In fact, the problem is nearly universal in most first world countries.  Across Western Europe, waste lines are growing.   Germany, Ireland, Finland, Greece, Spain and others have seen obesity skyrocket in recent years.   In both Australia and New Zealand, obesity rates are now described as “epidemic” and continue to rise.   The nations with the fastest growing obesity rates, however, are those which are still developing industrially.   Although the overall prevalence of obesity in Chile, Brazil and India are low, they are growing at the highest rates. In China, obesity was once extremely rare, but in the past decade has become common.   Even Japan and South Korea are seeing rising obesity, despite having had a reputation for generally lean populations.

The common yet false claims:

If you ever happen to watch a youtube video or visit a website claiming dangers associated with food irradiation, genetic modification or the use of vaccines, modern medicine etc etc, you will very often hear claims that it is the reason why the population is obese. Pictures of unhealthy, overweight kids are often shown alongside warnings of the evils of modern agriculture.

Others will say that we need to “detoxify” to become thinner. That seems to be an odd suggestion, since fat is not toxic but the result of your body absorbing and storing nutrients, which is what it’s supposed to do. Others insist that the answer is eating only organically-certified foods.

NOT reasons why people are fat:

• Vaccines
• Antibiotics
• Chemtrails
• Genetically modified foods
• High fructose corn syrup being used as a sweetener (as opposed to cane or beat sugar)
• Food irradiation
• Bisphenol A
• “Toxins”
• Insecticide residue
• Fluoridation of water
• A need to “detoxify” the body

Reasons why people are fat:

• Eating large amounts of high calorie food
• Sedentary lifestyles

Of these the first is by far the most important reason.   The second does have some impact and may be more true in children, since there has been a very strong shift toward less outdoor play and exertion than in decades past.   That said, there have long been large segments of the population who get minimal exercise and it is primarily the change in eating habits that is responsible for more obesity.

People in industrialized countries are eating more processed foods than ever before, more calorie-dense snacks and consuming more soft drinks than ever.   When one says “processed foods” it might seem to indicate that the problem is that they are a problem because there is something artificial or unnatural about them.  That’s not really the problem so much as it is that these foods tend to be very dense in calories and are easy to consume in bulk.  They also, by and large, are easy for the body to extract those calories from.   Fast foods and packaged snack foods are widely available and cheap.   It is very easy to eat a lot of them without even noticing.

Soft drinks are another big culprit.    It’s not uncommon for someone to drink sodas or sweetened juices with every meal of the day.   A single can of cola can easily contain 150 calories and it’s quite easy to put away 500+ calories of soda with a meal and hardly even notice it.   Sodas and soft drinks are so high in calories because they are loaded with sugar.   Often this is in the form of high fructose corn syrup, but that’s not what matters.  It could just as easily be cane sugar or beat sugar or any other kind of sugar.  It’s not the source of the sugar but the quantity and thus the caloric value.

The problem is not limited to sodas either.   Sweetened iced teas, sports drinks and other beverages can contain just as much sugar and calories.  Even “unsweetened” fruit juices can be very high in naturally occurring sugars from the fruits they are made from.

It’s become very common for people in industrial societies to drink large quantities of sodas and soft drinks every day.   It’s become very common for people in industrial societies to eat large quantities of processed, calorie-dense snack foods like cookies, candy bars and other sweets.   More and more people are also eating food from restaurants, fast food or otherwise on a daily basis.   These foods too tend to be high in calories, often being fried.

It’s important to remember that none of these foods are “bad” in and of themselves, should they be eaten in relative moderation.   Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both been around for more than one hundred years and were popular and ubiquitous around the world throughout the 20th century.   If the average person had a Coke or Pepsi every time they went to a ball game or barbecue, then there wouldn’t really be any problem.  If donuts were consumed a couple of times a week, they would not be much concern either.

The problem is that these foods have become staples.   It’s not uncommon for a person to eat a couple donuts for breakfast, chased with a coffee with lots of sugar then eat a burger and fries, with a large soft drink for lunch, snack on candy bars and soda in the afternoon and then have a large high-calorie dinner.

Why this has happened:

The reason that so many have excessive calorie intake is that they can.  It’s not the fault of restaurants or food producers, they are just filling a demand.   As a general rule, humans prefer foods that we would generally consider “unhealthy” by modern standards.

For most of human history, food has been scarce, so it was beneficial to eat the foods with the highest calories in high quantities, when they were available.  Calories are the most important consideration when it comes to nutrition and having a constant surplus is something that has only happened recently.   Foods with a lot of fat and sugar taste good and are satisfying.   Other options are there, but given the choice between a salad and a burger, most people will choose the burger.   Choosing the salad usually means making a conscious decision to do what is healthy, not what is more enjoyable.

Innovations in agriculture, automation and the general rise of more food services has made it easier and cheaper than ever to get these foods.   Soda machines are common and convenience stores and gas stations are stocked with every kind of sweet confection imaginable, primarily because that’s what people want.  Fast food restaurants can provide a quick breakfast, lunch or dinner with drive-through convince and do it for only a few dollars.   They often do have healthy options on the menu, but that’s not usually what customers buy.

Given the choice, consumers will also tend to prefer larger portions.  To some extent it is an issue of more value for one’s money, and simple economics come into play here.  The value to a consumer can be increased by either lowering the cost of a product or increasing the quantity.  For a restaurant, it’s more attractive to increase the quantity, since they are then taking in more revenue and have fixed preparation costs.  Additionally, consumers simply tend to gravitate toward greater portions.   French fries and other high calorie sides are cheap, so it makes business sense to pile them on, since consumers prefer to get more anyway.

There are also some cultural reasons for this happening.  People are more mobile than ever, and being on the go means more opertunity to grab a quick packaged snack.  Eating at home is less common than in decades past, and prepared foods and restaurants are part of the growing service-oriented economy.   With more women in the workplace and fewer traditional families, the old norm of having a woman spend her afternoon making a pot roast or meatloaf for the family to eat together at the dinner tables is no longer common.

The solution:

There are no easy solutions here.   Encouraging people to eat more healthy foods and reduce intake can help.  Providing more low calorie options can help too.   Encouraging more exercise is also helpful.

On an individual basis, we can all decide to eat healthier and do so through willpower, but making the whole population do so is much harder.  To some extent, one is up against human nature, which is generally a losing proposition.   Making food more expensive or less available is not a good option, because doing so would result in greater burdens on the lower classes and more income going toward food purchases.  Trying to place restrictions on foods won’t generally work either.  Such restrictions are unlikely to be well received and would need to be draconian to have any chance of working at all.

Even if restrictions put in place, there will always be ways to skirt them.   Creating a “black market” for high calorie foods might seem like an absurd idea, but it has actually happened.  In Los Angeles, school districts instituted a policies for school lunch programs, replacing most of the high calorie foods with things like salads, whole wheat breads, grilled chicken and other foods generally considered healthy.   Unfortunately, a large portion of  students don’t like the new menu and prefer sodas, chips and candy enough to create a thriving black market.  More and more students now bring their own lunches, and now are selling to their peers. Food trucks and vendors set up shop around schools to fill the demand.  Now California is mulling banning such vendors, while some districts consider either inspecting bagged lunches or banning them altogether.

Trying to apply such rules and restrictions to greater segments of society would result in similar backlash, although it would likely be even worse.

Disclaimers:

[1]  I know already someone is going to point out that I personally could stand to lose a few pounds.  I don’t dispute this.  That’s not the point.  I’ll be the first to admit that the reason I am overweight is that I my eating habits are sub-optimal.

[2]  A lot of the readers of this blog seem to like hypertechicalities, so to clarify the “Not reasons why people are fat” should probably say “Not MAJOR reasons why people are fat.”  It is true that there are circumstances where antibiotics can result in some weight gain.  It’s also possible that one could make the logical connection between vaccines and more obesity by pointing out that vaccination has economic benefits and that these could, in turn, result in a population that could buy more food.

[3] Of course the subject is more complicated and there may well be other factors that come into play, but go beyond the scope of this blog post.

[4] Someone is almost certainly going to bring this up – it’s true that HFCS and sucrose (cane sugar) are not identical and that there’s some difference in the dietary effects.   In general, HFCS is lower in calories than sucrose of an equivalent sweetness which would suggest that it’s actually less problematic.   Claims have been made that HFCS is more readily converted to fat than glucose, although data to confirm this is, at best weak.   Regardless of these possibilities, it does not change the fact that the major problem is quantity, not type of sugar and HFCS does not appear to be significantly more prone to contributing to weight gain than other forms of sugar.

In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C.

P = People S = Services per person E = Energy per service C = CO2 per energy unit

Then he adds that in order to get CO2 to zero, “probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero.”

Following that, Bill Gates begins to describe how the first number — P (for People) — might be reduced. He says:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

You can watch this yourself at: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A…
Reducing the world Population through vaccines

This statement by Bill Gates was not made with any hesitation, stuttering or other indication that it might have been a mistake. It appears to have been a deliberate, calculated part of a well developed and coherent presentation.

So what does it mean when Bill Gates says “if we do a really great job on new vaccines… we could lower [world population] by 10 or 15 percent?”

Perhaps that’s the whole point of it. Given that vaccines technology help almost no one from a scientific point of view (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v…), it raises the question: For what purpose are vaccines being so heavily pushed in the first place?

