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I mean most of them already stock homeopathy and woo like ear candles and holographic wrist bands, a lot have in-residence naturopaths and iridologists. But now there’s yet another way to rip off consumers by selling them stuff they don’t need, this time when they’re trying to get a prescription filled*.

It has just been announced that the Pharmacy Guild and Blackmores have joined forces to upsell you Blackmores supplements when filling a prescription. It’s all explained in the video below but basically now when you go to a pharmacist to get a script, a computer programme will match your medication to a Blackmores product, then the pharmacist will attempt to upsell you, by saying you need it if you’re taking that medication.

What a sweet deal between the Pharmacy Guild – the organisation who essentially manage the business side of pharmacies – and what a great little earner for Blackmores. The only people who are in line to get ripped off in this partnership are the consumers who will likely get sold expensive and unnecessary supplements. As Dr Ginni says in the video below, it’s the equivalent of saying “do you want fries with that?”.

It pains me to think that pharmacists exploit their status as one of Australia’s most trusted professions by doing crap like this. Do they really care about their patients anymore or are they only interested in lining their back pockets?  (The previous statement was made in frustration. Thanks to @pakili1987 for pointing out that this will not translate into a boon for individual pharmacists. It’s a ruling made by the Guild and many of them fervently disagree with it).

And they’ve really picked their timing on this haven’t they. Are they hoping we wouldn’t remember the recent TGA audit of CAM which found ninety percent of complementary medicines didn’t comply with regulations? Out of 31 selected for random audit;

• 22 were found to have manufacturing and/or quality issues
• 20 medicines had labelling issues or breaches which may mislead consumers
• 14 did not have adequate evidence to substantiate claims made about the medicines

That so many products failed to even satisfy quality or manufacturing standards has led for calls by the TGA to label supplements with “untested”. And why not. Consumers have a right to know they’re buying something that probably does nothing and in some case may even be harmful.

According to The Age;

“Obtaining evidence of efficacy of listed complementary medicines has been a difficult issue,” the audit report said.

“While most products are safe, if often ineffective, Australian research last year identified 39 reports of adverse events associated with such products, including four deaths over the previous two years.”

“Official inaction on the efficacy issue has been blamed on the Government’s reluctance to pay for tighter policing of the remedies, but also on pressure from industry leaders, including, Marcus Blackmore who rejects the disclaimer idea.

ORLY.

As for the Pharmacy Guild, never mind that our products don’t comply with TGA rules for safety and manufacturing, let’s gets our white coated “trusted” friends to push ‘em on consumers anyway! What the hey! BUY OUR SHIT!

Disgraceful.

I remember one of the first things I ever did when becoming an active skeptic was sit with Richard Saunders and write an open letter to the pharmacists of Australia asking them to stop selling quackery. That was three years ago and instead of things getting better they only seem to be getting worse.

Well done Pharmacy Guild of Australia for taking the piss out of consumers and bringing your “trusted” profession into disrepute again. Shame on you.

*BTW I am uncertain this is a brand new idea. I’ve certainly had pharmacy staff attempt to upsell me supplements when being prescribed antibiotics but it only happened once and it was a long time ago. I presume this new deal means the upsell will now be exclusively Blackmores – what I don’t know is if means it will be more common place.

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QUICK UPDATE: From an article in Fairfax this morning.

“He said it was the first time the Guild’s computer system, which is used by about 70 per cent of members, would prompt pharmacists to discuss complementary medicines with patients. The system has been used to alert pharmacists to potential drug interactions or medication compliance issues.”

What a dirty money grabbing exercise this is. Worse than I previously thought.

If you follow the process, no doubt you’ll know who trolls the internet leaving this statement anywhere someone criticises homeopathy;

“Real is scientific homeopathy like Conventional Allopathic Medicine (CAM). Evidence-based modern homeopathy is a nano-medicine bringing big results”

Firstly, wha??

Only one person can dish up quality woo like this. It’s Not-a-Doctor Nancy Malik of course. And what exactly is “scientific homeopathy”? Best you ask Dr Malik about that.

So given that it was WHAW, many science-based bloggers and tweeters took it upon themselves to make people “aware” that homeopathy is nothing more than an expensive placebo. In most cases, the liquid or sugar pills you buy from your pharmacist in fact contain nothing at all. Thus, the catch phrase of Ten23; “Homeopathy, there’s nothing in it”.

My best mate Richard Saunders did his bit, in the form of an epic slap-down story on Adelaide’s Today Tonight where Brauer “Natural Medicine” came in for a bollocking. As Phil Plait so eloquently put it, this story was unique for the token homeopath not the token sceptic, the latter being the usual way things work on commercial television. If you haven’t seen this video, take the 10 minutes to watch it – it’s great. Richard delivers some succinct and pointed sound bites which really bring the message home (and I’m not too coy to say I was sitting off camera coaching him for this part!).

But, like many sacred cows, homeopathy is an unsinkable rubber duck and despite 200 years and 200 clinical trials, there is still no evidence that homeopathy works (see how homeopathy works here). This leaves homeopaths mumbling excuses like “RCTs don’t work for homeopathy” or “one day quantum physics will solve it”.

Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

So it was with great delight that I opened my Australian Doctor email today to find an article by Paul Smith (whom I highly respect) with the headline; “National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) declares: homeopathy ‘not efficacious’”. It’s a subscription based article so I can’t copy paste it here, but I can provide a summary.

