Vitamin Seller Made a Criminal

by Chekov Fri Dec 15, 2006 17:15

He sold some variety of useless snake oil to vulnerable people telling them that it could cure cancer and AIDS.

There is NO EVIDENCE that any of his remedies could cure cancer or AIDS.

If a multi-national corporation made such claims and made money by selling magic potions to patients who were in desperate situations, I hope nobody would support the. So why the hell would anybody support this guy? He's a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman and he's profiting from people's credulity and desperation.

ANH wrote: "Essential treatments in diet and homeopathic care are reduced and curtailed in advertising"

Yep. People aren't allowed to make up claims about medical treatments for serious illnesses and sell them for a profit to desperate people who are facing death. Isn't that terrible? Homeopathic treatments are WATER - nothing more nothing less They are essential treatments for nothing at all. Dietic treatments are also almost always a load of absolute bollocks, sold by the cynical to the anxious and credulous.

by c Murray Fri Dec 15, 2006 20:13

ANH are are reputable org- with highly intelligent activists, unlike the bias which is so
evident on this site.

a lot of homeopathic and alternative remedies are about consumer choice.
and I wholly support the alliance, but some people refuse to eduate themselves
about choice. This is why Ireland is one of the most globalised countries in the EU.

chekov- why don't you stand for the PD's?

btw- a snake oil saleswoman has treated long term illness effectively in my own family
and alleiviated us from the burden of long term pharm care.

how pathetic the bias and lack of education exhibited in your comment.

by ballad writer Fri Dec 15, 2006 20:27

sure the pills don't work.
tell me is it getting better?
would yur ma give you the cell to build a new kidney-
the plight of the fight is right but you piss the minerals away.
so that's why you should oh brudders & sisters join together
and slaughter veggies & greens & the fruits of the forest.

I'm only starting out. but I'll figure out how to upload the tab symbols too for the guitarist, banjo or similar types. mock me now but the album is a cert

by c murray Fri Dec 15, 2006 21:09

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/79330

http://www.codexalimentarius.net

by Ray McInerney - Global Country of World Peace Fri Dec 15, 2006 21:28 raymond.mcinerney at ul dot ie Limerick 00353860638611

The failures of modern medicine are inevitable and result from one fundamental weakness: an isolated approach to knowledge and practice which fails to attend to the balance and integration of the physiology as a whole. The most striking failures of modern medicine are:

The inability to truly cure, which results in 40% of the American population suffering from a serious chronic disorder

Adverse side effects, which result in 180,000 deaths per year

Iatrogenic disease of epidemic proportions

Escalating costs that prohibit many from seeking appropriate modern health care services

The failure to prevent disease and suffering

by C Murray Sat Dec 16, 2006 13:12

Curative herbologies and local knowledge of plants , poisons and herbs
is something that is not quite being lost.
for a small example digitalis- or the fox glove is used for heart conditions
and can be toxic to the human physiology without knowledge.

we live in a world of synthesised drugs, which in dublin are in the main
used to get coked etc out of the tiny little mind. whilst the pharms are
buying up the rights to patent and synthesise drugs they are repressing the
knowledge of generations. our old friend the opium poppy and its cultivation in
Afghanistan (a war-zone) has caused 25 deaths between here and Glasgow
the spores that got into the injecting area had a bacterium which is fecal related.

most of our modern drugs derive from natural products. men test how they
work on humans and animals and give them to people with varieites of symptoms.

if you would research the issue you would know that known serotonin inhibitors
for example cause suicidal reactions and psychotic symptoms in new users.

Diet is incredibly important in healing, given the amount of pre-packaged over
salted, over sugared crap that people want to spend good money on.
and yes they will be suing in a few years when they start dying of diabetes and obseity.

by Joe Sat Dec 16, 2006 15:02

It seems obvious to me that if people are selling something they claim to be a medicene then they should be subject to the laws medicene sellers are subject to. Wether they are a hippy in a field or a transnational shouldn't enter into it.

by Chekov Sat Dec 16, 2006 17:31

Hi Chris,

Your response above is absolutely pathetic. You complain about "editorial bias" when I took no editorial action, I merely posted a comment - something that anybody can do. I would have thought that my choice to respond rather than wielding my moderation zapper showed pretty clearly that I was not abusing my powers. I will go on to deal with your comment in detail, even though it really should be removed due to the fact that it breaks most of our guidelines. Of course you continue to ignore all the guidelines to the site in a typically selfish and fantastically egotistical way, so I might as well take this opportunity to respond in kind.

chris NH are are reputable org- with highly intelligent activists, unlike the bias which is so evident on this site.

I said nothing about NH's reputability (sic - you can't even get the bloody acronym right!) or the intelligence of their activists. I don't know much about them, I was commenting on this awful article, which defends the grossly irresponsible behaviour of a snake oil salesman who made appallingly irresponsible claims about his treatments.

If you haven't figured out the fact that comments and stories on this site have bias by this stage, then you are truly beyond intelligence. All content here carries the bias of the author. We don't subsrcibe to the notion of objectivity. Hell, we even carry your outporing of incredibly low-quality articles which are generally just your musings from watching the mainstream media and, at best, never really amount to much more than "isn't it awful". If you were a little bit better at writing, you could take up a job in the Daily Mail.

chris a lot of homeopathic and alternative remedies are about consumer choice. and I wholly support the alliance, but some people refuse to eduate themselves about choice. This is why Ireland is one of the most globalised countries in the EU.

That's a fantastically awful piece of reasoning. Every single clause is a non-sequitur and most of them are just meaningless. Do you even know what homeopathy is? (It's absolutely nothing to do with herbal remedies). So Ireland is one of the most globalised countries in the EU because some people refuse to eduate [sic] themselves about choice??? What utter gibberish.

If you think it's "about consumer choice" then do you think that multi-national companies should invent claims about their drugs and sell them to the public based upon a pack of lies? That's not choice, it's deception. For consumer choice to have any meaning at all, it needs to be based on accurate information, not straight up lies. It's particularly galling when you see people lying to desperate people with terminal illnesses.

chris chekov- why don't you stand for the PD's?

That's playing the player. It's also remarkably stupid. Anybody who objects to the practice of selling remedies to desperate people based upon lies is a PD? Gawd, in your universe every rational person is a PD. What a horrible place it must be.

chris btw- a snake oil saleswoman has treated long term illness effectively in my own family
and alleiviated us from the burden of long term pharm care.

Personal anecdotes are entirely useless as ways of assessing medical treatments. I wiggle my toes regularly and have never had a long term illness which required long term medical treatment. That doesn't mean that I'm going to start selling my toe-wiggling treatment.

chris how pathetic the bias and lack of education exhibited in your comment.

Yep, I'm strongly biased towards things that have evidence behind them. I am also confident that I'm way, way more educated about this stuff than you are. As I said above, you don't even seem to have the faintest clue as to what homeopathy is.

by c murray Sat Dec 16, 2006 20:08

The term 'credulous and vulnerable' did not come from me- I happen to believe
most people who are educated or want to educate themselves about pharmaceutical
use/research and politics would be able to make a considered choice.

example being the vacinne situations- the single shots versus the MMR controversy
is an example of this and has not gone away in the UK. parents have to make the choice
about infant care.

speaking as one of those:

there are many problems from pregnancy on regarding diet, birth choice, birthing methods,
midwife vs consultant, breastfeeding, after care, home birth and vacine. We are a very
wealthy economy and these choices are the most limited in the EU. (unless you buy
private insurance and the whole range of options are open to you)

The codex and food supplement debate is similar, supplements are being reduced
and codex is now branding and filling food-stuffs with the required supplements, which
can be had quite simply from cooking good fresh ingredients. again there is a paternalistic
spin on reducing choice and increasing 'randed foodstuff'demands- its not rocket science
its market driven.

We do not look at the range of options open to us simly because we are in the process
of 'undeucating' ourselves about food , diet and health care alternatives. These
issues of the politics of food go way back - in particular I remember the nestle boycott
on some dublin campuses.

Homeopathy is an area where I do not claim expertise but I accept that if the homeopath
is qualified , that it is a complimentary treatment, a good homeopath
would work with the local GP or hospital in patient care and a lot of the things that
a doctor would not deal with in relation to sleep problems are areas in which they
help alleviate symtoms . In fact many GP's would refer patients to medical homeopaths
for complimentary treatments. medically qualified homeopaths are not allowed
advertise their services as much as gp's or plastic surgeons - that is simply a fact
in this country.

conditions such as coeliac, asthma, anxiety, depression, migraine are treatable through
homeopathy. Best way of finding one is through recommendation and customer
satisfaction.

apologies to ANH (for getting the name wrong- though I am sure they are not so bothered)

by Chekov Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:13

c murray "the single shots versus the MMR controversy is an example of this and has not gone away in the UK. parents have to make the choice about infant care."

Yep, parents have to choose between scare mongering rubbish put out by the daily mail and supported by legions of snake oil salespeople with vested interests, and proper medical science backed up by proper evidence. It has now been fairly conclusively shown that MMR is safe - there is no evidence to suggest otherwise despite the fact that a number of people have attempted to find some (and many of them have been singularly dishonest in doing so).

c murray "We do not look at the range of options open to us simly because we are in the process of 'undeucating' ourselves about food , diet and health care alternatives."

I agree. Many people are listening to the mystic nonsense put about by idiotic daily mail scare stories and snake-oil salespeople and their ignorant promoters instead of educating themselves about things like "evidence", "randomised controlled trials" and all of the other wonderful tools of medical science. Hell, some people are even objecting to the fact that people are ethically prevented from making up claims about their ability to cure terminal illnesses. They would prefer if we lived in a cloud of ignorance where any old mystic nonsense was automatically accepted as soon as somebody called it natural.

c murray "Homeopathy is an area where I do not claim expertise but I accept that if the homeopath is qualified , that it is a complimentary treatment,"

Amazing. You don't know anything about it, but you accept it. Why? Would you also accept any arbitrary made-up medical treatment? Try toe-wiggling - it's a winner!

c murray "In fact many GP's would refer patients to medical homeopaths for complimentary treatments. medically qualified homeopaths are not allowed advertise their services as much as gp's or plastic surgeons - that is simply a fact
in this country."

A small number of GPs refer patients to people who call themselves "homeopaths" and a couple even claim to practice it. However, there is no such thing as a "medically qualified homeopath" - just as there is no such thing as a medically qualified crystal healer, or a medically qualified toe-wiggling healer or a medically qualified quack.

Your statement that an imbalance in advertising laws is "simply a fact in this country" is complete nonsense. GPs rarely advertise their services (they don't have to) while the various "complimentary and alternative" practitioners are largely advertising driven. The law only proscribes people making false specific claims about their treatments and this applies equally to all treatments. This means that none of the CAM practitioners are allowed to make any specific claims about curative powers at all since to claim a specific healing quality, you need to have some evidence of this and absence of evidence is what defines CAM.

by Dave Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:38

Chekov, as a person who disagrees with much you say on this site, I must say that your own observations and opinions tally 100% with my own, and should be a beacon of light for anyone considering homeopathic solutions.

Modern mainstream medicine differs from much of homeopathic medicine in one key area: medicine is based on trial by scientific method. Anything untested by the scientific method can be GENERALLY classed as snake-oil. Most homeopathic remedies rely on anecdotal (i.e. hearsay) evidence. However, on the (guarded) advice of my GP I tried acupuncture for a specific ailment. It cleared up. Do I think acupuncture "works"? For some ills, for some people, some of the time, it does. For my ill that time, it did. Perhaps it was just lying down in a quiet room for 45 minutes every week that did it! If it comes back, back to the needle for me.

Some people say the mainstream medical industry is protected by legislation and the homeopathic industry is deliberately supressed. Yes; to get a drug FDA approved you need a lot of money... because you need to do a LOT of research and testing. That lends itself (currently) to big business with shareholder-based investment (to spread the risk if a drug fails testing or worse still fails in use as sometimes happens). Perhaps a better system will evolve in the future, perhaps not.

Keep you're buteyko method, I'll keep using my ventolin.

by M Cotton Mon Dec 18, 2006 13:36

"Yep, parents have to choose between scare mongering rubbish put out by the daily mail and supported by legions of snake oil salespeople with vested interests, and proper medical science backed up by proper evidence. It has now been fairly conclusively shown that MMR is safe - there is no evidence to suggest otherwise despite the fact that a number of people have attempted to find some (and many of them have been singularly dishonest in doing so). "

Proper medical science backed up by proper evidence!!! That would be the multi trillion dollar coprate juggernaut that has defined Western medicine in the interests of proft and profit alone for the last 100 years and more. The same murderous and repeatedly discredited medical science that has caused so much death and ill health along the way. The same medical profession that cannot function unless its 'patients' are infantilised by enforced ignorance about their own health. The legalised and establishment backed drug pushers whose chauvinistic and authoriatarian arrogance is running terrified in the face of an upsurge of interest from ordinary people about exactly what it is that makes and keeps them healthy. Nothing like well informed ordinary people to get the establishment riled! The idea that health is a matter of nutrition and lifestyle is horrifying to them . It threatens the pharmaceuticals (and a lot of others too) as nothing before ever has and they are even now doing their best to demonise all alternative medicine in the same way, for example, that the Shell to Sea campaign is being demonised by the corporate backed mainstream media everywhere. Their powerful lobby has thrown everything it has at EU law. When will people ever learn! What is it about men in white coats that other men must bow down to as before Gods?