Bill Gates seems to be saying that one of the primary purposes is to reduce the global population as a mechanism by which we can reduce CO2 emissions. Once again, watch the video yourself to hear him say it in his own words: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A…
How can vaccines actually be used to reduce world population?

Let’s conduct a mental experiment on this issue. If vaccines are to be used to reduce world population, they obviously need to be accepted by the majority of the people. Otherwise the population reduction effort wouldn’t be very effective.

And in order for them to be accepted by the majority of the people, they obviously can’t just kill people outright. If everybody started dropping dead within 24 hours of receiving the FLU shot, the danger of vaccines would become obvious rather quickly and the vaccines would be recalled.

Thus, if vaccines are to be used as an effective population reduction effort, there are really only three ways in which they might theoretically be “effective” from the point of view of those who wish to reduce world population:

#1) They might kill people slowlyin a way that’s unnoticeable, taking effect over perhaps 10 – 30 years by accelerating degenerative diseases.

#2) They might reduce fertility and therefore dramatically lower birth rates around the world, thereby reducing the world population over successive generations. This “soft kill” method might seem more acceptable to scientists who want to see the world population fall but don’t quite have the stomach to outright kill people with conventional medicine. There is already evidence that vaccines may promote miscarriages (http://www.naturalnews.com/027512_v…).

#3) They might increase the death rate from a future pandemic. Theoretically, widespread vaccination efforts could be followed by a deliberate release of a highly virulent flu strain with a high fatality rate. This “bioweapon” approach could kill millions of people whose immune systems have been weakened by previous vaccine injections.

Ohhhh kay…

Perhaps a little out of context? Note for example that he does not mention vaccines alone but rather in the context of healthcare and reproductive services.

It should be noted that in general, killing a lot of people in an epidemic or war is not a very effective means of population growth. Unless the stress on the population is continuous, it will bounce back remarkably fast. Beyond that, the idea of reducing human lifespans or increasing early deaths is also repugnant and something that most won’t take very kindly to. (But that’s apparently no problem for the evil conspirators)

The best way to reduce population growth is by increasing standards of living and healthcare, especially reproductive care and contraception. As a general rule, the better educated, the more industrialized and the greater the standard of living of a society, the lower the rate of population growth. This is where vaccination comes in, because vaccines don’t just directly save lives, but also result in a lot less people suffering from non-fatal, but extremely unpleasant illness. Diseases are very expensive for a society. Every time someone gets sick they can’t work to their full capacity or can’t work at all. They may be occupying a hospital bed and the time of a physician, which could have been used to care for someone else.

Therefore:
Greater vaccination -> less diseases -> less stress on the healthcare system -> better healthcare
and
Greater vaccination -> less diseases -> less economic loss from disease -> better economics
and
Greater vaccination -> less diseases -> less people suffering, less disabled persons, less pain -> higher average standard of living

All of the above contribute to reduced birth rates.

The reasons are varied and complex. Many births are unplanned and those who have the knowledge of birth control and access to it will therefore take the steps necessary to prevent it. Substance agriculture can result in pressure to produce more, not less children because of their value as workers. When disease is rampant, increased birth rates may be valued as a way of insuring at least some of the offspring survive. In impoverished areas, women may have no choice but to submit to unprotected sex and thus get pregnant.

This is why in India, where most live in very poor conditions, the population is exploding and yet in Japan, where most live in a highly industrial and comfortable urban setting, birth rates are so low there is concern that population reduction is leaving the country with two few elderly and not enough young people to care for them.

Vaccines, of course, can’t do it alone and were not mentioned alone. In the short term, they may even result in a small increase in population growth by reducing death rates, but not enough to make a huge difference. In the long run, vaccines are part of a broader effort to improve life and increase economic development and healthcare quality. That can and will reduce population growth.

(Note: I actually disagree with Bill Gates on his CO2 formula. Energy does not need to be CO2 intensive. But that’s beyond the point.)

There’s a way of knowing whether a given compound has therapeutic properties and whether it’s safe in general – scientifically controlled clinical studies.   Alternative remedies, which include many traditional and regional preparations were not the result of scientific study.  A few have been subjected to scientific scrutiny and proven to be worthwhile.  When this happens, they stop being “alternative medicine” and become simply “medicine.”

For all the rest, it’s just hit or miss, and more often than not, it’s miss.  Guided by old traditions, anecdotes and old wives tales, the actual effect on the body could be just about anything.

Such would seem to be the case with birthwort.   Birthwort is a family of plants which have been regarded as medicinally beneficial for centuries, despite complete lack of evidence for this.   The exact reason for the belief is unclear, although it might have to do with the fact that some of the compounds in the plant do have antimicrobial properties and thus could be useful as an antiseptic, if only topically.   Another reason for the belief that it has useful medical properties is the so-called doctrine of signatures – a discredited belief that herbs are useful in treating a part of the body which they resemble.   Birthwort is noted for having a shape that is similar to the human uterus.  For this reason, it was believed to be useful for reproductive and genital health and for fertility.

It also has been used for various kidney problems, including kidney stones and urinary tract problems.   Again, the reasoning for this is not entirely clear.  It may be an extension of the belief that it is helpful for health issues involving the genitals or it could just be that it gained a reputation for being something that people with kidney problems swore by.   Whatever the case, it was not science-based.  That said, it was accepted for many years.

Like many “alternative” remedies, it remained on shelves, largely unquestioned until people started getting sick and dying enough to catch someone’s attention.   This happened in 1991 when a clinic in Brussels, Belgium started offering the herb as part of a weight loss regime.   Although it was known for some time that the plant contained potent toxins, it was not until a large number of women in Brussels began to show up at doctors with acute kidney failure that it became evident that the plant was more dangerous than anyone had suspected.

Upon further investigation it turns out that the long trusted, yet untested herb is in fact, a potent carcinogen and that use of the quantities common in traditional preparations can cause kidney damage, amongst other things.

Via USA Today:

Kidney stones. Snakebites. Head wounds. To the ancients, a weed called birthwort was a wonder drug that treated them all, and more.

Medical detectives, however, are finding that the ancient remedy likely has caused centuries of kidney failure and cancer, as well as being the culprit in a widespread syndrome of kidney disease in some parts of the world.

“The big clue was the plant itself,” says pharmacologist Arthur Grollman of Stony Brook (N.Y.) University. “Once it was appreciated that it contained a potent kidney toxin and human carcinogen, we could get to the bottom of things.”

Grollman and colleagues have unraveled a genetic signature left behind by birthwort in cases of cancers and kidney failure, as reported in the March journal ofKidney International. And in upcoming work, they report signs that use of the drug in Chinese medicines may be responsible for Taiwan’s sky-high rate of kidney disease.

…

Modern medicine became alarmed by birthwort in 1991, when dozens of young women from a “slimming” clinic in Brussels, Belgium, appeared in doctor’s offices with kidney failure. The case triggered warnings and a 2000 New England Journal of Medicine report noting that about 5% of 1,800 women given the Chinese herb, Aristolochia fangchi (another birthwort species), in a weight-loss treatment at the clinic had developed kidney failure. That triggered a Food and Drug Administration warning about the herb that mentioned 16 weight-loss products then on store shelves, and also offered a clue that only some people suffered from a genetic susceptibility to the herb causing kidney failure, Grollman says.

But it wasn’t until a 2007 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper that Grollman and his colleagues showed the Balkan and Belgian cases were caused by the same toxin, finding mutations in the genes of Croatian patients that exactly matched those of mice poisoned with aristolochic acid. The mutations were pinpoint changes in a well-known tumor-suppressing gene called p53. The finding “was a breakthrough,” says kidney expert Marc De Broe of Belgium’s University of Antwerp, in a commentary in Kidney International. DeBroe added, “this magic plant turned out to contain a powerful nephrotoxic (kidney-poisoning) substance with an ability to induce urothelial (urinary tract) cancer.”

But the damage from birthwort poisoning may well go beyond clusters of unexplained kidney failure, Grollman suggests. In an upcoming study, he and his colleagues looked at Taiwan, the “Land of Dialysis” in some news reports, where the herb is widely used in traditional medicine. A 2006 survey in The Lancet suggested that nearly 12% of Taiwan’s population suffers chronic kidney disease. Health service statistics there also show that about 1 in 3 patients are prescribed Aristolochia as part of traditional medical treatments delivered at doctor’s offices. And Taiwanese kidney failure patients in the upcoming study widely show the same pinpoint changes in the p53 gene seen in patients in the Balkans and Belgium, Grollman says.

This is a potent example of a basic fact about traditional remedies: The fact that something has been “used for centuries” or that it is common in rural China or that it is natural means absolutely nothing in terms of safety or effectiveness. We can’t know if something is safe or effective unless it is actually subjected to a battery of scientific tests. The fact that something has been considered a valid remedy for a given condition does not mean it works on that condition or even that the claim is based on anecdotal evidence – it could be something as bunk as the fact that the plant looks like a body part.

If you choose to take a traditional or alternative remedy, keep in mind that it may well make your condition worse, or it might do nothing.  While it’s possible that it could also have therapeutic benefit, if it has not been subjected to scientific tests and evaluation we just don’t know.  It’s a stab in the dark.   You may as well go outside, pick up the first random plant you find on the ground and eat it.

