Botswana Skeptic

Weekend Post - How well do you know your science?

2012-01-22T21:03:00.001+02:00

How well do you think you know basic science? Do you think you can answer the sort of questions your kids will ask you about the world?

A survey done recently in the UK by The Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair found that two-thirds of British parents are stumped when their kids ask them scientific questions. A quarter of them find it embarrassing that they can’t answer them. That’s particularly bad because one third of parents say their kids ask them science questions every day.

The good news is that the kids are clearly curious about science and want answers. The bad news is that most British parents can’t answer them.

So what are the questions British kids are asking their parents that are proving so difficult to answer? Here’s a sample of the most commonly asked, and least commonly answered questions. See how you do.

1. Why is the moon sometimes out in the day?
2. Why is the Sky Blue?
3. Will we ever discover aliens?
4. How much does the earth weigh?
5. How do aeroplanes stay in the air?
6. Why is water wet?
7. How do I do long division?
8. Where to birds / bees go in winter?
9. What makes a rainbow?
10. Why are there different times on earth?

Of course some of them are more difficult than others. Whether we’ll ever discover aliens is up for debate. They’re probably out there but they’re so staggeringly far away that our current understanding of physics suggests we’ll probably not make proper contact with them any day soon. And why they’d want to travel all this way to see us is arguable.

Some of the others, like why the moon is sometimes visible during the day, are fairly simple to answer and I’d be surprised if anyone had much difficulty. However some, although they are perfectly reasonable questions to ask, might challenge a lot of us a bit more. Why IS the sky blue? How DO rainbows form? Why do aeroplanes stay up in the air? With a little luck, and assuming you were paying attention that day, you might remember a few things from your school science lessons. You’ll remember forming rainbows with glass prisms in the science lab, studying the migration of birds and perhaps even a few things from geography.

One thing I found pleasing in the study was that a third of all the parents questioned said that if they didn’t know the answer to one of these questions they do some research and find it out. Particularly in these days of easy internet access it’s not difficult to find the answers for yourself. For instance if you do a Google search for “Why is the sky blue?” you’ll get 81 million hits. Of course some of them will be nonsense but the first ten were all correct and all mentioned how the different colors in white light are scattered by air molecules to different degrees, and how blue light scatters the most. The most scattered light hits our eyes from the most scattered area, leaving the other colors to travel more directly from the sun. Not only is that why the sky is blue, it’s why the sun is yellow.

If you can figure that one out, the rainbow question follows on quite nicely although this time with water droplets refracting the colors within sunlight to different degrees. Incidentally, despite what a rather aggressively religious acquaintance once told me, knowing how a rainbow is formed does NOT make it any less beautiful and impressive. In fact, I think it makes it more wonderful.

What about some bad news? Over 20% of the parents sampled said that if they didn’t know the answer to one of these questions they would either make one up or claim that nobody knew the answer.

One of the suggestions of this study is delightful. Their spokesman, Professor Brian Cox, who you may have seen presenting science programs on DSTV, said:

“the best thing parents can do is work with their children to find the answers – not only can it be fun, but you’ll both learn something new along the way.”

I can’t think of anything better than finding out scientific, absolute truth with your children.

Sources

The web site of the The Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair can be seen here. You can download their press release (it's a 193k Microsoft Word document) here.

Some answers to the questions can be seen here at the following links:

Photo c/o Wing-Chi Poon

1. Why is the moon sometimes out in the day? Ask NASA. They should know.
2. Why is the Sky Blue? No, it's not because God is a boy. It's because of differential scattering.
3. Will we ever discover aliens? A Russian astronomer thinks so.
4. How much does the earth weigh? A lot.
5. How do aeroplanes stay in the air? My lesson for today. I thought it was just Bernoulli's principle but it's more complicated than that.
6. Why is water wet? It's not. "Wet" is just a word we use to describe the feeling of water. Call a philosopher.
7. How do I do long division? I honestly don't know, I was sick that day at school. Honest. Answer here.
8. Where to birds / bees go in winter? Bees hibernate, with birds it's more complicated.
9. What makes a rainbow? Water droplets make rainbows.
10. Why are there different times on earth? The Earth is a sphere and it can't all point in the same direction at once.

Weekend Post - Evolution is happening all around us, we just don’t see it.

2012-01-14T17:56:00.000+02:00

Evolution is happening all around us, we just don’t see it.

The problem with witnessing evolution happening is that it’s slow. VERY slow. Not as slow as mountain formation and continental drift but nevertheless really, really slow.

Let’s just recap. Evolution is the slow change in form of a species over multiple generations. Each generation perhaps changes a little, tiny, almost invisible amount but after many generations a noticeable change can be seen.

The changes happen because of the way that plants and animals reproduce. Almost all of them reproduce sexually. Two parents share their genetic information to produce a child. Some of the mother’s characteristics show up in the child, some of the father’s but occasionally there’s an error in the mix and strange things emerge, some of them good, others bad. Every so often one crops up that gives the child an advantage, the sort of advantage that will improve his or her chances of reproducing and passing on that advantage to their offspring. Nature, in effect, selects that child to pass on his or her genes more than a child without the advantage. That’s what Darwin called Natural Selection.

The problem with witnessing human evolution is that most of us don’t even consider making babies for at least 20 years. Even those of us who are VERY lucky will only ever see perhaps 7 generations in our family. I for instance met my great-grandparents and with luck I might meet my own great-grandchildren but seven generations isn’t enough for any major change in form to emerge.

That’s why geneticists are forced to choose other species to examine, ones that breed much more rapidly. Their favourite is the fruit fly. That’s because they can breed only 10 days after birth, allowing dozens of generations to be examined in a year. Also, even though they have an extremely simple genetic make-up with only 4 chromosomes (humans have 23) they nevertheless share most of the genes for disease that humans possess.

Perhaps the most famous example of evolution actually being observed was the Peppered Moth. This was a common moth in England that was normally white with black speckles but a tiny proportion were born much darker. The paler moths were clearly at an advantage when they rested on the pale, lichen-covered trees they called home and the darker ones never lasted very long before predatory birds had them for lunch.

As the Industrial Revolution began and the countryside became more and more polluted it was noticed that over many generations the moths gradually changed their coloring to match the increasingly darkened environment. Eventually 98% of the moths were born black. Clearly the moths with the paler coloring became increasingly visible to the birds that ate them and the ones who happened to be darker were more likely to avoid the birds. The darker ones passed on this genetic advantage to their children and over time almost the entire population became dark.

The Peppered Moth: Before (Picture taken by Olaf Leillinger)

The Peppered Moth: After (Picture taken by Olaf Leillinger)

Rather wonderfully, when the pollution finally subsided and the environment became paler again, the moths gradually changed back to their original color. Although this wasn’t a change of species into another it certainly demonstrated that the form of a species can change remarkably rapidly when the environment demands it.

Similar effects have been seen in fish, for instance the South American guppy, again with a fairly rapid change in their camouflage. As with the Peppered Moth camouflage is a great way of staying alive, or of being eaten by a predator if it fails, before you get a chance to pass on your genes.

What about humans? Are genetic mutations going on right now that might give some people an advantage? Certainyly. There’s a town called Limone sul Garda in Italy where a small proportion of the community have a mutated version of a protein that protects them against cardiovascular disease. They’ve even been able to trace the mutation back 300 years to the original “mutant”, a man called Giovanni Pomarelli. Drug companies are doing their best to make an artificial version of the protein that you and I can take. It’s either that or we send our children to that town in Italy to make babies with Signor Pomorelli’s descendants and get the gene into our family as well.

Sources

For a good introduction to evolution see the Wikipedia page here. That page contains a summary of Natural Selection but there's a fuller description here.

If you want to know more about the fruit fly see the Wikipedia page here. For details on their disease gene similarity to humans see here.

There's a very good summary of the evolution of the Peppered Moth here. Details of the micro-evolution of the South American guppy can be seen here and a profile of the biologist concerned, John Endler here.

Finally you can see details of the fascinating advantageous mutation in Italy here and here.

Weekend Post - The New Year is a bad time for science

2012-01-14T10:18:00.000+02:00

The New Year is a bad time for science. Part of it is the ridiculous New Years resolutions that so many of us make each year. Most of them, and I confess I’m not immune to this, involve promising yourself that you’ll live more healthily. You’ll promise to cut back on the booze, the saturated fat and the chocolate.

Unfortunately the purveyors of pseudoscience know this and shamelessly exploit our good intentions.

A few days ago I saw an advertisement on TV for the completely nonsensical “Detox Foot Pads”. According to the advert you stick these pads to the soles of your feet at bedtime and they apply warmth to your reflexology points and "detox your body while you sleep". The advert claims that this boosts your immune system. According to the personal testimonials from a range of grinning faces you wake feeling refreshed and with "less toxins and impurities".

According to the various characters presenting these pads they generate "far infra-red radiation equivalent to a full cardiac workout". The graphics they showed of two glowing feet were apparently "Thermo X-Rays" that showed "the incredible effects". Actually it looked more like a kid's drawings of feet with wobbly orange spots but maybe I'm too cynical and perhaps "Thermo X-Rays" are a bit of medical technology I've missed over the years.

Unfortunately they fail to point out that everything they say is complete rubbish.

To begin with there’s the reflexology angle. Reflexology is based on the notion that the soles of your feet are somehow connected to every other part of your body. Reflexologists will tell you that stimulation of specific spots on your feet can remedy problems in related organs of your body. However, it overlooks the fact that these connections simply don’t exist. They’re not there. Nowhere. They are as imaginary as the supposed benefits that reflexology offers. Bring me an anatomy textbook and we can fail to find these mythical connections together. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that reflexology is anything more than just a comforting foot massage. If you like your feet massaged then good luck to you but don’t expect any medical benefits from it.

Then there’s the issue of “detoxing” through the soles of your feet. The advert shows some used foot pads and, amazingly, they are all blackened with what we are told are the toxins extracted from your feet. No chance that the dirt could just be from dirty, sweaty feet is there? Feet are actually horribly dirty things. Why do you think they smell so bad if not washed?

Then there’s the whole issue of detoxification in general. The whole detox industry is based on a series of lies and deceptions. A BBC news story a couple of weeks ago discussed this. A variety of doctors pointed out that thinking of “detoxing” your liver after the Christmas and New Year festivities was a complete waste of time. Despite the claims of the many detox remedies aggressively advertised over the break, none of them offer any real benefit. One of the doctors quoted by the BBC said:

“Detoxing for just a month in January is medically futile. It can lead to a false sense of security and feeds the idea that you can abuse your liver as much as you like and then sort everything else with a quick fix.”

In fact the best way to get healthy after the over-indulgence is just to stop over-indulging and to make a few simple lifestyle changes to protect your health. Your liver is a remarkable cleansing machine so long as you treat it with a little bit of respect. It will do all the detoxing you need if you let it. You don’t need silly footpads, reflexology or any other pseudoscientific claptrap to help get back to good health.

Although detox foot pads are certainly harmless, the danger is that they could be used when real medical help is called for, not just a placebo. They also spread lies about how your body works. That can only lead to danger.

While I think that satellite TV, newspapers and the internet are wonderful things they also have the ability to spread deception, dangerous conspiracy theories and outright lies. Detox foot pads may be a relatively innocent example but they are not that far from things that threaten our welfare, maybe even our lives. Sometimes the detoxing we need is not of our bodies, but of our brains.

Sources

You can see a version of the ad I saw on DSTV here. It's a US version of the ad with US contacts and prices but you'll hear that all of the "happy customers" are South Africans.

You can see an enormous variety of critical comments about these nonsensical foot pads as follows:

For a skeptical review of the utterly ridiculous concept of reflexology see the Skeptic's Dictionary article here.

The BBC story about the silliness of detoxing can be seen here.

Weekend Post - Is this the year that the world will end?

2012-01-05T18:14:00.001+02:00

Is this the year that the world will end? No, it isn’t and next year won’t be either.

For several years we’ve been hearing a whole lot of nonsensical speculation about 2012 being the year of the end of the world. If you do a Google search for the exact phrase “2012 end of the world” you’ll find over 18 million hits, almost all of them suggesting that this is somehow true. One of the most important things to know in the 21st century is that just because something’s on the Internet that doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact I’m tempted to suggest that if something IS widely mentioned on the Internet then it’s almost certainly rubbish. The 2012 prophecies are a fine example of that.

To begin with let’s face a simple fact. Without doubt, every single prediction of the end of the world so far has been wrong. Every one, without exception. Not once has the world ended. By this stage surely we should have cast aside end of the world predictions along with witch-burning, reading chicken entrails, astrology and homeopathy. They’ve never worked in the past, they have no rational basis and they’re just plain silly.

However, because each of these things persists those of us who believe in the power of the scientific method and reason have to confront them over and over again.

Let’s start with the main 2012 production. One of the popular things you’ll see is the idea that a Mayan calendar reaches a major turning point in 2012, often referred to as the end of a “Great Cycle”. Even if this were true does it actually mean anything? It’s no more than just the end of a calendar, no more meaningful than reaching 31st December or my birthday. The date is just arbitrary.

But this business about the end of the Great Cycle is nonsense anyway. According to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies: “there is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012. The notion of a ‘Great Cycle’ coming to an end is completely a modern invention.”

So if it isn’t the Mayans predicting the Apocalypse, who is it? Ironically it’s a strange mixture of fundamentalist Christians who predict the end of the world every year, astrologers and New Age claptrap purveyors.

I’m not going to comment on the US TV and radio evangelist predictions of the Apocalypse. Instead I’ll just refer you to last year’s predictions by Harold Camping and his gullible followers who plastered billboards all over the world with detailed predictions of Judgment Day in both May and October last year. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us we’re still here.

Astrologers have been predicting that in 2012 a “galactic alignment” promises doom for us all. However here’s another slightly inconvenient truth. This galactic alignment is a true as the end of the Mayan Grand Cycle. It’s not true. According to NASA, who should know about these things: “There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible.”

So still no evidence.

Another often-Internet-quoted belief is that there’s a mystery planet on it’s way to destroy us. Sometimes it’s just called Planet X or other times “Nibiru”. Again let me quote the people who know about these things, NASA. “Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist.”

Perhaps the biggest hurdle in getting rational people to believe that all of this is nonsense is Hollywood. Every year there’s a disaster movie that features the end of the world, caused either by something from outer space or something closer to home. We all have images in our heads from films like Armageddon, War of the Worlds, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. Just because Hollywood has made a film about something doesn’t make it real.

I know it’s a forlorn hope but I’m an optimist. Why don’t we all be rational this year and cast aside the thoughts of supernatural doom? Let’s face the real threats like poverty, unemployment and hunger rather than made up ones?

Sources

Correction: The Google search for "2012 end of the world" now has 21 million hits.

National Geographic (who know stuff) has a very good and entertaining summary of various 2012 myths here. The excellent material from NASA (who know everything) is here. A very comprehensive response from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (who seem to know what they're talking about) can be seen here.

Finally if you want to see a list of the "Top 10 Apocalyptic Movies" go here. Warning, some of the films are very good (I Robot, Andromeda Strain, The Terminator), others are just terrible (Armageddon, Independence Day).

Weekend post - The physics of road safety

2011-12-10T17:40:00.001+02:00

I’m a little obsessed by road safety at the moment. This is partially because a very good friend of mine, a loving and vibrant young wife and mother, was killed a few weeks ago in a car accident. It’s also because I’m a driver. I spend up to 2 hours each weekday behind the wheel of a car, driving mainly around Gaborone. You can’t do that without spending much of the day considering matters of mental health. How did that combi driver not see me in my great big car or perhaps he just didn’t care? Why did that BX driver think it was acceptable to overtake in the face of oncoming traffic, crossing a solid white line and exceeding the speed limit? How did that person ever get a driving licence?

As well as questioning the mental health of drivers I often find myself wondering whether drivers studied any science at school. Don’t they know anything at all about physics?

Newton’s First Law of Motion says that the velocity of an object will remain constant unless a force acts upon it. The cup of tea on your desk isn’t going to move unless you pick it up. The ball you throw in the air will only change direction and speed because of air resistance and gravity. A passenger in a car will continue moving in a straight line within the car when the car hits a brick wall. If a car travelling at 60 km/h hits a solid object and suddenly stops the occupants will continue moving at 60km/h until something stops them as well. If they’re lucky it’ll be their seatbelt or an airbag that will slow them down as gradually as possible. However if they’re not stopped by something soft it’s likely to be something very hard indeed that does it. Something like the steering wheel, the windscreen or the wall the car hit after they’ve burst through the windscreen in a spray of blood and bone.

Let’s take a simple, not too scary example. Imagine a child is in the front seat of a car that’s just left your house. Let’s say it’s a perfectly average 9-year old girl who weighs 30kg. She’s not strapped in. The car is travelling slowly at only 30 km/h but collides with the back of a massive truck and stops almost instantly. Let’s say it takes a meter to come to a halt. In the 8th of a second the car takes to stop the girl becomes a flying object within the car. She’ll hit the windscreen at something close to 30 km/h with a force equivalent to a man weighing 117kg jumping on her. She’ll probably live.

The problem is that this isn’t typical. Who drives at 30 km/h? The other problem is that the amount of energy a moving object possesses is not directly related to it’s speed. The kinetic energy of an object is proportional to the square of its speed. Double the speed and you quadruple the energy. To make matters worse if you double your speed you don’t necessarily double your stopping distance. If the car driving that unrestrained little 9-year old girl hits the same truck while travelling twice as fast, at 60 km/h, it’ll probably still stop in a metre. This time she’ll hit the windscreen with a force of almost half a ton. She’ll probably die.

Let’s be completely depressing and double the speed again to 120 km/h. The same collision will hit her with a force of almost 2 tons. She won’t just die. Someone will be forced to reassemble her body so a relative can formally identify her. I know a very brave uncle who volunteered to identify the pieces of his niece’s body so his brother, the girl’s father, didn’t have to. He couldn’t bring himself to drive his car for weeks afterwards. Every time he got behind the wheel of his car he was plagued with the images from the morgue.

That’s why I lose my temper when I see loving parents driving their beautiful children to and from school each day and they allow their kids to stand up on the front passenger’s seat. I get even madder when I see an unbelted adult in that seat with a kid on their lap. You know what? It might not just be the windscreen that kills her, it’ll be your body hitting her from behind, crushing her from front and back. Could you live with the knowledge that your body, perhaps the body that brought that child into the world, is the thing that crushed her to death?

Maybe that’s what we need to teach in physics classes in schools. Instead of balls hitting each other or weights going up and down inclines we should use the idea of a little girl inside a metal box being driven by a psychopath. Maybe that’s the sort of science we need to cut down the slaughter on our roads.

Sources

For a quick summary of Newton's Laws of Motion see the Wikipedia page here. There's also a good explanation of the physics of car crashes here.

I'd like to say that I did all the maths in this piece myself but that would be lying. I did SOME of it myself but then was lazy and used the online car crash impact calculator here.

Weekend Post - Is my laptop frying my fertility?”

2011-12-03T20:38:00.001+02:00

The answer is almost certainly not but from the recent press coverage you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

The BBC published a story that was widely circulated that was headlined “Scientists question if wi-fi laptops can damage sperm”. The story reported that after being placed next to a laptop that was downloading data “sperm were less able to swim and had changes in the genetic code that they carry.”

Needless to say the headlines grew more and more scary as the story spread around the world’s media. The particularly hysterical British Daily Mail stated that “Radiation from WiFi connections can reduce sperm activity in up to a quarter of men” and the even more hysterical Huffington Post stated that “Wi-Fi Laptops 'Kill' Sperm”.

Unfortunately not all of the reports actually explained what the experiment involved and gave ment enough information on what to do with their laptops (and their laps).

The facts are a bit less scary that the excitable elements of the press suggest. To begin with this was just what the researchers called a “Prospective in vitro study”. This was just an experiment they conducted in a laboratory, “in vitro”, in glass. The experiment was actually very simple. Samples of healthy sperm were placed for four hours next to a laptop computer that was downloading data. Another set of samples was placed in an identical setting except there was no laptop downloading next to it. When they examined the samples after the four hours they discovered that the samples near the downloading laptop were less mobile and more damaged than the control group.

This was hardly real life. It’s certainly not what most men do with their sperm. Nevertheless it’s still an interesting study that it would be foolish to ignore. As the researchers say, “Further in vitro and in vivo studies are needed” to establish whether this effect is genuine. An “in vivo” study means a test in real life, in a living body. If other researchers can replicate these results an experiment with real men and laptops can be undertaken.

Until then we can be cautious. The most important thing is not to panic. The experiment these guys undertook is nothing like the normal way that men and women make babies. It’s also certainly not the way men usually offer their contribution to the baby-making process.

This was just one study, with a very small sample size, involving only 29 sperm samples and the effect was small. There is also no plausible explanation for how this effect might have been caused by the wi-fi network. The strength of a wi-fi signal is so weak that it’s unclear how it might have caused the damage. Critically wi-fi signals, like cellphone signals are non-ionizing, they simply don’t have the strength or frequency to cause damage to biological cells. They’re not like X-Rays or gamma rays that can have a massive impact on the human body. They’re not very different to sitting still while listening to the radio. The signals from your local radio station are around us all the time and nobody panics about them, do they?

However one thing that is known to affect sperm is heat. Excess heat around those parts of a man’s body can reduce fertility but the researchers in this study apparently ruled that out as an explanation. I’d find it perfectly easy to believe that repeatedly resting a laptop on your lap for a long period could effect a man’s fertility. Also sperm are fairly fragile and can quite easily be affected by a range of factors other than heat.

The BBC asked an expert, Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, for his reaction to the study. He said that “we cannot infer from this study that because a man might use a laptop with wi-fi on his lap for more than four hours then his sperm will necessarily be damaged and he will be less fertile.” That sounds sensible to me. Let’s wait and see what further studies come up with before banning wi-fi networks from anywhere near prospective fathers.

In the meantime, if you’re a guy worried about his fertility then not keeping a hot laptop on your lap for too long is probably very good advice. More importantly it’s hardly the way to woo your partner, is it? Better still, try some romance, you’re much more likely to make a baby that way, it’s scientifically proven. Trust me.

Sources

The original story from the BBC can be seen here and the abstract of the study can be seen on the Fertility and Sterility site here.

For the more hysterical coverage see the Daily Mail here ("Working on a laptop wirelessly may hamper a man’s chances of fatherhood") and the Huffington Post here ("Wi-Fi Laptops 'Kill' Sperm").

For more reasoned coverage see The Register here and Time here.

Killer bananas

2011-12-03T18:19:00.000+02:00

It’s a fantastic plot for a science fiction, don’t you think? “Revenge of the killer bananas!” However if you believe some people the risk is real.

Like many others I received an email a few days ago that began:

“Do not eat bananas until further notice. PNP will investigate if there is any truth in this, but rather be safe.”

The email then explained the danger posed by these homicidal fruit.

