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Without evidence of benefit, an intervention should not be presumed to be beneficial or safe.

- Rogue Medic

Whistle-Blowing Nurse Is Acquitted in Texas

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:42:10 -0500 by
Much has been written about the fanatics criminals trying to get Anne Mitchell, RN locked up. I will only give a brief summary.

A quack – Rolando G. Arafiles Jr., who for some odd reason has not yet been stripped of his medical license, had the sheriff investigate anonymous reports to the Texas Medical Board about his abuse of patients. The sheriff arrested Nurse Mitchell and charged her with a felony that could put her in jail for 10 years and could include a $10,000 fine. The fraudulent investigation probably did contribute to her being wrongfully fired. The county prosecutor, who works for the charlatan, decided to prosecute.

All of these frauds belong in jail.

The case was investigated by Sheriff Robert L. Roberts Jr., a friend and admiring patient of Dr. Arafiles, and tried by the county attorney, Scott M. Tidwell, a political ally of the sheriff and, according to testimony, Dr. Arafiles’s personal lawyer.[1]

In case you are thinking that this is a misrepresentation of their criminal abuse of power, the jury did not have to deliberate for long.

The jury foreman said the panel of six men and six women voted unanimously on the first ballot, and questioned why Mrs. Mitchell had ever been arrested.[1]

Where would a good story about fraud be without a bunch of cognitive dissonance?

Sheriff Roberts said he was disappointed in the verdict but did not regret the prosecution.[1]

The next jury should arrange for these frauds to be bunkmates in a prison where they do not have any friends.

We want nurses and others to feel comfortable reporting potential problem doctors to state medical boards. The medical board should be the ones determining if the complaint is valid.

After the verdict, the nurses’ lawyers pivoted quickly to the lawsuit[2] they have filed in federal court against the county, the hospital and various officials, charging that the firings and indictments amounted to a violation of due process and their First Amendment rights.[1]

Texas, it turns out, has laws that protect whistle-blowers — but only from civil suits. Criminal prosecution is another matter entirely. After the medical board received the nurses’ anonymous complaint, its investigators gave a copy to Dr. Arafiles. That complaint alleged that he’d given patients inappropriate care, including sewing a rubber tip not intended to be attached to humans onto a patient’s crushed finger (a case that the Texas Department of State Health Services had red-flagged). Too, the complaint noted, Arafiles urged patients to buy Zrii, a questionable nutrition supplement sold via a pyramid-marketing structure.[3]

Last month Andrew Wakefield was publicly humiliated for his fraud. Let’s hope they follow that up with criminal charges.

This month another scam artist, Rolando G. Arafiles Jr., is publicly humiliated for endangering patients, as well. Likewise, let’s hope that after the civil trial, there are criminal charges filed against this witch doctor and his minions.

White Coat has written about this –

Nurse Acquitted

Respectful Insolence has written a lot about this –

Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail? It might really happen for Anne Mitchell, RN in Winkler County, Texas

Dr. Rolando Arafiles: Antivaccine rhetoric topped off with colloidal silver for the flu and Morgellons disease

Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail? The trial, day two

Report a bad doctor to the authorities, go to jail? The cranks weigh in

Winkler County Nurse Anne Mitchell is not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty!

Footnotes:

^ 1 Whistle-Blowing Nurse Is Acquitted in Texas
By Kevin Sack
Published: February 11, 2010
New York Times
Article

^ 2 Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle, plaintiffs, vs. Winkler County Memorial Hospital; Stan Wiley, individually and in his official capacity as administrator of the Winkler County Memorial Hospital; Robert L. Roberts, Jr., individually and as Sheriff of Winkler County, Texas; Rolando G. Arafiles, Jr., individually; Scott M. Tidwell, individually and in his official capacity as County Attorney; and Mike Fostell, individually and in his official capacity as District Attorney, defendants.
US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Pecos Division.
Free Full Text PDF

^ 3 Medical emergency – In reporting a doctor’s mistakes, a West Texas nurse risked going to prison
Houston Chronicle Editorial
Feb. 11, 2010, 7:53PM
Article

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Filed Under: Censorship, Fraud, Heresy, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: , , ,

CBS Neck and Neck with CNN for Most Incompetent Network

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:23:57 -0400 by

Also possibly posted as part of the Skeptics’ Circle over at The Mad Skeptic. I procrastinate and am late in sending this in. Maybe The Mad Skeptic has already finished this edition. Anyway, go check out the rest of what is there.