Perhaps if Chekov had spoken to parents whose children had gone into convulsions after receiving
MMR jabs and had never recovered their mental or physical health again, he might not be so impressed. This has fuck all to do with the Daily Mail and everything to do with the lived reality of damaged lives that millions of people are coping with. What a nice little earner that whole vaccination scene is! Anybody got any idea how much it is worth, globally? And yet what bullshit chauvinistic arrogance it all is - the idea that we can 'defeat' disease. The same fucking idiots in white coats who design nuclear bombs and genetically modified foods and every kind of insanity that the world is teetering on the edge of disaster from. The most effective way of fighting disease - even according to Hugh Pennington (CEO BMA) is by adequate housing, sanitation, and nutrition - in other words with healthy bodies. If the pharmas spent the same money on providing these three things to the millions of people who still do not have them, as they do on marketing their chemical coshes (which incindentally is only a tiny fraction of what they spend on researching their own brands of snake oil, such is their devotion to us all), death from disease would be vastly reduced. The real quackery in all of this is the pharma sponsored medical profession - a largely insufferable and self-regarding group of people. Vaccination is the single greatest medical experiment being practised on successive generations - we do not yet know the full extent of the damage it is doing to our immune and other systems. Mercury is used - to name just one lethal little aspect of the cocktail of poisons that we inject into the fragile systems of young babies and children - in the name of preventing disease. But we'll do anything it seems in order to make profit out of disease while simultaneousely preventing millions of those same babies from having an equal share of the planet's food, shelter and other resources - the things that would really give them health. We only have to look at the restrictive practices they have insisted on in selling their potions in countries like Africa. They need all the disease they can get their hands on! Prevention is that last thing that is wanted! The corporates have it every way. People are sick to death, literally, of all this gung ho, scientist backed lunacy.

by Dave Mon Dec 18, 2006 13:59

"Perhaps if Chekov had spoken to parents whose children had gone into convulsions after receiving MMR jabs and had never recovered their mental or physical health again, he might not be so impressed."

Perhaps if YOU spoke to parents whose children died from Measles, Mumps or Roubelle YOU'D be MORE impressed. There aren't so many of them around anymore, thanks to the MMR jab.

If you are saying that we would be better off without the jab, you are insane.

If you are saying that parents have the right to choose not to have the jab, I understand but disagree.

by Chekov Mon Dec 18, 2006 15:26

Oh me oh my. Another highly non-specific, vitriolic and generalised attack on "medical science" which involves lumping toghether umpteen different claims into one great big demon with no attempt to examine what is being talked about, nor any evidence that the author has the faintest clue what evidence is and why it is a good idea to do things based upon evidence.

m cotton "That would be the multi trillion dollar coprate juggernaut that has defined Western medicine in the interests of proft and profit alone for the last 100 years and more."

Total rubbish. A very large proportion of medical science has been carried out in public institutions by researchers who are genuinely interested in alleviating human suffering. If it was interested in "profit and profit alone", why bother doing all that difficult, expensive and labour intensive research, they could just sell water and make up claims that it had some sort of magical properties that could heal all sorts of things. Oh wait, that's what homeopathy does!

The broader point is that it is a terrible mistake to equate medical science and the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies are indeed interested in profit alone, and they are quite capable of quackery. The good thing is that they are limited in their ability to pursue profit over health by the fact that there is a requirement that they demonstrate the efficacy of their treatments using methods that are difficult to manipulate - such as randomized double-blind controlled trials and the results of these trials are examined by often skeptical experts prior to publication. What's more, the fact that the whole process is relatively transparent and open, allows others to perform similar studies to double-check the results. It's not a perfect system by any means and it is corrupted by capitalist pressures, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything the CAM people can offer - they generally seem to feel that they don't have to produce any evidence whatsoever for their claims.

m cotton "The same murderous and repeatedly discredited medical science that has caused so much death and ill health along the way."

I note the absence of evidence to back up this claim. I might put forward a bit of evidence which tends to disagree with your assertion. Let's start with trends in life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths in childbirth over the last 100 years. What can you offer in opposition?

m cotton "The same medical profession that cannot function unless its 'patients' are infantilised by enforced ignorance about their own health."

Ridiculous. The whole point about evidence based medicine is that anybody can understand it. If a doctor gives you a diagnosis and a treatment, you can look it up in peer reviewed journals or just on the internet and assess yourself the rationale behind their judgement. You can read the evidence for yourself and assess it, you don't have to depend on the word of your doctor. By contrast, homeopathy and the rest of the quackery requires you to give blind faith to a quack - you can't assess the evidence yourself because there is none.

Once again, however, the system is by no means perfect. There are lots of doctors who adopt paternalistic, victorian attitudes to their patients and don't inform them about the analytic process that they use. But just because there are bad doctors, doesn't mean that you should abandon the whole field - especially when the alternative is so much worse.

m cotton "The legalised and establishment backed drug pushers whose chauvinistic and authoriatarian arrogance is running terrified in the face of an upsurge of interest from ordinary people about exactly what it is that makes and keeps them healthy."

Chortle. I don't think that anybody is "running terrified" in the face anything, with the possible exception of Daily Mail readers who are running around in a circle of shakras and crystal healing in a desperate attempt to find any inanimate object that doesn't "cause cancer".

If homeopathy and all the other rubbish took off in anything like a big way, you would inevitably find that all the big multi-nationals would start peddling it in a serious way - as I said above, it would really help their profits too - it's much cheaper to just sell people water and make stuff up about it than it is to do randomized controlled trials which reveal that many of your treatments do not work and have to be scrapped.

m cotton "Nothing like well informed ordinary people to get the establishment riled!"

True. But nothing makes them happy like people who will believe any old rubbish as long as the person who is telling them calls himself an expert.

m cotton "The idea that health is a matter of nutrition and lifestyle is horrifying to them."

Really? I doubt you would find a single medical practitioner in the world who would disagree with the above. They must spend a lot of time being horrified.

m cotton "It threatens the pharmaceuticals (and a lot of others too) as nothing before ever has and they are even now doing their best to demonise all alternative medicine in the same way, for example, that the Shell to Sea campaign is being demonised by the corporate backed mainstream media everywhere. Their powerful lobby has thrown everything it has at EU law. When will people ever learn! What is it about men in white coats that other men must bow down to as before Gods?"

Actually, I think you'll find that the pharmaceuticals rarely if ever complain about CAM - they see it as a potential market full of guillible people who'll buy any old thing. The people who object are normally rationalists who have a distaste for the practice of taking advantage of the public's scientific ignorance and fear to make a profit. What demons!

I also think that the comparison with Shell to Sea is typically lazy thinking which doesn't stand up to the most cursory examination. For a start, it's obvious that the corporate media actively promotes all sorts of alternative medical nonsense and quackery. The Daily Mail is only the most enthusiastic in promoting health scares, but most of the rest of them provide almost entirely uncritical commentary of the various brands of snake oil on offer.

The "men in white coats" thing is another example of misunderstanding the whole field. Medical science has validity and faith because it does not rest upon what experts say, it has validity because it has hard evidence that any reasonably intelligent person can appraise and understand. It is the CAM quackery that rests entirely on faith in experts.

m cotton "Perhaps if Chekov had spoken to parents whose children had gone into convulsions after receiving MMR jabs and had never recovered their mental or physical health again, he might not be so impressed."

Nope. I am fully aware that people impute causation to all sorts of things and are particularly prone to do so when they have strong emotional motivations to do so. I know that there are very good ways to test such things - randomized controlled trials and so on. If something only shows up in anecdotes and disappears as soon as you try to test it objectively, then it is almost certainly an example of people's well known propensity to impute causation incorrectly.

m cotton "This has fuck all to do with the Daily Mail and everything to do with the lived reality of damaged lives that millions of people are coping with."

That's just a content-free appeal to a random emotive statement. The only reason that the dangers of MMR gained any type of presence in the public consciousness is that papers like the Daily Mail ran many, many false and scaremongering stories about it, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence for any adverse affects. You can choose to get carried away with such emotive rubbish if you want, it just means that you run around being anxious about all sorts of stupid stuff without any good reason - a bad choice if you ask me.

m cotton "What a nice little earner that whole vaccination scene is! Anybody got any idea how much it is worth, globally? And yet what bullshit chauvinistic arrogance it all is - the idea that we can 'defeat' disease."

Hmm. As it happens vaccinations are not at all the type of things that pharmaceutical companies like. You take the treatment once in childbirth and you never have to take it again. They much prefer repeated treatments for chronic illnesses. CAM practitioners, on the other hand, don't have to put up with vaccines - all of their treatments are essentially infinite in scope - there's always some problem that requires ongoing treatment.

Incidentally, do you remember the last time that somebody died of smallpox? I'd say it's a pretty 'defeated' disease. You can also look at the incidence of Polio in the west for example - it's pretty much been defeated in 80% of the world while only 50 years ago it was a major killer and crippler of children. Similarly measles, rubella, mumps and all the rest of what used to be major childhood killers no longer kill anything like the same number of people that they used to. Saddly, however, the use of MMR has declined since the various made-up scare stories about its links to autism and it now appears possible that we could once again see major epidemics.

m cotton "The same fucking idiots in white coats who design nuclear bombs and genetically modified foods and every kind of insanity that the world is teetering on the edge of disaster from."

Nope. I don't think many doctors are nuclear physicists or food scientists in their spare time. Or in your world, is anybody who attempts to examine anything rationally part of some great big evil cabal? It must be a horrible place - all the rational people are involved in a humungeous conspiracy to destroy the earth!

m cotton "The most effective way of fighting disease - even according to Hugh Pennington (CEO BMA) is by adequate housing, sanitation, and nutrition - in other words with healthy bodies."

Yep and we know this unequivocally because a great many medical researchers have spent years showing us in excruciating detail that inequality is the greatest causal factor in health outcomes through huge population studies using the best standards of scientific methodologies.

m cotton "If the pharmas spent the same money on providing these three things to the millions of people who still do not have them, as they do on marketing their chemical coshes (which incindentally is only a tiny fraction of what they spend on researching their own brands of snake oil, such is their devotion to us all), death from disease would be vastly reduced."

If you're waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to start taking on global inequality, you'll be waiting a long time. You could say the same about any industry - arms, aeronautics, construction, electronics or whatever. It is an obvious logical fallacy to go on to claim that this invalidates their claims that, for example, aeorplanes fly, or that reinforced concrete is a strong building material. The fact that the electronics industry does not fix world inequality does not mean that the quantum physics with which they analyse semi-conductor transistors is wrong and that it should be replaced with stuff about shakras.

m cotton "Vaccination is the single greatest medical experiment being practised on successive generations - we do not yet know the full extent of the damage it is doing to our immune and other systems."

Yes we do. There have been large numbers of controlled trials which show, clearly, that the damage is negative. They don't do damage, they do prevent diseases. These studies allow me to know that they do no damage, what evidence supports your claim that they do damage?

m cotton "Mercury is used - to name just one lethal little aspect of the cocktail of poisons that we inject into the fragile systems of young babies and children - in the name of preventing disease."

Actually, mercury is no longer used as a preservative for most vaccines. There is no evidence that the trace levels of mercury that were present had any health affects whatsoever in any case.

by the digger Mon Dec 18, 2006 16:44

Its worth logging on to this site to read Chekov's articles alone.

Tremendous stuff.

by Charles B. Mon Dec 18, 2006 18:04

Well, well, well, that is quite the riposte indeed. As one who has not had their offspring vaccinated (and knowing parents of children who have had adverse reactions) I am aware of the fear that parents feel when considering this particular option. However, one should not write off the whole of medical science, as well as all those in 'white coats' ,some of whom, incidently, don't conduct scientific research, but carry away maniacs, lunatics, psychotics etc. (perhaps its those that MC is referring to...)
And being personally trained in the empirical sciences myself, I do take issue with the implication of Miriams that it is those who wear white coats who are responsible for every problem from the Bomb to GMA. It is attitudes such as these that have resulted in my shying away from anti-corporate initiatives. For those who prefer reason, knowledge and logic to higly emotionalised argument and perhaps a little knowledge, this attitude is simply annoying, disheartening and at the end of the day doesn't get anyone anywhere.
The last line of your most recent comment " all this gung ho, scientist backed lunacy" says it all. Its as if those of us who believe in science, and try to understand our environment through it, are all in it with the Companies, sheesh.
As for it all being 'chauvinistic', well thats a debate in itself innit. If only Darwin had been a lady...

by M Cotton Mon Dec 18, 2006 19:17

A perfect example of exactly what I was talking about.

You refer exclusively to the establishment approved frame of reference in order to justify, well, the establishment approved frame of reference itself. That's not evidence, that's just saying that what you believe is true because you believe it. Empirical research is not an exact sciene - not by a long shot - and it is easily made to serve favoured outcomes. In fact, that's what it does most of the time.

