Catherine over on What Now has drawn my attention to someone who has posted a link to the claims of Masaru Emoto, a Japanese author who some wrongly believe to have scientific qualifications.

No doubt it will be deleted, but it's so delicious, I'll reproduce it here:

"I thought this might be of interest to someone out there, I am not saying is works or it doesnt. But it might help someone, so thought I would share it......just in case. At a molecular level we are all basically the same, the theory that everything in the Universe is affected by vibrations, positive and negative, even down to our thoughts and music is not an old one. A guy by the name of Dr. Masaru Emoto has been researching the effects that words and vibrations can have on water. As people are made of roughly 70% water, following that train of thought, it stands to reason that we as people might be effected too, at some point along the chain.

Here is the website if its of any interest anyone. I got interested after researching Quantum Mechanics. Now I find myself writing things like 'Love, happiness and healthy' on my arm to create a positive vibration on the water particals circulation my body. I find it an interesting idea. My hope is that this little note might do some good to someone. I dont want to offend anybody and that is not my intention. Love, Happiness & Healing to everyone and anyone reading this."

Far Out! Mr Emoto is one of my favorite nutjobs. He claims that he can photograph the effect on water of human thoughts and emotions. He was featured in the sneaky film "What The Bleep Do We Know" which attempts to show that science supports alternative medicine and all other things spacecadet by mixing a tiny bit of science with a truckload of flapdoodle, because essentially "like, what the **** do we know maaan, it's all like..quantum. Like, wow!"

This film (which is officially classified as a work of fiction and was produced by people from a number of Indian based religious cults) appears to be the source of the post author's research into Quantum Mechanics. It has been suggested that he needs 'sucker' tattooed on his arm, rather than 'inspirational' words, and who am I to disagree?

"What the Bleep" is a religious recruiting film, and nothing whatever to do with science, but like the X-files, hippies seem to think it is a science documentary.

A number of supposed scientists are featured in the film, some of whom like "Dr" Emoto are quite clear about the fact that they are not scientists in answer to a straight question. Of course in this film no one asks him that question.

Some of them like Richard Alpert are not so clear that they used to be sort of scientists before they took many large doses of hallucinogenic drugs, were fired from academia for giving their students magic mushrooms, and now plug Hinduism under the name of Baba Ram Dass.

And the overwhelming majority of the rest of them are a bit quiet about the fact that they are proselytising for the religious cults who employ them.

But let's look at Emoto's claims before we move onto the more general world of quantum hogwash.

Has Mr Emoto published a single paper in any scientific journal? Why yes, he has. A single paper.
Published in a journal of which his co-author was editor in chief.

It claims that focussed positive intentions in Japan led to measurable differences in the pleasingness of crystal structures in America.

As the results of this experiment would seem to show a clearly measurable psychic effect, they were invited to claim James Randi's million dollar prize for such a demonstration by repeating the experiment with real scientists watching.

Looks like they don't need a million dollars, as they seem uninterested in claiming the prize. Or their experiment will not stand up to detailed scrutiny.

But what other claims does he make, for which he has produced no scientific evidence whatever? That's right, water can read, in both English and Japanese.

So, there is no verifiable scientific evidence to back this, and Mr. Emoto is not a scientist. He is a muddle-headed fantasist. Bless!

The energised/clustered/activated/otherwise special water nonsense which Emoto says he is photographing is however the basis for more serious sorts of quackery. I've seen curative claims for all sorts of magic water on cancer boards, often with what look to the general public like sciency stuff as backing.

And of course, clustered water is used by homoeopaths to explain the mechanism behind homoeopathy, but of course before we look for an explanation of an effect, we'd need to see an effect. Homoeopathy has no effect above placebo. Fact.

The idea of "quantum vibrations" being a scientific explanation for the healing power of prayer, reiki, and other forms of quackery has the same problem. In the absence of an effect, no explanation is required.

