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Wednesday 30 October 2013

Homeopathy. Scientists beginning to understand how it works

Homeopathic Signals from DNA

As a Homeopath, I have never been particularly interested in how homeopathy works. I just know that it has worked for me, that it has worked for my family, and for my patients over the years.

Most patients have a similar attitude: they are ill, and their primary interest is getting better - safely. They can little if there is no scientific explanation of the working mechanism of homeopathy.

However, in recent years, homeopathy has come under attack from people with a vested interest in the Conventional Medical Establishment, and in particular, in a form of medicine based largely on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. They have demanded to know - mainly by stating that homeopathy does not work because there is no known mechanism through which it could work.

Thankfully, there are a small group of scientists who are now beginning to explain the working mechanism. This article has been reproduced from the "Institute of Science in Society" website, and it is reproduced here without amendment.

'Homeopathic' Signals from DNA

Nobel Laureate who discovered the HIV presents controversial but well-documented findings that electromagnetic signals can be detected from highly diluted solutions of DNA. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
fully referenced and illustrated version of this paper is posted on ISIS members website and can be downloaded here.

Please circulate widely and repost, but you must give the URL of the original and preserve all the links back to articles on our website

“Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won a Nobel prize in 2008 for linking HIV with AIDS, last week made controversial claims that highly dilute solutions of harmful viruses and bacteria emit low-frequency radio waves, allegedly from watery nanostructures formed around the pathogens. Similar claims have been made for homeopathic remedies.”New Scientist [1]

Latest round of attack on homeopathy

Homeopathy has been subject to periodic attacks from the mainstream medical and scientific community aided and abetted by uninformed journalist in the mainstream press eager to create a good impression with the scientific establishment.

The latest round was initiated by a damning report from the UK Parliament Science and Technology Committee released in February 2010, Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy [2], which concludes that the existing scientific literature shows no evidence that that homeopathy is efficacious beyond the placebo effect, and that “explanations for why homeopathy would work are scientifically implausible.” 

Therefore, the National Health Service should stop funding homeopathy and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency should not allow homeopathic product labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy.

In July, the British Medical Association passed a resolution to stop homeopathy being made available on the National Health Service (NHS), and to have all homeopathic remedies to be placed in a special area marked ‘Placebos’ in health shops and pharmacies. However, the UK government is not taking action to ban homeopathy from the NHS [3], which has funded homeopathy from its inception in 1948. So homeopathy is safe, at least for now. 

Lack of plausible explanation the major hurdle in gaining public acceptance

The most difficult hurdle in getting general acceptance for homeopathy is without doubt the lack of an explanation, based on contemporary science, on why it would work. In my view, that is more important than getting double-blind, placebo-controlled data on efficacy. Such an explanation is beginning to emerge, and Luc Montagnier’s research team may have provided some key observations.

The Nobel Laureate has entered the fray, bravely picking up on work done by his fellow countryman, the recently deceased immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who became the centre of a major international controversy in 1988, when Benveniste and his research team published a paper in the journal Nature describing the apparent homeopathic action of very high dilutions of anti-IgE antibody on the human blood cells basophils. As condition for publishing the paper, the then journal editor John Maddox organised and subjected Benveniste and his team to a farcical and damaging public trial [4] that included illusionist and well-known sceptic James Randi and fraud expert Walter Stewart .

Montagnier’s recent work, summarily dismissed in the New Scientist [1] and elsewhere, has been published in two papers in 2009, and the evidence presented is clear and informative.

“A novel property of DNA”

The first paper reports the capacity of some bacterial DNA sequences to induce electromagnetic waves at high dilutions in water [5], and appears to be a “resonance phenomenon” triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves. Interestingly, genomic DNA of most pathogenic bacteria contain sequences that are able to generate such signals, suggesting that highly sensitive detection system might be developed for chronic bacterial infections in human and animal diseases. The second paper follows up this suggestion, showing that it is indeed possible to detect the presence of HIV DNA even when the RNA of the virus has disappeared from the blood of people infected with HIV and undergoing antiviral therapy (see [6] Electromagnetic Signals from HIV, Prospects for a Science of Homeopathy,SiS 48).

Montagnier and his colleague Claude Lavallee initially observed that filtering a culture supernatant of human lymphocytes infected with the bacterium Mycoplasma pirum (about 300 nm in diameter) through filters with pore size of 100 nm or 20 nm gave apparently sterile fluid. However, the sterile fluid was able to regenerate the original mycoplasma when incubated with a mycoplasma-negative culture of human lymphocytes within 2 to 3 weeks. Similarly, filtering an infective fraction of HIV particles (120 nm) through 20 nm filter failed to retain the infective agent.

Furthermore, the infectious filtrate produced electromagnetic waves of low frequency in a reproducible manner after appropriate dilutions in water. They suspected a “resonance phenomenon” depending on excitation by the ambient electromagnetic fields such as the 50/60 Hz signals from the mains. The infectious signal appeared associated with “polymeric nanostructures of defined size” present in the diluted filtrate. The supernatant of uninfected eukaryotic cells used as controls did not have those infectious effects.

EM signals associated with nanostructures

Given the initial clues, the researcher team set out to investigate the phenomenon more thoroughly, to characterize the electromagnetic (EM) signals and the nanostructures produced by the purified bacteria.
In addition to M. pirum, they looked at E. coli. The supernatants of deliberately infected human lymphocytes containing 106 or 107 infectious units per ml were filtered twice first through 450 nm Millipore filters to remove debris, and then 100 or 20 nm filters to remove mycoplasma cells. The filtrates were confirmed sterile by incubation for several weeks in enriched growth medium. Repeated search for traces of mycoplasma DNA by polymerase chain reactions (PCR) was also consistently negative.

