When I first spoke with Dr. Jones, I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to interview him and I told him that I wouldn’t be throwing any curve balls his way. Characteristic of Dr. Jones, he told me he loved curve balls. This is a man who has been unafraid to fight for what he believes, regardless of popular - and often institutionalized practices. From his days at Boston University’s Divinity School and his march with Martin Luther King Jr., to his steadfast treatment of children with Lyme disease, Charles Ray Jones has remained unwavering. He has treated children from all over our country and all over the world. He has given hope to parents who thought their child was lost. His detractors have said he treats recklessly, but the proof remains: desperately sick kids cured of tick-borne illness. Dr. Jones has been investigated by the medical community, prosecuted, fined, and monitored for the last four years. His legal fees, fines, and monitoring costs drained his bank account and nearly shuttered his practice. The Lyme community – patients and practitioners - responded, donating enough money to keep his practice going. He is once again caring for kids, despite the fact that he’s 85 years old and has had numerous surgeries. But, his story, the one he’d like told, is about the children who have come back from the brink, and the hope that even more can be successfully treated.

Janet: I know that you just finished the mandated monitoring. Did it slow you down a lot?

Dr. Jones: No, it didn’t slow me down but it was annoying. For four years, I was on probation and was monitored every month. The cost of the monitor was 4,000 dollars a month, in addition to a 10,000 fine. It was a very steep penalty, the highest that any physician who maintained the ability to practice in the past, say 20 years has received. Before the monitoring ended on March 16th, 2014, the licensing board reported me to the Ethics Committee of the American Medical Association (AMA), hoping the Ethics Committee would pick up and take over the sanctions and fines. I was interviewed for over three hours by seven people from the Ethics Committee. After a month I received a letter congratulating me for all I do and saying they saw no reason to impose sanctions or fines.

Janet: Do you think it was about the issue of long-term Lyme?

Dr. Jones: No, that wasn’t even an issue. It was about me. It’s a vendetta. It’s been going on for 20 years. The hearings lasted two and a half years, and when they sentenced me, I had a chance to either resign my license or fulfill the responsibilities of the sanctions. I was ready to say: That’s it, they win, the kids lose. But that’s when a little boy named Timmy came back to my office after not seeing me for three and a half months. Timmy was barely seven years old when his mother brought him in. She thought his many disabilities might have been affected by the Lyme and other tick-borne disease that she had for 15 years prior to his conception. She had been untreated and undiagnosed until three months before he came in. She breastfed him for two years. At nine months old, he had the first of multiple tick attachments. When Timmy came in he was busy, climbing on the chairs, jumping to the floor, and doing a couple of laps around the office. He had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at nine months of age. Timmy didn’t lose skills; he just didn’t develop them. He had severe hypotonia, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD), and sensory integration disorder. He had receptive speech but no expressive speech. He was definitely not autistic. He liked to be held, but didn’t stay very long. He also had very good eye contact. He was diagnosed with Lyme disease by testing as well as by clinical evaluation. He not only had Lyme (Borrelia burgdorferi), but Bartonella and Babesia as well. On one of his laps around the office, Timmy came up to me and looked me directly in the eyes. I put my hands on his cheeks and held them there and said, Timmy, I hope I have the key that can unlock your brain. Then he was off running. It was if I had spoken to the air. Timmy came back three and a half months later, after being on antibiotics. Instead of running to the door and into the room, he walked to the door and into my office. He came up to me, took my hands and put them on his cheeks and held them there. He looked me directly in the eyes and said, Thank you for giving me the key to unlock my brain. It was a very moving moment. No one had any idea what he was going to say. His parents started crying. He said, Why are you crying? This is a happy time. I interceded and said, Sometimes people cry when they are happy. Well, Timmy was instrumental in my staying.

Janet: How many children do you see in a week?

Dr. Jones: Around 30 to 36.

Janet: How do you keep track of them?

Dr. Jones: The cases are complex so I go through the charts each night before the patients come in. Kids come in for a follow-up every three months, or every six months if they’re coming from abroad. Patients come here from every state in the U.S., from every province in Canada, every state in Mexico, all the countries in Central America, South America, and every continent abroad including China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Burma, all of Australia, Borneo, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, northern India, and every country in Europe. The countries with socialized medicine don’t want to acknowledge Lyme because then they’ll have to treat it. However, two countries, Poland and Slovenia, have recently acknowledged that Lyme exists and realized if they don’t treat the children with Lyme disease, those children will not fulfill their genetic potential and will become economic burdens to the state. They’ve also concluded that if they don’t acknowledge Lyme disease in adults, those adults will not participate in the work force and therefore they too will become a burden to the state. This is a distinct problem in many countries, especially in Canada, where officials say Lyme doesn't originate. Several parents of patients have been warned if they pursue the diagnosis of Lyme disease in their children, the government will take their children away from them, and the parents will be charged with Munchausen syndrome by proxy and arrested for endangering the well-being of a minor.

