(Posted by Patrick Sullivan Jr on 3/2/06. Bumped to top and updated on 3/4.)
Regular Pat Sullivan Blog readers know that Scott Shoemaker's autistic son has made some pretty amazing breakthroughs in the past several months. Scott and his wife both attribute most of the first 6 months of their son’s recovery to chelation therapy only. Their child has never had any behavioral therapies, and he has made incredible gains in a very short time from the first weekend that they started chelation. Their story will be aired Friday night by NBC local affiliates across the nation on there respective local news channels anywhere between 5:00 and 6:30 PM.
Now for the bad news...It appears that his story has sparked a very unpleasant situation for Scott and his family. A mass email was sent out by a clinic taking full credit for his child’s recovery, and contained inaccurate and inappropriate information about Scott and his family. The email was very unprofessional, and it was never cleared with Scott or his wife. He sent a copy to me, and I found it to be extremely tacky for a clinic to do something like this.
It also contained what basically amounted to an advertisement for the clinic itself and other links that generate revenue for the owner of the clinic. Scott asked me to temporarily take down his son’s story because of this. To me, it sounds like Scott may have been railroaded by putting his story out there and doing a good thing by helping other parents and children. Actually, it really pisses me off personally that this has happened, because it seems like this incident has caused him and his wife a great deal of anger, frustration, and pain, and has caused them to do a lot of damage control over the last couple of days.
I helped Scott post this clarification today. GO READ IT.
UPDATE 3/4/06: Scott told me this morning that he is happy with how quickly his clarification statement spread throughout the online autism community. He asked me to repost the original two stories (part 1, part 2) that I had pulled. (Clarification can still be found here.)
Also, the NBC newscast featuring the Shoemakers can be found online. No word as to exactly which markets it was broadcast in. I'm pretty sure it hasn't hit the Phoenix market yet, but I think it did air in NY, Boston, and other big markets. I thought the piece was good; fair and balanced, and that's about all you can hope for.