The Quackometer

A new form of acupuncture is dramatically improving the quality of life of patients suffering from a range of diseases, including cancer, anxiety and autoimmune diseases, according to a new study.

The therapy, Tong Ren, has been pioneered in the USA since 2001 by Tom Tam, an acupuncturist and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner.  He has used it to treat patients suffering from cancer, diabetes, AIDS, arthritis, anxiety and depression.

Researchers from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine have tracked the health of 265 patients after weekly sessions of Tong Ren.  Around a third noted improved quality of life, and with no adverse effects.  ‘Substantial’ improvements were noted by 63 per cent of patients suffering anxiety, and 60 per cent of cancer patients.

Although the survey is based on subjective and anecdotal evidence, the researchers say the results warrant further research into Tong Ren.

Tong Ren is a form of energy therapy for restoring health and vitality.   Tong Ren is based on a belief that disease is related to interruptions, or blockages,   in the body's natural flow of chi, neural bioelectricity, blood, or hormones. Tong Ren seeks to remove these blockages, restoring the body's natural ability to heal itself, even when illnesses are chronic, debilitating, or otherwise untreatable.

In a typical therapy session, the Tong Ren practitioner uses a small human anatomical model as   an   energetic representation of the patient, tapping on targeted points on the model with a lightweight magnetic hammer.

Labels: acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, WDDTY, What Doctors Don't Tell You

 

The Professional Conduct Committee has seen that treatment plans are exploitative when they are constructed around a diagnosis that leads patients to believe they are more seriously ill than they are, with the intention to promote undue dependence on chiropractic care. Some treatment plans, as shown by the evidence heard by the Professional Conduct Committee, were formulated without any adequate assessment or reassessment of patients’ needs. Going hand in hand with this approach was the routine X-ray of patients without justification. The images were used as sales tools further to pressurise patients to accept treatment.

They speak of a few cases:

This year the Professional Conduct Committee heard evidence in one case that also demonstrated a blatant disregard for patients’ safety and wellbeing. Amongst other things, patients, including a child, were exposed to ionising radiation for no other reason than to use X-rays to pressurise patients to sign up to long contracts of care. The individual concerned showed no insight, understanding or remorse for what
he had done and was removed from the Register.

During another Professional Conduct Committee hearing, a respondent chiropractor admitted that he had routinely X-rayed nine out of 10 adult patients. Upon considering an audit of nine patient records, the Professional Conduct Committee was of the view that there was no justification for those patients to have been exposed to ionising radiation.

Table 33. & 34. X-rays

Chiropractors were asked:

a) For what percentage of your patients is an x-ray justified?
b) Do you take x-rays of your patients?
c) Do you refer patients direct for imaging?
d) Do you refer patients for imaging via GPs?
e) Do you interpret the x-rays?

Table 33. a) X-ray justified?
Number of Range chiropractors

0%	9	1%
1-20%	525	61%
21-40%	99	12%
41-60%	51	6%
61-80%	47	6%
81-100%	34	4%
Didn’t specify	89	10%

 
Table 34. b, c, d, e) X-rays

	B	C	D	E
Yes	294 (34.43%)	499 (58.43%)	568 (66.51%)	593 (69.44%)
No	542 (63.47%)	306 (35.83%)	246 (28.81%)	241 (28.22%)
Didn’t specify	18 (2.1%)	49 (5.74%)	40 (4.68%)	20 (2.34%)

Clearly, the majority of Chiropractors are X-raying fairly regularly and some are performing it routinely. There are undoubtedly practitioners out there that believe wholeheartedly in the concepts of subluxations and use X-rays to try to find their mysterious problems.  One comment in the Survey noted this 'fundamntalist' approach to their art,

Labels: chiropractors, regulation, Simon Singh

 

This is a poster that is doing the rounds...

HOW DO YOU DETECT WHEN SOME ONE IS TALKING BULLS**T?

Saturday 07 February 2009 1415h
The Court Room Town Hall, St Aldates, Oxford

Andy Lewis is the inventor of The Quackometer and the canard – the new international unit of quackery. Go to http://www.quackometer.net/ to check out examples of nonsense in your own local area.

David Colquhoun FRS is a research professor of Pharmacology, University College London. His blog DC’s Improbable Science, dcscience.net strives to promote public understanding of science and expose managerial psychobabble.

Come and listen to them give a light-hearted talk about some of the nonsense they have encountered.

There is no charge to attend the talk, but we are asking everyone to donate at least £5 to cover costs. All profits will go to the South African charity The Treatment Action Campaign which campaigns for evidence-based treatments for those with AIDS.

For more information contact leenigelthacker ##at## yahoo##.## co##.## uk

I hope a few of you will be able to attend. And perhaps there is a possibility of a cheeky pint afterwards.

Labels: quackometer

 

What Doctors Don't Tell (wddty) is such a marvelous site that I might have to do a regular post on it. It is completely batty and carries about as much misinformation as you could imagine. What interests me is the mindset of people attracted to the site: it peddles a mixture of alternative flimflam coupled with conspiracy theory. It is essentially a fantasy site that allows its subscribers to imagine that they have gained access to secret health information that the world government is trying to suppress from them on behalf of Big Pharma and other vested interests. For a subscription fee, you can gain knowledge that will allow you to 'take control of your own health' and get one over on elitist and corrupt doctors and scientists.

The only problem is it just full of ill researched and one-sided nonsense. And I suppose it has to be if it is to maintain the sense of revelation and superiority.