“Please don't eat bananas for the next 3 weeks. Several deliveries of bananas from Uvongo Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa have been infected with necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as flesh eating bacteria. Recently this disease has decimated the monkey population in the south coast. We are now just learning that the disease has been able to graft itself to the skin of fruits in the region, most notably the banana which is one of South Africa’s largest exports. Until this finding scientists were not sure how the infection was being transmitted. It is advised not to purchase bananas for the next three weeks!!!”

The email continued to explain how the FDA hasn’t issued a warning because it fears “a nationwide panic”. It also said that if you have an infected wound and are far from medical attention “burning the flesh ahead of the infected area is advised to help slow the spread of the infection.”

Are you feeling scared yet? Or just skeptical?

To begin with there’s a minor technicality. The FDA is a US body, not South African. Then there’s the “science” part of it. Let’s be honest about one thing. You do NOT want to develop necrotizing fasciitis. It’s a horrible bacterial infection that causes massive irreversible tissue damage and often results in either amputation of the infected body part or death. If you want to see some scary pictures do a web search but don’t do this while eating. However, can you actually catch necrotizing fasciitis from the skin of a banana?

No. The Centre for Disease Control in the USA says that there “is no evidence that necrotizing fasciitis is transmitted by food. The bacteria which most commonly cause necrotizing fasciitis live in the human body. The usual route of transmission for these bacteria is from person to person.” There is also little sense in the statement about the “disease has been able to graft itself to the skin of fruits”.

This story is a hoax. In fact it’s a very old hoax. This has been circulating around the internet for at least 12 years. It was first seen in 1999 but with a slight difference. That time it mentioned Costa Rica, not South Africa but the words in the email were otherwise exactly the same.

You can rest assured that eating bananas is still safe and they’re still good for you. You’re not going to be turned into a zombie by eating them.

However, what I find just as interesting is why people continue to send these emails. I know of several people who’ve received it and a couple who forwarded it to others. I know of one person who even posted it on Facebook. I’m sure all of these people were perfectly well-meaning and genuinely felt it was important to warn their friends about a possible risk but did they really believe the story or were they so shocked and horrified that they felt it was an emergency?

Or are they perhaps just a bit more suggestible than others? A bit less naturally skeptical? Psychologists have certainly identified that there is a scale of suggestibility with some people being more prone than others to believe what they see and hear. They are much more susceptible to suggestion, particularly with things like hypnosis but I suspect they’re just as susceptible with anything new, like emails about bananas.

I sometimes think that I’ve become overly skeptical at times, automatically assuming that something is not true until it’s proven to be so, But then I remind myself that I think this is by far the safest approach to take to life. Isn’t it better to assume what scientists call the “null hypothesis”, that something is NOT true until there’s a good reason to change your mind? That certainly goes for anything you receive in your email inbox and anything that makes remarkable claims. Sa Carl Sagan said, “remarkable claims require remarkable evidence”. There’s nothing remarkable about the killer bananas story other than the fact that people believe it.

Sources

Snopes has a report of the original hoax email that referred to Costa Rica here. There are several useful links at the end of the article. The Skeptic Detective has a comprehensive piece on the hoax here.

The official Centre for Disease Control statement can be seen here and there's a very assertive statement from the Kwa-Zulu Natal Banana Association (I SO want to join!) here.

If you're feeling brave and want to learn more about necrotizing fasciltis you can see the Wikipedia page here which includes a fascinating but ghastly fact about the death of King Herod.

The full text of the email I received is as follows:

"Please don't eat bananas for the next 3 weeks

Several deliveries of bananas from Uvongo Kwa-Zulu Natal South Africa have been infected with necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as flesh eating bacteria. Recently this disease has decimated the monkey population in the south coast. We are now just learning that the disease has been able to graft itself to the skin of fruits in the region, most notably the banana which is one of south africa ’s largest exports. Until this finding scientists were not sure how the infection was being transmitted. It is advised not to purchase bananas for the next three weeks!!! If you have eaten a banana in the last 2-3 days and come down with a fever followed by a skin infection seek MEDICAL ATTENTION!!!The skin infection from necrotizing fasciitis is very painful and eats two to three centimeters of flesh per hour. Amputation is likely, death is possible.. If you are more than an hour from a medical center burning the flesh ahead of the infected area is advised to help slow the spread of the infection. The FDA has been reluctant to issue a country wide warning because of fear of a nationwide panic. They have secretly admitted that they feel upwards of 15,000 South Africans will be affected by this but that these are" Acceptable numbers". Please forward this to as many of people you care about as possible as we do not feel 15,000 people is an acceptable number."

2011-12-01T10:27:00.001+02:00

This is how statistics should be portrayed.

Weekend Post - What do modern medicine, flu, ice cream and pirates have in common?

2011-11-19T17:54:00.001+02:00

Here are some dangerous but factual observations.

Since the introduction of modern healthcare in Botswana more people than ever before have died of cancer. People suffer from more infectious diseases in colder seasons. The more ice cream that is consumed, the higher the number of drownings that occur. The reduction in the number of pirates (yes, I said pirates) in the world has coincided with gradually increasing global temperatures.

All of these are facts, there is overwhelming evidence to support them. But the big question is what they actually mean. Is it true that modern healthcare causes cancer? Does cold weather cause colds and flu? Does ice cream cause people to drown? Has the loss of pirates actually caused global warming? Should any of us actually do anything, should we take any lifestyle decisions based on these undeniable facts?

Of course not, but that’s where the danger lies. You only have to hear of these facts for a chill to go through you. It’s only one step further before you begin to suspect the benefits of modern medicine and science.

The real facts are simple. More people are dying of cancer since the introduction of modern, scientifically based medicine because we’re living longer. Cancer is largely a disease of older people. As we’ve done away with so many of the causes of death from the past that killed younger people like infectious disease and starvation other causes of death have stepped in to fill the void. Like cancer.

People suffer more colds and flu in the winter, not because our immune systems are weaker in the cold months or because viruses are stronger but simply because when we’re cold we stay inside much more. When we’re stuck inside our homes with our families we’re much more likely to spread infections by close-proximity coughs and sneezes.

The really good news is that ice cream doesn’t make you more likely to drown. However, both rates of drowning and consumption of ice cream are both associated with hot weather. Both are caused by something else.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when looking at the world is to assume that correlation implies causation. Because two observations are somehow related then one must have caused the other. It’s a fundamental mistake and one of many logical fallacies that people often make.

A recent example. A couple of weeks ago the BBC reported that scientists had announced in the British Medical Journal “a link” between use of the oral contraceptive pill and prostate cancer. The interesting thing is that only women take the pill and only men get prostate cancer so how can one possibly cause the other? The suggestion is that the hormone oestrogen in the contraceptive pill may be released in the urine of pill-taking women into the water supply. Men then drink the water and experience one of the side-effects of oestrogen: higher rates of cancer. The team of researchers from Canada had carefully examined various countries that used of different forms of contraception and found higher levels of prostate cancer in those countries where the pill was widely used. In countries where other forms of contraception were widespread the higher levels of cancer couldn’t be found.

However they were very careful to say that their study “has significant limitations with respect to causal inference”. In other words they are most certainly NOT saying that the pill increases the risk of prostate cancer. This was just what they call “an ecological study”. They observed a correlation between two things and said that “it must be considered hypothesis generating, and thought provoking”. This wasn’t an experiment, it was just some careful observations that make scientists want to ponder a bit and then design more detailed studies.

One problem is that it’s very difficult to design an experiment to test this. If we suspect there’s a link between oestrogen and prostate cancer we can’t just expose a group of men to oestrogen and see if they develop cancer, that would be inhumane. However it would be worth conducting animal tests and further ecological studies. For instance, does the rate of prostate cancer go down in countries where the use of the pill declines or where lower oestrogen pills are used?

Finally, in case you were worried, nobody really believes there’s a relationship between the number of pirates and global warming. However if you’re willing to suspend your skeptical faculties you can join the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for whom this is a core belief. Perhaps not entirely seriously!

Sources

For various sources on "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" see the Skeptics Dictionary chapter here (180kb pdf download) or the Wikipedia page here. There's also a comprehensive list of the many logical fallacies courtesy of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe here.

The story from the BBC about the pill and prostate cancer can be seen here and the original article in the British Medical Journal here.

For the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster just say "Arrrgh".

Weekend Post - We're still alive!

2011-11-14T18:03:00.001+02:00

The world narrowly avoided destruction yet again last week.

Asteroid 2005 YU55 sped past the earth at nearly 50,000 km/h coming so close that it was within the orbit of the Moon. Although this wasn’t the biggest of objects flying through space it was big enough. Astronomers estimate it was about 400m wide, roughly spherical and something that size hitting the Earth would have caused devastation. I’m no expert but a little maths suggests that it might easily have a mass of many millions of tonnes and people have estimated that impact may have exceeded the effect of any atomic bomb ever constructed.

You might think that given that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water it probably would have landed there and just made a bit of a splash but that might have actually been as bad or worse than hitting land. The tsunami that followed would have been devastating.

However this was never going to happen anyway. NASA and other agencies had been tracking it for long enough to know that it would sail right passed the Earth and would hardly been noticed. If the boffins at the various space agencies hadn’t spotted it we never would have known it was there.

Of course that didn’t stop the usual suspects claiming that this was the end of the world, many of them probably the same people who predicted the end of the world on October 21st. A variety of conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands also started spreading rumours that there was a government cover-up of the impending doom. They’ve all been proved wrong by events as well as the science.

However we have to face the fact that sooner or later an asteroid like this IS going to hit us. It’s certainly happened before. Although it’s widely thought that an asteroid impact 65 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs there’s no conclusive proof that this was the case, it’s just one of various theories. However it’s a persuasive one. Such an impact would certainly have had a devastating effect on the planet, throwing up a global dust cloud that would have prevented sunlight getting through to the plants that feed the entire food chain. Geologists have found a layer in sedimentary rock all over the world that they call the K-T boundary. This layer contains massive amounts of iridium, and element found often in asteroids. Below the K-T boundary fossils of dinosaurs are found, above the layer they’re mostly absent which suggests whatever caused the increase in iridium in the atmosphere might be connected with dinosaur extinction. Another theory observes that iridium can also be found in the Earth’s core and a massive upsurge in volcanic activity might have been the cause. At the very least the impact of that and other asteroids certainly had a dramatic effect on the Earth and it’s not something anyone wants to happen again. But it will.

Incidentally, our recent fly-by visitor, Asteroid 2005 YU55, probably wasn’t actually big enough to cause an extinction event. We’d need to have a cosmic punch-up with something a lot bigger for that to happen.

The good news is that scientists at NASA reckon they’ve now detected almost all of the asteroids that pose a threat to the Earth and there is no evidence that any of them are coming close enough for us to worry. However, they’ve adopted the “hope for the best, plan for the worst” approach. A variety of techniques have been discussed for nudging any potentially threatening asteroid off course so that it gives the Earth a miss. They’ve considered atomic weapons, ion beams and even just throwing large rocks at it. Anything just to give it enough of a nudge to bypass us.

While the threat is real and the possible effect is devastating, the chance of it actually happening in our lifetime, or that of anyone we can imagine, is so vanishingly small that it’s not worth losing any sleep. Better still to spent our time and resources fighting the things that DO threaten us, like global warming, population growth or our species’ innate ability to kill itself with the slightest provocation. Those are things worth worrying about and worth paying scientists to find solutions for.

Sources

Start with a BBC story on the asteroid passing by. Also the Washington Post covered it here.

As always with astronomical news stories you should always consult Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer. His comments on Asteroid 2005 YU55 are here. He also has a good animation from NASA JPL that shows the passage of the asteroid.

For some of the doom and conspiracy lunacy surrounding the asteroid see here and here.

The Washington Post discusses the efforts to detect all potentially risky asteroids here. For ideas on how to deflect asteroids heading our way the Wikipedia page summarises them well.

Wikipedia also has pages on asteroid impact events and the K-T boundary including some fantastic pictures of the boundary itself.

Weekend Post - Was Einstein right all along?

2011-11-06T21:58:00.000+02:00

In September there was a big fuss, reported all over the world, about an experiment conducted in Italy that suggested that Albert Einstein, his Special Theory of Relativity and his notion that nothing can travel faster than light might be wrong.

Almost every newspaper in the world asked “Was Einstein wrong?”The Italian scientists claimed that they had managed to force a beam of neutrinos to travel faster than the speed of light. Admittedly only very slightly faster than light, but even a little bit would have been enough. Their beam of neutrinos had travelled all the way from the CERN laboratory in Geneva, a trip of 730km, across the border into Italy and they arrived 60 billionths of a second earlier than light would have covered the same distance. Clearly something is wrong. Either one of the cornerstones of our understanding of the universe is wrong or there’s been a mistake by the scientists. My money was on the latter.

Obviously the results are interesting. Was Einstein right or wrong? It’s a big question. But I think it’s just as interesting for the public to see how science works. The researchers in Italy went public with their results and said to the entire world (in an Italian accent) “Hey, look at this, can this be right or have we made a mistake?”

The physics community around the world went into overdrive. They thought about repeating the experiment, tried to think of new rules of physics and, most critically, tried to help the Italians discover any mistakes.

It didn’t take long for things to happen. As we speak they’re trying to repeat the experiment in a slightly different way to rule out any systematic errors in their measurements. Just as importantly experts at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands might have come up with an explanation.

This is where it gets complicated. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is simultaneously simple and complex. At it’s simplest he just suggested two things: firstly that it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, the law of physics remain the same. That’s the easy one. The second is more complicated. It says that wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, the speed of light is always the same. That isn’t as simple as it sounds. Imagine you are the passenger in a car travelling at 50km/h and you lean out of the window and throw a ball ahead of the car at 10 km/h. The speed of the ball will be 60km/h.

But instead imagine now that you lean out of the car window and shine a beam of light from a torch ahead of you. Light travels at roughly a billion km/h. So the light will now be going at a billion plus 50 km/h? No. It still travels at a billion km/h. The speed of light in a specific medium doesn’t change. Not ever. If you travel in a spaceship at half the speed of light and shine that torch forwards the light will still just travel at a billion km/h.

The effect of this is profound. I don’t have the skill or space to explain the steps (I’ll put links on the web site) but it follows from this that as you go faster and faster some pretty strange things happen. The faster you go the greater your mass and the more energy is needed to accelerate further so that actually to get to light speed you would need infinite energy. Most importantly, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time itself progresses as seen by an outside observer.

That last element is the critical one for the Italian experimenters. The critics at Groningen noticed that the Italians had used GPS satellites to measure the time the neutrinos were travelling. But GPS satellites are themselves moving, nowhere near light speed but fast enough that their ability to measure time as accurately as the Italians needed was affected. The Groningen scientists did the maths and worked out that this would affect the calculations by, yes, you’ve guessed it, 60 billionths of a second.

The new experiments aren't done yet but we now have a very plausible possible explanation for the effect the Italians saw. Will they be proved right? Only time will tell.

Sources

The original news story can be seen here courtesy of the BBC. The original notice in Nature is here.

For an overview of Special Relativity see How Stuff Works or the Wikipedia page here.

For news on the repeat of the experiment see the BBC story here. For a summary of the Groningen suggestions about GPS satellites and their time dilation see here.

Weekend Post - We’re all dying

2011-11-05T10:19:00.000+02:00

More people are dying these days than ever before. And that’s a good thing.

There was a news story from the BBC last week entitled “Cancer cases projected to rise 45% in next two decades”. The research by Cancer Research UK projected 23 different types of cancer and concluded that the “numbers of cancers in men and women are projected to increase by 55% and 35%, respectively”. The impact on the health sector in the UK is going to be profound. The UK has rapidly increasing health care costs, just like we do, and the costs of care for cancer are amongst the highest. Such a dramatic increase in the number of cancer cases is going to have an enormous impact on everyone. While the story was specific to the United Kingdom, I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect we’re very different.

I’m prepared to stick my head above the parapet and make a dangerous prediction. More people reading this will die of cancer than did in their parent’s generation. In fact I’ll go further. I predict that a larger number of people will die in the next century than died in the last one. Many more.

The first reason for this prediction of doom is simple. More people will die because more people will be alive. Whether we like it or not, everyone who is alive will, one day, be dead and a greater number of living people means that eventually there will be a greater number of deaths. That’s just a sign of progress.

The fact that there are more living people is a direct result of many influences including better health care, lower infant mortality and better education. Despite what certain “alternative” health product manufacturers with a vested interest in selling their bogus products will tell you, our diet these days is much better than it was in our grandparent’s time. Our food is more hygienically produced, more nutritious and even tastes better than it did in the past. Our health care systems, while still imperfect, are an immense improvement over what existed in the past. While “traditional” knowledge systems had something to offer us, the truth is that they are nothing compared with what a pharmacy can give you today. Better transportation means that doctors and nurses are more available to us than ever before, even in a country as large as ours and with a population as small and as widely distributed.

In Botswana even with the extra burden of HIV/AIDS our life expectancy is improving. Our nation’s life expectancy at birth, even including our brothers and sisters with HIV, is now double what it was a few years ago thanks to anti-retroviral drugs and PMTCT. Our population now apparently exceeds 2 million, up by almost a quarter in a decade.

So because of all these dramatic improvement more people are alive and as a result more will die.

The second reason for growing levels of cancer is due to that longer lifespan. As a result of living longer and of all this progress we’re now dying of different diseases and conditions that afflicted us in the past. We’ve completely eradicated diseases like smallpox and can prevent many other diseases like polio and influenza and consequently most of us are living through our youth and middle age into our elderly years when we’re susceptible to an entirely different set of diseases. Most of us are now dying of diseases of the elderly, not of the young.

Cancer is a good example. The vast majority of cancer victims develop cancer in their 50s or later. If people don’t survive until their 50s they’re not going to get cancer at all. All you have to do is increase life expectancy from 50 to 60 and you’ll see a massive increase in cancer rates. It’s the downside of living longer but you have to ask yourself something. Knowing that you’re certainly going to die one day, would you rather do it tomorrow or in 10 years? Or in 20 or 30 years time? The effect of scientific and medical progress is that you and I will hopefully live long enough to die of something our great grandparents had never even heard of. What better example can there be of progress?

Sources

The original BBC story can be seen here and the Cancer Research UK paper in the British Journal of Cancer it's based on is here. Cancer Research UK also provide historical data on levels of cancer over time and by age here.

Loads of fascinating data on life expectancy in Botswana can be seen here.

Weekend Post - A malaria vaccine?

2011-10-29T17:20:00.000+02:00

Is it possible that we might one day live in a world without malaria? Nobody knows but we’re now a step closer.

Last week it was announced that following an 18-month clinical trial involving 15,000 African children an experimental vaccine appears to reduce the risk of contracting malaria by half. That’s not a cure but it’s an excellent start.

The potential benefit is enormous. Every year perhaps a million people around the world die from malaria, most of them African children. Anything we can do to reduce that death toll must be worth the effort. Even if we only halve the number of victims that’s half a million survivors.

This vaccine works by stopping the spread and multiplication of the malaria parasite after the victim has been bitten, by stimulating the body’s immune response and preventing it from getting a foothold in the liver.

The vaccine was based on a quarter of a century’s research by a GlaxoSmithKline team led by a research scientist called Joe Cohen. This is the stuff that Nobel Prizes are made of. A career’s research devoted to something that is so overwhelmingly good, that has such potential benefit for humanity and that can possibly save millions of lives.

I can’t help but wonder how certain people are going to react when they learn that this research was undertaken by a drug company. Not a high-brow academic in a university but an employee of GlaxoSmithKline, a company that some people will have you believe is the corporate Anti-Christ. I’m no defender of the pharmaceutical industry, they’ve certainly got a stained record but that doesn’t mean everything they do is wrong. This is a great example of how an absolute and uncomplicated good thing can come from an industry we’re free to criticise and condemn. Every so often though we have to give them some serious gratitude.

It’s happened before of course. One of the least known but most important statements ever made in human history was when the World Health Organisation declared in 1980 that “the world and its peoples have won freedom from smallpox”. A massive, worldwide campaign of vaccination and infection control over several decades eventually removed smallpox from the face of the planet. This disease killed hundreds of millions of people and it’s eradication is perhaps the greatest, practical contributions to humanity that science has ever offered. If you ever encounter one of those deluded scaremongers who say that vaccination is dangerous you need only say the word “Smallpox” and you’ve won.

One of the most disappointing things I’ve seen over the last few decades is the anti-vaccination movement. I have no hesitation in calling them either deluded or liars and some of them are both. Children have DIED because of the drops in vaccination rates around the world. Not just in the Western World where measles reappeared but here in Botswana where certain groups took what is politely referred to as a “faith position” against vaccinations. It’s not just their children we should feel sorry for it’s the rest of the community as well. One of the key objectives in fighting communicable disease is “herd” or “community immunity”. A disease like measles can’t spread as easily if most of the population are immune to it. “Chains of infection” can’t form if there are only very few people with no immunity. The more people there are who haven’t developed, or been given, immunity by vaccination the more likely the few who haven’t are to get the disease.

Malaria is different though, it’s not passed from human to human and eradicating malaria will require a different approach. However, a vaccination to give people immunity would be such an amazing step forward. The vaccine isn’t going to be with us very soon either. Scientists have earned the hard way that these things can’t be rushed. However the researchers hope that it’ll hopefully be available by 2015. Then we can really celebrate.

Sources

For a summary of the research see the Reuters story here. There's a comprehensive description of malaria from the Center for Disease Control here.

For some background on smallpox and why it's eradication is a reason for celebration see the Wikipedia page and the various links it offers. Anti-vaccination campaigners should be forced to look at the pictures of smallpox victims and imagine they show their children. For a scathing description of the loathsome anti-vaccination movement see the Skeptics Dictionary article here.

Weekend Post - Science is critical

2011-10-22T07:56:00.000+02:00

Please forgive the wordplay but science really IS “critical”. I believe it’s critical, in the sense that it’s vitally important, because it saves, prolongs and improves our lives. If it hadn’t been for science we’d still live to our 30s if we were lucky and most of us over the age of 40 would be in constant pain and probably wishing we were dead. We have the benefit of modern technology that allows us to communicate better than ever before, educate ourselves and entertain ourselves in a way that our grandparents could never have imagined. Actually, let me correct that. My grandmother CAN imagine it, she’s still alive and kicking at the age of 93, thanks to the benefits of science and medicine.

Science is also critical in another sense. It’s critical because it criticises. Not in a negative, whining sense, but in the best sense of the word. Criticism is about weighing the good and the bad aspects of something and science is best at that.

Unfortunately there are just too many areas of falsehood where science is needed to dispel lies and deceit.

Homeopathy is a good example. Despite there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it does anything, many people still swear by it. Can they all be wrong? Yes, they most certainly can. To begin with it’s simply not plausible. Homeopathic remedies are based on two simple ideas. Firstly there’s the idea that a dose of something that causes similar symptoms to a disease will cure that disease. This makes no sense whatsoever and is simply not true. Then there’s the second, even less plausible idea, that by repeatedly diluting the “remedy” the effect of the remedy actually becomes stronger.