However, when the filtrates were incubated for two weeks or three weeks with a culture of human activated T lymphocytes, the mycoplasma was recovered in the medium with all its original characteristics.

The filtrates were analysed just after filtration for production of EM waves of low frequency. For this purpose, a devise previously designed by Benveniste and Coll was used for the detection of signals produced (see Figure 1).
Figure 1  Detecting EM signals with Benveniste and Coll’s device

The filtrates were serially diluted 1 in 10, after each dilution, the tube is tightly stopped and strongly agitated on a Vortex apparatus for 15 seconds. This step, which is equivalent to homeopathic ‘succussion’, has been found critical for the generation of signals.

After all dilutions have been made (15 to 20), the stopped tubes were read one by one on an electromagnetic coil (copper wire on a bobbin, impedance 300 Ohms), connected to a Sound Blaster Card, itself connected to a laptop computer powered by its 12 volt battery. Each emission is recorded twice for 6 seconds, amplified 500 times and processed with different softwares to visualise the signals on the computer screen. The main harmonics of the complex signals were analysed by softwares for Fourier transformations. In each experiment, the internal noise generated by the different pieces of the reading system was first recorded (coil alone, coil with a tube filled with ordinary water). Fourier analysis shows that the noise was predominantly very low frequencies probably generated at least in part by the 50/60 Hz ambient electric current. Using the 12 volt battery to power the computer reduced the noise, but did not abolish it altogether; as the noise was found to be necessary for the induction of the resonance signals from the specific nanostructure.

EM signals did not decrease with dilution

When the EM signals from serial dilutions of the M. pirum filtrate were recorded, the first obvious change was an increasein the overall amplitude of the signals at certain dilutions over the background noise, and also higher frequencies. This change was abolished if the tube analysed was placed inside a box shielded with sheets of copper and mumetal, which also shields static magnetic field as well as low frequency EM fields.

Fourier analysis of the M. pirum signals confirmed a shift towards higher frequencies close to 1 000 Hz and multiples thereof. The profiles were identical and highly reproducible for all the dilutions showing an increase in amplitude.

The first low dilutions were usually negative, showing the background noise only, positive signals were typically obtained at dilutions ranging from 10-5 to 10-8 up to 10-12, at which the signal was greatest before it became negative at 10-13.

The positive dilutions varied according to the type of filtration; the 20 nm filtrate being generally positive at dilutions higher than those of the 100 nm. The original unfiltered suspension was negative at all dilutions, a phenomenon observed for all the microorganisms studied.

The 20 nm filtrate was centrifuged through a density gradient to separate components with different densities that were tested for electromagnetic emissions. The emitting structures were distributed in a large range of densities from 1.15 to 1.25 gm per ml.

In the experiment with E. coli, supernatants of cultures containing 10units/ml were used.  No signal appeared after filtration through 20nm filters, suggesting that the structures associated with the signals were retained by those filtered, and therefore had a size greater than 20 nm and lower than 100 nm.

The final filtrate was sterile. Signal producing dilutions again range form 10-8 to 10-11, with profiles on Fourier transformation similar to, yet distinct from those of M. Pirum. In one experiment, some very high dilutions were found to be positive, ranging from 10-9 to 10-18.

In contrast, the unfiltered supernatant did not show any signal above background up to 10-38 dilution. This suggests that the low dilutions are self-inhibitory, probably by interference of the multiple sources emitting in the same wave length, slightly out of phase, like radio jamming. Alternatively, the abundance of nanostructures can form a gel in water and therefore inhibited from vibrating (more later).

EM signal can be transferred

The researchers wondered whether or not it was possible to generate new signal-emitting structures from tube to tube by wave-transfer. The answer was yes.

A donor tube of a low “silent” dilution of E. coli (10-3) was placed side by side close to a receiver tube of the positive “loud” highest dilution of the same preparation (10-9). Both tubes were placed together in a mumetal box for 24 hours at room temperature, so the tubes were not exposed to external electromagnetic noise and only exposed to the signals generated by the structures present in the tubes themselves. When tested after that, the donor tube was still silent, and the receiver tube too, became silent.

But when further dilutions were made from the receiver tube, they became positive again. These results suggest that the receiver tube was made silent by the formation of an excess of new nanostructures, which could emit signals again upon further dilution. The effect was suppressed by putting a sheet of mumetal between the two tubes during the 24 h contact period, pointing to a role of low frequency waves in the phenomenon.

EM signals from all pathogenic bacteria

Emission of similar EM signals was found with other bacteria such as Streptococcus B, Staphylococcus aueus,Pseudomonas aerogniosaProteus mirabilisBacillus subtilisSalmonellaClostridium perfringens, all in the same range of dilutions as for E. coli, and only after filtrating at 100 nm,  not 20 nm. Importantly, the transfer effect between the two tubes, one silent, one loud, was only observed if both contained dilutions of the same bacterial species. These results indicate that the signal transfer is species-specific.

Does the signal depend on the initial number of cells? To investigate that, a stationary culture of E. coli was counted and adjusted to 109 cells/ml and serially dilution 1 in 100 down to 1 cell/ml. Each dilution was filtered through 100 nm, then analyzed for signal emission. Surprisingly, the range of positive dilutions were not strictly dependent on the initial concentration of E. coli cells, being roughly the same from 109 down to 10 cells, suggesting that the same final number of nanostructures was reached at all concentrations.

