Imagine the following situation:  You’re home from work sick.  You have a severe cold or some other virus that has you in a miserable state of congestion, fatigue, headache and low grade fever.  Unable to get restful sleep and suffering from these symptoms you venture out to your local corner drug store seeking an over the counter remedy to provide some temporary relief to your symptoms so you can get some rest.

It’s certainly reasonable to expect that the cold and cough isle in a pharmacy would have products that would provide some basic symptomatic treatment for minor ailments like colds, allergies or sore throat.   A number of OTC products exist that contain safe and effective ingredients such as antihistamines, decongestants and general purpose pain relievers.

After looking over the medications available, you select a product that appears to be a good match for what you’re looking for.   The label offers some straight forward indications for use, “Non-drowsy formula:  for relief of stuffy or runny nose, sinus congestion and headache.”   So you buy it, never even realizing that it does not have a single active ingredient in it and will do absolutely nothing to help your condition.   Most of the other products on the same shelf are totally legitimate and do contain some kind of therapeutic ingredient.

Is this a realistic scenario?   Could a person seeking a legitimate over the counter medication end up spending money on a completely sham product containing absolutely nothing?  Many pharmacies in the US and elsewhere stock homeopathic products right alongside the real thing, often in similarly styled packaging with only a small, easily overlooked mention of the fact that they are homeopathic.

Consider this image.   Most of the products shown here are legitimate over-the-counter medications.  They contain ingredients that are actually proven to be safe and have value in providing some level of temporary symptomatic relief.   One or more, however, are homeopathic and thus contain no active ingredient and do not provide any direct therapeutic benefit.

The image above is made intentionally small to illustrate that glancing over these products does not provide much insight into which are homeopathic and which are real.  If you read this blog frequently or a self-described skeptic then  chances are you are well aware of what homeopathy is and know to keep an eye out for that word on labels because it means the product is worthless, but does the general public even know this?

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It’s really amazing that a product like the Power Balance Wristband could be considered “controversial” or that there would be any kind of debate or inquiry over this.   The Power Balance Wristband is a rubber bracelet with a cheap hologram, like those put on credit cards stamped on it.  It sells for as much as 60 to 75 US dollars and claims to help rebalanced energy fields, improve endurance and do all manner of other things to improve health and athletic performance.

Could there be a more obvious scam product?   I’d have a hard time imagining one.  There is no biological energy field known to science by which such a product would work nor is there any reason to think holographic images would have any effect on the human body simply by being present.

Despite this, the product in question has sold quite well, in the United States, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.  It continues to sell quite well and gets rave reviews on many sites, such as Amazon.com It also has the endorsement of numerous athletes and has even inspired a slew of knockoffs.   By some reports, its maker has already made 87 million dollars off the product .

It is utterly astounding that these kind of things sell so well. It is the kind of thing that makes me worry very deeply about where human society is going and ask how so many could be so boneheaded. It’s both very sad and extremely scary.

The following report is from Australia, but the product is originally from the United States and sold in numerous countries. I’m glad to see my friend Richard Saunders managed to get some media attention for the skeptical side of things. Australia happens to have an especially strong skeptical activism community, and Richard especially has done an excellent job in appealing to the media to confront this kind of nonsense. He also was nice enough to give me a very large number of TimTam cookies last time I saw him, and showed me that they can be used to suck up a beverage – which, as it turns out, probably should not be beer (the flavor of beer and TimTam does not mix well.)

The product has been out for a few years and only recently has the controversy (if you can call it that) over its validity shown up in the media.   There have been other reports in the US press, a few doing a pretty good job of completely debunking the product, showing that relatively simple experiments can easily demonstrate that it does not actually improve performance.

Still, it’s a damn shame that it even had to come to this.   Something in our culture is failing catastrophically.  I don’t know whether it’s the educational system or the media or the scientific community, but clearly something is very very wrong.

Quackery often takes lives by misinformation and by directing those who need real medical treatment to useless treatments that do nothing to help urgent medical conditions.    It is less often that quackery is deadly in and of itself, killing directly by administration of toxic substances.    When it does occur, the results are horrific.

That appears to be what has happened in Australia, resulting in at least a few deaths.  The exact number is currently under investigation.

Via the Australian:

Cancer patient died after solvent therapy
A DISCREDITED Austrian doctor behind a bizarre therapy claimed the tumour cells of one of his patients were disappearing days before the woman died.

In an email to a nurse administering his therapy in Perth, banned Thailand-based doctor Hellfried Sartori said a lot of the tumour cells of breast cancer patient Deborah Gruber were dying, and directed the nurse to inject the 42-year-old with the industrial solvent DMSO.

Days later Gruber, who had travelled from New York for the supposed cancer cure, began vomiting green fluid and was eventually admitted to hospital, where she died from an infection of the bloodstream.

