Homeopathy: No more research needed

 Homeopathy  1 Response »
Apr 052013
 

Studies into homeopathy often repeat the refrain “more research is needed”. No, it isn’t.

Homeopaths point out that medicine (which they usually refer to using some additional redundant pejorative adjective) constantly publishes new research. This is true, but it is a long time since medicine has had to even consider the question of whether administering a pharmacologically active substance produces an effect, or whether the human body responds to measurable quantities of drugs. This is a given.

Homeopathy, on the other hand, is still busily engaged in trying to prove that its claimed effect exists at all. It hasn’t got round to proving the fundamentals yet, it hasn’t even (after more than 200 years) provided compelling evidence that there is a phenomenon to study in the first place.

More research is needed only after these glaring omissions have been rectified. Until then, more research on humans is not only not needed, it’s ethically unsupportable.

H:MC21 and the ASA – annotated guide

 Homeopathy  No Responses »
Apr 052013
 

The ASA have as their remit demands, consistently placed the protection of consumers against false advertising above the demands of advertisers and other vested interests. H:MC21 (Homeopathy, Medicine for the 21st Century, a “charity” which is unusual in having a name that is blatantly factually inaccurate) were slapped down by the ASA for a false advert in the New Statesman; they are still apparently seehting about this and about the adjudications against fellow fraudsters such as Steve Scrutton who runs a blog inaccurately titled “Homeopathy: Safe Medicine” (it is of course neither).

This is their latest attempt to get out of jail free by intimidating the ASA.

H:MC21 Report on the Advertising Standards Authority’s Ruling against their Advert in the New Statesman: An annotated version

April 2013

In November 2011 H:MC21 appealed against the ruling of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on our advert in a Care supplement of the New Statesman, published in October 2010. In December 2012 we received the Draft Recommendation from the new ASA investigation.

ASA relied on science, which we hate because it does not support our beliefs. We challenged this. ASA did not accept our Revealed Truth. The bastards.

H:MC21 trustees have pursued this case diligently, and they consider that it offers clear evidence that the Advertising Standards Authority is neither abiding by its guidelines, nor acting within its remit. It appears to be pursuing an ideological position of rejection of any advertising of homeopathy (or other complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies) without regard for the available science.

H:MC21 Trustees are practising homeopaths and thus direct beneficiaries of the charity’s political lobbying. We’ll keep quiet about that flagrant breach of the Charities Act and instead try to pretend that by protecting consumers from claims which cannot be substantiated, the ASA ar ein some way evil. Because what consumers need, most of all, is to be deluged with scientifically unsupportable medical claims.

Well, OK, what the homeopathy industry really needs to reverse its terminal decline is to be allowed to deluge consumers with scientifically unsupportable medical claims. But it’s the same thing, more or less.

As a result, H:MC21 is planning a protest outside the ASA offices in London when the charity is finally able to publish to the media the whole truth about this investigation. We call on all those interested in the right of patients to choose what medical approach to use for their own bodies to support this protest, especially homeopaths, other CAM practitioners, patients, and representative organisations. We shall set at date for the protest at the earliest possible opportunity.

We think that by trying to intimidate the ASA we can get get enough publicity to allow us to force them to accept scientifically unsupportable claims.

H:MC21 would also like to raise a fighting fund in order to challenge the ASA’s decision, should that be necessary.

H:MC21 is running out of cash (Charity Commission filings show income of under £5k). We can’t effectively promote our financial interests reverse the tide of science without more cash.

Issues with the H:MC21 case

After more than two years, we are still profoundly concerned at the approach being taken by the ASA. In conducting its investigations, the ASA appears to us to be ignoring its own guidelines. Instead of basing its assessments on “the available science”, it appears to be relying on and endorsing an ideological position which is in conflict with good practice in medicine, which has no scientific basis, and which is dangerous for patients.

After more than two years, we are still profoundly concerned at the approach being taken by the ASA. In conducting its investigations, the ASA appears to us to be relying on science. It is basing its assessments on the available science, it appears to be ignoring on and discounting an ideological position which is in conflict with good practice in medicine, which has no scientific basis, and which is dangerous for patients.

