Some quack “doctor” – actually, “naturalistic doctor” by the name of Eric Bakker has been getting some attention with his idiotic tweets about how homeopathy is going to overtake all medicine because its workings are obviously better. According to him, skeptics are just desperate self-deluded idiots or big pharma shills and the fact that the James Randi Educational Foundation will offer one million dollars to prove it just makes Randi a “Dork” because… skeptics can’t explain how grass grows.. or something.

You can read all his stupid tweets here, but here are some of my favorite:

I think my favorite has to be this one:

All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. …

Whether or not this is true, lets not forget: Not all that is ridiculed is truth.

I don’t really see where he’s going with his “explain how grass grows” nonsense or what that has to do with anything. However, I *think* what he is trying to say is that the growth of grass is self-evident and that homeopathy is also self-evident and therefore it does not matter if you can demonstrate how it works or not – it works and that’s that.

Well, unfortunately, this is simply not the case. It’s a common tactic of quacks to use self-observed results and anecdotes about a patient who got better to justify their non-working cures. Anecdotal reports and experiences once guided medicine, and all in all, it didn’t work out too well. It really was not until medicine started to adopt case control studies and quantifiable experimental data, which wasn’t universal until the late 1800’s, that it actually started to make major advances in conquering disease. Toady it’s the cornerstone of medical science, because it works.

There are a number of problems with the “it works, just ask my patients” argument. First of all, many conditions are self-limiting and people usually recover on their own. If you take 50 people with a cold and give them a pill, in a week most of them will be better. But was it because of the pill? Well, you really can’t tell one way or another unless you can actually compare the results with the pill to those without it. As it turns out, people get better from a cold with or without a pill.

The other problem is that a single case or even a dozen cases of someone recovering extremely quickly from a condition could just be a fluke. Even late stage cancer patients have been known to, on occasion, experience spontaneous remission. If you send thousands of such cancer patients to a homeopath, a few will experience remission and tell you how great their experience was. The rest won’t, but they won’t tell you how ineffective the treatment was, because they’ll be dead.

Finally, there is the placebo effect and the fact that people are just not very good at objectively observing anything and even worse at observing themselves. That’s why the studies collect data from third party observers or, when it is self-reported, it is tabulated and compared to a control group, to see if there is a statistically significant trend.

Okay, if I absolutely must, yes I can explain how grass grows:

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For most readers of this site, there’s not much in this video that you won’t already know, but it’s still nice to see that the mainstream media has begun to report on the realities of vaccine scares and the real damage they cause.   Australia is leading the way, where the AVN is barely holding on against a massive popular backlash.

The following aired on 60 Minutes (Australian Version of the show)

Direct Link to Youtube Video

Full Story and Video

I do wish that they were a bit harsher on the crazy-crazies. There’s nothing good about getting measles, mumps or rubella. These are organisms didn’t evolve for our benefit, they use our bodies to reproduce and cause damage in the process. Yes, they do leave us with an immunity, which does mean that the damage usually only has to happen once, but it can be a real lot of damage when it does happen!

Gaining immunity to these diseases is not an example of them helping us. It’s an example of our body being invaded, damaged and ultimately winning the fight with the pathogen, and in the process recognizing it and establishing defenses. Of course, the immune system does not always win.

Vaccines, on the other hand are unfair, unfair to the virus. They stack the deck against it, providing the immune response without the damage and never giving it a chance to get into the body and start reproducing.

A rather idiotic write-up comes out way from the Mercury News:

Marin boy’s homeopathic treatment demonstrates difficulty of evaluating alternative remedy

Valerie Goodale of Novato believes that homeopathic treatments administered by a San Anselmo doctor cured her son of a rare, potentially life-threatening disease.

“I’ve seen it do miraculous things,” said Goodale, whose son Nicholas was diagnosed with Langerhans cell histiocytosis when he was 6 months old. His plight was featured in a Sept. 28, 1997, article in the Marin Independent Journal that documented his initial alternative treatments.

Today, Nicholas is a healthy 16-year-old junior at Novato High School who competes on the track team. “He’s thriving,” Goodale said.

But Dr. Rima Jubran, a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who has specialized in the treatment of histiocytosis for 12 years, said some people with Nicholas’ condition get well with no treatment at all.

