"Desperation Time" · 2006-07-20 20:00


Significant Misrepresentations
Mark Geier, David Geier & the Evolution of the Lupron Protocol
(Part Six) • Related articles

Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier’s efforts to arouse interest in and recruit new subjects for the “Lupron protocol” have not been entirely limited to Internet newsgroups, political rallies, and the autism conference and lecture circuit; they have also extended to the world of talk radio. On April 12, 2005, father and son were interviewed on Radio Liberty, a nationally syndicated program featuring stories of globalism and federal conspiracies. By his own description, host Dr. Stanley Monteith “has spent 30 years researching the causes for America’s spiritual and moral decline.”

During their 2005 interview, Dr. and Mr. Geier discussed their newly-conceived “Lupron protocol,” described the “amazing improvement” they observed in their first subject, and speculated on the potential market for their new treatment method.

We’re talking about potentially hundred of thousands to millions of kids. And, you know, the effort to do this — you’d have to have as many treatment centers as we have McDonald’s, you’d have to have, you know, a level like the moon program.

On June 23, 2006, Dr. Geier returned to Radio Liberty to discuss vaccines and autism, and to give an update on the progress of his research into the “Lupron protocol.” The following passages were transcribed from that interview.

‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡

If you look at these children, most of them have signs and symptoms of precocious puberty. That’s what David and I have discovered. We’ve discovered that the mercury upsets the pathway that has to do with testosterone, and the testosterone pathway interacts with the glutathione pathway, which is the pathway for eliminating mercury. Most of these kids have precocious puberty and they can be treated. You can look. They have high testosterone, they masturbate at age six, they have mustaches, they’re aggressive, and you can treat them by lowering their testosterone and removing the mercury, and we’ve had unbelievable success. And we’ve been having that. And a number of doctors now are joining us, but they would join us a lot better if the authorities would actually tell the truth about what happened to the children.
[Dr. Monteith] How well are these children doing? I know I talked to you one time before and I think at that time you only had about eight or nine children in the study. But you’re well over sixty. And you know these children they appear to be mentally defective, even that or certainly very aggressive, and almost impossible for families to handle. What is your overall success rate? Have you had any way of evaluating that?
Virtually every one of the sixty or more children we’ve treated have improved in a very, very big way. And when you hear that kind of story you say, “Well there must be something wrong, it’s too good to be true.” And the first thing that people think is, well, the side effects of the drug we use, which is called Lupron, is really bad. And it turns out it isn’t. The only thing that I can think, that I’m not sure of is, I don’t know how long I have to keep treating these kids, if I stop treating them will they go back to the way they were? That I don’t know. But the treatment level has been so high, the success level has been so high, that now some pediatric neurology groups that we’ve presented to have recommended a major double blind study, which I think is going to be done soon at the university to demonstrate, by the way, what almost doesn’t need to be demonstrated….
[Dr. Monteith] …He’s been telling us about the treatment that they have devised. Could you just briefly summarize that for our listeners?
Yeah, it turns out that these kids almost all have low glutathione, which is the substance the body makes to help get rid of heavy metal. And they’ve been exposed to mercury, and when they have that condition, when they start making their androgens, their testosterone, they get to a point, a branch point, where they’re supposed to make most of their, it’s called DHEA into DHEA-S, but they can’t make DHEA-S because they need glutathione to do that step, so they make it almost all into testosterone. And the testosterone further inhibits the glutathione pathway, and so you have a multiplier loop, and these kids end up with signs and symptoms of precocious puberty.
And we presented this out in California, and it’s become very hot, and mostly in California, one of the big autism clinics a pediatric neurologist was sitting there and she said, “Well, yeah, I’ve seen these kids, they all have signs of precocious puberty, that’s because they’re autistic.” and we said, “you know what? why don’t you treat the precocious puberty because it makes the autism virtually disappear.” And that’s what we’ve been doing and we’ve been having unbelievable success doing it, and others have seen it and they’re just not looking. And once you point it out to them, they go, “Oh my God, look, this one has a mustache and he’s four, this one is masturbating at age three, this one is aggressive, this one has a growth spurt, this one has acne.” I have a little girl — and there are some girls, the girls are rarer, but there are some girls, and they have high testosterone — I have a little girl, who’s between four and five years old, and she has male pattern baldness. You know, you’ve seen it — I have male pattern baldness and I’m in my fifties — you can see it from across the room. The center of her hair is bald. That is caused by testosterone. She has high testosterone and I’ve been treating her now and her male pattern baldness is going away and so is her autism. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that anyone can look at her and see, even without a lab test that she has high testosterone.
