Tag Archives: pseudoscience

The madness of the anti-medicine movement

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Big Placebo, Health, Legal, Scam by

Long term anti-vaccine lobbyist, Judy Wilyman recently had one of her standard attacks on HPV vaccination republished on the site of the ambitiously named The New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine.

The same page on which Wilyman’s piece appears has a link to the New Zealand 3D Investigative TV3 report on the types of injuries and even deaths Wilyman contends are firmly associated with the HPV vaccine Gardasil. The programme, entitled Cause or Coincidence? aired on November 9th 2015.

The Immunisation Advisory Centre based at The University of Auckland have responded directly to claims raised in the programme. Three NZ girls have become ill and two girls have died after receiving the HPV immunisation. The IAC provided a comprehensive response, which included:

There is absolutely no evidence that the Gardasil® vaccine has caused death, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), or any other related fatigue syndromes.

Just because these conditions occurred after vaccination it does not mean that they were caused by the vaccine.

It was also stated in the programme that fatalities of this nature and illnesses of this type are occurring at rates that they would had their been no HPV immunisation programme.

In no way can The New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine be called a “journal”. It constantly hits the peak of the very worst deceptions peddled by paranoid pushers of alternatives to medicine. Certainly there are advertisements for a cornucopia of unproven concoctions promising to improve or cure a host of mild to moderate ailments. Yet articles seem to follow a pseudo-binary opposite theme. A browse through some available samples is most revealing.

If something is in the realm of science based medicine it is not just useless, but harmful. Not only is this publication in the style of Natural News, but it heavily republishes articles from Adams’ anti-science hysteria website. A typical example is, Why won’t Big Pharma ever cure cancer? Because “the cancer industry is probably the most prosperous industry in the United States”. Exactly why “Big Pharma” should bear this manufactured blame when cancer research continues apace in various research institutions isn’t made clear. Readers are supposed to swallow the tired line that profit from treating cancer is what ensures the “cure” never surfaces.

Readers are of course not alerted to the advances cancer research has delivered, leading to full remission in cases where this was once unheard of. Or treatments that have improved both the quality and duration of life for patients across a range of cancers. Gerson cancer treatment gets a plug. Vitamins C,D,E, Chinese herbs, Ayurvedic herbs, selenium, turmeric and high protein diets which increase the immune system’s ability to kill cancer cells also feature. Homeopathy improves quality of life for cancer patients, and is in fact “extremely helpful” at doing so.

This is just a snippet of cancer treatments. Of course, you must be wondering why we have never heard of this. Simple.

You see “the early Rockefellers” thought up the “business plan of our current medical system”, and “gained control” of most medical schools in the early 20th century.

The plan was to create all sorts of diseases, say with vaccines (e.g. autism, cancer, etc), fluoride, pesticides, junk “food” and the like, and then invent drugs to manage said diseases for the life of the patient, all the while getting gobs of taxpayers’ hard earned dollars to pay for said drugs and management.

Never, ever, ever actually CURE any disease, as that would not be profitable, but get ever increasing increments of cash to “manage the disease” and continually “LOOK FOR” the cure.

Then get nice little old ladies and school kids with freshly baked cookies to raise money for “charity” societies, like cancer, diabetes, heart stuff of all kinds, birth defects, autism, ad infinitum.

Most if not all of which societies are linked to the very same corporations that helped create the diseases in the first place, e.g. cancer societies being funded by pesticide manufacturers.

Call your brand of medicine “scientific” and “evidence-based” while disparaging anything that comes from beyond the pale as “unproven” or worse, “anecdotal”.

When someone comes along with an actual cure, disparage them, ensure their funding gets revoked (if by some miracle it happened in the first place), and in extremis have them imprisoned or murdered.

Hey, nothing personal. It’s just business.

However, millions of people are now waking up, albeit more slowly that one would hope, although it’s sometimes amazing that there are people “out there” who are still thinking for themselves at all.

And, as long as it lasts, the Internet is at your service, where everyone can do their homework.

Oh, my. Murdering those who have an “actual cure”. Ongoing perusal of this esteemed “journal” reveals a Natural News piece informing us that certain medications causally increase our potential to murder up to 200% in the case of anti-inflammatory painkillers. Opioid painkillers “increase the risk by 92%”. Antidepressants – 31%. Tranquilizers – 45%.