At an inquest into the deaths of five cancer sufferers who were given industrial solvents and dangerous minerals as part of an alternative cancer therapy, Gruber’s husband Peter told Western Australia’s Coroner’s Court via telephone link from New York that his wife’s system seemed to shut down 12 days after she began the treatment.

“I was very concerned because she was completely unresponsive at that time,” he said. The inquest is also examining the role of Mosman Park GP Alexandra Boyd, whose house was used as a base for two registered nurses to administer the concoctions.

The youngest of the patients was 29-year-old Carmelo Vinciullo. Yesterday his mother, Vincenza, gave evidence that her son paid $40,000 for the therapy which he thought was a natural remedy.

Outside court she said Sartori — who is now acting as a consultant for a wellbeing retreat in Columbia, South America — had preyed on vulnerable cancer patients and should be in jail.

“He should never, ever be able to put forward that he has a cure for cancer . . . as far as I know, there is nobody alive who has done that treatment,” she said.

Mrs Vinciullo said she did not know what connection Dr Boyd had with Sartori, but her role was disheartening.

“It was disappointing because she’s a medicinal practitioner and she would have known, I think, a little bit about Sartori (and) that he had been in trouble practising when he shouldn’t have,” she said.

Sartori was banned from practising medicine in the US and jailed for practising without a licence in the late 1990s.

I am still trying to find better reports regarding exactly what kinds of chemicals were administered.

Several reports mention DMSO or Dimethyl sulfoxide. Dimethyl sulfoxide is used as an industrial solvent in various settings.   It is also used, to some extent in medicine. Dimethyl sulfoxide has the ability to penetrate skin and other membranes easily and is thus sometimes used in topical medications, as a means of delivering other compounds, such as anti-inflammatory drugs to tissue.   Such topical products are commonly for localized treatment of minor arthritis pain.    It also be found in anti-fungal treatments.  DMSO is also sometimes used as a cryoprotectant for tissue samples or embryos.  It is not generally given as an injection in legitimate medicine.

Despite its legitimate medical uses, dimethyl sulfoxide has also attracted a great deal of attention by quacks. Claims have been made that DMSO is a nearly miraculous compound capable of curing any ailment.

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It has been almost three months since the news first broke about the substance being sold as “Miracle Mineral Supplement.” In fact, the substance being sold as a cure-all is a solution of sodium chlorite, a chemical which, when mixed with critic acid undergoes a chemical reaction that produces chlorine dioxide, a powerful oxidizing agent which is used in paper production and disinfection applications.

In the US, the FDA issued a warning against the product.  Its sale was also banned by Health Canada.   The dangerous health reactions have not been confined to North America.  Reports of use in the UK and as far away as Kenya have also come to light, resulting in the British Government issuing a warning against using the product.

It has widely been reported that the product is “Clorox Bleach.”   Strictly speaking, this isn’t really true.   Clorox bleach and others household and laundry bleach products are sodium hypochlorite. Though chemically similar, it’s not quite the same thing. Sodium chlorite is more reactive and the concentrations in MMS are higher than what is normally found outside of industrial settings. Chlorine dioxide is a yellow-green gas which is unstable and a powerful oxidizer. In some environments, it may break down to raw chlorine gas.

These substances are available from most industrial chemical suppliers. Sodium chlorite ca also be found in water purification tablets, which are available to consumers. It’s safe when used according to directions at low concentrations, which is usually one small tablet per canteen of water.

You might think that after all this information coming to light that people would be less prone to use the stuff, but if you did, you’d be wrong.

A quick read of forms and health blogs will find that a number of individuals are now trying to make the stuff themselves.   One idiot in Canada stated it “makes me happy” to find that the ingredients could still be purchased in the form of water purification tablets.

Indeed it seems a whole community has grown of people who are utterly convinced that this stuff will cure any and every disease and that the only reason they can’t get the original formula is because of the conspiracy of government agencies and the pharmaceutical companies.

Then we have videos like this one (which came out just this month) instructing people on how to make it themselves using the supplies they can acquire from any industrial chemical supply house:

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Via Bloomberg News:

Whooping Cough at Highest Level in California Since 1950, With 10 Deaths
California reported its 10th death from whooping cough as the state’s total number of 2010 cases reached its highest level since 1950, said Mike Sicilia, spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.

A six-week-old infant who was born prematurely in San Diego County was the most recent baby to die from whooping cough, or pertussis, this year, Sicilia said in a telephone interview.

As of Oct. 19, California has reported 5,978 confirmed cases of whooping cough, a highly contagious disease that can be prevented with a vaccine. The 10 deaths in California are the most since 13 people died during one year in the late 1950s, Sicilia said.

“Pertussis is a cyclical disease that has had a five-year wave of historic patterns,” Sicilia said. “We are at the top of the five-year pattern” in California, he said.

