bogus claims
Conversion therapy has been banned last week in Canada. These therapies – also known as sexual orientation change effort (SOCE), reparative therapy, reintegrative therapy, reorientation therapy, ex-gay therapy, and gay cure – rely on the assumption that sexual orientation can be changed, an idea long discredited by major medical associations in the US, the UK, France, and elsewhere. The new law makes “providing, promoting, or advertising conversion therapy” a criminal offense. It will also be an offense to profit from the provision of conversion therapy. In addition, the bill states a person cannot remove a “child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside Canada.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the law’s Royal Assent: “It’s official: Our government’s legislation banning the despicable and degrading practice of conversion therapy has received Royal Assent — meaning it is now law.”
Conversion therapy is the attempt to change an individual’s sexual or gender identity by psychological, medical, or surgical interventions. Often, informed consent is insufficient or lacking. In conventional medicine, numerous treatments have been tried for this purpose, some of them dangerous and all of them ineffective. In alternative medicine, approaches that have been advocated include:
- Homeopathy (see below),
- Hypnotherapy,
- Spiritual healing,
- Prayer,
- Eye Movement Desensitization,
- Rebirthing,
- and others.
- Faith-based organizations or leaders
- Licensed healthcare professionals
- Unlicensed healthcare professionals
As previously reported, the German ‘Association of Catholic Doctors’ claimed that homeopathic remedies can cure homosexuality. Specifically, they advised that ‘…the working group ‘HOMEOPATHY’ of the Association notes homeopathic therapy options for homosexual tendencies…repertories contain special rubrics pointing to characteristic signs of homosexual behavior, including sexual peculiarities such as anal intercourse. And a homeopathic remedy called ‘Dr. Reckeweg R20 Glandular Drops for Women’ was claimed to treat “lesbian tendencies.” The product is “derived and potentised from fetal tissues.”
Several countries are now in the process of banning conversion therapy. France has already banned it and so has Germany. The UK government intends to introduce a legislative ban on the practice of conversion therapy. The consultation on how to best do this is open until 4 February 2022.
The ‘Control Group Cooperative Ltd‘ is a UK Company (Registration Number: 13477806) is registered at 117 Dartford Road, Dartford, Kent DA1 3EN, UK. On its website, it provides the following statement:
The Vaccine Control Group is a Worldwide independent long-term study that is seeking to provide a baseline of data from unvaccinated individuals for comparative analysis with the vaccinated population, to evaluate the success of the Covid-19 mass vaccination programme and assist future research projects. This study is not, and will never be, associated with any pharmaceutical enterprise as its impartiality is of paramount importance.
The VaxControlGroup is a community cooperative, for the people. All monies raised will be re-invested into the project and its community.
Volunteers for this study are welcome from around the world, providing they have not yet received any of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and are not planning to do so.
So, the Vaccine Control Group (VCC) aims at recruiting people who refuse COVID vaccinations. The VCC issues downloadable and printable COVID-19 Vaccine self exemption forms that you can complete (either online or by hand) supplied by: Professionals for Medical Informed Consent and Non-Discrimination (PROMIC). The form contains the following text:
COVID-19 vaccines, that have been administered to the public under emergency use authorisation, have been
associated with moderate to severe adverse events and deaths in a small proportion of recipients. There are currently insufficient available long-term safety data from Phase 3 trials and post-marketing surveillance to be able to predict which population sub-groups are likely to be most vulnerable to these reactions. However, clinical assessments have identified a range of conditions or medical histories that are associated with increased risk of serious adverse events (see Panel B). Individuals with such medical concerns, along with those who have already had COVID-19 and acquired natural immunity, have justifiable grounds to not consent to COVID-19 vaccination. Such individuals may choose to use alternate approaches to reduce their risk of developing serious COVID-19 disease and associated viral transmission. UK and international law enshrines an individual’s right to refuse any medical treatment or intervention without being subjected to penalty, restriction or limitation of protected rights or freedoms, as this would otherwise constitute coercion.
I do wonder, after reading this, what scientific value this ‘study’ might have (nowhere could I find relevant methodological details about the ‘study’). In search of an answer, I found ‘Doctors & Health Professionals supportive of this project’. The only one supportive of the VCC seems to be Prof Harald Walach who offers his support with these words:
A vaccine control group, especially for Covid-19 vaccines, is extremely useful, even necessary, for the following reasons:
- We are dealing with a vaccination technology that has never been used in humans before.
