Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Two – The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Release Date: April 3, 2025

Introduction

In the second installment of "Behind the Bastards," host Robert Evans, along with co-hosts Mangesh Hattikudur and Sophie, delve deep into the troubling world of pseudoscientific treatments marketed as cures for autism. This episode meticulously unpacks the harmful practices, manipulative figures, and devastating consequences of the fake autism 'cure' industry.

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The Misuse of Chelation Therapy in Autism

The episode opens by examining the misuse of chelation therapy—a legitimate medical procedure for heavy metal poisoning—as a supposed treatment for autism. This segment highlights several alarming cases where such treatments led to tragic outcomes.

At [06:19], Mangesh confronts Dr. Rimland’s defense of Dr. Usman and Dr. Kerry, stating, “We killed him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the wrong drug.” This powerful statement underscores the negligence and malpractice within the industry.

Tariq’s Tragic Death

A focal point is the case of Tariq, whose death underscored the dangers of unregulated chelation therapy. Originally, the Autism Research Institute (ARI) claimed Tariq died from a medication error, administering disodium EDTA instead of calcium disodium EDTA ([05:56]). However, co-host Mangesh sharply criticizes this defense, asserting that the fatal error was a direct result of unethical medical practices ([06:21]).

Dr. Usman’s Malpractice

Further scrutiny is cast on Dr. Anju Usman, who faced repercussions for administering medically unwarranted chelation treatments. As Robert narrates, “In reaching a consent order with Usman, medical regulators alleged that Usman failed to disclose her financial interests…” ([10:33]). Usman’s minimal punishment—a $10,000 fine—elicits strong disapproval from the hosts ([11:44]).

Jordan King and Misleading Diagnoses

The episode also recounts the story of Jordan King, a child subjected to chelation therapy for purported high levels of mercury and tin. Evan emphasizes the absurdity and danger of such diagnoses, questioning how a child could be excessively exposed to tin ([07:32], [08:22]). The hosts highlight the flawed scientific methodologies employed, where chelation is administered before testing leads to artificial elevations in heavy metal levels ([09:54]).

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The Role of Celebrities and Influencers

Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue

Jenny McCarthy emerges as a prominent figure in promoting fake autism cures. The hosts critique her involvement with Generation Rescue, where she advocates for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO2) despite lacking scientific backing ([19:14], [17:31]). McCarthy’s claims, such as “We are educated, caring parents who have done thousands of hours of research,” are dissected for their disconnect from genuine medical evidence ([17:32]).

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBO2)

The promotion of HBO2 is scrutinized, revealing that despite some inflammation being present in autistic brains, HBO2 has no proven benefits and can be harmful ([15:12], [19:14]). Testimonials from families who suffered negative outcomes further illustrate the therapy’s dangers ([20:53]).

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The Biomedical Movement and Pseudoscientific Treatments

Rise of Alternative Treatments

The hosts explore how the biomedical movement leverages social media and community groups to spread unverified treatments. The reliance on anecdotal evidence and manipulated studies fuels the persistence of these dangerous practices ([14:02], [15:45]).

Stem Cell Therapy and Other Fads

Stem cell therapy is presented as another grave concern, with parents rushing to foreign clinics offering unproven and expensive treatments. The psychological desperation of parents drives them to bypass rigorous clinical trials, risking their children’s health ([29:20], [30:00]).

Ethical Implications

Robert and Mangesh discuss the ethical breaches, where treatments are administered without proper consent or scientific validation, leading to cognitive and physical harm in children ([10:47], [15:12]).

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The Story of Jeffrey Bradstreet

One of the most harrowing narratives in the episode is that of Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet, a former Christian preacher turned biomedical grifter.

Background and Rise

At [35:03], Robert recounts Bradstreet’s transformation from a family doctor to a radio talk show host promoting fake autism cures after his own son was diagnosed with autism. Bradstreet founded the International Child Development Resource Center (ICDRC) and later the Good News Doctor Foundation, blending evangelical Christianity with unscientific medical practices ([35:43]).

Promotion of GCMAF Therapy

Bradstreet became infamous for advocating GCMAF (globulin component macrophage activating factor) therapy—a pseudoscientific treatment with no proven efficacy. He falsely claimed high success rates and marketed the substance as a cure-all, including for autism and cancer ([44:35], [45:04]).

Downfall and Tragic End

Despite his facade, Bradstreet’s methods were exposed as fraudulent. At [54:32], the hosts describe how Fiona O'Leary, a vigilant mother, uncovered Bradstreet’s deceit, leading to raids on his facilities. Facing legal jeopardy and public backlash, Bradstreet fled but tragically took his own life in 2015 to escape prosecution ([55:30], [56:07]).

Conspiracy Theories Posthumously

Bradstreet’s death did not silence conspiracy theories; instead, it fueled further misinformation among biomedical advocates who falsely claimed he was murdered by pharmaceutical interests ([55:17], [55:35]).

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Real Stories of Parents Fighting Back

Fiona O’Leary’s Stand

Fiona O’Leary’s relentless pursuit of justice against Bradstreet highlights the importance of accountability. Her efforts led to regulatory investigations that ultimately exposed the fraudulent practices behind fake autism cures ([43:42], [53:27]).

Emma Zurcher’s Transformation

The episode shares Emma Zurcher’s story, a child who initially underwent numerous harmful treatments but later benefited from genuine occupational therapy. Emma’s mother, Ariane, reflects on the wasted years and the eventual realization that embracing her child’s neurological differences was the true path to support ([33:05], [34:11]).

Emma poignantly states, “You thought my autism was hurting me and that you needed to remove it, but you did not understand that it is a neurological difference. Fear caused you to behave with desperation.” ([34:38])

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Conclusion

Part Two of "Behind the Bastards" serves as a critical exposé of the fake autism 'cure' industry, illuminating the devastating impact of grifters and unregulated treatments on vulnerable children and their families. Through harrowing stories, expert critiques, and poignant testimonies, the episode underscores the urgent need for evidence-based medical practices and robust regulatory oversight to protect those most at risk from pseudoscientific exploitation.

Notable Quotes:

• “We killed him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the wrong drug.” – Mangesh Hattikudur ([06:21])

• “This is the punishment.” – Robert Evans ([11:44])

• “You thought my autism was hurting me and that you needed to remove it, but you did not understand that it is a neurological difference.” – Emma Zurcher ([34:38])

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Key Takeaways:

• Chelation Therapy Risks: Misapplied chelation therapy can be deadly, highlighting the negligence within the fake autism cure industry.

• Influence of Celebrities: Figures like Jenny McCarthy leverage their platforms to promote unverified and harmful treatments.

• Pseudoscientific Practices: Treatments like hyperbaric oxygen therapy and GCMAF lack scientific backing and pose significant risks.

• Accountability and Advocacy: Stories like Fiona O’Leary’s emphasize the critical role of vigilant parents in exposing and combating fraudulent medical practices.