“This patient may have gotten better despite this homeopathic medicine,” Jubran said.

Goodale’s experience with homeopathy illustrates just how tricky it is to evaluate the medical efficacy of an alternative therapy that was used by 3.9 million U.S. adults and approximately 900,000 children in 2006, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

No. It doesn’t show how “tricky” it is. No one case can be used to validate a treatment because it could easily just be a fluke that the person got better. That is why there must be a sample *group,* and ideally a large one. This is compared to a control group of similar composition. It’s not enough to show that some who received the treatment got better – it must be a greater proportion than those who didn’t.

Histiocytosis is a general name for a group of syndromes that involve an abnormal increase in the number of white blood cells called histiocytes.

According to the Histiocytosis Association of America, the vast majority of sufferers survive the illness.
In

some cases, however, the disease proves fatal, and other patients develop life-long chronic problems while still other patients go into remission without treatment.

“My son had a skin rash over his whole body, and he had enlarged lymph nodes,” said Goodale, who has worked as a nurse for 32 years.

Goodale took another nurse’s advice to explore alternative therapies after doctors at Stanford University suggested trying chemo and radiation therapy.

“I felt like I was dealing with fire. I didn’t want to kill him,” Goodale said.

You’re lucky. You almost did kill him. You saw fire and what did you do? Rather than call the fire department you let it burn. It just happened to burn out. It might not have, but it did. If it hadn’t you would be in a much different place now.

But it gets better (or rather worse)…

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Somehow the following idiotic press release managed to actually get reposted on several major news outlet websites.

Via the San Fransisco Chronical (reprint off of PRWeb):

How natural medications affect the brain

How does medicine affect our brain? Prof. Dr. Wilfried Dimpfel from the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, Germany, uses electricity to come up with the answer. He measures brain waves with the help of an electroencephalogram (EEG) to characterize the impact of pharmaceuticals. Using one of the homeopathic medications produced by the pharmaceutical company Heel as an example, he examined its effects, compared it to other medications and created a differentiated profile.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is an approved standard method in medical diagnostics. It measures the electric signals that nerve cells in the brain use to communicate. Based on the region of the brain and the frequency of these electrical activities, the psycho-pharmacological effect of medication can be described, among other information. Each drug produces an individual reaction pattern.

The pharmacologist Prof. Dr. Wilfried Dimpfel examined the effect of a medication that contains several natural active pharmaceutical ingredients in homeopathic dilution, including passion flower and oats. Within an hour after taking the drug, the brain activity in certain regions already becomes more intense. It then reaches its peak after two to three hours and gradually decreases.

Yes, EEG is a valid medical technology that has diagnostic value, but in this case, the actual results are meaningless. It does not seem as if there is any placebo group, and in fact there is no control group at all. Whether or not the activity on the EEG is at all related to the fact that the homeopathic concoction was taken is impossible to tell. It could be that just sitting there for two hours causes the activity in certain areas of the brain to increase.

But it gets worse:

“Although the active pharmaceutical ingredients in the homeopathic preparation are highly diluted, the brain shows a strong reaction,” Dimpfel says. “The low dosage possibly even has a higher impact: In pre-clinical experiments, the brain’s response was even stronger if the dose was half of a pill per kilogram of body weight instead of a whole pill,” he adds.

Am I the only one who sees some pretty astounding logical paradoxes here?
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What determines why some people are heterosexual and others homosexual?   Is it genetic?   Environmental?   Developmental?  Is it a combination?

To be honest I really don’t know, and I don’t care that much.   However, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with soy.

Yes, soy, as in the bean and products made from it.

No, there’s no evidence for this in terms of studies or empirical data.  However, one guy with an enormous forehead thinks that the reason there are so many gays out there is a direct result of the consumption of soy.   (Amazingly, in Southeast Asia, where soy has been a staple of centuries, there are actually still a large number of heterosexuals.  No explanation for that one.)

Via WorldNetDaily:
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Dr. Steve Novella is a great skeptic and promoter of science based medicine.  He writes for the appropriately named blog Science Based Medicine.   Dr. Novella and other pro-science doctors have been very critical of Dr. Oz, the cardiologist turned media personality who is a big promoter of alternative medicine.