The drug we use is called Lupron which is the standard mainline medicine treatment for precocious puberty, and then we chelate them, we give them a mainline FDA-approved drug called DMSA or Chemet, which is FDA-approved to remove mercury. And the combination of lowering the testosterone and removing the mercury makes these kids so much better. We typically don’t tell the schools, and we get calls from the schools. “What did you do to our kid? It’s not the same child.” And the parents say, “It’s not the same child.” And it’s so obvious. It’s not that they get a little better, they get a whole lot better. And the question is, can you eventually remove enough mercury that you don’t have to keep giving them Lupron. And the answer to that is, we’ve only been doing this less than two years. I don’t know the long term, but I can tell you on the short term that we have kids that… A lot of these kids are so severe, you know, they don’t say a word, they attack everybody, they break their mothers arm. These are really, really aggressive kids. And it shouldn’t surprise anybody, by the way, even if you don’t understand the biochemistry that we’ve developed, that if you take people who are very, very aggressive, and you lower testosterone, they’re going to be better. But it doesn’t just take away the aggression. It makes their attention better, their socialization better, their learning better, they look you in the eye, they can hug you. It’s just… it’s just… just like I never dreamt that I would discover what the CDC has been hiding, I never dreamt that I would have a therapy that would have this kind of efficacy.
We’ve published a medical hypotheses on the theory of it. And now we have several papers that have been accepted in about… We’re going to publish a whole series of papers because every child that we look at we do a complete medical work up. One of the reasons we’re so successful in treating the autistics is, we know what we’re treating. Before we put anybody on this treatment we make sure they really have mercury poisoning or regressive autism. So for example, we do chromosomes. If they have Fragile X, well, then they’re not for the treatment; it they have Rett Syndrome, they’re not for this treatment. So we actually have worked up about 150 kids now with a complete genetic work-up…
The estimates are as high as… The CDC says that they thought one in 166 children were affected. I think that probably at the peak, and the peak was between, say, 1999 and 2001, somewhere in that range for diagnosis, I think we may have gotten as high as one in thirty and one in forty children in the United States. There may be between one and two million autistics, and almost all of them are young. Because you know those who say, “Well, we’ve always had autism, we’ve just made a differential diagnosis now,” we’d like to see their sixty year old autistics and their fifty year old autistics, where are they hiding them? That’s called the hidden horde. There are only handfuls of autistics before. So almost all the autistics are young. And of course, they’ll fool you if you’re not careful, by saying, “The number of autistics continues to go up, even though we took it out of the vaccine.” Sure it does, because the ones who have it don’t die. What we’re saying is, the rate of new cases has gone down. Not the total rate, but the rate of new cases, and it’s because they’ve taken it out of the vaccines and out of the RhoGam.
These kids are not the Rain Man. These kids are extremely aggessive. And there’s another interesting phenomena that’s occurring in this country. There’s a small group now on the web that are attacking us and others who are treating this, called neurodiversity. They think autism is a good thing. Well, maybe it’s a good thing, if they think, you know, “Einstein had autism.” He didn’t have autism, he might have been a little eccentric. If they saw these kids, no one can look at these kids and say, “these kids are ok they shouldn’t be treated.” No human can look at them. They bang their heads against the wall, they don’t talk, they bite their mothers. I mean, no one can think this is a normal thing. This is not, “Einstein was a little eccentric,” this is full blown autism and it’s intolerable, and everybody thinks that they should be treated.
And as you said, it not only destroys the kids’ lives, it destroys the family, it destroys the siblings, it destroys the neighborhoods, it destroys the educational system. And if we are not careful it’s going to destroy the United States, because it’s going to hard for us to be the number one nation in the world. What do we produce? What makes us number one? Is it our oil? Is it our nuclear energy? Is it our science? You know what it is? It’s our brains. And if we have one in six children, even using their figure, that have brain damage, and we end up, there’s three hundred million Americans, and we end up with one in six of them having brain damage, that’s fifty million Americans, we’re not going to be the number one country in the world anymore. And I have great fear for that. I love this country, and we’ve got to not let that happen.