Janet: So it’s forcing parents to make difficult decisions?

Dr. Jones: The concept of Lyme disease supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American Academy of Medicine, is that there’s no chronic Lyme disease, that it can be easily treated by three weeks of antibiotic therapy, and if people aren’t well at the end of that time, then they don’t have Lyme. They don’t know what it is, but they don’t have Lyme.

Janet: Do you have a sense that is changing?

Dr. Jones: I don’t. I’m faced with it every day. I’m considered the Great Satan by academia and by the American Academy of Pediatrics. I'm also considered the Mother Theresa and the Gandhi of Lyme disease. I enjoy being the Great Satan of Lyme.

Janet: Is the medical establishment still following what you do?

Dr. Jones: Yes, I’m always in their gun sight; that I accept. I have to keep a little bit off to the right or left of it. The writer Graham Greene – who had a psychological bent in his work – wrote a story called The Shoe. In his story, a girl in her late teens lived in Dublin with her parents. They rented out an apartment on the third floor. The girl’s room was on the second floor below the boarder’s third floor room. Every night between 11 and 12, the boarder would return to his room, sit on his bed, and drop one shoe and then the other onto the floor. The girl couldn’t go to sleep until she heard the shoes drop. Then the boarder moved away and she couldn’t go to sleep, waiting for the shoes to drop.

Janet: So you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Dr. Jones: Absolutely. I’m somewhat relieved but not totally exonerated.

Janet: I heard that you’re practicing medicine six to seven days a week. How do you stay healthy in mind and spirit?

Dr. Jones: I stay with it because I see the kids get better, that’s the main point.

Janet: Do you have some patients who don’t get better?

Dr. Jones: Very few. Some have refractory Lyme disease, you see this with older teenagers who are better on antibiotics, but the spirochete can never be eradicated. Once you define and delimit every single organism that’s involved, one can treat with antibiotics, but that might not reverse the process. If the antibiotics aren't curative, then one can add IV immunoglobulin (IVIG), and this can result in a cure. IVIG is very successful but very costly. But first one has to delimit exactly what organisms are triggering the whole process of infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathy, where the infections cause the body to make antibodies to the brain and the nervous system. It’s not just Lyme, it’s Babesia, Bartonella, Candida albicans, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, it’s all the herpes-related viruses.

Janet: So now we’re moving out of the tick-borne disease realm?

Dr. Jones: Yes, we are. Do you know about PANDAS? Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections. The other is PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) – the same thing without strep, and that includes Lyme. This is where the boundaries cross; this is where the infection-induced autoimmune process is involved. It’s an interesting and very complex situation. Even in a patient with tick-borne disorders, one has to determine whether or not there are other microbes involved, because if one doesn’t treat all of them at the same time, you can’t succeed. That might be a reason why they’ve failed to eradicate an organism in adults - because they don’t treat long enough and they don’t delimit what organisms are involved – tick borne as well as not tick borne.

Janet: Given that the tests are so insensitive, do you determine this based on clinical exams?

Dr. Jones: Yes, the clinical aspect is very important. There’s a new test available through Advanced Laboratory Services in Philadelphia. They have developed a way to culture the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi from blood. That is a direct test for Lyme disease. The problem with the test is that one has to be off antibiotics and homeopathic relief for months. And then it takes four tubes of blood. It’s not easily used in itty-bitty people who are too small to donate four tubes of blood. That’s a problem, but the test is a boon to reaching a diagnosis. The Western Blot, which really isn’t a test for Lyme but a test to determine whether one has serological exposure to the Lyme bacterium, is highly dependent on which lab does the test. We use IGeneX because it’s a laboratory devoted to tick-borne diseases. IGeneX uses two to three reference strains of the Lyme bacterium, so you’re more likely to get a positive response – a match between the serum antibodies and the test material. Running the Western blot you report all the antibodies. Stonybrook will report all antibodies, but Stonybrook only uses one reference strain and is therefore less likely to have positive responses. Unfortunately, a lot of people in academia, the CDC, and others feel the Western Blot is diagnostic; it’s not diagnostic at all. We recently had a little guy who came in after a tick bite. He was 5 years old and was a bright little child. He had lost all expressive speech and was diagnosed with mutism. The DNA PCR test, the Western Blot from IGeneX, serum and urine - they were all negative for Lyme. He had a positive blood culture from Advanced Laboratory Services and was put on antibiotics. He was talking in three days. If one had relied on the traditional Western Blot and ELISA, he would yet to be treated.

