How to End the Autism Epidemic

J.B. Handley

I am privileged and excited to be able to preview the groundbreaking book (How to End the Autism Epidemic) before it hits the shelves in the next day or two. While we have lived a life with autism and endured the confusion doctors have around autism and the nuances of the medical needs of children diagnosed for many years, we are now in a place where our child has recovered enough for the autism diagnosis to only ever to be hinted at, no longer underscored.

While writing that intro was easy, the reality of living with autism is not. Recovery is tenuous and it has taken many thousands of hours, countless interventions, extreme diet changes, medical tests, truckloads of cash, complicated supplement regiments and many, many, many, strange looks and weird conversations to get us here. So even though we do feel lucky the hard work has paid off, our child still has a diagnosis of post-infectious encephalitis.

However, this really is a much better place than when we were living through the initial throes of autism.

As soon as “How to End the Autism Epidemic” hit my inbox I settled down on the couch and started reading. Within the first 10 minutes, my husband came in to see what was going on. There I was on the couch, cuddled in a blanket reading my laptop and bawling my eyes out. Handley begins the book by explaining his personal journey with autism and even though I was only a few minutes in, all the emotions (I have intentionally buried deep in the recesses of my memory) came flooding back. I couldn’t help but compare their journey to ours. I was forced to replay memories like a video in my mind, mentally comparing notes and nodding as I read. All the feelings and emotions I had buried hit me and there I was crying on my sofa. These pages laid out why and how we lost our kiddo so fast and so easily.

Our story was laid out in the pages…

Just thinking about all the milestones we missed, remembering how miserable and restless he was at night, so hard to get to sleep and waking up sweating and screaming hours after going to bed, worrying when he stopped paying attention to family, when he wouldn’t play with friends, slipping away into his own little world. Looking back, we had no idea what was happening to our son, we knew something was wrong but we certainly didn’t know to call it autism. No one was really talking about why, but they were happy to label the what and autism entered our vocabulary. The utter confusion and loss we felt when it began would quickly be replaced by a vigor to make whatever it was, stop. Once we caught our breath, we chose to focus our eyes firmly forward. To continue to survive, we have pushed the memories of those first few years deep into oblivion. Including any ideas on what might have actually triggered what happened to our child. We have rationalized that there would be no point looking back? Like the Handley’s – my husband and I do vividly remember those first few months of baby fun, the happiness of feeling like a family, we know he was a happy and content child initially. Later, when our child started struggling to sleep we blamed another typical stage of development. He was around 10 months old – and – as was the case with all his other vaccinations which were given right on schedule (including the BCG), we chose to give him the flu mist and thought nothing of it. He was already a sickly kid who had had chronic upper respiratory infections, ear infections, and even pneumonia so I wasn’t really paying close attention to any side effects specifically related to his vaccinations. Besides, everyone who knew kept telling us it was okay. We got the message loud and clear – Vaccines do not cause autism. Four weeks later, we had to take a 12-hour flight to the UK. During that trip, he started vomiting and had such bad diarrhea we were changing diapers hourly. We suspected a virus and again thought nothing of it. We returned to the US after a month and all seemed okay except skills we had seen emerging started to disappear. No more hand clapping, no more waving, he just kind of stalled out. He celebrated his first birthday and a little while later, we took him to the pediatrician for a checkup. While there the doctor was slightly concerned when she learned he had lost some skills but also that he had never developed an apparently key skill – pointing. He had always been quiet, but now his babbling speech had disappeared. There was no real sounds, just a high pitched random squeal and as he sat on the floor in the surgery ignoring the world around him, she called his name. He failed to respond. She clicked and clucked and tried to get his attention, but he didn’t turn around or respond to her attempts to engage. A month later we found ourselves at the Children’s hospital kissing him gently as they anesthetized him for a hearing test which proved no hearing loss was evident.

 

So it began …

Those skills remained lost, speech was absent and then extreme behavior began. At 22 months, with flu season upon us, we once again chose the flu mist. We heard people questioning vaccines, other friends would talk about autism but we didn’t connect the dots. It would be many years before we finally woke up and connected those dots. We stayed committed, believing it was the right choice to make, besides we all know the folks who question the science are nuts, right? Reading Handley’s book, makes me realize how little we (and millions of others) questioned and how blindly we trusted. We certainly didn’t want to be seen as “those people” who questioned the solid science, we wanted to fit in, to blend, to do the right thing.

My hobby, like J.B. and his wife, became searching the internet late at night. After the kids were in bed, I would sit at the kitchen table and search for answers. I purchased books about parenting, about sleep regulation, anything to help me help my child function a little better. J.B. Handley took it a whole other step higher and started to shake trees and demand answers. Meanwhile, in our world, we were sent for an evaluation at a respected developmental pediatrician’s office and got a diagnosis of Pervasive Development Disorder. Later, at 3.3 years, an Autism diagnosis. I cried like a baby on that 1.5-hour drive home. I knew, of course, by then I knew but having it confirmed “officially” brought me a whole new level of “truth”. But still, at that time, I didn’t wake up. We still had no idea that vaccines had potentially caused this cascade and downfall in our son. In the book, Handley writes “Vaccine proponents desperately want to portray mitochondrial disorders as rare, but that’s not the case, with the data showing that anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of children with autism have some type of mitochondrial disorder. Worse, mitochondrial disorders are sometimes genetic but can also be caused by the toxins in the environment. So a healthy child could receive one load of vaccines and develop a mitochondrial disorder and then receive a second load and develop autism.”