Surprisingly he was invited to be on Dr. Oz’s show.   I had hoped that this would be a great opportunity to bring some skeptical and science to a show that badly needs it.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be almost painful to watch.

Well, it seems that the good doctor tried pretty hard to make a point and, in the process hopefully he did get through to a few.   However, it’s pretty hard to win a debate when the other side of it is also the moderator and when you have a hostile audience.   Dr. Novella pretty much is standing along against at least three other “experts” who are looking to promote alternative medicine.

Dr. Oz manages to make a number of statements that really get under my skin.  For one thing there’s the whole claim that acupuncture is rejected because it does not fit into our “western” mindset.   NO!   It doesn’t work.  There’s no “Western” science, but only science.   The scientific method is culturally independent and used everywhere.  In China, they use science and have been doing pretty damn well with it.   Best of all, Eastern, Western Northern and Southern doctors can all agree on what works and does not because the laws of logic and science are universal.

Then the “arrow” versus “ballistic missile”  approach.  God this guy really annoys me!   Science based medicine is not nearly as brute-force based as it is made out to be and there’s not only one type of therapy for each given condition.   The only thing that separates medicine from alternative medicine is that medicine works.

Finally “just let the patient decide what works for them.”   People are VERY BAD at judging the effectiveness of medicine on an individual basis.  That’s why we have placebo-controlled, large-scale clinical studies.  Anecdotes are worthless and the fact that a particular therapy seems like it worked for you is not an objective fact that can be relied on.   Most people don’t understand this and if they did they might be less apt to believe their own intuition when there’s good established data to look at.

What would happen if you removed all herd immunity by intentionally creating a population of children who are not vaccinated, because their parents don’t believe in vaccination? What would happen if at a young age, when especially vulnerable to a disease like pertussis? What would happen if this highly contagious disease were then introduced to said population?

Pretty much what you’d expect to happen.

Via sethmnookin.com

This week, there is an example in Virginia of the ways in which a concentrated number of deliberately unvaccinated children can effect (or infect, depending on your perspective) the health of an entire region: Earlier today, The Roanoke Times reported that the Blue Mountain School, an “alternative” private school in Floyd County, had to shut down for a full week after twenty-three of its forty-five students came down with pertussis. According to the Times, every single one of those children was unvaccinated. The school’s administrator, Shelly Emmett, was quoted as saying, “Many of the families and staff at our school understand that some people choose not to vaccinate their children. We’re not requiring that they do.”

Emmett seems to be saying that the school’s administrators have decided they are exempt from Virginia law, which requires schools and day care centers to have documented proof that children have been vaccinated. (There are religious exemptions available in Virginia, as there are in 48 out of 50 states; Emmett’s quote implies that some, but not all, of the school’s unvaccinated students obtained such an exemption.)

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There’s no doubt that the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear plant is serious, although efforts to stabilize the situation are continuing to progress. As time goes on, the level of decay heat produced by the reactor cores diminishes and active cooling becomes less critical. At the same time, short-lived radioisotopes continue to decay away, reducing the severity of potential core discharges. Local radiation continues to spike due to venting of the cores and problems with keeping water in the spent fuel pools.

Still, the worst case scenario for the plant would be limited to a relatively localized event. Even if all of the reactors at the plant experienced a complete failure of all levels of containment and all spent fuels experienced fires, there would still be zero danger of acute radiation sickness to anyone who was not in the immediate area of the plant.

For those who live miles away, the worst danger would be the possibility of exposure to iodine-131. Although levels would not be enough to cause any acute symptoms, it can increase the probability of developing thyroid cancer. This danger too is reduced with time. With a half-life of about eight days, iodine 131 does not persist in the enviornment. As of this posting we are already coming up on one half-life since the reactor shutdown. In about two weeks the levels of iodine-131 in the reactor cores will be less than 15% what they were when the reactors shut down. Most of the iodine-131 has already decayed away from the spent fuel in storage.

Even in the worst case, where all material is discharged, there is zero danger of any dangerous radiation levels to areas beyond Northern Japan. The United States, Europe, Australia and elsewhere simply cannot be effected to any substantial level by any breach at any Japanese reactor, or even if every singe Japanese reactor simultaneously experienced a complete meltdown and core breach. It’s impossible.