It’s a rundown of some of the more interesting incidents of mass hysteria, where numerous people began to manifest symptoms based entirely on their belief that something existed when it didn’t. It’s actually more common than one might think. History is littered with examples of whole populations erupting in uncontrollable laughter, people believing they could not breathe and thus passing out, men panicking that their penises were retracting into their bodies or the female equivalent, where women believe their reproductive tracts are closing up. In some cases, individuals have injured themselves in an attempt to stop the fictional condition from progressing.

Never put 100% trust in anyone, not even yourself!

The story might have ended there and been the sad tale of a young lady who lost an arm to cancer.   However, due to her poor choices, the story is much much sadder.   Ms. Ainscough decided to decline further treatment.  She instead opted for an organic diet, coffee enemas and various detoxification rituals.   She believes she is “healing” her cancer and that this is an example of her taking responsibility and doing the right thing.

Ms. Ainscough looks pretty good and, according to her, she feels pretty good.   That’s actually not too surprising.  The cancer has invaded her soft tissues and is growing and spreading, but, at least from the sound of it, it has not become debilitating just yet.   The sad thing is Ms. Ainscough seems to be very confident she is getting better because she lacks the most basic understanding of what the condition is and how it needs to be treated.   It’s certainly true that surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are damaging, but that’s because they have to be.  Cancer cannot be “healed.”  It must be killed.  Cancerous cells are damaged cells of ones own body, which grow out of control, due to a breakdown in the function of the mechanisms that control cellular growth.   Cancer is a problem inherent to animal cell biology, it can happen in anyone, for any number of reasons, but usually with no single attributable cause, and when it does, the only way it can be cured is by destroying the cancerous cells.

Ms. Ainscough’s complete lack of even the most basic understanding of how cancer is treated is apparent in some of her statements, such as this one:

Drugs do not cure cancer. They just don’t. Every now and then, chemotherapy and radiation treatments may put a patient into “remission”, but this is not truly healing. This is certainly not a cure. Why? Because cancer is so much more than the tumour it shows up as. The tumours are merely the symptoms. And when you just target the symptom without dealing with the root cause, the disease is going to keep showing up. You can chase the disease around your body with surgery and radiation, and you can douse it with toxic chemicals, but this is not an effective long-term solution. This is why you here so often of people whose “cancer came back”. They didn’t do the work to truly reverse their disease. Cancer is nothing more than your body telling you that something has got to give. It is the result of a breakdown in your body’s defenses after it has endured years of abuse in the form of a toxic diet, toxic mind and toxic environment.

No. That’s not it at all. The tumors are the problem. The tumors are composed of the cancerous cells that are the root of the problem and the reason it often comes back is that it’s so damn hard to get every one of those cells, especially when they start spreading to different areas of the body.   While cancer can be the result of carcinogenic chemicals, it can also be caused by heredity or by the random degradation of genetic material that happens as a result of cellular respiration.

Let me be blunt about the sad truth here.  Jess Ainscough is going to die.   I don’t mean in fifty years either.   The cancer she has now is going to kill her.   It’s too late for her to have a good prognosis, and if she continues without treatment, then the already poor odds are going to get worse.   She may feel okay for the time being, but she will die.  Her only hope is spontaneous remission, which in this kind of cancer is all but unheard of.

I should note that I am not a doctor and I do not have access to Ms. Ainscough’s complete medical information.  However, what I do know is that she claims to have been diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma.   If this is indeed true (and if it’s a lie then she’s downright evil), and if she is not receiving treatment by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, then the cancer can be expected to be fatal.   This has been confirmed by experts I have consulted before writing this.  As one put it “Not treating epithelioid sarcoma is suicidal.”

The thing that really bothers me, however, is that she is working very hard to put out the message that her non-treatment is working and is the best course of action.  She’s been embraced by the media and this idiocy could easily kill others who buy into it.

Via Dolly:

“I’m healing myself from cancer naturally”

In 2008, when I was 22 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer called epithelioid sarcoma in my left hand and arm.

I was living in Sydney at the time and working as the online editor for DOLLY magazine. I was living an ideal life for someone in their early twenties – burning the candle at both ends, paying no attention to how my actions could affect my health, but having a whole lot of fun while I was at it.

Everything was going exactly according to my life plan. Or so I thought.

On the 24th of April, 2008 I went to see my hand surgeon to have a cast removed, following an operation I had to biopsy some lumps that had been popping up all over my left hand and arm.

After taking the cast off, my doctor told me the news that would change my life in too many ways to predict. He said that I had cancer, and that the type of cancer I have is so rare that not many doctors know how to treat it.

Epithelioid sarcoma doesn’t respond to chemotherapy or radiation, and my only chance of prolonging my survival would be to have my arm amputated at the shoulder. But essentially, my condition was incurable.

None of this made any sense to me. I felt so healthy, and I looked healthy. I could not understand how my life had come down to a decision about whether to have my whole, fully functioning arm chopped off.

After so much anguish and being given no other options, I signed the papers and arranged to have the amputation. However, Baby Jesus, Buddha, Elvis – or whoever is up there – must have been looking out for me, because two days before I was due to have the operation, my medical team came to me with an alternative option.

They wanted to tie a tourniquet around my armpit so that an extremely high dose of chemotherapy drugs could be pumped through my arm. I spent eight days in hospital having the treatment, then a week at home recovering.

Following scans showed I was clear of cancer, but in 2009 – not even a year after going into remission – the cancer was back.

This time I was told that my only real chance of prolonging my survival would be to have my arm amputated at the shoulder, but that this would just be biding me time. My case was regarded as terminal.

Deciding this was not good enough, I took matters into my own hands. I refused their offers and began searching for natural, alternative cancer treatments.

The way I saw it I had two choices. I could let them chase the disease around my body until there was nothing left of me to cut, zap or poison; or I could take responsibility for my illness and bring my body to optimum health so that it can heal itself. For me it was an easy decision.

I began looking at the different ways I may have contributed to the manifestation of my disease and then stopped doing them.

I swapped a lifestyle of late nights, cocktails and Lean Cuisines for carrot juice, coffee enemas and meditation and became an active participant in my treatment.

This research led me to Gerson Therapy which ensures you have a perfectly balanced diet for optimum health, assisting your body to flush out nasties whilst feeding it with all the goodness it needs to flourish.

Epithelioid sarcoma is a relatively rare type of cancer of the soft tissues. It usually occurs in the extremities and is most common in young adults. The tumors are slow growing, but have an extremely high rate of recurrence. Whenever possible they are best treated by surgical removal. As with most cancers, the earlier the tumor is removed, the better and the lesser the chances of recurrence, but even when the entire tumor can be removed, it frequently recurs. Up to 77% of patients will have the cancer reoccur after it has been removed.

Amputation would seem to be an extreme step to take, but in the case of Epitheloid Sarcoma, it is often the recommended treatment that offers the greatest probability of long term survival. The cancer is prone to metastasis early in its development, which is what makes it so difficult to treat and necessitates radical surgery as the best means of avoiding recurrence.   The cancer is most prone to “local metastasis” which is why operations to remove only the tumor are frequently unsuccessful.   Operations to remove larger areas of tissue or amputate the entire limb have a much higher success rate.   It’s hard to gauge the exact success rate because it depends very heavily on how early the cancer is caught and to what degree it has spread.  If the entire region of the cancer is removed, metastasis is only 30%.  Therefore, while amputation of a cancerous limb does not guarantee that the cancer is cured, but it offers the best chance for doing so.   Even despite the disfigurement and lack of function, it is generally advised that such radical surgery be the primary means of treatment.

The condition becomes extremely difficult to successfully treat once it has begun to spread to more distant areas of the body.  It does not respond well to chemotherapy some chemotherapy drugs do appear to have effect on large tumors, but the data is inconclusive due to lack of peer reviewed studies evaluating long term survival.  Radiation, though helpful for local occurrences, is of limited value once the cancer begins to spread to multiple areas of the body.   In some cases, aggressive radiation therapy does stack up favorably to amputation and therefore may allow for retention of a limb while still providing a similar success rates.   Surgical removal of the tumor combined with radiation therapy in the area of the tumor is another option which offers relatively good success with the ability to retain the limb.

The fact that this type of cancer is not common makes it difficult to get good statistical data on the success rates of different treatment regimes.   With aggressive treatment by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, the overall success rate is, sadly, only lackluster.   About 42-55% of patients treated will survive ten years or more, which is generally considered the benchmark for being “cured.” Ms. Ainscough, however, would have had better than average odds of survival, given her demographic.  Women tend to have better survival rates than men, and younger patients tend to have better survival rates than older ones.  In more favorable cases, the rate of successful treatment can be as high 80%.

It’s hard to tell what Ms. Ainscough’s prognosis would be, but it appears it would have been pretty good, based on her age, gender and general health.  With aggressive treatment, she had a very good shot at beating the cancer, even if it may have cost her an arm.   Regardless of her ultimate outcome, treatment could certainly offer Ms. Ainscough a longer life, even if it were not ultimately successful.   In all likelihood, the aggressive chemotherapy she had early on has given her at least a year or more extra to live.