The biggest problem homeopaths face is explaining quite how much they dilute the remedy. They typically begin by diluting the original remedy to one hundredth of it’s strength in water. Then that diluted amount will again be diluted to one hundredth so that only one ten thousandth of the original strength remains. Then again and again it will be diluted to one hundredth of each diluted strength, sometimes up to 60 times. Please don’t try to do the maths, your calculator can’t cope with numbers that big but others have worked out that many homeopathic remedies are so diluted that not a single atom of the original substance remains in the “remedy” you buy. Not one.

The homeopathic industry, when these facts became clear, suggested instead that somehow the water has a “memory” of the substance it originally contained. In 1997 a French researcher, Jean Benveniste actually published a paper in the respected science journal Nature, suggesting that water could indeed do this. That would have been fine if his research hadn’t later been shown to be fatally flawed, used biased researchers and having discarded the results that weren’t what they wanted to see. So we can forget that.

In fact, and this bit IS science, there are circumstances in which liquid water can retain certain structures and forms. Water molecules can form temporary bonds but these last no more than (take a deep breath) fifty femtoseconds which is fifty quadrillionths of a second. That’s a millionth of a billionth of a second. Even if there was any truth to this silliness no “memory” of a useless homeopathic remedy would last until the pills are in the store’s shelves.

Because of all this catastrophic implausibility homeopathy remedies don’t even need to be tested to say that they’re worthless but the scientific method isn’t as careless as that. Homeopathic “remedies” HAVE been tested many, many times and guess what? Not one of them works. Of course people THINK they work but what’s working is the placebo effect, the slight feeling of being better you get by doing something, perhaps anything.

The problem with homeopathic or any other so-called complimentary remedies isn’t that they do nothing. The problem is that they are often taken instead of medicines that DO actually do something. In the UK recently there was a major scandal because some homeopaths were recommending their silly products as preventing malaria to travellers to places like Botswana. Someone could have died. Who knows, perhaps someone did.

Science has two main roles. To give the world new ideas based on evidence and research but also to help us cast aside those ideas that don’t work any more, and probably never did. We’ve given up the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe and that your star sign predicts your future. It’s the same for homeopathy. It’s long past the time when that sort of superstition should be put aside and replaced with something that does actually work.

Sources

For a summary of homeopathy you should start with the Wikipedia entry here.

If you want a good summary of it's logical, scientific and common sense failings see the Skeptic's Dictionary entry here. There's also an excellent summary of the whole "memory of water" claptrap by Steven Novella here.

Faster than light? No.

2011-10-16T07:54:00.000+02:00

It looks like the the scientists in Italy who thought they found neutrinos travelling faster than light might have made a mistake. The irony is that the theory they thought they might have undermined actually explains the effect they saw.

Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all

Weekend Post - Healthier than ever

2011-10-15T16:07:00.001+02:00

A few months I was parking my car at my kid’s school. A young guy approached me as I left the car and asked if he could talk with me. I had a few minutes to spare and he seemed polite. I didn’t think he was going to mug me, I suspected he was trying to sell something.

He asked whether I was worried about my children’s diet. I told him that I wasn’t particularly worried which seemed to surprise him. I told him that I thought my kids have a fairly healthy diet. They probably get through a few too many chips but they’re just as likely to be found munching an apple. Ignoring this he started a lecture on the evils of “processed” and “convenience” food. His claim was that the chemicals, additives and junk in all this evil food was causing global ill-health and premature death. He suggested that if we eat organic, healthier food (and buy his pointless herbal concoctions) these problems would go away. He asked me why I think people lived longer in the past than they do now?

For a moment my brain stopped working and I stood there speechless. Was he serious? Did he really believe that in the past people were healthier than we are today?

He was, of course, comprehensively, completely and utterly wrong. We are the most fortunate group of people that has ever lived. No population is as lucky as we are today. No population in the history of the world has lived as long as we do or been as healthy.

Yes, I mean even in Botswana. I’m not just talking about places like Japan, Iceland and Australia where people seem to go on and on, I mean here too. Despite what we heard a few years ago, when the impact of HIV and AIDS was the centre of our attention, as a nation we have achieved a staggering amount.

Look at the facts. According to the figures, a baby born in Botswana in 2004 was expected to live, on average and if the mortality rate stayed the same as that in 2004 throughout his or her life, to the age of 31. Babies born now can be expected, if our much reduced mortality rate remains the same as it is now, almost to 60. And that’s the life expectancy at birth. If a kid survives the first few years of it’s life it can be expected to last a lot longer than 60.

Of course I’m not denying that HIV will continue to have an impact. However the success of anti-retroviral drugs is plain to see. We probably all know someone who we’ve seen close to the end but who is now thriving and enjoying life to the full because of the medication they’ve taking.

Perhaps my favourite statistic about the benefits of medicine involves our success with the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission program. Normally a HIV+ pregnant mother has roughly a 40% risk of passing HIV to her child during childbirth. After PMTCT the risk dropped to lower than 4% and it’s dropped even further subsequently. Science and medicine did that.

So ARVs are extending the lifespan of our HIV+ siblings but what about diet? Wasn’t my car park friend right about the poisons and toxins in our food? No, he was wrong about that as well.

There is, sit down before you read this, no scientific evidence that food produced in traditional ways is any better for you than food produced using “artificial” fertilisers and pesticides. None whatsoever. In fact there is a lot of evidence that conventional fertilisers pose a very significant risk to human health. That’s not surprising when you think about it. Do you really want traces of raw cow poo on your fruit and vegetables?

There isn’t much evidence that the reverse is true either. Food produced using modern techniques is no better or worse for you than the traditional methods but one thing HAS changed massively. Food is now produced much more efficiently. The world’s population has almost reached 7 billion and we’re still producing food to feed everyone. Of course there are problems with getting it to the right people at the right time but that’s always been the case.

So here’s my suggestion for the week. Rather than pretending there was a distant age when things were better let’s look back and remember the massive proportion of children that never made it to their 5th birthday, the number of people who died of horrible diseases in their 20s and 30s and the endless sequence of famines. Let’s remember that in ancient Rome life expectancy was less than 30 and it didn’t get much better until the beginning of the 20th century.

Let’s also remember what helped us achieve all of. Science and medicine.

Sources

For a comparison of life expectancy data from around the world Wikipedia is a good starting point. It's also worth understanding what "life expectancy" actually means as well.

For details of Botswana's current life expectancy figures see here for data from the CIA World Factbook. Take a look also at the graph for death rate.

For a story on the impact of PMTCT see here.

A starting point for thinking about organic food is the Skeptoid podcast, in particular the episode on organic food here. This is where I found this piece from the American Council on Science and Health. Not worried about poo on your food? The US Food and Drug Administration are.

And that figure of 7 billion people? We'll get there later this month.

Weekend Post - Faster than light?

2011-10-08T10:07:00.000+02:00

There might be a revolution in science any moment now. Or maybe not.

A few weeks ago Italian scientists said that they thought they’d broken one of the fundamental laws of nature. They claimed that they had managed to force a beam of particles to travel faster than the speed of light. Admittedly only very slightly faster than light, but even a little bit would have been enough. Their beam of neutrinos had travelled all the way from the CERN laboratory in Geneva, a trip of 730km, across the border into Italy and they arrived 60 billionths of a second earlier than light would have covered the same distance. If this is true, if something really can travel faster than light, faster than 300,000 kilometers per second, then our understanding of the universe has been incomplete. After the results were announced the international media was full of headlines asking "Was Einstein wrong?"

If true, this won’t be the first time that a revolution like this has occurred in science. When Einstein first proposed his laws of relativity there was an enormous backlash against them because they contradicted the theories of Isaac Newton and the scientific establishment of the time couldn’t accept that. However, a few experiments later it was found that Einstein was right and that Newton was out-dated. Of course that doesn’t mean Newton’s theories and equations aren’t relevant, they still are in almost all circumstances. Engineers building bridges, scientists launching spacecraft, even soldiers firing guns all use Newton’s laws and they work just fine for them. It’s only in extreme circumstances that Newton’s laws stop working and Einstein’s have to be used instead.

What might have happened in Italy is something similar. Nobody is actually saying that Einstein’s theories were wrong, it’s just that they might have been only 99% correct, they might not explain everything, there might be things that his theories don’t predict or explain.

Or, and this is much more likely, the results from Italy might just be wrong. To their credit the Italian scientists have published their results and have given the international scientific community the opportunity to tear them to pieces. That’s the way the scientific process works. You have an idea, you test it, you publish your results and your colleagues do their best to find a flaw in what you’ve done. It’s not a competition, it’s just a rigorous way of testing ideas. Unlike supernatural belief systems, criticism and testing are welcomed as ways to get closer to the truth.

One of the least well understood aspects of the scientific method is that there’s a difference between facts and explanations. Gravity, for instance, is a fact. If you’re unsure, feel free to lean too far out of a top floor window and in the next few seconds you’ll be convinced. Similarly evolution is a fact. It’s been seen in a variety of quickly reproducing animals over several generations. It can be seen in fruit flies, moths and fish. These aren’t denied by anyone who has seen the facts. They don’t need any more proof. Things fall to the ground, planets are attracted to stars, animals gradually change their form to adapt to their environment over time.

What’s differs are the possible explanations. With gravity, Newton just proposed that there was an attraction between bodies but he couldn’t explain how that might happen, he just came up with rather wonderful equations to explain and predict it. But those ideas later turned out to be very slightly imperfect. That’s when Einstein came along with the idea that the structure of space and time was curved by matter. That was a better explanation of everything and filled the gaps in Newton’s explanation. A step forward. Likewise with evolution. Initially we were told that species didn’t naturally change, they were static. Then biologists began to notice what they called “speciation”, that what once identical species seemed to have changed their form to adapt to different environments. Everyone who’s seen the evidence agrees that species adapt over time, the evidence for that is clear. Then Darwin came along with his explanation, natural selection. So far, that’s the best explanation we have for the variety and adaptation of species, humans included. Maybe one day another scientist will come up with an improved explanation. So far there doesn’t seem to be a need, Darwin’s theory appears to be holding out perfectly well, just like Einstein’s.

That’s the wonderful thing about science. Whether the Italian results are right or wrong, scientists will be happy. If Einstein’s ideas continue to adequately explain things then we’re happy. If however, there’s something his theories can’t explain? Fantastic, the universe is even more marvelous and complex than we thought already.

Sources

There's a good summary of the experiment in Nature. You can see the reaction to this story by doing a Google search like this.

You can see a summary of Newton and his theories here and of Einstein here. The experiments by Sir Arthur Eddington that provided the first experimental support are discussed in Eddington's biography here.

For a summary of the scientific method see here. If you're feeling a bit more adventurous read this on Karl Popper and "empirical falsification" as the basis of science. Learn that and you understand it all.

For background on Darwin and natural selection as his explanation for evolution see here.

Weekend Post - Radiation

2011-10-01T11:38:00.000+02:00

“Radiation”

It’s a horrible word, isn’t it? It conjures up images of the burnt victims of Hiroshima, their skin peeling, waiting for radiation sickness to kill them. More recently the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima in Japan brought back those images. But how dangerous were these disasters? How many people actually died as a result of both these accidents?

This is where things get difficult. It’s impossible to say with certainty with any cancer victim that a particular thing caused their cancer. However you can look at the number of deaths that’s more than might be expected. In the initial explosion at Chernobyl 25 years ago, 57 people were killed but subsequently the only noticeable effect has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of children with thyroid cancer. The good news is that thyroid cancer is easily and successfully treatable and so far only 15 people have died from thyroid cancer in the area. While that’s 15 tragic deaths too many it’s not much more than would be expected anyway. Similarly there appears to have been no increase in birth defects or other cancers. Nobody is going to say that the radiation leak was a good thing but the effect is much, much lower than everyone feared.

Regarding Fukushima it’s really too early to say but the initial number of deaths was minimal and those few deaths were nothing to do with radiation. It’s impossible to predict future deaths but the news is not nearly as bad as was suggested by the press at the time.

On the subject of the danger of nuclear power production you also have to consider the dangers of other ways of producing power. According to the American Cancer Society between 50,000 and 100,000 Americans might die each year from the pollution caused by conventional, mainly coal-based, power stations. That’s a risk we should all be worrying about.

But what about other types of radiation? Are they dangerous? Well, that depends. “Radiation” covers a number of things. Ask a scientist and you’ll discover that radiation is divided into two main categories: ionizing and non-ionizing. Ionizing radiation has enough energy to ionize, or break down atoms. It’s ionizing radiation that causes radiation burns by breaking down the atoms in skin cells. Ionizing radiation can also break down the atoms in DNA that might result in cancer. It’s this type of radiation that is often released by radioactive sources like those found in nuclear power stations. However, as we’ve found from the experience at Chernobyl the risk isn’t nearly as high as we all fear.

The other type of radiation, the non-ionizing type, typically has much less energy, not enough to actually damage any atoms it might meet. That doesn’t mean that it can’t cause damage but the types you and I are likely to encounter are almost all perfectly safe because the energy levels and frequencies are so incredibly low.

The best example of non-ionizing radiation is the one we see every day, just by opening our eyes. Visible light is all around us all the time, even at night, it’s what we use to see things. Visible light is not ionizing. It doesn’t have enough energy to break atoms. A common misunderstanding is about sunburn which people often believe is caused by the light of the sun. In fact it’s the ultra-violet light from the sun that is ionizing, that causes the burns.

What about the most controversial of all the non-ionizing radiations: the radio waves that are used to transmit cellphone calls? Let’s start with a simple fact. The radio waves used by cellphones and cellphone masts use a frequency that is 10 million times lower than the level required to ionize. Unless radiation can ionize atoms it simply can’t cause cancer. This isn’t an assumption, it’s just physics. The radio waves used by your cellphone are as safe as the radio waves used by your chosen radio station.

But what about that World Health Organization report that was published earlier this year that everyone read, the one that said there WAS a risk from cellphones and that they might cause cancer? Unfortunately their report was selectively quoted. They reported just one study that suggested such a link but the papers neglected to report the vast number of other studies that showed there was no relationship between cellphone use and cancers of the brain or central nervous system. Perhaps the most telling fact is that the global levels of such cancers hasn’t changed a bit since the world started using cellphones. In fact the only widely accepted risk from cellphone use is falling in a fountain while texting. Do a search on YouTube for “fountain texting” and see if you can stop laughing.

The lesson is not to believe what you read in newspapers. Do some research, be skeptical and just because someone says it, that doesn’t mean it’s true. And yes, that DOES go for me as well.

-----

Sources:

My initial source for this was an excellent episode entitled of the Skeptoid podcast by Brian Dunning called "Rethinking Nuclear Power" [transcript here]. It was there that I found the report from the American Cancer Society which suggests the number of deaths from fossil-fuel energy production.

For a general overview of radiation see the Wikipedia page on radiation, in particular the distinction between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

The WHO report on cell phone radiation effects is here and includes the following paragraph:

"A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use."

There's also a good summary of the facts on the Cancer Research UK site here. Read carefully the section on Category 2B risks (which currently includes cellphones). They describe this group as:

"a bit of a catch-all category, and includes everything from carpentry to chloroform."

For a good overview see the always useful Skeptics Dictionary. In particular see the page on electro-magnetic fields and radiation here and comments on the WHO story here.

Regarding the coverage of the cell phone mast in Mochudi that was destroyed by an outbreak of mass hysteria see the Mmegi story here. See also the appearance of the charlatan called Barrie Trower here. Barrie Trower is not all that he seems.

To see what can happen when you text while walking click here but remember that if you laugh at someone else's misfortune you're a bad person.

Corrections:

In the printed version of this article I referred to the American Cancer "Association", not Society.

"Homeopathic Thuggery", from Science-Based Medicine

2011-08-20T08:27:00.000+02:00

Read and be outraged.

The critical consumer

2011-07-28T17:51:00.002+02:00

Are you critical?

It’s one of my favourite words because it has two important meanings. Critical can mean “crucial” and “essential” and we all know that consumer are both of those things to a business. Well, WE know that but not all businesses seem to have realised this.

An example. We had a complaint recently from a small start-up company that engaged a web design company to construct their web site. P3,000 later no usable site existed, they were making silly excuses about their failures and then they went silent. Clearly they don’t want to make a success of their business. They seem to have forgotten the critical thing, their customer.

Another company was engaged to repair a consumer’s stereo system in July 2009, two full years ago. During this, probably the world’s longest repair period, the store confessed that they lost some of the components and weren’t capable of fixing it. They offered to replace the device at their cost and then offered cash instead. Since then it’s just been excuses. Another critical consumer ignored.

I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the biggest culprits in the Forget What’s Critical League of Infamy are the monopolistic parastatals. Our power provider seems, despite the efforts of some of their staff, to have absolutely no idea that consumers matter. Despite their manifest and scandalous failures in ensuring power supply they still seem to operate as if we’re the ones who should apologise to them when things go wrong.

The only one of the parastatals that I think have shown any improvement in recent years is BTC but that’s only because they’ve had to confront some competition from Mascom and Orange. They’ve been forced to get off their backsides and do something to keep us making phone calls with BTC phones.

Meanwhile I still think it’s disgraceful that we pay a small fortune for unbelievably slow internet connections in Botswana, most of which are controlled by BTC in one way or another. My mother, who has the misfortune to live in the UK, has an internet connection at home that is 32 times faster than mine here. I pay P399 a month for mine, hers is entirely free, provided by her telecoms supplier with her phone line. If we, as a nation, really want to attract companies to work from our business parks and innovation hubs then we need to provide them with power and internet connections that don’t make us look like a third-world nation. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re not.

My dictionary says that the word “critical” can also mean “involving an analysis of the merits and faults” of something. That’s the bit that’s important to you and me. I know it’s boring but until all consumers analyse the merits of the things we want to buy then we’re asking for trouble.

You can start by being extremely skeptical about any advertisement that uses the words “natural” or “organic”. Neither of these words actually mean anything useful. Cow manure is both natural and organic but that doesn’t mean you want to eat it in a pie. Just because a health product says it’s natural, that doesn’t mean it will actually DO anything for you. Just like homeopathic remedies, which are perfectly “natural” because they’re no more than water. They have precisely no active ingredients. Just like there’s no evidence that they work at all. In fact, the only thing there IS evidence about with homeopathy is that they simply don’t work. Any effect they have is no more than a placebo effect.

You should also be careful when dealing with the people inside stores who are trying to sell you things. Remember that almost certainly they’ve been trained how to sell things. You haven’t been trained how to resist them.

Some salespeople, particularly those selling used cars will have been trained, weird though it sounds, to keep you waiting as long as possible. Once they discover you’re interested in a particular vehicle they’ll sit you down in the office and disappear. They might say they’re off to see their manager to negotiate a special discount but in reality they’re doing nothing of the sort. They’re relying on what psychologists call “self-justification”. The longer you wait, the more you will subconsciously explain to yourself that there’s a reason for it. You must really want the car.

Many furniture stores as well as car dealers will create a sense of urgency by letting you know that there’s a time limit on a special offer. “The offer is only for this weekend and will never be repeated!” Of course you do know that the offer will be there next weekend and every other weekend as well, don’t you?

One of my favourite sales tricks is when the salesperson, particularly when you’ve been a bit challenging, will ask you “What’s the one thing stopping you from buying?” Of course there isn’t ONE thing stopping you buying, there are several but the moment you answer the question you’ve played into his hands, allowing him to focus on just one objection rather than several. You’ve made the sale a bit easier for him.

Needless to say the weapons you should take when buying something expensive is are skepticism and knowledge. And assertiveness.

If the salesman asks you to wait in his office while he negotiates for you, politely say no, you’d rather come back later. When they say there’s a time-limit, call their bluff and point out that the same offer existed last weekend. Are they really going to call you a liar? If they ask what’s the one objection you have, tell them that you have five and which one do they want first?

Above all, remember that the salesperson’s nightmare is seeing you from behind. The moment you can’t get what you want, politely remark that in that case you’ll give it a miss and turn your back on them and walk out. If a good deal really exists they’ll chase you and offer it to you. If they don’t you know you didn’t want to buy from them anyway.

"Pastor Irene is in town". I hope she's leaving soon.

2011-06-28T18:08:00.000+02:00

A story in Mmegi recently announced that "Pastor Irene is in town" and that "The devil is in serious trouble". The story went on to "report", as if it was a fact, that "Botswana welcomes a woman of God" "as she casts out demons from people of all ages including young children afflicted by demons and witchcraft spells". Am I the only one that objects to these fairy tales being presented as news?

The glowing report, that was written even before she had performed these so-called miracles seemed not to consider, even for a moment, if any of this silliness was actually true. Rather than deal with the details of the claims made about her abilities I'll just ask two things. Firstly, please give me the name and phone number of anyone, just one person who experienced a miracle that can be medically proven. Just one will do.

Secondly, perhaps someone can tell me what happened to Pastor Irene's prediction, made on a previous visit to Botswana in 2007 when she predicted that on 20th November 2007 God started to roll out his big plan for ending HIV and AIDS and that very soon “All children born of HIV positive mothers will be free of HIV”.

Let's get our facts straight. There genuinely HAS been a reduction in the proportion of children of HIV positive mothers who were born with HIV and that’s tremendous news. But it wasn’t religion or Irene's charlatan version of religion that did that, it was our Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program. It was PMTCT that took the proportion of HIV positive children born to HIV positive mothers down from 40% to virtually zero. It was PMTCT backed up by rationalism, logic and medical science that did it, not Pastor Irene's supernatural money-making schemes.

Mmegi - End of the world or just sanity?

2011-03-30T07:29:00.001+02:00

In response to this article in Mmegi regarding the end of the world.

I enjoyed your article in Mmegi on 28th March entitled "Is May 21 judgement day?"

I appreciated it because unlike most religious proclamations this one can actually be tested. The prediction from Harold Camping's bizarre church group is that the world will end in the period "from May 21 to October 21 2011". They state that we will "experience great torment, which will begin with a great earthquake that opens all the graves and brings normal daily earthly life to a halt".

That shouldn't be too difficult to test.

I'm not worried though. Harold Camping is famous for having previously predicted that the end of the world would occur in 1994. Maybe I missed it? He's just one of many doomsday predictors who have persuaded their gullible followers that they have some mathematical formula for predicting the end. Charles Wesley, who founded the Methodists, predicted it would occur in 1794, 1874 was one of the many predictions made by the Jehovah's Witnesses, 1988, '98 and '99 were very popular years for various groups, even Isaac Newton predicted that 2000 would be the end. It seems that no year passes without some fringe group predicting the end of the world.

All of them have been wrong so far. Why should we think he will be right this time?

The drinks are on me in November when we can all ask Camping how he got it wrong yet again

Evolution is as true as gravity

2011-03-08T11:26:00.002+02:00

In response to a very uninformed letter to Mmegi, entitled "We have never been gorillas".