Was the effect dependent on the operator? No. Two operators measuring independently the same dilutions of E. coliproduced exactly the same results. The results were also independent of the order in which the samples were read, whether in descending dilutions from the lowest to the highest or vice versa. And even in random order. That was achieved by letting another lab worker place the diluted samples in random order, the labels being unknown to the person reading the samples. Again the same results were obtained, provided each tube was well separated from the others to avoid cross-talk between them. Finally, the results were independent of the reading site. They were the same in France (Paris), Canada (Montreal) and Cameroun (Yaoundé), even though the background noise at each place was distinct. The positive signal is always clearly differentiated by the same higher frequency peaks.
A non-exhaustive survey of the bacterial species displaying EM signals suggests that most of the bacteria pathogenic for humans are in this category. In contrast, probiotic non-pathogenic bacteria such as Lactobacillus and their DNA are negative for EM signal emission.

What is the nature of the EM signal emitting nanostructures?

The nanostructures were not destroyed by treatments with enzymes that destroy RNA, DNA or protein (RNAse A, DNAse 1, proteinase K); only by heating at 70 ˚C for 30 minutes, or freezing for 1 hour at -20 ˚C or -60 ˚C. Treatment with lithium cations, known to affect H-bonding of water molecules, reduced the intensity of the signals, while the range of the positive dilution remained unchanged.

EM signals traced to specific pathogenic DNA sequences

In preliminary experiments, the researchers found that treating a suspension of E. coli with formaldehyde, which killed the bacteria, did not alter the capacity to induce the EM signals. This treatment denatured the surface proteins of the bacteria but did not change their genetic material - the double-helical DNA - and suggests that the source of the signals may be the DNA itself.

Indeed, DNA extracted from the bacterial suspension by the usual method, after filtering and appropriate dilutions in water, was able to emit EM signals similar to those produced by intact bacteria under the same conditions. DNAse treatment of the extracted DNA solution abolishes its capacity to emit signals, so long as the nanostructures previously induced by the DNA are destroyed.

The same as for the intact microorganisms, the isolated DNA must be filtered before the EM signals can be detected in the diluted solutions. This suggested to the researchers that filtering is necessary to break up a “network of nanostructures organized in a gel at high concentrations in water,” allowing them to be dispersed in further dilutions. One complication is that the filtration through 100 nm pore size filter did not retain the DNA. The dilutions positive the EMS were in the same range as those for the intact bacteria, generally between 10-7 to 10-13.

At the high dilution of 10-13, calculations indicate that there is no DNA molecule larger than 105 Da in the solution; making it unlikely that the EM signals are produced directly by the DNA itself, but rather by the “self-sustained nanostructures induced by the DNA.” Generally, all the bacterial species shown to be positive for EM signals yielded also DNA preparations positive for EM signals, and they were all pathogens.

In the case of E. coli, some non-pathogenic strains used for gene cloning were negative. This suggests that only some sequences of DNA are the source of the EMS.

The signal is linked to the ability of the bacteria to cause diseases, which in turn depends on the capacity of the microorganism to bind to eukaryotic cells. They looked in M. prium DNA, where a single gene – adhesion coding for a 126 kDa protein – is responsible for the adhesion of the mycoplasma to human cells. The gene was cloned previously in Montagnier’s laboratory, and they had it as two fragments: 1.5 kbp N terminal part and 5 kbp C terminal part of the protein in two different plasmids. The two plasmids containing the fragments were amplified in the E. coli strain that did not produce EM signals. 

But when the E.coli strain (XL1blue) was transformed with either plasmids carrying an adhesion gene fragment, EM signals were produced.

The two adhesion DNA fragments were then cut out by specific restriction enzymes and isolated by agarose electrophoresis. Each DNA fragment was able to induce the EM signal. To confirm the result, they purified a large fraction of the adhesion DNA from the whole mycoplasma genome using specific primers and amplication by PCR, and found that this fragment induced EM signals.

The researchers have discovered a novel property of DNA, the capacity of some sequences to emit electromagnetic waves in resonance after excitation by the ambient electromagnetic background. They speculated that all DNA may be capable of emitting EM signals, but “in our conditions of detection, it seems to be associated with only certain bacterial sequences.”

They detected similar EM signals in the plasma and in DNA extracted from the plasma of patients suffering from Alzheimer, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis, suggesting that bacterial infections are present in those diseases. They require 20 nM filtrations suggesting that the nanostructures produced are smaller than those produced b y bacterial DNA.

Moreover, EM signals can be detected also from RNA viruses, such as HIV, influenza virus A, Hepatitis C virus, In patients infected with HIV, EM signals can be detected mostly in patients treated by antiretroviral therapy and having a very low viral load in their plasma. Such nanostructures persisting in the plasma may contribute to the viral reservoir which escapes the antiviral treatment, assuming that they carry genetic information of the virus.

It is known from the very early X-ray diffraction studies of DNA that water molecules are tightly associated with the double helix, and DNA in water solution forms gels associating a large number of water molecules.

The capacity of diluted solutions to emit EMS after they have been isolated in mumetal boxes last up to 48 hours, indicating the relative stability of the nano structures.

What exactly are these nanostructures and why do they emit electromagnetic waves? Mantagnier and his team are not very explicit on this. But we shall examine this more carefully at the end of the next article in this series [6].

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Steroid Drugs: short-term benefits: long-term dangers

This blog has been reproduced from the Homeopathy World Community Website. http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/forum/topics/corticosteroids-at-a-glance. It was originally part of a discussion about the use of corticosteroid drugs, and this excellent response by Gina Tyler, DHOM, is worthy of repetition here.