Unfortunately, it’s now probably too late.   I asked a doctor about what would be recommended now, and he said it might be amputation, if the cancer is completely or at least mostly in one arm, but if it’s spread further, amputating the arm would not provide much benefit.  If the cancer has moved beyond her arm, which it probably has, then there’s very little hope of a successful outcome.  Once the cancer has reached widespread distribution, the likelihood of long term survival is small, although it is not impossible. Even if treatment could still result in a favorable outcome, it appears that Ms. Ainscough is not open to the possibility of reconsidering mainstream medicine.

The progress of this type of cancer is usually slow.  Since it primarily affects soft tissues, it may be grow and spread for quite some time before presenting serious symptoms or life threatening complications.  Soft tumors develop around the body, mainly in the deep subcutaneous tissues.  They are slow growing and may or may not result in noticeable tenderness or discomfort.  It can, in some cases, result in surface ulcers.  The slow but aggressive cancer will eventually begin to impair normal functions as it invades lymph nodes and structures like the abdominal wall.

It can take some time for this form of cancer to become debilitating and even longer for it to kill.  The most common way that this cancer kills is by infesting the lungs.  It may take some time, but eventually the cancer will begin to impair lung function.   Palative care may include supplimental oxygen, which can allow patients to live a bit longer, even as their lung function declines.  Ultimately, this is the manner in which epithelioid sarcoma kills.

I really do not take any delight in saying this, but based on all the research I have done and the opinion of doctors in the field, if Jess Ainscough really does have epithelioid sarcoma and is not having it treated then she will almost certainly die in the near future.   She may continue in relative comfort and appear healthy for the time being, but the cancer is only going to get worse.  She will begin to suffer progressively worse symptoms and will die, although it may take anywhere from a few months to a few years for it to happen.   She has missed the opportunity to have a reasonably good prognosis.   If she were to start treatment now, her likelihood of living a full life would be low, but if she continues to forgo treatment, it will be even worse.

I really find it extremely sad.   Ms. Ainscough is a twenty six year old lady who may be naive and has been very quick to embrace alternative medicine as a cure for a disease she seems to have no understanding of, but being naive hardly is grounds for a death sentence.   Sadly it does not look like she is going to make it to thirty.

Now this is really going to sound terribly cold, but considering she is going to die and there’s not much to be done about that, part of me hopes it happens soon, because has long as she is alive (which isn’t going to be a whole lot longer, no matter how you look at it), she’s spreading this deadly misinformation.   Maybe once she dies, her tragic case will make others wake up and realize they need to get their condition treated.

The ones who really should have to answer for this disgrace is not so much Ms. Ainscough, who is as much a victim as anything else.   This poor woman is dying and does not even know it, because charlatans exploited her ignorance and lack of blind trust.  Media outlets have given her a platform to spread it even further.   In the end, she’ll be the dead one and they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Unless she’s lying about having this condition, in which case she’s just plain evil.

Finally, in a highly unusual step, I wrote to Ms. Ainscough:

Dear Miss Aincough,

I am writing you because I have read your posts and articles about your battle with cancer and the actions you have taken to try to treat your condition. I am sure that you firmly believe that you are getting better and that you are doing the right thing to improve your health. You may even feel better and perfectly healthy at the moment. However, you have been had. You are taking advice from people who have no idea what they are talking about. If you continue to do so, it will likely kill you.

I am not a doctor, but I know when a doctor should be consulted and being diagnosed with cancer is most certainly a time when you need a doctor. Having read your accounts, I can understand why you feel they are not giving you the answers or advice you are looking for. The modern healthcare system often bounces patients between white coat-clad professionals who do extremely cold and clinical assessments and seem to take little interest in personal wellness. This is a symptom of doctors needing to treat many people and being forced to work within constraints. It’s a heavily regulated and impersonal system. That does not, however, mean they don’t know what they are talking about.

The doctors who treat cancer understand it very well. They have spent years studying it on a biochemical level, a microscopic level and on a whole-body level. They know how it works, how it progresses and how different chemicals interact with the cancer cells. Becoming a doctor is not easy and you’ll generally find doctors to be very smart people.

Despite what you might have heard, doctors are not in it just for money. Sure, a career in medicine pays pretty well, but it’s not as simple as that. Medical school is long, hard and expensive. Doctors have to spend years in low paying residency before they ever get the chance to make good money, and even then the salaries doctors get are good, but they’re not usually enough to become extremely rich – usually just upper middle class. They have to worry about things like malpractice and may be forced to be on call at odd hours. If a person only wants money, they’ll go into finance or become a lawyer. Doctors, on the other hand, may make good pay, but they are also motivated by the desire to help and the challenge of things.

I don’t think anyone is going to deny that cancer is a tough thing to treat. It’s not as simple as nutrition, and if it was, we would not be spending billions a year working on improving treatment. Cancer is a problem inherent to animal cells. Sometimes they break down and start to divide out of control. When this happens, there’s usually no attributable cause. It’s not your body reacting to something, but just a random error that causes the body to attack itself. This is why it’s so hard to treat and why the treatment can be so difficult.

I realize that losing an arm is something that anyone would want to avoid. Being young and healthy and suddenly hearing you’ve got to have your arm amputated to avoid dying from cancer must be a huge shock. However, I assure you that no competition medical professional would ever recommend such a thing unless they thought it was absolutely necessary and even then, they don’t take it lightly.

The reason you have heard things that you do not want to hear from doctors is that they are required by the ethics of their profession to be truthful. When they said you had to have an arm removed and that it would not guarantee that it would successfully stop the cancer, they were telling you the cold hard truth. When they say the disease could kill you and they can’t be sure they’ll be able to stop you, they are telling you the truth. It’s not the reality you want or they want, but it’s just the way things are. Those who tell you to drink juice and have coffee enemas can tell you much more positive and desirable things. They can tell you that you are being cured and will live a long healthy life with both arms and no cancer. They can tell you this because they lie.

One thing that is universal with cancer treatment is that it always is always more effective when started early. You have already waited some time and therefore, your odds of success are now lower than they had been. They are not zero and if you start treatment now, you have a fighting chance of beating the disease. If you want until tomorrow, they will be worse. The longer you wait, the worse the odds get.

I really do not expect you to listen to this, because I’m sure you have heard this all before, but I still felt ethically obligated to at least try.

Please consider seeking real medical treatment or you will almost certainly die.   If you get treatment now, you might have a chance.

Regards,
Steve Packard

Helsinki/Finland, January 11, 2012-Epidemiological studies are given the most weight in evaluation of human health effects. Therefore, when researchers started their effort to find out whether cell phone radiation causes brain cancer, epidemiology was given the most of attention – and the most funding.

Well… yes, since Epidemology is the study of health events, disease patterns, health statistics and disease rates and their relation to factors like environment, lifestyle and other causes, it would seem to be the field of study that would apply to such a question.

It’s as straight forward as determining that geology is the appropriate field of science to look to when trying to determine the characteristics of a rock.

However, and please let me play “devils advocate”,

Only if I can play with science advocate.

is the epidemiology overrated?

No.

There, are we done?

Will epidemiology ever give us reliable answers concerning cell phone radiation and brain cancer?

Yes, and they have. Or is it simply that you don’t like the answer and want it to be something else, therefore you consider it flawed?

In 2010 and in 2011, two of the largest epidemiological studies on brain cancer were published. It appears that the time and money were used generously,

There’s a lot of interest in the topic, so a lot went into it. I’m not certain which studies you mean, but there have been some enormous ones recently.

but the studies failed to provide reliable answers concerning cell phones radiation and brain cancer. Flaws in the design of both studies prevented delivering conclusive answers.

Really? Well, if you say so. But thankfully, we don’t have to rely on any two studies. Two studies don’t mean much in the world of epidemiology anyway. To actually get a conclusive answer, you need to have confirming data coming from many studies. In this case we’re lucky enough to have literally thousands. So, you could actually discard two of them if you so choose and it won’t change the balance of the evidence much, because there’s such a huge amount from other sources.

It was 1999 when the largest case-control epidemiological study, INTERPHONE, was planned. At that time, optimists hoped that by the end of this project in 2004 we would know whether cell phone radiation causes brain cancer.

Actually, I think we had a pretty good idea even back in 1999, so it doesn’t seem very optimistic to think we would by 2004. That would be like me predicting that in the year 2017 we’ll know that the earth revolves around the sun. Unless there’s some kind of complete collapse of civilization that leaves behind only a handful of completely uneducated people, I am pretty sure we will know that in 2017, since we do already know it now.

I think I see where this is going though. The Interphone study was supposed to be one of the largest studies of this type and would dispel the doubt forever. It pretty much did.

After several delays, INTERPHONE published the results of the glioma brain cancer study in 2010.

The results were confusing, to say the least. Use of the cell phone for less than 10 years seemed to have a “protective” effect, whereas the use of the cell phone for more than 10 years showed a small increase in glioma occurrence.

Well I agree on one thing: The study abstract didn’t do a very good job of putting this all in context. It might simply be that research scientists are very apprehensive about using absolutes and tend to talk in degree of confidence. The tiny increase in giloma, but only in certain subsets was almost certainly statistical noise. It was miniscule. The “protective” effect can be attributed to a combination of statistical noise and possibly some slight confounding factors.

The balance of the data provides pretty good confirmation of no overall risk increase. Again, this should have been made more clear. The problem largely stems from having non scientifically literate persons get involved in the reporting. Reports and public officials have a tendency to focus on very narrow portions of a study like this and take them out of context. They will generally then demand to know whether the researchers can be 100% confident that this is not in fact a risk effect. The answer to that question is always no, statistical analysis never regards anything as being 100% certain. Then the study gets reported as if it raised doubts, when it actually does not.