The Finnish study, published in June this year in World Psychiatry deals with association between the medications and murder. Yet the study is misrepresented by Natural News/NZ Journal of Natural Medicine under the heading Certain Medications cause people to commit murder…

This has a sub-heading Homicide risk increased by 31% to 200%… 100 million Americans take these drugs. It goes on to claim that the study:

…found that several classes of prescription medications – including antidepressant drugs, tranquilizers and anti-inflammatory painkillers markedly increased the chances of someone murdering another human being.

Which, like the sub-heading, is highly misleading because the study concludes (bold mine):

These results – which may probably be generalized to other developed and stable societies that have a low to medium homicide rate, although not necessarily to countries with higher rates of organized and premeditated crime – imply that the use of antidepressants should not be denied to either adults or adolescents due to a presumed risk of homicidal behavior. The surprisingly high risk associated with opioid and non-opioid analgesics deserves further attention in the treatment of pain among individuals with criminal history.

It can’t be ignored that the study itself notes “non-scientific” organisations blame psychotropic medications, especially antidepressants for large scale shootings in the USA, citing the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Colorado: a front shop for Scientology’s anti-psychiatry propaganda and lobbying. A 2011 issue of the NZ publication asks on its cover, “Is Psychiatry A Hoax?”

The NZ Journal of Natural Medicine targets a number of areas where conspiracy meets evidence based medicine. Fluoride and how to detox from it, is accompanied in various issues with all the pseudoscientific horrors that are caused by this “poison”.

Predictably since the proposed Australian No Jab No Pay legislation gained increasing media coverage over 2015, this was picked up in NZ. The image below is from Issue 17, May – August 2015.

PreviewScreenSnapz008

Heavily laced with USA-centric articles this edition also included a piece entitled The Government Knows It’s A Medical Killing Machine, as its Health Freedom highlight. Although published in late 2013 the piece rattled off many figures we’ve been fed here by Meryl Dorey pushing the line that the medical system kills hundreds of thousands per year. Vioxx, Avandia, Paroxetine is apparenty ample evidence that peer reviewed publication peddles fraud. Also readers enjoyed this well known image:

PreviewScreenSnapz009

The article following this the incredible “Forced Vaccination At Gunpoint”. This is the same article word for word at Natural News, published November 19 2007 by Mike – Health Danger – Adams. Yep. By the time the NZ Natural Medicine “journal” published it it was 7, 1/2 years old. This image was added:

PreviewScreenSnapz010

Broaching the topic of No Jab No Pay in Australia comes The War Against Vaccine Refusers, written by an editor:

Make no mistake, there is a war hotting up against people, who for want of a better name I will call “vaccine-refusers” – people who choose not to be vaccinated (or allow their children to be vaccinated) or people who may agree to one or more vaccinations but don’t want to have every new vaccine that Big Pharma brings to market injected into them or their children.

In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott recent announcement that the government planned to remove the “conscientious objection” category from vaccination exemptions from January 1, 2016 is especially worrying. Families who do not vaccinate their children (who do not belong to the Church of Christ, Scientist, and/or cannot obtain a medical exemption from vaccination) would lose their eligibility to the “Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate and the Family Tax Benefit Part A end of year supplement)”. The loss of these benefits could cost a family approximately $15,000 per child.

[…]

If the pro-vaccine lobby is successful in inculcating in the general public the belief that people do not want to be vaccinated (or parents who choose not to vaccinate their children) are “irresponsible” or “free- loaders”, the social conditions in which a coercive or even compulsory vaccination policy can be instituted will have been created.

If you take into account all the recent news from the USA (including the forced vaccination of children detailed elsewhere in this issue), the many bills before different US State governments, and the announcement by the Australian PM and the recent promotion of compulsory vaccination by Dr. O’Sullivan in NZ, it becomes clear that Big Pharma and its minions are obviously unhappy that there may be anyone refusing to be vaccinated – even if vaccine-refusers are only a small percentage of the population.

In fact as we know members of the Church of Christ, Scientist were not required to abuse their children by denying them the protection of vaccine induced immunity. Only medical exemptions are valid reasons to not lose access to benefits.

I can’t possibly comprehend why Judy Wilyman would want her name associated with a magazine populated with such varied deception and conspiracy. There is one small piece in this same issue some of you may have read before. There is very little original – or up to date – material in this so-called “journal”. As such they have chosen to publish the utterly insane, amusing as it is offensive piece from the Journal of Public health and Epidemiology, 2014; 6: 271-86.