The ASA has provided us with no secure scientific basis for its opinions, but has relied on oblique references to questionable studies. At the same time it has dismissed evidence supplied by H:MC21 to the effect that the ASA’s arguments are not justifiable, even though, on these matters, much of H:MC21’s evidence comes from medical experts addressing issues of medicine in general, often without the least regard for homeopathy or the homeopathic perspective. As such the ASA is ignoring not just specifically homeopathic information, but also a much more widely recognised understanding of medicine.

The ASA has provided us with a secure scientific basis for its opinions which we ignore because we do not like it, and has relied on references to studies we assert are questionable because they don’t support our beliefs and financial interests. At the same time it has dismissed a snowstorm of pseudoscience supplied by H:MC21 which has already been included in the scientific assessments. They ha ve also refused to accept that problems with medicine justify quackery even though we have conclusively proved that plane crashes amply justify the promotion of magic carpets. As such the ASA is ignoring not just specifically homeopathic misinformation, but also a much more widely recognised misunderstanding of medicine.

The ASA has sought expert advice on homeopathy apparently with little regard to CAP Code 12.2, which states that “Health professionals will be deemed suitably qualified only if they can provide suitable credentials; for example, evidence of: relevant professional expertise or qualifications; …”. We consider that this statement means that “relevant professional expertise or qualifications” must include expertise or qualifications in homeopathy. We are also concerned that the ASA does not appear to have made any straightforward checks on the accuracy of the expert advice, and H:MC21 considers this advice to be seriously inadequate, and even wholly inaccurate on some points. In the highly polarised environment of discussions of homeopathy, we would have expected the ASA to be scrupulous about making sure that any expert was demonstrably impartial.

The ASA has sought expert advice on homeopathy apparently in line with CAP Code 12.2, but we like to pretend that “Health professionals will be deemed suitably qualified only if they can provide suitable credentials; for example, evidence of: relevant professional expertise or qualifications; …”should be interpreted as “only qualified magicians may comment on magical claims”. We ignore the lack of any accredited training in homeopathy in the UK, and the fact that there is no licensing body and no requirement for homeopaths to be trained, licensed, certified, insured or anything else. We also ignore He Who Shall Not Be Named (Edzard Ernst, the Dark Lord of the Reality-Based Community) because although he is very obviously highly qualified, we hate his opinions. We are also concerned that the ASA does not appear to have asked us to check and undermine the expert advice, so H:MC21 considers this advice to be seriously adequate, and even wholly accurate on some points, which is plainly unacceptable. In the highly polarised environment of discussions of homeopathy (with reality on one side and our vested interests on the other), we rather hoped the ASA would have been less scrupulous about making sure that any expert was demonstrably impartial. We only like partial experts, who support our claims, and we absolutely cannot be having that neutral Science and Technology Committee Evidence Check, which we refer to as “the report that Shall Not Be Named”)

A third issue is the introduction of at least one completely new claim about how a statement would be interpreted by readers. We fail to see how such an interpretation could be valid, when it has only occurred to the ASA after more than 2 years and in the 7th version (including the version published as the ASA Council’s ruling). This point, especially when taken with the others above, tends to confirm the impression which H:MC21 has derived from the original investigation, namely that the ASA has prejudged the complaints and is seeking to find ways of justifying its judgement, rather than allowing the judgement to be a genuine response to the actual evidence.

We especially deplore the removal of wiggle room afforded by the pretence that because we did not directly say we could treat or cure something, thus the claim was not intended. Of course it was intended, and the weasel wording was intended to make it possible to make these claims by implication and thus evade the rules. We are gutted that the ASA rumbled this.

Implications of the H:MC21 case

H:MC21 is concerned that the ASA does not appear to be simply ruling on whether an individual advertiser has breached codes of conduct in its advertisement, but is ruling on whether a whole sector is permitted to advertise at all. We do not consider this to be within the ASA’s remit.