- All studies that have planned a control group long term, i.e. longer than only 6 weeks, have meanwhile been compromised, i.e. there are no real control groups around, because those originally allocated to the control group have mostly been vaccinated now. So there are no real control groups available.
- Covid-19 vaccinations are one of the biggest experiments on mankind ever conducted – without a control group. Hence those, who are either not willing to be vaccinated or have not yet been vaccinated are our only chance to understand whether the vaccines are safe or whether symptoms reported after vaccination are actually due to the vaccination or are only an incidental occurrence or random fluctuation.
Comparing unvaccinated people and those with a vaccination history regarding Covid-19 vaccines long term is important to determine long-term safety, because in many instances in the past some problems only were seen after quite some time. This can happen, if auto-immune processes are triggered, which often occur only in very few people. Hence, it is also important to have a long-term observation period and a large number of people participating.
Prof. Dr. Dr. phil. Harald Walach
This does not alleviate my doubts about the scientific value at all. Prof Walach, promoter of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) and pseudoscientist of the year 2012, has in the past drawn our attention to his odd activities around COVID and vaccinations. Here are three recent posts on the subject:
- Prof Harald Walach is really unlucky
- Is Prof Harald Walach incompetent or dishonest?
- COVID-19 vaccinations: Prof Walach wants to “dampen the enthusiasm by sober facts”
In view of all this, I do wonder what the VCC is truly about.
It couldn’t be a front for issuing dodgy exemption certificates, could it?
Anthony Fauci is the American physician, scientist, and immunologist who serves as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. I have never met him in person but, from all that I know about him, I have great respect for him and his work (he also happens to share with me a John Maddox Prize for standing up for science; he received it in 2020 and I in 2015). Not everyone, however, shares my admiration for Fauci.
This week Lara Logan, a host on Fox News’ streaming platform Fox Nation, confirmed Godwin’s law by comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed some of the most horrific experiments on Jewish twins at Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the Third Reich: “This is what people say to me: He doesn’t represent science,” the former “Logan of Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He represents Josef Mengele … the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War in the concentration camps. And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this! Because the response from COVID. What it has done to countries everywhere. What it has done to civil liberties. The suicide rates. The poverty.”
She made the comment during an appearance on “Fox News Primetime,” following a rant about how there was “no justification for putting people out of their jobs or forcing mandates” for a disease that has death rates “that compare very much to seasonal flu.” (The death rate from COVID-19 is up to 10 times higher than that of most strains of the flu.)
Only hours after the comments by Logan, the Fox News host, Tucker Carlson has compared Dr Anthony Fauci to Italian fascist World War II dictator Benito Mussolini. Holocaust comparisons have become a common feature of protests against COVID-19 strategies. Conservative politicians and media personalities have repeatedly compared vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The US is sadly not alone. In Germany and Austria, such comparisons between the atrocities of the Third Reich and COVID vaccinations have become common too. In Germany, this has gone so far that the judiciary is now taking action against people who compare Corona politics with the crimes of Nazis.
Personally, I find these comparisons not just stupid but despicable, and I agree that they should be outlawed. Journalists, in particular, must know that by employing this type of rhetoric, they act against all decency and undermine our efforts to protect the public from the pandemic. I, therefore, feel that Logan, Carlson, and anyone else who descends that low should be prosecuted.
Dr. Mehmet Oz is one of the most influential promoters of outright quackery. I once (many years ago) met him at a meeting where we both were lecturing. My impression was that he does not believe a single word he speaks. Oz later became a TV star and had ample occasion to confirm my suspicion.
Oz’s wife, Lisa, is a Reiki master and has spoken widely of her insights into energy and health. Mehmet Oz appeared as a health expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2009, Winfrey offered to produce a syndicated series. The Dr. Oz Show debuted in September 2009 and became the most successful promotion of charlatanery in the US. During a Senate hearing on consumer protection in 2014, Senator Claire McCaskill stated that “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you” for airing segments on weight loss products that are later cited in advertisements, concluding that Oz plays a role, intentional or not, in perpetuating these scams, and that she is “concerned that you are melding medical advice, news, and entertainment in a way that harms consumers.” This judgement was supported by a 2014 analysis published in the BMJ; here is the abstract:
Objective To determine the quality of health recommendations and claims made on popular medical talk shows.