This has been republished across the Internet, even starring in What Doctors Don’t Tell You. So I’ll publish it in full below:

 

Autism ‘Caused By MMR Using Human Fetal Cell Lines’ October 16, 2014

The explosion in autism has been caused by the introduction of human fetal cell lines in the manufacture of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines, a major new study has concluded.

Before 1987, when the vaccines were produced with animal cell lines, autism cases were relatively low. Today, it’s been estimated that 1 in 50 children has autism.

Stem cell researcher Theresa Deisher and others say that the correlation between the sudden explosion in autism cases and the introduction of the new MMR vaccines is too strong to ignore – although, as the old maxim goes, correlation doesn’t prove causation.

The ‘change point’ – when the numbers of autism cases rose sharply – happened in the UK in 1987, just when the new MMR vaccine, using human fetal cells, was introduced. A similar correlation was seen around the same time in Denmark, while the autism change point in the US was 1980 to 1981 after the introduction of the new MeruvaxII and MMRII vaccines in 1979. Both vaccines used human fetal cells [as a culture medium for the rubella viruses in the vaccine – Ed] for the first time.

WI-38 and MRC-5 human diploid cell lines are used in the production of hepatitis A, rabies, rubella, varicella and Pentacell DTaP-IPV/Hib as well as MMR.

The article Vaccines Contain No Aborted Fetal Cells looks at the bogus claims of fetal cells in vaccines.

So-called “research” in anti No Jab, No Pay submissions

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, General, Health, Human Rights, Legal, Science by

A casual review of anti-vaccine submissions pertaining to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (No Jab, No Pay) Bill 2015, reveals a striking repetition of unsubstantiated or demonstrably false claims, mixed with more of the misguided beliefs that have brought Australia to this point in the first place.

The most prominent theme backed by deceptive pseudoscience or distortion of genuine science is that vaccines are harmful. More so they are either not needed due to the wonders of modern snake oil or have never had the dramatic impact on the scourge of vaccine preventable diseases, that they have indeed irrefutably had. Vaccines are however, capable of causing the diseases the public is deceived into believing they prevent, and go on to enable their spread.

A while back I touched on the triumphant antivaccinationist claim of “having done my research”. I suggested a lack of critical thinking and cognitive bias left a great deal of these “researchers” incapable of discerning reputable source material from nonsense. That the unwary reader is presented with huge volumes of championed material, yet lacks the rather vital tools of cognition to identify and trust the genuine expert. This is a fast track to accepting opinion (or worse) as fact.

Tim Harding tackles this problem in more depth and with far more care than I, in his article How Dr Google spawned a new breed of health ‘experts’. Harding identifies key elements contributing to this phenomenon. Under the heading Misunderstanding democracy, he writes;

Reducing the influence of experts is sometimes mistakenly described as “the democratisation of ideas”. Democracy is a system of government — it is not an equality of opinions.

While the right of free speech prevents governments from suppressing opinions, it does not require citizens to treat all opinions equally or even take them into account. Equal rights do not result in equal knowledge and skills.

[…]

Deakin University philosopher Dr Patrick Stokes has argued the problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that it has become shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” without justification; and that disagreement is somehow disrespectful.

Dr Stokes suggests that this attitude feeds into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.

The truth and import of Dr. Stokes’ observation of false equivalence between experts and non-experts is a reality I feel we should readily accept. Skeptics and science advocates have experienced and will continue to experience such when it comes to the anti-vaccination lobby.

In recent weeks this lobby has accused its critics of being worse than Nazis. They have launched a concerted attack against the families and grieving parents of infants lost to pertussis. They have produced memes likening vaccination to rape – and defended criticism of this. Whilst less insulting but no less ludicrous they’ve insisted democracy in Australia is dead.

Yet they never doubted their democratic right to swamp the No Jab, No Pay Social Services Amendment process with submissions accommodating a host of patently ridiculous, fallacious and time wasting material.

Some don’t know they are parroting nonsense. Meryl Dorey’s old trick attacking pertussis vaccine efficacy pops up here and there. 1991 was the first year for compulsory notification of pertussis cases, which were recorded by the National Notifiable Surveillance Diseases System. 1991 was a different time. Not all health professionals were logistically prepared to diagnose, much less report pertussis cases. Sensitivity of diagnostic equipment was magnitudes less than today. This was five years prior to the Immunise Australia campaign, launched by Michael Wooldridge.