I could dissect any one of their articles, but I thought I would pick on just one news item as it is so wrong that it could not be wronger if it tried. Everything about it is nonsense. It is so short, yet chocka with misinformation. Here is the item in full:

Cancer: Nuclear workers exposed to same radiation levels as Hiroshima

16 January 2009

More proof – if any were needed – that radiation can cause cancer comes from a new UK government report that workers in the nuclear industry are more likely to develop the disease than those in other industries.

The cancer rate among workers regularly exposed to ionising radiation is similar to that of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Negasaki A-bomb attacks in 1945, say researchers.

The workers are more likely to develop cancers such as leukaemia, the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) has reported in a new study. The HPA has, since 1976, been tracking the health of around 175,000 workers exposed to radiation in workplaces around the UK.

(Source: British Journal of Cancer, 2009; 100: 206-12).

Just about every statement made in this news article is wrong and it is interesting to explore why. Now, I only have access to the abstract of the paper quoted (here) but this is enough to tell me that WDDTY have badly misinterpreted the results.

Let's start with the title: "Nuclear workers exposed to same radiation levels as Hiroshima". From the beginning, this is obviously a nonsense statement. Victims of the Hiroshima bombing were exposed to huge variations in radiation levels. Some got massive acute exposures that would have killed them in days to weeks. Lower doses are not fatal but give rise to enhanced risk of cancers later in life. If you were far enough away from the blast and subsequently not too exposed to fall out, your radiation dose from the bomb might be very low. It is only in this sense that the WDDTY headline comes close to being true.

Next - "More proof – if any were needed – that radiation can cause cancer". This is hardly controversial or denied by anyone. However, there is still debate about how much radiation is dangerous, how long term exposure might be different from acute exposure and which types of radiation are most important. You see, we live in a radiation rich environment. Rocks are radioactive. Brazil nuts - quite high. Our own bodies contains lots of natural ⁴⁰K so sleeping with someone will add to your lifetime dose - don't do it - I bet your doctor does not tell you that. The point is that at doses close to what we might typically receive from our natural environment it is quite difficult to tell what harm they might be doing (if any). Our knowledge of the risks from ionising radiation do come from populations like atomic bomb survivors, but there are problems here in interpreting the data. Firstly, surviving an atomic bombing is a pretty impressive feat. The surviving population is likely to be fitter than the average population and this might skew the results. Secondly, guessing what peoples exposure was is quite hard and, in general, these doses were considerably higher than what you might be exposed to as a nuclear worker, x-ray technicians, or Concorde pilot. Thirdly, survivors got their doses in a relatively short space of time, from miliseconds to months - this is a quite different exposure pattern to occupationally exposed workers.

So, over the years, researchers have monitored survivors and counted how many extra cancers they got. The excess numbers are surprisingly low and so we now have to make some assumptions that we can extrapolate back to the sort of occupational doses that people receive and hence estimate the risks of doing various jobs. Radiation protection measures have typically assumed the worst and extrapolated back linearly from high doses to low doses and that there are no 'threshold' effects. The study quoted by WDDTY is looking to see if these assumptions are correct.

So, onwards: "a new UK government report that workers in the nuclear industry are more likely to develop the disease than those in other industries." Wrong. Straight up we are told that "SMRs for all causes and all malignant neoplasms were 81 and 84 respectively, demonstrating a 'healthy worker effect'. " What this means is that workers in the study group got fewer cancers and a lower standardized mortality ratio (SMR) than the control (presumably the general population.) Nuclear workers live longer and get fewer cancers than average.

It has been well known for a while that this is the case. Workers in nuclear facilities have stable jobs and relatively good incomes, and this means that may well be healthier than the general population. (Wealth is a good predictor for how long you will live.) Furthermore, nuclear workers are aware of any health risks and are likely to be well monitored, so any problems might well be picked up early. This is the 'healthy worker effect'. So, we are not told about the relative risks of working in the nuclear industry compared with other jobs, but we can see that any differential is not going to be huge.

The next sentence is a little better, but still wrong: "The cancer rate among workers regularly exposed to ionising radiation is similar to that of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Negasaki [sic] A-bomb attacks in 1945, say researchers."

They do not say this. What they say is that "Estimates of the trend in risk with dose were similar to those for the Japanese A-bomb survivors". This does not mean that workers got the same level of cancers as A-bomb survivors, but that the dose-response curve was consistent. A very different statement.

WDDTY goes on to say "The workers are more likely to develop cancers such as leukaemia, the UK’s Health Protection Agency" but they do not tell us more than what. The report says that leukaemia incidence increases with occupational dose, again consistent with what is assumed in radiation protection. However, the report goes on to suggest some difficulties in the study which What Doctors Don't Tell You Don't Tell Us. The researchers were not able to take into account confounding factors such as smoking. The reasons for this are probably simple. In any nuclear facility, the higher you are up the payscale, the less likely you are to get a larger dose. Lower paid workers are probably the ones routinely getting doses. Managers, are for the most part, sat in their comfy offices. If lower paid workers are more likely to smoke then your dose-response curve might artificially suggest radiation is causing more cancers when actually smoking is to blame. It's a hard one to tease apart in the data.

The report concludes "The cancer risk estimates are consistent with values used to set radiation protection standards." So, after all that, the report is rather reassuring to nuclear workers. Radiation limits for workers are set so that the extra risk of dying from a radiation induced cancer is likely to be no more than the risk of coming to harm in other comparable occupations. Nuclear workers know that their day to day risks are probably similar or lower to their friends down the pub who drive busses, work on farms, fly planes or decorate your home.

Why people find this nonsense on such sites as WDDTY so alluring is just depressing. Real science, with all its subtelties and nuances, is so much more interesting. And you do not have to pay a subscrition to find out about it. You just need to be curious.

