I sometimes find myself grieving for those, who through horrific bad luck, live very short lives. If I hear a story about a teenager who dies of cancer, or a four year old killed in a house fire, or a young adult who dies by a brain aneurysm, I’ll often be deeply upset, for the rest of the day, and possibly for several days after.
These kind of deaths could be described as unavoidable. We could talk about earlier cancer detection or better fire safety, or researching new treatments for brain aneurysms, but broadly, we could say that there was nothing that we could be done to save these people.
But the tragic death I’m going to talk about now, was completely avoidable. The senseless waste of it all, has meant I’ve been able to think about little else since I first heard about it.
On January 31st of this year, five year old Thomas Cooper burned to death. I’ve thought about how to even type that out, because nothing I can write can even begin to adequately convey the absolute terror, and agony, he must have experienced in his last moments. This is how this five year old, with his whole life ahead of him, died on that horrific day.
He was receiving treatment for ADHD and sleep apnea, in a hyperbaric chamber. This was at the Oxford center, an alternative medicine facility (there’s no such thing as “alternative medicine”), that offers “treatment” for, well, here’s the complete list:
https://theoxfordcenter.com/other-conditions/
ADHD, autism, dyslexia, healthy aging/wellness, crohn’s disease, covid-19. There’s a big long list, of illnesses/disabilities/neurodivergences that they claim to cure or treat. Some of their claims are vague, I mean, what the hell is wellness? They claim to treat illnesses that are genuinely debilitating or even life threatening, such as epilepsy and cancer. And they claim to “treat” neurodivergences that don’t need a cure, such as, as already mentioned, ADHD, autism, and dyslexia.
So, how did this horrific death occur? Well, a hyperbaric chamber supplies 100% oxygen.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17811-hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy
While of course we need oxygen to breathe, too much oxygen is extremely dangerous, because the slightest spark can stark a fire. So that’s how Thomas Cooper died, what police and fire officials have described as a “fiery explosion”. Thomas’s mother, Annie Cooper, rushed to save him. She got severe burns on her arms in her attempt to get him out, but sadly, there was nothing she could do to rescue her son from this horrific fate.
I want to be very clear about something before I go any further. Yes, while Thomas Cooper’s parents agreed to this treatment, I don’t blame them for what happened. Annie Cooper received severe injuries in her attempt to save her son, and, I feel it’s safe to say, in that moment, if she could have switched places with her son, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
So who do I blame for this tragedy?
Well, what comes to mind instantly is the Oxford Center. If you’ll take another look at the illnesses/disabilities/neurodivergences on their list, you’ll notice that there’s no evidence that hyberbaric chambers are an effective treatment for the vast majority of them, and of course there’s the fact that some of the conditons they “treat” are neurodivergences that do not require a cure.
The Food and Drug Administration FDA, has just thirteen types of injury that they approve for hyperbaric oxygen therapy:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/hyperbaric-oxygen-therapy-get-facts
And yet, I just counted, how many conditions do you think the Oxford Center treats. Is it twice as many as the FDA recommends. Is it three times?
The Oxford Center treats, 108 conditions with hyperbaric oxygen therapy! That’s 95 conditions that they treat, where there is no evidence that hyberbaric oxygen therapy does any good!
Okay, but there are some conditions that hyperbaric chambers can treat. So, what I’ve been wondering is, of course, with ADHD and sleep apnea, Thomas Cooper shouldn’t have been anywhere near a hyperbaric chamber. But was what happened to him, simply a tragic and unforeseeable accident, that could just have easily happened to somebody who needed the treatment, such as somebody with anemia or carbon monoxide poisoning?
The answer is no. This was not an unforeseeable accident, but a result of the callous negligence of the Oxford Center. The chamber Thomas was in hadn’t been inspected since 2022, had a manufacture date of 2013, and its grounding wires were visibly in worse condition than the other chambers.
And, it gets worse from there.
After the death of Thomas, Tamela Peterson, the CEO of the Oxford Center, ran away from detectives when they asked for her phone, and had her son scrub her laptop.
The use of a grounding strap could have potentially saved Thomas, but grounding straps were not used by the Oxford Center.
A former employee, described as a certified hyperbaric technologist, said she refused to run the hyberbaric chambers due to the lack of safety practices. She was fired.
When I started writing this, it was going to be a much simpler narrative, about how society’s mistreatment of neurodivergent and disabled kids often leads to their death. But, while that’s not just a part of the story, but a big part of it, there’s a lot more going on then just that. Yes, Thomas Cooper, as a person with ADHD and sleep apnea, should NOT have been in a hyperbaric chamber. And if there wasn’t such an abundance of pseudoscience about those conditions, he would still be alive today.
But, even if the Oxford Center had treated only people who genuinely needed hyperbaric oxygen therapy, it was only a matter of time before one of these patients was killed in the same gruesome manner that Thomas Cooper was. So greed, and a callous disregard for all humans, disabled or abled bodied, healthy or sick, was a big reason why this absolutely sickening tragedy happened.
But after spending a lot of time thinking about it, I’m not willing to say that ableism and misinformation about neurodivergent people and other disabled people had nothing to do with it either. If we didn’t live in a society where there was a complete lack of understanding on the needs of autistic people, dyslexic people, people with ADHD, and people with other disabilities and illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, then it wouldn’t be possible for snake oil salespeople such as the owners of the Oxford Center to offer treatments for these conditions. Imagine if we lived in a world where as soon as you said, “I offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy for ADHD” you were automatically recognized as a charlatan and laughed out of town.
But, no matter how much progress we make on awareness of neurodivergences/illnesses, there will always be at least a small number of the population who is vulnerable to misinformation.
So, I’m going to ask something of America. Hey America, I know you love the free market, and I can understand that, because when I was in my late twenties, I got very into the idea that the free market will solve many of the world’s problems. But, could we just have a tiny, tiny, restriction on the market, and close down every “treatment” center that offers pseudo-scientific “cures” for ADHD and autism, and deliberately and callously operates dangerously unsafe machinery. Can you do that America?
Hopefully lessons will be learned from all of this. But I wish it didn’t take for the death of Thomas Cooper, who died in indescribable agony, for that to happen. The Oxford Center should NEVER have been allowed to operate, it’s that simple, and until “treatment” centers like this are barred from practicing, this tragedy will sadly, keep happening again, and again, and again.
Ponderings Of An Autist 