So the deception runs that in 1991 with only around 71% of 0-6 year olds vaccinated, there were only (according to one submission) 347 cases. In fact there were only that many cases reported. NNSDS pertussis figures for 1991 still creep up at about five per year. 1991 notifications in 2012 are 332. This year to date: 345. The same submission goes on to report that in 2011 with a 95% pertussis vaccine uptake in 0-6 year olds, “there were 38,725 cases of whooping cough”.

Notice the age of vaccination is the 0-6 years cohort, but the pertussis notification figure is Australia wide. This includes overseas visitors, workers and new arrivals who brought the infection with them.

And of course by 2011 it’s not that PCR testing can detect Bordetella pertussis in samples hundreds or thousands of times smaller. And days older. Or that practitioners are constantly on the lookout for signs, or that documentation of notification is meticulous. Or sciencing in this field is better and faster.

Or that it is therefore significant that last year’s total of 11,866 (approx. 700 more than 2005) is comparatively low, and the high figures collated for 2009 – 2011 reflect the national outbreak that is reported as beginning in Meryl Dorey’s backyard. NB: article uses a number of media sources.

Nay. It’s the vaccine whatdunnit, dear reader, and Meryl Dorey has been peddling that lie and tripping up people who “do their research” for years. She never has replied to my January 2012 email wherein I step by step showed her how she pulled off this trick.

Vaccines it is argued, still cause autism. One may read that “autism-like symptoms” are in fact autism. That the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has compensated cases of autism arising from vaccination. This is most certainly untrue. The VICP continue to deny ever having compensated any individual for autism caused by vaccination.

Whilst terms such as “autism-like symptoms” are used the Compensation Program at no time refers to anything like “autism arising from vaccination” or “autism as a result of vaccination”. The Pace Law School scandal is deconstructed here. Meryl Dorey’s fraudulent addition of the word “[Autism]” to the US Court of Federal Claims case file dealing with the case of Bailey Banks is documented here. Sadly it is not realistic to think these claims have not influenced opinion in some.

Across the internet the false tale of 83 vaccine induced autism cases, compensated by the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program will pop up. It refers to a paper written by Pace Law School Students entitled, Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A review of compensated cases of vaccine induced brain injury.

I wrote in 2011;

Reading the document reveals ample use of terms such as “settled cases suggesting autism”, “language that strongly suggests autistic features”, “published decisions that used terms related to autism”, “payment of vaccine injured children with autism”, and not – as Seth Mnookin pointed out – “because of their autism”. More so, the authors spend some time arguing why there should be no distinction between autism and autism-like symptoms. This is a major concession they award themselves.

The paper includes caregiver opinion, parental opinion, phrases from doctors who gave evidence at hearings and provides a case table of “Language suggesting autism or autistic-like symptoms”. A notable concern is referencing The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine and a Manmade Epidemic [2010] by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill.

This issue of insisting “autism-like symptoms” should be accepted as autism may have an intuitive feel to it but would ultimately reap an injustice on individuals involved. If we consider patients who have experienced brain injury from head trauma, stroke, near drowning or drug overdose, each may present with near identical symptoms. However the mechanism of brain injury is different and demands specificity of treatment.

So it is with autism. Diagnosis, treatment and prognosis are not opinions one can choose. Other erroneous opinions we find as a result of anti-vaccine research lean towards the legislative change being an abuse of rights and freedoms. It is an abuse of our constitution. Vaccines, being poisonous and responsible for chronic disease in children will reap harm because natural is best whilst chemicals and toxins are bad.

In fact the submissions rejecting No Jab, No Pay appear to be a cornucopia of all anti-vaccine misinformation. The authors have indeed “done their research”.

The problem of clustered drops in herd immunity

Posted in Denialism, General, Health, Scam, Science by

There are many reasons anti-vaccine lobbyists push the falsehood that herd immunity “is a myth”, is not important or simply doesn’t exist.

To listen to recent untruths from Meryl Dorey, one should eagerly accept that it is “documented” in peer reviewed literature as being more or less non-existent. Indeed, “it is a lie” lies Dorey. By essentially mocking the importance of herd immunity, garden variety anti-vaccine tricksters can shirk the responsibility that not vaccinating may harm the wider community, innocent infants or children, and deny larger scale resistance to infection that the immune-compromised rely on.