Then:

Complain to CBS: CBS resident anti-vaccine propagandist Sharyl Attkisson sucks up to anti-vaccine pseudoscientist Andrew Wakefield.

The most famous fraud in medicine, that Criminally Blundering Scientist, Andrew Wakefield, was praised on the television network that has decided to give CNN a run for its money in the category of incompetence.

The CBS (Comedic Bumbling Scaremonger) network decided that they would give some air time to an exposed fraud to promote his latest larceny. He has already been shown to have taken payoffs from trial lawyers to fake his research. Is he pushing a book? So, why does anyone pay any attention to him? One reason. He tells them what they want to hear. And if it is written in a book, it must be true. OK, 2 reasons. He tells them what they want to hear, he feeds their paranoia, and if it is written in a book it must be true. OK, 3 reasons. . . .

If you believe that the people reporting the news, such as Sharyl Attkisson, are objective, you probably were told that by a reporter. If you believe that Andrew Wakefield does anything that is not designed to make him money, you probably were told that by Andrew Wakefield or one of his accomplices. If you think that Generation Rescue Generation Revenue knows anything about medicine, you probably were told that by somebody at Generation Revenue – somebody trying to sell you something.

Anybody, who uses only bumper sticker slogans as their medical evidence, clearly is not worth listening to. Too much, too soon. Based on what? They don’t know. They only feel. Ignorance is their strength. Green the vaccines. That doesn’t even mean anything. And then they use the made up word, Toxics, as if it were a real word.

Because, when you don’t know what you are talking about, it doesn’t matter what you say. It only matters what you feel. And they want you to feel angry, so they can make money off of you.

You should be angry. They want you to sacrifice your children to satisfy their feelings. They also want to make money off of you. They are selling books and magical mystery treatments – guaranteed to lighten your wallet, but certainly not guaranteed to be safe. They demand more and more vaccine research. The research continually shows that vaccines are safe, but they keep asking for more research – hoping for the fluke grouping of autistic children in the treatment group, so they can claim that it was the vaccine that caused the autism. They already do make that claim, but all of the evidence shows that they are lying.

Of course, they will sell you some of their dangerous all natural products. They don’t have to show that they are safe, because they sell them as supplements, rather than medicines. Supplements will kill you. You have no way of knowing what you are getting, because the politicians (such as Sen. Tom Harkin) have minimized oversight in response to donations from the real big money supplement groups – Big sCAM. And they get a quarter of a billion dollars – each year – of our tax dollars to look for evidence to support alternatives to medicine that has evidence that it works. Talk about pork.

When your money is going to buy their untested supplements drugs, they do not care about safety. When your money is going to pay for well tested vaccines, to protect your children, they are ranting and raving about danger.

One thing that can be said about everything that these 2 recommend – Not Safe!

Not safe for adults – and definitely not safe for children.

Interviewer – And yet in many cases, vaccines have effectively eliminated diseases. Measles is among the top five killers in the world of children under 5 years old, yet it kills virtually no one in the U.S. thanks to vaccines.

Jenny McCarthy – People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines. Please understand that we are not an antivaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins. If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f___ing measles.

Jenny McCarthy on Autism and Vaccines
By Jeffrey Kluger; Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2009; Time Magazine

Reduce the schedule? Based on what?

Reduce the toxins? She is giving a chant, like a cheerleader, so repeating the word reduce works in the cheer. The toxins claim is just naming ingredients that are in microscopic quantities and are safe, even in children. Of course, this complaint about toxins is from someone who has botulism injected regularly, to maintain a youthful appearance. What does she understand about toxins?