“The NHMRC’s position is…it is unethical for health practitioners to treat patients using homeopathy, for the reason that homeopathy – as a medicine or procedure – has been shown not to be efficacious.”

This is currently a draft statement, apparently drawing on several issues; claims that “homeopathic vaccinations” are an effective substitute for vaccines, recent deaths (see here and here) in Australia where homeopathy was implicated and the findings by the UK Science and Technology Committee in 2010 which concluded that the UK National Health Service should cease funding homeopathy.

This is the first time the NHMRC has spoken out against homeopathy and the implications are significant. As Paul says;

“If the public statement is formally adopted by the council, the major health insurers – Medibank Private, HCF, NIB and MBF – will have to justify why it is using taxpayers’ money to fund “unethical” homeopathic treatments.”

Three billion dollars of taxpayers money is provided every year to fund private health insurance rebates by the government and this includes homeopathy. Should the NHMRC declare it “unethical”, health funds will be under pressure to pull funding for quack remedies like homeopathy.

It’s too early to tell at this stage if this will happen, since the statement is still a draft, but it is tantalising to think that science and rationalism could win this one.

I encourage the NHMRC to formalise this statement and declare homeopathy unethical and devoid of efficacy. Of course people will still be able to buy it, but at their own expense instead of that of the tax payer.

And maybe, just maybe, this will see the end of doctors prescribing it and pharmacists selling it. And wouldn’t that be a huge win for science and scepticism.

The full article (subscription required) can be found here

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One company who likes to use “science” to sell their products is Power Balance. They love the big science words like mylar, hologram, frequency and hertz. But after today, I’m not sure Power Balance and science are gonna be such good friends. You see, some researchers busted their magic hologram silicon bracelet using well, science.

In fact it was a team of chiropractors – a profession not universally known for evidence based practice. Indeed, some* chiropractors believe some pretty weird things like in the existence of subluxations. Put simply, this term is commonly used by chiropractors to describe signs and symptoms of the spinal column, yet evidence that these even exists remains controversial.

In May 2010, the General Chiropractic Council, the statutory regulatory body for chiropractors in the United Kingdom, issued guidance for chiropractors stating that the chiropractic vertebral subluxation complex;

“is not supported by any clinical research evidence that would allow claims to be made that it is the cause of disease or health concerns.”

A similar stance is taken by the National Health Service:

“There is also no scientific evidence to support the idea that most illness is caused by misalignment of the spine.”

This emphasis on woo in the chiropractic profession always struck me as kinda odd, since in Australia, chiropractic is a 2 year post graduate course meaning students have 3 years of undergraduate science education under their belts before they even begin.

But it’s clear that evidence-based practice is not the general rule (again please see *), as evidenced by a cursory glance at any of their websites. Chiropractors claim to treat a wide range of conditions including colic, asthma, sleep disorders, ear infections and ADHD. I addition to this, many chiropractors are also anti-vaccination, and I have blogged about one such in particular in the past.

So I was somewhat surprised today when the results of the Power Balance trial being conducted by the Discipline of Chiropractic in RMIT’s School of Health Sciences in Melbourne were announced, and the results were negative.

When I first heard about this trial several months ago, I was not confident the results would come out the right way – and by that I mean that Power Balance is an expensive rubber band, and nothing more, as the company itself admits.

I had already been disappointed by the gushing testimony of another chiropractor on the Today Tonight story where Richard Saunders showed the magic bands could not be distinguished from placebo.

Melbourne chiropractor, Dr. Matt Bateman, said he had tried it on hundreds of his patients, and even staked his reputation on it.

“I felt it for myself. There is so much you can fake – I am not faking 500% strength and stability, which is what I felt – I can’t fake that,” Dr. Bateman said.

No word yet from Dr Bateman on whether he wishes to retract his statements.

But, in what is another nail in the coffin for the reputation of expensive rubber band, the study found there was no statistically significant change in balance performance brought about by the silicon wristbands.

The randomised, double-blind controlled trial tested 42 volunteers on a computerised dynamic posturography device that measures balance and stability. The test was performed three times: once with no wristband, once with a placebo wristband (where the holograms were replaced with two stainless steel discs of the same dimensions and weight) and once with a Power Balance wristband.

“We saw no difference in people’s balance whether they were using the wristband, wearing a placebo or wearing no wristband at all,” study showed Chief investigator, Dr Simon Brice.

“…given this study strongly refuted the primary balance benefit of holographic wristbands, the validity of other purported benefits seems highly unlikely.”

Another author on the study. Dr Jarosz explained:

“They think it will work, therefore they feel like it’s working.”

The study will be published in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies , which is PubMed indexed and published by Elsevier. I say kudos to the team for publishing the first scientific study looking at the claims of Power Balance.

Just goes to show, if you abuse science for nefarious purposes, it might just come back to bite you. How ya liking science now Power Balance?

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* I say this based on my research, experience and the contact I have had with chiros. I wish to stress, I do not apply this statement the entire profession.

Sadly, this is not the first time I have reported on deaths associated with the use of homeopathy. Recently there was the case of the untreated eczema death of toddler Gloria Sam, for which her parents were convicted of manslaughter.

Penelope Dingle died in 2005 from untreated bowel cancer aged 45 after being diagnosed in 2003. She first presented with bleeding from the bowel in 2001. Following a colonoscopy, she was advised by doctors to have surgery to remove the cancer. She declined conventional cancer treatment, instead deciding on following a regimen of alternative treatments including special diets, vitamins and homeopathy.