Herd immunity is an impressive function of mass vaccination. More so it is remarkably easy to understand. But the anti-vaccine lobby refuse to accept any need for or benefit from, mass vaccination. It is even more bizarre when one considers the parallels to so-called “natural immunity” – such as with marvellous measles, or “right of passage” infection and immunity. With mass vaccination we can control the spread of immunity and thus the spread and ultimate impact of vaccine preventable disease.

We should never forget that claims of raising impeccably healthy and disease-free unvaccinated children can exist only for as long as vaccine-induced herd immunity remains at a crucial level. The level that permits a free ride and protection from most vaccine preventable diseases for these very children.

Once again the formula frequently relied upon is “< 100% = 0%” – such as this 1973 article. One popular mode is that if a child is vaccinated against X, they should be safe from infection with X. Even worse is a distortion of epidemiological factors at play. This involves citing nationwide or statewide vaccination rates – which level out as reasonably high – along with reported outbreaks, such as those seen of pertussis or measles. Or including individuals who have had just one MMR jab (in the case of measles) or those whose vaccine-induced pertussis immunity has certainly waned.

This not-very-clever deception ignores the fact that areas with low vaccination uptake provide the ideal conditions for infection to spread rapidly.

The video below compares the difference in infection spread in the sparsely located unvaccinated compared to a cluster of unvaccinated individuals.

Herd Immunity

The man who draws ducks draws a long bow against vaccine science

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Health, Human Rights, Science by

Michael Leunig was a guest on ABC News Breakfast to chat about his new book Musings From The Inner Duck, his role as a cartoonist and the impact of his commentary both political and social.

It wasn’t long at all before discourse turned from reflections on the Leunig duck to Leunig’s support of quackery. Particularly his April 15th cartoon in response to Scott Morrison’s removal of up to $15,000 in tax payer funds to parents who seek to claim “conscientious objection” to vaccinating their children.

The awful piece of nonsense from our 1999 National Living Treasure firmly ran the ignorant antivaccinationist banner up Leunig’s flagpole. One doesn’t say so lightly, but the cartoon and subsequent interview ticked all the worst of the anti-vaccine boxes. I’ve also no doubt Leunig would have kept digging had he more time. Headed Some mothers do ‘ave ’em the piece continued;

They have maternal instincts
That contradict what science thinks.
They stand up to the state:
A mother’s love may be as great
As any new vaccine
That man has ever seen
Leunig_April15_2015Problems with Leunig’s thinking come across in the text.

Mothers have maternal instincts that contradicts what science “thinks”. I realise a rhyme is important here but there’s no reason why mothers can’t have maternal moods that contradict what science concludes. Because science must not drift off into thinking or feeling or musing. It follows a strict set of processes designed to invite replication and strident attempts at falsification. This doesn’t involve just one, two or a handful of variables. Multiple factors help form hypotheses in this process until a scientific consensus is formed. In the face of new evidence and conclusion a new consensus is formed in the same way.

Nor is this a matter for the famous Leunig “whimsy”. If we honestly made way for this new antivaccinationist insistence of maternal instinct ruling over what science “thinks” (because ‘science always changes its mind’) we would be beset with tragedy. Recent revelations about the conduct of midwife Gaye Demanuele give valuable insight as to what is at stake when ignorance and/or defiance clashes with evidence based health practice as recommended by national health experts.

Speaking of “the state”, Leunig tells us these mothers (who let’s face it are either part of, or misinformed by the anti-science in medicine chapter) also “stand up to the state”. Perhaps he’s referring to the reckless and abusive decisions they make in denying their children the protection of vaccination. He winds up letting readers know a mother’s love can apparently create antibodies and/or protect from vaccine preventable disease as well as any vaccine.

Underneath the text is a plainly shocking cartoon. A mother sprinting, baby in pram, away from giant flying syringes. It seems like the cartoon version of those Photoshopped images favoured by Natural News, Mercola, Age of Autism and other junk sites that depict lines of crying children or babies jabbed with multiple syringes.

“It does seem to be an odd thing to assert Michael Leunig, that a mother’s love may be more beneficial for a child than a vaccine”, offered Virginia Trioli.