H:MC21 is distressed that by reviewing claims in general, they have deprived us of the opportunity to overwhelm them with thousands of subtly different bullshit claims and thus get away with it.

Furthermore, the ASA is also attempting to evaluate complex scientific evidence not just about homeopathy but about the whole field of medicine, despite having acknowledged that it lacks the competence to do this. We do not consider that the ASA should make such far-reaching decisions when it lacks the necessary competence.

Furthermore, the ASA has evidently understood the rather simple scientific facts that there is no reason to suppose homeopathy should work, no way it can work, and no proof it does work. We have worked really hard to obscure this and it is offensive that the ASA so quickly saw through it.

Since the ASA is not even a statutory regulator, but a private company operating on behalf of the advertising industry, we are profoundly disturbed that it is assuming powers which are both draconian and based on inadequate understanding of the issues.

We succeeded in persuading the government not to have this fight and we really hoped the ASA would follow their supine position.

General issues

In this context other general issues have great significance.

1. The ASA acts as prosecutor.

In responding to a complaint from the public, the ASA Investigation Executive may generate a whole set of additional complaints against a marketer (the person or organisation placing the advertisement). Before reaching the point of adjudication, complaints may be altered to such an extent as to constitute completely new ones requiring additional evidence. Where the public can make a complaint up to 3 months after publication of an advertisement, there appears to be no time limit on the ASA Investigation Executive’s freedom to rewrite complaints.

When people make a complaint, the ASA may get experts in false advertising look at the material in question and see if there are other issues. That’s not playing the game! If we manage to get a claim past Joe Public, who are the ASA to pick it up? The bastards!

2. The ASA acts as advocate for the defence.

The marketer submits evidence in support of the claims made in the advertisement, but this evidence and associated points made by the marketer are summarised by the ASA Investigation Executive. The marketer can seek to correct errors of fact or of argument in this summary, but the Investigation Executive has the final decision on how this information is summarised, and can refuse to alter a summary. As such the ASA Investigation Executive is not just the advocate for the defence, but may actually be a hostile advocate unwilling to put forward the marketer’s true case.

The ASA openly and brazenly acts as a representative of the victim customer. The bastards!

 3. The ASA acts as judge.

The ASA Investigation Executive prepares a draft recommendation of whether each complaint should be upheld or not upheld and the reasons for these recommendations.

The recommended decisions can be based on assertions of how readers are likely to have interpreted statements made by the marketer. The Investigation Executive may take the context into account when making these assertions, or may ignore the context. The assertions can be modified during the process of preparing the draft recommendations, and new ones can appear at any point. No evidence to support these assertions need be presented by the Investigation Executive.

The recommended decisions can be based on evaluation of the evidence provided by the marketer. However, this ‘evaluation’ also involves assertions about the evidence which allegedly rebut that evidence. No evidence to support these assertions need be presented by the Investigation Executive.

The CAP rarely throw out any of the ASA’s carefully assessed recommendations. The bastards!

‘Slanting’

The language used by the ASA Investigation Executive is ‘slanted’ so as to give greater weight to the views of the Investigation Executive whilst reducing the credibility of the marketer. For example, the Investigation Executive routinely “considers” something to be the case, whether or not there is evidence to support this view. On the other hand, the marketer is routinely said to “believe” something to be the case, no matter how substantial the evidence supplied to support this view.

The ASA assesses the claims impartially, rather than bending over backwards to be fair to the people who are trying to make a living by scamming the fuck out of people providing a valuable alternative to medicine. The bastards!

As an organisation regulating the advertising industry, the ASA cannot be unaware of the effects of such ‘slanting’. It may be that the ASA Council operates on the basis that there is no difference between the words “consider” and “believe” in this context, though there will always be an unconscious tendency to give different weight to the two terms. Certainly, the general public is highly likely to assume that the words have their conventional meanings when the ruling is published.

The ASA must be aware that by slapping down bogus claims, they hurt the livelihoods of people whose business depends on making bogus claims. The bastards!

