Goodreads Censors Autism Recovery Book: Banned Book Redefined As "Not A Book"
Audio read by the author:
I used the online book website ‘Goodreads’ for years. I was a huge fan. Until now.
As part of my review of Autism Recovery books, I finished reading a book titled The Life Recovery Method: Autism Treatment from a Trauma Perspective by Robert Cox.1 This book describes a method to treat children and adolescents on the autism spectrum that runs counter to traditional ABA therapy. ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis, which is a therapy covered by insurance companies for children with an autism diagnosis. The Cox book is not the first book I have read that reconsiders the assumed effectiveness of ABA. I agree with many of Cox’s ideas but disagree with others. My mentioning this book is not an endorsement of the author’s methods, but I site the book for anybody who is curious.
I opened my Goodreads account to add this book to my personal book list, which I do every time I finish a book. Here is my Autism Bookshelf, showing 29 in this category. These books offer a range of perspectives as wide as the spectrum itself. I appreciate the birds-eye view offered by the display of book cover images, and each time I add a book, I click on this view and review the diverse perspectives, ensuring that my ever-changing thoughts about health and illness are informed by varied voices.
The 30th book, titled Wave, is not about autism, but I include it because there is a description of an adult presenting with severe autism-like symptoms following a tragedy of indescribable proportions. More about this another time.
My eyes quickly went to the third book in the third row. What is that? The gray cover was unfamiliar and certainly not on my physical bookshelf. The title of the mysterious publication is: NOT A BOOK (all in capital letters) and it has an author by the name: NOT A BOOK.
What is going on?
I clicked on the mysterious NOT A BOOK by NOT A BOOK to view the details. The realization took hold: one of my good reads has been banned. Somebody somewhere decided that a book on my physical bookshelf is not a book any longer.
The author of my physical copy is a woman named Kerri Rivera. Her son was diagnosed with autism, and she searched for potential causes and treatment options. Skipping over the details, her son is now recovered. She helps others and has collected testimonies from parents about recovering and recovered children. She wrote what is most certainly a book sharing her experience and the method she used that led to significant improvements and eventually, loss of her son’s diagnostic label ‘autism.’
I pulled up my Amazon account, where I purchased my copy several years ago. I scrolled down my history of orders. There it is.
But when I click on ‘View your item’ the image of the book cover becomes ‘not available.’
How bizarre. The cover image for this book is obviously available. I am looking at it. Amazon’s database is pulling the book cover image to populate my past orders. When I click on “View product details” …
According to Amazon, the book is not a NOT A BOOK, but instead of outright censorship, the website loops around a series of dead links of nonavailability and apologies coming from Mollie the Amazon dog.
How much weirder can things get?
I guess Mollie could be wearing a surgical mask, or a methane-capturing cup under her tail to offset her carbon emissions, or Mollie could be confiscated by Shanghia covid police as a harborer of pathogens. Lucky Mollie. If you’re a dog these days, an Amazon dog is the way to go.
If, however, you are a mother who did not accept the mainstream notion that nothing could be done about your son’s condition, and instead figured out how to eliminate your son’s body burden of toxins and pathogenic microbes and parasites and the resulting trauma while saturating his body with essential nutrients, you are not so lucky. You are nothing but a NOT A BOOK who wrote a NOT A BOOK that is neither available nor catalogued in the highly populated, popular parallel universe of the industrial mainstream.
In order to combat this nonsense, I would like you to learn about NOT A BOOK also known as Kerri Rivera, author of NOT A BOOK, also known as Healing The Symptoms Known As Autism. You can learn more at kerririvera.com/ which is her website. If you click on her Autism tab, it will take you to a very scary page that warns of a security risk ahead if you continue to click in search of information.
I was feeling particularly brave, so I Advanced and landed on another strange page with a statement about non-trustworthy sites and invalid certificates …
Accepting the Risk and Continuing, I finally arrived at a page that used to be part of her website …
Apparently her book contains some dangerous information. Perhaps she is a terrorist disguised as a mother with a son with autism. I read her book in 2017, and I still remember the main points:
she acknowledges that neurotoxins are toxic to living organisms, including children
she acknowledges the microbiome
she acknowledges that essential nutrients are essential
she incorporates all three of the above simultaneously in a protocol designed to slowly resolve symptoms of heavy metal and pathogenic toxicities
she uses a controversial compound called chlorine dioxide; advocates of neurodiversity (who believe that autism is a personality trait) and the medical community and pharma-funded mainstream media call the compound ‘bleach’ and claim those interested in more information about the substance and related disease-curing protocols are trying to murder their children. I am not kidding. They use the word ‘murder.’ Of course, the compound, is not bleach. It does have bleaching properties. I won’t further engage with absurdity. I am reminded of horse paste propaganda.
Quackwatch has featured Kerri and chlorine dioxide on more than one occasion. They promote the view that she is promoting the poisoning of children.2
Back to NOT A BOOK…
Who owns Goodreads? I wondered. The answer was easy to find, not at all censored. According to a Brave search, Goodreads was purchased in 2013 for about $150 million by Amazon. The pit in my stomach is becoming too familiar.
I headed upstairs to my real bookshelf to find Kerri Rivera’s real book. It was right where I thought it would be, on my top shelf, appropriately reserved for recovery books. I find it sandwiched between Natasha Cambell-McBride’s GAPS and The Nemechek Protocol for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders by Patrick Nemechek. I reach for Kerri’s book. It feels good in my real hands, and when I open the real pages, I see real notes that I took years ago with a real pencil when I read the real words with my own real eyes.
I have come to understand that any non-patented substance that is suppressed by governments, industries and a small number of parents holding extreme, illogical views is quite possibly a substance I want in my medicine cabinet, right next to my vitamins and minerals. And any book censored by governments and industries is definitely a book I want on my bookshelf. Maybe even the top shelf, reserved for books about real recovery.
Author Note: I just completed a follow-up search Amazon prior to publishing this post (March 13, 2023) to see if the book has reemerged. It has not. In its place is a book containing 31 prayers, a memoir, and a book about secrets of the autistic millionaire.
https://liferecoveryconsulting.org/the-book/
https://quackwatch.org/ncahf/digest15/15-26/