Labels: WDDTY, What Doctors Don't Tell You

 

Today sees the long awaited launch of the government backed Ofquack, better known in some circles as the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC). Ofquack is the "national voluntary regulator for complementary healthcare practitioners" and was set up by Prince Charles' Foundation for Integrated Health and funding from the Department of Health. You can find their sparkly new website at http://www.ofquack.org.uk/.

It has been quite a long road getting here. The quackometer reported on the newly emerging regulator's woes this time last year when I described it as a dead duck. The CNHC had grand ambitions to be the one-stop-shop regulator for all complementary therapists - a single register that the public can check to see if their chosen quack professional was 'legit'. The House of Lords, in a 2000 report, said that such a move was desirable. It has been a dismal failure.

The reasons for this are many, but principally stem from the daft decision by the Department of Health to put the set-up of the new body in the hands of Prince Charles. This is a man with a blind faith in all sorts of wooly alternative health ideas and no critical ability to appraise the problem rationally. His sycophants have assured that Ofquack has been set up so that it presents little challenge to his beliefs.

So, Ofquack is not quite dead, but it is moribund. They state that their aim for 2009 is to register 10,000 practitioners. My guess is that they will achieve a tenth of that. Of all the forms of quackery that were supposed to be regulated by the CNHC only massage therapy and nutritional therapy are included in the fold. The other large quack trades, such as homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology and reiki have not been cooperative and enthusiastic in their wish to be regulated. The homeopaths, for example, have flatly refused to take part and their current fake regulatory bodies, such as the Society of Homeopaths, are desperately trying to be seen as their own effective regulators - a role they fail dismally at.

So, will the massage therapists and nutritional therapists flock to the fold of Ofquack? Well, massage therapy is a small trade - it does not include the vast majority of massagers that you might find in luxurious hotels, sports centres, or dodgy rooms above a betting shop in the less salubrious suburbs of Birmingham. Massage therapists are the massagers left over who somehow believe that a good rub down can clear your body of toxins or something. Not a happy ending.

What of the nutritional therapists? I somehow doubt they will be rushing to join. They stand to lose a great deal by being independently regulated. Currently, their own regulator BANT allows them to get away with all sort of sharp practice. BANT changed their code of practice under pressure from Vitamin pill companies to allow BANT members to take kick backs on the sale of pills. This is a cosy and profitable arrangement that I am sure would be threatened if Ofquack decided to apply some more ethical standards to their registrants. Nutritional therapists also make money from dodgy diagnostic tests, such as fake allergy testing and hair mineral analysis, which has been described by the American Medical Association as "an unproven practice with potential for health care fraud." I am sure practitioners would wish to stay with a 'regulator' who is in on the scam.

So, even if some quacks decide to join so that they can use the new 'kite mark' on their advertising, will Ofquack work? I doubt it. The central problem is that the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council appear to be horribly confused about what they are supposed to be protecting the public from.

Today, one of the chairs of the CNHC said on the BBC web site (Alternative therapy 'crackdown') that Ofquack would "would clean up the industry used by one in five people." She "estimated thousands of clinics may go out of business in the process." (See Maggie Dunn talk about Ofquack here).However, the BBC were quick to point out the flaw here when they said "It will not judge clinics on whether therapies are effective, but rather on whether they operate a professional and safe business." However, there is an inherent contradiction here that you cannot assess if a therapy is 'professional and safe' if you do not also take into account if the therapy is effective. And here we have the fatal flaw in the whole idea of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council.

Let's imagine a few scenarios. Someone complains to Ofquack that a nutritional therapists is using hair mineral analysis to diagnose 'mineral deficiencies' and using this as a basis of selling huge numbers of expensive supplements and then is taking a kick back on the sales in the form of commissions. Hair mineral analysis does not diagnose dietary deficiencies. The whole basis of the transaction is fraudulent and yet is very common in nutritionist circles. What would Ofquack do? They would probably consult their therapy specialists who advice them if such a practice was within the training of a therapist. And the answer would be 'yes'. Patrick Holford's Institute of Optimum Nutrition in London trains students in such dodgy practices. The course is underwritten by the University of Bedfordshire. Is the practice safe? Well no direct harm has occurred, although the indirect harm is that someone believes their diet is deficient when it probably is not, and they are left with the belief that they have to buy 'specially formulated' vitamin and mineral supplements to avoid dreadful health effects. Could Ofquack protect the public from these dubious practices without asking 'is the therapy effective'?

A second scenario - based on real life. A customer is brain damaged by a nutritional therapist who told their customer that the needed to diet by drinking lots of water and removing salt from their diet. Again, this sort of advice is routine. This year, Barbara Nash, a nutritional therapapist, was sued and paid out £810,000 in a settlement for compensation for such a course of action? How would Ofquack respond to such a complaint? Clearly they would have to take into account that such advice is batty and dangerous. But to do this they have to rely on their 'panel of experts' from the various quack trades. In the Barbara Nash case, none of the nutritional therapy bodies spoke out and condemned her actions. People like Nash are constantly told that they have good training and are professional. As Ben Goldacre argued in the guardian,

After completing the rigorous training at the "College of Natural Nutrition", anyone would naturally believe themselves to be appropriately qualified, and able to give advice confidently. Nash's confidence in her own abilities seems entirely congruent with that world view.