Nearly 17,000 cases of pertussis were reported in the U.S. in 2009, although many cases go unreported or undiagnosed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease gets its name, whooping cough, from the distinctive gasp between coughing spasms of patients.

Three Months Old

All 10 deaths in California have been among infants three months old or younger, said Wilma Wooten, public health officer for the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency, in a telephone interview. The CDC recommends that children get five doses of vaccine through grade school, with the first dose given at two months, she said. The agency also recommends booster shots, known as Tdap, for adolescents and adults, she said.

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I would hardly call them “public interest groups,” but they are certainly very unhappy about some recent changes in the FCC’s statements. This would seem such a small thing that you might think nobody would notice, but they did…

Via the Washington Post:

FCC changes position on cell phone radiation and safety guidelines

The Federal Communications Commission has updated its views on cellphone safety in a move criticized by a public interest group for downplaying the potential risks that radio frequencies could pose to users.

The agency, without issuing a press release, made the update on its Web site, saying that its guidelines on radio frequency limits were confusing and did not necessarily show whether one phone is safer than another.

Specifically, the FCC revamped its Web entry on cell phone health guidelines, removing a suggestion that users concerned about the radiation emitted from cellphones could choose devices with lower SAR values. SAR stands for “specific absorption rate,” which is a measure of the rate of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body.

“The FCC requires that cell phone manufacturers conduct their SAR testing to include the most severe, worst-case (and highest power) operating conditions for all the frequency bands used in the USA for that cell phone,” the agency wrote on its consumer and governmental affairs section.

The issue of cellphone health risks has captured the attention of several jurisdictions, most notably San Francisco, which adopted a “Right to Know” ordinance that requires cell phone companies to label phones with radiation levels. San Francisco is scheduled to hold public hearings Thursday on the ordinance. A similar measure is also being considered by nearby Burlingame, Calif.

Public interest groups, scientists and some lawmakers have called for an overhaul of the way regulators assess the safety of cellphones. They say that testing of phones’ specific absorption rates should be conducted by regulators, and they cautioned that the current testing approach does not account for the fastest growing group of users: youth.

All of this has put the cellphone industry trade group, CTIA, on the defensive. It filed a lawsuit against San Francisco seeking to block the ordinance, said it would not longer consider the city for future trade shows and ramped up a lobbying campaign against similar measures elsewhere.

Scientists say the higher the SAR, the greater the potential danger to humans. To be sure, scientists do not agree on the effects of cellphone use on humans. Some studies show that radio frequencies absorbed by brain tissue have led to cell mutations and tumors – with the greatest threat posed to children. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and state lawmakers in Maine and California have called for a sweeping federal review of its oversight of cell phone safety.

The Environmental Working Group says the FCC’s changes mimic a message pushed by CTIA. The FCC said that measuring safety by SAR ratings can be misleading and cause confusion. A phone has different SAR levels depending on how far the phone is located from a cell tower base station and how closely it is being held to the body.

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This is not exactly a recent news story, but as it didn’t get much attention in the media, I only recently found out about the death of Professor Rustum Roy.    Dr. Roy died on August 24 at the age of 86.

Rustum Roy was a professor of material sciences who had earned his PhD in ceramics in 1948.   He was legitimately an educated and accomplished scientist in this area and nobody can take this away from him.   However, beginning in the 1960’s, Roy also became heavily involved in alternative sciences, especially alternative medicine.   In recent years, Rustum Roy had been a mainstay of homeopathy and other generally rejected areas of medicine.

Although trained in materials sciences, he had no background to speak of in medicine.  Despite this, most of his recent activities focused in this area.   He also had been active in promoting religious-based science.  He founded the organization “Whole Person Healing” which promotes homeopathy and other alternative medicine.

He had also lent his name to other areas of questionable science such as claims of “water fuel” and “water burning.”

One of the things that always bothered me a great deal about Roy’s arguments were that they were generally an appeal to authority.   Roy argued often about “water memory” and the idea that water molecules could have structure that would somehow transfer information to human cells and thus effect health.  Offering no empirical evidence, he generally resorted to simply pointing out that he was a professor and had a PhD in materials sciences.   Of course, this is a complete straw-man, especially considering that his area of formal training wasn’t related to biology or medicine.

Rustum Roy had been discussed on this site on several occasions.

I should finally say that despite the fact that I believe Rustum Roy did a lot more harm than good in the later part of his life and that his views on things like homeopathy were far out in left field, I certainly never wished the man death.  It has always been my impression of Rustum Roy that he was not so much a scamster as genuinely self-deluded into his own unsupported beliefs.   That said, we do have one less prominent homeopath in the world.

While living t0 86 is definitely a full life, it’s hardly an exceptionally old age, considering that there are close to one hundred thousand persons of 100 years of age or older in the United States.   Thus, it would seem that the claims that homeopathy can be used to cure nearly all ailments and thereby achieve exceptional longevity are, once again, proven wrong.