Conclusion

In conclusion, the ASA Investigation Executive determines what complaints are addressed; the Investigation Executive determines what defence is presented in response to these complaints; and the Investigation Executive sets out the recommended judgement in a ‘slanted’ way without a requirement for supporting evidence. Whilst the final adjudication is made by the ASA Council, it is simply acting as a jury assessing a case in which all the information is tightly controlled by the Investigation Executive. It is unacceptable that the validity and activity of the whole sector of complementary and alternative medicine should be judged in this forum.

In conclusion, we think that the claims of alternative medicine should be taken at face value even when they conflict with every relevant scientific finding, even when there is absolutely no reason to believe they are true, even when they are quite obviously down to wilful ignorance of reality and a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the burden of proof, even when, as with homeopathy, every single positive study tuns out to be fully consistent with the null hypothesis.

Your freedom to choose bullshit is being impeded by the ASA’s control over our freedom to promote bullshit. You WANT bullshit! You DESERVE bullshit! You have a RIGHT to bullshit! And we have a right to profit form it!

Act Now!

Homeopathy propagandists have charitable status. Discuss.

 Homeopathy  No Responses »
Apr 022013
 

H:MC21 (billed as “homeopathy, medicine for the 21st Century” but actually of course “homeopathy: Delusions for the 19th century”) has charitable status.

Its activities, according tot he charity commission website, are as follows:

  • RESEARCH ON THE PROVISION OF HOMEOPATHY BY PCTS.
  • PUBLICATIONS OF A E-BOOK IN ADDITION TO TWO WEBSITES; A RESOURCE PACK; A NEWSLETTER; AND BRIEFING NOTES FOR MPS.
  • CAMPAIGNING INCLUDING THE HOMEOPATHY WORKED FOR ME DECLARATION; SPEAKING AT COLLEGES AND PATIENT SUPPORT GROUPS; ATTENDING CONFERENCES, FAIRS, AND PROTESTS ETC.

These boil down to: propaganda, propaganda and propaganda.

I do not think this is a proper purpose for a charity. You may be inclined to agree. Perhaps we should complain to the Charity Commissioners.

Addendum:

According to my reading of the Charity Act and commission guidance, I believe that a charity must have a public benefit. This charity does not have a public benefit, its activities are rather to the benefit of an industry, and the charity’s officers are members of that industry.

The issue is, of curse, that homeopathy is a scientifically discredited form of alternative medicine, which is in steep decline due in part to de-funding by primary care trusts. A thorough review of the evidence by the Commons Science & Technology Commitee recommended that provision under the NHS be ceased.

The charity exists as a lobby group against this scientific consensus and in favour of commercial providers of homeopathy, which includes the charity’s officers.

Their current activities including co-ordinating the lobbying of MPs in favour of NHS funding for homeopathy, which will directly materially benefit the charity’s officers, and co-ordinating a protest against the Advertising Standards Authority, which has found many homeopaths to be advertising falsely and which (correctly) states that homeopaths may not claim to treat or cure diseases.

Even if the activity were to be successful, and even if the charity’s officers did not directly benefit from it, there would still be no public benefit: the scientific consensus is that homeopathy does not work. Provision of homeopathy by the NHS is a waste of public money, which is why PCTs are, by and large, no longer funding it, and why NHS homeopathic clinics have mainly closed. In fact, promoting homeopathy is a public /dis/benefit:

* http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Homeopathy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

The two websites the charity runs present only evidence in support of the commercial interests of the charity’s officers, and do not reflect the scientific consensus view of homeopathy. They are propaganda sites.

Any assertion of public benefit demands the rejection of the scientific consensus and the acceptance instead of the beliefs of homeopaths. Homeopathy is, in effect, a religion, but it is sold as a system of medicine; there is no credible evidence to support its efficacy as such

The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has said that homeopathy is “rubbish”. The House Science and Technology Committee recommended: “By providing homeopathy on the NHS and allowing MHRA licensing of products which subsequently appear on pharmacy shelves, the Government runs the risk of endorsing homeopathy as an efficacious system of medicine. To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy. Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS and the MHRA should stop licensing homeopathic products.”