Design Prospective observational study.
Setting Mainstream television media.
Sources Internationally syndicated medical television talk shows that air daily (The Dr Oz Show and The Doctors).
Interventions Investigators randomly selected 40 episodes of each of The Dr Oz Show and The Doctors from early 2013 and identified and evaluated all recommendations made on each program. A group of experienced evidence reviewers independently searched for, and evaluated as a team, evidence to support 80 randomly selected recommendations from each show.
Main outcomes measures Percentage of recommendations that are supported by evidence as determined by a team of experienced evidence reviewers. Secondary outcomes included topics discussed, the number of recommendations made on the shows, and the types and details of recommendations that were made.
Results We could find at least a case study or better evidence to support 54% (95% confidence interval 47% to 62%) of the 160 recommendations (80 from each show). For recommendations in The Dr Oz Show, evidence supported 46%, contradicted 15%, and was not found for 39%. For recommendations in The Doctors, evidence supported 63%, contradicted 14%, and was not found for 24%. Believable or somewhat believable evidence supported 33% of the recommendations on The Dr Oz Show and 53% on The Doctors. On average, The Dr Oz Show had 12 recommendations per episode and The Doctors 11. The most common recommendation category on The Dr Oz Show was dietary advice (39%) and on The Doctors was to consult a healthcare provider (18%). A specific benefit was described for 43% and 41% of the recommendations made on the shows respectively. The magnitude of benefit was described for 17% of the recommendations on The Dr Oz Show and 11% on The Doctors. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest accompanied 0.4% of recommendations.
Conclusions Recommendations made on medical talk shows often lack adequate information on specific benefits or the magnitude of the effects of these benefits. Approximately half of the recommendations have either no evidence or are contradicted by the best available evidence. Potential conflicts of interest are rarely addressed. The public should be skeptical about recommendations made on medical talk shows.
During the presidential campaign in 2016, Oz supported Trump and hosted him on his TV show. In 2018, Donald Trump appointed him to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, Oz was criticized as an example of choosing “pundits over experts”. Recently, Oz announced he intends to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.
In April 2020, Oz also spurred controversy because he said that children should be sent back into schools despite the fact that the novel coronavirus pandemic had only just begun and there were no vaccines or therapeutics yet available. “I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity,” he said, claiming that resuming classes “may only cost us 2 to 3 percent in terms of total mortality,” according to his “reading” of medical journals. The mistake was so substantial that Oz later provided a kind of half-apology, saying that he “misspoke.”
Yesterday, it was reported that one of Austria’s best-known opponents of vaccination has died as a result of coronavirus infection. He vehemently refused treatment in hospital. Instead, he insisted on treating himself – and tragically, he is not an isolated case.
“Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) is being promoted as a treatment for all kinds of diseases – including, of course, the coronavirus. But MMS is nothing more than the bleach and disinfectant chlorine dioxide, or CDL for short. It made headlines when Donald Trump suggested it as a remedy against Covid-19. Subsequently, CDL became highly popular amongst the anti-vax brigade.
Johann Biacsics was one of the leading figures of the anti-vaccination scene in Austria. On 11 November, he was seen in a Vienna hospital with an acute corona infection. At this stage, he had already taken chlorine dioxide because of fever complaints. Biacsics was, of course, not vaccinated and refused treatment. He was firmly convinced that he had already overcome the infection thanks to his treatment with chlorine dioxide.
The senior physician at the Vienna hospital saw things differently. His condition was “life-threatening”, she said. But instead of accepting treatment in hospital, Biacsics discharged himself and said he would rather treat himself. Once home, Biacsics put in an IV line with chlorine dioxide and sodium chloride. Two days later he was dead.
Only two weeks before his death, Biacsics had demonstrated in Vienna against the Austrian Corona measures. In a television interview from September, he can be seen in front of the parliament. “There are mainly vaccinated people in the intensive care units. 67 percent of them are vaccinated,” he said on camera at the time. When the reporter corrected him, he only replied that he had “inside information”.
His followers are now suggesting that he was poisoned. And for once they are, of course, correct. He basically poisoned himself with MMS. His family, meanwhile, blames the hospital and claim that he did not die of COVID, nor that Biacsics’ death is the result of treatment with chlorine dioxide.