"Steroids are fast catching up with antibiotics as the most abused class of drugs in your doctor’s black bag. Steroids mimic the action of the adrenal glands, the body’s most powerful regulator of general metabolism. John Stirling, director of the vitamin company Biocare, credits a very short course (three injections) of steroids with jump-starting his failing adrenal system after anaphylactic shock and saving his life.
The problem is, like antibiotics, steroids appear to be a miracle ‘cure’. 

Patients with crippling arthritis or asthma seem to be instantly better on steroids.The wheeze, the swelling, the pain go away. So doctors turn to steroids as the first, rather than last, line of attack for their anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects.

These MD’s do not take into consideration the side effects,and what these steriods are actually doing to the “disease”/ symptom. Just because the pain goes away, the swelling stops, the skin clears up does NOT INDICATE the imbalance has been CURED. NO way!

In fact it will return with a vengeance, turning into complex / chronic / life altering health problems.

As with antibiotics, what was once reserved for the extreme emergency is now being used on the most trivial of conditions. Steroids are now handed out as readily as antibiotics, even to babies, at the first sign of inflammation of any sort.

The latest drug set to replace gripe water for babies with croup is a steroid (budesonide); hydrocortisone is included in the latest over-the-counter medication for piles. Steroids make up many OTC skin drugs, and are considered the drug of choice for asthma, eczema, arthritis, back problems, bowel problems like ulcerative colitis-indeed, for any and all inflammations or allergic reactions-and new uses are still being invented.

Far from being a wonder drug ‘cure all’, steroids cannot cure one single condition.

All they do is suppress your body’s ability to express a normal response. 

In a few instances, this type of suppression will give the body a chance to heal itself. But more often, the effect is immediate, devastating and permanent damage. And we are only now realizing just how quickly damage can occur. Despite what doctors say, that steroids only have side effects after many years of use, there is no such thing as a safe dose.

Studies show that steroids cause permanent, debilitating effects after a single dosage. With long term use, some of the more common side effects of steroids include changes in appearance, such as acne, development of a round or moon-shaped face and an increased appetite leading to eight gain. Steroids may also cause a redistribution of fat, leading to a swollen face and abdomen, but thin arms and legs. In some cases, the skin becomes more fragile, which leads to easy bruising. These take weeks to begin appearing.

Psychological side effects of steroids include irritability, agitation, euphoria or depression. Insomnia can also be a side effect. These changes in appearance and mood are often more apparent with high doses of steroids, and may begin within days. Injected Triamcinalone, or oral dexamethasone seem to cause these changes less, but as they stay in the body an undesirably long time, rendering them second choices.

An increase in susceptibility to infections may occur with very high doses of steroids. Prednisone may also aggravate diabetes, glaucoma, and high blood pressure, and often increases cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood. In children, steroids can suppress growth. These effects are reversed once the steroids are stopped.

Long-term damage: quick and dirty: Steroids don’t take years to damage your system, as doctors maintain. Permanent, crippling damage can occur weeks after you’ve begun treatment.

•     Osteoporosis can occur within a matter of months. Steroids cause 8 per cent reduction in bone mass after four months (Ann Int Med, November 15, 1993), the equivalent of the effect on your bones of having your ovaries removed. Even low doses of inhaled steroids (400 micrograms per day) reduce bone formation (The Lancet, July 6, 1991).
•     Low doses (10-15 mg prednisone) for a year can cause cataracts (Surv Ophthalmol, 1986; 31: 260-2).
•     Topical steroids may begin to cause eye damage or raise pressure after two weeks. Extensive visual loss can be caused by a 1 per cent hydrocortisone ointment, which is available OTC (BMJ, August 20-27, 1994).
•     Rub-on steroids have caused Cushing’s syndrome in children as soon as a month after treatment has begun (Arch Dis Child, 1982; 57: 204-7).
•     Inhaled steroids slowth growth in children after six weeks (Acta Ped, 1993; 82: 636-40. See also, The Lancet, December 14, 1991).
•     Bilateral cataracts and glaucoma induced by long term use of steroid eye drops

Side effects that may be caused by the long-term use of steroids include cataracts, muscle weakness, avascular necrosis of bone and osteoporosis. These usually do not occur with less than four weeks of treatment.

Avascular necrosis of bone, usually associated with high doses of prednisone over long periods of time, produces hip pain and an abnormal MRI scan. It occurs most often in the hip, but it can also affect the shoulders, knees and other joints. Caught early, the joint can be saved by “decompression” by an orthopedic surgeon. Once full developed, Avascular necrosis is painful and often requires surgical joint replacement for pain relief.

Steroids reduce calcium absorption through the gastrointestinal tract which may result in osteoporosis, or thinning of the bones. Osteoporosis can lead to bone fractures, especially compression fractures of the vertebrae, causing severe back pain. Calcium, at least 1500 mg of the calcium carbonate form or equivalent, should be taken.

There is also a relationship between steroids and premature arteriosclerosis, which is a narrowing of the blood vessels by fat (cholesterol) deposits. In general, there is a close relationship between the side effects of steroids and the dose and duration of their use. Thus, a high dose of steroids given over a long period of time is more likely to cause side effects than a lower dosage given over a shorter period of time.

Steroid treatments, Prednisone and Azathioprine, had completely destroyed my immune system and were the culprits that were not allowing my bodily systems to repair themselves.