Despite these undeniable facts, there remains a persistent myth, largely encouraged by the media and politicians, that a nuclear accident can constitute a truly global crisis. Nuclear accidents are portrayed as being some kind of doomsday event which can undermine human civilization and leave whole regions of the earth uninhabitable, causing the deaths of millions or billions and endangering every man, woman and child in every location on earth.

This ridiculous belief has lead to panic and madness gripping the world, with individuals from China to the United States responding to reports of radiation with a kind of fear normally reserved for the demons and curses of religion.

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I found this article, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Vaccines, today while thumbing through the Tuesday “Science Times” on the history of vaccination especially as it relates to the founders of the United States. Many conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine groups will invoke the names and quotes of the founders of the US to justify their message of “freedom from vaccines.”

In fact, this notion is not only scientifically but also historically flawed. Many of the founders of the US were extremely strong supporters of inoculation, which at the time existed in a manner far less refined and safe than today. Yet despite its primitive nature, inoculations were seen as a critical measure for protecting health and represented one of the first major public health initiatives in the United States.

Benjamen Franklin stands out as one of the biggest promoters of inoculation. Franklin was both a politician and a scientist, who helped document the safety and effectiveness of inoculation. Franklin was personally touched by the loss of his four year old son who died of small pox having never been inoculated.

He would later state:

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way, long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.

This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may be the same either way and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

I’d recommend taking Franklin’s advice. In case you didn’t know, he has a reputation for being a rather wise man.

One of the things I really love about the skeptic movement is that its full of passionate grassroots activists who have managed to really make a difference.   There are a lot of scams and scam artists out there and all to many of them have never been challenged.   If you see something and know it’s wrong, speak up, challenge the claims being made and look for evidence.

A great example of this is one 16 year old in the UK.   You may remember “Miracle Mineral Supplement,” a product being sold as a cure-all which is actually an industrial grade bleaching agent. Rhys Morgan has Chron’s Disease and when he saw a website advertising “Miracle Mineral Supplement” to treat his condition he was skeptical enough to do some more investigating. After discovering the facts he reported the scam to the Food Standards Agency leading to the scam being shut down, at least in the UK.

Via the BBC:

Cardiff teenager to target more ‘miracle’ cure websites
A 16-year-old praised for campaigning against a so-called miracle cure has welcomed a change in advertising rules.

The actions of Rhys Morgan, of Cardiff, who has the bowel condition Crohn’s disease, helped close websites offering Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS).

The Food Standards Agency has warned people not to consume the product.

From 1 March UK-based websites must comply with advertising rules which means they cannot publish testimonials to the alleged effectiveness of MMS.

From next month, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) says its rules will apply in full to such online marketing.

The Food Standards Agency says MMS is equivalent to industrial-strength bleach and when consumed as directed “could cause severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, potentially leading to dehydration and reduced blood pressure”.

It has ordered councils to be on the lookout for retail outlets selling the product.

Rhys, who won praise from the Food Standards Agency for his campaigning, said the advertising rules change will mean more websites selling the product could be closed down.

He said: “This will be amazing. Testimonials will count as advertising so people will have to substantiate their claims [about MMS].

“It’s going to make it much easier to get stuff taken down.”

Unfortunately, shutting down the UK-based scams won’t really stop this product from being sold on the internet. The nature of the web allows for offshore servers to continue to sell the product and the fact that it has legitimate uses in water purification, sanitation, sterilization and industry means that the chemical will still be fairly easy for quacks to get and resell. What may turn out to be the bigger achievement of Rhys is simply getting the world out and getting media attention for a horrific quack product that had previously been sold with virtually no information published about its dangers.

Rhys deserves a lot of credit for not backing down and assuming there wasn’t anything he could do about a scam. He may be just a young, middle-class student, but he’s already got a lot to be proud of.

This should be an inspiration to others. If you see a dangerous scam product, don’t just shrug your shoulders and assume there’s nothing you can do. You can make a difference. If you’re not sure what you can do, there are also a lot of skeptic advocacy groups and organizations out there who may be able to help. Ultimately though, it only takes one person to make a difference.