Leunig tries to dodge this claiming he is “not taking a position publicly”… but is concerned that the maternal instinct is being asked to step aside and accept what the state is saying. Virginia challenges his claim of not taking a public position. Leunig works his way around to asking “…if we should sweep aside those mothers who in great conscience, intelligence and research feel they just can’t go ahead with this. Should we demonise them? Should we criminalise them? Should the whole society make them feel a pariah? That the traditional work of the cartoonist is to stand up for the improbable, the minority which seems to be of true heart and sincerity”.

“Isn’t it an issue about science?”, Virginia asks.

“Well science is… it depends on whether you believe science is the final say on everything”.

“Most people do”, offers Michael Rowlands.

“Well they did when they had Thalidomide…”, Leunig replies bizarrely with confidence, probably blissfully unaware what a cruel and ignorant fool on this topic he has just revealed himself to be. Dragging out the Thalidomide card in this instance is thunderously immoral. All antivaccine champions ignore the fact that drug trials and testing were forever changed for the better.

Virginia baulks at this nonsense and pulls the cartoonist up. “Ooh, that’s a difficult comparison, because there was a concerted cover-up about that for many, many years, and such corporate malfeasance that it’s probably unparalleled in medical history, so you’re not asserting something similar to that are you?”

And then it happens. The man who draws ducks proclaims, “There is a science against vaccines also”, masterfully ignoring that he just informed us that “…it depends on whether you believe science is the final say on everything”.

As Michael Rowland observes at this point, “It’s not science Michael”.

Leunig denies upholding “a lot of evidence (against vaccination safety)” and warns beware the crowd. He contends that science is not complete [yawn] then just to prove he’s reading lots of antivaccine dreck, poses “… and what is this impulse that’s universal, it’s not freakish but I’ve seen a lot of very intelligent women and parents hold a really grave concern… and there are really bad consequences of some vaccinations…”. He thinks the science is incomplete. Disagrees with the finding Wakefield is a fraud.

Delightfully, with the feel of a eulogy, Virginia’s next sentence is “But as someone who has been much loved as a cartoonist can I just show you one response to your cartoon”?

It’s a tweet from Hannah Gadsby (@Hannahgadsby) and reads;

After years of enduring Leunig staring at her, the duck finally spoke “I can’t give you the benefit of whimsy today. You’re a dickhead”.

HannahGadsby_tweet

Leunig is now worried that this means “so we don’t tolerate the outsider voice that says the improbable. That’s what my job is, it’s not to march entirely with science it’s to be the improbable”. He suggests Virginia and Michael should be getting fired up about criticism of the antivaccination lobby.

“What is this fierce anti anti-vaccination… why so emotional…?”.

“It’s called public health Michael”, Michael Rowland cuts of the rant.

Dismissively, the man who draws ducks reckons “If we cared about public health we wouldn’t design cities like this, …terrible television, dreadful media. Public health is in disarray at so many levels and all we’re worrying about is this little needle”.

You know that little needle – perhaps the greatest medical breakthrough of all time. Virginia tries to see him off.

“But I’m not standing against vaccination”, Leunig lies as all antivaccinationists do. “It’s this thing as a matter of conscience”.

He was a C.O. to the Vietnam war so knows what he’s talking about he finishes.

The biggest problem – or a very big problem – with Leunig is that he’s had a long time to work his way through the science around Wakefield’s fraud. Indeed, vaccine science in total. This was Leunig on January 29th 1997;

Leunig_Jan29_1997

This cartoon pushes the old and rather pointless defence of pseudoscience that argues “science doesn’t know everything”. Or rather, it’s that defence on steroids. Unapologetically we’re asked to believe a cruel and arrogant medico has jettisoned any capacity to be humane or understand the whole person as a patient and reacts aggressively to the mother. Nothing could be further from the truth, and no reaction could better impede the aim of vaccinating the mother’s baby. In fact it’s quite silly in that any medico so dangerously constrained by medical science would point out the heart is a pump and emotions, superstitions are seated in the brain. But the point is taken. Doctors and medical science are pathologically removed from understanding emotion, preferring to belittle human nature as some primitive throwback to be “immunised” against. “It is a disease in itself”. This nasty, inaccurate and combative message, dreamt up by opponents of medical science, is entirely without merit.