[Caller] Hello, I wanted to talk to the doctor; I think he’s leaving one bit out here. I’m really experienced with Lupron, I certainly don’t have your medical background… It has some pretty serious side effects, both psychologically, emotionally and physically. And those side effects are irreversible…
I’m glad you asked that question; I hear this all the time. Lupron has, is used in adults, in males, on prostate cancer and benign prostatic hypertrophy. It’s used in females on severe cases of endometriosis and also on cystic ovarian diseasee. In both adult males and adult females there are tremendous side effects, and the side effects are not side effects. They are, you lose your estrogen, and you lose your testosterone. It has been tested for many, many years on young children, and because they don’t need testosterone or estrogen, it has virtually no side effects. And you can look it up in the PDR, Physician’s Desk Reference. It has been tested at 250 times the usual dose on children for years with no side effects.
And let me tell you why it has no side effects on these children. Lupron is actually a very complex biomolecule, and it is actually a natural molecule. The way we control our hormones is, the hypothalamus has releasing substances, and Lupron is exactly the natural one, except they added one carbon on the end to make it stick more. So it binds there and actually turns it off. But it’s 99% natural. And sure, if you give an adult woman Lupron and you turn off her estrogen, she’ll have menopausal symptoms, and she’ll have bone demineralization (by the way, that’s not a good doctor, you should replace her estrogen hormones). If you give it to an adult male of my age, I’m going to lose my sex drive, I’m going to lose my beard. But if you give it to children whose normal level of testosterone is zero, and you lower these kids to zero, there are virtually no side effects.
And if you talk about side effects — I mean, I don’t think any drug is completely side effect free — but, mainline medicine is treating these kids with Abilify, Paxil, things that have side effects — and by the way, they’re not approved for that use. The way we’re using Lupron, it is approved. And in fact every HMO pays for it because these kids have precocious puberty.
And of course these children, then there’ve been extensive studies in children that show it’s safe.
That’s right. And of course, there’s the underlying thing. The underlying thought of that, it’s kind of a minor disorder and I don’t want to risk side effects. I don’t want to harm any child. But this is not a minor disorder, this is desperation time. Even if there were some side effects, if you’ve got a kid there that’s going into an institution and is beating his head against the wall and breaking his mother’s arm, even if there were side effects, one would take the risk because this not, like some people are thinking, “well kid’s kind of, you know, a little bit different.” These kids aren’t a little different. They don’t have a single word. Sixty percent of them never say a word. They hit people. There’s room for side effects. But actually, among the drugs that can be used, they are by far the safest. They’re certainly safer than chelation, and they’re certainly safer than Ritalin or Strattera or any of the SSRI’s that currently are being used. And incidentally, the funny thing is, those things, that many of the SSRI’s — Abilify and Paxil — are not approved for use in children. The Lupron, the way we’re using it, it’s exactly the way it’s approved. If you demonstrate that a child has precocious puberty the treatment under mainline medicine, has been for twenty some years, is Lupron. Now the only difference is that we get a side effect. The side effect is that they not only lose their precocious puberty, they lose a good deal of their autism. Now I don’t think there’s any rule about getting a good side effect. Also, when we demonstrate mercury toxicity, and we use Chemet or DMSA, that’s the FDA approved… there are people that are using all kinds of crazy things for chelation, but that’s the FDA approved treatment for mercury. It’s exactly what you’re supposed to be doing…
I can be reached at mgeier@…
[Dr. Monteith] Why are these things going on? Well, if you’d like to know why they’re going on, you need to get my talk on planned population reduction… And ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say this, but there really are people who want to hurt children… And if you doubt that, you need to get my book, Brotherhood of Darkness… Our government is poisoning us.
There really are people like Judy (sic) Gerberding and others at the CDC, who know exactly what they are doing, and they are evil. I’ve been to the CDC, I’ve met many of these people when I was back there, and of course, not the same people, I’m sure those people have gone on and probably been richly rewarded working for the drug companies or working elsewhere now, very prosperous after doing all the harm… We’re up against organized evil. We’re in a battle for the souls of men, and the survival of Christian civilization.

‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡

These passages exemplify the manner in which Mark and David Geier have recently promoted the “Lupron protocol” to the lay public — with inaccurate information and unverifiable generalizations —

If you look at these children, most of them have signs and symptoms of precocious puberty.

These kids almost all have low glutathione.

Chemet, which is FDA-approved to remove mercury. (Although approved for the treatment of mercury intoxication in adults, Chemet’s only FDA-approved pediatric use is for treatment of lead poisoning.)

I think we may have gotten as high as one in thirty and one in forty children in the United States. There may be between one and two million autistics, and almost all of them are young.

Sixty percent of them never say a word. (According to C. Lord et al, “Trajectory of language development in autistic spectrum disorders,” in Developmental Language Disorders: From Phenotypes to Etiologies, 90% of children on the autistic spectrum develop speech by the age of nine.)

representation of hypotheses as facts —

Mercury upsets the pathway that has to do with testosterone, and the testosterone pathway interacts with the glutathione pathway.

They get to a point, a branch point, where they’re supposed to make most of their, it’s called DHEA into DHEA-S, but they can’t make DHEA-S because they need glutathione to do that step, so they make it almost all into testosterone.

exaggerated claims of efficacy —

Virtually every one of the sixty or more children we’ve treated have improved in a very, very big way.

Treat the precocious puberty because it makes the autism virtually disappear.

trivialization of potential risks to children —

The first thing that people think is, well, the side effects of the drug we use, which is called Lupron, is really bad. And it turns out it isn’t. (From the Lupron package insert: “No clinical studies have been completed in children to assess the full reversibility of fertility suppression.”)

[Lupron] has been tested for many, many years on young children, and because they don’t need testosterone or estrogen, it has virtually no side effects. (From the Lupron package insert: “A pharmacokinetic study of leuprolide acetate in children has not been performed… In two studies of children with central precocious puberty, in 2% or more of the patients receiving the drug, the following adverse reactions were reported… general pain, acne/seborrhea, injection site reactions including abscess, rash including erythema multiforme, vaginitis/bleeding/discharge.”)

It has been tested at 250 times the usual dose on children for years with no side effects. (From the Lupron package insert: “In rats, subcutaneous administration of 125 to 250 times the recommended human pediatric dose, expressed on a per body weight basis, resulted in dyspnea, decreased activity, and local irritation at the injection site. There is no evidence at present that there is a clinical counterpart of this phenomenon.”)

It’s 99% natural. (From the Lupron package insert: “Leuprolide acetate is a synthetic nonapeptide analog of naturally occurring gonadotropin releasing hormone. The analog possesses greater potency than the natural hormone.”)

failure to consider alternate possibilities for observed phenomena —

The center of her hair is bald. That is caused by testosterone. (Hair loss can also be caused by autoimmune disorders, high fevers, medicines, crash diets, excess vitamin A, emotional stress, surgery, or severe injuries.)

The rate of new cases has gone down. Not the total rate, but the rate of new cases, and it’s because they’ve taken it out of the vaccines and out of the RhoGam.

appeals to popularity and status —

We presented this out in California, and it’s become very hot.

Some pediatric neurology groups that we’ve presented to have recommended a major double blind study, which I think is going to be done soon at the university.

invocation of fear of autistic people —

These are really, really aggressive kids… They attack everybody… They bite their mothers.

No human can look at them.

and incitement to panic —

It not only destroys the kids’ lives, it destroys the family, it destroys the siblings, it destroys the neighborhoods, it destroys the educational system. And if we are not careful it’s going to destroy the United States.