You must be the first pharmaceutical industry -supporting anarchist ever. Interesting. So, parents of autistic children are emotional and gullible. You know better than them, do you? They just live with their children every day of their lives but, hey, what would they know! You should have been a doctor - you'd fit in beautifully.

Thank God at least some doctors are willing to be original:

"Autism, Vaccines, and Immune reactions
Vijendra K. Singh, Ph.D.
Research Associate Professor of Neuroimmunology
Department of Biology, Center for Integrated Biosystems
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA

"To conclude, since everything changes with time, I firmly believe that it is time to re-evaluate the safety of vaccines and the manner in which we practice immunizations. Vaccines are well known to cause numerous adverse reactions in humans and no matter how rare they might be it is time to pay a closer attention to them. I don’t think the epidemiological studies will suffice the purpose but the laboratory-based experimental research is urgently needed. We need new policies simply because the existing policies are not in line with our modern knowledge of human immunology, virology, and genomics. This is clearly exemplified by our experimental approach involving laboratory techniques that did not exist 30-40 years ago when the vaccines were originally developed. Indeed, there is persuasive evidence to suggest that the MMR vaccine could potentially cause autism or a regressive form thereof in a significant number of children. At this juncture, I would also like to recommend a new policy of “Testing immunity before vaccination or immunization” that should help identify immunocompromised children who otherwise might react adversely to vaccines. The cost should not deter us from implementing this policy especially when the lives of hundreds and thousands of children and their families are concerned."

Link to full article: http://vacinfo.org/vijendra_singh.htm

The guy is merely saying: look lets be very careful here, we dont know yet what these vaccines may be doing and blanket immunisation is a crude and dangerous tool to use. So, Andrew Wakefield is not alone and the villification of him by the corporate backed press for daring to suggest the link between autism and MMR, will be exposed sooner or later. It's only a matter of time. Note too that the BMA have dropped their charge of professional misconduct against him. Why? Firstly, because that allegation was a crock of shit, and they know it - it served its purpose for gullible establishment friendly newspaper readers who need to feel secure - that the world is the right way up and they are able to go happily about their business without troubling their little heads about those reassuringly paternal 'empirical researchers'. Now that his career has been destroyed in the UK, the whole awkward matter can be quietly put to one side. But studies in Japan and Scandinavia and the US, among others, are throwing up all the same concerns. And for your information, Chekov, the link between autism and vaccination had long been pointed to by parents of children before any MD was willing to do any research into the issue.

The medical establishment is terrified the Wakefield thesis will emerge as deserving the respect it does: that administering multiple vaccines is overloading the immune systems of many children. WTF is so controversial about that? It would cost more to vaccinate, that's what! The UK would rather spend trillions bombing the lives out of children in Iraq.

And if the link is proven (which it already absolutely is to many parents the world over who have lived with its consequences) then what will be the cost in law suits from parents who will definitely want to sue now that a tangible concern has been raised but rubbished so determinedly by the very people who would be most liable if it were proven. Conflict of interest? Definitely.

I dont doubt that most medics go into their professions for the good reasons but whatever their motives it is a profession wholly underwritten by pharmaceutical companies - much the same way as most journos like to think of themselves as intrepid reporters of the truth when in fact almost all they do and say is restricted and controlled by by the likes of Tony O Reilly. Compare Andrew Wakefield to Frank Connolly - it's exactly the same. He took on a very powerful commercial lobby and paid the price.

Statistically, very few children die from measels - fewer than for many, many other diseases. Is it worth destroying the lives of huge numbers of people, causing them to have impaired intellectual functioning and all the social, personal and eoncomic cost to themselves, their families and their communities that accompanies that outcome? Generations of men (and women) are being horrifically affected by autism. We should not administer vaccinations that either exacerbate a pre-existing condition or trigger the onset of the syndrome. People fight diseases with optimally nourished healthy bodies and in fact, even in the disgustingly wealthy 'First World' most of us are actually badly deficient in many vital nutrients. We are functional but we are not nearly as healthy as we should be. Medicine is operating in a knowledge vacuum that is nothing short of a disgrace, given the number of people are dying of starvation or are unhealthy for want of proper, healthful food.

GMO, pharmas, anti organics - these are all the same industy - they do not want us interfering with them any more than the oil industry wants us to stop using environmentally deadly cars.

MMR is not adminsitered in a single jab - three separate doses are needed and if I had a fiver for every parent who has told me that her son's symptoms coincided with the third of these innoculations...But of course those are just hysterical women, emotional and gullible etc etc. And incidentally, mercury has not yet been removed from vaccines everywhere. A pilot test has been run in California which shows a reduction in the incidence of autism following its removal there...that would be the same mercury that we were assured over and over again would be harmless...

by Bored with Hatred Mon Dec 18, 2006 19:48

Thank God at least some doctors are willing to be original

Mmmm. Selectively finding one person or a minority of people that hold a dissenting viewpoint in an expert area doesn't prove that you're right. You can still find a few climate scientists that don't believe in global warming and some biologists that believe in the existence of yetis. If you were betting on right/wrong and had no data other than what the majority in a field believe then you'd be wise to put your money on what the majority believe.

But vaccines/MMR are all irrelevant to the central point that some people are defending here: that an exploitative charlatan should not be convicted for peddling wares that he claims will cure serious illnesses. It's surprising that anyone would defend that type of criminal. But then it's surprising that anyone would take homeopathy seriously.

by redjade Mon Dec 18, 2006 19:57

m cotton says' Statistically, very few children die from measels - fewer than for many, many other diseases.'

a quick google says...

March 10, 2005 — Deaths by measles have been cut almost in half over the last five years thanks in part to mass vaccination campaigns supported by the Measles Initiative. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund announced March 3 that deaths have fallen by 39 percent between 1999 and 2003 from 873,000 to an estimated 530,000.

In Africa, where the majority of measles deaths occur, the change was even greater, with a 46 percent reduction in measles deaths.

[....]

Launched in February 2001, the Measles Initiative is a long-term commitment to control measles deaths in Africa by vaccinating 200 million children and preventing 1.2 million deaths over five years.

Source: http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_332_4141,00.html

by C murray Mon Dec 18, 2006 20:41

I think the exploration of the various statistics to do with vacine is another thread.
The original piece was abourt a vitamin supplement.

Nice to see everyone so passionate coming up to christmas.

am wiggling me toes- very good for the circulation.

by M Cotton Tue Dec 19, 2006 10:08

Launched in February 2001, the Measles Initiative is a long-term commitment to control measles deaths in Africa by vaccinating 200 million children and preventing 1.2 million deaths over five years.

The reason the incidence of death from measels in Africa is so high is because of the poor state of health and malnourishment of many children - their bodies do not cope with a disease which if they were optimally fed and nourished they would be able to fight naturally themselves in the vast majority of cases. They would also strengthen their own immunity and acquire the other knock on benefits that can only be had from a naturally matured immune system. Our bodies are naturally capable of this without any interventions from the pharmaceutical 'empirical researchers'. But no, instead we muck around with the health of people with crude, one size fits all mass immunisation - the better to fill the bank accounts of the wealthy pharma owners. At the same time we refuse to share the world's food resources equally so as to prevent the shameful ill health and misery that millions of people live and die with. And again, this is to preserve the profit margins of 'first world' food producers. Insanity on insanity.

In fact, vitamin supplements have a vital role to play in combatting exactly these sorts of situations. A mass programme of supplementation of high quality vitamins and minerals would do far, far more to prevent deaths and ill health in many countries. In conjuction with a healthy diet of organic food with no refined flours, sugars, colourings and additives, the world's health problems would be drastically reduced. Add in good sanitation, proper housing and a stress minimised lifestyle (i.e one not devoted every daylight hour to making profits for pharmaceuticals, arms manufacterers etc etc) and the medical researchers which some folk are so in awe of, would be able to take a long vacation in which to come to terms with the abject failure of their approach to health.

by M Cotton Tue Dec 19, 2006 10:56

From 'What Doctors Don't Tell You', Lynne McTaggart, Thorsons, 1996

"The zeal behind the recent measles campaign was founded on the belief that measles can be a life-threatening condition, and it seems to be one that is getting more dangerous by the year. When the Department of Health [UK] ran its last major vaccine drive in 1989, Dr Norman Begg, consultant epidemiologist of the Public Health Laboratory Service, cited the then-official statistics that one in 5,000 children contracting measles will develop acute encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, and one in 5,000 of thos will develop SSPE (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), an almost inevitably fatal progressive disease which causes hardening of the brain.

Five years later, when one columnist encouraged parents to have their children re-vaccinated in the countrywide measles campaign, the percentage of measles victims who might go on to dervelop encephalitis had shrunk to one in every 500. One in 10 of these would die and one in four would suffer permanent brain damage, the columnist maintained. As the campaign intensified, other newspapers had magnified the danger even further. By November it seemed the one out of every 17 cases of measles would turn into a case of encephalitis.

But the report of the journal geared specifically for the study of the fatal illness being worried over, the SSPE Registry, concluded that the measles-induced form of this disease is ‘very rare’, occurring in 1 per million cases. [Journal of American Medical Association, 1972 ; 220: 959-62] This rare disease also doesn’t appear to be so random. A study of people with SSPE concluded that environmental factors other than measles, such as serious head injuries or exposure to certain animals, played an important part in the onset of the disease.
[American Journal of Epidemiology, 1980; iii(4): 415-24]

Measles can be a killer, but it doesn’t strike as randomly as medicine would have us believe. In the US in the 1990, at the height of a measles epidemic when 27,000 cases were reported, 89 died. But many deaths occurred among children of low-income families, where poor nutrition played a part, as did failure to treat complications. In Africa, where children are markedly deficient in vitamin A, measles does kill. However, as study after study demonstrates, even third-world children with adequate stores of vitamin A or those given vitamin A supplements are overwhelming likely to survive.
[The Lancet 1986; i ; 1169-73
British Medical Journal, 1932; 2 : 708-11, as reported in Townsend Letter for Doctors, January 1996:29
New England Journal of Medicine, 1990; 323: 160-4]"

by Pushkin Tue Dec 19, 2006 16:58

Natural Remedies No Better Than Placebos For Relieving Menopause

Main Category: Women's Health / OBGYN News
Article Date: 19 Dec 2006 - 4:00 PST

A new research study shows that natural remedies based on a number of popular herbal and food ingredients (including black cohosh) are no more effective than a placebo at relieving unpleasant symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes and night sweats. It confirms that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) remains a significantly effective treatment.

by Pushkin Tue Dec 19, 2006 17:05

You can access the full text of the study here:

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/145/12/869

by Ray McInerney - Global Country of World Peace Tue Dec 19, 2006 17:18 raymond.mcinerney at ul dot ie Limerick 00353860638611

Treatments used in naturopathic practice motivated our choice of interventions. The whole-person approach used by most naturopathic physicians differs significantly from the treatments selected for our study, and this might have affected response to therapy. Time spent with the patient on counseling about diet, exercise, and emotional issues related to menopause; dose revisions; and additional supplements are important aspects of the naturopathic strategy for managing menopausal symptoms. We could not replicate this approach.

by M Cotton Tue Dec 19, 2006 18:03

"Evidence is accumulating that the high incidence of cancer of the breast and ovaries in women, and of the prostate and testes in men, may be related to disturbed hormoe signals in the body. All of these body tissues are sensitive to hormones and hormone-disrupting chemicals, and excess oestrogen, a hormone that stimulates cell growth, may play ke role in these cancers.

Research shows that if oestrogen levels are increased, the proliferation rate of breast cells increases by over 200 per cent, more than twice the normal rate. On the other hand, if progesterone is given and the level in breast tissue is raised to normal levels, the rate of cell multiplication falls to 15 percent of that in untreated women. This study undertaken on healthy, premenopausal women, shows that oestrogen will promote the proliferation of breast cancers, while progesterone is protective. This may explain why the risk of breast cancer doubles for women who take oestrogen HRT for five or more years and why the risk of ovarian cancer is 72 per cent higher in women given oestrogen HRT, according to a 1995 study by the Emery University School of Public Health,which followed 240,000 women over eight years.

However, it wasnt until the 'million women study', published in the British Medical Journal in 2002, confirmed a doubling of breast cancer risk that HRT was effectively banned for the treatment of osteoporosis. This study, involving 1,084,110 women in Britain, confirmed that the risk of invasive breast canccer among HRT users goes up by 66% and that the risk of death goes up by 22%. The biggest risk by far was seen in women on combined oestrogen/progestin HRT preparations. In thse women the incidence of breast cancer doubled compared with a 30% increase among those on estrogen-only HRT, which generally only to women who have had a hysterectomy since oestrogen given on its own increases the risk of womb cancer. The researchers estimate that in Britain alone, the use of HRT by women aged fifty to sixty four has resulted in an estimated 20,000 cases of breast cancer in the last decade alone."

Patrick Holford, 'Conquering Cancer', Optimum Nutrition Bible.

Black Cohosh

"Most promising are the results with a herb called Black Cohosh which helps hot flushes, sweating, insomnia and anxiety. Also encouraging is new research that shows that black cohosh doesnt hae a downside - it doesnt increase cancer risk and it isnt anti-oestrogenic. The usual recommended daily amount is 50mg, although much larger amounts, up to 500mg are more effective. It also helps raise serotonin, relieving depression."