Her husband is Dr Peter Dingle, a prominent Professor of Environmental Toxicology at Murdoch University in Perth and a media personality and author. Modelling himself as a kind of Aussie Joseph Mercola, he has a flashy website and has written such titles as “Is your home making you sick?”, “Improve your memory, your thinking and your life” and “The six week healthy eating planner”, the latter co-written with a naturopath (read: not a doctor).

The inquest was conducted at the request of the family following Mrs Dingle’s death in 2005. According to evidence given at the inquest from friends of Mrs Dingle and from her diaries, she and her husband made a pact with homeopath Francine Scrayen to not take any conventional treatment including pain relief. Dr Dingle also planned to write a book about how to cure cancer with homeopathy and alternative treatments once his wife was cured. A friend of the couple testified they were “enthralled and entrapped” in the spell of Ms Scrayen.

A report from the West Australian newspaper described;
“….Pen had so much faith in Francine. She was totally in her control”.

The friend described how Mrs Dingle has called the homeopath “at least a dozen times a day” and would only consume homeopathic medicines prescribed by her.

She came to visit Mrs Dingle in 2003, and was shocked to see how emaciated she was, since she had been assured by the couple that Mrs Dingle was responding well to the treatment. When the friend spoke to the homeopath, who consulted exclusively by phone, her concerns were dismissed, with the homeopath saying Mrs Dingle’s pain “was in her head” and she merely had constipation. She would not allow Mrs Dingle to take any other forms of medicine.

The friend also described how Mrs Dingle moaned in pain every night she was there, and even a visiting nurse who rated her pain nine on scale of ten was unable to convince her to take pain relief. Eventually she did succumb, receiving morphine in hospital and emergency surgery. This was only after she was advised by doctors that she would vomit feacal matter and die an excrutiatingly painful death within 24 hrs if she did not. Her bowel was completely obstructed by the tumour at this stage and she had not had a movement for 12 days.

It was too late for Mrs Dingle by this stage as the cancer has metastasized after such a long period of neglect and she died in 2005.

The question now is will the homeopath be held accountable for contributing to the death? I am not familiar with the legislation in WA, but in NSW it is illegal to claim to be able to cure incurable diseases, in accordance with the Code of Conduct for Unregistered Practitioners, legislated by the HCCC. But technically, homeopaths are actually not unregistered practitioners since they do have a regulatory body, the Australian Homeopathic Association which has a code of conduct of their own.

It seems you don’t need to dig very deep to see where Mrs Scrayen has breached the code (mind you on looking through it, it is not particularly specific about harm or seeking conventional medical advice when necessary).

Section 1, part 1 under general principles of professional conduct, states that:
“the welfare of patients…..shall take precedence over a member’s self interest and the interests of employees and colleagues.”

Section 2, part 2 also states:
“Members shall not …cause undue harm to patients.”

The only other section that is relevant in this case is Section 2.4:

“Patients whose state of health is deteriorating shall not be attended indefinitely without the member in charge suggesting or insisting upon a consultation with at least one other practitioner to confirm the assessment and treatment.”

But by stating “at least one other practitioner” does suggest another homeopath, not like a proper doctor or anything, you know the ones who are qualified to treat cancer for example.

The HCCC Code of Conduct is not so ambiguous. Section 5 states:

“Health practitioners not claim to make claims to cure certain serious illnesses. (1) a health practitioner must not hold him or herself out as qualified, able or willing to cure cancer and other terminal illnesses.”

Now I don’t know if the homeopath claimed she could cure Mrs Dingle’s cancer – this information has not been revealed as far as I know. It might be the case that the couple made the decision to only use homeopathy and not conventional medicine. But even of this is true, the homeopath did apparently forbid Mrs Dingle from using conventional pain relief and surely this breaches either code of conduct for responsible behaviour.

We will wait and see. In the meantime, this is yet another sad case to add to the hundreds on the What’s the Harm website. It makes you wonder what exactly motivates people to shun science based medicine, and especially in this case, where the alternative was just water and the desire to pursue this line of treatment even after it became obvious the magic vibrating water was not helping.

Add to this, the fact that Dr Dingle has a PhD? None of it makes sense.

Dodgy devices to be regulated 25-May-2010 By Michael East

THE manufacturers of shonky devices used by alternative therapists to carry out what they claim are diagnostic tests will soon have to provide clinical evidence that they work under new Therapeutic Goods Administration regulations.
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The changes, which will be introduced in July, are in response to growing concerns about the number of in-vitro diagnostic devices employed by alternative therapists.
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Among the products advertised on the internet is the “Hemaview”, which, according to its manufacturer, uses one or two drops of blood projected onto a video screen to diagnose “nutritional deficiencies, organ dysfunction and certain biochemical imbalances”.

Director of the Alfred Hospital’s department of haematology Professor Hatem Salem said users of the device were “pulling the wool over people’s eyes”.
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“The notion that one can diagnose all sorts of ailments by examining a drop of blood on a video screen is both ridiculous and plain stupid.”
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Currently the TGA is only able to regulate diagnostic devices included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods, including those that test for HIV and hepatitis C, as well as those used in the home.
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However, many of the in-vitro diagnostic devices used by alternative therapists have been exempt from scrutiny because they are not considered medical devices.
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From July the makers of all in-vitro diagnostic devices will then be required to show clinical evidence that their products work but will have four years to fulfil the new requirements. They will also have to make clear to the public the potential risks of the devices.