Do you want the measles or the autism? Again, based on what?

These questions are nothing but a scare tactic.

There is no connection between vaccination and autism. You can look at all of the research, or you can listen to a stripper and an exposed fraud. A fraud who faked his research to make it appear that there is a link between vaccines and autism. Listen to real doctors? Or listen to these 2 ringleaders of a circus of ignorance and anger.

Why do people listen to such psychotic ranting? Mao was more compassionate than either of them and he tops the updated list of greatest mass murderers. Judging by the number of people skipping vaccines, we will probably not get people to realize just how dangerous her advice is until there are a lot of dead children. Probably not even close to Mao’s 73,000,000, but who knows how persuasive she can be.

So that you can keep track of how many people are being killed, because of people listening to the anti-vaccine mob, get the Jenny McCarthy/Anti-Vaccine Body Count widget. There are 2 other designs at the web site.

Jenny McCarthy Body Count

217 dead? The current numbers are actually 235 dead and 49,556 preventable illnesses. I don’t know why the widget is not up to date.

2007: Jenny McCarthy Begins Promoting Anti-Vaccination Rhetoric

Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe it is a coincidence that the number of cases of disease, and there are plenty of other diseases documented at the site, began dropping with the introduction of vaccinations, leveling off at very low numbers, and staying low until Jenny McCarthy started telling people that it is wrong to protect their children from these illnesses. Be fair to measles, or something like that.

Why is it wrong to protect my child from these vaccine-preventable diseases?

Loving parents should protect their children, not listen to a stripper giving deadly medical advice.

Am I being unfair?

Ask a parent who has had a child die because of Jenny McCarthy or Andrew Wakefield.

Then there is the big question.

Why was Andrew Wakefield being interviewed about an article appearing in a minor medical journal?

Do they normally cover all of the articles published in the more reputable medical journals, but are now adding to that extensive medical coverage?

Not at all. This is important news only to those who believe in the religion of Andrew Wakefield. The Lancet, which published the study that had to be retracted due to Andrew Wakefield’s fraud, is not going to believe that he had a sudden onset of honesty. JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics, the British Medical Journal, et cetera, have reputations for quality that they need to maintain. Professional responsibility. Why even look at something from these frauds? Maybe the peer reviewers had no idea of the identity of the authors, but did not see anything about the paper to justify inclusion in a major medical journal.

Neurotoxicology? I never heard of the journal before, but maybe they wanted a bit of publicity. Dr. David Gorski goes into detail on the many conflicts of interest in this study. He also has links to the full study, which has been published at a couple of autism misinformation sites. Monkey business in autism research, part II.

For further information on Andrew Wakefield there is the reporting of Brian Deer:

Thoughtful House: Since the Royal Free ejected him in October 2001, Andrew Wakefield first re-emerged as “research director” of the self-styled International Child Development Resource Center, in Florida, which sells expensive products for autism, including enzymes and purported “genetic tests”. He was then installed at Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas, earning $280,000 a year.

Wakefield’s patents: Nine months before Andrew Wakefield and London’s Royal Free hospital medical school unleashed a global scare over the MMR vaccine, they filed, on June 5 1997, the first of a string of patent claims for theoretically vastly profitable products which could only succeed if MMR’s reputation was damaged. These included a purported safer measles vaccine – a potential competitor – and treatments for bowel disease and autism. All were based on claims that measles virus in MMR was at fault.

These are just 2 examples of the many sleazy activities of Andrew Wakefield. There are a lot more at http://briandeer.com/. Andrew Wakefield is not a doctor in the United States, although he works in the US. Has he been practicing medicine without a license? It would be a surprise if that were the one ethical part of his life.

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Filed Under: Children, Critical Judgment, Fraud, Heresy, Malpractice, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to be a Part of the Healthcare Workforce

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:06:11 -0400 by
That’s easy, to become a part of the healthcare workforce, you attend and complete a course of study in a recognized part of healthcare.

Wrong.