-----

Your correspondent, Shine Namane, who wrote a letter last Friday entitled "We have never been gorillas" doesn't seem to understand anything about evolution.

To begin with he suggests that evolution has taught us that human beings were "originally a gorilla or a chimpanzee". This is simply not true. Our current understanding of humanity's origins is that both humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor, another species that is now extinct. Nobody in the world believes we're descended from chimps or gorillas.

He also suggests that "christians believe that evolution is a lie". Again untrue. The Roman Catholic church accepts evolution. So do the Anglicans and Methodists. It's actually a fairly small set of fundamental biblical literalists who believe that the Bible accurately describes the origins of either the universe or life.

He also seems to overlook, or perhaps he simply hasn't seen, the vast amount of evidence for evolution. Museums around the world are stocked with transitional fossils, the DNA evidence is overwhelming and evolution can even be seen to happen in certain species that conveniently reproduce very quickly.

Mmegi readers shouldn't infer from Mr Namane's letter that there is any real intellectual and academic opposition to evolution. Darwin's theory of natural selection is as respected as Newton's theory of gravity or Einstein's theories of relativity.

Finally, far from being "degrading", "ridiculous" and "a lie", a truthful understanding of our origins can only give us a better sense of our place in nature, something that the enlightened see as magnificent, awesome and uplifting.

BBC - Alternative remedies 'dangerous' for kids says report

2010-12-23T11:04:00.000+02:00

A BBC story about the dangers of so-called "alternative remedies" which are, in fact, not remedies at all.

I get an email about "EFT"

2010-12-19T16:38:00.001+02:00

See here for my earlier warning about EFT.

An email arrived regarding my rather dismissive comments as follows. The email is in red.

Hi It's a shame people are so skeptical without giving something a chance.

I haven't given shooting myself in the head a chance either, but that doesn't mean I should try it.

I've been using EFT for 7 years on myself, as a practitioner and trainer and I can honestly say that many of the claims for it are broadly true based on my experience and the shifts I see in others. I see some amazing things happening on a regular basis.

"broadly true based on my experience"? Is that meant to seem like evidence?

My background is in IT and I'm totally uninterested in fake or airy-fairy techniques that are not really delivering the goods.

I'm not sure that qualifies you as an expert. I would rather have decently constructed double-blinded scientific studies investigating the claims made by a treatment but perhaps I'm just old-fashioned?

This is the real mackoy and delivers well above placibo. So give it a chance and try it out. There are free manuals on the web. Thanks, Peter

The word is "placebo". Forgive me if I don't try something that is based on pseudoscience, was invented by a charlatan and makes extraordinary claims but without any extraordinary evidence.

Peter's own web site include the following, remarkable statement:

"EFT is based on a revolutionary new discovery that violates most of the beliefs within conventional psychology. It contends that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system. With remarkable consistency, EFT relieves symptoms by an unusual (but scientific) routine of tapping with the fingertips on a short series of points on the body that correspond to acupuncture points on the energy meridians. Where there is an imbalance, there is a corresponding blockage in the flow of energy through the meridian system.

The tapping serves to release the blockages that are created when a person thinks about or becomes involved in an emotionally disturbing circumstance. When this blockage is released, the emotions come into balance. Once balanced, the person cannot get upset about the circumstance no matter how hard they try. The memory remains but the charge is gone."

Note: any particularly attractive people are welcome to come over to my place for a glass of wine and a vigorous "tapping" from either me or the wife!

Christopher Maloney is a quack

2010-12-08T11:35:00.000+02:00

For more details of his deeply silly pseudo-legal threats against PZ Myers see here. Seems like he doesn't have a natural remedy for being exposed as a quack who is simply NOT a doctor, despite the ridiculous laws in the US state of Maine where it looks like anyone can be called a "doctor" if they have a natural medicine "degree".

For Maloney's own laughable "medical" site, see here.

Baiting a "traditional doctor"

2010-11-19T17:17:00.001+02:00

OK, not a scammer, a traditional healer this time but a liar and a charlatan nevertheless. This is his advertisement:

I SMSed a number of "doctors" who placed advertisements in local papers yesterday and today as follows:

His response and our subsequent conversation went like this:

He is "Dr" Kachule and his cellphone number is 75916409. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you!

A real man

2010-10-28T16:18:00.000+02:00

Courtesy of Pharyngula. As the father of three young sons I find this a very useful example of what a "real man" might be. Morally strong, courageous and protective of his loved ones in a crisis. In fact just like a "real woman".

BBC News - Alert issued on danger supplement

2010-09-25T15:44:00.002+02:00

BBC News - Alert issued on danger supplement

"Food watchdogs have issued an alert after finding that a chemical marketed online as a health supplement was similar to industrial-strength bleach.

'Miracle Mineral Supplement' is 28% sodium chlorite - which becomes bleach when mixed with citric acid.

Even taken as instructed, experts say it can cause severe vomiting and diarrhoea - and mixing it wrongly could lead to respiratory failure."

419ers take council for £100k • The Register

2010-09-25T15:43:00.001+02:00

419ers take council for £100k • The Register

"A Scottish local authority lost £102,000 to an African gang after being duped by a targeted letter scam.

The letter, received at the end of July, purported to come from one of South Lanarkshire Council's legitimate suppliers, and requested that payments be made into a different account."

Warning - "Emotional Freedom Techniques"

2010-08-30T15:51:00.004+02:00

An email came in from a consumer asking our opinion on a workshop to be held in Phakalane next month entitled “Relax And Repair With EFT” or “Emotional Freedom Techniques”.

This utter nonsense was made up by someone called Gary Craig. His profile says:

“Gary Craig is neither a psychologist nor a licensed therapist. He is an ordained minister through the Universal Church of God in Southern California, which is non-denominational and embraces all religions. He is a dedicated student of A Course in Miracles, and approaches his work with a decidedly spiritual perspective. However, there is no specific spiritual teaching connected to EFT or its Practitioners.”

In other words he’s not a scientist and it’s not scientific, he’s spiritual because he’s been ordained by a silly made-up church in the home state of silliness, but his ridiculous EFT isn’t spiritual.

In fact EFT is based on what they very scientifically call “tapping”. The EFT people say that:

“although based on acupuncture, EFT has simplified the realignment process by gently tapping on key meridian points on the head, torso and hands.”

So they just tap you? On your non-existent “meridian points”? So it’s like acupuncture, which all the evidence suggests is pseudo-mystical, pseudo-scientific claptrap, but without the one thing that might plausibly do anything?

These charlatans claim that EFT can be used to treat asthma, high blood pressure, depression, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, cyctic fibrosis and even sexual abuse trauma.

Based on these extraordinary claims I say we should run these extraordinary charlatans out of town!

Who deserves respect? Botswana Guardian

2010-07-02T10:11:00.000+02:00

In the Botswana Guardian last week Abdullah Moahi wrote a letter in response to another written by the very reasonable Ali Haider. This correspondence began when Moahi’s fellow Muslim, al-Hasan, wrote a letter complaining about recent cartoons featuring images of the Prophet Muhammad. I later responded by suggesting that if Muslims want to restrain themselves from portraying their prophet then that was fine but I felt that the rule didn’t apply to non-Muslims like me.

Well, al-Hasan and Moahi clearly disagree with me. They feel that people of another faith or those like me who have put superstition in the same place we put Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy must live by their rules whether we like it or not.

Obviously I disagree. My point was simple. I obey the law, do my best to be a good neighbour and I pay my taxes. So don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, OK?

Moahi and al-Hasan are confusing two different things. I believe that they, as individuals, deserve some basic respect. I won’t email them pictures of the prophet, I won’t invite them to eat pork and I will do my very best to leave them alone. I will offer them some basic respect. I expect them to offer me the same courtesy.

However I don’t think I am under any obligation to respect their belief system and they shouldn’t feel obliged to respect mine. I don’t think belief systems, whether they are religious or political, themselves deserve respect. It’s people who deserve some basic respect. If they want more they can earn it.

I also don’t think that anyone looks respectable if they write letters to The Botswana Guardian that are full of anti-Semitism and hatred like al-Hasan did a couple of weeks ago. Again I think he is confusing two different things. His letter is full of insults aimed at Jews, blaming them all for everything that is wrong in the Middle East. His target should obviously be the despicable Israeli Government, not every member of Israel’s main religious belief system. Jews and Israel are like Muslims and Iran. Not the same thing. Both the Israeli and Iranian governments frequently behave despicably but that doesn’t mean all Jews or Muslims are psychopaths. It’s not too hard to see the difference between a nation, a religion and people, is it?

Yes, I know I’m an atheist, according to al-Hasan a devil worshipper (he doesn’t exist, how could I be?) and an infidel. I have enormous respect for my friends who are believers in whatever faith they have but I don’t respect them because of their religion. I respect them because they are decent, hard-working and charitable people. Unlike some people the worst excesses of religion hasn’t corrupted them.

Moahi ended his letter with the words “silence is consent”. In that one thought we agree. I do not consent to my freedoms being constrained by any religion. I will not remain silent. Nor should anyone else who values their freedom to express themselves.

Twitter study debunks psychic powers - Channel Four

2010-06-11T08:15:00.000+02:00

Twitter study debunks psychic powers

A right to be respected - Botswana Guardian

2010-06-04T08:19:00.000+02:00

In the Botswana Guardian last week al-Hasan wrote a lengthy letter suggesting that Muslims have a right to be respected. He specifically implied that the rules within Islam that forbid the portrayal of the prophet Muhammad must somehow apply to non-Muslims. I disagree.

al-Hasan’s letter was no doubt prompted by the recent “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” day which prompted death threats to cartoonists around the world. The cartoon I suspect he refers to, by Zapiro and published in the Mail and Guardian, portrays Muhammad on a psychiatrist’s couch complaining that “Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!” Already Zapiro has received the inevitable death threats.

I am not a Muslim or indeed a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist or Rastafarian so I don’t consider myself bound by the rules within each of those religions. I eat pork and beef, I consume alcohol, I have been known to use what some people would consider rude words and I often work on a Sunday. The internal rules of religions I don’t belong to don’t apply to me, nor do they apply to any other non-members of those religions. The rules that apply to me, that govern my conduct, are the laws of the country I live in. Of course I also acknowledge that in addition to the basic laws there are certain community values so I have learned to moderate my behaviour when necessary, that’s just simple courtesy. I don’t swear loudly in public, I wouldn’t blaspheme in a religious gathering and I wouldn’t demand beef from a Hindu host or a bacon sandwich from a Jew.

But outside of those situations I am free to express myself. So long as I do not encourage violence, I am not constrained from expressing my views. To put it simply, I am entitled to draw a picture of Muhammad, just as I can draw a picture of Jesus, Buddha or Haile Selassie. What’s more I firmly believe that I have a right to challenge other people’s beliefs, just as they have a right to challenge mine. Muslims and members of any other religion are free to evangelise. They can advertise, broadcast religious programs on the radio and TV and post me letters and emails trying to persuade me of their beliefs. That’s the wonder of living in a democracy, the range of divergent beliefs that surround us. It’s also what makes a democracy so irritating sometimes. Often the beliefs of your neighbours are annoying, sometimes infuriating. As an atheist, I dislike being told by people like al-Hasan that I don’t respect other people’s beliefs, am a worshipper of Shaytaan (Satan) or that I “rape and kill Muslim women and children”. However I’m sufficiently grown-up to see stupid allegations as nonsense and to ignore them.

I also think that at a time when Islam is being used, obviously by a tiny, psychopathic minority, to terrorise the world and to drag us back to the Middle Ages, people like al-Hasan would do better to show their more moderate, tolerant and understanding side and not threaten the rest of us with eternal (and immediate) punishment for expressing ourselves.

My feelings about free speech are simple but are best expressed by a ruling by Lord Justice Sedley in the UK on the freedom to evangelise who said:

“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

Anger mounts over Zapiro cartoon

2010-05-22T18:12:00.000+02:00

Read the full story at the Mail & Guardian here.

I get mail about atheism and morality

2010-03-02T17:35:00.001+02:00

Every part of the comment has been published, unedited, shown in blue.

This is a respond to a note wrote by Richard Harriman, I am not against atheism, I believe we all have reasons to belive in something or nothing but what matters the most is how well you justify your lifestyle

Thanks.

in my lifetime, I have had countless arguments about atheism and I might as well applaud you on your view points because they seem well thought of but one thing that seems to be lacking is the logic behind them.

Thanks again, I think.

If you are against believers I assume you practice what you preach and you have trully come to the conclusion that there are no deities.

I'm not "against" believers, some of my best friends are people of faith but yes, I have come to the conclusion that the possibility of deities existing is so vanishingly remote that it's as good as non-existent.

all religions has simillar practices to a certain extent but if we were to take christianity as a whole and trace it's many churches roots then we can agree that they all came from one source. Because of brutality towards christians during the roman rule and the many philosophers of that time, people interpreted Christianity in different ways henceforth the many churches present today.

I'm not sure your suggestion that Christianity was interpreted in various ways because of oppression is true. The Church began as a single entity until the Reformation when the rule of Rome began to be eroded.

I point this out to show you that when you decided to be an atheist you simply started your own movement influenced by what you see as most appropriate.

Non-sequitur. I haven't started any movement, I don't want to be part of a movement, I wouldn't be part of any movement that would have me.

This movemnt or idea of life of yours had to answer questions which serve as pillars to your existence and coincide with the moral standards of the society you are based in. If yes great, if no then i seemed to have overestimated your analogy to rationalize your thoughts.

As I said, there is no "movement". I'm also not sure that I need "pillars" to my existence. It's also possible that I don't agree with all the standards of the society I'm based in. Maybe 90%? I'm not sure what "If yes..." means. Yes to what, exactly?

Making moral decisions is not influenced by beliefs, instead it's the general populance you reside in that decides what is percieved as wrong or right. Take a look at how the limitations on how to behave amongst each other has rapidly increased over the centuries to become known today as breaking the law. It's true we are all capable of rape and murder

I disagree. Of course moral decisions are influenced by beliefs. I'm sorry but I don't understand the rest of this point.

Another main influence is also the order of things, as humans we have the ability to be considerate,feel and act rationaly. Meaning most of us treat the next person as we wish they should treat us, this common mannerism enables us to co exist not religion. This disputes your notion about what prevents us from doing wrong things.

What is the "order of things"? What notion is it that you think I have about why we restrain ourselves from doing wrong things?

If more than half of the world would rather belive in God so that they can be able to sleep at night or live a life with meaning so be it, but claiming that your life is more/going to be more fulfiling if you live it the way you are explaining it then Your logic and reasoning behind it is shallow as the explanation behind it. i believe in God and philosophy is a hobby I picked along the way, again this was wrote with the artmost respect but sometimes the latter overlaps the other

Just because a majority have been led to believe something, doesn't make it true. I don't think my life without superstition is more fulfilling, but I DO believe it's truer and truth brings me pleasure and fulfillment.

I'm glad philosophy is a hobby but I think you need more practice.

Michael Tellinger - Botswana Guardian

2010-02-12T10:14:00.001+02:00

Tonight, if you're reading this on Thursday, we'll have the privilege of a visit from "scientist, explorer and international author" Michael Tellinger who is due to speak at the Civic Centre in Gaborone. According to the announcement I saw he will be speaking on the "Origins Of Humankind and Ancient Civilisations Of South Africa". Sounds fascinating, don't you think?

Well, it does until you do a little research into Tellinger's theories. Instead of talking about the origins of humankind with the benefits of science, anthropology and those irritating things called FACTS, Tellinger has some rather different ideas, bizarre ones to say the least. In fact his crackpot theories remind me of those from the so-called "Church" of Scientology. Scientology novices are finally taught (after they've coughed up truly vast quantities of cash) that 75 million years ago Xemu, the head of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people now haunt us all and cause us all our mental health problems.

You can see why the Scientologists aren't too keen to publicise this hogwash until after they've got your cash, can't you?

I suspect that Mr Tellinger is in a similar position. I think he'd rather get your P100 entrance fee and perhaps even your $18 for his downloadable book BEFORE you discover what exactly he believes. In his book "Slave Species of God" Tellinger tells us that aliens from the planet Nibiru came to Earth nearly half a million years ago to steal our gold. Once they got bored doing all that hard work digging they mixed their DNA with that of primitive earthlings and produced human slaves. These humans, being rather dim-witted, then worshipped the aliens as gods. Telinger claims to have learned all this from translated ancient stone tablets. Curiously nobody else seems to have translated the tablets the same way and the real academic world has missed the spaceships, gold smuggling and all that juicy inter-species cross-breeding.

[Thanks to the 01 and the Universe blog for the book review]

By all means go and hear Tellinger and his delusions but my recommendation would be to go round the corner and spend your money at a certain spicy chicken restaurant instead. At least you'll go home with a tingle on your lips and a full stomach instead of just an empty head.

Morality is a human virtue - Mmegi

2010-02-02T18:54:00.000+02:00

Original here.

Like Don-Martin Takudzwa Whande I don't want to get into a letter-writing argument about atheism and religion.

That wouldn't entertain any Mmegi readers and I seriously doubt that it would help change anyone's minds. He is probably as committed to his beliefs as I am to mine. However his last letter seemed to revolve around one particular point that I disagree with profoundly.

He said that atheism "automatically means that life has no meaning. It simply means everything is permissible because there are no laws and therefore no one is accountable to anyone. However, if that is so,what then is the reason why we now have laws to govern behaviour today unless there was a law giver?"

He seems to believe that because I don't believe in Father Christmas (or any other make-believe people), my life is meaningless and I must have no morals.

Maybe he should get to know me before assuming I'm a sociopath? I am at least as moral as anyone who believes they have invisible friends and my life is just as meaningful as theirs. The difference is that I have found my own meaning, not one that was taken from a book of ancient superstitions. Ironically I suspect that his morality and mine will be remarkably similar. I'm sure that we both oppose murder, theft, rape and deceit. We both believe in honesty, respect and charity.

The difference is that I believe these values to be of human origin, not divine. It's interesting that regardless of which religion is dominant, all countries in the world have adopted roughly the same moral values whether the countries are theocracies like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UK or secular democracies like the USA and Botswana. The thing all countries have in common is humanity, not superstition.

I think it's also interesting to ask a question of religious folk. Is the only reason you don't go around murdering, raping and stealing because God tells you not to? That's not exactly flattering is it? I don't do these things because I don't want to and because they're all morally wrong. I don't need superstition to tell me that.

I believe that the time has come for secular humanists like me to be more open about our atheist beliefs and morality. They are just as valid as religious beliefs and frankly a bit more practical.

Don-Martin Takudzwa Whande's response - Mmegi

2010-02-02T18:43:00.002+02:00

Original here.

Although I do not usually like to respond to a response to my articles, I felt obliged to respond to Harriman's letter of January 22 because he shares some really interesting thoughts.

It's important for the reader to understand that I am not trying to start a Holy War with atheists, but I simply desire to connect with my colleagues and try reach an understanding, if possible, by presentation of facts and ideas. First of all, I do understand when atheists say that there is no God. However, such a belief automatically means that life has no meaning. It simply means everything is permissible because there are no laws and therefore no one is accountable to anyone. However, if that is so,what then is the reason why we now have laws to govern behaviour today unless there was a law giver?

In simple, if life has no meaning then each and every one of us has to live as they please. So Harriman,wouldn't you agree with the fact that we have rules to govern behaviour and conduct in the universe simply because this universe has a meaning? C.S. Lewis, who was once an atheist but is now convinced that there is God, had this to say: "A man does not call a line crooked unless he has an idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this world to when I called it unjust? If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning."

What C.S Lewis was trying to say was that when atheists say this universe is unjust and has no meaning, to what are they comparing it to? How can one say life is unjust and has no meaning unless he or she has an idea of a meaningful and just life? Let me use an everyday example. Is it possible for me to say to a person she is beautiful unless I have an idea of what an ugly person looks like?

This, I believe, is the same trap that many atheists find themselves in. This is the last aspect of reality that atheists should now consider before they can conclude that life has no meaning. A closer analysis of the above question will reveal that this universe has meaning after all because to every bad thing, there is always the good side.

One thing is for sure, Harriman. If a person is truly convinced about his/her religion, then that person should not be afraid to come out in the open about his/her faith. For example, you rightly pointed out that many atheists are afraid of coming out in the open because they fear being rejected by the community. This is the same quandary homosexuals find themselves in.

But surely, if one is sure and confident about his or her faith, why are there a lot of atheists, in this country for that matter, being afraid of coming out and professing their faith? I believe it is because of the lack of absolute truth that makes people do this. It is also because atheists are aware that life is meaningful and therefore cannot afford just to come out in the open. The society has a moral obligation to accept or not to accept Christianity, Atheism, amongst many other religions. But if life has no meaning, as you say, why are some of your people (atheists), just like homosexuals, afraid of coming out in the open? Why do Atheists care about criticism if life is meaningless?

With all due respect, I also think atheists should simply stop trying to behave as if they understand the Bible. I am saying this because of the way Harriman dismally failed to interpret the Bible. In your letter to the Mmegi on January 22, you rightly pointed out that "I don't believe in the Bible", which is evidenced by your saying that the Bible is littered with endorsements of murder, rape, genocide and human sacrifices. Harriman seems to have moved from being a 'non-believer of the Bible' to a 'perfect interpreter of the Bible.'

If you do not believe in the Bible, that is good enough. Do not contradict and embarrass yourself by trying to interpret the Bible that you seem to be so appalled with. If I were to say "I do not believe there is a language called Setswana", is it then 'rational and logical' for me to try and interpret it? Maybe you would like to ponder about that. I am still radically sure and utterly convinced that there is God around us.

However life is a matter of choice. There are good and bad ideas, right and wrong as well as some ideas in between. No one, however, is supposed to be forced into the belief of deity. Each decision we make ultimately has a bearing in our lives and we are all accountable for our actions and choices in life. We are here for a purpose and we are all custodians of our individual lives.

Don-Martin Takudzwa Whande

Thank you rational atheists - Mmegi

2010-01-28T18:35:00.000+02:00

Original here.

I would like to express my thanks to all the people who have approached me or have sent me messages by email or on Facebook supporting my letter last week entitled "Atheists are rational and logical". I confess that I expected a negative response but in fact everyone has been remarkably positive. It's often surprising to learn that although the religious might be in the majority a surprising number of people reject superstition in all it's forms and embrace the rational, the logical and the real.

However it saddens me that some people explained how they couldn't "come out" as atheists because of their fear of rejection by their communities, families and friends. One of the most objectionable things about any rigid belief system must be that, whether it's religious or political, Christian, Muslim or Marxist, dissent is unwelcome and often forbidden. In extreme but distressingly common situations heresy and apostasy are treated as capital crimes. People have been killed just for expressing their free thinking.

Thankfully I live in a country where enlightenment is not an offense.

A final point. Isn't it curious that many Christians refer to the ultimate evil as "Lucifer", a word that means "bringer of light". It's ironic that the Devil is seen as the one who enlightens, not the religion.

