A Chicago father is suing two doctors after he says his son was prescribed “dangerous and unnecessary” alternative autism treatments over the phone.
James Coman says the doctors prescribed chelation to his son, now 7, without first running proper tests or examining the boy. Chelation is designed to remove excessive amounts of heavy metals from the body.
When Coman’s son was tested to determine the level of heavy metals in his body, he was first given a drug designed to pull all the metals from his system. Everyone has small amounts of metal in their body, but the drug makes those small amounts appear much larger since the metals show up in urine testing all at once.
Then, the results of Coman’s son’s test were assessed against a chart reflecting metal levels in people who have not taken the drug, Coman says in his lawsuit. His son was found to have extremely high levels of lead and mercury, among other metals, and chelation treatments were prescribed.
The doctors named in the suit — Dr. Anjum Usman who practices in Illinois and Dr. Daniel Rossignol who practices in Florida — promote alternative autism therapies to parents and other doctors through the Defeat Autism Now! movement.
“This is a big business, and there are a lot of people who are willing to put aside the safety of children to make money off of scared, desperate parents,” Coman told the Chicago Tribune. To read more click here.
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Teresa Conrick
IL
My daughter is a patient of Dr. Usman’s and I have nothing but praise and sincere appreciation for the care and medical treatment we have received. Megan, who just turned 17 this week, regressed after a series of vaccines as a toddler. She lost language, began to withdraw and then started to exhibit symptoms of autism, loss of eye contact, repetitive movements, and isolation. More importantly, she began to have one illness after another, have pain and GI distress for years. Dr. Usman was the only doctor who actually helped my daughter these recent years, after numerous office visits to pediatricians, a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and so as they offered nothing but psychoactive medications or worse, institutionalization.
My daughter had intense GI pain and an inflammatory response due to food allergies, chronic bacterial infections, mitochondrial dysfunction, originating from a huge body burden of toxic metals and an impaired immune system. Megan’s existence has changed from one of head banging, biting, lashing out at others to a new, pain-free life filled with joy, laughter, and an increased ability to learn at school, where she has been promoted from the more severe, 1:1 classroom to an independent tract, where she is learning how to type on the computer.
An angry divorced father is not a reason for this attack. Dr. Usman is a doctor of integrity and medical hope for an epidemic of children who on paper, have a list of behaviors though in reality, they are medically ill and have been abandoned by the American Academy of Pediatrics and most standard physicians. Instead of believing this angry father and his very suspicious legal team it is time for the Tribune and the media to believe us, the parents, who have witnessed first the regression of our children and now the healing that only the Defeat Autism Now (DAN) doctors are providing.
Shaun Heasley,
I think it’s important too note the integral point that this father is involved in a fierce custody battle, as reported by other news reports, and his wife and mother of the child agreed to the treatments. This fact is glaringly omitted in the above article summary. I hope it was simply a careless mistake and not indicative of purposeful omission to support a viewpoint on the subject matter of the lawsuit.