So, taking all this into account, I believe that:

  1.  This charity is run for an improper purpose: the promotion of something which is contradicted by the best available evidence and lobbying to remove restrictions on commercial advertising assessed, by the an independent body, to be false and misleading.
  2. Its principal activities are political and not for public benefit, as any notional benefit depends on rejecting the consensus view of science and the medical community.
  3.  The officers of the charity have a material conflict of interest in that the charity’s purposes directly promote their own financial interests.

Addendum:

Trustees are listed as:

Examples of false statements include: “These people have chosen to use homeopathy for the same reasons that led to its inclusion in the National Health Service 60 years ago: because it is a system of treatment which is modern, scientific, effective, safe and without side effects”

Actually it was included in the NHS under a “grandfather clause”, because it already existed. It is not modern, it originated in 1796 and has not developed in any meaningful way since. It is not scientific, it is one of the most widely cited examples of pseudoscience. It is not effective, there is no credible evidence it is anything other than a placebo. It is not safe, anyone who relies on it when they are seriously ill is at significant risk. It has no effects, side or otherwise.

It is a pre-scientific delusion which was understandable before we knew of the atomic nature of matter but is inexcusable now.

Burzynski: A note to the PBS ombudsman

 Cancer woo  Comments Off
Mar 222013
 

The PBS Ombudsman has responded to criticisms of Colorado Public Television’s airing of Burzynski 2: It’s Still An Infomercial.

I have emailed some followup questions:

This response leaves me with some unanswered questions. I wonder if you would clarify, please.

1. The issue of promotion. Whatever the status of the pledge drive, the movie is (as you rightly acknowledge by putting “documenary” in quotes) essentially promotional. It is advertorial. Placed as such, it would clearly be illegal (as the FDA letter makes clear). Does CPT really bear no responsibility for showing promotional material which it knew in advance was, if accepted as promotion, a violation of federal law?

2. I believe there may be a confusion between the two Burynski movies. “It was licensed to the Documentary Channel” seems to me to apply to the first, not the second movie, which was planned for release direct to DVD until very recently. “We are puzzled that people have referred to it as an infomercial or advertisement” is naive in the extreme, as the reaction to the first Burzynski movie should be more than sufficient to make this clear (for example: “Eric Merola, a former art director of commercials, is either unusually credulous, or doesn’t understand the difference between a documentary and an advertisement, or has an undisclosed relationship with the subject” – Quack Quack Goes Burzynski, Village Voice, June 1 2010).

3. The claim that “Antineoplaston therapy has had significant success rates with terminal brain cancer patients” is unsupportable from the published evidence base. The term “significant” has a specific meaning in science; it would mean that there was solid evidence that Burzynski patients survived longer on average than non-patients with similar disease and prognosis, and that by a statistically significant margin. We do not know this because Burzynski has not reported the results of any one of the 61 trials he has registered in the last two decades.

Overall it looks very much as if the wrong sort of people were driving this, editorially. Had it been in the hands of science journalists it is likely that the uncritical presentation of which you are critical, would not have happened, and the viewing public would, as a result, have been mush less likely to be deceived.

Let’s not forget that Merola, with his brother Peter, is responsible for the conspiracist propaganda masterpiece “Zeitgeist: The Movie”. Many of the techniques used in the Burzynski movies are identical to those in Zeitgeist. Emotive story lines are set up, viewers are coerced into emotional investment with the perceived victims, and then the alleged bogeyman (the political and religious establishment in Zeitgeist, the medical establishment in Burzynski) are paraded like pantomime villains to be booed and jeered by the by-now partisan audience.

Given Merola’s past history of conspiracist propaganda, I believe that showing this movie showed atrocious judgment.

Burzynski: Another fact-blind troll, who predicted that?

 Cancer woo  4 Responses »
Mar 192013
 

Another fact-blind troll has joined the “illustrious” ranks of  @BurzynskiMovie, @MissNissKat, @Sk8scooter and @Burzynski_saves (who, to his credit, seems to be adopting a more reasonable persona now).

Ne’s like a rash over the blogs and twitter, he’s also been banned from Wikipedia which has a more robust attitude to sockpuppets and block evasion than some services.