Dong Quai

The other 'hot' herb for hot flushes is dong quai, botanically called Angelical sinensis. One placebo controlled experiment giving dong quai plus camomile to fifty-five post menopausal women who complained of hot flushes and refused hormonal therapy found that they experienced a big reduction, of almost 80 per cent, in hot flushes. These results became apparent after one month."

by Chekov - anti-quack international Wed Dec 20, 2006 14:10

This has all rather drifted away from the point of the article. Still, to answer the latest barbs.

m cotton "You refer exclusively to the establishment approved frame of reference in order to justify, well, the establishment approved frame of reference itself."

Erm, I used evidence based argument to justify evidence based approaches. What should I use, crystal balls, shakras, magic water, appeals to random emotive statements?

Okay, if it keeps you happy, my aura tells me that evidence based approaches are best. It's glowing bright orange at the moment, which is good. What's more, would somebody please think of the children?

m cotton "That's not evidence, that's just saying that what you believe is true because you believe it. Empirical research is not an exact sciene - not by a long shot - and it is easily made to serve favoured outcomes. In fact, that's what it does most of the time."

So, in light of this damning critique of evidence based research, what does evidence-free research have to offer?

m cotton "You must be the first pharmaceutical industry -supporting anarchist ever."

Oooh. That's obviously dishonest, playing the player rather than the ball and applying guilt by vague association despite the fact that I have written nothing but criticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Tell me, does the fact that I think quantum physics is borne out by the evidence mean that I support microsoft? I'm also vaguely of the opinion that modern megallurgical techniques are pretty darn good - supporter of the arms industry?

m cotton "So, parents of autistic children are emotional and gullible. You know better than them, do you?"

Oooh again. That's an attempt to dishonestly impute a condescending opinion to me that I didn't express and wouldn't express. Parents of autistic children think all sorts of stuff and I wouldn't dare generalise about them or my comparative knowledge in comparison to them. I'm sure that some of them are eminent epidemiologists who would wipe the floor with me, for example.

m cotton "they just live with their children every day of their lives but, hey, what would they know!"

Oooh once again. That's a simple emotive appeal to hardship and personal experience in a domain where it's just completely ridiculous. I doubt anybody really thinks that living with somebody who suffers from an ailment makes one qualified to identify the bio-chemical cause of that ailment. Personally, if I had cancer I'd put a whole lot more faith in the opinions of an oncologist than the opinions of whoever happened to live with me.

m cotton "You should have been a doctor - you'd fit in beautifully."

I don't know what I've done to deserve the compliment, but I'm several long, hard years of study shy of being a medical doctor and I think you're rather giving me too much credit. I'm only applying some basic critical, rational thinking.

m cotton "Thank God at least some doctors are willing to be original: snipped abstract"

Woah now. I thought you were arguing against all this gung-ho scientist backed lunacy and medical science. Now you're apparently using this published piece of medical science to back up your argument. How can that be? You either are against "medical science" or you're for it. You can't just pick the tiny fraction which superficially appears to agree with your pre-formed conclusions and reject the rest. That's not how it works. Any appraisal of the literature will reveal very, very clearly indeed that medical science says there is no link between vaccines and autism.

The paper that you quote is several years old and even when it was published, it stood out as highly conjectural and based upon fairly slender indications and said little more than "we should look into the potential". Since it was published, much of the re-appraisal work that it recommends has been done and, guess what, it has all refuted the speculative suggestions in the paper, every single bit of it. This has included an absolutely enormous population study in Japan which has delivered absolutely rock-solid evidence against the link between MMR and autism [1]. I would also suggest that the young researcher in question displays a rather poor understanding of the statistical methods used in epidemiology - it may be a blunt instrument, but when you want to measure the effects of immunisation or other public health measures on broad populations, that's exactly what you need. You are interested in the cost-benefit tradeoff across the whole population, not individual cases.

If you allow that medical science is a useful source of evidence for your arguments, you would not even bother considering the type of work that you quote - it is an attempt to show a correlation between autism and measles anti-bodies using a tiny sample size. It doesn't even attempt to show any direct correlation between vaccination and autism, never mind a causation. Rather than looking at this sort of stuff, you'd actually look at the studies which do look at the actual correlation you're interested in. You'd start with meta-analyses, then move onto any randomized controlled trials, then other large trials, then you'd look at cohort studies and so on. With each of these papers you'd have to consider various things - sample sizes, selection biases, the reputation of the journal in which it was published and so on. It would only be if you found that the research revealed persistently significant and unexplained correlations that you'd even bother to look at the mechanism and would start to look at work like the paper you have quoted.

However, having looked into the research myself, I can tell you that anybody who performed such a survey would have no choice but to conclude that there is no evidence of any link at all between autism and MMR. Picking a single piece of dated research which speculates about hypothetical potentials as an aside is just a crazy way to use the evidence. It would be more rational to just reject the whole lot and to put your faith in crystals or prayer or something similar.

m cotton "So, Andrew Wakefield is not alone and the villification of him by the corporate backed press for daring to suggest the link between autism and MMR, will be exposed sooner or later. It's only a matter of time. Note too that the BMA have dropped their charge of professional misconduct against him. Why? Firstly, because that allegation was a crock of shit, and they know it - it served its purpose for gullible establishment friendly newspaper readers who need to feel secure - that the world is the right way up and they are able to go happily about their business without troubling their little heads about those reassuringly paternal 'empirical researchers'. Now that his career has been destroyed in the UK, the whole awkward matter can be quietly put to one side."

Okay, another medical scientist that you appear to believe - that brings the sum total to two. You believe these two are honest and the other couple of hundred thousand are bogus, based on...the fact that they agree with your pre-formed conclusions. Neat that. The amazing thing in this case is that you have already pointed out the well known fact that medical research can be compromised by money and can be distorted so that the data fits the desired conclusions. Yet, in the entire field of medical science, one of the only two researchers who you seem to support has been very, very clearly shown to have hidden the fact that his research was financed by lawyers who were taking a case trying to prove a link between MMR and autism, a fact that was hidden both from his co-researchers and the publications. In addition he had taken out a patent on an alternative measles vaccine which he was actively trying to replace MMR with - something that he would have benefited financially from in a massive way [2]. In fact 12 of the 13 authors of the original paper have since withdrawn their names from it and it has now emerged that the samples used were actually contaminated.

So, let's get this straight. Although you reject "empirical evidence" as it is prone to manipulation and conflicts of interest, you accept Wakefield's work although it is one of the few rare cases where it has been unequivocally demonstrated that the work was manipulated and did have a tremendously serious and undiscolosed conflict of interest. I'm not sure if you're methodology of selecting evidence really stands up here, if you see what I mean.

m cotton "But studies in Japan and Scandinavia and the US, among others, are throwing up all the same concerns"

Err, not unless you can interpret the data better than the researchers can. They have arrived at the exact opposite conclusion [1]

m cotton "The UK would rather spend trillions bombing the lives out of children in Iraq."

As I pointed out above, these sorts of comparisons are nothing more than a sleight of hand and are a misleading piece of rhetoric. We can consider the question of whether there is any link between vaccines and medical problems in isolation.

m cotton "And if the link is proven (which it already absolutely is to many parents the world over who have lived with its consequences) then what will be the cost in law suits from parents who will definitely want to sue now that a tangible concern has been raised but rubbished so determinedly by the very people who would be most liable if it were proven. Conflict of interest? Definitely."

Gawd. The day that somebody succeeds in suing a medical researcher (as against a pharmaceutical company) for being mistaken in their assessment of the evidence, is the day that science dies. That doesn't happen, it won't happen, but if it did happen, it would just be disasterous for all of science - it is an area where researchers are allowed to express their opinions on the evidence without having to worry about litigation.

m cotton "it is a profession wholly underwritten by pharmaceutical companies - much the same way as most journos like to think of themselves as intrepid reporters of the truth when in fact almost all they do and say is restricted and controlled by by the likes of Tony O Reilly."

That's just not true. Not even nearly true. I mean where do you get this stuff? The big majority of doctors are employed by the state. Almost none are employed by pharmaceutical companies. Journalists, on the other hand, are directly employed by Tony O'Reilly. If you can't see the difference, you just don't want to. Many doctors won't even let pharmaceutical reps in the door, never mind being controlled by them. Of course it's not perfect, there are all sorts of sneaky ways that pharmaceutical companies attempt (with some success) to influence prescribing policies of doctors, but that's a million miles away from the relationship between Tony O'Reilly and his employed lackies.

m cotton "Compare Andrew Wakefield to Frank Connolly - it's exactly the same. He took on a very powerful commercial lobby and paid the price."

My goodness. You appropriate another completely unrelated situation to back up your argument - we've had Shell To Sea, Tony O'Reilly and now Frank Connolly. It's not "exactly the same" at all. In fact there is nothing at all meaningful in common that I can think of.

m cotton "Is it worth destroying the lives of huge numbers of people, causing them to have impaired intellectual functioning and all the social, personal and eoncomic cost to themselves, their families and their communities that accompanies that outcome? Generations of men (and women) are being horrifically affected by autism. We should not administer vaccinations that either exacerbate a pre-existing condition or trigger the onset of the syndrome."

Of course we shouldn't. But we're not. If we were, such things would show up in studies. They don't except in anecdotes.

m cotton "if I had a fiver for every parent who has told me that her son's symptoms coincided with the third of these innoculations."

The plural of anecdote is not "data" and they are still useless in terms of evidence. But, in any case, it's hardly surprising that people should think such things. The fact is that the symptoms of autism first become apparent at around the same time that MMR is administered. Since lots of people put about all sorts of scare stories about links, and people have a hard-wired propensity to impute causation to things, you would expect lots of people to come to that conclusion. Thank goodness we have scientific ways of checking them so, otherwise we'd have lots of infectious disease epidemics on top of the autism.

m cotton "From 'What Doctors Don't Tell You', Lynne McTaggart, Thorsons, 1996"

What doctors don't tell you, but nutters do - I'm sure that's a long book. Lynne McTaggart stands out from the anti-vaccine quackery community for managing to claim that a non-existant anti-bird flu vaccine had killed 8 people in Japan.

""In a radical move, even for the vaccine fear-mongering community, this time she actually has people dying from a vaccine that doesn't exist: "Indeed, the flu shots are worse than useless. Japan has already reported that eight people have died - not from the virus, but from the avian flu jab itself." Lordy. Good luck jabbing a Tamiflu capsule into your arm." [3] (Tamiflu is a pill that you take when you have flu!)

Actually, not only is she an out and out fabricator, but even from the little passage quoted above, we can see that she is completely innumerate too.

m cotton quoting Lynne McQuack ""Dr Norman Begg, consultant epidemiologist of the Public Health Laboratory Service, cited the then-official statistics that one in 5,000 children contracting measles will develop acute encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, and one in 5,000 of thos will develop SSPE"
...

But the report of the journal geared specifically for the study of the fatal illness being worried over, the SSPE Registry, concluded that the measles-induced form of this disease is ‘very rare’, occurring in 1 per million cases."

Now, 1 in 5,000 peopel with measles get encephalitis and 1 in 5,000 of those will develop SSPE. By simple multiplication you get one in 25 million who get SSPE from measles. The figure of 1 per million is actually 25 times less rare than the supposed 'scaremongering' figure above. Amazing that somebody who is such a moron has the cheek to actually flog pretend-science books! Even more amazing that anybody would choose to believe such an obvious idiot.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4311613.stm
[2] http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,1712....html

by Bill Gates Wed Dec 20, 2006 14:36

Brilliant refuting of nonsensical argument from somebody who cannot distinguish faith from reason.

This exchange has made my day but two things.

1. Where is the connection between Quantum Mechanics and Microsoft software? I'm not saying there isn't one. After all, it would explain the probability of MS software messing up factor! But I'm more than interested in this new curious conspiracy!

and

2. Be wary of arguing with a fool. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!

by Chekov Wed Dec 20, 2006 15:06

"Where is the connection between Quantum Mechanics and Microsoft software? I'm not saying there isn't one. After all, it would explain the probability of MS software messing up factor! But I'm more than interested in this new curious conspiracy!"

Well microsoft software runs on circuits made of semi-conductor transistors and semi-conductor transistors depend upon quantum effects to function.

Either that or the microsoft "uncertainty principle" - it is impossible to ensure that a piece of software will both run and do what it is supposed to do at the same time. Or maybe it's the potential for word documents to exist in a transposition of states - simultaneously deleted and not-deleted, and it's only through observation that they collapse into one state or the other. Or something like that.

by Bored with Unfairness Wed Dec 20, 2006 16:00

Here's another one: the concern about supposed rising levels of autism (which some have sought to correlate with thimerosal) is a result of a media campaign by wealthy US parents and there's no conclusive evidence to show that there is anything other than a rise in diagnosis. The epdiemic crisis thesis was most prominently championed by privileged and wealthy underdog Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone and The New York Times. The proponents of the thesis reject the findings of the Institute of Medicine (a broadly convened peer research group in the USA similar to the BMA in the UK) and allege that the IOM, the Centres for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration are all colluding in suppressing the actual rise in autism and its link to government vaccination programs.