Quantum mechanics explains some of the very weird effects we get at very small scales. It does not explain them all, and physics is presently reaching for an explanation for everything we see in experiments which operate on very large and a very small scales.

At these very large and very small scales, things do not act as they do in everyday life, and a great mass of speculative theories are produced. Some of these are known in scientific circles as "physics porn". They are speculative, and without any experimental backing. None of them support anything. They do not even support themselves yet.

Quantum mechanics applies at a particular, incredibly tiny scale. It has no more relevance to the human scale of operation (and consequently medicine) than Einstein's theory of relativity, but it has been constructively misunderstood to seem to back religious ideas.

Sorry, hippies, go a bit steadier on the magic mushrooms in the next life. Peace out!

Labels: clustered, emoto, masaru, quantum, water

Someone kindly sent me this article yesterday on exercise and cancer. There does seem to be some reasonable evidence that exercise can reduce your chances of getting breast and bowel cancer.

It is also true that dietary factors seem to be associated with getting various cancers.

However, for those of us who already have/have had cancer, what part do diet and exercise play in preventing recurrence? The Swedish study in the first link showed that men who did exercise and got cancer were more likely to survive it, but the study had quite a few flaws, and the newspaper article exaggerates the strength of the evidence. Here's what the NHS think of the study.

So there is presently no real evidence that the standard diet and exercise advice given to the general public isn't also the best advice for cancer patients.

Yes, there is a good chance that diet and exercise play a part in some bowel and breast cancers, but we should be careful about consequently branding them lifestyle cancers as many seem to for Melanoma.

I also object to the partners of cancer patients who bully them (and any other cancer patients they can get to listen) into doing excessive exercise and eating a miserable diet in the hope of preventing recurrence.

There's no evidence that it has any effect on outcome, other than perhaps in Swedish men with certain cancers, and depriving people of the comfort of good food will do no good to their quality of life.

I remember one woman who boasted on the melanoma board that her husband was eating only brown rice and cold gravel and cycling some enormous distance every day right up until he dropped dead, and aggressively recommending that we followed his example.

She didn't appreciate us pointing out that it had done her husband no good at all, and that frankly a kebab now and then wouldn't go amiss.

Now, I'm not saying that food does not have health benefits. If you don't eat it you will die, and following the FSA recommendations on diet is only sensible, BUT there is no evidence whatever that any diet affects the course of cancer.

That is not an overstatement of the position. That is a fact. The middle ground does not lie between sense and nonsense.

I may be angry, but I am right. As for the less angry pluggers of quackery on What Now - what is it that they are selling you with their mock humility? Harmless diet tips? Nope:

The canceractive website, books and publications of Mr Woolams (as plugged repeatedly by "Poet40") make Woolams lots of money from desperate people by promoting the following quack treatments known to be actively harmful (follow the links for scientific medical opinions):

Laetrile
Gerson Therapy
Gonzalez Therapy
Hulda Clark's Cure for all Cancers

They also promote more or less all quack therapies, including the following worthless crap:

Carctol
Alkaline Diet
Shark Cartilage
Ozone
VEGA Diagnosis

They also promote (amongst others) the following cretinous ideas, which are obviously unsupported by any real world evidence other than the mutterings of acid casualties, and those hoping to exploit sick and desperate people

Kirlian Photography/Auras
Electrochemical smog

Woolams' publications also plug a number of unlicensed quack clinics in Mexico. They are not in Mexico as Woolams claims because the staff are Mexicans. They are in Mexico because they are offering cancer patients expensive but worthless "treatments" which would seen them prosecuted in the US or UK .

Now, the publications are hedged all over with disclaimers, but mountains of worthless anecdotes are offered which support these various brands of quackery. Poet40 takes his cue from these publications, "offering ideas for debate", and seeming terribly reasonable. But these are not reasonable ideas, and the poet is not a man of reason.

He has said on the WN forum that he believes himself to have Electromagnetic Sensitivity. ES is not what its sufferers imagine it is. It is a mental illness which is probably curable by cognitive behavioural therapy.