These are the twitter accounts (in rough reverse order) I can recall (strikeout for the terminated ones), feel free to let me know of any others:

All display precisely the same kind of “I didn’t hear that” bullshit. I can’t add much to Keir Liddle’s analysis of this particular vermin other than to say his agenda appears to be to annoy, not to persuade, as persuasion would require engaging with and addressing criticisms of his arguments.

Incidentally, I heartily recommend Janetter. It has a “Mute” feature which removes users not only from your own timeline but from all searches. Then all you need to do is check the web when the troll has had enough time to pay out another noose, pull the trapdoor and wait for the next round of whack-a-mole.

Who Is This Eric Person Anyway?

 Cancer woo  Comments Off
Mar 182013
 

You may not know it but the Burzynski movies are not Eric Merola’s first foray into conspiracist whacknuttery.

Have you heard of Zeitgeist: The Movie? It was directed by Peter Joseph, using his two given names but not his surname which, according to Wikipedia, is “not publically known”, but is well enough known in skeptic circles: Peter Joseph Merola. Also credited on that move is one Eric Clinton, in the art department. Eric Clinton is also using his given names and not his surname. Step forward Peter Joseph’s brother, advertising art director Eric Clinton Merola.

Eric Merola

Eric Merola

Peter Joseph (Merola)

Peter Joseph (Merola)

Zeitgeist promotes the idea that the US Government was complicit in the September 11 attacks. That is, pretty much, all you need to know about it. The intersection between Truthers and rational humanity is the null set. Some of the comments about Zeitgeist might ring bells:

The film is an interesting object lesson on how conspiracy theories get to be so popular…. It’s a driven, if uneven, piece of propaganda, a marvel of tight editing and fuzzy thinking. Its on-camera sources are mostly conspiracy theorists, co-mingled with selective eyewitness accounts, drawn from archival footage and often taken out of context. It derides the media as a pawn of the International Bankers, but produces media reports for credibility when convenient. The film ignores expert opinion, except the handful of experts who agree with it. And yet, it’s compelling. It shamelessly ploughs forward, connecting dots with an earnest certainty that makes you want to give it an A for effort. (“Conspiracy theorists yelling in the echo chamber“, Globe and Mail)

And

[T]hese are surreal perversions of genuine issues and debates, and they tarnish all criticism of faith, the Bush administration and globalization—there are more than enough factual injustices in this world to be going around without having to invent fictional ones. (“Zeitgeist: The Nonsense”, Irish Times)

Or, more pithily

“Conspiracy crap”. (Village Voice)

Hmmm. Surreal perversions of real issues, inventing fictional injustices, a driven piece of propaganda, tight editing and fuzzy thinking, conspiracy crap – these could all have been lifted from reviews of the Burzynski “movies”. Like this one: “Quack Quack Goes Burzynski“.

But why are the Merola brothers so coy about this? Perhaps they have day jobs that might be impacted by being identified with the lunatic fringe. Or perhaps they actually believe the conspiracist bullshit they spout and are worried that the CIA (which is clever enough to fool all the engineers at NIST) is not clever enough to puncture their cunning pseudonyms.

Well, the game’s up long since and I don’t see the black helicopters anywhere.

So, Eric Merola is a serial offender in the Bullshit: With Colons department. Why am I not surprised?

Disagreeing with the principles of homeopathy would also disagree with the principles of vaccination

 Homeopaths say the funniest things!  3 Responses »
Mar 162013
 

According to a response to one of my Amazon reviews,  ”disagreeing with the principles of homeopathy would also disagree with the principles of vaccination”.

This is not the first time I’ve heard this from a believer.

It demonstrates a lack of understanding of both immunology and homeopathy.

The doctrine of similars is “like cures like”, not “same prevents same”, and it’s asserted to be generalised in in a way that vaccination emphatically is not.