Atheists are rational and logical - Mmegi and Monitor

2010-01-22T16:20:00.042+02:00

Original here.

In a column in Mmegi on 15th January Don-Martin Takudzwa Whande argued that atheists like me somehow fail to see the overwhelming evidence for the existence of God. He's wrong. I think we atheists have a clear, rational, logical and above all, reasonable view.

There are many arguments against the existence of an invisible friend in the sky but I would rather be constructive and offer him a suggestion. I think his approach of using endless quotes from the Bible to persuade us non-believers is wrong. Why would the Bible persuade me? I don't believe that god exists and I don't believe the Bible has anything particular to teach us.

Of course people will say that there is wisdom in the Bible but there is in all religious texts, whether Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist. And crucially there is at least as much wisdom in many non-religious texts. What's more, for every delightful, inspiring, poetic quote from the Bible there is another that is vicious, cruel or just plain evil. The Bible is littered with endorsements of murder, genocide, slavery, rape, human sacrifice and the mass slaughter of children. And I'm meant to give this book respect and be persuaded by it?

The same goes for many religious leaders. Last week, the esteemed (by some, certainly not by me) american TV evangelist Pat Robertson said that the people of Haiti had brought the recent catastrophic earthquake upon themselves. His exact words were "they got together and swore a pact to the devil" and that consequently "ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other".

Need I say more? OK, I will. Robertson is a nasty, vicious, hateful old bigot and those who use religion as a cover for their hatred deserve to be shunned by all reasonable people.

Anyway here's a challenge for those who feel the need to convert us atheists to religion. See if you can come up with a persuasive, thoughtful, rational argument that doesn't involve a single quote from your religious texts. Then we might consider them.

Ginkgo biloba doesn't work - CNN Health News

2009-12-31T16:45:00.000+02:00

CNN Story

"Ginkgo biloba has failed -- again -- to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging."

Full story here. Story alert from The Skeptic's Dictionary.

Evidence based faith?

2009-12-22T15:44:00.000+02:00

I wonder what this story teaches us?

Mmegi, 21st December - "Church Still In Deep Shock After Pastors Drown"

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

2009-11-27T21:57:00.001+02:00

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

Some months ago I visited a web site that offered me a free astrological reading. I got an email from the site from someone called Sara Freder. She sent me a long email but at the end it wanted me to spend money to get the full report which I ignored. Since then I received many emails asking for money and warning me about both good and bad events in my life that only she can tell me about if I give her money.

Do you think I should send her the money?

Absolutely NOT. Please don’t even think of sending this crook a thing. Two reasons why.

First, you do realise, don’t you, that astrology is hogwash? This is one of those ideas that needs to be consigned to history’s dustbin. There is simply no sense to astrology. Every time real scientific research has been done into the relationship between your birth date or your star-sign and your life events or personality it has shown there is simply nothing to it. It’s all rubbish.

Then there’s the web site you visited. Let’s get straight to the point. Firstly, this “woman” called Sara Freder is really a man called “Jean Christopher Maires” who lives in France. Are you suspicious yet? (More links here 1, 2, 3)

In the interests of research I did a little experiment. I went to the web site and completed the form asking for basic personal details twice, once as a man, once as a woman but both times giving the same date of birth. I gave two different email addresses and waited to see how similar the “readings” would be. When they arrived it was clear how this worked. The two readings were, on first glance, different but as I read them it became clear that they had been constructed from basically the same text, it was just the order that was different. Both emails talked in the vaguest possible terms about my future but the message was very simple. I get more when I pay for it.

That’s all there is to this scam. The Frenchman just wants your money. Once you’ve paid you can be assured that there would be more and more emails sent your way, encouraging you to spend more money for more readings.

I’ll make an astrological prediction for free. If you send this crook money for a reading, he will get richer and you’ll get poorer. Guaranteed.

Who has rights? (Mmegi Consumer Watchdog column)

2009-10-29T22:00:00.003+02:00

We’ve been getting phone calls at the office. Unfortunately none of them were offering us large quantities of money (hint), free brand new Jaguars (hint, hint) or anything romantic (hint, hint, HINT!). Instead a number of them seem to have been inspired by one of the issues we covered recently and which seems to have provoked a response. This issue began when a consumer called us asking about a vitamin company called GNLD. Her email said:

“What’s the difference between them and other vitamins and supplements as they cost anything from P300 upwards for one month’s supply which I find ridiculous! To me it’s clearly a pyramid style business or something like it, to my husband it’s an option for ‘better vitamins’ (that we don’t normally take anyway!) even though so expensive?”

My response was twofold. Firstly I don’t believe that we need to take vitamins or dietary supplements. Well, OK, perhaps you might need to if you’re pregnant, old or already unwell and your doctor has suggested it would be good for you. Maybe then you should. However, those of us who are basically healthy certainly don’t need to start popping pills. Instead we should spend our money on a healthy diet and lifestyle.

In fact I suspect that vitamins and supplements run the risk of making us worse off. Taking pills to boost their health distracts people from focussing on those things that WILL make them healthy. I can imagine people arguing that as they swallow vitamin pills their health is therefore guaranteed. They probably give some people an excuse to have an extra beer, burger or box of chocolates.

Other than the unnecessary vitamin pills there is a wider issue. GNLD is what is politely referred to as a network marketing company. It’s not, strictly speaking, a pyramid scheme because there is a product at the heart of the mechanism but it has the same structure. You recruit people beneath you to sell the vitamins and in turn they recruit more people beneath them. Add in a complex mechanism of commissions and payments and you get a pyramid-shaped selling scheme.

So what, you might ask, if people are making some money? The trouble is that they don’t. The vast majority of people DON’T make money from these schemes. The evidence from companies like Amway and World Ventures shows that about three quarters of the people who get involved either make nothing from the business or lose money. The quarter that does make some money on average only makes a tiny amount. On the World Ventures web site they confess that in 2008 70% of their recruits made no money at all from the scheme. Of those that did make money, the median earnings were a pathetic $114.60. Then, hidden away in the small print it says:

“These figures do not represent Representatives’ profits; they do not consider expenses incurred by Representatives in the promotion of their business.”

So that $114.60 is before they’ve paid their expenses, like their phone bill, internet charges, transport and materials?”

Don’t waste your money on these vitamins or pyramid-shaped get-rich-quick schemes. Spend your money on fruit and veg instead.

I’m convinced that many of the callers we had were actually involved in the GNLD scheme. Most of them refused to give their names but just asked questions about who we were. However I had a conversation with one of the callers who was prepared to talk. She claimed to be impartial but seemed to know rather too much about GNLD to be a disinterested bystander. The most interesting question she asked though was to do with us, not GNLD.

“What gives you the right to criticise them?” she asked.

At the time I couldn’t think of a smart, witty and entertaining answer. I couldn’t because I was stunned by the question.

I think the problem is that I’ve lived in democracies for too long. In fact I’ve never lived in a country that didn’t permit free speech. I think I’m so used to being able to say pretty much what I want that I’ve not given much thought to having a “right” to do so. Of course we all know there are limits to what we can say, even in a democracy like ours. The great American Supreme Court judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes said:

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

Clearly there are some limits on what you and I can say. We have no right to endanger someone’s life, happiness or liberty by what we say.

Meanwhile we have an absolute right to criticise misconduct when we see it. So long as we don’t go too far and invade someone’s privacy or publish irrelevant personal information we have a right in Botswana to criticise companies when they get it wrong, we are permitted to tell them and to inform the public about their wrong-doings. In fact I’d go furthe. I think that we have an obligation to do so.

It’s not just newspaper columns that have a right to criticise and complain. We all do. Again I think we have a moral obligation to. It’s not just ourselves we’re defending, it’s our friends, families and neighbours.

So that’s where I get the “right” to criticise GNLD, their largely redundant products and their pyramid-shaped business model.

This week’s stars

Omphametse, Godfrey and Dineo at the Engen filling station at Square Mart. Our reader says they’re pleasant and helpful every time.

A UK legal scandal - Trafigura

2009-10-17T13:54:00.001+02:00

Some companies, and their law firms, particularly those like Carter Ruck in the UK, behave like utter scumbags.

Direct quote from Wikileaks:

The "Minton report" exposes a toxic waste dumping incident which hospitalized thousands. The UK media has been suppressed from referencing the report and its contents since a secret gag order was issued against it on September 11, 2009. The report was commissioned trhough Waterson & Hicks, a UK law firm, possibly to claim client-attorney privilege should it leak. Client and dump is "Trafigura", a giant multi-national oil and commodity trader. The report assesses a toxic dumping incident involving Trafigura and the Ivory Coast—possibly most culpable mass contamination incident since Bhopal. The UK media is currently unable to mention the URL http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton or anything else that would direct people towards the report.

The UK press gag remains in effect. Incredibly, Trafigura's lawyers, Carter Ruck, are now attempting again to prevent parliamentary debate over the gag, this time by claiming sub-judice

Every so often a company (and their lawyers) deserve to be described as fascists. Read the report!

We get mail - the QXCI/EPFX/SCIO silliness

2009-10-08T21:57:00.001+02:00

Intrigued by the SCIO/QXCI/EPFX machine we mentioned in Mmegi this week, I emailed one of the South African web sites advertising it. I said:

We have been asked by a number of consumers in Botswana to investigate whether the SCIO device you advertise on your web site at www.100percenthealth.co.za is the same as the QXCI/EPFX/SCIO device that is currently banned from importation into the USA by their Food and Drug Administration.

Can you also please confirm the connection between the SCIO device and "Professor" Bill Nelson who is currently a fugitive in Hungary, on the run from fraud charges in the USA?

I plan to discuss this in this coming week's Consumer Watchdog column in Mmegi, the national newspaper in Botswana, so I would appreciate a rapid response.

Instead of a response from South Africa I got a reply all the way from Hungary. It goes like this:

Thank you for sending your email. Having read through your Consumer Watchdog website, I greatly respect your statement on your Right of Reply page, “It is critically important to us that we get our facts right.” Therefore, I look forward to you printing the facts as follows.

I think you can live without it being printed. Here on the blog will suffice.

The regulatory requirements for each country and each device are quite different. The device that was sold in the USA called the EPFX was very similar to the SCIO, but the registration (granted in the USA in 1989) was different between the USA and the rest of the world (which is typical of many devices). A summary of the FDA’s reasons are shown on the FDA’s Import Alert link which you reference below in which the FDA state what the device was and was not given marketing clearance. Therefore, the FDA have put the device on the Import List and it is no longer manufactured. The manufacturer of the EPFX closed in February 2009.

"Very similar" to the EPFX? They're the same thing as far I can tell.

The SCIO has a different registration in Europe and the rest of the world as a Universal Electrophysiological System which covers many indications for use approved in Europe. The website you mention below www.100percenthealth.co.za is advertising the SCIO under the indications for use as approved in the registration.

William Nelson is the creator of the device. The situation with his legal status in the USA should not bear a reflection on the device and its safe and effective use.

Logically, yes, that's true. It IS possible for a fraud on the run to have invented a device that works. However as he is on the run precisely because this device does NOT work and the claims made about it were (and remain) fraudulent, I think it IS relevant, don't you?

However, William Nelson has expressed an interest to chat with you on the phone if you wish. To organize this, please write to [email address removed].

I've given this a lot of thought but I don't think I can do it. Talk to him without laughing I mean.

As the Regulatory Manager, I’m responsible for ensuring the safe and effective use of the SCIO in all countries and areas where it is registered and used. Every year in the Spring we complete an audit to ensure the safe and effective use of the SCIO. The current registration in Europe expires in April 2011 as European registrations are granted for 5 years at a time. I am more than happy to answer any more of your questions regarding the SCIO. However, please keep in mind that I will be at a conference from Wednesday – Sunday October 7-11 and will not get the chance to respond until after the conference..

There you go. Right of Reply respected.

I still can't see any reason not to describe the SCIO/QXCI/EPFX as a piece of nonsensical, charlatan quackery. Avoid it.

Fighting nonsense (Mmegi Consumer Watchdog column)

2009-10-08T21:54:00.002+02:00

It’s been a hard couple of weeks. I’m trying hard to think of a recent example of someone NOT being hugely gullible and naïve. I had a boss years ago who loved to remark that “common sense wasn’t”. Wasn’t common, he meant. If you look back over the history of our largely pathetic species you’ll see that apart from the occasional moments of generosity, kindness and heroism it is largely characterised by nastiness, naiveté and stupidity.

You see this both at the large-scale, historical level but also at the micro level. In other words in my email Inbox.

As you may have seen over the last few weeks we’ve mentioned a variety of very suspicious establishments that offer so-called qualifications for nothing other than cash. These call themselves universities but are no more than post boxes, email addresses and web sites. Correction, they’re no more than bank accounts. All you have to do is send them your cash, pretend that you’ve learned something and you get a degree of varying importance back by post. The last one wanted no more than $850 for a PhD, the exam for which was multiple choice! I can just imagine the questions. Q1. Are you going to tell your prospective employers that you bought this crappy degree online? Answer 1: Yes, I’m an honest fraud. Answer 2: No, I’m a fraud, a cheat and a liar.

Following these articles we got an email. No, I don’t mean the one from the “University” in question (The “University” of SouthCentral Los Angeles) that threatened to engage their lawyers. This email came from a reader who had a question. He said:

“I was about to apply for one of those degrees at USCLA. What you wrote made me think twice. However, my question is, are there any universities that would offer you a degree in one year? Genuinely speaking.”

Well, I suppose it’s good that I helped him think twice about getting a fake degree but is he really serious? Does he really think there are REAL universities that award degrees in a year? In case you’re in doubt, there aren’t. You can’t get a genuine degree that quickly, you really can’t. You certainly can’t over the internet. You most certainly can’t just by handing over a chunk of cash.

Then there was the other question we had. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence but just after we’d done a radio show on pseudoscience we were contacted by someone about one of the “health” devices that had been mentioned on the show.

This was the QXCI machine, otherwise known as EPFX or more recently the “SCIO”. This is a box of electronics about which some astonishing claims are made. The South African web site that is used to market this device claims that it:

“is an incredibly acurate (sic) biofeedback stress reduction system, combining the best of biofeedback, stress reduction, Rife machines, homeopathic medicine, bioresonance, electro-acupuncture, computer technology and quantum physics”

The web site explains how this device works. See if you can understand any of this tripe. Apparently it’s “multi-layer faclity enables dysfunction unravelling”. It is also “Equivalent to radonic operation”. Best of all it explains that “Most computers are binary: 1 or 0. Quantum software is trinary - basis for artificial intelligence”.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering what QXCI means, let me tell you. It stands for “Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface”. Here’s your free consumer tip for the week. Anyone who uses the word “quantum” when they are trying to sell you something is a fraud or a fool. Or both.

I could go on giving you examples of this hogwash but I think you’ve probably heard enough. This nonsense was written by someone who knows nothing about anything. They’re just using a jumble of meaningless words they’ve seen somewhere that sound good. I think you can get a feel for how respectable these people are elsewhere on the site. They offer a variety of workshops on alternative health including some based on the work of Hulda Clarke. “Dr” Clarke was famous for her bizarre, dangerous and frankly stupid theories about disease. She maintained that every single disease was caused by a combination of parasites and pollutants. She claimed that her remedies could cure cancer, diabetes and AIDS. Clarke (who died earlier this year) was a quack and a charlatan with a range of fake degrees. Anyone who offers services based on her theories is another fool or fraud.

To expand my understanding a little further I phoned the people in South Africa to ask about their SCIO device. They did indeed claim that it could cure “any disease”. They also told me that anyone can use it because when you buy the device you get a training package built in. So how much does this silly machine cost? R200,000.

So in answer to the question we received, no, we don’t think you should waste your money on this silly machine. Here’s one final reason why you shouldn’t. The US Food and Drug Administration have imposed a ban on importing the device into the USA. In an interview with the Seattle Times a spokesman for the FDA said:

“This is pure, blatant fraud. The claims are baloney. These people prey in many cases on consumers who are desperate in seeking cures for very serious diseases.”

Amusingly the inventor of the machine, the self-proclaimed “Professor” Bill Nelson (who also performs as a tranvestite singer under the name Desiré Dubounet) is now on the run in Hungary, a fugitive from US justice, on the run from fraud charges.

Do you really want to use a device that is based on fraud and baloney and was invented by a man who calls himself Desiré?

This week’s stars

Colin in the butchery at Spar at Kgale Shopping Centre for being charming, helpful and friendly.
The team at Incredible Connection for responding to a problem with professionalism and style and ending up with another very happy customer.

Fortune tellers are criminals - Botswana Guardian

2009-09-24T20:59:00.002+02:00

There are times when I love the law. Not the boring bits, I mean the bits that actually outlaw something that deserves to be outlawed. I also particularly love the fact that our laws are generally so well written. They are clear, simple and easy to understand. Let me give you an example.

Section 313 of the Penal Code is entitled "Pretending to tell fortunes". It says this:

"Any person who for gain or reward undertakes to tell fortunes, or pretends from his skill or knowledge in any occult science to discover where or in what manner anything supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found, is guilty of an offence."

Isn't that simple? Fortune tellers are criminals. The charlatans who offer to "bring back stolen goods" (that was from an advertisement last week) are crooks. It's not me saying it, it's the law. One part of that section that appealed to me is the wording it uses. Look back to where it says "undertakes to tell fortunes" and "pretends". The law is smart enough to realise that it's all hogwash. Pretending to offer any of these things is illegal because they're all make-believe. The law sees it as lying, not "occult science" or "witchcraft".

Then there are the charlatans that say they can help with things such as "fertility", "madness" and (my favourite from last week) "don't let your lover to run away coz of manhood problems". They're crooks as well. Again it's not me saying that, it's that wonderful Penal Code again. Sections 396-399 outlaw what they call "prohibited advertisements". These are advertisements that offer medicines for a range of ailments, including:

"the cure of any habit associated with sexual indulgence, or of any ailment associated with those habits or for the promotion of sexual virility, desire or fertility or for the restoration or stimulation of the mental faculties"

The same sections prohibit advertisements for treatments for cancer, TB, epilepsy, heart disease, even hernia. Pharmacists should watch out as well, it doesn't distinguish between the charlatans and the real thing.

You might think that it’s all harmless, people don’t really believe this rubbish but think again. In the last couple of years I’ve come across two cases of people who died because of the concoctions they were given by these thugs.

My new resolution, even though it’s not the traditional time for making them, is to report every one of these criminal advertisements I see to the Police. So far I know of one that has been escorted to the border and kicked over it and hasn’t been allowed back again. Who’s next?

“How to read articles about health” – by Dr Alicia White

2009-09-16T17:34:00.003+02:00

From the ever excellent Dr Ben Goldacre's Bad Science site. How to read articles about health and healthcare

Homeopathy and science - Dara O'Brien

2009-09-16T17:29:00.004+02:00

Warning. Not safe for work unless you work for a particularly enlightened company. Lots of rude words but an excellent attack on pseudoscientific nonsense, homeopathy in particular.

Irritating "traditional doctors" - Botswana Guardian

2009-08-15T10:37:00.006+02:00

Yes, they're irritating but I've also been irritating them.

I responded to a number of advertisements from some of these so-called traditional doctors and have a mixture of responses. I SMSed them all saying "Your advertisement in this week's newspaper contravenes both the Penal Code and Consumer Protection Regulations."

A "Dr" Rasul very quickly phoned me and angrily demanded to know where I was. His considered opinion was that I am "a stupid person". He of course was the one who advertised that he was:

"The traditional doctor who will never disappoint you. Keeping unfinished jobs, do you want your loved ones back, looking for quick revenge, short boys for quick response, manhood, financial crisis, court cases, protection of properties eg, cattle posts and many more."

If Rasul is truly claiming that he can help me get revenge against someone then he's a criminal. If he claims he can influence the results of court cases then he's a criminal. Who exactly is the stupid one?

Later a "Dr" Gopole SMSed me. It went like this:

Gopole: Who r u?
Me: I'm from Consumer Watchdog.
Gopole: Cn u jst cm straight 2 a point wht do u want 2 say
Me: Are you really a doctor? Do you have a PhD or an MD? You use the title "Dr" in your advertisement.
Gopole: Yes both English Dr and Tra doctor i finsh my univesty 15 yrs ago mayb b4 u r stl a std grade in lagos i went 2 canada thn if u want tak me anywhr u want and i show u my degree s i knw wht u u dont knw i went morethan 40 countries bt africa and oversea do u knw who u playn with?
Gopole (again): Do u realy went 2 xool take ur dictionary and chk English Dr and Traditional Dr de meaning thn u continue askn me questions ur most welcm askng any question
Me: Is "do u knw who u playn with" a threat? Which university awarded you your doctorate?
Gopole: [nothing more from him]

I also had a call from a "Dr" Misisi who advertised the questionable services of a "Mama Yamaka". Her advertisement went like this:

"Mama Yamaka - A woman psychic. 40 years experience readings into: love, life, weight loss, relationships, drug and alcohol addictions, unfinished financial and business matters e.t.c. Quick and effective, lucky charms available."

Yet another set of illegal claims. The entire advertisement contravenes the Penal Code, the Consumer Protection Regulations, no doubt the Health Professionals Act and the Witchcraft Act as well.

In fact the entire profession shows contempt for the people of Botswana and our laws.

Simon Singh - Chiropractic

2009-08-01T13:25:00.003+02:00

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

You can see further discussion at Pharyngula, at Respectful Insolence or at Bad Science.

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal

Simon Singh
The Guardian, Original version published Saturday April 19 2008
Edited version published July 29, 2009

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

--
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

GenQuest - Multi Level Marketing comes to Botswana again

2009-07-06T07:34:00.004+02:00

A Malaysian called Goh Seng Hong is in Botswana trying to introduce us to GenQuest, a Multi-Level Marketing company. He's doing a presentation at the University of Botswana on 11th July.

Posted on the Facebook site for the event are videos relating to "energised water" whcih of course is pseudoscientific claptrap.

When I contacted the guy he was rather defensive, accused me of a range of sins, but eventually confessed that the product they are selling is the Bio Disc. This is a very good example of the sort of Energy Medicine nonsense that abounds these days.

However, the real product on sale is "network marketing". It's a pyramid-structured selling mechanism where the recruits are promised wealth and happiness by recruiting other people into the scheme beneath them, each level making money from the levels below. Very few people make money from network marketing other than those at the very top.

Steer clear!

"Dr" Jabu - an update

2009-06-06T12:36:00.001+02:00

Action has been taken!

Self improvement

2009-05-30T18:38:00.002+02:00

Courtesy of Pharyngula

Warning traditional healers - 3rd response

2009-05-29T23:25:00.002+02:00

Can anyone translate this?