So I get mad when I see people ripping off cancer patients, but I am backed by all scientific evidence, and the poet seems reasonable but is in fact mentally ill.

This is clearly not an area to judge who is right by who seems nicest. Not when your life or that of your loved one is on the line. Get the facts.

BTW, Homeopaths are not a good source of facts. Homeopathy is bunk, and homoeopaths are therefore know-nothing quacks.

Note that my personal qualifications are irrelevant, as I am simply linking here to the opinions of qualified medical experts.

Labels: Canceractive, Icon, Rainbow Diet, Woolams

Someone mentioned "Zen Oxygen" on the WN board this morning as another miracle immune booster, and Carol B suggested that the poster looked at my blog for answers. I'll take that as a cue.

"Zen Oxygen" is nothing to do with Zen, that's just one of the words marketing people stick onto names to make them sound all mysterious and oriental. Zen just means "meditation".

What "Zen oxygen" actually is, is oxygen enriched air with more than a faint aroma of bullshit.

The promotor's website has a long screed making all sorts of claims, backed by all sorts of supposed doctors, and quotes from beauty magazines. Its claims are unworthy of detailed consideration, because of the following basic facts:

1. Does breathing high oxygen concentrations boost the immune system or otherwise promote health? Afraid not, on the contrary, is increases the amount of free radicals in the body, promoting tissue damage and possibly cancer.

2. Oxygen therapy is not novel, but has played a major part in the inglorious history of quackery. We know all about it. It does not work. It is quackery. End of.

If a cancer patient wanted to do something proactive, as well as taking what conventional medicine offers, moderate exercise would be a good place to start, especially in natural surroundings. Research suggests this may well both boost mood, and reduce the chance of recurrence.

Or you could actually try Zen, the real kind rather than the marketing version. Evidence suggests that it may help cancer patients to handle the stress.

Of course both of these things involve a bit of hard work, rather than being a product which you can buy....

Labels: oxygen, Zen

Yesterday's attempt to promote turmeric as a cure for cancer on the What Now board using a mass of inconclusive, weak, and badly designed studies has been deleted by the admins, but the woman responsible is all over the internet with it today.

There were a lot of studies in the pile, but science doesn't weigh the evidence for each side in a scale, but ranks it in terms of its strength.

So what does the evidence really tell us about turmeric?

1. That the strongest of the weak evidence available for anti-cancer effects is not for turmeric itself, but for a purified component, curcurmin.

2. That the strongest of the weak evidence for anti-cancer effects is in cell culture, rather than in complete living organisms.

3.That curcurmin is hardly absorbed from food at all in humans.

4. That is is not possible to attain the levels of curcurmin in the human body which show possible anti-cancer effects in cell culture without taking at least 110g of curcurmin daily.

5. That is is presently just as as likely that curcurmin promotes some cancers as suppresses others.

Here's how Cancer Research UK weigh the evidence to date.

They DO NOT recommend using turmeric supplements. Note the warning at the end that internet turmeric supplements are contaminated with nimusulide, an unlicensed medicine which can cause liver damage. Despite this, the What Now poster promoted a document which contains links to places to buy these supplements on the internet.

The ultimate source of the misleading "evidence" was apparently Christian Wilde, (a songwriter with no scientific or medical qualifications whatever) who has made himself a long-time promoter of alternative medicine, especially turmeric.

She is now hard at work promoting him, his books and his half-baked ideas on every cancer forum she takes part in because he "validated" (read flattered) her and her "proactive" approach in which she labours under the delusion that she and her husband are making medical history.

Of course in the American medical system, you can have any treatment you want if you have the money, then convince yourself that the quack treatments did the job rather than the proven ones, as this unfortunate woman has done. The medics involved will also avoid contradicting you on these issues as they are your employees, and are commercially interested in you having as much medical treatment as possible.