Several problems with the design of INTERPHONE were debated. By design, the INTERPHONE study was unable to detect brain cancer induced by cell phone radiation because of its long (over 10 years) latency period.

Okay, that might be the case, but plenty of other studies did look at longer latency periods. A few went so far as to track down some of the early adopters of cell phones who started using them frequently in the early 1980’s and they also found no increase in brain cancer.

That said, even if the AVERAGE latency period were something like twenty or thirty years, it’s hard for me to imagine that there could be a bell curve so narrow as to have zero detectable risk increase after a much shorter period of time.

At the time of execution of INTERPHONE (2000-2004), cell phones were in common use for only a few years. There would be not enough time for the development and diagnosis of brain cancer if it was caused by cell phone radiation.

It does not matter how common they were by the early 2000’s. The fact of the matter is that they have existed since the late 1970’s and they have been used by many people since then. Sure, the actual proportion of the population that began using cell phones a lot in the early 1980’s is small, but it’s still more than large enough to produce good study results.

It’s not even really a cell phone issue. Wireless phones are just UHF/Microwave transmitters and those have been around for ages. There are studies that have been done on others exposed much longer. Police officers started using radar guns in the late 1950’s to measure the speed of motorists and some cops spent thirty years working highway patrol with a radar gun in their car. Others spent their careers as microwave technicians for AT&T or television networks. Military personnel worked on the deck of ships with radar antennas energized nearby.

Studies have been done on these individuals. Many of them, in fact. The results are consistent and compelling: The only health effects ever detected are acute thermal injuries and no chronic effect of exposure to RF fields has ever been documented.

However, there was an even more important design flaw. The information about the extent of exposures to cell phone radiation was based on individual recollection of the subjects in the study. The study subjects were asked about their history of using cell phone, including how long and how many phone calls they made in the past.

Perhaps in this study, but not in all. While it may introduce a potential source of error, I’m hard pressed to see how this could possibly skew the studies that badly. Even if you rely on spotty recollection, the fact that people who reported being heavy phone users show no greater cancer risks than those who never owned a cell phone at all would seem to be pretty hard to mess up.

By the way: Studies on cigarette smoking and cancer have largely been based on the subject’s recollection of how many packs they usually smoked a day. Despite this, they had no problem picking up on the fact that tobacco causes lung cancer.

It is a very unreliable method. Who of us remembers how many and how long calls made a few days ago? The study subjects were asked to recall cell phone use up to ten years before the study.

Okay, lets see if I can do this…

Got my first cell phone in the summer of 2001. Before that I had used cell phones a bit, but only occasionally when on that belonged to someone else. I worked for a company that sold cell phones so I had a good plan with a discount. Consequently, I used it a good few minutes a day or more. I would say my use has generally been on the increase since then, although not always. I’ve generally made or received three or four calls per day, usually each one only being a few minutes. Occasionally I have longer calls. In 2004 and 2005 I had a job that had me on the road a lot and my usage went up to about a dozen calls a day, but mostly short. As it stands now I use about 180 minutes of talk time in a month, but occasionally one or two long calls can push that way up. That’s how it’s been for the past few years.

Good enough?

Therefore, by design, INTERPHONE compared reliable information concerning diagnosed cancers with entirely unreliable information about exposures. Such kind of comparison can not produce reliable result, as was seen in the confusing results of the study published by INTERPHONE in 2010.

Again, you’re presuming that this error is so great that it would make someone who has never owned a cell phone indistinguishable in risk from someone who says they’ve been a heavy cell phone user for the past ten years. That just does not make sense. Even if recollection skewed the data, it shouldn’t so enough to cause that kind of discrepancy.

In 2011, the Danish Cohort published another largest study, evaluated in this column in December 2011.

Similarly to INTERPHONE, the Danish Cohort compared reliable information on diagnosed brain cancers with the absolutely unreliable information about exposures based not on the use of cell phone but on the length of subscription with the network operator.

No. That’s actually perfectly reasonable. It stands to reason that a person who has a cell phone contract and owns a cell phone will be more prone to using a cell phone than one who does not. This is even more true in the early years. In 1983, a handheld cell phone cost about four thousand US dollars. Anyone who pays that much for something obviously has reason to do so. For example, real estate agents were some of the first to embrace the technology, because even given the high cost, they needed to make appointments while traveling between properties.

It might be imperfect in that some cell phone owners will use it more than others, but a cell phone owner will always use it more than one who does not own a cell phone.

The study also contaminated the control group with the cell phone users.

The study looked at the habits of long term user as compared to the general population and to groups of similar demographic profiles. Some of those included those who had used a cell phone as well, but didn’t you just assert that it would not matter since the latency period is very long? In any case, it’s all but impossible to find a large group these days which has never owned a cell phone. So the study compared long term cell phone users to those who either had recently acquired a cell phone, never owned a cell phone or had been very light user. The study actually looked at the groups using more than one method. It examined it based on the length of the phone ownership, the average usage of the phone, the reported habits etc.

In all cases, no coloration to increases in brain cancer was ever detected.

Again, as with the INTERPHONE, the Danish Cohort made comparison of reliable data on cancer with the unreliable information about exposures cannot produce reliable final result.

And what the hell would you consider to be reliable data?

Brain cancer is a rare disease, somewhat in the range of around 10 cases per 100,000 people. It means that in order to reliably detect the change, which seems to be less than 50% according to flawed INTERPHONE, tens of thousands of the study subjects should be analyzed. This is very expensive but not necessarily productive.

It’s actually not quite that rare. In fact, it’s about twice as common as cited.

But regardless, the fact is that if the probability of brain cancer were increased by using a cell phone, it would be easy to detect if that probability increase were large. In other words, if it increased the risk from, 22 per 100,000 people to 23 per 100,000 people, that would be very hard to find and a massive sample would be needed. On the other hand, if it increased it from 22 per 100,000 people to 100 per 100,000 people, that would be easy to detect and would stand out from the statistical noise in even a modest study.

Therefore, what we can say from these studies, without doubt, is that while it is impossible to rule out the possibility that there is an increased risk, it must be vanishingly small, if it does exist, because otherwise it would have been easily detected.

As shown by the experiences with INTERPHONE and Danish Cohort, large amounts of money (tens of millions of Euros) and ample amounts of time (over 10 years) were used and no reliable answers received.

No, we have reliable answers. They’re just not the ones you want.

In the current situation, with the above presented experience, should the epidemiology be the first kind of studies to use our scarce research resources? Epidemiology is very expensive and takes a very long time to get results. Any flaw in the study design sets us back by ten or more years.

Well I agree in so much as there’s no point in throwing more money at this. We have plenty of data. The jury is not out. The questions have been answered. It’s time to consider spending money on things we don’t know.

Would we be we better off using the available funding for the human studies examining acute effects of cell phone radiation on physiology? This would, of course, include studies of the known molecular events leading to initiation and development of cancer. We still do not know if cell phone radiation triggers any such events in living humans.

We’ve actually done that too.

And as far as molecular events that lead to initiation and development of cancer, those are not observed with microwaves. No mechanism by which that could happen has ever been discovered, despite more than a century of study of RF fields and electromagnetic radiation.

Performing physiological studies on volunteer will provide information whether any known carcinogenic events are triggered by cell phone radiation. Depending on the result, we could act immediately by imposing preventive measures based on scientific evidence.

Yes, we have done that. We’ve done it on humans. We’ve done it on animals. We’ve done it on live tissue cultures. We’ve done it on chemical systems that mimic what goes on in cells.

To provide such information, epidemiology will still need tens of years before it is able to perform effective studies, assuming that studies will be designed without any major flaws. Volunteer studies examining physiology and pro-carcinogenetic events would provide information much faster.

It’s been done. At some point it becomes time to give up on the existence of something which has been studied for so long and has not been determined to exist.

In this time of scarce resources, we need to make choices how to obtain, most reliably and expeditiously, information about the possible effect of cell phone radiation on brain cancer.

Based on the experience of the last 10-15 years, epidemiology does not seem to be the method of choice.

Well, compared to an assclown with an ax to grind and a desire to be in the newspaper, it actually does pretty well.

Hopefully by posting this garbage I can get some sound-minded people to vote it down a bit and make some rational comments to educated those who might believe this dangerous message.

Here it is. The Greater Good: Supposedly a fair look at vaccines, but actually one of the worst pieces of lying propaganda I have ever seen.

This is beyond shameful. It’s a very skilfully made, compelling set of bold faced lies that tug on heartstrings and can easily cost lives. Defeating this kind of propaganda is going to be very difficult. It’s a potent weapon against the war on infectious disease that humanity has fought for its entire history. We’re really going to have to work hard to fight this filth. It may require writing letters to the film festivals and venues that show it.

For a complete and well researched refutation of the film, please visit Science Based Medicine.

Oh, and by the way, there’s no evidence that the health problems of the young lady shown in the beginning are at all related to vaccines. She began to experience health problems which were diagnosed as central nervous system vasculitis and central nervous system lupus “within weeks” of her third dose of the HPV vaccine, but there’s absolutely no evidence the two are related and in all likelihood, the condition had been developing for some time before that. Of course, it’s very sad that she has this condition, but it was not caused by the vaccine. You can read more about it on the Science Based Medicine page.