Janet: The testing is one problem, but it also seems like the complexity of tick-borne illnesses has increased.
Dr. Jones: Yes, by far. I’ve been doing this since the late 1960’s, and it became evident very early on that it wasn’t just the joints that were involved, but also the brain and the gut. The main target of the Lyme or the tick-borne organism is the brain and the gastrointestinal tract. That presents a lot of factors to deal with. Then the autoimmune element is another factor. It’s fascinating to see everything expand in terms of awareness, but also in helping kids get better.

Janet: Is the autoimmune part reversible?

Dr. Jones: Absolutely. It can be reversed in two ways. First, by eliminating the organism that triggers the autoimmune response. If that doesn’t happen, one continues the antibiotic treatment and adds the IV immunoglobulin using immune modulating doses.

The focus of my practice is not just Lyme disease, it’s also infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathy. Denis Bouboulis, M.D., an immunologist and allergist in Darien and I have been using this treatment for a long time. He called me eight to 10 years ago and said, Ray, I'm seeing patients with PANDAS who don't have strep. So, we have kids with obsessions and compulsions, multiple ticks - involuntary movements, generalized anxiety, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), sudden personality changes, and emotional lability. Children also can develop psychoses, schizoaffective disorder, oppositional-defiant disorder, rages, bedtime fears - especially rituals - extreme separation anxieties, sensory issues, issues with food, including anorexia, deterioration of handwriting and math skills and other cognitive functions, daytime urinary and bowel frequency and loss of control, as well as hyperactivity, and the list goes on. If one has an infectious process, autoimmune problems can occur when the body produces antibodies to the brain and other areas. This is apart from the joint pain and the fevers, fatigue and sleep disturbance.

Janet: That's a long list.

Dr. Jones: It is. For the kids, their lives are altered to the point where they're strangers in a world they never made. It's quite pitiful but reversible. Mostly, kids come in because of tick-borne diseases, and I have to determine whether that’s the main problem or if it's something other than tick-borne disease. I've always felt that if something doesn't fit, don't try to make it fit, try to figure out why it's not fitting. I see kids with the possibility of having normal lives and fulfilling their genetic potential. It’s very gratifying to see these kids get well. The other day someone said: If you don’t be careful, you’re going to have the authorities down on you again. I said, What am I going to do? It would be immoral for me to back track, to say they’re right and I’m wrong. I’m not going to do that.

Janet: There are so many bright doctors, you would think that they would see that there’s a huge problem here that requires a new way of thinking.

Dr. Jones: From Richard Horowitz, M.D. (author of Why Can’t I Get Well?): What the mind doesn’t know, the eyes won’t see. And my corollary: If the mind doesn’t want to know, the eyes will never see. A lot of people, both naturopathic and allopathic physicians, come here to do preceptorships to learn the little bit I know. They have to be open-minded. People say I should get someone else to practice with me. I’ve been prevented from doing that for 20 years because I’ve been under the scrutiny of the licensing board. Anyone coming in here to practice with me would have a target right on the forehead saying, Here I am, take me too. The people who want to come in are usually young, with new practices and young families. They don’t need multi-million dollar lawsuits, legal defenses, and hammering by a licensing board. They can do preceptorships but they can’t practice with me.

Janet: So you need someone who is willing to take risks for the children.

Dr. Jones: If one has a cure and doesn’t make it available, that’s unethical. We have so many kids here who are doing well, not only with Lyme, but with other diseases. They come from all over. One little girl recently came from northern China. Her mother told me there are many people with Lyme in northern China. One little boy came from North Korea – there’s lots of Lyme there too. Any geographic area that has a climate similar to northern California and has a vector, whether it be yak or deer or kangaroo or field mice, has a way of having tick-borne diseases perpetuated. Global warming and the northward movement of forestation encourages the persistence and northward movement of tick-borne diseases.

Janet: Let me ask you something about treatment. Are you looking to eradicate these organisms completely?