• Psychological Impact: The desperation of parents can lead to harmful decisions, underscoring the need for better support and reliable information.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of "Behind the Bastards" is a sobering reminder of the lengths to which unscrupulous individuals will go to exploit vulnerable families. It calls for increased awareness, stringent regulation, and compassionate support systems to dismantle the fake autism 'cure' industry and prevent further tragedies.

Transcript

[Call Zone Media]

Call Zone Media.

[James Stout]

Hi, everybody, it's James here. If you don't listen to what could happen here, you might not recognize me. My name is James Stout and I'm the guy who pops onto this feed every few months to tell you something very sad and then ask for your money. And that's why I'm here today. A terrible earthquake struck Myanmar today. The day I'm recording this, which is Friday 28th March, it was 7.7 on the Richter scale. We know of more than 100 deaths, but it's likely the death toll is much, much, much higher. Lots of the telegraph and Internet infrastructure has been taken out by the earthquake and the junta restricts Internet and social media access. So we don't really know the full extent of the death, but we can imagine it will be very high as one of the areas most affected was Mandalay, which is the second largest city in Myanmar. I've spoken to half a dozen sources in Myanmar today, people who Robert and I have interviewed before. They're all okay, but they all shared how terrible things were they as bad as they were at the time of Cyclonagus, which was a terrible disaster in 2008. If you would like to support the people of Burma who are currently fighting against a tyrannical dictatorship, as well as dealing with the consequences of this natural disaster, there are a couple of ways you can do so. I was actually already running a fundraiser on my Patreon for Mobier PDF. They are a casualty evacuation team in Southern Shan State. Right at the fiercest part of the fighting. Right? They don't fight. What they do is they go and they evacuate people who have been injured and they provide medical services to internally displaced people. They've been doing this since 2021. They're incredibly brave people and they've saved more than 300 lives. You can read more about them by going to my Patreon post, which also includes all the links for donation. The website for that is tinyurl.com help myanmar. That's tinyurl.com h e l P M Y A N if you'd like to donate somewhere else, an organization that you can donate to is the Free Burma Rangers. Free burmarangers.org They're a fantastic NGO. They've been doing a lot of medical work in the liberated zones of Myanmar for a very long time. They've also worked in Rojava and lots of other places around the world where people need help. I spoke to Dave from FPR today. He's well and he told me that they're already starting to respond to the disaster. So to donate to them, free. Burmarangers.org thanks very much. We appreciate your support.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Podcast where, you know, Mangesh, our great guest for today.

[Robert Evans]

Do you know that you ever heard that quote, cometh the time, cometh the man?

[Sophie]

I haven't.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, well, it's a quote people say.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And I'm saying it now because I've.

[Robert Evans]

Decided I had a dream last night.

[Call Zone Media]

Are people you and you when.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

I was not.

[Robert Evans]

Excuse me, Excuse me.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Sophie, let's cut that out.

[Robert Evans]

No, cometh the time, cometh the man. And I had a vision last night while I was dreaming.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, I was gonna say, you're really.

[Call Zone Media]

Not helping this theory.

[Robert Evans]

No, no.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

I had a vision while I was.

[Robert Evans]

Dreaming about how to save America. And so I've decided I'm running in 2028. And I'm running on a platform of, look, one of the big problems the liberals and the progressives have, they all think if you make education better, if you get enough dunks on debates or whatever, you can stop parents and the like from like putting poison into their kids to try to treat ill understood conditions. Right? And you can't, you can't stop people from wanting something to do, so let's give them something to do that's basically harmless. And that's why as, as a presidential candidate, my entire platform is going to be legalize and subsidized using federal money. A $7 bar of Xanax the size of a Snickers bar. You just get them over the counter.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Any grocery store, any pharmacy, just a pure Xanax, you can lick it like a horse. You can do whatever you want with it. $7 flat. You know, that's how we're gonna fix things in this country. Look, every problem the $7 Xanax Snickers bar solves, right? You got a guy walks into a.

[Robert Evans]

Fucking public building wanting to do a.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Mass shooting, reaches for his gun, finds a $7 Snickers bar of Xanax, bites it, forgets why he' solved. You know, everything could be this way.

[Sophie]

I'm so glad you're coming with the solution.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, this is, this is how we save America. I'm convinced.

[Robert Evans]

Everyone.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Vote Evans 2028 for your $7 stickers bar. Xanax.

[Call Zone Media]

I mean, we went to both the RNC and dnc. You know, at least somebody's got a big idea.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, again, we won't have any more elections. There are going to be like three votes that make it in every election and none of them will have a legit like a readable name. It's just going to be scribbles on a piece of who's the president it. So let's get back into this less, less happy story of medicine.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

The Autism Research Institute and our buddy Dr. Rimlund rode in to defend Drs. Usman and Kerry after Tariq's death, writing in a post on the institute's website that Tariq had died not because of chelation therapy, but because of an error that had seen him dosed with a lookalike drug, disodium EDTA instead of calcium disodium edta.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Now, first off, I don't think the.

[Robert Evans]

Argument we didn't kill him with bad medicine.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

We killed him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the wrong drug. Makes things better.

[Sophie]

Yeah. Feels like a weak argument.

[Robert Evans]

That's like, no, no, no, I didn't give him Fentany. Shot him up with way too much heroin.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Like, yeah, I don't really see how that helps.

[Robert Evans]

This is also untrue. Tariq was administered with the normal kind of EDTA used in chelation therapy, which is the only kind the clinic had stocked. In subsequent publications, Dr. Rimland bragged that chelation therapy had consistently good results as rated by parents who were surveyed by ARI. In fact, it was the number one.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Pick out of 88 approved interventions. A subsequent tris. Yes, they love this because it clearly is serious medicine.

[Robert Evans]

Right. It doesn't help.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It makes things worse generally, but it.

[Robert Evans]

Has a massive visible effect. I think that's honestly the whole reason why. Right. A subsequent statement put out by Dan.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Claimed that chelation was one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and related disorders.

[Robert Evans]

Now, aluminum, lead and mercury aren't the only metals that got blamed. I found a Chicago Tribune piece that gives the story of a boy named Jordan King who was chelated for high levels of mercury and tin.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

This is where there's a quote in there from, like, an expert on tin poisoning who's like, is poisoning really a thing? It is for like industrial workers who are like welding tin for a living, you know, like, but not little kids. There's no way to get enough exposure to tin. Really? Is your kid welding a shitload of tin? Then we have other issues. Autism's not the problem. You're letting your five year old weld. What are you doing? Take that torch away from them.

[Robert Evans]

Now the actual explanation for why this.

[Sophie]

Productive, like, you know, sure, why not?

[Robert Evans]

Why not?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's good for kids to have a hobby. At least they're touching. If they can't touch grass, they might as well touch heated tiny.