It is going to be very very hard to counter this kind of media. We’re facing an uphill battle. The major pro-vaccine groups have nowhere near the money necessary to produce a film of this kind of quality and if they did, it would just be portrayed as proof of all the dirty money that big pharma is spending. The only way of combating this is to redouble grass roots efforts, but with this well funded and cunning opposition, it won’t be easy.

In the war on infectious disease, it now seems we have two enemies working in close alliance. One is the pathogenic microbes who seek to invade our bodies and the other is the humans who have defected to their side. I’m not sure anymore which is the tougher one to defeat.

Today has not been a good day for me. I woke up this morning with an itchy, watering, irritated eye. I wiped it, I splashed water in it and that did not seem to help. By the time I was driving to work my other eye was bothering me. In fact, my eyes were so irritated I could hardly keep them open for long and they were watering enough to make it a bit hard to see, especially with the glare of the early morning sun, low on the horizon. I had to keep stopping the car and wiping the tears from my watering eyes, closing them to regain my vision and returning to the road until they started bothering me enough to stop again.

By the time I was at work, it had become obvious that I was suffering from conjunctivitis, commonly known as pinkeye. The outer layer of my eye, the conjunctiva, had become inflamed and was bloodshot, itchy and irritated. It’s a fairly common condition which can be caused by a bacterial or viral infection. In my case, I’d later find out I probably have a minor viral infection, based on the symptoms. It’s generally not terribly serious and tends to clear up on its own within a couple of days, but it’s annoying and uncomfortable. It’s also fairly contagious, so it’s important to wash one’s hands, avoid touching common surfaces when possible and clean those that are touched.

My condition, however, was bad enough that I figured I should probably see a doctor. I made a call to my doctor’s office and was told that unless it was an emergency they wouldn’t be able to have anyone to see me until later in the afternoon. Of course, it’s not an emergency, so I was agreeable to waiting a few hours to have my eyes looked at.

Given that I had to wait a few hours, I went to my local drug store to see if there were any products that might be able to offer some kind of relief in the meantime. I wasn’t looking for a cure, but as my eyes were pretty sore, I thought that there might be some kind of anti-itch, anti-irritation eye drops that would, if nothing else, at least be soothing to my sore eyeballs.

And this is where I almost got swindled, because as I scanned across the shelf of eyedrop products, something caught my watery, itchy, squinting eyes:

I saw the pink eye and the words “Pinkeye relief,” and immediately thought to myself “Well that’s exactly what I’m looking for!”  I then read the indications, stating that it provided relief from redness, irritation and watery discharge.   Again, I thought it was perfect.

You may notice that there word “homeopathic” is written in thin white font against the red background of a tiny band that runs around the box just bellow the picture of the eye.   I literally couldn’t see this at all in my state.    I was really and truly about to buy this product.  Luckily, I have a habit of looking at the back fine print whenever I buy a health product, and this was no exception.  Despite my irritation, I wiped my eyes and forced them all the way open to examine the directions and active ingredients of the product.  Only then did I actually see the words “homeopathic.”

I’m also lucky in that I know what “homeopathy” means, which many people do not.   The fact that it’s homeopathic means that everything else on the front of the box can be discounted as a lie.  It says “relieves the redness, watery discharge & burning associated with conjunctivitis.”  Well, it doesn’t.  That’s just a bold faced lie.   You might think that it would do so, because it says it does right on the box and most products you find on the shelves of your local pharmacy are required by law to only make truthful statements about what symptoms they can provide relief to, but this is homeopathic, so they can lie.

The active ingredients are belladonna, euphrasia and hepar sulphuris, not because these ingredients actually have been shown to help the symptoms of pinkeye, but because if you put them in a healthy eye, they’ll make it get red, irritated and watery.   However, they’re diluted to the point where there are only a few molecules or less actually present in the final product, so there’s really no effect.   The only thing this product might do to help pinkeye is just provide a little bit of lubrication and moisturizing, which any eyedrop could do.

I was lucky to catch this.  In the end I bought some general purpose anti-itch eyedrops that cost half as much as the homeopathic version and actually have some active ingredients that help provide some itch relief.   They didn’t help all that much, but they seem to reduce the itch a bit.   (Note, this is not a placebo controlled study thus my opinion that they seem to help should not be considered to be an objective fact.)

But still, I was very nearly swindled by an extremely dishonest product making a false claim and sitting next to perfectly legitimate products in similar packaging on the same shelf.

And yes, I’m pissed!

I wonder if they actually picked the font and colors to make it intentionally difficult for a person with watery, irritated eyes to see it.  It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.

I wrote about this kind of thing a while ago, but this is the first time I was almost swindled, because I’m usually very careful about these sort of things.

Chickenpox is a pretty nasty disease to have.  Like most adults, I went through it when I was a child because there was no vaccine at the time.  It was pretty misserable, but I was lucky, because despite missing more than a week of school and being covered with an  itchy, painful rash, I didn’t have any lasting effects.   Some are not so lucky.  It’s fairly common to be left with disfiguring scars, especially on the face, from chickenpox (I know a few people with such marks on their cheeks or forehead).   It’s less common, though not unheard of to have more severe and lingering effects and occasionally even death.

The virus tends to be less severe in children than adults, there was once a custom of intentionally infecting children with the disease.   So-called “pox parties” were held where children intentionally came into contact with others with chickenpox to get the disease when young.  Whether exposing children to the disease intentionally was ever a justifiable idea is debatable (most medical experts think it was always a bad idea), but it certainly is not any more.   These days, there is a vaccine for chickenpox that is highly effective and avoids the discomfort, suffering, dangers and possible disfigurement of the disease.   The vaccine is now part of the normal vaccine schedule and most children receive it.  Chickenpox is therefore far less common than it once was.

But what to do if you’re a vaccine fearing idiot?  Since the antivax crowd seems to think that getting infections is a good thing and boosts the immune system, a pox party seems like it would be right up their ally.  The only problem is that the vaccine has reduced the number of cases of chickenpox enough to make it difficult to find a good pathogen host to infect your kid with.   So what to do?   Why not use social networking to find other like-minded morons around the world and swap spit by mail with them.

The most popular and widely reported on Facebook group for doing this appears to have been recently shut down, but that’s unlikely to actually stop anyone in the long run.

I’m not even kidding…

Via the Los Angeles Times:

‘Pox parties’: Coming to a mailbox near you?
This week, press reports emerged that some parents, hoping to avoid giving their kids the chickenpox vaccine, were arranging through Facebook to pay strangers to send them “[licked] lollipops, spit or other items” from kids with the illness.

The idea is to expose the kids to the virus to build immunity without having to get a shot.

It’s a lousy strategy, doctors say.

Dr. Wilbert Mason, a professor of clinical pediatrics at USC’s Keck School of Medicine and an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, said he was “dumbfounded” by the news. “I’m speechless, which will make for a very bad interview,” he told Booster Shots. “How could people be so stupid?”

For starters, he said, sending chicken poxthrough the mail probably won’t work, because the varicella virus needs cells to live in, and there probably would be very few cells in spit or on a used lollipop. “It’s unlikely the virus would survive long enough,” he said.

But more resilient types of infections — dangerous ones — could make it, including hepatitis B, group A strep, and staph germs.

Getting chickenpox “naturally” provides immunity that may be more long-lasting than immunity from the vaccinebut can cause complications. It’s rare, but children with varicella can die if they develop pneumonia or encephalitis, Mason said.

Also, chickenpox blisters often get infected, and if they get infected with invasive group A strep, “it can kill [a child] in hours,” he added.

“The most important risk factor for a child getting that infection is varicella,” he said. “Since we’ve had the varicella vaccine, we’ve seen a decrease in children with invasive group A strep. For me, that’s the most compelling reason to get it.”

Thirty years ago, it was common for parents to bring their kids over to a sick friend’s house to get exposed to chickenpox — maybe that’s why today’s “pox parties” seem like a good option to parents put off by vaccines. Mason likened the practice to playing roulette. “It was not a good idea then, and it’s still not a good idea,” he said.

A few are actually flaunting how stupid they are by telling fellow anti-vaxers about their activities.

Via WNEM, CBS 5:

The Facebook group is called “Find a Pox Party in Your Area.” According to the group’s page, it is geared toward “parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox.”

On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail.

Parents also use the page to set up play dates with children who currently have chicken pox.

Medical experts say the most troubling part of this is parents are taking pathogens from complete strangers and deliberately infecting their children.

One concern is that they are sending the virus through the mail.

A Facebook post reads, “I got a Pox Package in mail just moments ago. I have two lollipops and a wet rag and spit.” Another woman warns, “This is a federal offense to intentionally mail a contagion.”

Another woman answers, “Tuck it inside a zip lock baggy and then put the baggy in the envelope Don’t put anything identifying it as pox.”

The video on the CBS-5 Website is definitely also worth watching.  It includes an interview with one of the parents who is shipping out the spit.