Germ theory may represent the single greatest leap forward in medical history.   With the understanding that microbes caused infectious disease, everything changed.   The importance of sanitation was fully appreciated, sterilization became standard for all surgeries and steps were taken to purify water and assure foods were free of pathogens.   Before this, surgeons didn’t even bother to wash their hands and instruments were not cleaned before patients.   Infection ran rampant and nobody had a full understanding of why.

How could anyone deny the validity of germ theory?

Well, some actually do.

Of course, not all medical conditions are caused by microbes. It is infectious disease that are, but other conditions may be caused by genetics, lifestyle and occasionally environmental toxins. Even with infectious disease it can be more complex than simply saying some microbes are pathogenic and others not. In some circumstances, microbes can be beneficial when present in some parts of the body but harmful if they grow out of control or enter other regions.

Modern medicine understands this, of course, and our understanding of what makes a microbe harmful and when a condition is infectious versus having some other cause has expanded vastly. Some, however, seem willing to throw it all away.

The Irish are known for many things, among them is humor.  Maybe it’s just a stereotype and maybe it’s not, but there’s no denying that at least some of the Irish are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

This little spoof in the Irish Times made me laugh out loud:

Why dampness and homeopathy are key dangers in their fields

NEWTON’S OPTIC: RESIDENTS OF Rush, Co Dublin, are right to be concerned by Eirgrid’s proposed new high-voltage underground power cable. But are they also aware of the high-pressure water main running directly beneath the town?

Water poses a variety of serious health risks, especially to children, vulnerable adults and unwanted kittens. It is a known carrier of diseases such as cholera and dysentery, while prolonged exposure can lead to chronic conditions such as trench foot and wrinkly finger.

However, it’s the hydromagnetic fields surrounding high-pressure pipes which are the greatest source of alarm. Hydromagnetic fields are made up of two components – dampness and homeopathy. The effects of a dampness field can be seen and even felt, mainly in bathrooms where the extractor fan has broken, although it’s probably just a blown fuse and you really should have a look at it.

Homeopathic fields are a far more insidious affair. Millions of people believe this powerful force carries the memory of certain molecules into the human body, delivering slight improvement for headaches and itching.

The same principle could easily apply to potentially harmful molecules such as cyanide, ricin or witch hazel.

Countless scientific studies on the safety of hydromagnetic fields have been unable to prove a negative, which in turn proves that science is useless.

Meanwhile, several studies have found a statistical link between human health and being hit with a pipe, which proves that pipes are dangerous.

From there on, it only gets better, so check out the whole thing.

I’d like to have a pint of Guinness with the author. I just hope nobody actually takes it seriously.

60 Minutes is a popular bi-weekly American news program produced by CBS. Although it gets a lot of attention for the stories it reports, in the past I’ve taken issue with a number of the show’s reports. However, I have to give credit where credit is due, as 60 Minutes ran an excellent report on “21st Century Sankeoil.”

The report included interviews and hidden camera footage that is gripping and disturbing, but is undoubtedly something the public needs more exposure to. It focused on scam artists who have been preying on individuals with terminal illnesses, particularly ALS.   ALS is a degenerative neurological disease that results in progressively worsening motor control eventually leading to complete paralysis and death.   The entire process normally takes about five years.    It’s the condition Stephen Hawking has, although his ALS has progressed unusually slowly.

There is no cure for ALS.  The condition cannot be reversed and therapies aimed at slowing the progression of the condition have had very limited success.   For most patients, only some symptomatic treatment and living aids can be provided to help make the process less unpleasant.   Sadly, the condition is a death sentence.

The quacks who prey on ALS sufferers are targeting individuals who are downright desperate.   Their claims are sprinkled with psuedo-science terminology that may make them seem plausible to those at their wits end.  Some of their favorite claims include stating that they can use “stem cell therapies” to reverse the condition.   This is a clear attempt to seek legitimacy by claiming to be part of a real area of medical research.   Indeed, many doctors to believe that stem cell therapies do offer some potential for treating ALS and other conditions, but no such therapies currently exist.   Research continues, but there is no cure for ALS and even if stem cell treatments do offer hope, it will not be happening today, tomorrow or even this year.

Here is part one of the report.  Parts II and III can be viewed on the CBS website.
(Note: You may wish to view this on the CBS website as well, as their version is higher resolution than the embeddable video. Either way you may be required to view a brief advertisement before the video starts. It’s still very much worth watching.)

I’m very glad to see the mainstream press reporting on this vital issue, for which more awareness is so sorely needed. Hopefully reports like this one will bring the issue of quackery and medical skepticism into the minds of more citizens. One of the biggest problems is that quackery never goes away. It changes its style an rhetoric a bit, but it’s always there and so too must be awareness and education.