There's an interesting recent paper by the president of the American Psychological Association which claims that there are three good reasons to disbelieve that there's even any "rise" to "correlate" with anything.

Gernsbacher, Morton A., Michelle Dawson, H. Hill Goldsmith. "Three Reasons Not to Believe in an Autism Epidemic", Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(2): 55
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0963...334.x

It argues that the apparent rise is a result of broadened diagnostic criteria, a misunderstanding of one particular Californian study (which has received a huge amount of coverage due to the fact that the parents of the diagnosed children tended to be wealthier tech-workers with media access and leisure for lobbying), and a misunderstanding of the new "child count" data collected by the 1991 Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act. To round off the authors ask what message is being sent to autistic adults and children when a catastrophic, emotive mispresentation is made by calling the recognition of the condition an "epidemic".

In short, it can be argued that false epidemics elicit false causes, e,g the vaccine argument, and that the fear mongering about "epidemics" and vaccines is untrue and a disservice to everyone expect those riding the cause to their own glory.

As they're sure to be accused of being biased it's worth pointing out that one of the authors is the mother of an autistic child, and another is autistic herself.

by M Cotton Wed Dec 20, 2006 20:48

Sicne you are so liberal yourself with the name calling and determined the tone of this exchange by throwing around words like 'rubbish' at people from the outset, I feel justified in responding in kind. Accordingly, your latest epistle is, again, plodding, laborious and woefully ill-informed. I'm not optimistic that anything can penetrate the dense fog that obscures your thinking on this issue, but, as a favour to you Chekov, I'll see what I can do to help. And you needn't feel obliged in any way. Think of it as a Christmas present from me to you.

Chekov:
m cotton "You refer exclusively to the establishment approved frame of reference in order to justify, well, the establishment approved frame of reference itself."

Erm, I used evidence based argument to justify evidence based approaches. What should I use, crystal balls, shakras, magic water, appeals to random emotive statements?

MC: Concentrate hard now Chekov, OK? Nobody has said hard evidence is unimportant. What I have said is that when commercial entities like Hofman La Roche, Pfizer or whoever take it upon themselves to find a cure for arthritis, for example, they do not do so in order to relieve the pain and suffering of arhtritis sufferers. They do so in order to make a profit, first and foremost. The pain relief is a secondary consideration as is clearly evidenced by the huge discrepancy between investment in actual research and in marketing and promoting their products. They are not interested in merely recouping their investment. There is a clearcut conflict of interest in this situation and indeed a lot of empirically based studies are defined so as to prove a desired outcome. 'Evidence' that is provided by researchers who are employed and/or sponsored by these same companies is not independent evidence of the standard to which you are refering and indeed the history of medicine is littered with law suits, product recalls and admissions of shoddy research, hasty approvals, tampered evidence and doctored trials. Not to mention all the death and ill health caused by bad medicine - all of which people like you were rushing to defend before the truth had to be acknowledged. All the same language was used - people's fears were groundless, they were talking 'rubbish', they were 'scaremongering', 'emotional', 'irrational' etc. Beginning to feel silly yet? You should be.


Chekov:
Okay, if it keeps you happy, my aura tells me that evidence based approaches are best. It's glowing bright orange at the moment, which is good. What's more, would somebody please think of the children?

????? Well, yes Chekov, exactly!!!! Im thinking of my three autistic children, just for starters. I have no idea what your 'aura' bullshit refers to - certainly nothing to do with anything Ive said. Do stop being so adolescent.

Chekov:

m cotton "You must be the first pharmaceutical industry -supporting anarchist ever."

Oooh. That's obviously dishonest, playing the player rather than the ball and applying guilt by vague association despite the fact that I have written nothing but criticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Tell me, does the fact that I think quantum physics is borne out by the evidence mean that I support microsoft? I'm also vaguely of the opinion that modern megallurgical techniques are pretty darn good - supporter of the arms industry?

Pathetic! I'm pointing out a glaring inconsistency between your arguments here and your avowed philosophy. The fact is Ive found you out in a display of good old fashioned bourgeois chauvinism and you dont like it one little bit. You are now claiming you are as critical of the pharmaceutical industry as anyone else and yet look at the cliched sarcasm and scorn that you pour on people whose secpticism of the pharmas you claim to share. 'Lynne McQuack' (ball playing or player playing?) has been a scourge of the pharmas and the arrogance and complacency of medical science. And yet look at how gleefully you join in with the kicking of her. She has done far far more research into all of this than you have, for instance. She backs up all of her claims with evidence. But you take your lead from all that you read in the mainstream media and consider yourself a jolly clever and superior chap for doing so. You cant have it both ways. Alternative medicine is no more infallible than traditional western medicine. The issue is that western medicine is wholly unwilling to concede its own fallibility unless or until people start dying or suffering from serious ill health in large numbers because of its treatments . It refuses to concede that there are other approaches or to acknowledge the inherent weaknesses and limitations of its own approach. And even that wouldnt be so bad if it were not for the fact that it is almost wholly underwritten by the same pharmaceutical industry about which you claim to be as sceptical as anyone else. Western medical science reflects all of these characterisitics and is not, therefore, the holy grail of empirical research that you evidently believe it to be.

It focuses on specific problems in isolation from one another. It does virtually no research, for example on the effect on people of combinations of medicines and has no way of knowing in any case what any one person is likely to be prescribed in combination by any one doctor. Factor in the significant differences of health between one person and another and the 'evidence' that a pill can safely do x or y in exactly the same way in every case is not just dangerous - its bonkers. And we are not just talking about whether or not people die - often people are cured of one thing but left with other problems that they did not have in the first place. Then they get prescribed other pills and so on and so on. Elderly people and children are especially vulnerable to this sort of medical treatment.

Chekov:

m cotton "So, parents of autistic children are emotional and gullible. You know better than them, do you?"

Oooh again. That's an attempt to dishonestly impute a condescending opinion to me that I didn't express and wouldn't express. Parents of autistic children think all sorts of stuff and I wouldn't dare generalise about them or my comparative knowledge in comparison to them. I'm sure that some of them are eminent epidemiologists who would wipe the floor with me, for example.

So what the hell is this below if not 'condescending opinion' based on total ignorance of the realities about which you clearly feel no humility whatsoever in offering up your sneers:

Oooh once again. That's a simple emotive appeal to hardship and personal experience in a domain where it's just completely ridiculous. I doubt anybody really thinks that living with somebody who suffers from an ailment makes one qualified to identify the bio-chemical cause of that ailment.

Would that include the thousands of people who have witnessed their children lapsing into convulsions and other illnesses immediately after being vaccinated? You know better than them, of course. There is your horrific condescencion, righ there Chekov. You cheerfully parrott the exact same paternalistic and dismissive response that so many people have had from the medical and pharmaceutical establishment.

And whiile we are at it, here are a few other gems:

“I am fully aware that people impute causation to all sorts of things and are particularly prone to do so when they have strong emotional motivations to do so.”

And again:

“The only reason that the dangers of MMR gained any type of presence in the public consciousness is that papers like the Daily Mail ran many, many false and scaremongering stories about it, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence for any adverse affects. You can choose to get carried away with such emotive rubbish if you want, it just means that you run around being anxious about all sorts of stupid stuff without any good reason - a bad choice if you ask me.”

From your posiiton of near total ignorance of the reality, you can arrogantly declaim all of that despite the insult and offence it represents to so many people. Not even the medical establishment itself would go this far! It has openly acknowledged (it was forced to) that MMR does indeed cause a lot of problems for a lot of children. Not all parents of children with autism are worried about MMR and not all think it is the cause of their children's conditions but for those who have witnessed appalling reactions to the vaccination they could do without snide little commentators like you.

Personally, if I had cancer I'd put a whole lot more faith in the opinions of an oncologist than the opinions of whoever happened to live with me.

That's just facile. Parents dont just happen to live with their children. They care for their health every day of their lives. They have a legal duty to do it responsibly and are necessarily very close to everything that is done to their children. They also have to pick up the pieces when it goes wrong because the medical profession is sure as hell not there for them when that happens. In fact, it devotes itself exclusively, in those circumstances, to denying culpability of any kind.

Chekov:

m cotton "Thank God at least some doctors are willing to be original: snipped abstract"

Woah now. I thought you were arguing against all this gung-ho scientist backed lunacy and medical science. Now you're apparently using this published piece of medical science to back up your argument. How can that be? You either are against "medical science" or you're for it. You can't just pick the tiny fraction which superficially appears to agree with your pre-formed conclusions and reject the rest. That's not how it works. Any appraisal of the literature will reveal very, very clearly indeed that medical science says there is no link between vaccines and autism...

[snip...long diatribe which can be read above and in which Chekov thinks he has come up with damning proofs and rationales agains the contention that MMR is not safe and other points that trouble him.]

Now this is all where you truly reveal both your ignorance of the facts and your embarrassing gullibility about research. Nobody has ever proved that MMR is safe. What the medical establishment have done is to claim that there is no evidence that it is NOT safe. In other words they will not, cannot, say that MMR is safe. Not only that, but one MMR jab introduced in the UK had to be withdrawn because it was causing viral meningitis. And that was said to be perfectly safe beforehand too, for all the same reasons and with all the same pooh poohing of worries about it that preceded its introduction as you are so arrogantly fond of resorting to here.

I rely primarily on the evidence of thousands of parents whose children have suffered immediate, debilitating physical and mental health problems as a consequence of having been vaccinated with MMR. I can point to over 100 studies that support the presence of a link. I can also tell you that the fundamental difference between those that show a link and those that do not, is that the former are mainly clinical studies i.e. they rely on evidence from children actually affected while the ones which say there is no evidence MMR is not safe, do not. I can tell you also that the official rejection of the link between MMR and autism has never, ever sought to ask why the affected children have acquired autism. All they focus on is the question whether the vaccines are safe. These are two fundamentally different questions and it is no coincidence that the medical establishment has avoided looking at the former. The UK and US governments have repeatedly refused to look at growing evidence of specific risk factors and despite repeated calls for them to do so - dismissing them all out of hand. With reagrd to the safety of MMR and other vaccines, a 2006 study has this to say:

“The safety trials of MMR were undoubtedly very poor. That is an established fact. The UK trials were recently described by a former senior Department of Health insider as ‘hopeless – a mess’. For the thimerosal issue, the pcture is even more stark. The product appears to have had no proper safety trials at all since its introduction about 75 years ago, and its use also appears to have lacked even the most baic appropriate back-checks on safety.”

This sums up the miserable failure of the government and medical establishment approach:

Much of the debate within the medical community appears to have been based around the simplistic assumption that, for example, if MMR caused autism, there should consequently be matching graphs showing the uptake of MMR and the uptake autism. For example, in Spring 2005, Dr William Barbaresi of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, commented that children had been given MMR for almost twenty years before there was a marked increase in US autism. The possibility that children had, for example, been damaged in gradually-increasing numbers by the introduction of MMR and then the later acceleration of the vaccination schedule using increased total burdens of thimerosal for each child, in combination, producing a delayed-action increase in autism numbers, does not seem to occur to the medical erstablishment.

It is rather like road accidents. Accidents are caused by driver behaviour, vehicle design, vehicle speeds, road design, road condition, weather and other factors, in combination. You do not simplistically expect to find a precise historic straight-line linear relationship over decades between (say) ‘numbers of drivers’ and ‘numbers of deaths’. Life is much more complex than that.

The children that have been damaged have had their lives ruined. They were previously completely healthy. They now have seventy or eighty years of mental handicap ahead.

The same report says:

“The safety trials of MMR were undoubtedly very poor. That is an established fact. The UK trials were recently described by a former senior Department of Health insider as ‘hopeless – a mess’. For the thimerosal issue, the pcture is even more stark. The product appears to have had no proper safety trials at all since its introduction about 75 years ago, and its use also appears to have lacked even the most baic appropriate back-checks on safety.”

“It is now believed that a ‘house of cards’ has thus been constructed by the UK Department of Health, the US Government health system and by other authorities and commentators in the medical establishment over the past eight or nine years, with repeated assurances being given to the public, but with these being based upon a lop-sided, highly partisan and culpably selective gathering and interpretation of the available evidence.”

That the medical establishment is vehement in its opposition to this conviction is not in doubt. It defines the parameters within which the issue may be investigated and does not by any estimation of what would be needed include all of the factors that may contribute. Something is going badly wrong with these vaccinations. You merely reiterate the same old crap about Wakefield that The Times and others have parrotted on behalf of the medical establishment. As I said before, the GMC has dropped its case against Wakefield's alleged misconduct - it hadnt a leg to stand on. The facts simply do not support the allegations that you are repeating here about him. You also repeat the distortions about what the funding he had was actually for and what it was connected to.

Chekov

m cotton "And if the link is proven (which it already absolutely is to many parents the world over who have lived with its consequences) then what will be the cost in law suits from parents who will definitely want to sue now that a tangible concern has been raised but rubbished so determinedly by the very people who would be most liable if it were proven. Conflict of interest? Definitely."