She consequently really thinks that an unqualified member of the general public armed only with a directory of quack sites knows more about cancer than people who have spent their entire lives studying it.

Suggesting differently is bad because that would be "invalidating her", or "making her wrong" which means that you aren't very nice, and can safely be ignored. Thus at a stroke she is utterly inured against any form of reasoned argument.

If she could just keep her nonsense to herself it would be no-one's problem but her unfortunate husband's, but she consistently chooses to try and persuade others that these various quack cures for cancer are a good idea. More generally she tries to persuade them that a patient or carer's reading partial and misleading summaries of the research and the falsehoods on internet quack sites might allow them to make a helpful input to the treatment of cancer.

In fact such activity just leads to confusion, and in some cases to promoting to other cancer patients supplements which could cause liver damage, whilst having no proven benefit, as in this case.

Doctors may not know everything, but you'd have to be unbelievably arrogant or stupid to think they don't know more than the general public, however many quack sites they have read.

Labels: christian wilde, curcurmin, habubrat, turmeric

I was sent this article from the Telegraph this morning about the application of "nanobees" to cancer treatment which included a melanoma cell line. The original paper is here.

It's another approach showing early promise (in mice without immune systems deliberately infected with cell cultures originally derived from melanoma tumours), but it's a long, long way from there to a working treatment for human Melanoma.

Here's a new one on me, which was being promoted on Cancer Chat by someone calling themselves "javamate"- Hamer's New Medicine, aka German New Medicine.

Admins removed the content quickly, which advocated cancer patients stopping conventional treatment in favour of GNM, originated by a "Dr." Ryke Geerd Hamer.

The poster subsequently came back on the board whining in a self-pitying way about being censored, as if they had an inalienable right to promote what amounts to expensive suicide to cancer patients with lies.

Here's the truth of the matter-"Dr" Hamer was barred from practising medicine, and has since twice served substantial prison sentences for medical malpractice, involving the deaths of several patients he "treated" whilst barred from practice.

The parents of a child he "treated" also served eight month prison sentences for letting him treat their child, leading to her death.

I think it fair to conclude that Dr Hamer is a quack of the first degree. See the link for a detailed explanation of why from a specialist cancer surgeon. Or this one for what the Swiss authorities found.

Could there be a clearer case of quackery? Yet it seems that once again those who have been duped subsequently become willing accomplices to the scam.

Labels: Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, German new medicine, hamer's new medicine

There's a simple way to pass on seventy seven kinds of muddleheaded nonsense to cancer patients at a stroke. Simply recommend that they read one of the books which push quack treatments for cancer with lies, such as Patrick Quillin's " Beating Cancer with Nutrition".

Over on the What Now board "habubrat" has been ploughing this furrow for years without getting banned. Since they changed to rules of the site to disallow direct promotion of alternative therapies, she has started saying she doesn't believe that it's really about beating cancer, but just about healthier eating. Just another of her arsenal of quackery promoting tricks.

So what's wrong with her disingenuous claim? Just two things-the book which she recommends explicitly and repeatedly claims to be about curing cancer, and its recommendation do not constitute healthy eating.

Let's ignore for now the fact that anyone purchasing the book is essentially purchasing an extended advertisement for the author's "specially formulated" all in one quack supplement, and the fact that the book endorses a number of other cancer quacks as supposed "experts", whom it recommends the patient contacts for further information.

So how does Quillin claim to be able to cure cancer with nutrition? Basically, like all of these books, he lashes together some information on things which might help prevent us from getting cancer, with some things which looked promising but have have been proven subsequently not to help, and some utter nonsense from the lunatic fringe.

