From:  Boyd Haley  October 11, 2004

To Whom It May Concern:

RE:  The statement from the www.neurodiversity.com website that "We abhor
Dr. Haley's likening of autistic children to 'Mad Cows'"

First, I have never compared or likened autistic children to Mad Cows, nor
have I ever said a derogatory thing about any autistic person or group.
Autistics and families of autistics have my unwavering support and
sympathy.  If someone has construed that I did so then they are
misinformed.  I would immediately lean over backwards to apologize if I did
so. However, what I did point out was that using the term "Mad Cow"
garnered national attention to the problem of finding a single afflicted
cow. (It should be noted that "mad cows" suffer from chronic wasting
disease, do not eat or drink even when the resource is in front of them.
They are remarkably unaware of their surroundings, they do not make
aggressive action towards anything.  Not at all like rabid or mad dogs.)
The point I was making is that our US government and our press media was
highly focused on an event (the single mad cow, no human injury caused)
while ignoring the plight of thousands of autistic children and their
parents.  Myself, and no one I know of has ever likened autistics to mad
cows and the statement on the neurodiversity website is inaccurate.  The
issue discussed at the meeting where I presented was the high level of
attention given to one "mad cow" while our country's responsible
government/medical agencies denies and ignores the autism epidemic and uses
descriptions of illnesses that do not lend to the elimination of these
diseases.  Remember, it was a group of parents of autistic children, not
the government agencies, that brought the autism epidemic to light.
Hopefully, those who take issue with my presentation regarding Mad Cow
comments will obtain the tape of my talk and listen to it themselves.  The
entire talk was designed to obtain support of a large physician group to
recognize and work for the plight of families of children with autistic
spectrum disorders.

I know the "statistical trick" used by some epidemiologists of dividing all
of the autistic spectrum disorders into many different "medical
definitions" such as autism, ADHD, PDD, Aspergers, speech disorder, etc.
In my opinion, this trick of dividing the thimerosal (ethylmercury) caused
illnesses into several groups can be used to keep the total number of any
single group from reaching a high level of statistical significance,
allowing manipulation of the data to show little effect of thimerosal from
vaccines.  Note that most of these illnesses have a higher boy to girl
ratio like autism, and have shown a dramatic increase that correlates with
the advent of the mandated vaccine program that increased infant exposures
to thimerosal like autism.  That is, they appear to have the same causality
with different resulting clinical effects or levels of neurological damage.
 It will also be much more difficult for all children with autism spectrum
disorders to gain compensation if they are divided into different medical
categories. I am trying to eliminate use of this statistical trick by
calling attention to it, and placing all of those affected by thimerosal
toxicity under one general causation described by one name.

The nature of the event that lead to the use of the term "Mercury Afflicted
Disease of Children (M.A.D. Child Disease) was as follows.  I was listening
to the speaker directly before me at the Doctor's for Disaster Preparedness
Conference. There were few, if any, parents of autistic children present.
The prior speaker, a veterinarian, spoke about what efforts and expense the
US government put into the finding of one "Mad Cow" in the state of
Washington.  I found his talk extremely interesting. I noticed also that
the rest of the audience, mostly physicians, where paying rapt
attention---over one sick cow, but admittedly a cow that had the capacity
to do a lot of human and economical damage.  I also remembered the number
of times I heard about the "Mad Cow" problem on national TV----it was on
nightly and yet, during the past few years any mention of the autisim
epidemic seemed exceedingly rare, and this epidemic represented severe
damage to many thousands of afflicted children and their families.  What is
wrong with our press and medical community that causes them to ignore the
autism spectrum disorder epidemic?

Therefore, when I was to speak I wanted to make a point.  Calling a cow a
"Mad Cow" got immense national press attention and government funding due
to the image produced by the name, while mercury damaged children and their
parents have to fight to get any press coverage.  Stating that they had
found a cow suffering from 'chronic wasting disease' would not have
attracted such media attention.  I was also aware that the responsible
government agencies and committees for national health problems, e.g. the
FDA, IOM, CDC etc, initially fought even the recognition that an epidemic
was occurring.  Now they have to admit one exists but are trying to label
it a "genetic disease", due to neurodiversity perhaps.  Sounds politically
correct, but is misleading and likely prevents many afflicted autistic
children from receiving medical treatment that may help restore some
quality to their lives.  As much as any parent would not like the Mercury
Afflicted Disease of children to be used you can bet the CDC and FDA would
like it even less.