Biacsics is not the first Austrian Covid patient who has refused treatment or used “alternative remedies”. And he is not the first who has died as a result. Self-treatment is booming among vaccination opponents and Corona deniers. It was even propagated in the Austrian parliament. For weeks, FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl (who also is COVID-positive) and his party colleagues have been promoting the deworming drug ivermectin – despite warnings from doctors, scientists, and the manufacturer.
All too often, the consequences are fatal: In Styria, two patients died from poisoning with ivermectin, in the district of Rohrbach in Upper Austria, a Corona patient left the intensive care unit in critical condition and died. He had also relied on ivermectin and refused other treatments.
“There is a battle raging for humanity”, claims Dr Carrie Madej, a US osteopathic doctor (in the US, osteopaths are [almost] conventional physicians). She thinks she has discovered how Big Tech collaborates with Big Pharma introduced new technologies in the coming vaccines, that will alter our DNA and turn us into hybrids. This, she submits, will end humanity as we know it, and start the process of transhumanism: HUMAN 2.0 They use vaccines to inject nanotechnology into our bodies and connect us to the Cloud and artificial intelligence. This will enable corrupt governments and tech giants to control us, without us being aware of it.
Dr. Carrie Madej is from Dearborn, Michigan, and received her medical degree from Kansas City University of Medical Biosciences in 2001. She then completed her traditional internship at The Medical Center in Columbus, Georgia, and internal medicine residency at Mercer University in Macon Georgia. Dr. Madej served as a private clinician and medical director of clinics in Georgia until 2015. Dr. Madej also served as an attending physician for the Pennsylvania College of Osteopathic Medicine. She has served as a public speaker and was featured in the documentary, “The Marketing of Madness” about the overuse of prescription psychotropic medicines. Dr. Madej now dedicates her time educating others on vaccines, nanotechnology, and human rights via multiple platforms and speaking engagements.
IN HER NEWEST SCORCHED EARTH DISCUSSION, Dr. Carrie Madej simply Can NOT stay silent about the ABSOLUTE DANGERS of the Covid-19 “vaccines” any longer! In fact, in this SCATHING PRESENTATION, she literally describes the ‘Killer Concoctions’ as ‘THE FRANKENSTEIN CODE” and HAMMERS the ‘Purveyors of the Poison Jab’ as ‘Murdering Psychopath Witch Doctors’ who are HELL BENT on the TOTAL DESTRUCTION & ANNIHILATION of the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE, as we know it today.
The ‘Kung Flu’ (as it’s been referred to by none other than POTUS Trump), is only ‘KILLING PEOPLE who are already suffering from cancer, diabetes, heart disease and a plethora of other autoimmune problems’ – so now WHY IN THE WORLD IS EVERYBODY being told to get the ‘Killer Jab’ when the risk of DIRE & GROTESQUE INJURY FAR OUTWEIGHS the risk of dying from Covid-19 or the fake Delta Variant, or Beta, or Gamma or WHATEVER ELSE THE DEMONIC FAUCI & GATES CONCOCT NEXT?! Get ready for a BEATING unlike you’ve seen in recent days, as Dr. Madej RIPS THE THROATS straight out of these Deep State Demons in this ‘DO NOT MISS’ Epic Video! Grab the popcorn, and get ready for a trip down the Rabbit Hole and a takedown of Satan’s Army!
This was published by the ‘REPUBLIC BROADCASTING NETWORK’ (RBN) who also published articles such as ‘Who are the Jews behind the coronavirus vaccines?‘
Dr. Carrie Madej is certainly no fan of COVID vaccines: Doctor Carrie Madej says she personally examined multiple vials of the vaccines that are being forced into people’s arms, and she was horrified by what she saw. She says she cried harder than she ever has before. Elsewhere she explained in detail:
“First it looked just translucent. And then as time went on, over two hours, colors appeared. I had never seen anything like this. There wasn’t a chemical reaction happening. It was a brilliant blue, and royal purple, yellow, and sometimes green,” she said.
She later shared that when she asked nanotech engineers what the emerging brilliant colors might come from, the engineers said the “only thing they knew that could do that” was a white light, over time, causing a reaction on “a super-conducting material.” In this case, Madej noted, white light came from the microscope itself.
She pointed out that an example of a super-conducting substance would be “an injectable computing system.”
