and our dreams were restored. Ethan had recovered from autism!
Recovery for some means the improvement of certain symptoms, for others it is the loss of the diagnosis and for others it is a recovery so significant that there is no way to really know that the child ever had autism.
When I went back to tell our pediatrician, he couldn't look me in the eye. He treated me as if I had done something wrong. He was trained to believe something different by the medical establishment and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He was trained to think autism is genetic (and incurable), even though the fastest growing genetic disorder is 1% per hundred years. That in itself said to me that autism, rather than having a primarily genetic basis, must have significant external triggers and therefore ways to prevent it and treat it.
I am grateful that today Generation Rescue is committed to moving the science forward through advocacy and research. I am also grateful that I don't have to feel alone. I have hundreds of families at Generation Rescue that want to support parents their journey of healing their child by helping them learn the latest approaches to treatment. I am also so grateful to have Jenny McCarthy's vision leading our journey of enlightening society and healing as many kids as we can.
Autism was the most devastating thing I have experienced, but it also provided me with an opportunity to see the world, and my own flaws, more fully. You'll understand this a little better in time. It was not easy to get started, but today I know that these children are sick, and that some ugly parts of human nature caused at least a portion of it. It also was not easy to realize that some children were brought to autism through vaccines and others by environmental toxins and infections.
I also know that autism is reversible! I know that many children greatly improve when they are treated with modern approaches and some children, like my son, completely recover. By recovery I don't mean treating him in a way that would suppress the gifts that were given to him at birth, I mean recovery from the physical conditions that were holding him back from being all he can be. And wait until you see how we can improve our own health on this journey. Yes, many of us as parents are affected by the same biological triggers.
There is still much to be done to help all the children, but there is also so much hope and success today and Generation Rescue will not stop until all the children are safe.
Generation Rescue is an organization devoted to finding the answers for all of the children and to providing parents with the latest information to begin treatment for their children, today! The heart and soul of who we are is our network of Rescue Angels, more than 450 families strong, who are available to help you find an enlightened doctor and get started on your own journey of recovery.
It is an honor to run this organization for Jenny and for the millions of families who are in this journey with us. We work every day for you and your child and we wish you the best on your path to recovery.
With love and intention,
Stan Kurtz
President |