I did my best to stir up this audience of physicians with regards to the
autism issue, hoping that it would lead some of them to convince the
government and press media into recognition of the autism spectrum disorder
problem and to support the bills to ban thimerosal in vaccines as was being
presented to Congress.  I pointed out the division of autism spectrum
disorders and stated that if we combined and labeled these neurological
diseases accurately based on causality then Mercury Afflicted Disease of
children (M.A.D. Child Disease) would likely garner more national attention
of this epidemiological disaster.  It is still my opinion that this is
better than staying quite, governed by a perceived political correctness,
and allowing the CDC and others divide, what is in my opinion, a set of
thimerosal/vaccine induced illnesses into many subgroups in an attempt to
hide the true cause. When the protection of American children's health and
safety, and the pursuit of happiness by families are at stake, then I am
one who will throw rocks if necessary to win and insure this protection.

I also recognize that saying someone has an autistic or ADHD child does not
evoke much sympathy or understanding from those unaware or unaffected by
the autism epidemic.   My approach to shock the physicians by pointing out
the affect of a NAME given to a disease worked as many of these physicians
spoke to me about this issue and many, including Dr. Donald Miller, has
taken on a role to bring this issue to public recognition.  Dr. Miller
wrote his article accurately and did so to be helpful to the autistic
children and should not be held accountable for the MAD Child reference.  I
am the responsible person for this and if anyone was offended it was not my
intention.

I pointed out in my speech that since the responsible government agencies
did not recognize the autism spectrum disorder epidemic, nor the press,
then many parents of autistic children were under the impression that it
was a "non-treatable genetic disease" and not a "treatable toxicity"
problem that could also potentially be eliminated (like Acrodynia or Pink
disease). 

I knew before my talk that many physicians were successfully treating
autistic children.  For example, the last DAN (Defeat Autism Now)
Conference had as its mantra "Autism, A Treatable Disease" and this was
based on the reports of many DAN physicians that treating autistic children
for mercury toxicity and the known biological effects of mercury toxicity
resulted in remarkable reversal of this disease in many children.  These
developed treatments were done (1) without any support from our government,
including the National Institutes of Health and (2) were done in defiance
of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation that thimerosal exposure
not be considered a possible cause of autism and that all research,
clinical or biological, regarding the thimerosal-autism hypothesis be
stopped.  In my opinion, this represents repugnant policy since neither the
IOM nor the CDC could provide any other reasonable hypothesis for the
autism epidemic.  The IOM totally discounted all of the research supporting
the thimerosal-autism hypothesis and only considered epidemiological
studies, mostly from foreign countries without our high autism rate, to
come to their conclusions.  This is highly symptomatic of an orchestrated
bureaucratic cover up that results in further damage to our children and
our nation.

Finally, I know that parents of autistic-spectrum disorder children would
not like for their children to be called MAD.  However, since this, in my
opinion, correctly describes the causal route as Mercury Afflicted Disease
of children, (autism spectrum disorders). I also know that the bureaucrats
at the IOM, FDA and CDC also are even more disturbed by the MAD Child
disease moniker as it directly calls attention to the nature of the damage
their agencies inflicted on families of autistic children which, if they
had been doing their jobs, would not have happened and would not have
continued after being recognized.  Instead, certain bureaucrats in these
agencies worked hard to cover up this "government agency induced disease". 

I have been fighting the issue of iatrogenic mercury toxicity delivered by
dentists and physicians for many years and will continue to do so. The USA
is worth it. Calling me a MAD Scientist would rank among the kindest things
that I have been called by the supporters of dental amalgams and thimerosal
in vaccines.  So I understand how those who have not viewed my talk could
be offended by the out of context and inaccurate representations of what I
have been given credit for saying. I apologize to these individuals, but
encourage them to review my entire talk so they will understand there was
never any likening of autistic children to mad cows