Membership of Bant carries such privileges as "a listing in the Bant Directory of Practitioners, which is available to the public and entry on the Bant website" and "acknowledgement of professional status by the Nutritional Therapy Council". So endorsed, Nash would once again have perfectly reasonable grounds for a strong faith in her own abilities

The big fear here is that if any therapist would join Ofquack, they now would have government backed endorsement of their 'abilities and professionalism', even though everything they think they know is nonsense - and sometimes dangerous nonsense.

The Barbara Nash affair took its first scalp at Ofquack. In my blog, I laid part of the blame on the British Dietetic Association for not doing enough to educate the public about the difference between quack nutritional therapists and properly qualified and regulated Dietitians. It transpired that Andy Burman, Chief Executive of the BDA, was actually on the board of directors of the CNHC. You can see from comments on my web site the sheer anger of dietitians over the fact that their Chief Executive was openly helping to promote quack alternatives to their profession. Dieticians have to spend a lot of their time disabusing patients of the nonsense they have been told by nutritionists. Very soon after, Andy Burman resigned from the CNHC board of directors.

So, even if quacks start joining the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council there will soon be huge stresses applied. The first upheld Advertising Standards complaint, or any other action that requires Ofquack to judge if a therapy is effective will result in their current structures unable to cope and their members frightened to death. Quacks are used to cosy arrangement with their current trade bodies who act as regulators. They know they could never be struck off for doing their normal quack business. But Ofquack, being a government body, and with a large lay team acting as judges, may sooner or later have to let reality into their decisions. The whole edifice will then collapse.

So what is to be done? Well, the first thing is that setting up voluntary regulators that rubber stamp quack training and practices only legitimises irrational, fraudulent and dangerous practices. It will risk giving extra undeserved standing to nonsense and will not protect the public from delusional and/or deceitful actions.

The whole thing has been a huge waste of money. The hundreds of thousands of pounds given by the government to set up this body would have been much better spent on training Trading Standards Officers in the issues of alternative medicine. As Professor David Colquhoun argues, the new Trading Standards Laws that came into effect last May have probably made much of alternative medicine illegal. "The gist of the matter is that it is now illegal to claim that a product will benefit your health if you can’t produce evidence to justify the claim." The law is clear: “falsely claiming that a product is able to cure illnesses, dysfunction or malformations" will be illegal. And as alternative medicine ceases to be alternative as soon as there is good evidence of efficacy, a lot of quacks could be in trouble.

What is standing in the way of people being prosecuted for making false health claims is the appropriate expertise within Trading Standards to evaluate the claims and initiate the appropriate prosecutions. There appears to be a situation evolving where there could be a large clash of government policy. It is likely Trading Standards will start prosecuting registered members of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council. Now, that will be a sight to watch.

*********************************************************************************


Update

As always, satire is the most efficient way of telling the story.

The excellent Daily Mash runs with the headline...

COMPLEMENTARY THERAPISTS TO BE REGULATED BY WITCH DOCTOR

Papa Limba said his first task as chairman of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council would be to identify which therapists were righteous shamans and which had the bad juju.

...

Limba said: "There are many frauds and not everyone has as strong a connection to the serpent god Demballa as they like to make out."I place my hands on their head and if their spirit vibrates to the rhythm of the ocean I give them a sticker to put in the window. If not I rub them with the mashed root of the banyan tree and we never hear of them again."He added: "Once a year I shall visit them and cast my chicken bones on their consulting room floor. If they are still there a week later I report them to health and safety."

And there is the heart of the problem. How are Ofquack going to certified 'well trained' practitioners when their training is in nonsense?

Labels: CNHC, Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, ofquack, regulation

 

The gullibility of British newspapers never ceases to amaze me. The British press today carried uncritical articles about the miracles of Deeside Mineral Water.

The Telegraph - a paper with no serious science credibility anymore - told us,

Scientists claim that Deeside Water can give drinkers a younger appearance and more radiant skin tone.

Those who drank the Scottish water, which is bottled from a spring near the Queen's Balmoral home, were 25 per cent more likely to report fewer wrinkles and better skin tone, the scientists found.

A separate study at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh showed that the minerals in Deeside fight free radicals - substances that can age cells.

Dr Mary Warnock, a lecturer in Dietectics, Nutrition and Biological Sciences at Queen Margaret University, said: "Free radicals are harmful to the body's cells and contribute to the ageing process. Reducing free radicals helps protect cells from damage.

"Deeside Mineral Water has some very unusual properties and we know that people have been drinking it for its curative benefits for centuries. The results from these tests are very exciting.

The Daily Mail went further,

The water was also found to beat other brands in hydrating the skin, making it appear more youthful and smoothing away wrinkles. If that were not enough, previous studies have credited the water with easing the pain of arthritis and thwarting the growth of cancerous cells.

This cancer claim, if made outside the 'reportage' of a newspaper would be illegal. We also see the press release copies onto the pages of the Sun and the Scotsman.

Shamefully, even the BBC carried a similar story some time ago on Deeside water. This time, Mineral water 'eases arthritis' we are told.

It is believed to have been a favourite of Queen Victoria, and has long been famed for its healing powers, supposedly helping to treat rheumatism, skin conditions and stomach complaints.

Martin Simpson, managing director of the Deeside Water Company, stressed that his product was not a "miracle cure". But he said: "It produces these positive effects because of unusual natural characteristics." The water is filtered through layers of ancient granite for 50 years, and some believe this is the process that makes it so beneficial for health.

This all smells very fishy. Water with 'free radicals' in it? Arthritis relief? Cancer cures? Naturally, we have to go and have a dig.

And, wow, we do find some woo.

Whilst the newspaper reports are all full of scientific words and scientists' testimonials, the website of Deeside water takes a very different tack. It is worth reproducing their healthcare claims...