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I’m afraid I’m sceptical. Required to show clinical evidence? To whom? Unfortunately the TGA does not have a very good track record of policing things like this.

Remember the homeopath who made all sorts of outrageous claims about magic water as a substitute for vaccination? Fran Sheffield of Homeopathy Plus! simply didn’t agree with TGA findings that her claims were misleading, so chose to ignore a ruling to remove such material from her website. And in an example of laughing in the face of the law, the day after she was exposed on ABC1′s Lateline programme by Steve Cannane, she jumped the shark.

In a post entitled; “Lateline: Can homeopathy safely protect against epidemic and infectious diseases? Can homeopathy treat serious diseases such AIDS and cancer?” she went even further, claiming that water could safely treat AIDS and cancer.

So, whilst I applaud this legislation in principle, how does the TGA, or other relevant health authorities plan to police it?

I regularly attend the Mind Body Spirit/Wallet Festival in Sydney where there is a plethora of snake oil salesman using Hemaview and collecting money hand over fist from gullible clients. It’s a perfect set-up; let us diagnose you with some allergy or somesuch and then when I reach over here, I have a bucket of powder for the special price of way-too-much which will fix you right up!

In NSW in 2008, legislation was introduced to regulate unregistered health practitioners, that is, those who are not already represented by a regulatory body like doctors or dietitians. Section 17 of the Code of Conduct states that a health practitioner must display the code and a document that gives information about where clients can complain to the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) if necessary.

I have dutifully trotted off to the MB$ four times now, will my code clutched tightly under my arm and as yet, I have not once seen the code displayed. It’s now become a bit of a joke between my friends and as such, we have nick-named our futile search “Code of Conduct Bingo”.

This “festival” had enough quackery and snake oil to start a factory. (As an aside, one also has to wonder how much of the takings are declared to the tax department at the end of the four day love in). Make no mistake, a large amount of cash is collected, when you count up the magic scalar energy infused Fusion Excel Pendants for $150-$200 (available from Alibaba.com for 6 bucks a pop) or the $45 for a 20 minute reading with a psychic (queues last week extended half way across the exhibition hall). Or the dangerous and useless ear candles, which you can buy wholesale for 20 cents a pop, or pay about 15 bucks for three at the MB$ (after you pay your 16 bucks to get in). Or how about a $60 Power Balance Bracelet (available from Alibaba.com for between 50 and 80 cents).

In the two years I have been attending, I have not been aware of any representatives from relevant health bodies lurking around – this doesn’t mean they are not there of course. It would hardly make sense to walk around declaring your identity if you wanted to catch people in the act.

But certainly, I’ve been mistaken for such as person, at a Hemaview stand in fact. A colleague and I were asking for published evidence for the statement “clinically tested” which was splashed all over their stand, when the pamphlet he was holding was rapidly snatched out of his hand and the previously helpful assistant demanded, “are you Doctors?? Why do you want to know?…ARE YOU FROM THE TGA?”

Thou doth protesteth too much methinks.

It becomes very difficult not to lose your temper with these people, particularly when you know they are blowing it out their arse.

The first time I was exposed to a Hemaview/Live Blood Analysis person at the MB$, I was carefully shuffled away by my friend as my voice began to break and my ears to steam. It took him a good 10 mins to calm me down from the tidal wave of bullshit that had passed over me. You see, as a scientist I knew the terminology spewing from the representatives gob was real, but the deceit of peppering sciencey sounding words into a spiel about woo, to make it sound legitimate was too much for my science educated brain. She was right when she observed, just before I was escorted to the nearest corner, that I had been “affected by what she said”.

It’s just it was not in the way she presumed.

Another time at another Hemaview stand, I was with a nurse colleague when we were surreptitiously moved on with a nod the boss man. I guess he had twigged we were onto their profitable little scam.

It is interesting nonetheless, to observe the way woo-purveyors react to being challenged on their claims. After a fair bit of experience, I’ve come up with a theory. The ones who get angry and ask you to leave, are probably knowingly deceiving the punters. You might call them frauds or con men. The ones who genuinely try to answer your questions, even if their explanations are completely implausible and off with the fairies, are probably genuine, even if they are deluded.

It’s a bit like the psychics who spot you in the crowd, knowing who you are, and point out there are a lot of fake psychics here today.

I’M DEFINITELY NOT A FAKE, but look over there – he is!!!

So, personally, I am not confident this new legislation with have much of an impact of the alternative medicine industry. And it also seems odd that they are given four years to comply. Why so long? One thing is for certain though, the addition of legislation designed to clean up the industry will lend it unwarranted legitimacy. Imagine how happy snake oil purveyors will be to declare that their quantum energy box has been approved by the government.

The TGA is failing the Australian public. It’s a disgrace.

When this appeared in my inbox yesterday, courtesy of Richard Saunders (who was kind enough to ask me if I was sitting down first) I initially *facepalmed*, then sought about getting the original paper where this apparent break through research had appeared (thanks to @xtaldave for the full text).

The paper that had apparently found homeopathy to be as effective as chemo for breast cancer (according to Homeopathy Plus!, yes those guys), was published in the International Journal of Oncology* and entitled “Cytotoxic Effects of Ultra Diluted Remedies on Breast Cancer Cells.” (Click the link for the full pdf of the study).

The paper examines the effects of ultra-dilute remedies (read:homeopathy) on the induction of cell death in two cancer cell lines (commercially available MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) and one immortalised control cell line, (HMLE).

