The antioxidant glutathione--critical for the body to excrete metals--plays a role, too. In 2004, researcher Jill James, Ph.D., of the Arkansas School of Medicine, led a pioneering study that showed autistic kids had significantly less glutathione than typical kids--which put their bodies in a state of "constant oxidative stress." In other words, autistic kids were genetically predisposed to having low glutathione levels, making them particularly susceptible to heavy metal toxicity. That toxicity--whether from vaccines, fish, dental amalgams, air pollution, tainted water or other environmental toxins, might provide the "toxic tipping point" to render a child autistic.

Many of the doctors and researchers who suspect chemical causes for autism--and who believe in natural treatments--are included under the umbrella Defeat Autism Now! DAN!, as it is known, is a set of practices for looking at autism from a biomedical or whole-body perspective. These are medical personnel and parents of autistic kids who speak openly about potential chemical triggers for autism, from vaccines to mercury-tainted fish, who advocate treatments such as chelation therapy, gluten- and casein-free (wheat- and dairy-free) diets and even hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in which oxygen is administered in a pressurized chamber. They tend to be anti-drug and pro-supplement, and they insist that autism is, indeed, a treatable condition.

SOURCE E-The Environmental Magazine