Deeside Mineral Water is used by complementary health therapists because it helps enhance their treatments. If you are a therapist, please test Deeside Mineral Water by your preferred method, whether Vega test, pendulum, intuition or any other. We are sure you will find positive results. If you would like to know more about the applications of Deeside Mineral Water in energy healing, please feel free to contact us.

Deeside Mineral Water is used in herbal essences, tinctures, creams and supplements, combined with other ingredients, to improve their performance. It is also used by many therapists as the water to be given to patients after a treatment and as the recommended water for their ongoing consumption, because of its properties.

Deeside Mineral Water has scientifically proven effects, understood in traditional circles, but also has great appeal in complementary fields because of its living energy and higher vibration than other waters. Water is the basis of all life and we understand its role at a much deeper level than most, having undertaken research into this area over many years. We have also investigated some of the less well know and alternative theories on water, energy and health. Ask your pendulum which water is the best for well-being!

Vega testing? Intuition? Living energy? Energy Healing? Higher Vibration? Ask your freekin' pendulum?

The Quackometer has exploded.

It gets better. This water is good for your pets too. "Birdline UK tested Deeside Mineral Water on troubled parrots and found a significant improvement in a short time." So, the water can also prevent Norwegian Blues from pushing up the daisies.

So, what of this new 'research'? Well, I can't find any. Maybe it is out there. The lead researcher in all this appears to be Dr Mary Warnock, of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. She "carried out experiments designed to gauge the ability of various waters to mop-up free radicals." Her home page at the University does not list this amongst her published papers. Her bio page tells us that one of her research interests is in Complementary Medicine.

With the Balmoral connection, it is of course no surprise to find out that Prince Charles has got his organic mitts involved. Yes, his Dutchy Originals bottled water uses Deeside Water. Yes (I can't resist this) Deeside water has been passed by Prince Charles: "It embodies The Prince's commitment to what he calls a ‘virtuous circle’ of providing natural, high-quality organic and premium products, while helping to protect and sustain the countryside and wildlife."

Only one interesting question remains? What is the relationship between Dr Mary Warnock and Deeside water. A cryptic comment on the Scotsman website says,

Dr Mary Warnock, like no relation to Frank "Mad Frankie" Warnock of Deeside Mineral Water fame eh ? So mineral water slows aging does it ? What is the scientific word for pants ?

Can anyone shed any light on this? Answers on a postcard please.

**************************************************************************************

Update

Well, after some correspondence with Dr Mary Warnock of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh it would appear that the press release, and hence these newspaper reports, were based on unpublished and non-peer reviewed results. No one is surprised.

Dr Warnock has kindly offered to update me when the results are published and I will be sure to examine them on this site. Unfortunately, she has not clarified for me her relationship with Deeside water, despite asking several times.

What I find very alarming here is that Queen Margaret University are able to issue a press release that says,

For the first time, scientists can prove that Deeside Mineral Water actually slows the signs of ageing and does so 50% more effectively than other tested waters on the market.In the first of two new research studies, Deeside Mineral Water was rigorously tested against other major international market leading brands of bottled water. The study was undertaken by scientists at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh and confirmed that Deeside Mineral Water is 50% more effective than other waters tested in suppressing free radicals.

and this is based on unpublished research. What this has resulted in is massive publicity for a quack water company and column inches in newspapers that would cost a fortune if paid for. Unpublished research is by its very nature highly provisional. It has not gone through the processes that can lead to confidence in a result. Researchers have not been able to fully explore their results, formulate their conclusions and test them with their peers. Premature publication of results by PR undermines the scientific process and should be condemned. Such activities corrupt science and diminish the authority of scientists in public debate.

QMU ought to be ashamed of themselves.

*****************************************************************

Follow up on Freedom of Information Request:

Queen Margaret University and Prostituted Academia

Labels: newspapers, Prince Charles

 

Today has seen lots of extraordinary news in the world of quackery. I am rushing around too much to digest it all fully, but I thought some of it deserved a brief mention.

We hear today that Steve Jobs of Apple is to step down as top dog at apple while he battles with health problems. The Guardian reports that it took some time earlier to persuade him to undergo surgery for his cancer as he was trying a 'homeopathic diet' - whatever that is. I sincerely wish Mr Jobs a full and speedy recovery. We cannot live without your gadget-tastic influence in our lives. Please, stay off the woo.

Next, the Times Higher reports that Salford is to close its Quack BSc course. We are told that "The University of Salford is to stop offering undergraduate degrees in acupuncture and complementary medicine because they are no longer considered "a sound academic fit".

That is rather good news and it is pleasing that it is for good reasons. Recently, the University of Central Lancashire said it was stopping its Homeopathy BSc this year due to lack of interest. It is currently reviewing these courses. We can only hope it comes to the same conclusions that these courses are academic bullshit that damage their academic reputation.

Hopefully, the other Wooniversities, such as Westminster and the University of Wales will be taking note. Will they be left holding the quack baby?

Gimpy has exploded the myth that Jeremy Sherr is some sort of Colonel Kurtz figure - a rogue homeopath gone bad and ended up with a heart of darkness in the depths of Africa, attempting to see if sugar pills can cure AIDS in deluded and dangerous experiments. With some marvelous research, we are shown how Sherr and his wife have been backed academically and financially by a string of prominent homeopaths. No one in the homeopathic community is standing up to the deluded and unethical practices going on in East Africa. The Society of Homeopaths wash their hands of him, despite Sherr being a Fellow of their society.