The authors use several remedies already in use for the treatment of human breast cancer developed at the P. Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation in India, Kolkata;

Carcinosin, 30C; Conium maculatum, 3C; Phytolacca decandra, 200C and Thuja occidentalis, 30C (for an explanation of how dilute these remedies are see here).

All remedies were diluted in 87% “extra neutral alcohol” and succussed, including the alcohol used as the control solvent.

The authors analysed each remedy with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to look for differences, then measured cell death in cell culture in response to increasing doses and increasing time of incubation with each remedy. These measures include the MTT assay for cell viability, Annexin V and PI for apoptosis, FISH for DNA breakage and Western blots to measure activation of cell cycle proteins.

Technically the paper is quite well written. The problems lie with the data. And these problems are so massive, I wonder how they got by the reviewers. I don’t know whether they were dozing when they reviewed this paper, but I could immediately see some big fat gaping holes in their results.

First up a few pointers;

“The experiments were conducted in triplicate and repeated at least twice in each case of remedy”

This would not get past me. It is accepted scientific convention that experiments are done at least three times (not two) and also in triplicate, giving you a final “n” number of 9. These studies were done in cell culture, meaning there is plenty of material for experiments to be repeated as many times as you wish. So why were they only done twice? Three is convention because it gives the study more statistical power.

Ah statistics, huh?

There is a distinct lack of statistics in this paper, by which I mean there are none at all. As my friend Jo said; “Nary a p-value nor a confidence interval to be seen”. Which begs the question, how can you get a paper accepted in a peer reviewed journal without doing an statistical analysis?

Really? No, I mean REALLY? This is why I suspect the reviewers were dozing or drunk.

And by not doing any statistical analysis, you can not make any statements about whether the treatments are different to each other. Statistics uses algorithms to calculate mathematical differences with a degree of confidence (usually 95%) so that we don’t rely on visual interpretation, which is notoriously unreliable. But this doesn’t seem to have bothered these authors, or the reviewers.

So let’s look more closely at the results.

Firstly the HPLC.

Oh wait a sec, there are no results shown for HPLC. And neither do the authors say “no results shown”. They just make some rather confused statements about what they think they saw and move on. What?! I need to see the chromatograms. What possible reason could they have for not including this data, especially when they go on to describe it so badly in the text.

“All four remedies had very similar HPLC chromatograms to each other, with only trace amounts of limited number of peaks. They were not significantly distinct from the solvent and they lacked the distinct peak seen in the solvent.

So, this means that all the remedies were the same, ie. no different to the solvent and no other peaks indicating any ingredients. But then they contradict themselves by saying that the remedies did not have the solvent peak? Fail.

And then;

“The chromatogram of the untreated and treated solvents appeared identical, indicating that succussion did not cause chemical changes in the solvent.”

Okay, but don’t some homeopaths claim that succussion does have an effect on the chemical structure of the water/solvent? Isn’t this how they explain that homeopathy works? I can only guess SINCE WE CANNOT SEE THE CHROMATOGRAMS, but what you are saying is the remedies and the solvent were exactly the same, meaning they are solvent.

No surprises there.

What about the cell death studies?

So let’s look at the cell death studies since these constitute the crux of the study’s aims. That is, to determine if these ultra dilute remedies can induce cell death in cancer cell lines.

So here we have results for all three cell lines, two cancerous and one control, and they are all treated with a control (the 87% alcohol solvent) or the remedies and death measured by MTT assay. Here’s how they describe it in the text;

“Interestingly, the inhibitory effects on cell viability of the remedies in both the MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells were distinctly greater for each of the doses tested than those seen in cells treated only with solvent.”

Which translates as the treatments killed the cells better than the solvent alone. Okay, so it looks like it did when you eye ball the histograms, but you have no evidence for this – you didn’t do stats, therefore you cannot say this! Sheesh, where did you learn to write science?

But why not keep the fail going;

“MCF-7 cells were found to be more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.

Again no statistics, so this statement cannot be confirmed. When you do science properly and you run statistical analysis, you are entitled to say, “MCF-7 cells were found to be significantly more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.

Unless you’re these authors, then you just get a great big FAIL stamp on your work.

Also note that they state that the control treatment (that is the solvent) also induced cell death in all cell types;

“As shown in Fig. 1A, the solvent reduced the viability of all three cell types; the overall reduction in cells at different doses of solvent was about 30% for MCF-7, 20-30% for MDA-MB-231 and 20% for HMLE cells.”

Ummm, hold on a sec.

This is your control treatment, which means it should not be causing cell death. It is designed to be inert, functioning as a carrier of your treatment, in order that you can measure the impact of the treatment alone. If your solvent or vehicle is killing your cells you have a fundamental problem. You need to go back to the drawing board and find a different solvent to deliver your treatment.

This is a very big problem right here.

If the cell death induced by the solvent is significant, then the rest of the paper is worthless. But because there are no stats here, there is no way to tell if death by the solvent is significant. According to the above statement, the alcohol killed ~30% of the cancer cells compared to no treatment at all. Although this effect was increased when the treatment was present, there remains a large problem with your model if your solvent is killing the cells.

Perhaps this explains why there are no stats in this paper? Because they may in fact show that the “inert” solvent also significantly kills the cancer cells? Once again, there is no way for me to know this without access to the raw data, or the statistical analysis.

Man, how the hell did this embarrassment get accepted?

Well now that I have revealed a fundamental flaw in this tripe I have lost the will to continue. There is much more fail herein however, I mean we are only at Figure 1 remember.