[Robert Evans]

Now again, they do, they do a test which shows high levels of mercury and tin in this kid's blood.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

But that's not the whole story. You hear about that and you're like.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, well, maybe there was something going on. Why would they have elevated levels?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Well, the explanation for why and for.

[Robert Evans]

Why all of the kids that get tested in order to justify this therapy have elevated levels of different heavy metals is because of the very, the distinctly a scientific kind of lab test that they give these kids. Right?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

You would think if you're like, this.

[Robert Evans]

Kid probably has high levels of heavy metals, we might want to administer chelation therapy. You're not a doctor, Mangesh.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

But what would you do first?

[Robert Evans]

What would you do first if you thought they might have high levels of heavy metals?

[Sophie]

Get a blood test.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Very basic assumes, right?

[Robert Evans]

Okay, you think this is true? Let's test their blood.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Call Zone Media]

The way you give these blood traits.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

In this kind of therapy is first you chelate the child, you shoot them up with this thing that strips heavy.

[Robert Evans]

Metals out of their blood and makes.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Them pee it out. Right?

[Robert Evans]

And then you test them.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Right? So you give them a drug that provokes them to excrete heavy metals and then test them. And then you know what, you're going.

[Robert Evans]

To find some heavy metals because you.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Gave them the drug that makes them excrete them. And here's the thing, there's no accept because this isn't the way science, you don't do this. Otherwise there's no accepted understanding for what normal results on a test given after chelation would be.

[Robert Evans]

So there's no actual medical case for like drugging people and then testing them like this. So the lab just shows back charts that show scary spikes of different metals.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And the clinician says, look, kids, got it. You know, we need to keep doing this. Now, doctor, in case you don't believe.

[Robert Evans]

Me and you shouldn't, not a doctor.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Dr. Carl Baum, director of the center for Children's Environmental Toxicology at the Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, calls this quote, exactly the wrong way to do it.

[Sophie]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Now, Dr. Usman did ultimately face mild consequences. In 2009, the Chicago Tribune featured her in their dubious medicine investigation, which helped push for a probe by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations. They alleged that she had provided medically unwarranted treatment that may potentially result in permanent disabling injuries to two boys. Quote from the Tribune. In reaching a consent order with Usman, medical regulators alleged that Usman failed to disclose to her patients her financial interests in the company supplying the hyperbaric oxygen chambers and in the compounding pharmacy that filled prescriptions for her patients. The state said that she also failed to obtain informed consent for the chelation therapy and did not keep adequate medical records for her patients. Patients Usman, who practices out of the True Health Medical center in Naperville, neither admitted nor denied the state's allegations. In signing the consent order, she agreed to pay a $10,000 fine. Great.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

$10,000. I love that.

[Robert Evans]

This is the punishment.

[Sophie]

Yeah, I know, I know. It's crazy.

[Robert Evans]

Now the other boy that she's accused of harming in this case was a Chicago child, the son of James Coman. We don't get this kid's name because they're a kid who was engaged in a custody battle with his ex wife over their kid who was a child with autism. Now, the kid's mom is a believer of these biomedical interventions for their son's autism. James is not. James recognizes this is pretty dangerous and he gets trapped in this nightmare of trying to advocate for his son against the wishes of the boy's mother.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Here's how.

[Robert Evans]

A different article by the Tribune titled Autism's Risky Experiments describes his regimen of treatment. James Komen's son has an unusual skill. The seven year old, his father says can swallow six pills at once. Diagnosed with autism as a Todd, the Chicago boy had been placed on an intense regimen of supplements and medications aimed at treating the disorder. Besides taking many pills, the boy was injected with vitamin B12 and received an intravenous infusions of a drug used to leach mercury and other metals from the body. He took megadoses of vitamin C, a hormone and a drug that suppresses testosterone. They're just doing everything to this kid. Again, the fact that his skill is.

[Sophie]

That he can swallow seven pills at.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

A time, he's able to take so.

[Sophie]

Many pills, that's not America's Got Talent.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, now, the Komen boy also suffered extreme negative side effects from chelation, although thankfully not fatal ones. This provoked his father to sue, and his mother responded by complaining that any interruption of his complex, nonsense therapeutic routine would have a disastrous impact on the boy, setting him back. You know, that Tribune article written in 2009 summed up the scope of the biomedical movement at the time. Studies have shown that up to three quarters of families with children with autism try alternative treatments, which insurance does not usually cover. Doctors many linked to the influential group Defeat Autism now promote the therapies online, in books and at conferences. Intensive regimens are so common that one doctor recently joked at an Autism One conference in Chicago, you know you have a child with autism if your child takes more pills than your grandmother.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Just joking about all the drugs you're giving kids.

[Sophie]

I love that. Like, you know you're a redneck if like is the forecast.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Share man, that makes you sound good. Sounds like you're a doctor, great. It also made a point of discussing.

[Robert Evans]

How the social media era had provided oxygen to the hyperbaric chamber fire that is the biomedical movement. Quote, Parents trade stories and advice about chelation on large Internet groups. One Yahoo group has more than 8,000 members. The treatment takes many forms, including creams for the skin, capsules, suppositories, and intravenous infusions of powerful medicines usually reserved for people with severe metal poisoning. The hype was so big around this stuff in 2006 that the National Institute of Mental Health announced a randomized control trial of chelation as an autism treatment. So an actual legitimate medical body says, let's do a trial. So many people are saying this helps their kids. Let's look into it, right? And ultimately they cancel that trial in 2008 because they can't find any evidence that there's benefit to it. And there's a lot of evidence that even trying this will put kids at risk, right? Significant risk, because chelation is not good for you if you don't need it.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

So it's actually unethical for us to study this because there's zero evidence it's helped anybody.

[Robert Evans]

And we know it hurts people. So we just can't do this to kids. Now, they've done some studies on lab rats that have showed that drugging lab rats needlessly with chelation therapy causes cognitive problems, right? So they're like, we just really can't justify doing this. This is good logic for ethical scientists. But the crazed parents and con artist doctors of the biomedical movement take this as evidence that big Sci Big Pharma.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Has killed another attempt to uncover the truth. Right? That's why they don't care about hurting kids. They just wanna, they wanna keep selling us expensive medicine that actually isn't as expensive as the fake medicine.

[Sophie]

That'S so awful.

[Robert Evans]

You see similar stories wherever you look at these nonsense treatments for autism. In 2007, the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent evaluator of medical research, reviewed the efficacy of casein and gluten free diets as treatments for autism, which had become another bugbear for biomedicine. The idea that some of these biomedical people have is that gluten and casein interferes with kids brain receptors and advocates would cite studies which proved that proper diet could eliminate the symptoms of autism. But per Scientific American, Cochrane identified two very small clinical trials, one with 20 participants and one with 15. The first study found some reduction in autism symptoms. The second found none. A new randomized controlled trial of 14 children reported this past May by Susan Hyman, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, found no changes in attention, sleep, stool patterns or characteristic autistic behavior. Slowly the evidence is starting to accumulate that diet is not the panacea people are hoping for, says Susan E. Levy, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who has evaluated the evidence with Hyman. Of course, logic and evidence never drives the reactions you want to see in cases like this, right? Fitzpatrick's book includes a quote from an anti mercury campaign in the US Generation Rescue. This is what's her name? The OPRAH Ladies, Ginny McCarthy's organization. Oh, yeah, yeah. And this statement was made initially in response to Tariq Nedama's death. You might want to recall here that Tariq was diagnosed with like high aluminum levels. Not mercury, but whatever.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Quote.