Topical corticosteroids are often prescribed intermittently for short-term reactive treatment of acute flares and supplemented by emollients. Reactive treatment with corticosteroids offers rapid and effective symptomatic relief for acute flares. However, there are considerable safety concerns associated with their use, particularly when they are applied continuously. Potential adverse events are primarily cutaneous (principally skin atrophy, but also telangiectasia, hypopigmentation, steroid acne, increased hair growth and rosacea-like eruptions), but there may be systemic effects (suppression of the hypothalamicpituitary- adrenal (HPA) axis, growth retardation, increased risk of glaucoma cataract and Cushing’s syndrome).

Sources
Hill CJ, Rosenberg A Jr. Adverse effects from topical steroids. Cutis 1978; 21: 624–8.

Ruiz-Maldonado R, Zapata G, Lourdes T, Robles C. Cushing’s syndrome after topical application of corticosteroids. Am J Dis Child 1982; 136: 274–5.

McLean CJ, Lobo RF, Brazier DJ. Cataracts glaucoma, and femoral avascular necrosis caused by topical corticosteroid ointment. Lancet 1995; 345: 330.

Bode HH. Dwarfism following long-term topical corticosteroid therapy. JAMA 1980; 244: 813–4.

Queille C, Pommarede R, Saurat JH. Efficacy versus systemic effects of six topical steroids in the treatment of atopic dermatitis of childhood. Pediatr Dermatol 1984; 1: 246–53.


Wednesday 9 October 2013

BBC assume leading role in promoting new GSK malaria vaccine

There is a new vaccine about to be launched upon us. It is for Malaria. And the BBC are acting to promote it, on behalf of the drug manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

This article appeared on 8th October 2013. UK firm seeks to market world's first Malaria vaccine.

The BBC has been hyping up the benefits of this vaccine now for some years - as always, keen to provide us with 'good' news about drug and vaccine 'breakthroughs'. These are just a few of the BBC articles on the Malaria vaccine during the last two years.

So, all would appear to be well, then? Well, not really. As usual, this is a piece of BBC News reporting that does little more than parrot the 'good news' press releases of Big Pharma drug companies. The BBC seems content to act as the sales promoter of their vaccines and drugs - without the least attempt at seeking balance in their reporting.

Like everyone else, the BBC is aware that conventional drugs and vaccines have 'side-effects'. What they don't recognise is that the 'side-effects' to which they admit are actually much worse than this phrase suggests. Conventional drugs and vaccines regularly and routinely cause 'disease-inducing-effects', or DIEs.

So what about this new vaccine. Has there been any attempt at balance? Who undertook the study? Has there been any questioning of the validity of the study, or any concern about possible DIEs for the patients who will receive this vaccine? Will this vaccine be any safer, or any more effective for patients than other vaccines have proven to be?

If the 'promising' trial results are analysed there are already indications of early signs of over-hyping, and danger for patients. Heidi Stevenson did such an analysis in June 2013, and commented:

          "Before accepting claims of a vaccine’s efficacy, it’s wise to look at the study and who financed it. A new study for a malaria vaccine is a case in point. It was financed by the manufacturer and the lead researcher is a co-patent holder! It should come as no suprise that there are gaping flaws in the study, as discussed here".

So, the BBC is quite willing to report 'promising' trial results without bothering to tell us that the trials were funded and conducted by the drug company itself. A 72% efficacy rate? Wonderful. No question about it then, as far as the BBC thinks anyway. Perhaps they continue to believe that there are no 'vested interests' in such trials, and that drug companies are entirely honest in the way they conduct and interpret them! But Stevenson found much more to be concerned about, not least that the findings on the safety were 'wildly exaggerated'.

She found that many people who had received the vaccine developed a series of mild adverse reactions, including induration, pain, tenderness, swelling, erythema, hyperpigmentation, hyperemia, fever, and headache. But these were not considered to be a result of the vaccine. Stevenson asks the question - how can this exclusion be justified? A question notably not asked by the BBC.

The more serious adverse reactions identified were upper respiratory track infections, body tinea, rhinitis, vulvovaginal candidiasis, and gastrointestinal disease. The study shows that those who received the vaccine experienced more of these conditions than the control group, and this was Stevenson's analysis.

          "Apparently, the researchers didn’t consider this to be significant. However, when you consider the relatively small size of this study compared with the millions who would be vaccinated if (the vaccine)  were approved, the seriousness of these results becomes quite apparent.

          "Let’s say that one million children receive this vaccine. Then, if the adverse effects occur at the same rate, an extra 127,000 children would suffer from upper respiratory tract infections. Since the targeted population is poor, that means many would not be healthy enough to manage it, and some would likely die. Add to that the gastritis case that occurred in the trial, and you’d have more than 25,000 people who’d suffer severe gastritis.

Whether it is appropriate for a drug company, with vested interests in the commercial success of the vaccine, should be allowed to get away with this is one thing.

That a public broadcaster, like the BBC, should allow them to get away with it is quite another. 

The BBC, unlike most parts of the private media industry, does not have a vested interest in GSK, or any other drug company. But it does (or at least it should) have a vested interest in its licence payers, who are patients, and so potential users of this vaccine.

Stevenson's study also looks at the claimed efficacy rate of 72%, and finds that such claims, based on this study, cannot be substantiated. She comes to this conclusion:

"It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the following flaws exist:
  • Efficacy, the primary point being hyped, was not the primary end-point of the study.
  • The primary end-point, adverse effects, were significant, likely resulting in a very large percentage of subject developing serious health effects. Though the authors of the study toss off a claim that they were not related to the vaccine, looking at the numbers makes that claim appear quite doubtful.
  • The section of the trial that that utilized children as test subjects failed to test them for prior exposure to malaria. This seems highly questionable and may be part of the reason that the efficacy results seem so good.
  • The other reason for apparently good efficacy results may be that the post-trial study used a control group that was chosen at a different time than the rest of the subjects. Looking at the results would tend to suggest that this is the most significant factor in apparently good efficacy.
It is notable that the BBC failed to pick up any of this, or even sought to do so. The close link between this public broadcaster and Big Pharma companies appears to be more about the views and allegiences of their science and health correspondents, who seem to be willing to proclaim positive, pro-drug, pro-vaccine news; whilst at the same time discounting any negative evidence that these drugs and vaccines are actually doing harm to patients, and causing disease. 