Dr. Sen. Tom Harkin is trying to run a scam through Congress, that will dwarf the multi-billion dollar bailout. All you have to do is make an unreasonable claim of ability to treat patients and submit an invoice. Since the claim of ability does not need to be reasonable, why should the invoice? You are providing a mumbo jumbo voodoo reiki acupuncture psychic homeopathic treatment.

Zowie! How can you put a price on that?

This is fraud. You can always put a price on fraud.

But Dr. Sen. Harkin has already had us spend hundreds of millions of dollars on NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine).

We need to know what works.

Research is good. We do need to know what works. Dr. Sen. Harkin doesn’t care. Dr. Sen. Harkin has already made up his mind that, if it is called alternative, it works.

There is more about Dr. Sen. Harkin’s Snake Oil Spectacular at Respectful Insolence:

Senator Tom Harkin pulls a fast one: Alternative medical practitioners will be part of the “healthcare workforce” under health care reform

Whether Dr. Sen. Harkin doesn’t understand science, or just doesn’t care, is something that will only matter at sentencing.

Sentencing?

If you thought that Bernie Madoff sold a lot of nothing for billions of dollars, then you will be in awe of Dr. Sen. Harkin selling nothing for trillions of dollars.

Trillions

of

Dollars

of

Fraud.

NCCAM has demonstrated that alternative medicine does not work. So, what does Dr. Sen. Harkin do. He starts with an anecdote. He describes a case of a friend, a retired legislator, who survived in spite of alternative medicine. Since it is anecdotal, there really is no reason to believe that this is normal for that treatment, or just an example of spontaneous resolution of the illness (something that happens more often than we would expect), misdiagnosis (something that also happens more often than we would expect), or something else.

Dr. Sen. Harkin wants to believe that it was the magic medicine, so he does. And Dr. Sen. Harkin is not afraid of spending your money on this belief in unicorns. All of your money, if that is what it takes. Even though there is no amount of money that will change the science, Dr. Sen. Harkin doesn’t care. In his mind, it is the fault of the scientists that alternative medicine does not work.

The scientists just need to stop being scientific and tell everyone that alternative medicine works. In other words, the scientists need to lie. That is the only way alternative medicine does work – if you lie about it. Here is Dr. Sen. Harkin complaining that the science won’t do what he wants.

@17:50 – One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly, It has fallen short. The focus, I think quite frankly, in this center and previously in the office before it. Most of this focus has been on disproving things, rather than on seeking out and approving them.

@18:50 – This morning I want to lay down a second marker. If we fail to seize this unique opportunity to adopt a pragmatic integrative approach to healthcare, that too would constitute a serious failure. I know, both Sen. Mikulski and I do not intend to fail in that effort.[1]

And they do not intend to let anyone stop them from dragging this country down into the abyss of magical solutions for everything. Forget the science that supports the technologies we use every day. They are more than happy to use these magical devices, but we are going to be adopting Soviet Science.

Soviet Science?

The science must support the party line. Lysenkoism is another term for this refusal to accept science unless it was approved by the party.

Research and science in the Soviet Union could be suppressed primarily for being seen as ideologically incorrect.[citation needed]

At different moments in Soviet history a number of research areas were declared “bourgeois pseudosciences”, on ideological grounds, the most notable and harmful cases being these of genetics and cybernetics. Their prohibition caused serious harm to Soviet science and economics.[citation needed] Soviet scientists never won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or Turing Award. (In comparison, they received seven Nobel Prizes in Physics.) This is one of the factors that resulted in the USSR historically lagging in the fields of computers, microelectronics and biotechnology.[citation needed]

Research which was not banned was often subject to political pressure to conform to certain schools of science seen as “progressive.”[2]

This is not a recipe for a successful future for anyone – except those making a profit off of these scams.

This appears to be our future.

Jenny McCarthy McMedicine.

Footnotes:

^ 1 Committee: Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Title: Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation
Date: Thursday, February 26, 10:00 a.m.
Place: SD-430
Video

^ 2 Suppressed research in the Soviet Union
Wikipedia
Article

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Filed Under: Fraud, Heresy, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: ,

Homeopathy Warning!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:59:29 -0400 by
From the desk of the Grand Wizard of the American Coven of Homeopaths.