Gawd. The day that somebody succeeds in suing a medical researcher (as against a pharmaceutical company) for being mistaken in their assessment of the evidence, is the day that science dies. That doesn't happen, it won't happen, but if it did happen, it would just be disasterous for all of science - it is an area where researchers are allowed to express their opinions on the evidence without having to worry about litigation.

The law suits, if they happen, will be brought against the legal entities who are deemed to be responsible - pharmaceutical comanies, I imagine. Science can relax. And so should you.

Chekov

m cotton "it is a profession wholly underwritten by pharmaceutical companies - much the same way as most journos like to think of themselves as intrepid reporters of the truth when in fact almost all they do and say is restricted and controlled by by the likes of Tony O Reilly."

That's just not true. Not even nearly true. I mean where do you get this stuff? The big majority of doctors are employed by the state. Almost none are employed by pharmaceutical companies.

Christ. The medicines on which they rely are exclusively produced by commercial pharmaceutical companies. There isnt a doctor in the land who isnt routinely visited by pharma sales reps, who isnt routinely invited to pharma backed (frequently extremely lavish) conferences and junkets and who doesnt get most of his/her information about the safety of the drugs they prescribe from the same source. Profesional gatherings and research are massively funded by the pharmas to an extent that makes state funding virtually insignificant. Medical facilities and laboratories are funded by pharmas. Many university medical facilities are funded by pharmas. Professorial chairs are funded by pharmas. Almost the whole point of doctors is that they should prescribe the products of pharmaceutical companies. To do so they need to believe in them and the medical profession has bent itself to promoting and upholding its faith in pharmas. Need I really go on.....?

by redjade Wed Dec 20, 2006 21:25

M Cotton: 'name calling and determined the tone of this exchange by throwing around words like 'rubbish' at people from the outset'

M Cotton then goes on to say of Chekov....

'penetrate the dense fog that obscures your thinking'

'silly'

'adolescent'

'pathetic'

'bourgeois chauvinis(t)

'You cheerfully parrot....'

and

'snide little commentators like you'

-- -- --

Sidenote: I have sent this post to a number of friends of mine that wouldn't normally read indymedia.ie and wouldn't be much interested in autism or MMR either, but would be interested in the use of rhetoric and of logical fallacies, and so on.

This thread is a fascinating study :-)

by Amazed Wed Dec 20, 2006 21:27

Now this is all where you truly reveal both your ignorance of the facts and your embarrassing gullibility about research. Nobody has ever proved that MMR is safe. What the medical establishment have done is to claim that there is no evidence that it is NOT safe.

And this is simultaneously a revelation of ignorance about how science works (nothing is ever 100% "proven" in science, it can't be, all that anyone can conclude is that a null hypothesis is rejected or accepted, within a certain confidence interval), and a statement of a desire for god-like certainty.

You're looking for absolute truth and you can't get it in this world. All you can get is reasonable certainty: hundreds of thousands of people have taken the vaccine and allowing for random chance it's not possible to say that it causes anything negative within reasonable confidence limits.

You won't find anything in the world anywhere which is safe according to your ludicrous standards. If the medical establishment had come out and said that they could prove that anything was safe, that would be the day I would start being very suspicious.

However, don't mind this, just keeping talking yourself into believing that you're right.

by PigsWillFly Wed Dec 20, 2006 21:35

so for the record: autism may not be caused by MMR, but MMR iws definitelt y
contributory it erodes, in huge doses the natural anti toxic body defences living
in the intestines. people may buy that crap

If I understand your post correctly this is something to do with cunts, crap and globalisation? And there's been a medical breakthrough which shows that MMR erodes the intestines? And you're concerned about medical care for the deceased? You do live in a interesting world.

Bottom line is that a criminal made claims that he could cure people if they took the supplements he sold them. He was found to be lying according to any half-sane analysis and he's been stopped. That's a great thing. Medicine is difficult and complicated enough to get right without allowing people to make misleading claims that they profit of off.

by M Cotton Thu Dec 21, 2006 13:04

Regular readers of Indymedia will by now be tediously familiar with your obsessive statements of contempt , Redjade. Quite what it is that has got you so riled is a mystery to me and at this stage Im not actually concerned to know. But there is something decidedly worrying about the lengths to which you are prepared to go: drawing up missives and emailing them around your friends? Should I be flattered? Should I get advice about this conduct? Should I be worried? Not so long ago I had a particularly nasty and anonymous email from someone with a remarkably similar preoccupation.

Perhaps, also, you would like to go back to the start of this thread and have a good look at how Chekov came riding into battle here:

'charlatan' 'snake oil salesman' 'a load of absolute bollox'

'typically pathetic response from chris'

'typically selfish and fantastically egotistical'

'your response is absolutely pathetic'

"Hell, we even carry your outporing of incredibly low-quality articles which are generally just your musings from watching the mainstream media and, at best, never really amount to much more than "isn't it awful". If you were a little bit better at writing, you could take up a job in the Daily Mail. "

Anbd all the rest - see above

Play the ball not the player? This stuff is pure vitriol - viciously unkind.

Chekov set the tone himself and as somebody wise once said 'If you cant take it you shouldnt dish it out in the first place'.

by Pushkin Thu Dec 21, 2006 14:46

It is estimated that up to 80% of all patients with cancer take a complementary treatment or follow a dietary programme to help treat their cancer, writes Jonathan Waxman, Professor of Oncology at Imperial College London.

Yet the rationale for the use of many of these approaches is obtuse - one might even be tempted to write misleading, he says.

Indeed the claims made by companies to support the sales of such products may be overtly and malignly incorrect and, in many cases, the products may be doctored by chemicals borrowed from the conventional pharmaceutical industry. The reason that these products are accessible to patients is that they are not subject to the testing of pharmaceuticals because they are classified as food supplements.

by science-buff Thu Dec 21, 2006 14:49

Amazing ethics on show here from the 'natural health' people. We've had:

It is okay for people to make up outlandish claims about their treatments and to sell them for a profit to desperate, terminally ill people.

It is okay for people to accept large cash donations for their research from interested parties and hide these donations from the public and their co-researchers

It is okay for people to invent fictitious vaccines killing fictitious people in order to denigrate stuff they don't like in public.

Is that what they mean by holistic?

by Ray McInerney - Global Country of World Peace Thu Dec 21, 2006 16:56

Why do patients change their diet [after getting cancer] " For some it is a way of taking back some control of a situation that is entirely out of their control, says Jonathan Waxman.

So diet and mental attitude should play no part in mitigating, healing or recovering from cancer or for any other disease or illness?

by Pushkin Thu Dec 21, 2006 17:12

"But although there is a strong dietary basis to the development of cancer, once cancer has been diagnosed no change in diet will lead to any improvement in cancer outcomes, he writes. "

Its possible that he writes it because of that. If you think differently and have evidence that backs it up then supply it.

I have to admit that if I had cancer I would pay close attention to my diet. If I ate wholesome foods then I reckon it would improve my mood. I wouldnt believe that it would save me but it might prolong my life. The will to live is important.

by Ray McInerney - Global Country of World Peace Thu Dec 21, 2006 17:53

I haven't read Waxman's original article but It appears from whats printed on the newsmedia that he is painting all cancers with the same wide brush by his statement: 'once cancer has been diagnosed no change in diet will lead to any improvement in cancer outcomes, he writes. " This can be misleading.

Review Article
Diet and exercise regimens to improve breast carcinoma prognosis
Basil A. Stoll, F.R.C.R. *
Oncology Department, St. Thomas' Hospital, London, United Kingdom.

*Correspondence to Basil A. Stoll, Oncology Department, St. Thomas' Hospital, London, SE1 7EH, United Kingdom

CONCLUSIONS
Breast carcinoma patients wishing to change their lifestyle are likely to benefit from a higher dietary fiber/fat ratio combined with regular physical exercise. If the trial shows an improved prognosis from intervention correlated with changes in biomarkers, a similar trial model could be used to identify specific fiber supplements, micronutrients, and exercise regimens that may improve survival rates in patients with breast carcinoma. Cancer 1996; 78:2465-70.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/592...TRACT

by M Cotton Thu Dec 21, 2006 19:12

Any doctor claiming that diet is unimportant in responding to cancer in the light of the massive evidence to the contrary is quite simply a quack and should not be practicing medicine. Only a bone-headed medical flat earther could go around making such a claim at this point in time. 'You are what you eat' is hardly a novel concept, now is it?

Professor Jane Plant - an eminent British scientist was diagnosed with breast cancer 14 years ago. After conventional treatment she developed a secondary cancer on her neck. She'd taken a professional interest in why so many women were getting breast cancer. She had been a vegetarian, was active and well exercised. She took a look at the incidences of breast cancer around the world and identified the absence of dairy products in the diets of low incidence regions as significant.

Here is what happened to her:

"It is now ten years since my last breast cancer secondaries disappeared following a fundamental change in my diet and lifestyle. My cancer had spread to the lymph nodes in my neck, in spite of a radical mastectomy, three further operations, 35 radiotherpay treatments, irrasiation of my ovaries to induce the meonpause and several chemotherapy treatments. Despite all this treatment, my doctors gave me only three months to live. I then recalled that people in rural China, where I had worked, had a very low incidence of breast (and prostate) cancer. At that point I changed my diet and lifestyle, and to everyone's amazement, including, I habve to admit my own, the large cancerous lump in my neck disappeared within five weeks. Since that time I have not had even a scare, and my annual check ups at Charing Cross hospital have tended to focus more on my diet and lifestyle than on my cancer. last year, the consultant I normall seee was on holiday and I was seen instead by his senior registrar. It soon became clear that he had read my book and kenw who I was, though I always attend using my married name. He first discussed my mammogram and other test results and gave me a throough physical examination before declaring me fit and well. Interestingly, he said that he fouind it hard to believe my story but, having read my notes and looked my recent test results andhealth record, he was imply astonished that anyone who had bee so seriously ill could now be so healthy. I have talked to other senior oncologists who have said that they personally have not met anyone who had survuved such serious illness and had been very sceptcial about my book until the had talked to me. I know from the many communications I have had with readers who have complemented their conventional medical treatment with the dietary and lifestyle factors I reccommend, that I am now far from unique."

Her explanation is basically that, firstly we are not made to consume anything other than human milk. Even when we restrict ourselves to that our bodies lose the ability to break human milk down at around 2 years of age. In many Eastern countries milk is regarded as something only babies should have and the idea of consuming the milk of other species is repugnant.

Hormones in milk known as IGF-1 and IGF-2 are the most critical to the development of breast cancers. It would take too long to include all of Plant's evidence here but this sums it up:

Let me finish by quoting from the final conclusions of the review paper by Outwater & Others who studied the findings of about 130 peer reviewed publications:

'The existing evidence indicates possible cancer risks associated with the consumption of dairy products. Bovine GH has not been considered to be of health concern because subsequent increase in bovine milk IGF-1 levels are within the 'normal range' based on untreated cows and human breast milk. However, it is possible that the 'normal range' could be carcinogenic when milk is ingested regularly over a lifetime. Hormones and growth factors in milk, such as IGF-1, are consumed in nature by the frast-growing infant; it may be that regular milk ingestion after the age of weaning produces enough IGF-1 in mammary tissue to cause the cell cycle to supercede its boundaries of control, increasing the risk of cancer. '

The same point is also made by the EU Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health. They state 'the physiological actions of IGF-1 and IGF-II relate to growth and development of the embryo and fetus and to cellular differentiation, proliferation and cancer.' Is this not just a modern, high-technology way of saying what the Chinese have always known, that milk is just for babies?

Modern milk production is also another factor. Cows live an average of five years when their natural lifespan should be somewhere between 15 and 20 years. The reason is that they spend their short lives being both pregnant and lactating to provide humans with milk. They just clap out. Many of them suffer from mastitis - an incredibly painful and sickening infection for which they have to be frequently medicated if they are to keep producing milk. The upshot of this is that in an average teaspoon of cows milk there are about 2million pus cells, along with the cocktail of medicines etc that the cow has ingested - as well as all of the cows own natural hormoes intended for the benefit of calves. Here is how Plant puts it:

"...all mature breast milk, whether from humans or other mammals, is a medium for transporting hundreds of different chemical components. And it varies in composiiton between species, between mothers, between breasts, betwee feeds and during the course of lactation. Different breast teats have even been shown to produce milk of different composition to suckle different young animals with different nutritional needs. The point is this: all mammalian milk, whether from humans, cows or other species, is a powerful biochemical solution of great complexity, uniquely designed to provide for the individual needs of young mammals of the same species. It's not that cows' milk isn't a good food: it's a great food - for baby cows. And therein lies the source of the problem."

Your Life in Your HandsProfessor Jane Plant, Virgin Books , 2003.

by Stuart Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:40

As a lifelong hard sciences researcher and writer, I am constantly amazed by some of the quackery and unsubstantiated practices of mainstream medicine, controlled by a largely unquestionable educational elite and protected by arcane, mutlilayered and inpenetrable legal process. Amongst the most harrowing of these are ECT (a closed head trauma causing often irrepairable brain damage) and hysterectomy (a procedure never submitted to any ethical or research evaluation). There is no doubt whatsoever that both can save lives and can have immense benefits to patients, there is equally no doubt that both are also practised as patriarchal and patronising abuses of the vulnerable by doctors seeking pragmatic quick solutions at patients' expense. Most doctors are good people, some are incompetent and a few are dangerously self-serving.