So I will cover just a few more things that are also glaringly obviously wrong with this paper, then I will send a large bottle of 87% alcohol to the editorial board and encourage them to keep up the good work of smiting the peer review process and science in general.

General lack of quantitation of results in this paper.

Figure 3, excerpt from Frenkel et al., showing damage to DNA.

Figure 3 (left) shows fluorescent microscopy data for DNA breakage as measured by FISH assay. But where is the quantitation of this data?

The authors show a representative image for each treatment, and this is usually acceptable if you then measure large numbers of cells and report on such changes with numbers (see below).

Dunlop et al., in press. Panels are representative DAPI/FITC overlay images of at least 10 images taken from triplicate wells. Histograms are mean + SD of 3 independent experients, incubations in triplicate, n = 9, p < 0.001 1-way ANOVA. Tukeys post-hoc analysis.

Further, even in the fluorescent images the authors only show a maximum of 14 cells. What the hell can you glean from 14 cells? They even say;

“At least 200 cells from treated and untreated samples were analyzed for mitotic index and telomeric DNA signals with a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with fluorescence attachment and a Photometrics CoolSNAP HQ2 monochrome digital camera.”

So where is this data? Not in this paper, I can tell you that.

Next up Western blots.

Then they move onto Western blots. Actually this looks like the most resolved part of the paper. They have normalised everything to beta-actin as convention goes, and they have indicated the time of exposure to treatments. But as I mentioned earlier, if their control treatment 87% alcohol, is killing cells, then what can we glean from this data? Well not much except the effect could be an additive effect of the alcohol and treatment. There is no way to differentiate the impact of the treatment versus the control.

Flow cytometry, not quantitated either.

Sigh. I spend most of my days doing flow cytometry, so I am pretty familiar with how it works and what are the accepted ways to present the data. This is not one of them.

Figure 5, excerpt from Frenkel et al.,

The assay they use (Annexin V and PI) is a common one and I use it often. Standard procedure is to count ~10,000 cells for each condition, then plot your results on a graph, like this (see left below).

Dunlop et al., in press. Flow cytometry analysis of lysosomal destabilisation in THP1 human monocytes with acridine orange as a probe. Mean & SD of three independent experiments, incubations conducted in triplicate (n = 9), ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, 1-way ANOVA, Tukeys post-hoc analysis.

You might also show your scatter plots as they have done above, as a nice visual demonstration of how the cells respond to the treatment, but this is not quantitation.

I’m going to stop there. I won’t even bother dealing with the discussion and conclusions, because by my analysis, they are based on flawed data.

One thing I will say about Homeopathy Plus! yelling “Homeopathy as good as chemotherapy for breast cancer” is not a conclusion you can draw from this study.

For all the reasons I have addressed above as well as the really obvious point that these studies were conducted in cell culture. This is a very different situation to a whole animal.

Cells bathing in a bath of homeopathy is very different to the processes which occur in vivo, for example the treatment must survive the low pH of the stomach, cross the gut, escape metabolism in the liver and get to the site of the cancer then do it’s job. This is a very complex process and very difficult to control. Studies in cell culture can provide data about the mechanism of action of a compound, but rarely do they relate to the processes in a human.

Never extrapolate results from a culture dish to a whole animal. You will undoubtedly be wrong and look like a fool.

Ooh, did someone say Homeopathy Plus!?

Listen to Fran Sheffield from Homeopathy Plus! talk about how homeopathy works here (mp3, 3:19).

*The International Journal of Oncology, impact factor 2.234, fail factor 10^23.

A reader emailed me this site and asked me to take a look. It’s called BICOM Bioresonance Therapy and is described, “as a gentle computer modulated therapy which helps to identify and treat the underlying causes of the disease, not only the symptoms”.

In the BICOM device the disharmonious frequencies are filtered out and inverted. These inverted therapeutic oscillations are now given back to the patient. This makes no sense to me, and I am a scientist.

Has your quack alert been activated yet?

If not, it should have. Familiarise yourself with the seven signs of pseudoscience. This is a great way to learn to spot quack products and avoid yourself getting scammed (or worse, put your health at risk).

BICOM is just another one of those “zapping” devices, sometimes known as Bioresonance therapy or Vega testing, and is not a dissimiliar concept to the E-meter used  for personality profiling by the Church of Scientology.

These things claim they will treat or cure just about anything, from allergies and geopathic stress (?) to cancers, but there is scant evidenc that they do any of these things.  They all make similar claims, but for the sake of clarity, I will use Biocom as an example to analyse some of these claims.

Bicom fits the “junk science” label pretty well, and also has the dubious honor of hijacking scientific terminology and technology to lend legitimacy to it’s product. This has the effect of “blinding consumers with science” to make them think if it sounds sciencey, then it must work! See the diagram. Science!

This is a particular heinous modus operandi in my opinion, particularly because since these therapies are not based in evidence, they choose to
cherry pick science to suit their agenda.

So, whilst homeopaths will tell you that quantum physics explains that water has memory, on the other hand randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can’t be used on homeopathy – this is usually because the results do not turn out like they want.

*Sulk*.

Wow, looks sciencey, must be good!

Anti-vaxers on the other hand repeatedly demand RCTs for vaccine safety, but reject the mounting scientific evidence that mercury does not cause autism. Convenient hey?

But then I never claimed these people were rational or logical, did I?

But I digress, back to BICOM. I’ve picked some gems from their website as examples of junk science.