CC: Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Jay Gordon, Jenny McCarthy, Deepak Choprah, Sylvia Browne, John Edwards, Dr. (for as long as it lasts) Andrew Wakefield, Dr. et cetera.

Top secret.

Not for distribution.

We will put a hex on you.

A real bad hex, not a weenie homeopathic hex.

For Homeopathy Awareness Week we do have to make you aware of some things:

Due to the recent developments with Zicam[1] and the problems with the British Chioropractic Association and their inability to keep their minions in line,[2] we need to warn you about some problems. Nothing that can’t be fixed with smoke, mirrors, misdirection, and the usual stupid arguments that still seem to confuse otherwise intelligent dupes.

Sometimes the medication we sell to the public is safe to take, but only as long as our victims patients do not avoid conventional medical treatment. As you know, this is because there is nothing active in the homeopathic medication.

Other times we just pretend to sell the public that holy water, but we put real medication in there so that there is some effect other than the placebo effect. We use this loop hole so that we do not have to meet the FDA requirements for real medication, while we pretend to be selling distilled water.

Since both of these approaches are completely dishonest, we will never tell our victims patients whether they are getting violated treated with an active fraud or an inactive fraud.

Most important we must convince people that the reason the fake homeopathy Zicam causes them to lose their sense of smell is not because real homeopathy stinks. I don’t know where they would get that idea.

Be very careful discussing this with anyone who might have a shred of integrity. We believe that we have diluted integrity to a 1 google C level in our organization, but integrity is so foreign to us that we may not recognize integrity when confronted with the genuine article.

Honesty is the enemy. All truth is a lie. We only hurt people because it is the quickest way to their money we love them.

This is big business. The real drug companies only wish they could make up whatever BS they want, but real drug companies have real oversight. We just answer to Satan.

MwaHaHaHaHa!


Our victims patients need to be lied to.

Our victims patients do not get to choose the lie they receive.

That’s just tough love, homeopathy style.

It’s good to be the Grand Wizard, baby!

Dictated by Baal, Grand Wizard of the American Coven of Homeopaths, for distribution to all active minions and executives of commercial partners.

Footnotes:

^ 1 FDA Advises Consumers Not To Use Certain Zicam Cold Remedies
Intranasal Zinc Product Linked to Loss of Sense of Smell
FDA
June 16, 2009
Press Release

^ 2 McTimoney Chiropractors told to take down their web sites
The Quackometer
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Top Secret Warning

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Filed Under: 'Alternative' Medicine, Fraud, Heresy, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: ,

Shock Trauma Infested With Evil Spirits

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:23:03 -0400 by
I thought Shock Trauma was a bit loopy with their insistence that all trauma patients be flown to the world famous R Adams Colwey Shock Trauma Medical Center, to avoid other trauma centers. It appears that this has resulted in a haunting at Shock Trauma Medical Center. The top doctors there have been using Reiki Masters to scare away the evil spirits.

There is an article,[1] with some entertaining video, about this foray of Shock Trauma into the realm of Darth Vader Medicine.[2] The article does not limit itself to the non-chemical voodoo of Shock Trauma, but mentions the problems with the related witchcraft of herbal/natural/alternative medicines. The defense[3] of Shock Trauma. We’re crazy, but we’re not that crazy. We do not give any poisons to people. We just try to convert them to our religion. Don’t believe in reiki? They will not force it on you, but they will have their reiki salesmen and saleswomen giving you the hard sell.

Hard sell? I want a room that isn’t haunted to begin with. I’m not paying for any Spirit Wrangler to chase the evil spirits out of my room.

Of course not. Remember the most important part of the hard sell. Convince the victim that it isn’t going to cost them anything.

Reiki is FREE!

If reiki is free, who pays for it?

You do. The same as with the FREE helicopter ride that allows them to bypass real hospitals, where there may be doctors who practice real medicine. The salespeople just hide the costs of the Reiki Masters.