Whilst these are harrowing, nothing compares on scale to the systematic and abusive practices of psychopharmaceutical medicine. Two fifths of patients have absolutely no positive benefit from antidepressant medication and a great deal of the supposed benefit of these products is advertising fiction - there is no (legal) "happy pill". The neurotoxic side-effects of antidepressant therapies are severe and prolonged - imagine, if you will, the inability of a previously healthy thirty-year-old to dial a phone call due to drug-induced tremor, or to tie shoe laces, or to wipe after using the toilet. Yet psychiatrists persist in a chemical model (serotonin) that has no scientific basis - we can measure serotonin in various tissues and demonstrate that there is no consistent difference between depressed, normal and elevated moods, that there is no consistent relationship between mood and levels within individuals and that other factors (exercise and diet) are as significant - to the point that they are controlled out of pharma trials. Trial after trial demonstrate the exceptional value of inactive placebo and time as effective (and essentially free) treatments. Old medications with known safety risks and known response groups (such as tricyclic antidepressants) costing perhaps 5 euro per patient per month are routinely passed over in favour of relatively untested products with no greater benefit costing 400 euro per patient per month - directly correlated to the patent expiry date, the drug industry advertising spend and profits.

Worse still is the off-label use of psychotropic medications (possibly worse in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe) for the control and manipulation of "difficult" people or people "being difficult". The recent exposure of such practices in the case of nurse Noreen Mulholland illustrates how anxiolytics, antipsychotics and other medications are misused on a large scale not for patient benefit, but to "shut them up" when they exhibit restlessness, anxiety or "agitation" within the normal range, and often in response to unacceptable hospital practices. And this is not for the treatment of psychiatric patients, but the control of everyday personal difficulties for the convenience of a quiet life. This is medical abuse of the vulnerable.

by Pushkin Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:09

I think this quote from Professor Richard Dawkins puts the debate in perspective.

Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some "alternative" sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as "orthodox" medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The "alternative" label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.

-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

by bootboy Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:16

Particularly apt given the above wild claims about diet:

"There's no doubt that nutritionism, what we might call the "bollocks du jour" of the alternative therapy movement, is an inherently rightwing individualist project: we know that the most significant lifestyle risk factors for adverse health outcomes are social inequality, not obsessive, complex, individual tinkering with your diet. But we pretend - without an evidence base - that complex dietary interventions will make us healthy, because it's something we can do as individuals. We can take personal responsibility for our health, and we can blame those who don't for their own misfortune.

Or is it about something deeper than that? The post-Marxist social theorist Theodore Adorno, whom I quote only because it amuses me to quote a post-Marxist social theorist, wrote at length about the psychodynamic links between astrology and fascism, about the need for rightwing ideologists, and especially their followers, to have simple, clear, authoritative narratives, rigid systems, patterns, and structures that make sense of the world.

The Daily Mail does have an ongoing ontological programme to divide all inanimate objects into ones that will either cause or cure cancer. But even more transparently than that, "sciences" such as graphology are about elevating our intuitions, an attempt to use "science" to bolster our prejudices with some kind of objectivity, to render them in biomedical terms."

Ben Goldacre, Bad Science

by Pushkin Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:41

Seeing as Stuart mentioned ECT, I thought I should, in all fairness, post this.

Electroconvulsive Therapy Causes Permanent Amnesia And Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits

In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals' ability to function.

"This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings," the study notes.

by Stuart Fri Dec 22, 2006 13:17

bootboy wrote: "we know that the most significant lifestyle risk factors for adverse health outcomes are social inequality, not obsessive, complex, individual tinkering with your diet. But we pretend - without an evidence base - that complex dietary interventions will make us healthy, because it's something we can do as individuals."

We also know that the two most important factors affecting depression and psychosis are physical exercise and healthy eating. Despite this evident and essentially free (and simple) treatment, not one psychiatric hospital routinely employs calisthenics or programmed exercise in treament regimes. Every psychiatric hospital does provide excess calories through an abundance of carbohydrates, meat proteins and animal fats. The necessary dietary are not complex, obsessive or tinkering. The average weight gain for a typical three month psychiatric in-patient admission is 11 kilograms.

A net weight loss would be desirable given obesity levels in Ireland and amongst depressed people in particular, but there is no multinational corporate benefit to be had.

by obfuscator Fri Dec 22, 2006 13:30

'alternative movement is an inherently rightwing individualist project"- whomever
wrote that really need to take a good look at the politics of globalisation.

I did not imagine that there were such sheep on the left that they are not capable of
discerning that the individual is part of the community and the collective, and aside
from the obvious inability to make value judgement on diet it shows a complete
lack of ability to think outside the theoretical framework they are so obviously
brainwashed into.

Diet care is not voodoo- it is an awareness that some illnesses, such as diabetes
can be ameliorated through correct diet. this would be, stopping with the
processed foods, white breads and pastas and devloping a healthy attitude.
high starch foods can lead to hyperglacemic reactions and most dieticians
would favour slow release sugars- such as dried fruits.

In terms of liver damage- which due to massive consumption of alcohol in
this country, fats cannot be broken down adequately by a mal-functioning liver
thus diary is ofen severely curtailed.

Taking care of your body and being aware that some of the mass-market foods
are over-processed, and the result of globalised politics is not a right-wing individualist
movement it is simple common-sense.

and yes there are political aspects to our diet, that is evident from the corporate
interference in food politics, in the EU reserves, in the GM row. it is really about time
that people woke up to the politics they are living in and stop playing the
fear game.
(((i))) is about the individual- look at the top of the page.

by Pushkin Wed Jan 03, 2007 19:03

University of Minnesota researchers are putting herbal remedies to the test on humans to learn about the remedies' efficacy based on science, not stories.

The university's Center for Spirituality and Healing researchers launched studies to examine scientifically three herbal preparations. The three projects also have Investigational New Drug status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which allows the remedies to be tested on humans, the university said.

In studying the turkey tail mushroom in breast cancer patients, Joel Slaton, associate professor of urologic surgery, said substances in the mushroom appear to activate cells of immune system that attack cancer cells. The university received a $2.3 million award from the National Institutes of Health for this study.

Linda Halcon, associate professor of nursing, said she is studying whether whether the tea tree oil can speed the healing process of wounds -- particularly foot wounds in diabetics -- by controlling staph infections.

In the planning stages is the study on a preparation of four herbs and a mushroom drunk as a tea that reportedly helps control hot flashes, researchers said.

by advocate Wed Jan 03, 2007 20:01

Over the new year we were caught up a mountain, away from a dr and cut off.
one of the kids had a variety of tinnutitus and we had no recourse to the maddening
pain and discomfort but to a herbal solution.

thus we read the hoeopathic manual which prescribed warming a spoon with
boiled water and putting a base oil into the bowl of the spoon thereby heating the
oil, then a few drops of calendula- after three 12 hour treatments the pain was completely.

Many drug/pharmacological remedies are derived from healing plants, including digitalis.
as are some of our most powerful drugs and alcohol. before the market cornering and patent
frenzy of globalised culture these remedies were known and are evidential in our folk tales.

there are books , especially the Mizen head folk stories which go into great details about
how varieities of mosses were used for everything from nappies to early sanitary protection.
We tend to sit back and allow our freedoms of choice to be removedand patented by
people with vested interests inselling back to us products that are often untried and unsafe.

The issues require separation- vested interests include a market-led ethos.
Homeopathy and holistic treatments are grounded in viewing the person as a complete being
not a set of symptoms.
practicing the right to choose in the area of illness is to do with respecting the dignity
of the person and their needs before the numbers, figures and budget concerns of the legislators.

maybe someone could write a dissertation on the opium poppy or the use of mescal in
ritual cultures and visionary experiences, its about refusing to accept market trends and relying
on community strengths and seasonal produces to deal with the body's harmony.

btw_ this thread has produced some laughs, especially the risible statement that
homeopathy and choice is about a right wing individualist movement. some people
whether left or right do not necessarily allow their interpretation as unique and this
planet as sustainable to be caught up in what is a greed-based attempt at global dominance
and cultural debasement.

by Believer Thu Jan 04, 2007 14:20

"Over the new year we were caught up a mountain, away from a dr and cut off.
one of the kids had a variety of tinnutitus and we had no recourse to the maddening
pain and discomfort but to a herbal solution.

thus we read the hoeopathic manual which prescribed warming a spoon with
boiled water and putting a base oil into the bowl of the spoon thereby heating the
oil, then a few drops of calendula- after three 12 hour treatments the pain was completely."

I've always found that a few decades of the Rosary does the trick. Alternatively if there's actual somatic tinnitus then gamma knife surgery followed by the stations of the cross is effective. The power of faith in medical recovery is greatly underestimated except by the non-global, local businesses run by local chancers that make a tidy profit out of selling armotherapy, reflexology, homeopathy, etc.

None of this is to deny the slim possibility that the attention paid to the child dimished feelings of anxiety and helped reduce stress that contributed to the tinnitus.

by science-buff Thu Jan 04, 2007 14:59

"thus we read the hoeopathic manual which prescribed warming a spoon with boiled water and putting a base oil into the bowl of the spoon thereby heating the oil, then a few drops of calendula- after three 12 hour treatments the pain was completely."

That's not homeopathy. It's also not holistic. It's just a pharmacological treatment that has little or no evidence to back it up.

by M Cotton Thu Jan 04, 2007 16:05

"It's just a pharmacological treatment that has little or no evidence to back it up. "

Like the 'scientific' evidence that is used to back up drug company products? Calendula oil is a tried and trusted centuries-old treatment, knowledge of which was handed down and used by people for millenia - unlike the vast majority of modern medicines which are brand new and virtually untested by comparison. But all those people were just stupid and/or emotional, of course, unlike our two heroes above whose genius appears to consist of disregarding factual evidence. Here we have a child with earache cured by an unremarkable and well known cure for earache. Result: earache cured. What exactly is the problem? No paternalistically reassuring chaps in white coats in evidence? Not enough profit gets made? Doctors feel left out? Not enough nasty side-effects? What?

"In the UK 10,000 people are killed every year by adverse drug reactions or ADRs - which happen when the prescription drug that is supposed to be curing you kills or harms you instead.** That is more than the number of people who die from the following causes combined: cervical cancer (927), taking illegal drugs (1,620), mouth cancer (1,700) and passive smoking by people aged between 20 and 64 (2,700). It is also greater than the number of men who die from prostate cancer (9,937). Yet while all these conditons are the focus of campaigns to cut the numbers, nothing comparable is happening to cut deaths from ADRs, nor are there patient groups to help survivors from drug disasters.

[But the drug companies can take heart from an unexpected source of support - the would-be anarchists and socialists of some Indymedia.ie editors and contributors.]

Which is more likely - that you will die in a traffic accident or as the result of a visit to your doctor? Surprisingly, to say the least, the answer is visiting your doctor. In 2004, traffic accidents were responsible for a relatively modest 3,221 deaths. ADRs account for 10,000 deaths in the UK alone, and a further 40,000 people are made sick enough by them to be forced to go to hospital at a cost of £466million.*** Then there are all the people who just feel bad after taking a drug but whose symptoms are never spotted or recorded."

**M Pirmohamed et al 'Adverse Drug Reactions as Cause of Admission to Hospital', British Medical Journal, vol 329, 2004, pp15-19

***J R Nebeker et al, 'High Rates of Adverse Drug Events in a Highly Computerised Hospital', Archives of Internal Medicine, vol 165 (10), 2005, pp1111-6. The number of cases may be even higher than that recorded in 1998. This paper studied admission to a new and highly computerised hospital for 20 weeks in 2000 and found that ADRs accounted for 41 per cent of all hospital admissions.

(Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, Food is Better Medicine than Drugs

by First Aid Thu Jan 04, 2007 22:01

Sometimes intervention on a first Aid level is necessary- especially for a variety of minor
symptoms {tooth-ache/period pain/early labour/ splints/broken bones/bruising/ recovery
position}

sometimes and especially in our shitty health system- the emergency services do not get there.
sometimes people do not have the money to pay the doctor.
Basic intervention techniques and a knowledge of either homepathic or natural
remedies can be a boon.

and I am not talking about pissing on a jellyfish bite :-)

For example it is possible to have a painless labour using a tens sytem and breathing techniques.
often natural processes become anathema to established care- and we go back to the
failure of established medicine - be it Dr Neary or the organ harvesting scandals.

There is a lot more to homeopathy and natural remedies and the choices people make
about their care than is necessarily evident by the bandying about of figures.

FirstAid:

recovery position.
artificial respiration.
Splinting.
diagnosis.
talking to patient.
basic bandaging.
cleaning a wound.
disinfecting and treating an area.
stopping blood loss.

we could also look at pharm sponsorship of GP's and branded products.
or the MRSA scandal.

the calendula worked unblocking the ear.
no anti-biotics needed.

by Polly Tix Fri Jan 05, 2007 02:51

On 1st of January 2000 St Johns Wort was banned in Ireland. It's a natural remedy which can assist people suffering from depression. It can be purchased over the counter in any health food shop up North and the UK, but is still banned here.