Madej went on, “These fibers were appearing more and more. Some of the fibers had a little cube structure on them, I’m not sure what that was. And also metallic fragments were in there. They were not metallic fragments I’m used to seeing. They were exotic. They were very opaque.”
In time, Madej said, “all the particulates, all these colors started moving to the edge” of the cover slide. “There was self-assembling going on, things were growing. They looked synthetic.”
Madej noticed something else quite strange: “There was one particular object or organism, I’m not sure what to call it, that had tentacles coming from it. It was able to lift itself up off of the glass slide. It appeared to be self-aware, or to be able to grow or move in space.”
She found it disturbing but said she thought, “Maybe that was a fluke in a way, maybe that was just that one vial.”
Some time later, the same lab obtained more vials from a different batch of Moderna shots, as well as a J&J vial. Madej was concerned to see the same things she had observed in the first vial.
“Another one of those tentacle-like structures appeared,” she said. “This was now completely under the cover slip, so there was no movement because it wasn’t on the edge, but I just couldn’t believe I saw another one. Same thing.” Madej also saw the “same colors” appear over time, as well as the fibers.
In the J&J vial, Madej said, there was “definitely a substance that looked like graphene. They all had graphene-like structures in there. Whether or not they were, I don’t have the capability of testing them in order to know at this lab, but that’s what they appeared to be.”
The vial’s contents also had “fatty substances, a sticky glue-like substance that would be considered a hydrogel in those, both of them.”
The J&J vial “also had colors appear.” “Their colors were different, like a fluorescent pastel kind of color. Again, a lot of synthetic structures in there as well.” Madej also noticed many “spherical ring structures” in the J&J contents.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. They’re not supposed to be in these injections. What are they going to do to somebody? What are they going to do to a child? I started crying when I saw these the second time under a microscope, because it was confirmation of everything I saw the first time,” Madej said.
Madej again appeared on the Stew Peters show on October 20 to discuss her findings from a Pfizer jab vial as well as another J&J vial. “What I’m seeing in all of these manufacturers are synthetic substances, graphene-like, also these nano-carbon tubes,” Madej said.
“In this particular J&J” vial, Madej saw “round spheres, which were not air bubbles.” She continued, “There’s many of these rings, and as time went on they would get thinner and thinner and expand out and then finally extrude out some gelatinous material — I’m not sure what it was, but different kinds of things were inside these spheres. So they’re almost like a delivery structure, that’s what they were doing.”
On one of these rings, Madej saw what “looked like a translucent organism that went around, and back and forth.” Madej first “thought it was another water parasite,” but after continuing to observe its movements, “thought perhaps it was moving in a more robotic way.”
Madej saw the “same kind of synthetic things” in the Pfizer jab, as well as “something that looks similar to teslaphoresis. That’s when these little graphite-like black, metallic particles start to coalesce into strings, like a spider web. They do that through any external force — it could be light, it could be a magnetic force, it could be an impulse, like a frequency. Anyhow, all these little particles would then coalesce and form their own neural network, or their own fibers, or wires.”
After listening to Madej’s findings and seeing the photo and video documentation she provided, Peters commented, “It’s like I’m watching a seriously bad B-movie, a horror thriller.”
Madej believes the tentacled entity she found in the Moderna jabs has a connection with the organism hydra vulgaris. “It is one of the model organisms that the transhumanists like to study and look at. They feel that this is an amazing organism for humanity,” said Madej, in part because “it’s immortal in the lab setting” and “continuously produces its own stem cells.”
“It never stops. You can chop it up into little bits, put it in a petri dish and it forms itself again and again,” she continued. “They’re thinking, wouldn’t this be great if we could put this inside of a human body’s genome, and then if your hand was chopped off by a trauma, you could grow a new hand.”
My friend Joe Schwarcz recently wrote a brilliant article about Dr. Madej. He concluded by asking: Is Dr. Madej a maddeningly malicious malfeasant, or does she just have a few loose marbles? I fear that it might be both.
The complex links between so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) and the pandemic have been a regular subject on this blog. Here is more:
This study investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of SCAM.