You don’t really believe the fantasy of the free lunch, free helicopter ride, and free reiki? Do you? In the end you pay for it. Since the costs have to be manipulated in a way that makes them seem to disappear there are a lot of unnecessary expenses.

If I am going to have some stress relief prefer Ghostbusters or Monty Python.

At least Shock Trauma is basing this on research.

There is no research showing a benefit from reiki. The attitude of Shock Trauma is that they can’t harm the patient with this. It is a form of relaxation therapy.

What about relaxation without the Dancing Feng Shui Masters?

That would probably appear too conventional, but they might arrive by helicopter to make it seem more dramatic.

Sorry. I forgot to think like a true believer.

I wonder if I can get them to write a prescription for a stripper for me. Strippers have been known to redirect blood flow without even touching the person. And remember, make it FREE! As long as there is no lap dance, it can’t be any less scientific than reiki.

They claim to be studying the use of acupuncture, but appear to be making the same mistake as I wrote about in Eureka – Conventional Treatment Plus Placebo Beats Conventional Treatment Alone. They will be pointing out that the acupuncture placebo is a genuine treatment, because when they added acupuncture placebo to conventional treatment, the patients felt better than when the patients received conventional treatment without the acupuncture placebo. This is exactly what you would expect from a placebo.

This is at an academic medical center. The gullibility of some people is amazing.

Hey, there!

Been in an accident?

Energy out of alignment?

Call 911 and we will fly you to the only trauma center in the country that will have witchdoctors in scrubs play with your energy in order to scare away the bad energy.

If we hooked you with our BS about the Golden Hour, that we just made up and kept repeating until you believed it, you will love this!

Reiki! Sort of a religion, but we receive federal money, so we act as if it isn’t religion.

Remember, just convinve somebody that there is a dent in your car, we will fly you here for FREE! and then we will set our Reiki Masters FREE to do stuff to you.

Act now. The Bogus Hour is being wasted while you think.

Don’t think, just act. There is still time in the Bronze Half Day, or at least the Limestone Week.

Come visit our Sandcastle in the Sky before it washes away.

Don’t forget to ask about our lifetime guarantee.

The one below worries me. Look at that touching. Isn’t this like the game Operation, where the buzzer goes off if you actually touch the patient. How can you be manipulating the evil spirits, if you are touching the patient? Isn’t the whole defense of this treatment that they are just manipulating the energy, not the patient. Maybe they just need to manipulate the people in the room. As long as they believe in something the placebo is working. The upper most picture is an impressive one – it rubs the rod on the bowl. I guess you need to have the live reiki concert to scare away the worst of the evil spirits.

Unproven Remedies
In this photo taken on Oct. 24, 2008, nurse Donna Audia performs Reiki on a patient at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)

Footnotes:

^ 1 AP IMPACT: Alternative medicine goes mainstream
Associated Press
By Marilynn Marchione, AP Medical Writer
Mon Jun 8, 3:33 am ET
Article

^ 2 SHOCK TRAUMA OFFERS ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES FOR PAIN MANAGEMENT
Patients Can Have Reiki, Music Therapy and Acupuncture in Addition to Medication
September 5, 2007
Press Release

^ 3 UMMC Statement About Potentially Misleading AP Alternative Therapies Article
UMMC press release in response to the AP article.
June 8, 2009
Press Release

This was covered a couple of days ago at Respectful Insolence.
The infiltration of woo into medical academia continues apace.

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Filed Under: 'Alternative' Medicine, Critical Judgment, Heresy, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: , ,

Piracy on the High Court

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:55:52 -0400 by
On May 28, 2009 the High Court demonstrated that the Mafia has nothing on the ability of the High Court to commit High Crimes.

Pirate Extraordinaire Sir David Eady (Justice X) decided to enforce an order of Omerta on Simon Singh.

What did Simon Singh do that was so bad, that he has been attacked by pirates? He told the truth. When it comes to truth, Great Britain is the modern equivalent of the Barbary States. There is a great jihad against the truth in Britain. They will send their hired thugs to enforce this gagging. At least the United States has no such law to punish the truth. The truth has been an accepted defense since the John Peter Zenger kangaroo trial in New York. A trial that was won by the defendant through jury nullification.