Before the ban was introduced, the association for Health food shops in Ireland held a campaign, involving petitions, highlighting the issue and also warned that it was a sign of things to come. There are a number of reasons that it was banned- it could be taken inappropriately with other medications, causing more harm than good. But that is a factor with almost all medications- prescribed or otherwise. But the debate over who decides what one can take is crucial. Self medication is positively discouraged as it takes power away from the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry. It also increases a stigma about depression as it indicates that individuals have no control and must go to a doctor. There have been no studies done since to measure the success or failure of the ban ( to the best of my knowledge).

For some other information: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/sjwataglance.htm

Take a look at the VHI website and a discussion on the lack of information!
http://www2.vhi.ie/comments.do?display=true&articleId=1...vUrl=

Part of the Dail debate at the time
http://www.irlgov.ie/debates-99/15dec99/sect5.htm

Google St. John's Wort and you'll find lots of companies selling SJW, with an ie domain name.

by pat c Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:18

St Johns Wort doesnt suit eveyone. Some people have bad reactions to it. Itsnot appropriate for everyone that suffers from depression. If its dispensed by a responsible herbal shop, then thats ok. I mean the sort that will talk to you about your problem and ask you want you want the remedy for. Theres a good herbal shop in Duke Street, Dublin, I cant think of the name just now.

by Miriam Cotton Wed Jul 04, 2007 19:37

Some light and truth might be about to be shed on what has been done to our children

http://v.mercola.com/blogs/public_blog/Children-With-Autism-Get-Their-Day-in-Court-20994.aspx

by Dorothee Krien - Eco-Congregation Ireland Thu Jul 05, 2007 23:28 dorotheekrien at gmail dot com

Quacks were those who used quicksilver, the old word for mercury (German "Quacksalber"; "Quecksilber" is mercury) and quackery is what mainstream medicine is still practising.
They inject mercury into small babies and use fraudulent science to cover up that they have created the autism epidemic. Dentists still use mercury in amalgam tooth filling, thus causing autism and Alzheimer's in millions of people worldwide. The damage done to society is enormous, nonetheless, doctors and dentists still have a high reputation. Both thimerosal and amalgam have never been proven safe, yet claims are made that they are completely safe. Officials in government and health authorities the WHO included in actual effect assist the ruthless medical profession to harm people's health, although they are supposed to protect it.

The FDA used urine tests to "prove" that mercury is safe to use in vaccines and dental filings, but the kidneys are not the major excretion route. A study done on children with amalgam tooth fillings showed that after two years no increase of mercury was found in urine, even when new mercury-containg fillings were placed. This was presented as proof that amalgam was safe for use in children. What it really showed was that after two years the pathway to excrete mercury has been completely destroyed. (See Terri Small's interview with Boyd E. Haley. http://www.usautism.org/PDF_files_newsletters/boyd_hale...2.pdf
The preservative thiomersal/US thimerosal is still used in the process of vaccine making but none is added as a preservative to pediatric anymore vaccines in Europe and the US - but it is still used in the Third World. Flu vaccines still contain thimerosal that are recommended for use in pregant mothers and children.
Mercury from pregnant mothers' amalgam passes the placenta and damages the unborn child. In both autism and Alzheimer's a genetic factor is involved that inhibits the excretion of mercury. See J. Mutter et al (2005) http://www.crossroadsinstitute.org/newsletter/nlarticle...m.pdf
http://www.nel.edu/pdf_/25_5/NEL240504R01_Mutter_.pdf
French researchers found that porphyrin profiles show the toxicity of mercury in autistics. See R. Nataf et al (2006) http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/porphyrinuria.pdf

Although thimerosal has been removed from pediatric vaccines autism rates have not gone down drastically. There is a very obvious reason for it as microwave radiation from mobile masts and phones has increased in the past ten years. Microwaves are known to break down the blood-brain barrier (see resarch by Salford et al (2003), thus making toxins reach the brain directly, this shows similarities to the disorder of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) where a permanently broken down blood-brain barrier allows toxins like insecticides and solvent to reach the brain, thus causing severe neurological damage in even very low levels.
See research by Dr Bodo Kuklinski and Prof. Martin Pall on the s-100 protein as a marker.
.
http://molecular.biosciences.wsu.edu/Faculty/pall/pall_...s.htm

The amount of mercury babies get in their prenatal state is sufficient to cause autism, most likely even in cases where the genetic factor is not involved.
Mainstream psychiatrists have compeletely ignored all research done in the past thirty years. They go on using anti-psychotic drugs for the treatment of autism, Alzheimer's and MCS with reckless disregard of the fact that all these disorders are caused by neurotoxins.
Mercury poisoning is extremely painful and the neuralgic pain autistic children have to endure is heartrending to witness.
Instead of admitting their negligence and harm done to millions of human beings, the mainstream medical profession continues in their old way. They have completely lost scientific and moral integrity. Those who have the courage to speak out are often vilified and even struck off the medical register, they lose their job or quit because they feel they can't bear the pressure anymore.

Irishborn Dr David Healy is one of the few to stand up to the pharmaceutical corporations that use their power to corrupt medical science. Many of his articles and lectures can be found on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection: http://www.ahrp.org/COI/HealyColumbia1005/index.php
The International Medical Veritas Association founded by Dr Mark Sircus tries to expose medicine to the light of truth and integrity. http://www.imva.info/
Sircus wrote the article "Mercury in the Air" that deals with the environmental pollution of the US.
http://www.taxtyranny.ca/images/HTML/Mercury/Articles/M...r.pdf

It is not only the medical profession itself, the media are involved as well. Just how come that Robert F. Kennedy's article "Deadly Immunity" never made headlines in Ireland? Not even the golden Kennedy name helped to bring news of the biggest crime against a whole generation of children, committed by the medical and dental profession, to the Emerald Isle.
Kennedy's article was published in Rolling Stone and salon.com simultaneously. It was based on a study he wrote in 2005 "Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal". It makes very interesting reading and gives all scientific references.
http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalF...L.PDF

Looking into these matters can be a wake-up call for many to demand a new medicine and a new psychiatry on human principles, taking regard of the impact of neurotoxins (mercury, pesticides, PCBs, uranium, plutonium, microwaves etc) on the central nervous system and how the depletion of the soil has led to deficiencies in essential minerals, how industralised farming has caused a lack of vitamins in food, how high amounts of sugar cause vitamin B1 deficiency that leads to mood swings, irritability and aggression, how food additives like phosphates can cause hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder, how medical and dental treatment causes mental illness.

Mainstream psychiartry doesn't even acknowlegde the Soul in the first place, it definitely is not a science. It is the continuation of the inquisition with different means.

A new psychiartry can assist those who are environ-mental. But there is a conflict of interest:, as there won't be much demand for psychiatrists if all environmental, nutritional and iatrogenic factors have been dealt with, the psychiatric profession will stay delusional and in constant denial about the real causes of mental illness in order to stay in business.

Recommended reading is Dr Jim Howenstine's article "Is Psychiatry Scientific and Dangerous" Quacks were those who used quicksilver, the old word for mercury (German "Quacksalber"; "Quecksilber" is mercury) and quackery is what mainstream medicine is still practising.
They inject mercury into small babies and use fraudulent science to cover up that they have created the autism epidemic. Dentists still use mercury in amalgam tooth filling, thus causing Alzheimer's in millions of people worldwide. The damage done to society is enormous, nonetheless, doctors and dentists still have a high reputation. Both thimerosal and amalgam have never been proven safe, yet claims are made that they are completely safe.

The FDA used urine tests to "prove" that mercury is safe to use in vaccines and dental filings, but the kidneys are not the major excretion route. A study done on children with amalgam tooth fillings showed that after two years no increase of mercury was found in urine, even when new mercury-containg fillings were placed. This was presented as proof that amalgam was safe for use in children. What it really showed was that after two years the pathway to excrete mercury has been completely destroyed. (See Terri Small's interview with Boyd E. Haley. http://www.usautism.org/PDF_files_newsletters/boyd_hale...2.pdf
The preservative thiomersal/US thimerosal is still used in the process of vaccine making but none is added as a preservative to pediatric anymore vaccines in Europe and the US - but it is still used in the Third World. Flu vaccines still contain thimerosal that are recommended for use in pregant mothers and children.
Mercury from pregnant mothers' amalgam passes the placenta and damages the unborn child. In both autism and Alzheimer's a genetic factor is involved that inhibits the excretion of mercury. See J. Mutter et al (2005) http://www.crossroadsinstitute.org/newsletter/nlarticle...m.pdf
http://www.nel.edu/pdf_/25_5/NEL240504R01_Mutter_.pdf
French researchers found that porphyrin profiles prove the toxicity of mercury in autistics. See R. Nataf et al (2006) http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/porphyrinuria.pdf

Although thimerosal has been removed from pediatric vaccines autism rates have not gone down drastically. There is a very obvious reason for it as microwave radiation from mobile masts and phones has increased in the past ten years. Microwaves are known to break down the blood-brain barrier (see resarch by Salford et al (2003), thus making toxins reach the brain directly, this shows similarities to the disorder of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) where a permanently broken down blood-brain barrier allows toxins like insecticides and solvent to reach the brain, thus causing severe neurological damage in even very low levels.
See research by Dr Bodo Kuklinski and Prof. Martin Pall on the s-100 protein as a marker.
.
http://molecular.biosciences.wsu.edu/Faculty/pall/pall_...s.htm

The amount of mercury babies get in their prenatal state is sufficient to cause autism, most likely even in cases where the genetic factor is not involved.
Mainstream psychiatrists have compeletely ignored all research done in the past thirty years. They go on using anti-psychotic drugs for the treatment of autism, Alzheimer's and MCS with reckless disregard of the fact that all these disorders are caused by neurotoxins.
Mercury poisoning is extremely painful and the neuralgic pain autistic children have to endure is heartrending to witness.
Instead of admitting their negligence and harm done to millions of human beings, the mainstream medical profession continues in their old way. They have completely lost scientific and moral integrity. Those who have the courage to speak out are often vilified and even struck off the medical register, they lose their job or quit because they feel they can't bear the pressure anymore.

Irishborn Dr David Healy is one of the few to stand up to the pharmaceutical corporations that use their power to corrupt medical science. Many of his articles and lectures can be found on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection: http://www.ahrp.org/COI/HealyColumbia1005/index.php
The International Medical Veritas Association founded by Dr Mark Sircus tries to expose medicine to the light of truth and integrity. http://www.imva.info/
Sircus wrote the article "Mercury in the Air" that deals with the environmental pollution of the US.
http://www.taxtyranny.ca/images/HTML/Mercury/Articles/M...r.pdf

It is not only the medical profession itself, the media are involved as well. Just how come that Robert F. Kennedy's article "Deadly Immunity" never made headlines in Ireland? Not even the golden Kennedy name helped to bring news of the biggest crime against a whole generation of children, committed by the medical and dental profession, to the Emerald Isle.
Kennedy's article was published in Rolling Stone and salon.com simultaneously. It was based on a study he wrote in 2005 "Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal". It makes very interesting reading and gives all scientific references.
http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalF...L.PDF

Looking into these matters can be a wake-up call for many to demand a new medicine and a new psychiatry on human principles, taking regard of the impact of neurotoxins (mercury, pesticides, PCBs, uranium, plutonium, microwaves etc) on the central nervous system and how the depletion of the soil has led to deficiencies in essential minerals, how industralised farming has caused a lack of vitamins in food, how high amounts of sugar cause vitamin B1 deficiency that leads to mood swings, irritability and aggression, how food additives like phosphates can cause hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder, how medical and dental treatment causes mental illness.

Mainstream psychiartry doesn't even acknowlegde the Soul in the first place, it definitely is not a science. It is the continuation of the inquisition with different means.

A new psychiartry can assist those who are environ-mental. But there is a conflict of interest:, as there won't be much demand for psychiatrists if all environmental, nutritional and iatrogenic factors have been dealt with, the psychiatric profession will stay delusional and in constant denial about the real causes of mental illness in order to stay in business.

Recommended reading is Dr Jim Howenstine's article "Is Psychiatry Scientific and Dangerous" http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james58.htm
David Kirby's book "Evidence of Harm" on the autism matter.
Two excellent talks are:

David Ayoub's
Mercury, Autism and the Global Vaccine ... 1 hr 31 min - Aug ...
[Click for more information] Watch video - 91min - Rated 4.7 out of 5.0
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6890106663412840646

Rima Laibow's talk on the Codex alimentarius:
Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, V... 40 min - Sep 2 ...
[Click for more information] Watch video - 40min - Rated 4.6 out of 5.0

And start reading the Idaho Observer, it keeps you up to date with a number of issues hardly any other paper covers, e.g. the following one (that is in a way linked to the Codex alimentarius and 9/11):
Idaho Observer: Deathbed confessions, photos support claims that ...
Based upon the “deathbed confession” of Hitler’s bodyguard and master spy/assassin Otto Skorzeny, we were given a clue that George Herbert Walker Bush and ...
www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm - 166k
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634