Yet 'rogue employees' are no excuse. The BBC is responsible for the news it broadcasts, and how it is broadcasted. Its editorial guidelines are supposed to be committed to 'balance' and 'impartiality'. However, with regard to most matters relating to health it repeatedly, and consistently shows a disregard for both. It shows absolutely no interest in informing its licence holders of the potential damage conventional drugs and vaccines are known to cause.

The 'new malaria vaccine' is a developing story. Most conventional drugs and vaccines come to the market with similar fanfares about its efficacy and safety - only to be withdrawn and banned a few years later because of the damage they cause to patients. There is no reason to assume that this new vaccine will be any different, or that it will be any more successful in the prevention and treatment of Malaria than current conventional treatments - which have totally failed.

So I will keep a watching brief on this one, and report on the issue as they develops. My prediction?
  • The testing has probably been done: it will not be seriously questioned. 
  • Approval by the drug regulator will be the next step: and they usually rubber-stamp any new drug or vaccine, controlled as they are by Big Pharma placemen. 
  • And then it will be our turn - we will be encouraged to receive the wonderful new vaccine by Government, the NHS and even our doctors. 
  • When subsequently there are signs of serious DIEs the conventional medical establishment will deny them, or play them down.
  • When the DIEs become undeniable, the vaccine will continue to be prescribed, but restricted in some minor way.
  • Eventually, but usually not until there is another (if questionable) replacement drug or vaccine, the vaccine will be withdrawn or banned. But not until thousands, if not millions, are harmed by it.
My advice? As with any conventional drug or vaccine - just say - "No thanks" - and look into what Homeopathy, and other safer and more effective alternative therapies can offer.

POSTSCRIPT 2019
This blog was written in 2013. In the intervening years has anyone noticed any reduction in the incidence of malaria arising from the malaria vaccine, and/or the BBC's promotion of it?

As usual, the promotion of conventional medicine is more positive than its actual performance! 

Friday 4 October 2013

"What Doctors Don't Tell You" magazine is under attack - because doctor's don't want you to know!

Please would you note the date this blog was originally published! 
October 2013! 
Nearly 10 years ago!

Amazingly, after all this time, Blogger has now seen fit to censor it! It contains, I was told today (16th March 2023) "sensitive material"!

Please read it, and see if there is anything written here that is untrue. The WDDTY magazine is still being published, but the campaign to remove it from the shelves of newsagents was eventually successful. Which makes the latter part of the blog out-of-date! Read through it to find any 'hate' speech - you won't find any in this blog, or any other blog that I have written since 2009!

WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF CENSORSHIP; a censorship community that Blogger has apparently now joined.

I am disappointed, but not entirely surprised. Pharmaceutical medicine is to powerful, too wealthy to criticise. Big Pharma controls the mainstream media, and no doubt Blogger is now dancing to their tune.

I will not, and cannot change the content of this blog.

Within 10 minutes of challenging this decision by Blogger, the post has been reinstated.

However, the entire incident confirms that no-one can, or should, have any confidence about anything appertaining the conventional/pharmaceutical medicine; and that media organisations are now quite willing to breach our freedom of speech, and freedom of information - given enough 'incentive' to do so by the pharmaceutical industry.

I thank Blogger for reinstating this post; but have to inform them that I no longer trust them, and can no longer believe that they can be trusted to allow the public to be informed about the harm being caused to patients by conventional medicine.


The magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell you is coming under attack - for daring to tell us things doctors are refusing to tell us!

To prevent a magazine being sold by pressurising distributors not to sell it is a major threat to our freedom of speech, and in particular, to our health freedom.

Please read the article - it shows just how 'nasty' the conventional medical establishment has become, how opposed it is to safe, natural treatment, and the steps they will take to ensure their medical monopoly is maintained.

AND WHEN YOU GET TO THE END, PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF THE DISTRIBUTORS, AS REQUESTED.

The WDDTY wars: why they don’t want you to read all about it

Two days ago we woke up to find ourselves and our magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell You the subject of a national scandal. On Tuesday October 1, the Times ran with an article about how there was a ‘call to ban’ our journal What Doctors Don’t Tell You over ‘health scares’.

The original Times article alleged that a group of ‘experts’, including ‘scientists, doctors and patients’ were ‘condemning’ shops for carrying our magazine,

The article also said that we’d claimed that vitamin C ‘cures’ HIV, that homeopathy could treat cancer, that we’d implied the cervical cancer vaccines has killed ‘hundreds’ of girls and that we’d told parents in our latest (October 2013) issues not to immunize their children with the MMR.

The Wright Stuff on channel 5 quickly followed suit with a television debate, flashing up a picture of me, Five Live followed up with a television debate about our magazine.  By Thursday, when the Press Gazette were onto it, the headlines had escalated to:  ‘Warning that claims in alternative health mag could prove fatal.’

In all of the furore, not one of the newspapers, radio shows or television stations bothered to contact us, even to solicit a comment – which is Journalism 101 when you intend to run a story on someone, pro or con.