Mr Quillin's particular blend of bullshit is as follows:

Essiac tea cures cancer
Sugar causes cancer
Guided imagery can cure cancer
Probiotics/yoghurt can cure cancer
Positive mental attitude can cure cancer
Cancer is caused by unresolved mental traumas
Cancer is caused by yeast
High dose vitamin C can cure cancer
High dose vitamin E can cure cancer
Drinking only water purified using activated carbon or reverse osmosis cures cancer
Cancer is an anaerobic growth, breathing exercises can cure cancer
The following supplements cure cancer:
lactoferrin
transfer factor
whey extracts
aloe extracts
mushroom extracts (Maitake D-fraction)
yeast cell wall extracts (1,3 beta glucan)
IP-6
MGM-3
ImmKine
fish oil
borage
primrose oil
flax oil
conjugated linoleic acid
shark liver oil
calcium
magnesium
chromium
selenium

Oh, and of course-a daily bowel movement is essential, and laxatives to should be used if "necessary" to achieve this

There's the problem when someone persists in promoting a book like this to cancer patients. In order to show why this book is harmful nonsense, you need to write a post as long as this one to show why. Ignoring the fact that most people will stop reading before the case is fully made, let's have a look at these claims.

"Essiac is claimed to be a miracle cure for cancer. There have been reports over the years of cancers completely disappearing after taking Essiac. But in many cases, it turned out that either the diagnosis was wrong in the first place, or that conventional cancer treatment was more likely to have been the reason for the 'cure'. There is no scientific evidence to show that Essiac can treat, prevent or cure cancer or any other serious illness in humans". CRUK.

It is claimed by many in the field of quackery that sugar feeds cancer preferentially. This has no foundation in fact, but actually originates in an email hoax. A detailed explanation can be found here.

Guided imagery has not even been proven to help cancer patients feel better, let alone cure cancer. CRUK.

Yoghurt and probiotics are not proven to boost the immune system in any way (contrary to what you may have seen in adverts), and neither prevent nor cure cancer. Duh.

Positive Mental Attitude has no effect on cancer outcome. Sorry,hippies. Cancer is not caused by being on a downer, neither does pretending to be happy cure cancer.

Cancer has no connection to yeast. Quillin has borrowed the idea from Tullio Simoncini, convicted killer of cancer patients.

Can Vitamin C cure cancer? 'Fraid not. It can in fact block the effect of chemo and radiotherapy.

How about vitamin E? Half the dose suggested by Quillin at least did no active harm in studies. But it had no protective effect, and even if it had, that would have made it a preventive agent, not a cure.

Tap water does not cause cancer or any other illness, so further treatment is unnecessary. Suggesting to cancer patients that anything other than lab quality water may kill them and their loved ones is attempting to turn them into a paranoid crank. This does nothing good for their quality of life.

The "reverse osmosis" process actually removes essential minerals from the water. In countries where they have to drink seawater purified by RO, they remineralise the water before sending to the consumer. Drinking such water exclusively may well be harmful.

"Cancer is an anaerobic growth". Oh no it's not. If this were true, cancer would be very easy to treat. All of our cells can live with limited supplies of oxygen. Increasing oxygen levels does not favour normal over cancer cells, and breathing exercises would not be the way to do it if this were true.

As well as being nonsense in itself, this falsehood paves the way for the more extreme beliefs of a large section of the quack community, namely hyperoxygenation therapy. The recent research which shows that keeping oxygen levels in treatment resistant tumours at normal levels with certain drug treatments removes their resistance to conventional treatment does NOT contradict this.

Calcium does not cure cancer, this is yet another quack's sales pitch which Quillin has borrowed.

Transfer Factor is the utterly ineffective basis of an internet pyramid sales scheme, subject of an FDA warning letter for misleading medical claims.

And all of those other supplements it recommends, as well as the claims I have not mentioned for specific foods? I could give details of how every single one of them has no proven activity, but you must get the idea by now, this book is basically a listing of every crank "cure" for cancer the author could find.

No medical professional would suggest that a cancer patient takes any supplements without discussing it with their medical team. CRUK.

This book is utter rubbish from start to finish. Untruths, half-truths, and harmful nonsense.

"Healthy diet advice", My Arse!