First thing you should always look for when determining if a product is a scam if it claims to treat or cure many unrelated diseases.

Bingo!

“The BICOM device detects and treats problems with Candida, parasites, bacteria, fungi, viruses, heavy metals, chemicals, miasms, allergies and food intolerances, immune system, treats geopathic stress, reduces scar interference, detoxifies, reduces pain and inflammation and regulates the hormonal system.

Programmes in the device are applied for a wide range of conditions such as smoking addiction, allergies, ankle problems, bedwetting, blood circulation, blood pressure, bowel and other digestive problems, catarrh, colitis, depression, dizziness, ear complaints, lack of energy, eye problems, fever, hay fever, hip/joint issues, impotence, liver, lymph, MS, pain, prostate, rheumatism, sinusitis, skin, spine, thyroid, warts, etc.”

I stopped counting at fifteen. Note the claims of “detects and treats”. Perhaps the Complaints Resolution Panel of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (Australia’s equivalent of the FDA in America) would be interested in hearing about this? Just a thought.

Also, unlike the conventional science based option, this one will be completely safe, has no side effects and be non invasive.

Oh wait, look what I found.

“It is a highly effective, painfree, and non-invasive therapy without harmful side effects”.

Tick.

Next, look for any connection to quantum mechanics or quantum physics.

“Findings from the area of biophysical and quantum mechanics and quantum physics have opened up amazing possibilities and have led to impressive developments in technology. Such findings are useful to explain the basis of bioresonance therapy.”

Tick.

In the category of “pardon?”
“…it been proven that cells communicate with each other by means of “flashes of light”

No, it hasn’t. You just made this up. Cells communicate by sending messages via chemicals. Not baby fireworks.

“Every substance and therefore every cell of every part of the body (but also viruses, bacteria, pollen, etc..) emit their energy. They have a highly specific, typical wavelength or frequency with entirely individual characteristics. This is termed the ‘frequency pattern’.”

Wha? This is an example of making stuff up and chucking in “energy” to make it sound kinda sciencey. Funny, whenever you ask these people exactly what they mean by “energy” they fail to answer the question. That’s because they have no idea themselves.

This is what I like to call the “put science words in a hat and draw them out at random” fallacy.

But what about the Treatment of Pathological Oscillations? Well Bioresonance therapy can do that too.

“Many diseases start with pathological oscillations or vibrations from toxins, moulds, parasites and chemicals.”

Again nonsense. Why is the alternative medicine crowd are so taken with energy and “vibrations”?

If a therapy present testimonials in the place of evidence you should also be suspicious. Does Bioresonance therapy do this? Yes they do.

If you’re still unsure then always check for the obligatory disclaimer. Here they will tell you themselves (to cover their ass from lawyers) that their product does nothing, their website may be wrong, and don’t take advice from them.

DISCLAIMER:

This website is not designed to be used to make any diagnoses, prescribe any form of treatment or medication or order tests. The information contained is provided as an educational service. The website contains articles on many health and wellness topics; however, no warranty is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained or cited in an article touching on medical matters is true, correct, precise or up to date.

Quack alert.

The BICOM Bioresonance is another “zapper*” that does nothing except empty your wallet.

*Hulda Clark sells zappers that she claims can treat cancer. She wrote the book “The cure for all cancers”. She died of cancer.

The Iraqi government has spent 85 million dollars, at a cost of 40 thousand dollars each, on the dowsing-like ADE-651 devices, but there are now fears that they failed to prevent bomb attacks which killed hundreds of military personal and civilians. Sidney Alford a leading explosives expert, said the sale of the devices was “absolutely immoral”.

He told Newsnight; “It could result in people being killed in the dozens, if not hundreds.”

This comes after three recent suicide car bomb attacks in Baghdad, with one attack in December killing over 120 Iraqis.

But the ADE-651 devices had never been shown to work scientifically. The device consists of a rotating rod inside a plastic case and a “programmed substance detection card” which is “tuned into the frequency of a particular explosive”. However, when Newsnight had the cards tested by Cambridge University’s Computer Lab, they were found to be nothing more than store security tags.

Dr Markus Kuhn who tested the cards said; “There is nothing to program in these cards. There is no memory. There is no microcontroller. There is no way any form of information can be stored,” he added. Furthermore, the tags which are supposed to be the heart of such an expensive system cost around two to three pence.

“These are the cheapest bit of electronics that you can get that look vaguely electronic and are sufficiently flat to fit inside a card,” Dr Kuhn told NewsNight.

Even the Iraqis themselves are sceptical about the device. “They don’t work properly,” Umm Muhammad, a retired schoolteacher said. “Sometimes when I drive through checkpoints, the device moves simply because I have medications in my handbag. Sometimes it doesn’t – even when I have the same handbag.”

Concerns about the legitimacy of a virtually identical device were first raised by sceptic and magician, James Randi back in the late 1990s (see below). When the devices were investigated by the FBI and others agencies in laboratory tests, they found that “there were no functioning parts and the device failed very definitive tests.”

The dowsing technique used by the ADE-651 devices, is not new and is well known to be bunk. Australian Skeptics have produced a video testing the effectiveness of dowsing to find water, and after numerous tests, found its success rate was no better than chance.

Watch the full story from the BBC. It’s chilling.

As a sceptic, I have been accused of being closed minded, arrogant and rude. Yet, it seems a healthy dose of scepticism with respect to these crank devices quite possibly would have saved lives in this case.