Gimpy concludes,

Jeremy Sherr is merely the prick that has burst the homeopathic boil and exposed the festering pus of ignorance and incompetence that defines the alternative sector. This movement is rotten from the heart of its establishment to the practitioners operating on the margins. Sherr, a respected teacher, is representative of homeopathy, not an individual acting on his own initiative. It is time these people were called to account and stripped of their influence.

The Horror. The Horror.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

Prince Charles' Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) is listened to by many in our Government as a sound source of information on complementary medicine. It has been given large sums of money over recent years by the Department of Health to set ways of regulating CAM sellers. The result has been the moribund Ofquack: the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council.

FIH has been regularly criticised for being hopelessly naive and uncritical of alternative medicine. FIH likes to call quackery ' Integrative Medicine' and sound like it is calling for the integration of 'natural' ways of healing with modern healthcare. In reality, it does little but uncritically promote bonkers charlatanism.

The latest promotion comes in the form a news item on their web site telling us that "Dr Richard Niemtzow has developed a form of 'Battlefield acupuncture' which will be used by the US Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan." We are told that,

This method of acupucture [sic] involves inserting very tiny semi-permanent needles into very specific acupoints in the skin on the ear to block pain signals from reaching the brain. This method can lessen the need for pain medications that may cause adverse or allergic reactions or addiction.

...

'This is one of the fastest pain attenuators in existence,' said Dr. Niemtzow 'The pain can be gone in five minutes.

Remarkable stuff. Niemtzow is the Editor in Chief of Medical Acupuncture, the journal of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. Are we seeing the integration of ancient Chinese practices into modern battlefield care? Of course not. The whole thing is a fanciful charade.

Auricular Acupuncture, or Ear Acupuncture, or even auricolotherapy, is indeed part of what is called 'Traditional Chinese Medicine'. It was included into Mao's re-invention of Chinese medicine as part of the Cultural Revolution's Barefoot Doctors' repertoire. However, the roots of ear acupuncture do not lie in ancient Chinese medical beliefs but in 1950's France. Yes, like its auricular cousin, Hopi Ear Candling - also found in your High Street Chinese Medicine Shop, it has roots that are thoroughly western. Ear Candling is a recent invention and nothing to do with the Hopi Tribe - who are hopping mad about the appropriation of their name to Western quackery.





The UK Auricular Acupuncture College tell us that it "is an ancient Oriental therapy using acupuncture on points of the ear to treat specific parts of the body". This looks like it is simply untrue. In a 2007 review, published in Evidence Based Complement Alternative Medicine, Luigi Gori and Fabio Firenzuoli tell us that ear acupuncture was invented by Lyon based doctor, Dr Paul Nogier, who is now known as the "Father of modern auricolotherapy".

The son of Paul Nogier, Raphaël Nogier, tells us,

1951, Paul NOGIER received in his consultation a patient, who explained to him that he was relieved from a sciatica pain by a cauterisation on the ear carried out by a quack in Marseille, Madame BARRIN

Nogier's remarkable 'insight' was to realise that the ear was a little homunculus - a man in the ear - in the form of a foetus. Thus, sticking a pin in the right part of the ear could somehow heal the corresponding part of the body. It turns out that Dr Nogier was a homeopath and so we do not need to concern ourselves too greatly about the battiness of these ideas.

Nogier's son, Raphaël, continues the pace of invention admirably and has developed this science to even greater extents. From Madame Barrin's humble quackery has grown a mighty and imaginative worldwide quackery. Electrical instruments are used to detect the appropriate points on ears to stick pins in. Furthermore, Nogier developed "auriculomedicine" - a technique for diagnosing problems by measuring the pulse whilst putting pressure on various parts of the ear.

It would appear that the French ear pin therapy quickly spread via Japan back to China where it was re-interpreted in terms of Chinese acupuncture:

The discovery of the system spread to China and led to intensive research by the Chinese medical authorities at a time of renewed interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine. After learning about the Nogier ear charts in 1958, a massive study was initiated by the Nanjing Army Ear Acupuncture research Team. This Chinese medical group verified the clinical effectiveness of the Nogier approach and assessed the conditions of over 2000 clinical patients, recording which ear points corresponded to specific diseases. The outcome of that research was very positive and resulted in the utilization of this therapy by the ‘Barefoot Doctors’ of the Cultural Revolution. In China was published an Ear Chart remarkably similar to that of Dr Nogier in 1958.

So, from the Chinese Army to the US Air Force. Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, MPH appears to have been developing his own version of ear acupuncture using tiny needles that you leave in your ear until they drop out. We are told,

Using ancient Chinese medical techniques, a small team of military doctors here has begun treating wounded troops suffering from severe or chronic pain with acupuncture.

In a deviation from the Nogier philosophy, Niemtzow believes that the "ear acts as a "monitor" of signals passing from body sensors to the brain. Those signals can be intercepted and manipulated to stop pain or for other purposes." A remarkable scientific discovery. Give that man a Nobel Prize.

The clincher for me is that he calls on the Wisdom of Pirates. Niemtzow says" Even 18th-century pirates were convinced of the value, piercing their lobes with earrings 'to improve their night vision'". Did the British ever tell the US that eating carrots improved the night vision of Royal Air Force pilots during the Battle of Britain?

This French, Chinese and Pirate wisdom is proving very useful apparently as "Battlefield acupuncture has been especially effective among patients suffering from a combination of combat wounds, typically a brain injury or severed limbs, burns and penetrating wounds along with severe disorientation and anxiety."

So, we shall see. It has yet to be deployed into Iraq battlefield operations and has to "overcome skepticism within the ranks of military doctors". I doubt it ever will be. What we do know is that the organisation that Niemtzow works for does quite a good job of promoting acupuncture in the US. For an academic institution, it is quite surprising to find on their home page that the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture says that it can "Find an Acupuncturist Near You".