The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an online survey advertised on Facebook. Structural regression analysis was used to investigate whether:
1) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of SCAM predict people’s response to the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic,
2) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM are related to people’s willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
The results indicate that individuals with more conspiracy beliefs and lower trust in information sources were less likely to have a positive response to the NPIs. Individuals with less trust in information sources and more endorsement of SCAM were more unwilling to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Distrust in information sources was the strongest and most consistent predictor in all models. In addition, the analyses revealed that some of the people who respond negatively to the NPIs also have a lower likelihood to take the vaccine. This association was partly related to lower trust in information sources.
The authors concluded that distrusting the establishment to provide accurate information, believing in conspiracy theories, and endorsing treatments and substances that are not part of conventional medicine, are all associated with a more negative response to the official guidelines during COVID-19. How people respond to the guidelines, however, is more strongly and consistently related to the degree of trust they feel in the information sources than to their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs or endorse CAM. These findings highlight the need for governments and health authorities to create communication strategies that build public trust.
I also believe that these findings highlight the urgent need for improvements in education. In my view, it should start at school and continue into adult life. It should focus on a better understanding of science and – crucially – on the ability to differentiate facts from fiction and conspiracies.
Long-COVID syndrome is a condition that will affect a large proportion of those who survived a COVID-19 infection. According to a recent meta-analysis, it is associated predominantly with poor quality of life, persistent symptoms including fatigue, dyspnea, anosmia, sleep disturbances, and mental health problems.
At present, we are still struggling to understand the exact causes and mechanisms of this condition. Therefore, its optimal treatment is as yet uncertain. Governments around the world have therefore made sizable research funds available to make progress in this area, and research in this area is frantically active.
Regardless of the evidence, practitioners and entrepreneurs of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) are gearing up to jump on this bandwagon by declaring that their offerings are a solution to this growing problem. Indeed, many of them have already done so. Here are just three sites that I found today which are promoting homeopathy for long COVID:
- Post Covid Syndrome – Homeopathy for Support & Symptom Management
- HOMEOPATHY FOR POST- COVID-19 SYNDROME
- Homeopathic medicines for Post Covid
One hardly needs to mention that homeopathy is not supported by sound evidence in the management of long-Covid (or any other condition for that matter). Neither does one need to stress that homeopaths are just one example, and virtually all other SCAM providers are promoting their services in the absence of evidence.
A recent review of the literature stated this:
Patients with long COVID commonly refer to taking ‘the stack’ or ‘the supplement stack’, which includes high-dose vitamin C and D, niacin (nicotinic acid), quercetin, zinc, selenium, and sometimes also magnesium. Further research is needed to confirm or refute the impact of supplements in long COVID. Examples of noteworthy interactions with supplements include: niacin causing an increased risk of bleeding events when combined with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, increased risk of rhabdomyolysis together with statins, and quercetin causing inhibition and induction of various human cytochrome P450 enzymes.
Why then are SCAM providers promoting SCAM for long-COVID?
This is a daft question if there ever was one.
It seems obvious they do it because:
- they are believers who don’t care about evidence,
- they are in it for the money,
- or both.
Some time ago, this homeopath already indicated, that SCAM providers should see COVID as an opportunity: For homeopathy, shunned during its 200 years of existence by conventional medicine, this outbreak is a key opportunity to show potentially the contribution it can make in treating COVID-19 patients. We should perhaps not hold our breath to see the emergence of convincing evidence, but we should be prepared to warn the public of getting exploited by charlatans who disregard both ethics and evidence.
Guest post by Richard Rasker
Last summer, I strolled through my garden, enjoying the abundance of flowers and insects. At the far end, the garden gave way to shrubs and reedy grass and a tiny pond that, contrary to past years, hadn’t dried out completely yet.
And right there, at the water’s edge, is where I stumbled upon IT.
At first I thought the small white object was a twig or something similar, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a small bone – looking remarkably like a human femur, albeit a bit eroded. So I looked around in the vicinity, to see if I could find any more bones. This was not the case, but what I DID find was even more breathtaking: a slender, 2-inch long gauze-like wing.
Immediately a mind-blowing realization dawned: there are fairies in the back of my garden!
Of course I had to be careful not to get carried away based on this single observation, so I spent the following months painstakingly searching for more corroborating evidence. And what I found was astounding: at least a dozen similar bones and wings, and even a very small tuft of brownish hair. And the bogs and marshes a few miles from my home proved an even richer treasure trove. Of course I also identified remains of numerous dead animals, mostly mice and other small rodents, but the femur-like bones I found were definitely too long for mice.