[Robert Evans]

We are not desperate parents willing to try anything. We are educated, caring parents who have done thousands of hours of research and administered dozens of medical tests on our own children under the care of knowledgeable physicians. Wow, great.

[Sophie]

Wasn't, wasn't Jenny McCarthy's kid also like she said he was autistic and then.

[Robert Evans]

She said she'd cured him. She says she's cured him. Yeah.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Oh my God, I hope that kid is okay.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know. Now this kind of talk, it's like, well, we've actually, we're the experts. We've done so much, you know, to understand this. It's very common among the loudest mouthpieces of the movement, which includes Ginny McCarthy. We've discussed before her appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show, which played a massive role in igniting the anti vax movement in the U.S. mcCarthy, whose son Evan was diagnosed with autism, describes herself as having a PhD in Google. She does not. But she did have a role to play in the death of that five year old who burnt alive in a hyperbaric barbaric chamber. In 2016, Jenny pivoted from her successful anti vax campaign and started advocating hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a treatment for asd. The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD have. And this is autism spectrum disorder. Right. The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD have inflammation in their brains, which is true. You can if you like. One thing you can see is that like there's a level of inflation in the brains of people with autism. Inflammation brains of people with autism. We don't know why, we don't know how this relates to the. We just know it's there. Right. So there's a lot of debate about this. But it is something you see and it is true that hyperbaric therapy has decreased other kinds of inflammation, but not in the brain.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, different, like stuff doesn't always. It's not all the same. Right.

[Sophie]

You know, even the. Right. The microbiome being different of autistic kids and diet not being able to affect it. Right. Yeah, it's hard.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah. And so it's this thing where like you are taking two unrelated facts and.

[Robert Evans]

Using them to put kids in these death tubes. Now actual analysis of the evidence, because there have been studies on this, shows that the only basis for hyperbaric therapy as a treatment for autism was one flawed study that showed a benefit per.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

PubMed, quote HBO2 that that's the name.

[Robert Evans]

For hyperbaric therapy should not be recommended for ASD treatment until more conclusive favorable results and long term outcomes are demonstrated from well designed controlled trials. A write up from this time by the American Council on Science and Health states despite all of this caution and doubt, McCarthy believes that she knows better. Her organization, Generation Rescue, is holding the third annual Autism Education Summit this weekend in Addison, Texas, just north of Dallas to promote HBO2 therapy for ASD. This conference included an expert panel of.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Chiropractors and osteopaths as well as along with those August medical experts, a YouTuber.

[Robert Evans]

Named Lily who made a video about.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Hyperbaric treatment helped her little sister.

[Robert Evans]

McCarthy was joined on the panel by.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Del Bigtree, producer of the movie Vaxxed and one of the ladies from the Real Housewives of New Jersey truly A symposium of the greatest minds in medicine. Awesome.

[Robert Evans]

Another conference expert was Dr. Anju Usman.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Whose husband sells hyperbaric chambers.

[Sophie]

Oh, my God. I was not expecting that twist.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Oh, yeah, baby.

[Robert Evans]

Now, this is all made especially infuriating because four years before this conference in 2012, a four year old boy and his 62 year old grandmother died after the hyperbaric chamber the boy was in caught fire at the Ocean Hyperbaric center in Florida. Francesco had cerebral palsy, which hyperbaric therapy does not treat, and he had traveled to South Florida from Italy, where the treatment is illegal, with his grandmother, and he caught on fire. She tried to save them. They both die nightmarish deaths. Four years before this conference, Virgin McCarthy saying, Everybody should do this for their kids. Now, none of these deaths, none of these injuries, none of the illnesses caused by all this bullshit treatment means anything to most of these people. Their only interest is their children. And one of the issues here is that because of the way autism works, for most people who have autism, you see around the time the symptoms become evident, it seems like they're regressing, right? They stop making eye contact, they stop engaging as much. And this can be very dramatic and very shocking to parents, right? But most people with autism, their symptoms then improve over time because they grow.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Up and they get used to dealing.

[Robert Evans]

With and engaging in the world, right?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

That's just life. You know, this is gonna be the.

[Robert Evans]

Case with a majority of people who get diagnosed with autism. You will see the symptoms get alleviated. So even if you're just dosing them with every random drug you can get your hands on, they will likely show.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Improvement in some ways, just as they.

[Robert Evans]

Grow up and people convince themselves, I saved my kid, you know, at least.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

They'Re better because of all of this.

[Robert Evans]

Shit I did when, like, he could have just loved him, dealt with the.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Help, maybe gotten some treatment of the GI issues or whatever, but he could have just loved him, didn't have to do all this other shit. But it's just like life. People find ways to interact and deal with the world.

[Robert Evans]

Like David Lynch.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

This is again, because people with autism are people.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, as a result of this fact, many of these parents will go to their graves secure in the belief that they stood up for their kid and helped save them, even if all they did was make the world more comfortable for the kind of conmen who encourage children to avoid getting vaccinated for measles. And speaking of con.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Nope, speaking of ads, here they are.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one.

[Robert Evans]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Unknown]

Long silent voices from his past came.

Forward and he was just staring at me.

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Gilbert King I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

If they call and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Bone Valley Season 2 Jeremy.

Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

We're back.

[Robert Evans]

Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. So every now and then when you read about the biomedical community, you do hear about the rare wins, right? These cases where apparently gets pulled into this, they treat their kid with nonsense for a while and they realize I fucked up and they pull back and they take accountability. And those are good stories. There's a great article in the Atlantic about autism's fringe therapies and it gives the story of Emma Zurcher and her family. Emma was born in 2002 and she started to show signs of autism at like age two and a half. Right around the time Tariq would have died. Right? Her mother Ariane later described the realization of her daughter's diagnosis as being like quote, descending into hell. I was desperate to save my daughter. We went to everybody, we tried everything. Per the Atlantic. Quote, she and her husband took immature neurologists, gastroenterologists, behavioral, speech and occupational therapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, a shaman and a homeopath, a craniosacral therapist and a qui gong master, a developmental pediatrician who didn't take insurance, charged at least $200 per visit and had a months long waiting list. Recommended they call a psychic in Europe. The psychic ironically refused payment because she didn't pick up a cigaret signal from them.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

When the psychics are more honest than the doctors.

[Robert Evans]

Holy.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Like, oh, one believable list. The psychic's like, no, I don't want.