Labels: Beating Cancer With Nutrition, Patrick Quillin

The law has no place in scientific disputes

We the undersigned believe that it is inappropriate to use the English libel laws to silence critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence.

The British Chiropractic Association has sued Simon Singh for libel. The scientific community would have preferred that it had defended its position about chiropractic for various children's ailments through an open discussion of the peer reviewed medical literature or through debate in the mainstream media.

Singh holds that chiropractic treatments for asthma, ear infections and other infant conditions are not evidence-based. Where medical claims to cure or treat do not appear to be supported by evidence, we should be able to criticise assertions robustly and the public should have access to these views.

English libel law, though, can serve to punish this kind of scrutiny and can severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest. It is already widely recognised that the law is weighted heavily against writers: among other things, the costs are so high that few defendants can afford to make their case. The ease and success of bringing cases under the English law, including against overseas writers, has led to London being viewed as the "libel capital" of the world.

Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.

The English law of libel has no place in scientific disputes about evidence; the BCA should discuss the evidence outside of a courtroom. Moreover, the BCA v Singh case shows a wider problem: we urgently need a full review of the way that English libel law affects discussions about scientific and medical evidence.

Sign It Here

Another couple of well-known faces appear over on the What Now Board. Matthew Manning the psychic healer, and Rosie Daniel, the doctor who turned into a promoter of quack diets and ayurvedic medicine.

Unfortunately the well-meaning posters who challenged the worth of these two have pulled their punches, and mixed unchallenged quack propaganda in with their attempts to debunk. Let me help out.

Matthew Manning is either a fraud or he is delusional, like all "healers". Faith healing is a fraud. Nothing more needs to be said.

Rosy Daniel's mission seemed for a long time mainly to be to blur the line between medicine and quackery, as she did so well during her time at the Bristol Cancer Centre, the acceptable face of complementary medicine, now called the Penny Brohn Centre.

To the extent that it differs from the FSA's recommendations, the Bristol Diet is completely worthless from a medical point of view. It is tolerated by medical professionals as a means to allow cancer patients to feel they have some control of their future.

Unfortunately this tolerance allows more hard-line quacks to promote harmful diets on the back of seeming medical acceptance of some of the principles of the Bristol Diet which have no scientific backing. These are:

That organic food is better for cancer patients than non-organic in some way.

That low sugar diets help prevent cancer returning

That low salt diets help prevent cancer returning

That low dairy diets help prevent cancer returning

That low meat diets help prevent cancer returning

That low caffeine diets help prevent cancer returning

All of these are unsupported by any evidence.

But Rosy has left that line-blurring behind her now, openly promoting quackery like Carctol, alkaline diet, and so on, and charging cancer patients £150 per hour for this worse-than-useless advice according to the poster on What Now.

The attempts to rebut Rosie on What Now accept quite a few things from quack propaganda, whether in an attempt to compromise, or through misinformation I do not know. These are:

Green Tea might help cancer patients-early promise in the lab, but no beneficial effect in the real world and can block the effect of some chemo agents

Dairy free diet might help cancer patients-Not only is this not proven, dairy may actually protect against some cancers

Honey helps cancer patients-nope, not even the magic kind that costs £45 a jar

Drug trials which will not lead to a patentable product are not carried out-not true-DCA, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Beta Carotene, Vitamin E, etc. have all been given clinical trials against cancer despite being non-patentable

Complementary techniques lessen side-effects-untrue-if "complementary medicine" reduced side-effects, it would be real medicine. There would be a measurable effect-but no such effect has been demonstrated.

Let's not even concede these seemingly innocuous delusions to the quacks. Give them an inch, and they take a mile...

It's been a busy week at work, so only just been able to blog on this weeks' melanoma related stories.

Sunbeds have been reclassified as a cause of human cancer by the World Health Organisation as reported slightly hysterically in the press.