We have all heard the saying, The truth shall set you free. Well, that does not apply in Britain. The opposite is true. If you tell the truth, and somebody does not like the truth, you may end up broke. Maybe the British interpretation is The truth shall set you free of your possessions so that we can protect the most vile frauds.

Just what did Simon Singh do?

What truth could be so horrible that a court would punish him?

Did he make nasty comments about Kermit being green?

What was so unpardonable a truth?

Simon Singh wrote an article in the Guardian. He wrote about an aspect of alternative medicine unicorn medicine that even many of the unicorn therapists do not defend. He pointed out that the British Chiropractic Association preaches this fraudulent disregard for the health of their patients. Since the motto of the British Chiropractic Association is Abandon all ethics, Ye who enter here, a little word – bogus for example – should not bother anyone. Since their treatment can be lethal, they have to stop all criticism. No matter how minor. No matter how honest. No matter that honesty is in the interest of the public welfare.

Here is the offending paragraph. The penultimate word is the truth that will make a fortune for lawyers and allow the health menace that is the British Chiropractic Association to claim they were wronged. Kind of like, You call that rape. We do far worse to people we claim to help. Not another word, or we’ll rape you the old fashioned way.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

To me, the word that is out of place is respectable. How can Simon Singh use that word in the same sentence as the name of the shakedown artists, the British Chiropractic Association? See what you get for being polite?

But how do we know that these treatments are bogus?

Here is the paragraph that follows:

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

Where’s the problem? He used the term bogus, but Simon Singh defined what he meant in the same article. Only an idiot could misunderstand that, or someone being bribed.

Yes. That is true. The only reasons to not label these treatments as bogus would be if one believes in unicorn medicine (maybe not idiocy, but massive gullibility), being bribed, or having one’s family held hostage until the decision is handed down. On the other hand, this is England. England wants to return to the swashbuckling days of piracy. They now encourage libel tourism. For a price of course. If you are going to sell your soul, you might as well be paid well for your perfidy. Maybe Britain will try to replace Nigeria as the home of SPAM.

Dear esteemed Sir. I, Sir David Eady, most humbly beseech you to allow me to bring an important financial matter to your attention . . . .

As a justice, raping the innocent all day, I Sir David Eady, find it difficult to go home and do the same to the wife and kids. That’s why I use Viiagra. When all they will do is lie there and think of England, it keeps me raping until the little buggers are a bloody pulp.

As you can see, there is a great future for Sir David Eady.

“No nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of speaking freely, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.” John Peter Zenger

Think about that, Not-So-Great Britain.

What can be done about the British anti-honesty laws?

senseaboutscience.org

And here are articles on this topic by the big media:

The Independent Silenced, the writer who dared to say chiropractice is bogus

The Times Review of libel law called for by comedians

The Guardian online Science writer Simon Singh to appeal against chiropractic libel judgement

Nature news Science writer will appeal libel case ruling

Times Higher Education Singh plans to appeal ruling in libel case

Wall Street Journal Britain Chills Free Speech

The Daily Telegraph online Stephen Fry and Ricky Gervais defend science writer sued for libel

The Daily Mail online Celebrities back writer sued by chiropractors for saying unproven treatment is ‘bogus’

Respectful Insolence I really admire skeptical English bloggers and commentators…

Respectful Insolence Simon Singh appeals Judge Eady’s bogus libel ruling

Bad Science A characteristically amateurish and socially inappropriate approach to pitching an article

Jack of Kent BCA v Singh: An Astonishingly Illiberal Ruling

The Quackometer Bogus Law

Here is a chart comparing the costs of libel litigation in different European countries from The Quackometer. This should have been done with the bars going sideways, to highlight the way the British libel laws make honest people walk the plank.

Click here to read and sign the statement.

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Filed Under: Heresy, Science, Unicorn Medicine Tagged With: , , ,