Ubwere mawa ndizakupase mankhwala okulisa mbolo ,chifukwa mbolo yako ndaona pa kalabashi kuti ndiyaying'ono komanso uzatenge mankhwala okuti machendee akowo asamachuluke mzeru . Ndee palinso ochilisa matenda amene ulinawowo a Aids zonsenzo kuchitunda kwake kuno Dr zatha . Poti ndiiwe kapolo wakapolo tidzakupanga ulele .galu osajandula iwe pankholo pamako ndi abambo ,pammmtuzuuu pako galu ,wagalu ukhalila yomweyo yamnsanjeyo .pachimmmtumbopako,kuthako konunkhako .

Warning traditional healers - 2nd response

2009-05-29T23:21:00.002+02:00

I get an SMS which says:

Thank u for let me know that there is a law who bar me not to advertise in the news paper,so how am i going to advertise to the people that am a healer sir\modam?

I responded by saying:

You are free to advertise but you can't mention medicines, treatments or any medical conditions. You cannot make any offers or promises you can't substantiate.

He replied, saying:

Thank u

Thanks accepted.

Warning traditional healers - 1st response

2009-05-29T23:16:00.002+02:00

A "Dr" Masunga called in response to the SMS. He says he's qualified as a doctor of medicine from Malawi, he's been practising here in Botswana since 1999 and didn't know that advertising his services was prohibited. He's says he'll call me back to discuss this further...

Warning traditional healers

2009-05-29T23:13:00.002+02:00

I SMSed a range of "traditional healers" who had advertised in local newspapers. I said:

Warning! Your advertisement in the newspaper contravenes Section 397 of the Penal Code and Section 15 of the Consumer Protection Regulations. Consumer Watchdog.

Their replies will be published!

Lying to lying healers - Botswana Guardian

2009-05-26T11:59:00.001+02:00

It wasn’t just me lying to them, it was them lying to me.

A confession. I emailed a certain “Dr” Jabu who recently advertised his treatments for a range of serious medical conditions including AIDS. I pretended to have AIDS and asked for his assistance.

OK, so I lied, but I forgive myself.

His 900 word response was so disconnected from reality that I don’t know where to begin.

Let’s start with the simple things. His email said “we have treatment for Kaposis, PCP and HIV/AIDS”. As you may know Kaposi’s sarcoma is a type of skin cancer often experienced by people with AIDS, who also often suffer from PCP, a horrible form of pneumonia. But note how he made it clear that he has a treatment for AIDS. No, he does not. He’s lying.

I’m not going to quote everything this crook said but here’s one excerpt to give you a flavour of his brand of nonsense:

“Consider your body as a fort-a castle- with seven gates- which are Endocrine Glands.
Blood and saliva are the pipelines. The HIV infection is an-un-known enemy which gets into the blood stream and damage the supply line of nutrition and the central power house-meaning the BRAIN. By that time, the enemy is discovered, damage is too much but not beyond the Cure.”

This nonsense goes on for another 800 words. I’ve put the entire letter on the web site below if you have the patience to work through it. At various points he suggests that antibiotics given to people with AIDS are the things that do the damage, not the various infections that anyone with an impaired immune system will suffer. He states that the best solutions are herbal remedies, acupressure, detoxification, yoga, chromotherapy and most worrying of all, “green juice”.

Everyone who’s seen Jabu’s email, including myself, has gone through the same sequence of reactions. First shock, then horror, then confusion and finally they start laughing. The danger is that none of this is actually funny. We should be horrified by people spouting this claptrap, we shouldn’t be laughing.

I don’t know whether Jabu truly believes all the rubbish he says, in which case he’s deluded, ignorant and stupid, or whether he knows that it’s gibberish in which case he’s a dangerous criminal who presents “a clear and present danger” to our nation. Either way he can’t be ignored. If only one person falls for this crap, stops taking their ARVs and suffers then Jabu has their blood on his hands.

HIV/AIDS is far too serious an issue to fool around with. Lives are at stake, the lives of our families, friends and neighbours.

Jabu and all the other peddlers of lies must be stopped. Preferably he should be stopped by the authorities but there’s little chance of that. Instead it’s up to us to run the homicidal crook out of town.

A cure for AIDS from "Dr" Jabu

2009-05-26T11:55:00.003+02:00

The email I provoked from the so-called "Dr" Jabu, who is a crook, a liar and a fraud. Or he might just be a lunatic.

-----

Many thanks for your e-mail and am sorry for not reponding sooner, its just because of busy.

The Answer for your question is: We have treatment for Kaposi's, PCP and HIV/AIDS which's only guaranteed for the persons between the age of 10yrs and below.

You may wonder when i say that HIV/AIDS can be curable... Here am taking an opportunity to show you how can this happen: please read with care.

Consider your body as a fort-a castle- with seven gates- which are Endocrine Glands. Blood and saliva are the pipelines.

The HIV infection is an-un-known enemy which gets into the blood stream and damage the supply line of nutrition and the central power house-meaning the BRAIN.

By that time, the enemy is discovered, damage is too much but not beyond the Cure. At this stage, under the popular treatment of Anti-biotics and other drugs made inside the effort. Mean-while, They are fires, ulcers in the stomach, mouth, etc. and even the piplines will be damaged which may lead to a serrious depletion on nutrition supply. Consequently, the immune system of the body's already weakened. A vicious cycle starts.

The first Gate to be damaged will be Thyroid and Parathyroid. ( leadind to the depletion of calcium supply).
The second will be Sex glands if the disease was obtained from sex abuse. ( leading to affection of phosphorus supply).
The third Gate is Lymph glands due to overworking during the fight against HIV and to remove excessive dead cells which die every day.

Remeber that, the immune system is already weak but the vicious cycle continues with strong anti-biotics/drugs which's only increasing the damages inside the fort. Now, more and more organs are damaged and setting in more infectious diseases steadily, the other gates become weaker, the internall immune system stops functioning.

Scientfically, it's known that if the internal force is reduced, then the out side force have to crush. Now. as the important pipelines are damaged, some people get PCP and others Kaposi's Sarcom. And so, we devide patients into two categories: 1, HIV due to sex abuse: the serrious damage will be on Thyroid and Para thyroioid, Sex glands and some times, Adrenal gland, Lymph glands and may be the liver.

However, these patients do not change their life style when the drugs are already blindly administered which may result to the excessive heat in the body, ulcers and more damages to the liver., reducing its capacity to create more biles so that they fight acidity and bacteria., the vicious cycle's also busy developing.
My dear, with extra power antibiotics and drugs, more infectious diseases increanse in the body, within two years or less, a person will be HIV/AIDS.

SECOND CATEGORY:
AIDS: due to HIV infection which's the result of sex abuses or blood transfusion:
Here it takes 3 to 12 years.

Now, because the immune system is already weak, Thyroid and Paratyroid is affected and lead to calcium deficiency and iodine in the body. hope you also know very well that all the endocrine glands are inter-connected. So now, the next damage will be on Gonads which controls the digestion of the phosphorus., then this will lead to the reduction of the internal-heat., by that time a patient experincing a problem with lack of apetite which in turn leads to the creation of massive water in the body.- This is when a patient start suffering from colds and sinus. And so Anti-biotics/drugs will be advised which may result in more production of H+ after the liver's also damaged and led to Candidiasis.

The mouth and oesophagus as the most common sites in these patients,here, you will find ulcers in the mouth and rectum which may go all the way to disseminated herpes or complex virus infection ( CVI ).

There's time, the body try to remove excessive heat by creating loose motions which is known as chronic cryptosporidiosis/an intestinal infection due to improper suplementation of nutrition. After sometimes, Adrenal gland gets more damages and lead to improper oxygenisation in the body. While Colds and Sinus creating cyto megalo virus ( CMV )/an infection in the lungs.

After the lungs are affected, there's improper supply of prified blood to the brain which can lead to a serrious damage on the pineal gland and create the disease called Cryptococcosis/ a fungual infection attacking the lungs: usually spreads to the brain and cause Meningitis.

Another disease called Taxoplasmosis which may occur after the Pituitary gland is damaged, this is the time a patient start having proplems with eyes.

Get informed that, unwise use of powerful drugs such as steriods, anti-biotics, works only to guide a HIV patient to become a victim of AIDS.

The AIDS experts worlwide have shown that the Science of Nature/Alternative Medicines have been found effective.

In This Science of Nature:
1, Endocrine glands are understood better and can only get activated by the acupressure .
2, The immune system can be boosted by the herbal remedies.
3, The blood can be purified and eosinophilia can be removed by the green juice/herbal remedies.
4, Excessive heat in the body can be removed through detoxofication programs.
5, Other organs can be activated by chromo therapy, yoga, etc.

I thank u very much for intrest in researching about a world's dillema and hope you'll understand and help others in looking for recovery but not challenging those who can help because of money!

Regards:
Dr.Jabu.
With God, every body can survive!

Science & religion - Botswana Guardian

2009-03-19T18:28:00.001+02:00

My recent letter celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and 150th anniversary the publication of his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest.

A couple of people have written in subsequently attempting, rather feebly, to argue against the wealth of evidence that supports Darwin’s breakthrough in our understanding of our origins. They have come up with the usual rubbish that Darwin was a racist and that his theory has turned out not to be 100% correct.

On the charge of racism I must point out that Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery and committed to, what was in those times, a radical philosophy based on the essential equality of all people, regardless of “race”. One key implication of his theory that we are all descended from a common ancestry is that regardless of our superficial differences we are all fundamentally the same, beneath the skin. His language may have been “of his time” but his sentiments were definitely not.

Of course his theories weren't perfectly correct. He wasn’t 100% correct but neither were Newton, Einstein or indeed any other scientist. Darwin existed long before we really began to understand genetics so he can't really be blamed for not grasping what we now know. Neither can Newton be blamed for not foreseeing Einstein's discoveries centuries before they emerged.

All a scientist can hope to do is to take us one step further towards understanding the universe a little better. Darwin was visionary enough to do this.

I think it's a bit hypocritical for religious zealots to criticise science and progress using nothing more than ancient scriptures and legends. I don’t think Darwin should be criticised by people who can only find answers in ancient superstitious texts that, amongst other things, support slavery, sacrificing children and smiting infidels and heretics.

Stephen Jay Gould, the paleontologist and biologist, stated that science and religion are “non-overlapping magisteria”. He means that the two are so separate that they can’t really be argued together. One is based on logic, reason and evidence, the other is based on legend, superstition and assumption. They are like oil and water and can’t be mixed. I actually disagree, I think that many of the claims of religion CAN be tested. We can test, for instance, the effect of prayer to see if people who are prayed for get better more quickly than those who aren’t (they don’t by the way).

However I do sometimes think that certain arguments between science and religion are a waste of time. Logic conflicts with illogic. Reason fundamentally conflicts with superstition. One actively seeks facts, the other seems often to be devoted to fiction.

And you think fish are dull?

2009-02-24T19:22:00.005+02:00

THIS is an example of why I think science and nature are thrilling, magnificent and awesome (all three terms to be taken literally).

Yes, this fish really DOES have a transparent head.

Click here for PZ Myers, blogging at Pharyngula, who is (tragically for me) much more eloquent and informed than I can ever hope to be.

2009-02-14T19:15:00.001+02:00

See, there IS hope...

Darwin Day - Botswana Guardian

2009-02-09T08:15:00.001+02:00

Thursday 12th February 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and this year is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s great work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

This is surely something to celebrate.

Very few scientists or thinkers have been able to revolutionise the way we think about our origins, our planet and our future. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin are probably the two that have had the greatest impact of them all. Each of them changed our entire world-view and what’s more, each of them has repeatedly been proved largely correct. The nature of science is itself evolutionary, theories are slowly adjusted, corrected and redirected but both Einstein and Darwin have been shown to be fundamentally correct.

Darwin’s discovery of natural selection as an explanation for our origins was truly remarkable. It explained, as some had already thought, that superstition was no longer needed to explain our origins. Darwin’s alternative explanation was based on the observation that each generation varies slightly from it’s parents and the one best suited to it’s environment will be the one most likely to pass on it’s genes to it’s children. Over many generations the species will adapt slightly to become more suited to it’s environment. Nature, not a mystical being, selects who will pass on their genes. It’s elegant, scientific and, above all, demonstrably true.

Despite what some religious groups maintain, nobody has been able to disprove the theory. The evidence is there in the fossil record, showing an enormous picture of gradual change over the millions of years life has existed on Earth. Huge numbers of so-called “transitional fossils” have been found, showing the forms of life that occurred between other forms, bridging the gaps between the two.

Evidence for evolution can be seen around us. Our bodes are so obviously similar to other creatures, our DNA is so closely related to our ape cousins, even some of the ways we behave demonstrate our origins.

Evolution can even be seen around us. Tragically HIV is one of the best examples of an evolving organism. HIV has evolved in the years we’ve know of it’s existence. We all know about growing antibiotic resistance, the difficulty in fighting TB and malaria, all of those are examples of evolution in action. Why are we so special that it hasn’t happened to us as well? It takes us perhaps 20-30 years before we reproduce whereas bacteria do it in minutes. It’s no surprise that it’s not obvious to the naked eye how humans evolve.

Unfortunately poor Darwin had his memory tarnished by a series of liars following his death. Despite what you night hear, Darwin didn’t convert to religion on his deathbed, he didn’t say an eye couldn’t emerge by natural selection and he didn’t change his mind about evolution at any point. All those stories were made up by liars who weren’t prepared to accept the evidence.

As has been said before, “Darwin took us to a hilltop from which we could look back and see the way we came.” His discovery improved humanity enormously. We should celebrate Darwin and everything he did for us. Happy Birthday Charles.

2009-02-07T18:41:00.001+02:00

A very funny video clip from the Australian "Today Tonight" show on Scientology including the legendary L Ron Hubbard's own voice describing the alien nonsense.

Watch and enjoy!

Speaking ill of the dead

2009-01-25T18:36:00.001+02:00

On 26th December last year, a 52-year old American woman called Christine Maggiore died. The world is a better place without her.

Isn’t that an appalling thing to say? Shouldn’t one only speak well of the dead? Not necessarily. Should we only say good things about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Idi Amin because they’re dead? No, I think it’s OK to say that we’re glad when someone wicked stops disturbing the world with their foul deeds.

Christine Maggiore was wicked too. Maggiore was an AIDS denialist. Who died of AIDS.

She was HIV positive but instead of campaigning for better treatment, greater research and for public education she founded a deranged group of pseudoscientific charlatans called “Alive & Well” who denied the connection between HIV and AIDS, suggested that the she was still alive because HIV did NOT cause AIDS and that anti-retroviral drugs were of no value.

So far all we have is a fool, but Maggiore went much, much further.

Despite knowing her HIV status and despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers she refused to take the appropriate medication while pregnant and then later decided to breast-feed her children.

When she was only 3 years old her daughter Eliza died of pneumonia, almost certainly brought about by AIDS. Still insisting that she was right she claimed that her daughter instead died from a reaction to an antibiotic. The autopsy disagreed. It showed that Eliza had AIDS encephalitis and PCP, the variety of pneumonia most associated with AIDS. In short it showed that her mother had killed her with neglect.

Sometimes people ask where the harm in so-called “alternative medicine” and denialism can be found. They think it’s just a few harmless homeopathic remedies bought by the gullible. They think that a few herbs here or there never did anybody any harm. Well, in most cases that’s perfectly true. Nobody ever died from taking a homeopathic remedy, simply because they don’t contain any remedies, they’re just water. Few people will come to any harm from taking some herbs sold by a quack.

However, every so often someone will take one of these remedies instead of something that works. Every so often someone will fall for the denialist claptrap we see and stop taking their real medication, the one that works. Then they pay the price, or worse still their children pay it for them.

I confess that in a very cruel moment I was glad that Christine Maggiore survived long enough to see what she’d done to her daughter but then I calmed down. Nobody should have to see that, it’s beyond understanding how terrible that must be.

But it WAS her fault. Science, medicine and rationalism could have saved Eliza’s life but they were all rejected in favour of stupidity, pseudoscience and denialism. There’s the harm.

New Year Sense?

2009-01-12T14:03:00.002+02:00

I wonder if it’s too much to hope that 2009 will be a year characterised by rationalism? Is it too much to ask that we start the year committing ourselves, as individuals, as families and as a nation to being realistic, thoughtful and rational?

Sometimes I think it IS too much to hope but I’m an optimist.

I hope that this year we can put the so-called alternative, or complementary medical community in it’s place. I hope we can see that there’s no such thing as “conventional medicine” or “alternative medicine”. There is only medicine that works and that which doesn’t. There are drugs that help you recover from illnesses are those that don’t. It doesn’t matter whether they came from a test tube or tree bark. Some have been shown, by experiment, by research, by science to work and others have not. It really IS that simple.

I hope we can put behind us the whole “detox” nonsense. A study by a UK group called Sense about Science published just after Christmas showed that almost all the so-called detox products on the market in the UK (and they’re available in Botswana as well) made ludicrous claims that were totally unsupported by the facts. The group also state that the suppliers of these silly products “were forced to admit that they are renaming mundane things, like cleaning or brushing, as ‘detox’”.

None of us need to “detox”, it’s just a made up term used to push pseudoscience and, more importantly, to sell us useless products. The secret the detox industry don’t want you and me to know is that we all already have nature’s greatest detoxifier. It’s called a liver. All it needs is clean water and a fairly healthy diet and it will clean out the toxins for you. For free.

Maybe this year we can also ignore all the silly conspiracy theories about medicine. The conspiracy theories that lead to illness, misery and death. AIDS is not a conspiracy by the CIA or aliens. Vaccinations are a truly wonderful way to protect children and adults from illness and are not another conspiracy to enslave the poor. The medical profession aren’t evil oppressors doing their best to keep us in bondage.

We should remember our local example of what modern medicine can do. Our PMTCT program reduced the proportion of babies born with HIV to HIV positive mothers from 40% to 4%. It was modern medicine that did that, not superstition, denial or a conspiracy.

Perhaps this year we can also do away with the more revolting aspects of corrupt religion. Maybe we can all see that a preacher to whom you give money who then drives a hugely expensive car and lives in a dream home is almost certainly a liar, a thief and a crook. Maybe we can see that a significant number of religious leaders, particularly those in the American TV evangelist mould, are just in it for the cash. They really do see their flock as sheep: stupid, woolly-headed and ready for slaughter.

Is it too much to ask that we can all be a little bit more skeptical in 2009? That we can use our heads before we give away our money, our health and our beliefs? I hope so.

Christopher Hitchens on Sarah Palin

2008-10-28T07:31:00.002+02:00

An excellent, scathing piece by Hitchens on Sarah Palin and her appalling scientific (and ethical) philistinism.

My Body Talks

2008-10-24T08:01:00.002+02:00

It seems that I’ve irritated the BodyTalk community. Last week two supporters of this rubbish wrote to criticise my description of BodyTalk as “pseudoscience”.

They claim in their letter that BodyTalk is based on Quantum Physics. They said “Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating.” To their credit one of them had the honesty to say that “I am not a physicist so do not think I am qualified to go into the nitty-gritty of what this is all about.”

Never has a truer word been written.

I’m afraid that their letter shows that they indeed know precisely nothing about physics and, if it were possible, even less about quantum physics.

For the record physicists discovered nothing of the sort. Quantum physics is simply a model of reality at a truly miniscule level. It describes the way in which particles and energy at the smallest possible levels behave and it had a remarkable impact on our understanding of the way the universe works. Without wishing to sound even more pompous and patronising than usual, unlike Ms Gilbert and Ms Cadfan-Lewis, I do know a little bit about the subject. However, like them I can’t claim to be a specialist but I do know what the theory is and, more importantly, what the theory is not.

One thing that is true about quantum physics is that because it’s quite difficult to understand it’s very often used by woo-woo, New Age, alternative, mantra-chanting, crystal-waving, alien-abducted, energy-medicine groupies to support the latest health fad they’ve heard about, or invented to scam the naïve. Saying that your new energy treatment is based on quantum physics may persuade the gullible but that doesn’t make it real. In fact it’s usually a warning of impending nonsense.

They make some claims about the miraculous effects of their silly technique. Apparently an occupational therapist in Hamburg could revive coma patients using this magic. In South Africa another was apparently able to improve the physical appearance of a child with Down’s Syndrome. However, and very strangely, they neglected to tell us when or in which hospitals these miracles occurred. They neglected to say which real medical journals published these astonishing findings. They neglected to tell us when the medical world started exploiting these findings to help humanity and when when the wicked pharmaceutical industry started making lots of money from it.

I wonder whether this is because these miracles simply didn’t happen. I suspect that this is just more fakery designed to give credibility to an incredible idea. As Carl Sagan famously said, “incredible claims require incredible evidence”. The BodyTalkers offer us the claims but don’t deliver the evidence.

So is BodyTalk a pseudoscience? Well, it’s not based on those old-fashioned but useful scientific ideas of plausibility, double-blinded experiments, peer review and not being silly. But it’s dressed up using clever-sounding scientific terms. Pseudo means “false”. It IS a pseudoscience.

One last thing. Isn’t it curious how they didn’t deny my report that BodyTalk involves pressing on a so-called “energy point”, lightly tapping the top of the head to “stimulate the brain center” and then “tapping the patient’s sternum to announce the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body”. Maybe they didn’t want people to read that bit again. Perhaps because it’s embarrassing and deeply silly? Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it again.

It’s in the stars?

2008-10-14T10:15:00.012+02:00

I've been naughty again. In fact I told a lie. I deliberately told someone something that I knew to be untrue.

I've been lying to astrologers.

Last week I was surfing the web when I saw a link that offered a free personal horoscope. Now of course I know that astrology is nonsense. It’s based on rubbish and produces nothing but rubbish.

However, just as an experiment, and as it was free, I thought I would see what happened. Off I went to the web site of an astrologer called Jenna who claims to be a Professional Astrologer, Psychic-Born, a Tarot Card Reader and a Numerologist.

Her web site asks for just your first name, email address, date of birth, sex, whether you’re happily married and if you’re employed. That’s all she needs.

A couple of hours later I got an email from “Jenna” saying she was working hard on my horoscope and that I should expect it within a couple of days. Two days later it arrived.

So how did I lie? Where was my wicked deception? My guilty secret is that I did this twice. The first time I gave Jenna’s web site my correct personal details and the second time I lied about everything. I changed sex, cut 10 years off my age and changed my birthday completely as well as my marital and employment status.

And how did the results compare? Both were about 2,500 words long and were virtually identical. The clever thing about this web site is that the “readings” I was given weren’t exactly the same. The sentence order was different but the message was exactly the same. Both said that I was going to live through “an event of great astrological importance”, that I was soon to be “in a rare astrological Transit which will not occur again in your skies before a very long time” and that if I “do not act in a very decisive manner concerning this period then it is extremely likely that all of these important opportunities will simply pass you by”.

[You can see one "reading" here and the other here.]

Of course this is the usual self-fulfilling claptrap you get from astrologers. Vague predictions about opportunities, challenges and life-changing events. Isn’t it curious how not a single astrologer specifically predicted 9/11, any earthquake or my cat dying last week?