It’s also apparent from the information published in The Times and in all the media following that not one journalist or broadcaster has read one single word we’ve written, particularly on the homeopathy story, and for very good reason: the article and the magazine containing it in fact have not yet been published.

Here is what the Times said, and here is what we actually published:

The Times stated: we said vitamin C cures HIV.  

We had written: “US internist Robert Cathcart…devised an experiment with around 250 inpatients who tested positive for HIV.  In a letter to the editor of The Lancet, he wrote that his regime of giving oral doses of vitamin C close to “bowel tolerance” had “slowed, stopped or sometimes reversed for several years” the depletion of an HIV patient’s CD4+ cells.

The Times says we tell parents not to immunize their children with the MMR.

We interviewed – and simply quoted – a medical doctor called Dr Jayne Donegan, who had carried out her own research into the MMR, and concluded that a child with a strong immune system shouldn’t have the vaccine.  This was the considered view of Dr Donegan, not us. We were simply quoting her.

The Times says we said that we implied that the cervical cancer vaccine has killed ‘hundreds’ of girls’. 

We had said that, up to 2011, the American Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System had received notification of 68 deaths and 18,727 adverse reactions to the vaccine. The figure has now risen to 27,023 events.

The Times said we referred to a study in India in which girls had died following the vaccine but had not mentioned that one girl had drowned and one died from a snake bite.

We said that seven children died and 120 suffered debilitating side effects so bad that the trial was stopped following protests from parents, doctors, public health organizations and health networks.  The Times also omitted to mention that, in 2010, an official Indian government report discovered huge lapses in the study’s design, which resulted in gross under-reporting of serious side effects.

The Times said that we ‘suggest homeopathy could cure cancer’. 

In the ‘Coming Next Month’ column in our October issue we wrote the following (and this is all we wrote:


‘The US government has carried out impressive studies into homeopathy as a treatment for cancer, and a clinic is India is actually using it. We report on their findings about homeopathy as a cancer treatment.’

The Times story - and all the stories that follow -  are entirely the work of Simon Singh, and his organization Sense About Science, a protracted skirmish that’s been going on for about a year, ever since we went launched our magazine in September 2013.  Singh, you may know, is the self-proclaimed guardian of all things ‘scientific’ with the pharmaceutically backed organization he fronts, ‘Sense About Science’.

Singh contacted our distributor, and then all our outlets (like Smiths and the supermarkets) and tried to persuade them to stop carrying us (they refused).  He then relentlessly pestered the Advertising Standards Association with complaints about our advertisers, to try to prevent them from advertising.

Singh is also associated with the Nightingale Collaboration, a ragtag group who meet in a pub of the same name, also allegedly wedded to ‘true’ science. After our launch, dozens of anonymous trolls began writing hateful and fairly libellous stuff on our Facebook pages.

Last autumn the Guardian ran an online story claiming that our distributor was threatening to ‘sue’ Singh (they are not and never have threatened, nor have we).  We also got ‘interviewed’ by a Glaswegian doctor named Margaret McCartney, also associated with Singh, who writes for the BMJ.

Recently, a doctor called Dr. Matthew Lam began contacting supermarkets, and informing them that he was calling for complaints to be made to customer service teams at all the supermarkets who carry us.  He said he was spearheading this campaign with Singh, McCartney and Alan Henness of the Nightingale Collaboration.

Please allow me to join the dots. Sense About Science publishes online as its sponsors the British Pharmaceutical Association, the official trade body for the UK’s drug companies.  Another one of its sponsors is The Guardian.

The next interesting aspect of this episode is the sheer hypocrisy of News International, which published the original story about us. That company, which owns The Times, is owned by the Murdoch organization. The Murdoch organization also owns HarperCollins.  HarperCollins published three of my books, including a book entitled What Doctors Don’t Tell You, a culmination of many years of research for WDDTY the newsletter.

Harper liked the book so much they published it twice, first in 1996 after paying a team of lawyers at Carter-Ruck, the UK’s top libel firm, to spend hundreds of hours of legal time carefully sifting through all of the scientific evidence supporting statements I made in the book to ensure the material was rock solid. It was only published after they were satisfied that every last statement was correct.

WDDTY was a bestseller for Harper – so much so that they asked me to update it and published the new version in 2006.  It’s also been an international bestseller, currently in some 20 languages around the world.

At one point, I was also a columnist for the Times and ran a story highly critical of the MMR vaccine.

Besides being a demonstration of how shoddy journalism has become, what interests me about this episode is that it offers evidence of the enormous shift that has occurred in the press’s notion of its role in society. The Times seems to be suggesting that their role is to ‘protect’ the public by censoring information that departs from standard medical line.

Determining what is fit for public consumption, or indeed how its readers should treat their illnesses, is emphatically not a newspaper’s job – ours or anyone else’s.

Our job as journalists is simply to inform – to report the facts, even when they are inconvenient truths, as they are so often in medicine, particularly with such things as vaccines or alternative cancer therapy.

For despite all the grandstanding and pink ribbons and prettily turned phrases, the fact remains that the whole of modern medicine’s arsenal against cancer  is both blatantly unscientific and ineffective.  When not manipulated, the bald statistics reveal that chemo only works 2 per cent of the time .The War on Cancer from the orthodox perspective is decisively being lost.

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of people are being cured by other methods of cancer treatment. Millions of others who have cancer or whose loved ones have cancer want to know ways to treat cancer that are less dangerous and more effective.

That qualifies as news, and it’s our duty as the press to report that.  It’s my job to deliver well researched information, and that’s supposed to be the Times’ job too.