So I can now safely reveal my findings: fairies do exist after all! This is truly world-shattering!
Now what does this have to do with homeopathy, one may ask? The answer is simple: the gathering of evidence for the viability of homeopathy (and many other alternative modalities) is fully analogous to the way that I found scientific evidence for the existence of fairies:
- People (scientists or homeopaths) believe that they stumbled upon something special.
- They almost immediately consider their finding as either a type of revelation, or as something that lends strong support to their prior belief.
- They then set out to gather more evidence in support of the phenomenon they found, thus affirming their belief.
- And after a lot of painstaking work, the conclusion is reached that the observed phenomenon indeed exists!
Recently, a commenter on this blog tried to bolster the validity of homeopathy by naming a couple of scientists who did exactly this: they started believing in homeopathy, not because of proper clinical trials with homeopathic medicines, but because of revelation-type experiences, or because of hypotheses and/or observations that appeared to explain and support one important prerequisite of homeopathy, the so-called ‘water memory’.
These scientists come up with all sorts of hypothetical mechanisms how this water memory is supposed to work. Usually, quantum physics is invoked – even though real quantum physicists are unanimous in condemning this as nonsense, because quantum physics doesn’t work the way that homeopaths say it does. Nevertheless, these believers in homeopathy come up with ‘explanations’ that involve entanglement, or ‘coherence domains’, or stable nanostructures in water. And there are still lots of other mechanisms dreamed up by believers in homeopathy that aim to explain the all-important water memory.
First of all, most of these hypotheses are completely bonkers, without any real-world evidence to back up the suggestions and claims made – and none of these scientists have so far succeeded in distinguishing an arbitrary homeopathic dilution from plain water, even though some claim that they can find minute differences for a few very specific substances. Just too bad that these results have not been replicated by other scientists, and that they have not been published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. And even if these results are legitimate, the effect found is absolutely tiny – just like all other homeopathic research with positive results.
But for the sake of the argument, let’s assume that these findings with regard to water memory are real (although no two researchers agree on even the basics of the purported mechanisms). Does this provide enough evidence to make us accept that homeopathy is a viable system of medicine?
No, of course it doesn’t!
Even if water would retain certain ‘nanostructures’ or ‘coherence domains’ or ‘quantum-entangled particles’, this means just that: that an almost undetectable ‘something’ apparently persists in water. It says NOTHING about how this tiny something can have a huge range of highly specific therapeutic effects, necessitating a hugely intricate structure (of which not a trace has ever been found). It says nothing about how this something finds its way from the water to the specific parts of the body to exert those beneficial effects, or about the way that this something interacts with the organism. It does not tell us why this something only ends up in water if it is shaken, or why this something becomes more potent with higher dilutions, or how this something can pass from homeopathic water to sugar pellets while retaining its very special water-based(!) structure – or why, in spite of this all, literally nobody can distinguish a homeopathic dilution from plain water.
Saying that the existence of water memory proves that homeopathy is real is like saying that the existence of those bones and wings I found proves that fairies exist. It is a totally unwarranted inference, and an excellent example of, in the words of Dr. Harriet Hall, Tooth Fairy science: these people spend lots of time, effort and money doing very serious research into all sorts of mechanisms and effects to explain how homeopathy works, but totally neglect to answer the primary question first: does homeopathy work at all? And even worse: these people think that the tiniest glimmer of an effect supporting their hypothesis immediately proves all of homeopathy right. Which is not so much jumping to conclusions, but making leaps of astronomical proportions that would have made even Neil Armstrong jealous. This is not how science works.
For homeopathy, I think that the primary question is answered pretty definitively: even after 227 years, homeopaths have not succeeded in coming up with even ONE ‘remedy’ that is efficacious beyond a shadow of a doubt. NOT ONE.
And to add insult to injury, nothing in science even remotely supports the very core tenets of homeopathy, the similia principle and the law of infinitesimals. ‘Like’ does NOT ‘cure like’, and higher dilutions most certainly were never found to become more potent medicines – quite the contrary, as is observed on a daily basis literally everywhere.
Most other ancient and traditional forms of medicine have come up with at least some treatments or herbs that turned out to have scientifically proven efficacy and have become part of modern medicine – but not homeopathy. Homeopathy DOES NOT WORK, PERIOD.