[Robert Evans]

To, I don't want to rob you.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

You know, like, holy fuck.

[Robert Evans]

They tried dozens of treatments that claim to have recovered children with autism, including numerous vitamin supplements, topical ointments, restrictive diets, chelation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, brain scans, a so called detoxification system and stem cell therapy.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

In other words, she went through all.

[Robert Evans]

The con therapies we've covered in these episodes and a bunch more. She describes her mind state after each failure. As I thought I didn't do it right, Let me do it again. And this is the consequence of this.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's not unreasonable to say like, well.

[Robert Evans]

If you, if your kid has a condition or, or an illness, part of treating it properly is the parent needs to be an advocate for their kid and involved in the treatment care. Not an unreasonable statement, but there's this attitude that that means that like the, it's. The parent is responsible for figuring it out. And like, well, but you're like, you're like a fucking accountant or something.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Like, you don't know how to, you don't, you're not a medical expert, you don't know what you're doing. Like, you know, you shouldn't be diagnosing your kid here.

[Sophie]

Also, you can see how like you, you like slip from one to the next to the next because you're increasingly desperate. But like, once you're dealing with like a shaman and it feels like someone in your life would tell you, a psychic, I don't know.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

The shaman knows how to cure autism.

[Robert Evans]

The ultimate result of all these specialty diets was that Emma shed body weight at a dangerous pace, losing 15% of her weight in six weeks. Now, Emma's mom had by this point come to believe that her daughter had something. That is another common line in biomedical Huey, that GI problems like leaky gut might help cause symptoms of autism. It doesn't. None of her attempts to fix Emma's microbiome worked. Arianne kept going, quote, I thought any treatment was better than doing nothing at all.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's this.

[Robert Evans]

I can't think of anything else to do. Better press the gas, you know?

[Sophie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

That's just not, it's not smart sometimes it's heartbreaking.

[Robert Evans]

I have a friend who's in ER News. She says sometimes the best thing to do at the site of a disaster is like smoke a cigarette and just kind of think things out for a.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Second before you get in there. Right.

[Robert Evans]

And that sounds horrifying to a lot.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Of people, but this is a person who deals with emergencies every day. Sometimes your Best bet is, like, give it a sec.

[Sophie]

Well, I mean, think it through. Everyone in the autism community is telling you that, like, there's a ticking clock, right? Like, you're trying to race and beat the clock.

[Robert Evans]

And this is also. It's another thing. It's a thing that gets people killed in war zones. You know, I've seen it, like, this desire, this feeling, a need to do something, when again, the people who are the real veterans, the people, number one, they also do react when they need to, but they also don't react all the time when they don't need to. They tend to keep to watch it.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

To think, you know, Cause otherwise you die horribly anyway.

[Robert Evans]

Her kid loses a disastrous amount of weight, and none of these attempts to fix Emma work at all. This is the state of mind, this idea. I've gotta do something. That's most of what these parents find themselves in. And the market for quack cures has only grown. I stated in 2009, about 75% of parents of children with autism reported using alternate medicine. Today, it's about 88%. Nearly all of them. If you have the money, there are a truly dizzying number of options available, like Spect, a $3,500 treatment that scans a child's brain to diagnose them and derive targeted treatments for their individual autism. This is in spite of the fact that brain scans like SPECT can't reveal autism.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

They don't.

[Robert Evans]

You don't see it that way.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And of course they can't, like, figure.

[Robert Evans]

Out this specific treatment is how to help your kid. Right, but parents love that shit. Like the, oh, I'm gonna get the exact kind of therapy for my individual kid.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

No, that's just. You're not doing it this way. Sorry.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe the therapy your kid needs is.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

For you to just like them.

[Sophie]

Well, also, once your kid has autism and then you get a scan, you can point to anything and say, like.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Look at this thing. I don't know what it is, but it says autism, you know, 100%.

[Robert Evans]

Probably the most costly of these new interventions is stem cell therapy.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And this might actually be.

[Robert Evans]

There might be treatment derived from this in the future. It's very far from clear at this point right at the moment. It is not approved as a treatment in the U.S. there are several trials gathering data on whether it's safe or effective. But again, the parents who think their kids have this ticking clock before their life is ruined don't want to wait. And as the Atlantic reports quote, several foreign clinics offer it for around $10,000. Sarah Collins credits the adult stem cell injections her two children received in Panama City, Panama with the recovery of her older son, an improvement in her younger son, both of whom were diagnosed with autism. Her experience led her to co found the stem cell therapy for autism Facebook group. She says one reason parents might not want to take part in clinical trials in the US is that their child might wind up in the placebo arm of the trial. They won't mess with that, they'll go right to Panama instead. Again, you get both the psychology of like, well, I don't want my kid to be. I want them to get the medicine now.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

But it's like, ultimately your desire to.

[Robert Evans]

Do something now is making your kid and everyone else you love everywhere in the world less safe. Because good medicine relies on good double blind studies with placebos. That's how you do medical studies. And by delaying this, number one, you are slowing down the process by which science will get done. But also by going to Panama to get whatever the fuck shot into your kid.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Well, say that clinic doesn't have good.

[Robert Evans]

Standards, say your kid, kid gets hurt. And maybe it's not even because of actual stem cell therapy. It's because something else fucked up happened. But there's this horrible public death or illness associated with it. And that shuts down research into a thing that may one day lead to treatments that help people, right, that alleviate some symptom or something.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

You are doing nothing but harm by.

[Robert Evans]

Doing this out of this desire that like, well, but I gotta focus on my kid.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And it's like, no, it's this fucking.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no. Emma's mom eventually made the right decision after about seven years of trying this carousel of treatments to reach out to an adult with autism and talk to them about her kid. This adult was Julia Bascom, who has a blog called Just Stimming this. Talking to Julia keyed her in on the fact that, well, maybe autism isn't.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Like, doesn't mean my kid has no life.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe they could be happy as a person with autism and I should focus on that because it's just the way they are. Emma's mom wrote, quote, my entire focus changed. Instead of fighting against Emma's neurology and trying to cure this heinous disorder, I started finding ways to help her flourish. And that's it. Really?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Right? Yeah, like, that's the ball game.

[Sophie]

I mean, just to just robbing yourself of like the joy of being able to enjoy your kid and see them, you know, is stunning. Because you're so worried.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Yeah, I mean, and it is tragic, like, the amount of the wasted years. You're so obsessed doing this that you're not actually having a relationship with your kid as your kid. You're having a relationship with your kid as a sick thing you need to fix.

[Sophie]

Yeah. As a guinea pig, essentially.

[Robert Evans]

It's sad now in this case. So one of the first things she does when she has this shift in mindset, she realizes, like, Emma's not great at talking. This is a big problem for her, that her kid can't really talk and communicate verbally.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And so instead of trying shooting her.