The principle of vaccination is that exposure to a specific pathogen at a low level causes an immune response which confers a degree of immunity against subsequent infection with that exact pathogen or its very close relatives. It requires a meaningful amount of biologically active material, and the response can be objectively measured using serology. It is also possible (actually quite easy) to demonstrate that as pathogens evolve they mutate and protection is not conferred.

The mechanism by which the body produces this immune response is well understood, testable, and has nothing whatsoever to do with “vital force”, “miasms” or arbitrarily selected “similars”, is dependent on the cause, not the symptoms of the infection (the polar opposite of “proving”), and is both specific and narrowly restricted in its sphere of operation.

Needless to say there is no known objective test which can validate a specific biological response to any homeopathic remedy at the dilutions normally used.

Crisis in homeopathy: remedy resistance

 Homeopathy  Comments Off
Mar 112013
 

There has been a lot of focus recently on antibiotic resistance and the problems it causes, but less attention has been paid to the current crisis in homeopathy: remedy resistance.

Put briefly, remedy resistance is what happens when the body is constantly subjected to remedies and the miasms which disorder the vital force mutate to become resistant.

Unfortunately, the way water is constantly recycled around the planet in rain, rivers and processing plants mean that water is in constant agitation (or “succussion” to give it its magic “like shaking only different” name). Virtually every substance known to man is identified as a remedy, usually for a broad range of overlapping symptoms, and all of these things are likely to have been in contact with water at some point, so we are constantly saturated with every possible remedy in virtually every possible potency.

I asked someone who is qualified to practice homeopathy in the UK, what this means for the haeling art of homeopathy. This was easy since I am in fact so qualified, having all the required training mandated by law for practice as a homeopath.

“It’s lucky”, I said, “that we still have remedies like light of venus and mobile phone radiation, which can be collected in isolation from water, otherwise we’d have nothing left in our chest”.

The Prince of Wales was unavailable for comment as he was giving an interview to a daffodil at the time.

Burzynski: What’s the game plan?

 Cancer woo, Health Fooldom  1 Response »
Mar 102013
 

As we approach the release date for Eric Merola’s second propaganda film dubbed “Burzynski II: This time it’s peer-reviewed“, I have to wonder what the game plan is. As far as I can see there are not many outcomes towards which Slippery Stan might be working. The options appear to be FDA approval, going alternative or going South.

I think he is headed South.

I believe that on present evidence Stanislaw Burzynski is headed down the route of Max Gerson and Hulda Regehr Clark towards Tijuana, Mexico, the global epicentre of cancer woo.

Let me run through my reasoning.

Why it matters

Any idiot can claim to cure cancer. Cancer patients are, by and large, desperate and expecting to die. If they do die, it’s not a surprise. If they don’t, they can easily be persuaded to credit their survival to whatever snake oil they tried last. Cancer outcomes are measured in terms of prognosis and survival – but prognosis is notoriously inaccurate in early diagnosis. If doctors give someone a few months to live and they last two years, it’s likely that the doctors just didn’t have enough data on that patient’s disease yet, rather than some miracle cure having extended life.

This is an important truth. Purported cancer cures run the gamut from dangerous (black salve) through implausible and utterly improbable (homeopathy) to the mass of unproven and generally thoroughly discredited “alternative” therapies such as Hoxsey, Gerson, Clark’s Zapper, detox and so on.

The only credibly identified way to separate exploitative bullshit and delusion, from effective emergent therapies, is the scientific method. Trials, tests, independent replication, and open debate.

Failure to engage fully with the scientific community, and especially with those who investigate a treatment skeptically, is a red flag for quackery. And refusal to do so is close to being a 100% reliable litmus test for quackery.

FDA Approval

Most of the theatre of trials we’ve seen to date looks on the face of it as if it’s intended to get FDA approval for antineoplastons – but scratch the surface and that interpretation looks less likely.

In order to get approval you have to show a solid in vitro effect at usable doses, a reasonably unambiguous effect in humans i phase II trials, and a concrete benefit over the existing standard of care in phase III trials. All of these require publication in peer-reviewed journals.

Burzynski has, as his fans point out, published a few papers. Most of these are conference reports and other low grade material that is not peer reviewed. A few people have also published some cautiously positive results from early tests, notably in Japan. But the output is staggeringly thin for 35 years of supposedly near-continuous investigation.