The chickenpox virus may or may not survive being mailed. In most cases, it probably won’t. Still, for those who might not realize this: it is generally considered to be a bad idea to intentionally ingest the bodily fluids of random people you don’t know and meet on the internet. (Granted some people do this for fun, but at least that involves some other benefits.) It’s certainly not a good idea to do it with someone who is infected with a disease and may be carrying other infections. And if they do have any bacteria infections, putting the biological material on a sugary item and placing it in a warm envelope is not going to do anything to prevent that bacteria from multiplying.

In other words: what the hell are these people thinking???

Thankfully, the law seems to be on the side of reason on this issue. It is generally illegal to intentionally send infectious diseases by mail, except under special circumstances, such as properly isolated and prepared laboratory samples, shipped with appropriate bio-hazardous safeguards. Federal prosecutors have made it clear that they are willing to charge those who violate the law.

Via Third Age:

Chickenpox Lollipops By Mail? Illegal, Prosecutor Warns

Parents receiving chickenpox-infected lollipops through the mail are breaking the law, a federal prosecutor tells the Associated Press.

Spurred by reports aired in the past week about parents turning to Facebook to procure items said to be infected with chickenpox, U.S. Attorney Jerry Martin hopes to make it clear that trafficking in infectious diseases is illegal — as well as unsafe.

“If you are engaged in this type of behavior, you’re not only potentially exposing innocent people to dangerous viruses and illnesses and diseases, you’re also exposing yourself potentially to federal criminal prosecution,” Martin told The Associated Press.

According to Martin, it is a federal crime to send diseases or viruses across state lines, whether through the U.S. Postal Service or private services like FedEx or UPS. The same laws that prohibit, say, the mailing the of anthrax also apply to infectious diseases: Offenders, if convicted, could face up to 20 years in prison.

The hubbub comes in the wake of the growing popularity of so-called chickenpox parties, organized by parents in order to expose their children to chickenpox and thereby strengthen their immune systems. As WSMV-TV in Nashville reported Thursday, parents without entree to such events are increasingly turning to internet dealers purporting to sell lollipops, among other items, infected with the chickenpox virus.

I fully expect to hear a lot of whining about how this is more proof that the government and judicial system are firmly in the pocket of the big evil corporations and how they are stopping parents from exercising their rights to do things the “natural” way. The antivaccine groups always seem to have had a persecution complex. Still, I hope that this warning will be enough to stop most from engaging in this illegal, dangerous and disgusting practice, though I’m sure it won’t stop them all.

I suppose the next thing will be swapping contaminated feces to infect children with polio in order to get a “natural” immunity.

First, some background on the lobotomy:

The lobotomy may well be the most notorious and misunderstood medical procedure ever to have been developed.   It’s the butt of many jokes and is portrayed widely in the media as a savage operation preformed on those who were unruly as a means of turning them into dribbling vegetables, incapable of resisting and placid in all respects.  This is partially true, but is an overly simplistic portrayal of what the lobotomy really was and how it was used.

To understand the use of the lobotomy one must first realize the environment it was developed in.  Prior to the mid 20th century, there was very little that could be done for the severely mentally ill. Psychotherapy existed and was useful in helping those with problems like anxiety, phobias and depression better manage their symptoms, but this could do little for the truly insane. For those who suffered from severe delusions, violent episodes, severe depression with suicidal tendencies, extreme bipolarism, there was no effective therapy.

Such individuals were placed in mental institutions, where they were often forced to live the entirety of their lives.   Often miserable places, institutions provided little more than warehousing for many individuals.   Mental institutions were enormous, becoming huge communities onto themselves.  Attempts were made to make life more pleasant by providing  classes and recreation, but the enormous expense of caring for the populations made that difficult to do on a large scale.   The worst cases were often left restrained or locked in padded cells.  With so many completely crippled by mental disease, conditions could easily degrade to the point where wards became filthy and filled with the screams of insane patients.

The origins of psycosurgury can be traced back to the 1880’s, when Gottlieb Burckhardt, a Swiss neurosurgeon began to experiment with operations on the brains of the most severely insane. Small sections of brain were removed in the hope that it might calm the continual mania of the patients operated on. The results were not encouraging, but research continued into the 20th century. It was known that traumatic brain injury, brain tumors or their removal could alter a person’s personality, but only the most basic understanding of the regions of the brain associated with various aspects of thought and emotion existed.

The lobotomy was developed in 1935 by Portuguese doctor António Egas Moniz, who intitially called the procedure the leukotomy. Moniz had become aware of experiments carried out on apes in which portions of the brain were intentionally removed or disconnected. Operations that removed the frontal lobes had a major effect on the learning capacity of the animals, but also made them more placid and less prone to expressions of frustration and emotional outbursts. He believed that doing so on humans might allow those with the most violent psychiatric episodes to lead more normal lives, or at least be more manageable. Early experiments involved injecting alcohol into the nerves that connected the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. This was later replaced by simply cutting the connections.

The belief at the time was that mental illness was caused by areas of the brain becoming too active or the brain being overstimulated and going haywire with out of control signals. It was thought that there was simply too much emotional activity that that cutting away the overly active portions of the brain would relieve this. While this belief is not always entirely false, it’s overly simplistic and does not apply to most cases of mental illness.  While there are portions of the brain that are associated with certain functions or aspects of personality, it is far too complex for a single region to be defined as the source of something like delusions, violent episodes or depression.

Still, the procedure did appear to have some validity. Many of those who received the operation did indeed become calmer and more easy to manage. Contrary to popular belief, it did not necessarily render the individual incapable of speech or basic function, although this did sometimes happen. It seems that overall, the results were highly variable. This is likely attributable to the simplicity and crudeness of the surgery. It involved drilling holes in the head of patients and cutting the pathways by inserting instruments. Exactly what kind of effects this had on the brain could vary quite a bit, especially since the individuals it was preformed on had all manner of conditions to begin with.

Early observations considered the outcome of the procedure to be result in a 33% to 33% to 33% success rate. In other words, roughly one third of patients could be considered to have improved from the operation. One third could be considered to be worse than before the operation and one third were roughly the same. This is hardly a stellar success rate, but given the lack of options for the worst cases of mental disease, it may have seemed worth the risk. There certainly were a few cases of individuals who seemed to gain extensive relief with few complications, but these were relatively rare.

A few individuals died during the procedure.  Others were left completely incapacitated and severely disabled.  Many, however, did retain their basic abilities to communicate and do simple tasks.   Some lost the ability to walk or talk but subsequently relearned it.   A number of reports indicated that the patients became very child-like and lost the ability to comprehend complex concepts.  Lack of emotional responses or social capacity was also reported.   Another effect was the loss of inhibitions.  Many seemed to have no fear or anxiety, even in circumstances where it would be appropriate.  Apathy and social disconnection were common.  Many patients began to overeat and put on large amounts of weight.  Some developed complications ranging from incontinence to lack of balance to sleep disorders.

The psychiatric community accepted the procedure with varying levels of enthusiasm. It gained rapid acceptance across the world, but many remained uneasy about the implications and ethical considerations. It was used primarily on the worst of the worst cases, at least initially. Directors of mental hospitals welcomed anything that could make it easier to manage their overcrowded wards, resulting in an expansion of use that raised questions about whether it was really being used as a last resort. Overall, the procedure was never without controversy, but given the lack of alternatives, it often was considered about the only thing that could be done to at least try to relieve severe mental illness.

Walter Freeman, the great lobotomist

Nobody did more to advance the expansion of lobotomy than Dr. Walter Freeman. Freeman was an American neurologist who, in the early 1930’s, became interested psycosurgury as a means of relieving the epidemic of mental illness he witnessed in state-run asylums. In 1935, he heard of the leucotomy procedure and became immediately interested in its potential. Freeman learned about the technique from Moniz, who became something of a mentor to Freeman. Yet his enthusiasm would far surpass that of even Moniz.

In 1936, Freeman brought the procedure to the United States, when he preformed his first lobotomy on Alice Hood Hammatt of Kansas. Freeman believed the leucotomy was the answer to nearly all mental illness. He claimed the procedure showed marked improvement in at least sixty percent of cases, although this finding is very much in doubt given the reports of others. In the next few years he preformed hundreds of the operations, assisted by his assistant James Watt. With the help of Watts, Freeman modified the procedure to remove even more of the white matter connecting the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. He renamed the procedure the lobotomy and began his long career in promoting lobotomy across the United States and world.

While Freeman was fairly successful in selling his procedure to mental hospital administrators and in getting patients to undergo the surgery, he recognized that the complexity and expense of brain surgery was a major barrier. Drilling into the head of a patient and cutting portions of the brain required a skilled surgeon, a sterile operating room and properly administered anesthesia. To make the procedure truly commonplace, Freeman would need to make it much simpler and faster. Ideally, he wanted to find a way to make the lobotomy possible as an outpatient procedure preformed in a doctor’s office.

So was born the “transorbital lobotomy,” an especially crude procedure that Freeman would champion for the remainder of his medical career. Freeman preformed the first of these operations in 1946. The transorbital lobotomy was preformed through the eyesockets and left the patient with no outward signs of the surgery except for severely black eyes. The instrument used was likened to an icepick, which was inserted along the top of the eyeball and then broken through the thin bone on the top of the eyesocket with a hammer. It was then moved back and forth to sever the connection with the frontal lobes. The whole procedure could be done in minutes. Freeman took an additional shortcut by omitting standard anesthesia in favor of electroshock. A few shocks of electricity to the head of the patient would send them into spasms and then into a brief period of unconsciousness. This was more than enough time to preform the lobotomy.