[Robert Evans]

Up with more drugs and shit, she tries a different kind of intervention. She gives her kid a keyboard setup so Emma can type out her thoughts. And suddenly Emma starts communicating very clearly with people and the rest of the world. She gets on track to get her high school diploma.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

The fact that she now they figured.

[Robert Evans]

Out how she individually needs to communicate gives her a chance to advocate for.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Herself and to live a life.

[Robert Evans]

While Zurcher told the Atlantic that she now views the money she wasted on quack treatments as insane. And Emma herself insists that only occupational therapy provided her with any benefit. And occupational therapy is a real thing that can help. She also insists she's not angry at her mom. Quote, you thought my autism was hurting me and that you needed to remove it, but you did not understand that it is a neurological difference. Fear caused you to behave with desperation.

[Sophie]

What an incredibly mature way to respond.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah. And that would be a beautiful note.

[Robert Evans]

To end on Mangesh, if we.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

If this is behind the bastards. So we're not gonna end on that uplifting note. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a whole nother story about one of these quack.

[Robert Evans]

Bastards, one of the worst of these.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Sons of bitches, an asshole named James Jeffrey Bradstrake street.

[Robert Evans]

Three names. Real serial killer shit for James Jeffrey Bradstreet.

[Call Zone Media]

Yeah. This. This episode. The End, Part one. Just the names.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

The names. Always the worst.

[Robert Evans]

Born in July 1954 in Florida, Bradstreet was at one point a Christian preacher who got a medical degree from the University of Florida.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

We're doing great. Knocking it out of the park so far.

[Robert Evans]

His postgraduate research was in aerospace medicine, and his actual career was as a family doctor. But in 1997, after he'd been practicing for a little over a decade, his son was diagnosed with autism. As Fitzpatrick writes, Jeff Bradstreet abandoned his career as a family doctor to become a radio talk show host.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Great, great start. Great start.

[Robert Evans]

He immediately met up with the biomedical activists and founded the International Child Development Resource center in Florida, or the ICDRC. In 2001, he appointed Andrew Wakefield to.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Be head of research there.

[Robert Evans]

Bradstreet was a big believer in merging his evangelical Christian faith with his treatments for autism. And so he created the Good News Doctor Foundation. Now, again, Bradstreet's training was two years of residency in obstetrics and some added training in aerospace medicine. He was not board certified in any specialty, yet he advertised himself as a biomedical expert in autism treatment who specialized.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

In correcting biochemical imbalances as well as detoxification. Again, this is a guy who's like, qualified to help your kid with the flu, you know, Right. Not to, like, downplay family medicine, but this is not a guy who's qualified to cure, among other things.

[Robert Evans]

Nobody is.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's not a thing. That's not a thing that happens.

[Robert Evans]

In the book Deadly Choices, Paul Offutt describes Bradstreet's clinical approach this way. Bradstreet had promoted several cures for autism, including secretin chelation, immunoglobulin administered by mouth and by vein, and prednisone, a potent steroid that suppresses the immune system. He also prescribed dietary supplements he sold in his office.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

As one expert put it, the nutritional supplements prescribed by Dr. Bradstreet were also sold by Dr. Bradstreet. Sure, that's fine. Cool. And this is.

[Call Zone Media]

We're like the late 90s, right? This is when this.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, like the guy.

[Call Zone Media]

This guy would be on TikTok. Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

He might have been.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Actually, you know what, Sophie, good news. We're going to talk about what this guy winds up doing in the present era. It's actually the best part of the story.

[Robert Evans]

So in 1999, Bradstreet began treating Colton Snyder, ultimately examining him more than 160.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Times and ordering a number of invasive lab tests that were not approved by the fda. Among these were multiple spinal taps. If you've had a spinal tap, that's not a thing you fuck around with. They're just stabbing this kid in the spine with needles. See if that makes it better.

[Sophie]

160 times. Feels very, very thoughtful.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Feels like a lot of visits. Feels like a lot of visits.

[Robert Evans]

They also insert a fiber optic scope into Colton's stomach and colon. As Offit writes, all these tests and procedures were expensive, potentially dangerous, and according to the opinions of expert witnesses, of no value to the child. Wow. Now, Bradstreet, this is not said directly, but his parents have money. This is not cheap. That's why Bradstreet's doing this. His medical documentation of Snyder ultimately runs to some 650 pages. He diagnoses the boy over the years with autism, yeast overgrowth, a fungal infection, unspecified encephalopathy, unspecified urticaria, and a shitload of other things. Things. And it's so many different things that it is clear that what's going on.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Here is Bradstreet has. This is like a Munchausen's by doctor syndrome, right? And it's.

[Robert Evans]

He's not doing it because he's deluded. He's doing it because he is a mercenary with the goal of keeping Colton's parents paying for very expensive tests and treatments for forever. Right? None of Colton's mercury tests were ever high, but still Bradstreet, who believed mercury contributed to autism, prescribed numerous rounds of chelation therapy. A write up in Quackwatch summarizes broadstreet conceded that Colton did not respond well to chelation. The medical records, including reports from Mrs. Snyder, reflected that Colten did poorly after every round of chelation therapy. The more disturbing question is why chelation was performed at all. In view of the normal levels of mercury found in the hair, blood and urine, its apparent lack of efficacy in treating Colton's symptoms, and the adverse side effects it apparently caused. That's another thing you encounter where these parents and these practitioners. The practitioners will convince the parents. Oh, yeah. If your kids having. If they're. If they're responding negatively, that's the toxins leaving of. Of course it's ugly, you know.

[Sophie]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

That's bad.

[Sophie]

It's so hard to listen to. I mean, it's awful.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's real fucked up. These people should all have gone to prison. They should all still go to prison.

[Robert Evans]

But you know who shouldn't go to prison? Our sponsors.

[Call Zone Media]

Is that what we're doing?

[Robert Evans]

I'm saying they shouldn't. Sophie, what do you want from me?

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Scoffia in Bone Valley season one.

[Robert Evans]

I just knew him as a kid.

[Unknown]

Long silent voices from his past came.

Forward and he was just staring at me.

And they had secrets of their own to share.

Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

If the cops and everything would have done the job properly, my dad would have been in jail, I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer bone.

Valley Season 2 Jeremy Jeremy, I want.

To tell you something.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2 starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content starting April 9th. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

We're back.

[Robert Evans]

So in one conference in the early aughts after Bradstreet had become a DAN affiliated doctor, he referred to parents who didn't blame their K condition on vaccines or subject them to dangerous biomedical experimentations as apids or autism. Parents in denial, right?

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

If you just accept your kid and try to help them live their best.