What do I, sorry both of me, need to do to take this “decisive action”? That’s simple. All I have to do is give Jenna US$60 and she’ll give me a complete analysis. This, of course, is what the whole thing is about. You get a free teaser and then have to cough up real money if you have taken the bait.

Let’s be frank about this nonsense. First of all Jenna isn’t human, she’s a computer. The wonderful thing about the internet is that once they’ve been set up computers can perform many mindless things without any human intervention. Use sites like Amazon and eBay and you’ll have virtually no contact with any real people. Jenna’s site is the same. You give it some details and it assembles some standard sentences in semi-random order and emails them to you. It then sends the many later emails to encourage you to part with your cash.

The only difference between human astrologers and computerised ones is the efficiency with which they try and deceive you. Astrology is silly at best, abusive at worst.

Center for Inquiry

2008-09-21T10:38:00.000+02:00

Talk to your body? - Botswana Guardian

2008-09-08T13:59:00.006+02:00

There’s been yet another outbreak of pseudoscience in Botswana. Sorry, I should correct that. This example isn’t even worthy of the term “pseudoscience”. Judge for yourself.

I recently received an email inviting me to “Botswana’s first BodyTalk Day”. According to the invitation this is “a revolutionary new approach to healing that has become the language of health in over 30 countries”. Wow. Notice how that claim actually means precisely nothing? It doesn’t say that millions of people are using it and it cures diabetes, AIDS and asthma. No. it’s just become the “language of health”.

The invitation goes on to say that BodyTalk “utilises state-of-the-art energy medicine to optimise the body’s internal communications”. Again, a statement that means precisely nothing. Note the use of terms like “state of the art”, “energy medicine” and “optimise”. All very vague don’t you think?

So off I went to the internet to do some Googling. One of the first web sites I found described in detail how BodyTalk works.

After a series of paragraphs explaining how our bodies are full of energy circuits, how the atoms we consist of are talking to one another and how we need to be resynchronised it explains what actually happens when you get yourself BodyTalked.

I hope you’re sitting down. Trust me, I’m not making this up. This is exactly what it says.

For every malfunctioning energy circuit found, the practitioner or client contacts the corresponding “points” with his or her hands. The practitioner then lightly taps the client on the top of the head, which stimulates the brain center and causes the brain to re-evaluate the state of the body’s health.”

“The practitioner then taps the client on the sternum to “announce” the corrected energy flows to the rest of the body.

So let me get this straight. This “practitioner” who is presumably either deluded, deranged or depraved gets to touch you, pat you on the head and then tickle your tummy and you’re cured?

I’m tempted to suggest a modified version of BodyTalk. I think I’ll call it BodyThump. Come to me with your health problems, I’ll stroke whichever part of you looks appealing, perhaps for quite a long time if it’s VERY cute, smack you on the back of your head, punch you in the stomach and charge you P500.

So you think I’m joking? Well, I am, but so are BodyTalk, surely? Do they really expect us to take them seriously when they are talking such palpable gibberish?

Of course there is no science behind BodyTalk or any of the other ludicrous so-called alternative therapies that abound. There’s no real evidence that they do anything because they simply DON’T do anything. OK, forgive me, they do so something. In fact they do two things. Firstly they allow the placebo effect to demonstrate itself. That’s the effect you often see in medicine where simply doing something, even it’s just giving a sugar pill, has a slight effect. It’s to do with positive thinking, optimism and taking a bit more care of yourself. The second thing it does is to help you lose weight. From your wallet.

The demons of televangelism - Botswana Guardian

2008-08-15T13:36:00.001+02:00

There’s an advertisement going around for a forthcoming “Leadership Life Development Convention”. This is being run by Bible Life Ministries, a local evangelical church and will be attended by “Bishop Dr” I.V. Hilliard. This gentleman is shown in the advertisement looking very serious as he rests his theological chin on his no-doubt very spiritual fingers.

My problem is that the so-called Dr Hilliard appears to break Harriman’s 1st Law of Evaluating Preachers. This says that you shouldn’t trust a preacher who drives a better car than you do or, in this case, a preacher who wears a more expensive watch than you do.

He also breaks Harriman’s Law of Doctorates. Anyone who claims to have a doctorate when in fact they bought it from a diploma mill is a fraud. Both Hilliard and his charming wife Bridgett have honorary doctorates from Friends International University. Not even the normal dodgy degrees purchased over the internet after submitting an essay, these guys got honorary degrees, presumably after dropping some cash?

I’ll put aside my personal beliefs for a while and will willingly acknowledge that certain religious groups do provide a real sense of community to their members, they provide moral guidance and a vision of hope. Frankly I don’t believe a word of it but each to his own I suppose.

My objection is to the flagrant abuse that televangelists get up to. Hilliard and his fellow ministers like Joyce Meyer (who also has a doctorate from an unaccredited university) and Benny Hinn, who is simply stealing money from his victims, are exploiting the gullible, the naïve and the sick. Benny Hinn is my “favourite” in that I find him particularly repulsive. A series of undercover operations have exposed the way in which his teams filter out the really sick from his televised miracle healing. His financial operations are notoriously secretive although he has recently been under very close review by the US Senate Finance Committee who wonder where all the money goes that he gets from his unsuspecting and hugely credulous viewers. His public appeal for donations towards his new $36 million personal private jet just seems to summarise his approach.

In my very brief research on Fake-Dr Hilliard I found an online invitation to his wife’s 50th birthday party in 2006. OK, you might think, how sweet of him to invite people to celebrate his beautiful wife’s birthday! But not so. Firstly you had to pay him $100 to attend and then you’re asked to bring her a present. There was even a list of gift ideas that included “Monetary gifts. Designer handbags: Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton. Gift Certificates: Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Escada”.

I confess I don’t know what half of those things are but the first one is just so blatant that it deserves repeating. “Monetary gifts”.

Roughly translated this means. “Pay me $100 to attend my wife’s no doubt spectacularly vulgar birthday party and bring along some cash to give her.”

As George Carlin once said about the typical evangelist’s message from God: “He loves you, and He needs money!”

This seems to be the basic message we get from the televangelists. The solution to the problems we face, whether it’s perceived family breakdown, HIV/AIDS, crime or old-fashioned social isolation, is to listen, switch off your critical faculties and to hand over the cash.

Good news from South Africa

2008-06-17T10:00:00.005+02:00

Excellent news from South Africa (for a change).

See http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN351191.html
and http://www.tac.org.za/community/node/2348

The loathsome Matthias Rath and his colleague David Rasnick have been banned from conducting their ridicuous trials of vitamins on HIV positive patients and from advertising their worthless products. Instead perhaps the people of South Africa can gain access to the ARVs they so desperately need and deserve?

Curse update...

2008-06-13T08:48:00.004+02:00

In the article below I challenged the amazing Lord Jaffa to curse me:

Give it your best, see if you can have some noticeable effect on me. Don’t try to bring about something generic like bad luck or a difficult week or killing me, make it something obvious and unlikely to happen by chance. Make me go bald. Turn my skin blue. Make all the flowers in my garden die overnight. If you have just a fraction of the powers you claim then any of those will be easy.

Bad news. I still have my hair, nothing's blue and my flowers are thriving!

Curse me if you dare - Botswana Guardian

2008-06-06T08:30:00.003+02:00

Readers of local newspapers will perhaps have come across a strange advertisement from the so-called Lord Jaffa. His ad offers a range of paranormal services that can help us with our problems and he claims “no problem too big”. He offers “genuine talisman” (shouldn’t that be talismen?), occult books and can tell our fortunes. He can also teach us yoga, astral projection and “mystic science”. Wow, impressive, don’t you think?

For now I’m going to ignore the fact that fortune telling is ILLEGAL in Botswana. Someone else can tell him that.

Usually I think of all these psychic frauds as being rather old-fashioned and out of date but this guy has ventured into the information age and has his own web site and fascinating it is too. Take a look for yourself at www.lordjaffa.com. Go on, take a look and see if you can keep a straight face.

The web site explains how well-travelled and educated this crook is and his various memberships of august professional bodies such as the Associate Union of Mystics, the Universal School of Mysticism and the Illuminated Path Society. That last one isn’t very impressive, I’ve got one of those in my garden.

My reaction was a mixture of things. First was genuine amusement. How have I lived without his “Witchcraft Expeller Bath Mixture”, “Pow-Wow, Long Lust Good Luck Medicine” or his “Peaceful Home Oil” which offers protection from “Robbers and buglers”?

Then I got angry. Really very angry. Fuming, smoke coming out of the ears, swearing angry. This charlatan, this fraud, this crook offers a whole page of remedies to real medical problems. For R350 you get a cure for measles. For R500 you get his remedy for hypertension. For another R500 you get a malaria cure. For R550 you get “Kali Seeds” which apparently are “for treatment of cancer and prevention of cancer spread”. Near the end of the list is the scandalous, outrageous, criminal offer of a R750 treatment for AIDS.

I’ve said this before but if just one person stops taking their real medicine because of this man’s ridiculous products then he will have blood on his hands.

So I invite him to do two things. Firstly, Mr Jaffa, if you have genuinely scientific evidence that your products work, you think it is legal to market them in Botswana and you think that my comments are unreasonable then sue me for defamation. The Guardian will give you my contact details.

Secondly, if you really have the powers you claim then curse me. Give it your best, see if you can have some noticeable effect on me. Don’t try to bring about something generic like bad luck or a difficult week or killing me, make it something obvious and unlikely to happen by chance. Make me go bald. Turn my skin blue. Make all the flowers in my garden die overnight. If you have just a fraction of the powers you claim then any of those will be easy.

Of course if you can’t, we can just assume that you are what we all think you are.

Simple or true? - Botswana Guardian

2008-05-30T16:03:00.002+02:00

There’s a big difference between an idea that is simple and one that can be expressed simply. Although scientists often describe a theory as “elegant” that doesn’t always mean that it’s easy to understand. Famously Richard Feynman said of quantum theory that if you think you understand it, then you clearly don’t understand it.

The trouble is that people often fall victim to theories and ideas that are just simple and no more. Theories that sound truly simple but are simply untrue.

The principle behind homeopathy for instance can be expressed very simply. A disorder can be treated with a tiny dose of the thing that caused it. Acupuncture can be “explained” by saying that it promotes the free flow of “chi” around your body to enhance your energy balance. Reflexology says that there are pathways between the soles of your feet and every organ of your body. Fiddling with your feet can therefore heal those other parts that are ill. All of these ideas can be expressed very simply, in no more than a sentence or two.

But simplicity is not the same as truth.

Every genuinely scientific study of homeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology shows that they are nonsense. They do nothing real. Any improvement can be traced back to the placebo effect.

If you want a real understanding of how health can be promoted and illness overcome then you have to do more than just come out with ignorant platitudes, you need to do some thinking. Real thinking. With your brain.

Real thought, real science and real knowledge are the sworn enemies of superstition, magical thinking and all the New Age lunacy that we see around us. They are also the enemies of prejudice in whatever form it shows it’s ugly face.

In a letter I wrote recently to the Guardian I mentioned that I resented being accused of being like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the nasty, bigoted and profoundly racist hate group in the USA. This accusation was made because I had stood up for science, medicine and rationalism. During this letter I mentioned in passing that I was the “father of a Jewish son”.

Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic behind the comment in Bugalo Chilume’s tirade the following week when, referring to me, he used the phrase “In Israel, Harriman’s homeland”?

For the record, I’m not Israeli and neither am I Jewish. Similarly I’ve been to Italy but I’m not a Catholic. I’ve been to the Far East but I’m not a Buddhist. I’ve read many articles by Chilume but I’m still sane.

The real danger we face in the world today is the epidemic of nonsense. The nonsense of AIDS denial is killing people. The nonsense of global warming denial is threatening to kill our grandchildren. The nonsense of xenophobic hatred as a cover for gross criminality is killing people in South Africa.

I can be the father of a Jew without being Israeli. I can be white and, on a good day, a fairly good person. Chilume can be logical but he seems to choose not to be so.

Can’t he do better than that? - Botswana Guardian

2008-04-14T08:05:00.001+02:00

In a letter to the Guardian on 11th April we saw the return of Bugalo Chilume. As Voltaire said about God, if Chilume didn't exist he'd have to be invented. He really is a walking advertisement for reason, rationalism and thought. OK, admittedly by NOT demonstrating any of those things but I think reading his writings is an educational experience nevertheless.

We are all used to his ravings about Mugabe and how he's such a nice guy, much maligned by the evil imperialist West and probably very kind to small animals but that's what we expect from him. Mugabe of course can do no wrong and the fact that his economy and in particular his currency are now a laughing stock is someone else’s fault. The fact that he brazenly tries to steal an election is no doubt another conspiracy by the CIA, Prince Philip and aliens to smear him.

However what provoked my greatest reaction to his letter was an implied reference to me.

The last sentence of his letter referred to the various letters and articles that Gilbert Sesinyi has written in the Guardian over the last few months. Most of these were in response to, or prompted, articles and letters by and from me. I wasn’t the only one who opposed Gilbert's ideas but I did play a significant role.

His last words describe Gilbert's opponent letter writers, and therefore presumably me, as "members of the local Ku Klux Klan sleeper cell".

Just in case anyone hasn't heard of the KKK they are a dreadful, despicable and disgusting racist group in the USA, the ones with the white robes and burning crosses. They have a history of lynching blacks, persecuting their opponents and hating Jews, Catholics, liberals and anyone with a functioning brain. So you can understand how being accused of being like the KKK is grossly insulting, particularly when I am a social liberal, the father of a Jewish son and in possession of a functioning brain.

However, despite a moment of anger I ended up rather amused by his comments. I couldn’t help but think that if that is the best he can do I must have overestimated his reasoning skills, although that IS quite a challenge I admit.

All I did was to express my belief that reason is better than superstition, that science is better than magic and that enlightenment is preferable to ignorance. If all he can do in response is launch an ad hominem attack against me and other rationalists then I find that rather disappointing. Where’s the argument, where’s the evidence that I’m wrong, where’s the critical reasoning? Somewhat absent it seems.

All we saw from him was the grossly defamatory suggestion that because I and others don’t share his views we must be a bunch of vicious racists. Come on Chilume, you can do better than that. Can’t you?

Homeopathy - Letter to Mmegi

2008-02-28T08:03:00.001+02:00

I was appalled to see the article entitled "People living with HIV turn to homeopathy" in Mmegi on Thursday 28th February. Appalled because I don't think we should allow charlatans to sell their ludicrous products and, in so doing, exploit the desperate, the sick and the naïve.

Let's be clear. Homeopathy is based on nonsense. The article states that it is based on the idea of treating patients with a minute dose of the substance that causes the symptoms the patient is experiencing, but this is rubbish. What you actually get from a homeopath is water. Homeopathic "remedies" are so diluted that not a single atom of any original substance remains. If you push a homeopath on this subject you’ll eventually get them to confess that they believe the water somehow "remembers" a substance that it once contained. This is utter gibberish.

Every controlled test of homeopathic remedies has failed to show any real effect. The homeo-pathetic movement has consistently failed to help anyone other than themselves. Help themselves to fat bank balances that is. What the charlatans in Maun are really doing is breaking the law. Section 15 (1) (c) of the Consumer Protection Regulations forbids people from promising "outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis". If they take a single thebe for their water treatment they are breaking the law.

The most ridiculous aspects of what they say are almost unbelievable. The homeopath covered in the article confesses that she prescribed a "grief remedy" as well as something for liver toxicity. This is just scandalous.

So what about the wonderful effects the victims are supposedly seeing in Maun? They are nothing more than the placebo effect. Doctors around the world know that giving patients a totally ineffective medicine will make them a feel a little bit better for a short while. But that's more to do with getting a bit of attention and sympathy than any real effect.

What homeopaths pretend to offer people with HIV is hope. Hope is a great thing but only when it is based on a genuine hope, a real hope of improvement. What in fact homeopaths offer is false hope, based on a mixture of ignorance and lies. I have contempt for people who exploit the desperate. Utter contempt. I genuinely hope that nobody falls for this nonsense. If just one person does and stops taking their ARVs, the drugs that DO work, then the homeopaths who have come here thinking they can fool us will have blood on their hands.

Scence is blind - Botswana Guardian

2008-02-28T08:00:00.000+02:00

Saying something out loud doesn't make it true. Writing something in a newspaper doesn't make it true. Even just believing something doesn't mean what you believe is true. In the past people were taught, and genuinely believed, that the world was flat. They believed that the stars were gods, that the Sun rotated around the Earth and that illness was caused by evil spirits. But we moved on. We embraced knowledge rather than superstition and we put behind us beliefs that had no foundation.

Or did we?

Last week the astonishing South African Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, stated that traditional healers, whose work is soon to be integrated into the conventional health system would not have to prove that their remedies actually worked. Specifically she said that traditional medicine should not be "bogged down in clinical trials". According to the BBC she said that "We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development".

Yet again she has missed the point. There is no such thing as a "Western protocol for research". There is no such thing as “Western research”. In fact there is no such thing as "Western medicine" any more than there is "Western sunshine". Medicine is medicine and the only real distinctions we should make are between medicines that work and those that do not, between ideas that are useful and those that are not, between things that actually help humanity and those that do not.

The scientific method, the approach that genuine medicine really uses, is based on one key thing. It's based on predictions that can be falsified. Not things that can be proved but things that can be falsified and that's what the clinical trials that Manto complains about are really all about. They are about really testing a theory that something works and testing it rigorously. What she presumably fears, along with homeopaths, reflexologists and herbal medicine sellers is the dreaded "double-blind, controlled trial". You get two groups, one gets the medicine you are testing and the other gets something that looks and feels like the medicine but is really often no more than a sugar pill or a glass of water. The key thing is that neither the people taking the medicine nor the doctors or nurses who actually give it to them know which is which until the end of the trial. Only then are the details taken out of a sealed envelope and the results properly analysed. That way can you remove the effect of people’s expectations. That way you can rule out the placebo effect, which is what happens when people believe they are getting a medicine when in fact they are not but they get slightly better anyway, just because they believe something is happening. The placebo effect is a powerful effect and it’s only by “blinding” both the patients and the doctors in a trial that you can rule out it’s effect.

In that sort of trial we could see whether so-called traditional medicines work. Hopefully some of them would. Maybe we really would find something marvelous that can really help humanity. Maybe science and tradition could come together and we could see through the medieval distortions and ignorance surrounding us

True science is a genuinely wonderful thing. Like justice it is blind. Blind to untruth, blind to expectations and blind to prejudice. Like all truth it is blind to prejudice, blind to ignorance and blind to lies.

A cure for everything? - Botswana Guardian

2008-02-01T09:14:00.001+02:00

It really is getting worse. In the past I’ve been irritated by the nonsense from various organisations trying to sell their useless rubbish. To begin with it was the Scientologists selling their ludicrous “we can fix everything” courses while hiding their deranged belief that our minds are inhabited by the souls of multi-million year old aliens. Then it was the alternative health movements who advocate fiddling with your feet, your bottom or your gullibility, homeopaths who think water has a memory of an ingredient that is no longer there, pseudo-oriental doctors who think sticking needles into part of you will rebalance your chi and then the silliest product in the history of unscientific rubbish: the detox foot pads.

This is all, of course, utterly unscientific, utterly without evidence and utterly useless. It’s all based on lies, naiveté or ignorance.

However despite this being completely silly I have always been able to see the funny side. Until recently every bit of pseudoscientific hogwash that I’ve come across has at least been amusing.

Until last weekend.

There I was strolling with my family around Riverwalk Shopping Centre when we passed by a pharmacy. An advertisement in the window offered “Rise-up and walk – the broad spectrum herbal medicine”. OK, I thought, here we go again, some herbal concoction made from leaves that hints, in vague terms, that it can help your immune system or can boost your health. Not so. This one was different. I won’t describe their claims, I’ll quote them directly:

“Effective Solution to Athritis, Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Cancer, Typhoid, HIV/Aids, Gynaecological Disorders, Viral, Fungal & Bacterial Diseases among others”.

Where to begin?

Well, perhaps by nominating the producers of this remarkable medicine for a Nobel Prize for Medicine. If this rubbish can, in fact, cure everything from typhoid to HIV/AIDS then the producers deserve a prize. At one stroke they have cured the world of AIDS, bacterial diseases like TB and typhoid and removed the threat posed by cancer.

Alternatively we can have the peddlers of this criminal rubbish reported to the Consumer Protection Unit for breaking the law. Our very own Consumer Protection Regulations state that suppliers have breached the terms of the Regulations if they quote “scientific or technical data in support of a claim unless the data can be readily substantiated”. They are also in trouble if they promise “outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis”.

Let’s be clear about a few things. There are no products that can cure cancer that can also cure typhoid, HIV/AIDS and diabetes. Anyone who tells you differently is either a fraud or a fool.

I genuinely wish there was such a cure, I really do. If it existed my wife wouldn’t have lost her sister, my father wouldn’t have lost three years of his teenage life to TB and millions of other people would be alive today.

But it’s simply not true. It’s a deliberate lie. It’s an attempt to cash in on our desperation and that’s what makes it so repellant. Sooner or later someone is going to spend money on this worthless rubbish and will stop taking their real medicine. Then they’ll die.

I beg you all not to buy products from suppliers who sell false hopes to the desperate. We really must all stand up against this sort of deception. Lives are at stake.

Shouting fire? - Botswana Guardian

2007-12-21T16:18:00.000+02:00

Do we have a right to unrestricted free speech? Well, most of us would instinctively say that yes, of course we do, we live in a democracy and we can say what we like. Or can we?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famed American Supreme Court judge once said in a ruling that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic”. In other words there are certain things you can’t say. You can’t shout fire in a theatre if there isn’t actually a fire. We’re simply not allowed to say things that will cause panic or that may cause death, injury or civil disturbance.

So what are we going to do about Pastor Tshifhiwa Irene who visited Francistown recently and who told the crowds that God has decided to end HIV/AIDS in a few days?

According to the Midweek Sun Pastor Irene, who had presumably forgotten to take her medication that day, reported that HIV was caused by a committee of demonic principals, chaired by Lucifer himself, who took blood from a crocodile, a snake, a tortoise and a hyena, mixed it with demonic saliva and blood which then somehow produced AIDS to destroy humanity. There’s no point in trying to understand this deranged claptrap because it’s, well, deranged claptrap.

However I suppose we’re all entitled to our ludicrous opinions. Botswana is a free country where the state isn’t allowed to forbid ideas, no matter how weird they might be.

What I DO object to is when people like Pastor Irene shout fire when there isn’t one. She apparently went on to report that on 20^th November God started to roll out his big plan for ending HIV and AIDS and predicted that very soon “All children born of HIV positive mothers will be free of HIV”.

Let’s get our facts straight. There genuinely HAS been a reduction in the proportion of children of HIV positive mothers who were born with HIV and that’s tremendous news. But it wasn’t religion that did that, it was our Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program. It was PMTCT that took the proportion of HIV positive children born to HIV positive mothers down from 40% to less than 4%. It was PMTCT backed up by rationalism, logic and medical science that did it.