Dr. Jones: Absolutely. It can be done. One has to aim for cure. Most of the kids who come here are cured within a period of three months to 17 years. Three months is unusual. Seventeen years is unusual. One has to use clinical parameters to determine whether a child is well, apart from testing. Those clinical parameters have to do with whether a child seems back to normal and isn’t having a Lyme flare as the result of another non-Lyme infection, say a common cold, influenza, pneumonia, strep, or fatigue, and with menstruating females, the period. If one can go three months without anything causing Lyme flare, then they’re cured. That can be verified by stopping the antibiotics if the child feels that it’s all gone. After stopping antibiotics, a relapse can occur within a month. If the child doesn’t relapse and they haven’t had any Lyme flares from other infections or menstruation, and the child states that they don’t think the infections are there, the child is well. One could do the lab tests or the culture, although we don’t usually use it at the end of treatment, but some parents will have it verified by culture.The final trump card is how a child feels.

Janet: The culture is just for Borrelia?

Dr. Jones: Borrelia burgdorferi. A lot of people are highly critical of Advanced Laboratory Services’ culture because they didn’t discover it. Certain diseases are politicized and Lyme is one of them. Chicken pox was politicized, HIV/AIDS and syphilis too. It’s a matter of persevering and perpetuating as much information as possible. I used to be able to see eight to 10 people a day, now I can see maybe six a day - it’s much more complex. Other people who treat these diseases also see the complexity increasing.

Janet: How do you explain the increasing complexity? Is it environmental factors?

Dr. Jones: It could be environmental factors. It probably has more to do with the infectious agents involved, which have mutated into forms that are more complex and difficult to treat. Say someone has Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, mycoplasma pneumoniae, and candida albicans. One has to treat all infections at once and eliminate everything that’s there. Treatments fail because a person is unable to respond if everything’s not being treated. It’s so simple, it’s a matter of defining everything that’s going on within a person.

Janet: Do you give small doses to begin with?

Dr. Jones: No, you introduce antibiotics slowly but at full doses. If one stops them too early, you’re not going to kill off the big guns; you’re going to kill off the ones easily killed off. The ones left are more resilient and more likely to mutate into forms even more resistant to the antibiotics that have been used in the past. Pulsing is treating with a certain antibiotic regimen for a week or two and then stopping, then going back on the regimen. You can’t pulse with kids. It might be what you see with adults, but I can’t comment since I don’t treat adults. One has to be able to think it through and thoroughly evaluate it. It’s seeing everything. I came from a background of treating leukemia in children. That was very complex. You always had to think outside the box. On the first day of medical school, the chairman of the pediatrics department held two pediatric textbooks over his head and said, Ladies and gentlemen, you must know everything in these books and more, but keep in mind that the children don't read the textbooks.

Janet: Do you start IVIG when you start antibiotics?

Dr. Jones: Not necessarily. Most of the time, one can get by with antibiotics alone. But, some children who have tremendous involvement of antibodies directed towards the brain and the peripheral nervous system will have an encephalopathic, neuropathic process that is not reversed with antibiotics, so one has to use IVIG to modulate the immune function that leads to antibodies directed towards the brain. The T cells are the ones that turn on the B cells to make the antibodies, so one has to calm or modulate T-cell function, so the B cells aren't generating the antineuronal antibodies. This can reverse the infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathy. There are a lot of people, particularly in academia, that think it’s a post-infection encephalopathy. They don’t believe you have to give antibiotics; they give IVIG. They’re wrong. You can see why I get into trouble. These children do not respond to psychotrophic medication. I get a lot of referrals from psychiatrists who realize there is an organic infection underlying the psychiatric problems. Psychiatric medication tends to make them worse. They do respond to antibiotics.

Janet: You’ve got your work cut out for you.

Dr. Jones: It’s an epidemic leading to children not being able to fulfill their potential and being maimed for life. The IDSA and the other academicians feel that by overtreating, we’re causing kids to have more problems. They don’t even see the fact that they’re undertreating. It’s sad. But at the same time, I see the kids they couldn’t treat come here and get better. I hope to pass the torch someday, but not yet. What we’re doing today, I think we’ll echo through eternity. We have to get the information out. It’s thrilling, exciting . . . and tiring.

Janet: Is there anything else you want to say to the Lyme community?