[Robert Evans]

Life, you're in denial. You should be poisoning them. Fitzpatrick notes that other experts in the field speak in similar ways. QUOTE Ginny McCarthy is dismissive of Woe is Me moms, though she is not above moaning about how shitty her own life is and reminding her readers that celebrities separate like everyone else. Still, she finds it difficult to accept that other parents don't simply believe in alternative treatments. Was it, she asks herself, that they didn't want to hope, or that they enjoyed the victim role? I don't know. Maybe they're just trying to do what's best for their kids. Yeah, yeah. When the Chicago Tribune interviewed Bradstreet about his use of IV immunoglobulin, or ivig, as an autism treatment, he told them every kid with autism should have a trial of IVIG if money was not an option and if IVIG was abundant. Bradstreet also became a vocal advocate for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, although he did later publish research arguing it was ineffective, perhaps because it wasn't a big moneymaker for his clinic. In 2008, more than 5,000 families enmeshed in the biomedical movement launched a lawsuit seeking compensation for vaccine related harm in the U.S. court of Federal Claims. Bradstreet was one of their major witnesses. He provided expert testimony, which ultimately failed because the Special Masters, which is the title name for the people who are like evaluating this claim, look into Bradstreet in part to determine if there's credible evidence to support the idea that vaccines cause autism. They conclude it doesn't. They reject the case, and one major reason is the case of Colton Snyder, which they examine at length and hold up as like, this is an example of how the malpractice is coming from inside the house. It's guys like Bradstreet, right?

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Still, by 2009, Bradstreet had been in practice so long that he claimed his institute has records on more than 4,000 patients. He got a California medical license in May of that year in a state, established a branch of the icdrc. Two years later, he got a Georgia state medical license and opened a clinic in Beaufort. Because staying competitive in the industry of fake autism treatments required constant innovation, Bradstreet became an advocate for a new autism cure late in his career. Gcmaf. This stands for globulin component macrophage activating factor. And this is a thing. It's a protein in healthy blood that you can remove and concentrate and use it to treat certain kinds. Some kind of people are sick in a way that injecting them with this concentrated factor can help them. Right. It's a real thing for stuff.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Not for this, but for stuff.

[Robert Evans]

In August of 2012, he gave a presentation in England in which he described injecting 40 patients with autism with this shit, declaring. I shouldn't call it shit. Well, but the stuff he is selling is shit. There's a legitimate version of this. That's not what he's selling. Declaring, quote, it's extremely potent in terms of its ability to work for children. He announced, many from this experiment have gone on to basically lose the label of autism. They don't have autistic distinctions anymore. After sometimes as little as 20 weeks of therapy. Now, this just isn't the way this works.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's not really how anything works.

[Robert Evans]

But Bradstreet tended to show up in the kind of crowds where he wouldn't be questioned. He claimed that doctors in Japan and Italy were working on the same therapy. And he also cited a guy named David Noakes, the head of an immuno biotech which manufactures gcmaf.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And he in, in fact he shouts.

[Robert Evans]

This guy out and then offers attendees to the speech a 25% discount on GCMAF.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Sounds like medicine to me, bro. I love it when my doctor gives me a fucking coupon for blood factor. Great.

[Sophie]

Well, it's coming from it, honestly. Cause he's a radio host.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Sure, yeah. Of course. It does come. Right, Right, Absolutely.

[Robert Evans]

Per a Washington Post piece by Michael Miller, quote, what he did not disclose, however, was that much of the research he cited had already been discredited and retracted. The journal considering Bradstreet's paper was the scientific equivalent of Self publishing and Bradstreet had close ties to Nokes and Immunobiotech. During the same UK trip, Bradstreet and Noakes made what was essentially a promotional video for Immunobiotech and its brand of GCMAF called First Immune. I'm here with Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet from the USA, the autism expert in the First Immune GCMAF laboratories. Noakes said on camera, Dr. Bradstreet has been using our GCMAF for 18 months and we'd like to thank you for. I think you've treated 900 children now, not just children, Bradstreet boasted. So the spectrum of my patients with autism ranges from somewhere around 18 months to, goodness, somewhere around close to 40. So we've treated many adults with autism, as well as chronic fatigue patients, cancer patients. So we found application for a fairly broad number of disorders for the product.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

The two training compliments for four minutes straight, just gassing each other up for four minutes. Again, sounds like medicine.

[Robert Evans]

Now, the transcripts for this are just impossibly fucking cringy, with Noakes saying, we've.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Never met a doctor with such an.

[Robert Evans]

Understanding at the microbiological level of how autism and cancer and other diseases work.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And again, autism and cancer, not really related.

[Robert Evans]

Not alike. Not at all alike.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Other diseases. Again, not that I'm not saying autism's a disease, but that's the way this guy's talking. It's like, no, this isn't medicine. I know doctors are never like, yeah, we figure like, this thing helps with the flu and, I don't know, probably lung cancer. Fuck it.

[Sophie]

And gout.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, gout, sure. Fuck it.

[Robert Evans]

And one of the things like Bradstreet goes back to after Noakes gases him up, he's like, this is the most sterile lab I've ever seen. The best equipment, the best people. This is the perfect environment for doing good medical science. Science. Bradstreet then pivoted to make a the pitch that the greatest thing about GCMAF was that you. You could use it without the presence of a doctor. In other words, regular parents could just buy the stuff and shoot their children up with it.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Quote, oh, my God. It's accessible to anybody around the world through your Internet sites.

[Robert Evans]

You've made it available very broadly. We've used it in South Africa, China, India, Eastern Europe, South America and all over. That's been a wonderful experience to see.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Parents have access to a therapy and like. So there's this, this cut.

[Robert Evans]

This drug that's a cousin of benzos.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

That Was like, Soviet Union Xanax that.

[Robert Evans]

They gave to their astronauts, that is.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Like, unregulated in the US you can order it by the kilogram, I think about shit like that. We're like, yeah, okay, but what if we just did that for children's medicine? You know, it's incredible. Oh, man, it is so funny.

[Robert Evans]

I don't.

[Sophie]

Yeah, I just don't understand, like, how, like, it's so shameless, like, going from children to, like, all people with autism, to, like, everyone with cancer to, like, it's just unbelievable.

[Robert Evans]

And again, the people selling Soviet Xanax.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

To strangers on the Internet, fundamentally an honest business. You know, people who buy that shit know what they're getting, you know, so.

[Robert Evans]

This that, like, and you can give.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It to your kids.

[Robert Evans]

DIY was the ultimate pitch to the parents in the biomedical treatment community and the ultimate evolution of the founding principles that parents should be actively engaged not just in caring for their child, but in diagnosing and treating them. Meanwhile, there was no real evidence that GCMAF benefited children with asd, as Baylor School of Tropical Medicine Dean Peter Hotehouse told the Post. And by the way, Dr. Peter Hotel also is the parent of a child with autism. An initial safety test of GCMAF injections had not even been completed. It was still trying to recruit participants.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

So, like, the actual doctors are being.

[Robert Evans]

Like, we don't even know if this is safe. We haven't been able to get enough people to volunteer to prove that this isn't dangerous, not even to show that it works.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And they're just selling this over the fucking Internet.