(Although, to be fair, homeopathy has given us one important insight with regard to medicine: that for many ailments, simply doing nothing is often the best choice. Because most conditions resolve naturally, without medical intervention.)
On a friendlier note: I do not think that those people who study water memory mechanisms and other similarly elusive effects are useless as scientists. Their painstaking research into things like nanostructures in water may one day produce interesting and useful new scientific insights. But it would benefit them greatly if they would distance themselves from homeopathy and its associated pseudoscience, because that is truly a dead-end street, bringing them nothing but scorn and derision.
And oh, about those bones and wings that I said I found? Those were of course likely from frogs and dragonflies, respectively. Or maybe I was the victim of a prank, or maybe I simply made up the whole story. Believe what you will, but you probably agree with me that almost any explanation one can think of is more likely than the fairy scenario. And this again is analogous to homeopathy: almost any explanation one can think of is more plausible than the explanation that mere shaking and diluting magically transforms water into a highly specific medicine.
What on earth is ‘reincarnation therapy’?
Here is a website that explains it quite well:
The concept of reincarnation is that our souls can experience many lifetimes directly thru centuries, perhaps even thousands of years. Life gives more meaning when you have a deeper understanding of the bigger picture. Earlier life regression has been recognized as a legal form of spiritual healing. No matter what religion you follow or not, you get the feeling that you are more than a physical body. You meet the essence of your soul, connected to a greater universal energy, perhaps for the first time in your life. For those who experience this, they get inner peace…
Reincarnation therapy is a technique that has been and has been used successfully for many years, and is a comprehensive therapy for body, mind and soul based on cause and effect (karma). Reincarnation can help people cure emotional trauma or an injury that you have transferred from a past life or in this life. The technique has not only been used by monks and theologians for many years, but has been more embraced by today’s psychologists, psychiatrists and science. If reincarnation is not a true phenomenon, but just an indefinite theory, how is it that the technique is so successful in healing?
The concept of reincarnation has been present in almost any culture since ancient times. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and all believed in the “transfer of souls” from one body to another after death. Although reincarnation is not part of official Christianity, many Christians believe in it or at least accept the opportunity. No matter what we know about this awareness, there is still so much we do not know. The most important thing we can say about previous reincarnation therapy is that it is a method that provides deep and permanent healing in a short time. You do not have to believe in reincarnation to receive healing from this amazing technique.
Reincarnation therapy can change your life! It will help you find your potential, create more compassion and love, gain access to wisdom, peace and guidance for you and others. It can reveal the purpose of life and the reason for incarnation, strengthen the clarity of the spiritual nature of the spirit and help you overcome fear of death. After several regression sessions, many clients report after the regression, about a greater sense of inner peace and love when they understand their choice of living conditions and what they need to learn.
Another website offers more concrete explanations:
Everyone can do reincarnation therapy, but it is especially important for people who experience recurring experiences in current life. Such as, for example, health problems or recurring relationship problems, fears, phobias, family problems, mental disorders, etc. Through the therapy, the problems can suddenly disappear by gaining insight into the cause. It is also interesting for people who are just curious what they have been in the past life. A person can experience the most special experiences. You may remember people or places where you have never been before in current life. There are cases that people suddenly spoke a language they could never speak before. The main purpose for experiencing of Reincarnation Therapy is to confirm for yourself and to know that there is always life even after death. This will change your way of thinking and give you more insight about life.
… Reincarnation therapy takes +/- 3 hours. You wil get into a trance, through which you feel, see, smell, taste everything, etc. We do not work with Hypnosis. Hypnosis is not good for the subconscious mind and many people don’t remember anything after that either. We want you to really experience everything and to experience this as a development.
So, reincarnation therapy is similar to or even identical with past life regression therapy, a so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) that we have recently discussed. 
What conditions does it treat or cure? Yet another website provides the answer to this question:
- all kinds of phobias;
- relationship problems;
- depression;
- addictions;
- chronic pain;
- panic attacks;
- insomnia;
- headache,
- etc.
The ‘etcetera’ presumably means that reincarnation therapy is a panacea. That sounds most encouraging! There is just one tiny little problem: there is not a jot of evidence. Yet, I am sure that reincarnation therapy can change your life: in case you are gullible enough to believe all the BS, pay through your nose for an endless series of sessions and thus end up poor.
