Bogner has his own ideas about autism, and they are not based on reality, evidence or reason. Believing that autism is a neuroinflammatory condition, Bogner is opposed to any pharmaceutical intervention, championing instead a plant-based diet, hyberbaric oxygen chambers and unproven and dangerous stem cell therapies. And Bogner doesn’t treat just autism; he treats almost everything that his customers are willing to pay him to treat, including chronic Lyme disease. He is also antivaccine (an advocate for ‘vaccine choice’), being a regular speaker at the antivaccine quackfest AutismOne and author of antivaccine Letters to the Editor like ‘Vaccines are a choice not a mandate’. In particular, Bogner claims that adjuvants (like aluminum) plus heavy metals in vaccines activate the microglia, which purportedly causes inflammation and autism. It doesn’t, if reality is your standard, but it isn’t Bogner’s. Apparently glyphosate is involved, too, as is “aborted fetal cells in vaccines”. Yes, Bogner is that kind of practitioner.
Bogner is most famous, however, for his pseudoscientific ramblings in favor of phytocannabinoid (marijuana) therapies for autism. Now, medical marijuana has become something of a new herbalism, a complete and largely (though not fully) pseudoscientific edifice with little root in actual evidence (for a good discussion, see this). The evidence for marijuana therapies for autism is more or less nil (there is evidence for using medical marijuana for spasticity and pain, which is largely irrelevant but which advocates of cannabis for autism often refer to since some children with autism also suffer from seizures). Advocates have claimed “peer reviewed evidence that cannabis not only has the potential to provide palliative relief of symptoms related to autism, but may also have the potential to target the underlying causes of autism itself,” but the “peer reviewed” evidence in question in that quote is merely a blog post, ‘The Endocannabinoid System as it Relates to Autism’, published on the Cannabis for Autism blog written by Bogner and Joe Stone. And the reason it is not a peer-reviewed published article is rather obvious if one looks at it: Apart from some amazing cherry-picking forays, they’ve gotanecdotes (mostly about epilepsy), some potential correlations and lots of imaginative extrapolations from preclinical cell culture and animal studies and studies that address other conditions, to conclude that cannabinoids are efficacious treating autism. They do not address the lack of actual clinical trial evidence. The current state of evidence on marijuana for neurological disorders is discussed here (from 2015, but the situation remains generally sordid, and on autism there’s still really nothing that rises above the level of shoddy-borderlining-on-scientific-misconduct).
And no, Bogner did not attend medical school at Cornell, but in Poznan.
Diagnosis: Pseudoscience and crackpottery, yes, and with the usual yet remarkable opportunism and cynicism associated with the kind of business in which Bogner is involved. A shitty person. Avoid.