But as I went deeper, I also found something else: an industry of strange magical cures—under-the-table children's vitamin injections; extreme eliminationist diets; immersive around-the-clock therapy; sound waves and subliminal messages that promised to reprogram brains and reminded me of the research I did into the CIA's MKUltra experiments on psychiatric patients. Online, I found people who identified as Autism Warrior Parents because they were at "war" with the autism in their child; some coached one another on horrific "treatments," including getting their kids to drink chlorine dioxide, a bleach commonly used in pulp and paper mills. Several people told me that when they got the diagnosis, they quit their jobs and became their child's full-time therapists in applied behavior analysis, a system of rewards and punishments with a sinister history that once included electroshock and is still often administered in cruel ways designed to "extinguish" all signs of autistic difference in young children. "Aggressive early intervention is everything," one of these parents told me. "If you don't catch it early, it's too late."

QUESTION: How prevalent is the dangerous chlorine dioxide 'treatment' in autism communities, and what regulatory gaps allow its promotion?

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 636