Luckily also present at the so-called prayer crusade in Francistown was the local MP and Government Minister, Phandu Skelemani, who is reported to have said afterwards “She must be out of her mind” and proceeded to ask local politicians “How can any self-respecting leader attend such a misleading service?”

Coincidentally another recent story from Francistown reported that the police were investigating piles of anti-retroviral drugs and hospital cards that were found near makeshift community churches. It seems that encouraged by religious fanatics patients are throwing away their hugely expensive drugs in the hope of promised miracle cures. Cures that of course miraculously don’t ever happen.

I believe very strongly that if only one HIV positive person is persuaded to leave the PMTCT program or to discard their ARVs as a result of what Pastor Irene and her colleagues say then she and her fellow preachers will have blood on their hands. She has gone further than we should accept. Her speech may end up not being free but in fact very expensive indeed.

Barry Eustice – a personal tribute

2007-11-27T20:37:00.000+02:00

Barry Eustice died last week and Botswana is a slightly poorer country because of it.

Barry was well-known throughout Botswana for his charitable walks, walks that covered Botswana but also other countries, raising many millions for the disabled wherever he went. I’m not going to repeat all the dates, distances and achievements, many others are better placed to report on those. Yes, he got an MBE for his achievements but that wasn’t what impressed people.

Barry was a role model, a demonstration of the spirit that can overcome the greatest of disabilities and was living proof that whatever fate throws at you there is always room for a smile. Well, in Barry’s case a load of smiles and a few beers as well.

I first grew to know him a decade ago as a regular in the bar at the President Hotel in Gaborone. He seemed to be forever there, sitting on a bar stool, surrounded by friends of every background, often with the Weekly Telegraph crossword half-completed (but not for long). One of the first things he ever said to me was “Who directed Dirty Harry?” “Don Siegel”, I said. We knew then that we had each met someone with the same level of passion for the sort of knowledge that is completely useless but that comes in very useful in pub quizzes and long conversations in bars after you’ve had a few.

A few years ago my wife Kate and I were part of a large team of people that was helping Nomsa Mbere and her followers prepare for her walk across the Makgadikgadi Pans. In order to launch the walk publicly there was a gathering at the Maharaja and I persuaded Barry, as a famous walker, to come along and give everyone an uplifting talk. After a series of, I have to say, rather unexciting lectures up sprang Barry. Within minutes he had the audience eating out of his hand. There were stories of mishaps, accidents, women ending up topless and the occasional President who would come along to wish him well. It ended with Barry doing one of his party tricks. After a comedian’s warm-up he showed us how he could balance one of his crutches vertically on the palm of his hand. “See”, he said, “just because I’m disabled, it doesn’t mean I’m incapable!”

The last time I saw Barry I was sitting in a restaurant with a visitor from South Africa when Barry slowly walked by. He joined us and then I watched as my guest sat open-mouthed as I made Barry share some of his stories. He seemed to have that effect on people. Here was a rather diminutive, elderly-looking, disabled man who would stun his guests with his achievements.

Barry raised the profile of the disabled in Botswana. He raised enormous amounts of money. He bothered government and businesses into donating to charity. He started the Botswana branch of the Cheshire Foundation. Like Leonard Cheshire, Barry achieved what very few of us can hope to do with our lives. He made a real difference to the society he lived in.

In an age of mortals, he was a hero.

A change of career? - Botswana Guardian

2007-09-07T16:15:00.000+02:00

I think I’m going to train to be a lawyer. I know 43 might be a little old for a career change but I’ve spent some time recently reading our laws. Some of them like the Collective Investment Undertakings Act are incredibly dull but many of them are fascinating.

One of my favourites is the Penal Code. Discrimination is illegal. Anyone who treats another “less favourably” on the grounds of colour, race, nationality or creed can be fined up to P500 or go to prison for up to 6 months. It’s illegal to deliberately wound anybody’s religious feelings. It’s obviously not illegal to say you don’t believe something someone else believes or even to point out flaws in their belief systems but going out of your way to offend them is punishable by up to a year in jail. So don’t do it OK?

Then there’s witchcraft. Not acceptable. The Witchcraft Act makes it illegal to tell fortunes or to find stolen or lost things using any claim to supernatural power. The thing I like best about the Act is that it refers to “so-called witchcraft”. The authors of the law knew it was all unbelievable hocus-pocus and, quite rightly, outlawed it.

However, every so often the laws take a small step sideways and have, in my slightly humble opinion, erred. For instance the Botswana Health Professions Act, 2001 demands that any health professionals must be registered. All very sensible so far. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other recognised professionals like opticians, occupational therapists and physiotherapists all have to prove their legitimacy before they can practice. However the Act then mentions what are called “Associated Health Professionals”. This includes chiropodists who are a logical bunch but then goes on to include homeopaths and acupuncturists. This is a mistake. Those last two professions are based on pseudoscience. There is no real, scientific, rational evidence for either homeopathy or acupuncture. They are both based on rubbish. No clinical trials into their effectiveness have ever shown any real effect. I think it’s an insult to chiropodists to lump them in with charlatans.

Back to the Penal Code. The wonderful clause 92 makes it an offence punishable by a fine of up to P500 to say or write anything that expresses hatred, ridicule or contempt for any person or group based on their “race, tribe, place of origin, colour or creed”. It’s simply illegal to make sweeping, offensive generalisations about people because they’re black or white, born here or elsewhere. We are all given the same protection from being insulted.

Of course none of us have any protection against logical argument and reasoned criticism. None of us deserve any such protection. All of us, every day, are open to criticism of our beliefs, our values and our allegiances. That’s the way of a democracy and we are all VERY fortunate to live in a genuine democracy. Millions of people around the world are dying to have the rights of free speech and the protections we have. The people of Burma, led by Aung Sang Suu Kyi, are struggling to have just a fraction of what we have.

So I’m just very happy to be in a country where free speech is not only respected, it is also protected and encouraged. If anyone thinks I’m talking nonsense I would be delighted to see reasoned arguments saying why. If, however, all people can come up with is that I’m wrong because I’m white then not only are your arguments silly, they may even be illegal!

Alternative medicine can cause alternative illness - Botswana Guardian

2007-08-03T08:01:00.000+02:00

It goes on and on. The parade of rubbish, nonsense and drivel masquerading as “alternative medicine”. In the Advertiser last week two advertisements offered something rather special.

Promises. Just promises. Nothing else.

The first was from Lam-Med Health Care. It asked whether we suffer from “Arthritis, Cramps, Cellulite, Muscular Pains, Back problems, Cancer, Poor circulation, Stress, High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Asthma, Eczema etc”. The solution to all of these problems? “Health through the power of Oxygen Ozone”.

The second, from “Siloam”, asked if we’re suffering from problems including “Insomnia and Headache”, “Sciatic nerve, rheumatism, arthritis” and yet again “High blood pressure”. The solution? “Reflexology and muscle and bone adjustment”. This lot go one stage further and promise that “you will be free from the suffering”. They say that Siloam “is the solution to your problems”.

Where to begin.

Firstly everything offered is known to be utterly useless. In case you don’t know reflexology is based on the idea that the soles of your feet somehow map the structure of your body. They say that if you apply pressure to various spots on your feet it will affect your organs. Squeeze here and your liver will be affected, tickle here and your spleen will be in top-notch shape.

This is nonsense. Every time there has been serious scientific research into reflexology it has been shown to have no more of an effect that having your feet massaged. Of course some of us might like having our feet massaged. It’s not my thing but people say it’s wonderfully relaxing and feels terrific. But that doesn’t make it medicine. It doesn’t make it true.

As for ozone that’s rubbish as well. Not only is there absolutely no evidence that ozone helps with any health problems, there IS evidence that ozone can actually be harmful to our health.

Then there’s the danger of relying on this rubbish rather than things that do work. Like medicine. Medicine based on science. Science that is rational, logical and enlightened. My fear is that some poor soul, suffering from one or other of the nasty conditions mentioned will go to these charlatans and take their nonsensical treatments rather than something that actually works. The risk is terrifying. Instead of taking real medication for potentially dangerous disorders like high blood pressure, asthma and diabetes they’ll take some ludicrous herb or the useless reflexology approach. Who knows what might happen. Someone’s going to die, if they haven’t already.

I’m not going to say that traditional or herbal remedies have no effect. We all know how many conventional medicines come from natural origins. Penicillin was discovered when samples in a laboratory were infected by an air-born mould. Warfarin, commonly used to treat heart conditions, is found in many plants such as sweet clover and even in liqorice.

But the trouble is how unpredictable herbal remedies can be. If I go to my local pharmacy and buy paracetamol I know for sure that each tablet contains exactly 500mg of paracetamol. With herbal remedies, who knows? The only certainly I have is if I use a homeopathic “remedy”. At least with those I know they contain nothing at all!

I think it’s about time that we did something to fix this problem. Luckily we have the tools to act. These nonsensical therapies cost money. That makes us consumers. The Consumer Protection Regulations make it really unwise to offer products where “the supplier promises outcomes where those outcomes have no safe scientific, medical or performance basis”. Reflexology and ozone have no scientific or medical basis. The fantastic news is that they are illegal!

We’re being invaded - Botswana Guardian

2007-03-23T19:10:00.000+02:00

No, I’m not talking about Zimbabweans, I think we’re under threat from something much more dangerous than illegal aliens, health charlatans and international consultants telling us we’re doing everything wrong.

We’re being invaded by nonsense.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve encountered several ludicrous ideas. The Scientologists will probably say this is because of alien ghosts in my brain but I blame something much more harmful: the internet.

Several times in the last few weeks I’ve received emails announcing the release of a DVD called The Secret. This DVD, which you’ll not be surprised to learn costs money, tells us that our thoughts can “create reality”. Just thinking that you’ll become a millionaire will make you a millionaire. If you just think that your marriage is going to be wonderful then it will be wonderful. Just thinking that it will rain, will, yes, you guessed it, make it rain. The trouble is it’s not all positive, there’s a negative side as well. We become ill apparently because we think bad thoughts. Presumably we get robbed, raped and murdered because we made it happen with our bad thoughts?

Apart from the cruelty of the message that The Secret delivers, there is of course, the utter nonsense that it comprises. Did we have a drought because we made it happen by being negative? Did the tsunami kill all those people because they weren’t thinking happy thoughts? Did tens of millions of people die during the Second World War because they hadn’t bought a DVD from a bunch of New Agers? Can you make HIV leave your body just by thinking?

Of course not.

I’m a big believer in positive thought but I do recognise it’s limitations. Positive thought alone doesn’t do anything. It’s what results from positive thought that matters. We’ve all known people who have managed to survive illness and adversity and whose positive outlook has made them a great role model but their outlook was just helpful, it didn’t itself cure anything. There is almost always a third factor behind such obvious associations.

Someone who retains a positive outlook when faced with illness is surely the one who is also more likely to improve their diet, cut down on the booze and start exercising? Surely it’s those things that help them live longer, recover more quickly and become healthier?

We get the same thing from all the other purveyors of the “thought makes reality” message. Whether it’s The Journey talking about cell memory, churches telling the congregation that prayer alone will make us rich or the Scientologists saying that we just need to clear out all those pesky aliens from our minds, it’s all the same.

As Oscar Wilde said, the truth is never pure and rarely simple. Our health and wealth are, in fact, heavily influenced by things beyond our control. Of course we can modify our destiny hugely by taking personal responsibility for it. We can work harder, learn something new every day, and listen to genuine, qualified experts when they give us health advice but we can’t avoid the fact that much of what happens in life is beyond the control of positive thinking.

At a more profound level my objection is that so much of this is simply untrue. Cells don’t have memory any more than rocks do. Wealth comes from good fortune for a few lottery winners and the grandchildren of millionaires but mostly it comes from hard work, imagination and talent. As for Scientology aliens in my brain, well, I think they gave up and went home years ago.

Colour blindness

2007-02-16T11:20:00.000+02:00

It occurred to me that HIV, wickedness and ignorance all have something in common.

They are all colour-blind.

HIV can’t see in colour. It doesn’t check someone’s colour before it infects them. It doesn’t take a quick peek to see whether it’s about to infect someone black or white. It doesn’t even check to see if someone is male or female. In fact it’s very liberal and totally unbiased. If it didn’t cause such suffering and distress we’d probably admire it for being so unprejudiced.

Wickedness also doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t decide who to corrupt by looking at their skin colour first. You don’t need to be an academic to see the appalling history of human wickedness.

Adolf Hitler was wicked and white, Idi Amin was wicked and black. Joseph Stalin was wicked and white, Haile Mengistu was wicked and black and Pol Pot was wicked and oriental. Like most serial killers each of them slaughtered largely within their own ethnic group. In none of those cases did skin colour play even a tiny role. They were all just plain wicked. No ethnic group has a monopoly, or even a majority share, in wickedness. In fact it’s fairly evenly distributed. It’s a thoroughly human failing, not an ethnic one.

And finally ignorance. Ignorance knows absolutely no boundaries and unfortunately seems to be present in epidemic proportions. Just take a look at the enormous spread of ludicrous superstitions and crazy pseudo-religions spreading through the world. Whether it follows the decline of regular religion I’m not sure but you can’t avoid the latest nutritional, self-help or other “New Age” lunacy everywhere you go.

I don’t think it’s pushing a point too far to state that willful ignorance has even played a huge role in the disastrous situation the US government got themselves into in Iraq. Pretty much everyone else in the world was saying they shouldn’t try it but their minds were closed and a determined ignorance won the day.

However, it’s not just in the west that ignorance raises it’s ugly head. Just across our border in South Africa their esteemed leaders have regularly fallen into disastrous and (verging on criminal) flirtations with AIDS denialism and the awful German Matthis Rath and his horrible vitamin concoctions that “allow the prevention, treatment and eventually the eradication of today's most common diseases”. Well, they do after you’ve made him rich of course.

It’s not just Rath though. We’ve had the misguided here in Botswana saying they can cure AIDS with apple juice and prayer and others who say that walnuts are better than ARVS. Is it improper of me to call that last one the “Nuts theory”?

It’s not been widely covered here but we had an even more remarkable case of either willful madness or possibly just badness a month ago in Gambia. Their president, Yahya Jammeh, has announced that with his own combination of the Quran and some herbs he found in the forest he can cure people of AIDS within three days. According to the Gambian State House web site (http://www.statehouse.gm) his claims have left medical experts in Gambia “mesmerised and stunned”. Presumably because they knew he’d have them shot if they didn’t look suitably impressed.

My point is simple, if a little long-winded. There IS a strange parallel between HIV on the one hand and wickedness and ignorance on the other, but to assume that any particular group has a monopoly on either wickedness or ignorance is, in my view, wicked and ignorant.

Medical malpractice?

2007-01-24T17:43:00.000+02:00

Last week Gilbert Sesinyi wrote a response to a letter I wrote. I had objected to his idea that doctors and medicine were the source of our ill-health problems. According to Gilbert all we need is to do is avoid processed food and the “whiteman” and things will be OK.

For instance one of Gilbert’s central ideas seems to be that all organic chemicals are good for us and inorganic ones are all poisons. This is a huge simplification. Oxygen, baking soda and water are all inorganic along with an enormous range of minerals without which we’ll die. On the other hand nicotine, monosodium glutamate and most nerve gasses are all organic compounds. The terms organic and inorganic don’t mean the same as good and bad.

He says that people aren’t living as long as they used to and that this is medicine’s fault. I wanted evidence for this. All we got from Gilbert was an observation that his grandparents lived longer than his parents. Sorry Gilbert but that’s not evidence, that’s an anecdote. It’s a bit like saying that Uncle Albert smoked 20 cigarettes a day, lived to be 90 and therefore smoking isn’t dangerous.

The facts are actually simple. If you exclude the people dying because of AIDS, we are living longer than ever before. It’s our average life expectancy that has decreased and it’s AIDS that did this. Simple as that.

We then had to read Gilbert’s opinion that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Instead he says that AIDS is due to poor nutrition, cellphone usage and “the whiteman’s culture”. This is similar to the evil nonsense South Africa has been forced to endure from the revolting Matthias Rath. All you need to do, says Rath, is buy vitamins and AIDS will go away. Oh and if you can buy them from him things will be even better. Well for him they will.

I really do object to this reckless, often paranoid denial about HIV and AIDS. I know people living with HIV and they have achieved amazing feats in coping with their infection, modifying their lifestyle, taking ARVs when required and continuing to be valuable members of the community. The denial movement slaps them in the face.

We should count ourselves lucky that we live in a country that is relatively free of AIDS denialism. Countless numbers of our South Africans cousins have died as a result of it and it’s a tribute to us as a country that our government, our health sector and most of our people have avoided the temptation to blame someone else for our situation and instead have taken some level of responsibility for it ourselves.

While all this got me a little hot under the collar Gilbert’s other assertions just made me laugh. Apparently I’m “a member of the oppressor’s nation, the white people”. Furthermore white people are all “either evil or the beneficiaries of evil”. Why can’t we shed these out-dated notions that categorise people “by the colour of their skin rather than the contents of their character”?

A much wiser man than me once said “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. He also said that “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”. He was black by the way, although he did have a very “white” name: Martin Luther King.

Oh, did I mention that my grandmother is 87 and is fighting fit?

Richard Harri-whiteman

2007-01-24T17:23:00.000+02:00

A reply from Gilbert Sesinyi in the Botswana Guardian
"Doctors do as they’re taught".
Rest assured a response has been submitted already from this "member of the oppressor’s nation, the white people".

Be wary of doctors?

2007-01-12T23:30:00.000+02:00

I read with surprise and some degree of outrage the column by Gilbert Sesinyi last week in the Botswana Guardian. His piece entitled “Be wary of the doctors” was a startling piece of scaremongering and I think potentially dangerous.

In his column Gilbert suggests, amongst other things, that “the whiteman… is motivated by profit over excellence” and “His ways are surely the ways of death”.

It’s probably best if I gloss over who exactly this “whiteman” might be. I know it’s not me, because I happen to think profit and excellence are equally good things and that they can’t be divorced. Also, with the exception of that snake in my back yard a few months ago I don’t think I’ve killed anything recently.

The worrying thing about what Gilbert wrote was to do with health and the medical profession. Unfortunately much of what he wrote is clearly mistaken. For instance he states that “there is evidence that ancient man lived much longer than modern man”. What evidence? My understanding is that worldwide people are living longer than ever before. It is reckless to suggest that because the average lifespan here in Botswana has dropped into the 30s that this is because of medicine. It’s down to AIDS. It’s because of the medical and pharmaceutical professions that we have ARVs. The ARVs that are helping to increase lifespans despite the effect of HIV, not reduce them.

It’s also mistaken to suggest that doctors know nothing about nutrition. Gilbert asks why doctors don’t tell us to avoid processed food, refined flour and sugar and food laden with pesticides and fungicides. Well, as someone who spent the first half of his career surrounded by doctors I can’t remember ever meeting a doctor who didn’t go on and on about healthy eating. Also, without at least some of those chemicals we wouldn’t actually have any food to eat.

There is nothing inherently wrong with chemicals. Salt is a chemical. Baking powder is a chemical. Monosodium glutamate, otherwise known as MSG, which Gilbert suggests is a poison and “the root of chronic diseases”, is a naturally occurring substance found in tomatoes, peas and in soy sauce.

I firmly believe that we should be skeptical about all things and I certainly don’t exclude medicine and doctors from my skepticism. However we must be reasonable and accept that despite some failures, despite some scandals and despite some people seeing medicine as the solution to all of life’s problems, medicine is why most of us are alive today. Without medicine I probably wouldn’t have lived to an age when I would be grumpy enough to write irritated (and probably irritating) articles for newspapers. My wife would be dead, my eldest son would never have been born and my parents wouldn’t have lived long enough to know their grandchildren.

The solution is, as always to use our brains. If a doctor says that HIV was developed by the CIA in conjunction with aliens that doesn’t make it true. History is littered with the aftermath of charlatan doctors and healers who have brought about suffering and death, but that doesn’t undermine medicine as a body of knowledge and doctors as people who help us live to a ripe old age.

I often think it’s amusing, in a savage sort of way, to wonder who those who oppose medicine would call for if they, or heaven forbid, their children were injured in an accident? A nutritionist or a qualified doctor? I know who I’d want to see in a white coat.

Xenophobia - Botswana Guardian

2006-12-09T23:25:00.000+02:00

I’ve been thinking about xenophobia. We can’t avoid it these days, it’s one of those fashionable words that suddenly become the in thing.

Whether it’s to do with foreign investment, the Basarwa relocation issue or the termination of expatriate’s work permits it’s a word that keep on cropping up.

People seem to think that xenophobia means a fear of foreigners but that’s not actually true. It’s much wider than that. It actually means a fear of the unknown. It can be anything, not just an unknown or perhaps strange-looking human being. You can be xenophobic about someone from the next village, not just someone from a different continent.

To some extent I suppose that it’s a natural reaction. If you think back a few hundred thousand years to when humanity was in it’s infancy, being afraid of something new was probably a very wise approach. The new, unknown thing really might want to eat you. Although we’ve moved forward a long way, there’s a huge part of each one of us that remains back in the primitive days, showing primitive reactions.

You see it all over the world of course. The list of places where xenophobia has led to death and destruction is endless. Rwanda and Burundi, Serbia and Croatia and, now I get really depressed, the Middle East. Despite reasonably successful efforts at reconciliation there are still issues in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and even in South Africa. In fact it’s probably easier to list the places where there hasn’t been any history of xenophobic conflict. Well, it would be if I could think of any. Iceland perhaps?

But just because something is “natural” that doesn’t mean we should just accept it. We all have so-called natural instincts that we know we shouldn’t give in to. I’m a man, I know these things! And just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good. In the same way, just because something is “unnatural” it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Condoms, hypodermic syringes and newspapers aren’t “natural” but they are all wonderful inventions that do untold good.

I’m a firm believer in understanding our nature, where we come from and what our instincts are but I also believe we are smart enough, have developed a sufficient understanding of what’s right and wrong and most importantly have sufficient self-control to overcome our more primitive instincts. Whether it’s an instinct to steal, fight or rape we all know these things are wrong and repulsive and we shouldn’t do them. Saying it’s natural is no excuse. Saying that you can’t overcome your instincts is nonsense.

The same goes for that specific type of xenophobia: our fear of strangers. Just because your instinct says you should reject someone who looks different to you, well that doesn’t make it right.

Surely we all know that people vary? Isn’t that one of the most interesting thing about our miserable species? Isn’t it actually rather wonderful that if you walk though one of our many shopping malls you see people of every shape, size and colour?

I’d go so far as to suggest we need to adopt a new approach. Xenophilia. A love for the unknown, the new and even what we might call strange. Let’s start welcoming variety. It doesn’t mean we all have to change ourselves, just that we should see new people and things as challenging, interesting and maybe even exciting

One last question. Where would we be now if Seretse and Ruth had both been xenophobic?