Does Burzynski want FDA approval?

An alternative interpretation is that the clinical trials have been a fig leaf to allow Burzynski to continue to market his treatment in the absence of approval, an end-run around the consent decree which allowed him to keep practising when he was found guilty of selling unapproved medicines across state lines.

I believe the latter, because form everything I have seen it appears to me that Stanislaw Burzynski does not care if the FDA approves his antineoplastons. As far as he is concerned the jury is in: they work, he believes they work, so any independent approval is an irrelevance. I am pretty convinced of this.

He is wrong, of course. Not necessarily about the antineoplastons (though it’s likely he is wrong about those) but he is wrong about the idea that approval, which is basically the rubber stamp which says you have convinced people who are not vested n the product, is irrelevant. There is a massive brouhaha right now about the release of trial data by pharmaceutical companies, the alltrials initiative championed by Ben Goldacre among others. By cherry-picking the evidence you publish, you will almost always overstate the benefit of your treatment.

But more than that: if he gets FDA approval, he will no longer be the “brave maverick”. The secret will be out, other people will be able to probe the soft underbelly of his treatment regime and maybe even use better science and better knowledge to improve it. I don’t think he is up for that. In his mind, he seems to be the lone genius whose understanding cannot be approached by mere mortals – I think he has been reading his own PR for so long that this inevitable consequence of being surrounded by yes-men has surely set in. I do not think he can handle the cognitive dissonance that would result from approval, which would be followed by genuine tests of his treatments against other drugs, and would establish not only whether it works or not, but whether it works better than other treatments. This last looks, on the face of it, to be extremely unlikely. It also seems unlikely that his supposed mechanism is in fact the right one.

It’s my view that if “antineoplastons” were approved, the result would be in short order the discovery that Burzynski has been playing science for 35 years with only limited understanding, due in large part to his failure to follow the publish-and-collaborate model that has been the core of most genuine scientific advance in the last century.

Going Alternative

If your main concern is to do business and “heal” people without all the tiresome business of evidence and regulation, the world of “alternative” medicine is the way to go. You can make the most extraordinary claims and as long as you move every few years to stay ahead of state health boards you can keep in business almost indefinitely.

You can also use the “bait and switch” tactics beloved of supplement purveyors, where you describe miracle cures and discuss the terrible effects of “toxins” in one place, and sell remedies in another, pretending that you are not formally making these curative claims at point of sale.

I don’t think Slippery Stan is going that way because most of his reputation seems to depend on administering standard cancer therapies (i.e. chemo) and pretending that he is doing it in a s”special” way. That requires a medical license, and that in turn pretty much precludes “going altie”.

Going South

Tijuana in Mexico has two things going for it as far as Slippery Stan is concerned: first, it’s close to the border and already has a thriving alternative health tourism market; and second, it has notoriously lax regulation (although they did eventually shut Hulda Clark down). In Tijuana you can offer amygdalin, Gerson, Hoxsey or any one of a number of quack cancer “cures” and get away with it as long as you’re not actively killing people (other than by deluding them into thinking that drinking juiced vegetables can cure cancer).

Commercial property is relatively cheap and the climate is nice.

It’s the perfect place for a quack charlatan brave maverick doctor to hang up his shingle.

And I believe that the upcoming Burzynski II is little more than a press release informing the world of this. Screw the FDA, if you want your cancer cured come to Doctor Stan’s Snake Oil Gene Targeted Cancer Therapy Emporium and pay the nurse on the way in.

It is not clear how someone with such a visceral reaction against any form of critical questioning, could ever handle the process of scientific debate. Can you imaging Burzynsi at a meeting of oncologists, calmly fielding penetrating questions about the details of his work and his outcomes? All the evidence we have to date suggests that any questioning is interpreted as wanting people to die and hating patients for being “cured”. Anything that interferes with the process of belief appears not to be acceptable to him.

So, for my money, Burzynski is headed for the border. You saw it here first (maybe).

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