Dr. Jones: Don’t give up! I feel sorry for the people who have tick-borne diseases who have to advocate for themselves and their kids. But keep doing it. Many years ago I was an assistant minister in Boston, and the church had a very strong social action school of theology - it was filled to overflowing whenever we had a program. Every Sunday, ministers would make house calls on those who couldn’t get out. On one occasion, I called on a lady who was very bright, in her early 60s, who was deformed by rheumatoid arthritis. When prayers were over and as we were leaving, she stopped me and held my hands with a gnarled hand and looked me in the eyes and said Please, help me in a real way. That was a decisive moment in my life. I said, move over Jesus; come in Hippocrates. I decided to go into medicine.

Janet: Can you tell me about another child with autoimmune encephalopathy?

Dr. Jones: I wrote a request for continued IVIG for a boy who is nine, who is originally from Armenia and then moved to New Jersey. He speaks mostly Russian and English. He had an extreme physical, emotional decline, cognitive, and psychiatric decline following a tick attachment when he was four years old. He eventually became psychotic. He lost weight. He lost all reading skills, writing, and cognition. He had psychotic breaks and episodes where he had voices telling him things. When he came in, he was a shell of a child. This was two years ago. He had been to 50 different physicians in Moscow, London, Toronto, and the United States, with no diagnosis. Two years ago, a psychiatrist in Pennsylvania, Virginia Sherr, determined he probably had tick-borne disease, based on the fact that when he was four years old he had a tick attachment. He was untreated and the decline started thereafter. No swollen knees but a lot of behavioral changes, to the point where he became unable to go to school, unable to function on his own, had frequent inability to hold urine and bowels, and had very poor eye contact. He would go into a psychotic state where he’d respond to internal voices. He would come out of the psychotic state but he’d come back to reality. When he first came into the office, he said: I don’t want tomorrow to come. Each tomorrow is worse than the day before. I want to go back in time to when I was four years old and a whole child. If I don’t eat, maybe I could reverse time. He went three days without eating. Once we started treatment he increasingly improved. Although unable to go to school, now he could carry on a conversation, write a few words, but not read or do math - but more attuned to the world.
After a year and a half of IVIG, he came back into the office. We have a wall with pictures of children from all over the world and he looked at it, then came over to me and said, Why isn’t my picture here?
I said: Bring it in and we’ll put it up here.
When he first came in I told him, You know, you’re fixable. This last time when he came in and I said he was fixable, he said, I know.
He’s had 12 IVIG sessions. He had Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, and Ehrlichia. He’s responding; he’s fixable.

Janet: How long will you continue treating him with IVIG?

Dr. Jones: Probably another year or two. The IVIG is interesting because you start getting into a full positive effect from it initially. There might be a brief positive effect that reverts after the seventh to ninth treatment. And then over a period of time with subsequent treatments, you’ll get a longer period of normalcy without relapsing and a longer sustained improvement without IVIG. So instead of going four weeks, you stretch it out to five weeks and then six weeks, then eight weeks between treatments. You cannot stop the antibiotics first. You have to stop the IVIG first, because infection is what’s inducing autoimmune encephalopathy; infection is the driving force. And then you can continue to treat with antibiotics – he’s on oral antibiotics – until everything’s reversed. That can take a while. It’s more likely to be three to four to five years of treatment. But, he’s totally fixable.

Janet: So, the big problem is the cost of the IVIG?

Dr. Jones: The big problem’s the cost. The family can afford this for now. If something happens and there’s a reduction in funds, they can’t. I’m trying to get him approved for more IV ceftriaxone. He’s on IV and oral antibiotics as well, and he is doing better. Here, under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act, treatment for either PANDAS or Lyme is discontinued after three weeks.

Janet: Does the IVIG help at all with Herxheimer responses from the antibiotics?

Dr. Jones: No, because the IVIG causes its own type of Herxheimer reactions. The Herxheimer reaction is not related to reducing the organism load, but is a response to immune modulation.

Janet: Can you tell me more about how you treat with IVIG?