I don’t want to harm any child. But this is not a minor disorder, this is desperation time.

to Part Seven:
The Citations Are Not What They Seem

Comments


  1. Eeeww. How did you actually listen to all of this Kathleen?

    — Do'C    2006-07-20 22:40    #

  2. “we’d like to see their sixty year old autistics and their fifty year old autistics, where are they hiding them?”

    Excuse me? raises hand We’re here. (OK, in my 40s still, but yoo hoo—here I am)

    A whole bunch of us hung out at Autreat. But that would completely freak the good doctor out, I’m sure.

    All those Aspies and Auties asserting their right to exist.

    Shhh, better not tell him. Wouldn’t want to blow his nice little paradigm.

    /sarcasm off. . .

    lisa

    — lisa    2006-07-20 22:59    #

  3. That radio interview was totally putrid. I had never read the Lupron package insert, though, so now we know that Geier considers lab rats to be the same as autistic children, or he easily confuses the two. We’ve seen it amply demonstrated that he thinks of autistic children as nothing more than lab rats.

    I wonder if W. Sykes ever broke his mother’s arm. Apparently, every one of the kids that Geier is endangering with Lupron has at one time broke his or her mother’s arm? Or did I get that wrong. And the numbers of new autistic kids are just dropping since 2001. You’d think we’d have heard about that lack of little autistic kids out here in California, where Lupron is “hot.” Too bad he never did name that university or that neurologist.

    — Ms Clark    2006-07-21 00:30    #

  4. Yes, they are pretty desperate to promote their “invention”.

    — Catherina    2006-07-21 06:15    #

  5. With difficulty, repetition, and an occasional nauseous urge, Do’C.

    — Kathleen Seidel    2006-07-21 06:16    #

  6. “There’s a small group now on the web that are attacking us and others who are treating this, called neurodiversity.”

    What an idiot.

    — notmercury    2006-07-21 08:47    #

  7. “It not only destroys the kids’ lives, it destroys the family, it destroys the siblings, it destroys the neighborhoods, it destroys the educational system. And if we are not careful it’s going to destroy the United States.”

    And just recently, I’ve been in an argument where Fore Sam said that these people weren’t trying to manufacture dispair.

    Oh, and blogged:
    http://rockstarramblings.blogspot.com/2006/07/please-clicky.html

    — Bronze Dog    2006-07-21 09:10    #

  8. Kathleen, here’s a cup of virtual chamomile tea to calm your tummy. I could use some myself after reading that interview. Urk.

    “No human can look at them.”

    Maybe Geier has been taking propaganda lessons from those neo-Nazi groups that talk about “mud people.” Sure sounds like it.

    — Bonnie Ventura    2006-07-21 10:17    #

  9. “I think that probably at the peak, and the peak was between, say, 1999 and 2001, somewhere in that range for diagnosis, I think we may have gotten as high as one in thirty and one in forty children in the United States. There may be between one and two million autistics, and almost all of them are young.”

    Where do they even get this stuff? You have to given them credit for imagination.

    — Joseph    2006-07-21 11:11    #

  10. “And of course, they’ll fool you if you’re not careful, by saying, “The number of autistics continues to go up, even though we took it out of the vaccine.” Sure it does, because the ones who have it don’t die. What we’re saying is, the rate of new cases has gone down. Not the total rate, but the rate of new cases, and it’s because they’ve taken it out of the vaccines and out of the RhoGam.”

    What they are trying to say there is that it’s theoretically possible for prevalence to go up while incidence is dropping. I’m not sure if Geier & Geier know enough about epidemiology to grasp the nuances of incidence vs. prevalence. In reviewing their work, I’d say they don’t. In any case, what they call “new cases” are not “new cases” and are not a good approximation for incidence. The prevalence in the 3-5 cohort is a good indicator of incidence, because in such a limited cohort it’s far less likely for incidence to drop while prevalence is rising. I’ve argued all this in detail in this post

    — Joseph    2006-07-21 11:57    #

  11. Wonderful work, Kathleen. I appreciate and admire your efforts here. I keep hoping that there is light at the end of this tunnel; I hope you hit the bottom of this well soon. It will be a sweet day when these guys are held up to ridicule by the government.