Her story was featured on Channel 7s Sunday Night and I previously blogged about it here.

Well, today I was informed that tragically Tamar succumbed to her cancer on November 12th, 2009 in San Salvador where she was undergoing treatment with natural therapies, including hours of mud-wraps. There is little information on this at the time of going to press, except to say that my source tells me they contacted a journalist involved in the story, who confirmed this was the case and that Tamar passed in hospital. Google searches are also turning up very little, however I did find a comment from someone on a news site, dated December 31 st 2009, stating

“Tamar died a month or so ago in el Salvador. Towards the end the mother was taking her for chemo treatment but it was too late. Her death was reported on the news here two days ago – the hospital in el salvador has confirmed it.”

According to the 3news.co.nz story from October 12th 3009, doctors in Perth

“say a seven week course of chemotherapy will give Tamar a 50 to 60 percent chance of survival. Without it she will suffer a long and painful death.”

But her parents are devout Christians, and say God will decide her fate.

“I don’t want to lose my daughter, but it is God’s decision,” says Tamar’s father Trevor Stitt.

“Who am I to fight against it?”

Trevor also left a comment on the same website stating;

14 Oct 2009 8:17p.m.

Hello to all of you, yes I am Tamar’s Father.Channel 7 came into our lives to supposedly portray 2 sides of the story, sadly they’ve lied and left out half the truth that they filmed. They were supposed to interview people (Doctors)and natural healers who’ve cured people of cancer successfully, but “pulled the pin” on the interviews because it would topple their one-sided story.They also ommited to say that I trained at Guy’s Hospital, London and worked as an Operating Dept Practitioner in Anaesthesia in the UK for 10 years before coming to Oz in 1998,worked at Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London and so have quite good research engines at my disposal. I have seen “clay wraps” cure my Tamar of asthma at 2 yrs when PMH only offered steroidal inhalers, she’s never had an attack since.If 7 had’ve told the truth about what they saw without overdramatising the San Salvador situation and others for sensationalism, then maybe folks would know more of what we are doing for Tamar, who IS getting a little better each day.I have to say I don’t really know who you are Josie, you say you know us,do you have another name?
I guess the struggle is just beginning (and I don’t speak about Tamar’s condition here)those “orthodox”people will not be happy, google Roy Rife, see what happened to him.Remember Patch Adams? (a true story)didn’t fit in to orthodox practice, too happy,he had a proper bedside manner (taboo in today’s conventional medicine). “There are none so blind as those who will not see”- with the eye of faith you don’t only see, you begin to LIVE!Thanks to All who support us and also to those who don’t.

This is a terribly tragic case, especially if it is true that Tamar’s mother did eventually take her for chemotherapy, as suggested by the comment above. Even more so, because her father apparently has a medical background including working “…as an Operating Dept Practitioner in Anaesthesia in the UK for 10 years before coming to Oz in 1998,worked at Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London……so have quite good research engines at my disposal.” (see above). Despite this, Tamar’s parents still chose to seek out alternative remedies as oppose to those supported by evidence.

Cases such as these where religious beliefs and faith in alternative medicine result in (often) avoidable deaths are tragically, not uncommon. It is also important to consider the desperation and vulnerability of a person faced with the imminent death of their daughter, therefore one can sympathise that you might be inclined to try anything. Similar to my Mum’s friend who passed 6 months ago from cancer also, but in her final months fell victim to all kinds of useless therapies including hair analysis which I have previously blogged about here and here and vega testing.

It reminds me of a quote from an essay written by Michael Baum and Edzard Ernst in the book “Healing, Hype or Harm” about ethics in alternative medicine;

“Even treatments which by themselves are not harmful, will become life threatening if they are used as an alternative to effective treatments of serious diseases.”

Cancer Victoria produces a booklet warning cancer patients about “quack” therapies. You can read about it here.

Several sources have advised me that there will be a follow up story on Today Tonight this coming week.

—

Thanks to Tony for letting me know about this. Please see Tim Farley’s comprehensive website What’s the Harm? for more such cases.

This story was covered on Channel 7s Sunday Night programme, the same one that covered the death of Dana McCaffery and the anti-vaxers back in April. You can read my previous blogs about this here and here.

In this case, a 10 year old girl Tamar, was recently diagnosed with liver cancer which required immediate and aggressive chemotherapy. But her parents have shunned conventional treatment in favour of “mud” therapy. A team of oncologists at Princes Margaret Childrens’ Hospital advised that a seven week course of chemotherapy would give Tamar a 50-60% chance of survival. Despite the treating hospital pleading with the parents to consent to chemotherapy, eventually seeking the involvement of the WA legal system, the parents fled Australia to El Salvador.

Their preferred treatment is tea made from herbs, and red clay gathered from around the hills near their house in El Salvador. Tamar’s mother says that “Clay is basically the right medicine for any kind of illness, (it can cure) anything“. She went on to say, “..it dries up anything that is causing the illness in your system“. Twice a day, every day for a minimum of three hours, the clay is wrapped around the girl’s torso.

Her father says, “I don’t want to do this to my daughter but if it’s God decision then so be it.” He claims his daughter doesn’t want to lose her hair or get sick from the chemotherapy and has seen the research for herself, so she is therefore capable of making a decision to use natural therapies. He also claims she is eating normally and has gained weight. The parents claim the proof for the efficacy of mud therapy therapy is a book “written by a doctor” about the curative effects of herbs.

You can watch the full video here.