Thirteen months later Wakefield’s infamous fraud was published and public health has suffered immensely ever since. Largely thanks to fools and egos like Michael Leunig. To sit there and say “there is a science against vaccination also” and that he has detected “a universal impulse” and is standing up for intelligent people who have researched and hold “grave concerns”. These poor people treated as pariahs or criminals and pushed about by the state. The softly spoken champion for the maternal instinct. He’s not antivaccine – nooo – but just doing his job. What was it? Oh yes, “it’s not to march entirely with science it’s to be the improbable”.

Well I find it improbable in the extreme that Leunig had such views 18 1/2 years ago and just happens to have them again today because it’s “his job” to worry about one of the most dangerous and most cruel antiscience and antimedicine cults at the present time. Leunig is an antivaxxer, cut from the same mold of them all.

His duck will now be remembered for its quackery.

Dangerous Food Fads

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Big Placebo, General, Human Rights, Legal, Scam, Science by

~ Superfood is a marketing term used to describe foods with supposed health benefits ~

superfoods1The growing uptake of truly ridiculous (and frankly quite dangerous) super food trends continues apace with much thanks to the internet and increasingly, social media.

Far from a byproduct of the “information super-highway”, the pseudoscience, deception and planned scamming that can be seen today is better considered a byproduct of a wild roller coaster ride through The Twilight Zone.

The humble blueberry is a so-called “superfood”. Nutritional information may be found here. The Wikipedia entry on superfoods notes that Blueberries [are] a so-called “superfood” that actually does not have an unusually dense nutrient content. These berries contain anthocyanin which is a flavinoid with antioxidant capability. Along with the semantics of “wellness” there are many similar miracles supposed to control toxins. It is best to ignore this marketing niche at all costs. Sometimes expensive costs.

Consider this con from a heartless long term offender who has made a fortune from misleading the public with his often very dangerous nonsense.

Imagine a plant that can nourish your body by providing most of the protein you need to live, help prevent the annoying sniffling and sneezing of allergies, reinforce your immune system, help you control high blood pressure and cholesterol, and help protect you from cancer. Does such a “super food” exist?

Yes. It’s called spirulina.

Unlike plants you may grow in your garden, this “miracle” plant is a form of blue-green algae that springs from warm, fresh water bodies.

The “wellness” push for foods that are supposed to be “super” and as such capable of proactive, reactive (or both) types of veritable nutritional magic is consonant with similar and supporting health beliefs and movements. The anti-vaccine movement spends a great deal of time in the superfood/antioxidant driving gear. Uncertain parents are led to believe that vaccines contain untested “poisons… toxins… chemicals” and thus can certainly harm.

The answer – albeit monumentally wrong – is to avoid vaccines and instead pursue all things natural. So too it is with illness and alarmingly, cancer. The author of The View From The Hills, Rosalie Hillman stepped up to the plate and asked some vital questions of a young lady, Jessica Ainscough. It is astonishing Jessica’s claims were going unchallenged. Rather than being challenged for promoting the impossible, she was virtually worshipped as the head of her own “tribe”. Ainscough was being presented as having (and who was basically claiming to have) cured cancer through diet, the well known alternative pseudoscientific and thoroughly discredited Gerson Therapy and positive thinking.

The Gerson Institute claims:

With its whole-body approach to healing, the Gerson Therapy naturally reactivates your body’s magnificent ability to heal itself – with no damaging side effects. This a powerful, natural treatment boosts the body’s own immune system to heal cancer, arthritis, heart disease, allergies, and many other degenerative diseases. Dr. Max Gerson developed the Gerson Therapy in the 1930s, initially as a treatment for his own debilitating migraines, and eventually as a treatment for degenerative diseases such as skin tuberculosis, diabetes and, most famously, cancer.

Basically Gerson approach concludes we are bombarded with toxins and carcinogens over our lifetime. Gerson plays the magic Ace card in claiming to “restore the body’s ability to heal itself”. This message is pushed hard. The body can heal itself. It is this amazing ability we have lost and which apparently demands kilograms of fresh fruit and vegetables daily in conjunction with the thrice daily enemas. The infamous coffee enemas ensure toxins will be eliminated from the liver.

Jessica Ainscough passed away from epithelioid sarcoma on February 26th 2015. Her cancer progressed as evidence based medicine would suggest for a woman of her age diagnosed when she was in 2008. Tragically Jessica’s mother, Sharyn, chose to follow Gerson Therapy in an attempt to defeat breast cancer. This meant abandoning radiotherapy.