    — Bartholomew Cubbins    2006-07-21 12:31    #

  12. Would I be out of line by insisting the Geiers are completely nuts?

    I mean, they’re not even TRYING to pretend to be scientists anymore, rather, they’re playing the role of informercial shill. I’m surprised he didn’t announce a toll-free number, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a free kitchen tool just for trying it out.

    — anonimouse    2006-07-21 15:04    #

  13. "No human can look at them."

    No human can look at them? Jesus. If I ever have occasion to meet the Geier’s I will be asking them in rather terse language to justify that statement.

    — Kev    2006-07-21 17:19    #

  14. “With difficulty, repetition, and an occasional nauseous urge, Do’C.”
    Commiserations :)

    This interview was really awful and weird with it. What are they trying to do? My daughter tells me that insurance premiums aside, you can make megabucks being an ordinary OB/GYN. So why isn’t he? Have our perseverative sleuths here done a thorough background check on Dr Mark Geier? I think someone said he wasn’t really board certified for genetics – some kind of alternate “Board” and they couldn’t find him certified for anything on the real one and that would include OB/GYN. So how legit medically is this creep? He is a creep really – has to know that his ‘theory’ is pure quackery.

    — Alyric    2006-07-21 19:43    #

  15. Number of ABMS-recognized medical speciality board certifications held by Mark Geier – zero.

    — Do'C    2006-07-21 21:57    #

  16. Mark Geier: ”[Y]oung children…don’t need testosterone or estrogen….children whose normal level of testosterone is zero”

    Endocrinology text: “During the first few months post partum, there is a third testosterone elevation, to levels approaching that of a midpubertal boy. The consequences of this elevation are not known. Thereafter, the serum testosterone concentration falls to relatively low levels until puberty.” http://acpmedicine.com/acpmedicine/pdf/med0302.pdf

    Advice to Mark Geier: Try Google, at a minimum, before you formulate your next take-it-to-the-bank autism treatment protocol.

    I do think this explains why Geier doesn’t work harder to protect his own credibility: his belief that something that exists at relatively low levels must be entirely unnecessary.

    — krakatoa    2006-07-22 23:32    #

  17. “It has been tested for many, many years on young children, and because they don’t need testosterone or estrogen, it has virtually no side effects. And you can look it up in the PDR, Physician’s Desk Reference. It has been tested at 250 times the usual dose on children for years with no side effects….”

    boggle

    Do they even read the basic inserts and information that COMES with Lupron?

    “Although no clinical studies have been completed in children…” quoted straight from the Lupron insert. I’m sure they’d be interested to know that the G’s are claiming differently. And the dosing is very specific from TAP, but I’ve seen staggering amounts quoted by parents who are giving daily shots to their children that are well-above that level, which is probably where they get off making this claim.

    — kimmah    2006-07-23 20:17    #

  18. YOu all are so looney! The Geiers are making real differences in peoples lives, for the better. I guess us parents should just not care about our kids if we follow this websites way of thinking. Just keep letting that boy bang his head, not be able to communicate, have horrible GI difficulty…have no association with the real world and have a life. thank goodness I already knew better when I logged on here.

    — Pam    2006-10-19 13:12    #

  19. I have some questions about the drug Abilify. I know a 16 year old child on this medication that has lost 82 pounds in the last year, no longer attempts to socialize unless u pull the words out of him, does not remember how to write his name, his alphabet etc.

    Please respond back.

    — Katie Womack    2007-04-17 18:06    #

  20. Katie, thank you very much for visiting. I’m not a doctor, and can’t offer medical advice, but I can definitely say that I’d be concerned, too, about such drastic, unplanned weight loss. You can read the product information for Abilify at WebMD; weight loss is listed as an occasional side effect. Weight loss is also mentioned in various articles that compare Abilify with other drugs often prescribed for bipolar disorder; apparently, many of these drugs cause weight gain, so moderate weight loss is often regarded as a positive thing by the folks who are taking Abilify. But 82 pounds peeling off a teenage boy in one year? If I were the parent of this child, I would hightail it to the doctor ASAP.

    — Kathleen Seidel    2007-04-17 18:54    #