Who has rights? (Mmegi Consumer Watchdog column)

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action has been taken!

Self improvement

Courtesy of Pharyngula

Warning traditional healers - 3rd response

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

See, there IS hope...

Darwin Day - Botswana Guardian

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.

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

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?

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

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

My Body Talks

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?

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

Talk to your body? - Botswana Guardian

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.