I had no idea the prevalence of mitochondrial dysfunction in children, nor it’s connection to vaccines and the body’s ability to handle aluminum. I didn’t know autoimmune disorders take years to appear and vaccines are only studied for days! I had no idea information was hidden and documents were shredded to hide what the manufacturers already knew! How could I know?

Looking back…

Looking back, even though we had long suspected “an event” had triggered regression, my unwavering belief for recovery required that I never went back and analyze what was to become our new way of living. Panic, trauma, and disbelief about our children’s health took center stage. The next 12 years were spent rocking between ER visits, out of network doctors, DAN doctors, MAPS doctors, supplements, MRIs, EEGs, hyperbaric chambers, homeopathy, occupational therapy, IEP meetings, diet interventions basically everything and anything that there was to bring our child a little more into our world and out of his. We were the “weird” people who took snacks to school, people like us who followed gluten free dairy free diets became the butt of jokes on TV, we were the folks who constantly had to manage our child’s behaviors and meltdowns in public and inevitably, we also became more and more isolated in the world of special needs and biomedical interventions. It was too hard to explain to everyone, all we wanted was our son back. At age 5, I gave my son three separate shots for his mumps, measles, and rubella (the option was still available at the time and I thought this is better). At this point, we were actually wavering and open to the idea that vaccines might be a problem for our child, but again we rationalized that if vaccines caused harm, the doctors who cared about our kids would not allow the schedule to continue. Surely the science was settled, the crazy people were wrong, and we were safe to continue what we ultimately thought was

both our parental and civic duty! 

For us, it’s too late. The damage done is lingering. While we have recovered our kid to where he is now, his cognition and memory don’t seem to ever be coming back. His FSIQ now sits at 86, a drastic reduction from the 127 he tested at the year after his final round of vaccines. His memory is gone, his oral comprehension is at the 5th percentile. His ability to organize and plan is about the 3rd percentile and I am sad. I am sad for him. I am sad for the future and the childhood he has lost. I am sad for what we have all had to endure. I am sad for all the kids who have lost the future their parents promised when they first held them in their arms when they were born. So go ahead, argue, laugh, mock, make fun of those people who bravely joined the “Hear This Well” movement but before you do, get a copy of this book and read it well. Check the resources, use the links, read carefully and then decide whether your mirth is warranted.

When and where can I purchase the book?

J.B. Handly’s book releases on the 19th of September – it is available with one click AMAZON. Have your copy downloaded as soon as today. I am not being paid for this review. I volunteered and honestly, the people who advocate for vaccines scare the crap out of me but I also knew this book would potentially hold the answers I have avoided for so long. I know many of you have followed our journey for a long time, and vaccines have only been mentioned fleetingly. It has been a purposeful omission on my part. I have seen how vicious and angry people become when they hear people say they don’t vaccinate, or worse, they consider their child vaccine damaged. So we joined the ranks of the doctors and scientists who also knew better and chose to say nothing. Our lives are already chaotic and lonely, and we don’t really want or need to draw all that negative attention our way but really it’s time to say stop and start pondering. This book may help you understand why. We have been misinformed and some of the information we needed, as parents, to allow us to make an informed vaccine choice, was hidden from us in plain sight.

J.B.’s book digs deep to connect the dots and fill in the missing information we all wished we had when we started injecting aluminum into our children.

Why should you read this book?

If you truly believe vaccines have been adequately and scientifically studied, if you can put your hand on your heart and say the science is absolutely settled, show me the studies and say here it is, if you truly believe the autism-vaccine debate is a fabrication of angry parents then don’t buy this book because I am guessing you are not interested in reading anything that sways your opinion but if you have one single doubt that vaccines are not as magical as we hoped they were, (or if you just want to learn how to argue with people who don’t vaccinate) – then you should buy this book. It should be reiterated, this is not fiction nor just J.B. Handley’s personal opinion – this book is a treasure trove of referenceable documents, some that were submitted in vaccine court and used in legal proceedings, including depositions and interviews from scientific leaders in the field of autism, two of whom were adamantly opposed to the idea that vaccines played a part in the autism epidemic until they realized they were wrong after doing their jobs and following the science. We should all remember Hannah Poling.

This is a book based on exploration of facts and science, not conjecture and misinformation. Reading this gives me hope. It gives me hope that we can continue to recover our child. It gives me hope that the epidemic is coming to an end, and it gives me hope for future generations who will probably look back and wonder “what on earth were we thinking” but will also be able to say “thank goodness they stopped!”.

About the author:

When rockstar Stanford alumni JB Handley, a leader in the private equity sector, and wife Lisa Handley discovered their son had autism, they didn’t settle for the dead-end diagnosis. Instead, they researched the most effective treatment options available to help their son. As part of their journey, the Handley’s founded Generation Rescue to offer hope with actionable treatment solutions for families.

The links above are affiliate links. I haven’t been paid for this review. I will make a few cents if you buy it through the links on my page. Thank you 😀

#Autism #encephalitis #immuneactivation #HowToEndTheAutismEpidemic #J.B.Handley