Well done to the Foundation for Integrated Health for uncritically carrying this story. I am sure the acupuncturists of the USA are very pleased.

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If you want to know more about Niemtzow, the excellent blog Science Based Medicine takes him apart here.

Labels: acupuncture, Prince Charles, pseudoscience, quacks, Traditional Chinese Medicine

 

It looks as if homeopaths will be making a noise about their victorious successes in Cuba against the scourge of leptospirosis. Last month, a conference was held in Havana, entitled "Nosodes 2008: International Meeting on Homeopropylaxis, Homeopathic Immunization and Nosodes against Epidemics". Homeopaths turned up to hear stories of the successes of magic water against dangerous diseases.

What is a nosode? A Nosode is "a homeopathic remedy prepared from a pathological specimen. The specimen is taken from a diseased animal or person and may consist of saliva, pus, urine, blood, or diseased tissue." This may sound a little like conventional vaccines - but there are important differences. When you wish to immunise someone against a dangerous disease, the key trick is to use something that is far less dangerous that what you are protecting against. Real vaccines protect against microorganisms by introducing the body to killed, attenuated or partial versions of the same microorganism. Nosodes do not introduce the body to anything. The dangerous "saliva, pus, urine, blood" is made safe by diluting to such extreme levels so that all that is left is water. Yes, homeopathic nosode immunisation is the same as any other homeopathic remedy - nothing. Of course, homeopaths claim that shaking the water introduces important quantum, vibrational dooda into the water - and this is what protects you.

However, even amongst homeopaths, the practice of homeoprophylaxis through nosodes is highly controversial. There are a number of reasons why.

• Firstly, you see, homeopathy in its 'classical' form is about 'like cures like'. The important word being 'like'. Homeoprophylaxis does not use 'like' but 'same'. This is heretical for many fundamentalist homeopaths. It is often called 'Isopathy', rather than homeopathy. In his later life, Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, denounced this heretical and deviant form of medicine. "To desire to cure thus, by a pathogenic power rigorously equal (per idem) is contrary to common sense and even to all experiences".
• Secondly, homeopathy is supposed to be 'individualised'. That is, a remedy is selected from a vast selection based on a wide range of 'symptoms'. These may not just be the symptoms of your disease, but on your state of mind, whether you were stuck in traffic that morning, your dreams about cheese last night - the list goes on. For many homeopaths, the idea that you can give the same remedy to millions of people without 'individualising' goes against the principles of homeopathy.
• Thirdly, homeopathic immunisation, or homeoprophylaxis, relies on giving the remedy before you have the symptoms that you are supposed to match against. Again, a major no-no for many homeopaths.

However, one can be pretty certain though: differences in homeopathy only really matter when discussing failures to cure. If there is a whiff of success in the air, these minor ecumenical disagreements will be dropped faster than an motion to promote the MMR vaccine at a homeopaths' conference. These differences persist over the decades in homeopathy as there is no acceptable standard of evidence to either accept or reject any belief. Homeopaths believe what they want to believe forever, no matter how absurd, dangerous and deluded.

So, what was going in Cuba? A presentation was given at the conference that suggested that an outbreak of leptospirosis had been prevented in Cuba by mass homeopathic immunisation. Leptospirosis "Weil's disease" is an endemic disease in many countries caused by bacteria in water, transmitted often by rats. In many developing countries it can account for many deaths per year. In the UK, it only manages to kill the odd canoeist once in a blue moon.

Cuba has has a problem with the disease. When the Autumn hurricanes hit, rats can be swept out of the sewers and into the paths of humans. Many more people come into contact with infected water. The prevalence of the disease is not constant though and depends on many factors. Up until the end of the eighties, the disease was under control. One factor was that the Soviet Union was supporting Cuba and supplying a vaccine that appeared to be effective. With the collapse of communism in Europe, such assistance quickly dried up and reports of leptospirosis leapt from 0.16 deaths per 100,000 in 1987 to 1.03 deaths per 100,000 in 1993.

Since then, the government of Cuba has taken action. Due to the enormous embargoes placed on them by the US, the Cuban economy has become remarkably self-sufficient in many areas and has achieved sometimes extraordinary things on minute budgets. It has a literacy rate of 99.8% (one of the highest in the world) and a life expectancy from birth of 75 for men and 79 for women (c.f. USA 75 and 80 respectively.) This is despite spending only $229 dollars per head on health compared with $6,096 in the US.

One thing that has been achieved against leptospirosis is the development of a new local vaccine. It appears that a mass vaccination programme has been underway for several years now with the locally developed vaccine Vax-Spiral ®. Also, the government has been recognising the importance of prevention:

Public health authorities are prioritizing rodent control and surveillance to prevent the disease known as leptospirosis. It’s recommended to see a doctor immediately if persistent fever appears and MINSAP is offering prophylactic medicines and including a vaccine to control leptospirosis, which is being administered in areas where there’s risk of contracting this disease.

Deaths from the disease need not happen if the public is educated about the symptoms and effective treatments are put in place. The Cuban government appears to be pretty good at ensuring there are a 'pool of community doctors on every corner' .