Addressing both cases the ABC wrote:

Despite Cancer Council advice that Gerson Therapy was not proven to work, Ms Ainscough persisted, embarking on an alcohol-free vegan diet, drinking raw juices, taking vitamin supplements and undergoing coffee enemas daily.

She made videos explaining how to administer enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now marked private.

When Ms Ainscough’s mother, Sharyn, was diagnosed with breast cancer, she followed her daughter’s lead and put her faith in Gerson Therapy.

Sharyn died in October 2014.

Whilst there are many heartless scam artists, such as Hellfried Sartori, aka “Dr. Death” and those genuinely deluded by their beliefs, one person deserves special mention. It appears that Belle Gibson managed to sink as far as one Meryl Dorey in that pleas for money donations from the public accompanied promises donations would be passed to charity. Gibson had named charitable organisations. As with Dorey this was not the case, although now under the glare of media scrutiny she has indicated the promised donations will be paid.

Gibsons The Whole Pantry app made the grade as a permanent app for the Apple Watch. It now seems Apple have pulled the app from Australian and USA app stores, but it is unclear if it will be and it has also been removed from promotional material as a permanent app from the much anticipated Apple Watch and iPad Air 2.

Sarah Berry wrote in SMH:

Gibson has a top-rating health app that was one of the promoted apps on Apple’s new watch.

Its success and the empire she has built comes from her incredible story of triumph over adversity, of sickness into self-empowered health.

It is a story that we now know was at best embellished and at worst was an outright lie.

Penguin have already dropped her recipe book by the same name. One hopes arrangements can be made so the scam app never sees the light of day as a permanent app on Apple’s watch.

Dangerous Food Fads

As Jenny McCartney recently noted the urge to believe in the magic of change turns consumer gullibility into fertile ground for the absurd claims made by every type of entrepreneur from well meaning fools to cunning scam artists. Gibson is reportedly back in Australia, but seriously who cares?

The damage has been done. Research indicates that even with brutally thorough exposure and follow up high quality debunking of anti-medicine and anti-science lies, the misinformation sticks. In this case it is not the lie of vaccines causing autism. Yet sadly it is a louder echo of a trumpet the antivaccinationists love to blow. Primarily that surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy do little for successful treatment of cancer.

The scale of Gibson’s rort is truly frightening. How many will follow her manufactured rubbish is unknown. But the fact remains that her army of followers and supporters will continue to support her pantry nonsense. Certainly many will realise the scam, but others – particularly the hard core anti-medicine crew – will dig in and find comfort in the usual conspiracies.

Consumers must develop skills in recognising reputable sources. As with the misinformation relating to vaccination and vaccines. Doing “research” just doesn’t cut it. Far better to have the means by which we can identify good, trustworthy material and spot the signs that give away trickery that is simply too good to be true. With cancer time is vital and whilst eating well is in itself not harmful, time spent thinking it is “treatment” is time lost from actual proven treatments.

This handbook from The Cancer Council provides excellent advice and tips on identifying dodgy sources and outright scams. As mentioned in the last post consider, “How will I know if claims of a cure are false?”. On page 39 of this booklet they note that the dishonest and unethical may;

  • Try to convince you your cancer has been caused by a poor diet or stress: they will claim they can treat you or cure your cancer with a special diet
  • Promise a cure – or to detoxify, purify or revitalise your body. There will be quick dramatic and wonderful results – a miracle cure
  • Use untrustworthy claims to back up their results rather than scientific-based evidence from clinical trials. They may even list references. But if you look deeper these references may be false, nonexistent, irrelevant, based on poorly designed research and out of date
  • Warn you that medical professionals are hiding “the real cure for cancer” and not to trust your doctor
  • Display credentials not recognised by reputable scientists and health professionals

Always speak to your doctor and be aware that even the best intentions of friends can unwittingly disarm you through peer pressure. There is no cure for cancer, but there are excellent treatments.

Avoid food fads as a means to health and beware of the wellness trend.

UPDATE – April 2nd, 2015. Belle Gibson will not be facing police action over fraud. Consumer Affairs Victoria has noted that dishonest and misleading actions of the business, The Whole Pantry, “may constitute a breach of the Fundraising Act 1998 or Australian Consumer Law (Victoria)”. Presently CAV are “ascertaining the facts around Gibson and her companies collection of funds and promises of donations.