Freeman toured the United States promoting the lobotomy, and especially the transorbital lobotomy at hospitals and medical meetings. He preformed a total of 3,400 lobotomies and suggested the procedure for everything from depression to migraine headaches. He toured in a car he dubbed the lobotomobile. Freeman took photographs of nearly all his procedures, he produced instructional films on the benefits and techniques of lobotomy. He held workshops to teach doctors how to preform his procedure. Yet his showmanship and the rapid fashion in which he preformed the operation made many of his colleges very uneasy.

Many of his procedures were preformed on individuals who did not seem to suffer from any major mental disease. His most notorious was that of Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy. Rosemary was reported to have been difficult and unruly. She may have been mildly retarded or at least learning disabled. Whatever the reason, he father, Joseph Kennedy had no tolerance for a daughter who did not fit the image of perfection he sought to cultivate. In 1941 he sent her to Freeman for a lobotomy, which left her severely incapacitated. She was forced to live out the rest of her life in institutions, unable to care for herself and badly handicapped. She died in 2005, having never recovered from the operation.

Freeman’s techniques and willingness to preform lobotomies so readily on those who did not appear to have any major mental illness lead to increasing criticism throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s. Concerned over the cruelty and crudeness of Freeman’s practices, even his loyal college James Watts left Freeman’s practice in 1950. Freeman’s fall from grace was accelerated in the mid 1950’s, when the drug Thorazine became widely available. The first modern anti-psychotic, it revolutionized mental health care. Thorazine could help control psychotic episodes and calm violent behavior. Unlike the lobotomy, it had minimal dangers of complications. It could also be adjusted to the appropriate level for the patient and its effects were temporary. Discontinuing Thorazine would result in the full reversal of the effects.

It would be followed by other psychoactive drugs, which were embraced by the mental healthcare sector. Finally, an effective treatment other than lobotomy existed and thus began the revolution that would lead to widespread deinstitutionalization. By the late 1950’s most in the medical field considered the lobotomy to be obsolete, crude and unnecessary. Yet Freeman remained a champion of it and continued to promote the lobotomy as a better treatment than drugs. Freeman dismissed Thorazine and similar drugs. He believed they did not treat the underlying problem and considered them temporary, noting that his operation could “cure” patients for life, but drugs needed to be administered continually.

As his promotion of lobotomy became more fanatical he became more marginalized. Yet Freeman continued to preform the procedures until 1967. That year he preformed the operation on Helen Mortensen. It was the third time he had preformed the operation on Mortensen. It’s not clear why he would do so more than once; he may have believed he had not completely severed the connections in the past operations. Whatever the reason, the operation proved disastrous. Mortensen suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage and died. She was not the first patient to die during the operation. In fact, a large number had lost their lives due to similar complications, but this time, it would not go unnoticed. Freeman lost his medical license and finally stopped preforming lobotomies.

From 1967 until his death in 1972, Freeman toured the country visiting his former patients to collect their stories in support of his claims of the success of the procedure. Despite his enthusiasm for the procedure, Freeman, of course, never had it himself. Yet it seems he may have been more qualified for it than many of his patients. Freeman appears to have had a number of his own daemons. He often took large doses of sleeping pills and suffered a number of personal tragedies that he never overcame. His marriage was unhappy and his wife an alcoholic. Freeman also lost a son when he fell into a river and was swept over a waterfall while our hiking with Freeman. Though he showed signs of depression, he never received any treatment and instead threw himself into his work.

By the 1970’s, the era of the lobotomy was over. Few were preformed anywhere in the world. Today few psycosurguries are preformed and when they are, it is only in the most extreme cases. A modified form of lobotomy is preformed on very rare occasions. It is almost never used for psychiatric conditions but occasionally may be used as a last resort for epilepsy.

There remain an unknown number of individuals who received the procedure decades ago.   As is typical of the lobotomy, their condition varies widely.  Some were robbed of most of the faculties and left profoundly handicapped while others remain mostly coherent.  A few appear to be relatively normal.   However, today those who have had the operation are now seen as having suffered a major setback, being left with a brain injury that only complicates their treatment and worsens their prognosis.

“My Lobotomy” – An Absolute Must Read on the Subject

Anyone who has interest in the lobotomy, the evolution of mental healthcare of simply wants to read a fascinating, if heartbreaking tail should consider the book “My Lobotomy.”  It’s really one of the most unique and memorable books I’ve ever read.  The book was written by Howard Dully, who, in 1960 was one of the youngest of Freeman’s patients to receive a lobotomy at only twelve years old.

Freeman had diagnosed Dully with schizophrenia, though this is highly suspect given that he only actually interviewed Howard a few times. In fact, Howard seems to have suffered from little or no mental disease at all. He was an energetic kid, prone to playing practical jokes on others and not always one to sit quietly in class. He was punished often at home for relatively small infractions, such as stealing cookies from the cookie jar in the kitchen.

Howard’s mother died of cancer in 1954, and his father remarried a woman who seems to have hated young Howard. It may have been because she favored her biological children or because Howard was larger than most and thus could seem threatening, but whatever the reason, the didn’t like Howard. She punished him severely and frequently. She attempted to get rid of him by passing him off to the state social services system with inflated claims that he threatened her other children. She insisted he was disturbed and had him sent to a school for special needs children and to a mental hospital. Howard’s father worked multiple jobs and was of little help in defending his son, usually caving to his wife’s hatred of Howard.

Howard’s step-mother went to numerous psychiatrists, but most told her there was no problem with Howard and some suggested she needed help. Then she found Walter Feeman. Freeman mentioned the lobotomy as a possibility, but even he was apprehensive about it. It took her a few months to convince Freeman that Howard was out of control and in desperate need of a lobotomy. At twelve years old and with little understanding of what was being done, Howard had the procedure preformed.

The photograph to the right shows the actual procedure with Freeman holding the instrument in Howard Dully’s brain.

Unfortunately, even after the procedure Howard’s step-mother seems to have continued to hate him and consider him unruly. He was thrown out of the house, forced into institutions and ended up an alcoholic, living on the street and dabbling in petty crime like check fraud to get by. With no family support and having never learned how to live a normal life, Howard Dully spent many years in this condition. He eventually managed to pull his life together. He sobered up, got a degree in information technology and then became a certified bus driving instructor. Though it took years, Dully managed to establish a stable, productive life.

In many ways, Howard Dully was lucky. That might sound like a very strange thing to say given what was done to him, but the results could have been much worse.   Howard Dully is not profoundly disabled.   He can drive, take care of himself and lead a generally normal life.  He’s not spaced out all the time and does not lack emotions.  He’s articulate and even and has a sharp, if dry sense of humor.   He has no problem bonding to others, understanding the feelings of his peers or experiencing normal social interactions.  He can do math, remember things and seems to have otherwise normal cognition, being of better than average intelligence.

In that sense, the results of the procedure could have been far worse and were for many.  It’s unclear why Dully managed to recover so well from the procedure.  It’s possible that his young age aided him.   In younger individuals, neural plasticity allows the brain to better compensate for injuries than in older individuals.  It’s quite likely that Howard Dully managed to regain most of what he lost by reconfiguring the connections in his brain to compensate for the injury.

In 2005, Dully was featured on the NPR program All Things Considered. The program centered around Dully and documented the effects of the lobotomy on him and others. As part of the program, Dully was given unprecedented access to the records of Walter Freeman, which had been stored at George Washington University. He was finally able to see his case file and read what Freeman had been told that lead to the decision to preform the lobotomy. He also interviewed others who had been lobotomized as well as the son of Dr. Walter Freeman.  The program was one of the highest rated NPR radio documentaries of all time.  The program is available online here.

In 2007, Dully co-authored his memoir with Charles Fleming. (as is commonly done by those with little prior writing experience).

The book is shocking and revealing. It provides unique insight into how the lobotomy was used and also into the world of Walter Freeman. There are a few things that really surprised me. Based on his notes and accounts, Freeman does not come off as an unsympathetic doctor. However misguided he may have been, he took genuine interest in the lives of his patients and was concerned for their welfare.  Freeman was, in fact, a very complex character.  Those who knew him almost universally described him as a genius, yet he seemed oblivious to the harm he caused.

There are also accounts of some of the more odd encounters with Freeman, such as one in which Howard and two other young people were presented on stage by Freeman as examples of the success of his procedure. The audience was shocked by their young ages and booed Freeman, who lost his temper and began to defend his procedure by citing the Christmas cards he got from his patients.

From NPR (And Very Much Worth Listening to):
‘My Lobotomy’: Howard Dully’s Journey
Howard Dully Talks about ‘My Lobotomy’

You can buy the book here. It’s well worth the read.

Other Links:
Psycosurgery.org
Rosemary Kennedy: the importance of a historical footnote
Walter Freeman – Father of the Lobotomy
Walter Freeman’s Lobotomies: Oral Histories (recollections of physicians assistant and others)
The Lobotomist(PBS Documentary On Freeman)
Walter Freeman’s Photographs (A look at the photographs Freeman took, including before and after)
Guide to the Walter Freeman and James Watts Papers (George Washington University)

Freeman’s own film on the transorbital lobotomy (part 1) – warning, graphic
Freeman’s own film on the transorbital lobotomy (part 2) – warning, graphic