Several months ago, I met Patricia Ellsberg, the wife of Daniel Ellsberg.  Back when I was a student, deciding whether or not to be a journalist, Ellsberg, an employee of the CIA, came across hundreds of pages of documents revealing America’s shameful role in the Vietnam war.

Ellsberg felt this was news and it was his duty to leak these papers to the New York Times.  The Times felt it was their duty to publish these revelations, these inconvenient truths.  Then President Nixon attempted to censor these leaks by attempting a legal embargo on The Times – a blatant attempt at government censorship.

The Ellsbergs (faced with life imprisonment – was anybody ever so brave?) turned on a photocopy machine, made multiple copies and leaked the documents to the Washington Post.

And when Nixon went after the Post, the Ellsbergs smuggled the papers to 17 other newspapers.  Not one paper blinked.  Not one paper decided this information wasn’t fit to print – or that the public needed to be ‘protected’ from a lying presidency.

But these days, the press – far less ‘free,’ now largely owned by huge corporations, including in the pharmaceutical industry (Murdoch’s son was on the board of one such drug company) – has now become the party with powerful vested interests to protect. Today the press is the Richard Nixon of the piece.

Back when the NY Times was publishing The Pentagon Papers and the Washington Post published the Watergate disclosures, newspapers wouldn’t be caught dead being associated with some industry backed body, especially one with the track record of carnage enjoyed by Big Pharma, as the Guardian now is.

But today newspapers are haemorrhaging money, and so have to have industry backing and its consequent influence. The public, which wants the truth, knows this and rejects this industry public relations by boycotting newspapers.  Presently, the Guardian is losing £100,000 a day, and the Times is losing £80,000 a day.  People don’t believe newspapers anymore. They know they have to go elsewhere for their news. That’s why they come to publications like ours.

As Deep Throat once told Woodward and Bernstein, when they were investigating Watergate:  If you want to find out the truth, just follow the money.

If you’d like to support WDDTY and a free press, and you haven’t yet voiced your support of the stores for stocking the title, let the following Customer Service departments know:

WH Smith
Customer.Relations@WHSmith.co.uk

Sainsbury’s
customerservice@sainsburys.co.uk

Tesco
customer.service@tesco.co.uk

And with the weekend coming up, show your support by buying a copy.  It’s available in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, WH Smiths, and over 8000 independent retail outlets. And you can subscribe through www.wddtysubscribe.com

Wednesday 2 October 2013

MIMS Announces yet another Banned Drug. Ketoconazole.

Ketoconazole, or Nizoral is (or perhaps was?) an anti-fungal medication. Similar drugs are fluconazole (Diflucan), itraconazole (Sporanox), and miconazole (Micatin, Monistat). These drugs are supposed to prevent the growth of fungi by preventing production of the membranes that surround fungal cells. The FDA approved Ketoconazole in June 1981. So once again we have a drug, now known to be dangerous, being taken by patients for over 30 years - and only after all these decades have the Conventional Medical Establishment decided that it is unsafe or dangerous. The MIMs article states the following:

          "The antifungal ketoconazole (Nizoral) should no longer be prescribed as an oral treatment as the risks no longer outweigh the benefits, the MHRA has advised. The risk of hepatic injury with oral ketoconazole is thought to be higher than that associated with other available antifungal treatments".

The drug has been known to cause serious 'side-effects', or disease-inducing effects, for most of this time. This has been taken from the Drug.com website, which called them 'unwanted effects', and that they were 'rare'. Clearly they were not sufficient 'rare' to avoid the ban being imposed by the MHRA!
  • Back, leg, or stomach pains
  • black, tarry stools
  • bleeding gums
  • blood in the urine or stools
  • blurred vision
  • burning, crawling, itching, numbness, prickling, "pins and needles," or tingling feelings
  • change in color vision
  • change in the ability to see colors, especially blue or yellow
  • chest pain
  • chills
  • confusion
  • cough
  • dark urine
  • difficulty breathing
  • difficulty seeing at night
  • difficulty swallowing
  • dizziness
  • fast heartbeat
  • fever
  • general body swelling
  • headache
  • hives
  • hoarseness
  • increased sensitivity of the eyes to sunlight
  • irritation
  • itching
  • joint pain, stiffness or swelling
  • light-colored stools
  • loss of appetite
  • mood or mental changes
  • nausea or vomiting, severe
  • nosebleeds
  • painful or difficult urination
  • pale skin
  • pinpoint red spots on the skin
  • puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, face, lips or tongue
  • redness of the skin
  • shortness of breath
  • skin rash
  • sore throat
  • sores, ulcers, or white spots on the lips or in the mouth
  • swelling of the eyelids, face, lips, hands, or feet
  • swollen glands
  • tightness in the chest
  • trouble sleeping
  • troubled breathing or swallowing
  • unusual bleeding or bruising
  • unusual tiredness or weakness
  • vision changes
  • wheezing
  • yellow eyes or skin
  • Change in number of sperm and their ability to move
  • decreased interest in sexual intercourse
  • diarrhea
  • hair loss or thinning of hair
  • inability to have or keep an erection
  • loss in sexual ability, desire, drive, or performance
  • sleepiness or unusual drowsiness
  • swelling of the breasts or breast soreness for both female and male
Quite a list of ailments in return for preventing the growth of fungi!

There is no indication in this list that the drug can also cause birth defects - but this website goes over the evidence for this.

I have no information that the drug has been banned anywhere else in the world, and on that basis, the drug companies will no doubt continue to sell it wherever they can, and deny, or play down the damage that the drug can cause to patients.

Click here for more information on Banned and Withdrawn Pharmaceutical drugs.