Obviously tanorexia needs tackling, and the original press release is entirely free of hysteria, but like a lot of melanoma patients, I do get a bit annoyed when these messages are taken in a way which blames MM patients. The message that deliberate tanning can cause MM is too often misread, misunderstood or misreported as one that deliberate tanning is the sole cause of MM, and melanoma is consequently thought of as a lifestyle choice. Bobby Robson died of metastatic MM yesterday. It didn't sound a particularly enjoyable lifestyle choice from the reports.

There is also a new promoter of quackery on the What Now board. This one is claiming that they are living proof that not one, but four or five separate quacks have effective treatments for cancer.

Of course, if someone with cancer had conventional medical treatment and also four quack treatments and lives for a while, we can be sure that all four quack treatments work and conventional medicine has failed.

After all, everyone knows that conventional cancer treatment is entirely ineffective, and all of science and medicine a huge hoax to hide these facts from us, organised by the lizard people from space who secretly run the world. Ask David Icke.

The quacks in question here are Messrs Gerson, Lodi, Cobb and "Cousins". Two of these have been discussed on here previously, and two are new. None of them however has even a single solid anecdote to support any of the "cures" they offer to anyone with money to spare.

Cobb claims to have cured her own cancer with a raw food diet, and subsequently opened a clinic promoting this supposed cancer cure, (though away from the testimonials section, the clinic's website is careful to avoid any claims to cure anything).

However, in telling her own story the site says says "Brenda Cobb, our Founder and Director, overcame the early stages of breast and cervical cancer without the use of drugs or surgery by following the simple principles of detoxification and nutrition. She also got rid of allergies, acid reflux, indigestion, arthritis, obesity, age or liver spots, and gray hair. Her eyesight even improved!"

This is fantastic! Uncooked food can cure anything. What fools we were inventing fire!

She also says "Brenda Cobb was awarded and Honorary Cultural Doctorate in Therapeutic Philosophy from the World University in September 2003 for her work in helping people heal from diseases that the medical community thought were terminal, incurable and hopeless."

Wow, "The World University", that sounds impressive! What do they study there?

To quote from their website "It embraces, but is not limited to such subjects as metaphysics, psycho-cybernetics, bio-energetics, astrology, telepathy, telekinesis, trance phenomena, precognition, and all states of altered consciousness, as well as the entire field of esotericism, including the teachings of initiation, uni-chotometrics, astral projection, and interplanetary communication."

Oh right, magic. It is the university of magic. Though Harry Potter is not mentioned on the site, I'm sure he must be a graduate. That he is fictional would be no bar to his attendance. Its entire curriculum consists of fictional subjects.

All qualifications from "The World University" are worthless, but the Honorary Cultural Doctorate in Therapeutic Philosophy award stands out as beyond worthlessness. It seem to represent recognition by your peers as a world class promoter of quackery. Look who else has one.

"Dr. Cousins" is actually Dr. Rabbi Dr. Dr. Cousens, as in:

"Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate American Board of Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, a physician of the soul, teaches and lives the sevenfold peace. To the process of awakening and healing, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker"..etcetera..ad nauseam (from his clinic's website).

He's a busy boy alright. Unfortunately he hasn't had time to actually document any cures for cancer at his very expensive clinic. And that patient who died after he injected them with an unlicensed medicine? He was cleared of all charges, and I'm sure the out of court settlement he made with the patient's family afterwards was just reflective of his deep spirituality. Oh yes.

He seems to practice more or less any brand of quackery or mumbo-jumbo you might want, for the right price. He also appears to be something of a dick.

The poster also recommends "Healing Cancer from the Inside Out", promoting Mike Anderson's "RAVE Diet", yet another "cancer curing" vegan diet of wheatgrass, supplements, and so on with the usual claims about the cancer conspiracy, sugar feeding cancer, alkaline diets, positive mental attitude, laetrile and so on.

Big Yawn. How many times can this bullshit be repackaged, and these conmen still sell their books to the desperate and the gullible?

Labels: Brenda Cobb, Gabriel Cousens, Healing Cancer from the Inside Out, Mike Anderson