[Robert Evans]

Even so, Bradstreet bragged about dosing more than 2,000 children and claimed 85% of them improved and 15% had their autism eradicated. The initial hype was massive, but the actual comments from parents who used the treatment were standard. Some claimed small positive, while others claimed hard to rate changes like, well, he's talking more many though recorded disappointment quote. We have recruited 20 shots of GCMAF so far. I am still waiting for the wow. That everyone talks about. One person wrote even worse. They described side effects including crying and pains in his chest and stomach. For at least the first three we are doing GCMAF injections. I have not seen any gains at all. Another person wrote, I have seen worse behaviors and tantrums. So after spending 1300 for no gains and living in hell, I'm done with this.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Wow.

[Sophie]

I can't imagine, like, I can't imagine ordering something online and being like, yeah, I should.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

I should shoot this into my child.

[Sophie]

With a needle 20 times. Unbelievable.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know, maybe that child abuse. I'm sorry, I know you.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

You quote, unquote, love your kid, but that sounds like child abuse to me.

[Sophie]

Completely.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yeah, obviously little kids don't understand.

[Robert Evans]

Sometimes you have to. If they're sick, you have to give them medicine that they don't like that may have negative side effects. Because that's just necessary sometimes. Right, I get it. But like, to do that for no reason.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

None at all.

[Sophie]

Also, like, I'm sure some of this was causing some sort of delirium and the kids were talking as a result.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Of that kid's not doing nothing. Cause by the way, Mango, we're about to talk about where this blood came from.

[Sophie]

Oh, God.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Cause I know, I know, I know. The first thing I thought was like, Jesus Christ. I just saw this is not just fucked up because they're like shooting kids full of blood that doesn't do anything.

[Robert Evans]

Or maybe it hurts them.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

But also, like, blood is rare. There's not enough of any of these blood factors.

[Robert Evans]

People need this, and you're not getting this stuff to people who need it. The good news is that's not an issue here.

[Call Zone Media]

I'm afraid.

[Sophie]

I'm so nervous.

[Robert Evans]

I've spent a lot of these episodes talking about what a bad idea it is to make parents without medical training.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Part of the diagnostic and treatment process in this way.

[Robert Evans]

But the Bradstreet story does have a positive ending due to a mom of two sons with autism named Fiona O'Leary. She came upon his scam and she gets angry, right? She is not one of these moms who buys into the bullshit. She's like, oh, this is fucking dangerous. Fuck this guy. She looks into his business and the web of shady undisclosed financial interests he had with Immunobia Biotech. She files complaints with regulators. I think this is over in the uk. I believe she lives. I don't know if she's in the UK proper, in Northern Ireland, given the name Fiona O'Leary, but she. She fought. She. This leads to the. The UK's equivalent of the FDA does an investigation that culminates in a raid on a First Immune GCMAF production facility near Cambridge. This is the lab where he filmed that video, where Bradstreet films the video with Noakes, where they gaffen each other up. Yeah, I heard.

[Sophie]

Was persistent.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

You heard that? So while Bradstreet had praised the lab's.

[Robert Evans]

Sterility, UK regulators described it as making GCMAF out of, quote, blood plasma labeled.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products. Oh my God. They're getting this out of the shit butt. Does that make it better? Cause at least regular, like people who need blood aren't losing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what we say here.

[Sophie]

Oh my God.

[Call Zone Media]

So sad.

[Robert Evans]

Eventually, she succeeds.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

It's so up, right? So, oh my God, where was this blood coming from?

[Robert Evans]

She succeeds eventually in getting US regulators to look into Bradstreet, which brought the feds to his door in Buford on June 18, 2015. Had he been indicted properly, properly, Bradstreet might have faced 20 years in prison, according to the suspected charges of a search warrant. Rather than endure that, Bradstreet fled town the next day, driving to North Carolina. As he checked into his hotel, Swiss papers reported a story from Switzerland that a first immune clinic in that country run by Noakes had been shut down after five patients being treated with GCMAF had died. Some had paid almost as much as €6,000 a week for treatment.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And to be clear, clear, we don't.

[Robert Evans]

Know that the GCA may have killed those people. These were terminal patients. Right? But this was billed as helping terminal conditions, and it didn't. Right? So there's a big raid on his partner Noakes. That and the raid on his own facility in Buford probably contributed to Jeffrey's decision to take his own life on June 19. His body was found by a fisherman that afternoon, floating like a river. And the gun he used was found nearby in the water. This immediately became a conspiracy for biomedical advocates, including the CEO of Immunobiotech, who insisted that Jeffrey was murdered by pharmaceutical companies for stating that the MMR vaccine causes autism and hurting their profits with his GCMFA therapy. And unfortunately, what happens here is kind of the best case scenario in this world. One major agent of harm faces a teeny bit of justice and then makes a choice to take himself out of the picture, Right? To this day, though, Bradstreet remains a focus of vaccine conspiracists. And I found this in a Reddit post on the R Conspiracy Commons board from 2022.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

And it's like a picture of this.

[Robert Evans]

Guy in a suit. This is Jeffrey Bradstreet. He found the cure for autism using oxygen chamber therapy, chelation and protein shots for T cells. After having cured thousands, he was shot in the back twice at his mansion. And the FBI raided and destroyed his cure center the day after.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Now, none of that's accurate. They raided his sinner the day before, he's not at his mansion. He tries to check into a hotel.

[Robert Evans]

And, like, can't check in, and then.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

He goes to the river. Like, this is just all wrong. Wrong. But.

[Sophie]

But it's. It's also, like, such a hydra, right? Like, it feels like you cut off the head and, like, all these others emerge. It's awful.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Anyway, that's our story for the week.

[Robert Evans]

Great stuff.

[Sophie]

It's super uplifting.

[Robert Evans]

Happy trails, everybody.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Mango, you got any plugs to plug?

[Sophie]

Yeah, definitely. I did a show called Skyline Drive, which is about a skeptical look at astrology. It's really good, and I would love for people to check it out if they have the time. But honestly, Robert, Sophie, this was so fun. I know. I was just shocked and saying, oh, my God, more than I probably should have, but it was both horrifying and, I don't know, really emotional.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Yep.

[Robert Evans]

Well, glad to be horrifying and enlightening.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Horror.

[Robert Evans]

Fin.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Lightning.

[Sophie]

And now I need that Snickers borrow Xanax.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

That's right.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. Yeah. Now, again, this is the solution to all of our problems is the $7 Snickers bar of Xanax.

[Sophie]

The soul flick. Yeah.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

Again, vote Evans. A Snickers bar of Xanax in every pocket. And honestly, none of us is gonna know what happened, but that's kind of the benefit, right? Jesus Christ. And look, are some people gonna die?

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely. And we're gonna knock down the Washington Monument and replace it with a monument that's just a four bar.

[Mangesh Hattikudur]

A giant four bar in the sky. Problem solved.

[Call Zone Media]

Behind the Basterds is a production of Cool Zone Me Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Unknown]

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Scott Schofield in Bone Valley season one.

Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.

At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.

Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.