What did the homeopaths in Cuba do and what do they think they achieved? Details are hard to come by as there is no published 'scientific' paper yet. Reports from the conference suggest that 2.5 million people were given two doses of a homeopathic nosode (Nosolet) alongside "two Bach Flower Essences to address the typical mental and emotional effects of the disease. " This cost, apparently, $200,000. Now, seeing as the homeopathy is simply water, costing nothing, surely the bulk of the cost must have come from the imperialist dogs at Nelson's Homeopathic Pharmacy in London who make the Bach Flower Essences. Bach remedies are like homeopathic remedies except that they use brandy rather than water. The little vials you can buy in Boots are just tiny bottles of dilute Brandy - the most expensive brandy in the world. If Ernesto 'Che' Guevara were alive today, he would be turning in his grave at the thought of such decadent western nonsense being use to subvert the revolution from imperial corruption.

So, is there evidence that the homeopathic experiment worked? Of course not. Accounts from the conference suggest that there were merely 10 infections per month and no deaths. Can this be attributed to homeopathy or the other health measure in effect? We will not know until a paper is published. But here is my prediction: it will basically say, we dished out the magic water and brandy, we saw a small amount of infection, we concluded it woz the homeopathy wot did it. No control groups. No baseline. Just assertion.

Will we see UK homeopaths crowing about this? Maybe. But they may have also learnt a lesson from last year when a conference by the Society of Homeopaths flaunted nonsense about the treatment of HIV. They were crucified in the press.

I actually look forward to them trying to shout about this. It will simply highlight their inability to recognise the boundaries of what they know they can safely achieve. And this is the major criticism I have of homeopathy. If they stuck to being truly complementary and having nice chats about aches and pains I would have little to say. But they continue to persist in fantastical delusions that they are a true alternative to science and medicine. And in that role, they are a menace.

Labels: cuba, homeopathy, leptospirosis

 

I have received this comment from an anonymous poster after reading my post on The World Health Organisation Traditional Medicine Hoax and I thought it deserved a wider readership. I wish all anonymous comments were like this...

As one of the people who has been directly involved in the development of artemisinin based therapy for treating malaria, I just wanted to set the record straight on the use of herbal Artemisinin for treating malaria and its origins.

It was indeed known from old times that an aqueous extract, i.e. a tea, of a plant called Artemisia Annua, could be used for lowering fever. However, the extension of its use to the treatment of malaria has only taken place during the 1960’s after research performed in China.

At the time, a war was going on in Vietnam and one of the main problems for the Vietcong was not the US soldiers on the ground, but the lack of proper medication against malaria, as quinine or other products could not be shipped to them as they were under Western control. The Vietcong asked Mao to help them and several hundred Chinese researchers started investigating whether they could find an alternative. After a considerable search, they found that a petroleum ether extract, so not the aqueous extract, of the herb Artemisia Annua showed antimalarial activity. Further research showed that this action was due to one single compound, called artemisinin and this substance was subsequently extracted and purified.

Even so, the extracted artemisin itself has a very poor solubility and therefore bioavailability and it was further chemically modified to other derivatives like artesunate, artemether and arteether.

In the early 1990’s the existence of this product was revealed to the west at a WHO conference on malaria held in China. This was a major breakthrough, as the malaria parasite had developed resistance against most known Western drugs. Therefore, several pharmaceutical companies, Sanofi, Roche & Novartis then started the full clinical development of the product. The reason for going through the whole process of toxicological and clinical research was to be able to clearly define the safety and to find the proper dose and administration regime for the compounds.

In the early 1990’s some companies started marketing the product in Asia as a monotherapy of about 100 mg artesunate daily for a duration of 7 days. This treatment in itself is very effective, but as most people feel better quickly there are not many patients that take the pills for the full duration, so to shorten therapy length and to prevent resistance from building up, it was then decided by WHO, to state that artesunate and artemether are only to be used in combination with other drugs like lumefantrine, sulfadoxine or amodiaquine.

This lead to new toxicological and clinical research and finally around 1998, and a clinical program including up to 4 000 patients, the first combination therapy artemether-lumefantrine was launched by Novartis, this was later followed by other combinations like artesunate-sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and artesunate-amodiaquine.

These fixed dose therapies, in which an artemisinin derivate is combined with another chemical western based drug molecule are nowadays the only recognized and formally approved artemisinin combination therapies (ACT) as endorsed by WHO for the treatment of malaria.

In conclusion, although the origin of ACT therapy certainly is to be found in Traditional Medicine, because off the chemical modifications and purifactions performed after extracting a single clearly defined substance from the herb, the combination with western synthetic drugs, and the clinical research programs that went into it before its acceptance by the WHO and other health authorities, I feel it would be hard pressed to use the current ACT treatment as an example of the effectivity of Traditional Medicine or herbal medicine.

I find this quite interesting. Artemisinin is one of the drugs that supporters of Chinese Medicine trot out to show that Chinese herbalism is full of untapped wisdom. Frankly, I think it is more like the exception that proves the rule, and this comment highlights what had to be done in order for it to become an effective, quantified and deliverable treatment.

My guess is that most herbal products of all traditions are more cultural in meaning than pharmaceutical. Homeopathy is a derivative of Western herbalism that grew out of the Doctrine of Signatures. This form of sympathetic magic stated that a disease could be cured by herbs that somehow resembled the illness. For example, an "arrow-shaped leaf might be a good treatment for arrow wounds. Plants with yellow sap would be jaundice treatments, and plants and animals with long lives could be used to extend human life.". Homeopathy extends this principle with its central concept of 'like-cures-like' and still continues in this tradition - e.g. shipwreck if you feel 'stuck' in your life.

Undoubtedly, other forms of herbalism are founded on similar culturally derived ideas. There maybe a few more gems hidden in traditional pharmacopeias, but this does not mean we should uncritically accept the claims of herbalists at face value.

Labels: Traditional Chinese Medicine