Dr. Jones: There are several reasons to use IVIG, but mainly two. One is for immune replacement in children who don’t make enough immunoglobulin. We treat these children with intravenous immunoglobulin, 500 TO 750 mg per kilogram of body weight per infusion. The other use of IVIG is to support immune modulation. These children need a high dose of IVIG over two consecutive days to tone down T-cell function, so the T cells stop stimulating the B cells to make antibodies against the nervous system. For immune modulation, one needs to use 1500 to 2000 milligrams per kilogram per infusion. For immune modulation, the period of treatment is 12 to 24 months. IVIG is very effective but it’s very costly - anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 per infusion cycle. That’s a huge financial burden. The insurance companies, with the Affordable Care Act, removed all the CPT codes that covered infusion for immune modulation.
One seven-year-old boy who came in had been a bright, low maintenance, sparkly little guy who was beginning to use sentences at 18 months old. He received the measles vaccine and the next day he lost his speech, he was autistic, and he was a shell of what he was before. Instead of a pleasant little boy he became wild and destructive. He also had Lyme. After four IVIG treatments, he came back in and he didn’t run around the office. Instead, he climbed up on my lap, and he said: I can talk now. He pointed to his head and said: More up here.
When his appointment was over, he said: Time to say goodbye now, I want to hug you.
He’s coming back – it’s only been four treatments but he’ll have 12 to 24 treatments. He’s fortunate his parents have an insurance company that pays for the IVIG.
The children who have measles-induced autism, they can fall into basic categories: the ones with rapid, destructive brain damage that’s not reversible. Then there are some kids who occasionally will come out of the autistic phase and into reality. These are the children who don’t have a lot of brain destruction, and these are the kids who respond well to IVIG. We have to screen the children as to who will respond and who won’t respond.
One little boy who is now eight was born exposed to the Lyme bacterium, and he had developmental delays – similar to Timmy - but he maintained his speech. Then at 18 months of age he had the measles vaccine and he lost his speech. Some of it came back: he can talk but he can’t carry on long conversations. Then at three years of age he was bitten by a tick and that compounded everything; he had Bartonella and Borrelia, and he regressed. He came in with his parents, who wanted to talk about IVIG without his being in the room. It was a very disheartening conversation because their insurance denied giving him IVIG and the parents couldn’t afford it. The boy told his parents he wanted to speak to me alone; he sensed that something was going on. He came in, closed the door, and said, Please, never forget that I’m here, I need you.

Janet: Is it the measles vaccine or a combination of the vaccine and an infectious agent that wreaks havoc?

Dr. Jones: In certain people, the measles vaccine alone can induce a rapid onset of autism. People may have other problems too. A little boy who I treated had autism and tick-borne diseases – he was born with Lyme. He is now doing quite well. He’s an independent person, a brilliant writer, and will be graduating soon from college. His parents are defense attorneys and I’ve conferred with them about the problems that will occur when I make this public. They asked whether I would continue and I said I felt morally obligated to. What I am saying goes against the National Institutes of Health, which did a study several years ago that definitively proved that the measles vaccine doesn’t cause autism. It was a dumb study, but it’s part of the bible. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Neurologists have all stated that the measles vaccine cannot induce autism. Well, I’ve seen 12 kids who have autism following the measles vaccine. You have to question that. Also, these kids’ symptoms are reversible if picked up early enough.
There are other triggers for autism besides the measles vaccine, but this one is certainly preventable, and can be treatable. Denis Bouboulis, M.D. and I have to pull all the information on these cases together – there are about 40 right now. We hope to publish. We’ll either be lauded and get the Nobel Prize in medicine or we’ll be persecuted. The fact is that I have seen children who have become autistic the day after receiving the measles vaccine. This is what I see despite the fact that the NIH has said the measles vaccine does not induce autism. This should be reconsidered.
Aldous Huxley said that there are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
I can’t turn my back on this.

Janet: How early does it have to be caught to be reversible?

Dr. Jones: A child has to have some reversibility to the process. In other words, if a child with measles induced autism can be in reality – it might be playing ball or playing with parents, sitting on their laps, versus doing pattern behaviors.
It took me 20 years to develop the concept that 90 percent of our genome is of microbial origin, that over the years life is built on life. And if 90 percent of our genetic material is of microbial origin, then if we are exposed to an organism that’s contributed to the genome, or receive a vaccine representing an organism that’s contributed to the genome, we make antibodies to the organism, we make antibodies to ourselves: infection-induced autoimmune encephalopathy.
Is this the only cause of autism? No. There are other factors, there has to be other factors. But anything that can alter or impact upon genetic material certainly can create an autoimmune process.
So you’re looking at two factors causing autoimmune encephalopathy: Infectious organisms and vaccine-modified organisms. It was found that children are more likely to get the measles-induced autism if the vaccine is given before the immune system is more mature. At 18 months the immune system is not mature. If you wait until after three years of age, the system is more mature and can handle the onslaught better. To give one vaccine at a time is better than giving more than one.
One of the definitions of truth is empirical, growing coherence. We don’t know it all.
I’m willing to say I don’t know it all. Good medicine is Mind Open.

Dr. Jones practices in New Haven, CT.

Janet Jemmott is editor of the Lyme Connection newsletter. To receive future online issues, sign up on our Home Page.