I’m soon to trek back to the US (for the third time this year) to attend a conference on BMAA and MND, a project I am enjoying working on immensely. I’ve written about this before over at Skeptic Zoners and talked about it on ABC Radio if you are interested to hear more details. No doubt I will have more to report from the picturesque Jackson Hole in Wyoming in early October when I meet with collaborators for the 7th Annual BMAA conference.

In the meantime, I have several manuscripts on the cusp of being returned for final review, after additional experiments were completed to satisfy reviewers’ comments. For a humorous take on how (not to) respond to these critiques, see PhD Comics Addressing Reviewers’ Comments, a copy of which is permanently taped in close proximity to my laptop.

I’m currently also in the midst of doing some research for another unrelated project (the details which I am unable to reveal just yet) and as such have been sorting through my stash of pamphlets, flyers and brochures collected from multiple trips to Mind Body Wallet festivals.

I just came across this one and simply had to share it. It’s a derivative of the old adage of “Things your doctor won’t tell you!!!” or “What the pharmaceutical industry is hiding!!!”. You know the type of screed that steals all the exclamation marks from the internetz.

It’s from a photocopied document entitled “Know Miracle II” which contains some garden variety woo about alkaline water curing everything. It then details how amazing this stuff is, and all the things it can cure. You know the phrase you couldn’t make this shit up? Well don’t worry readers, you don’t have to cause it’s already written here for you!

Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.  Enjoy. My comments follow in blue.

• Human bodies that have been been on Miracle-II (M-2) have been checked through esoteric programs via MD and naturopath….with the report, “Best results of any tests, regardless of age!”

Esoteric? Best results? Wha?

• Radionics machines find M-2 off the chart

Jibberish

• Independent university testing by NE Louisiana University five years ago determined that M-2 neutralizer neutralizes cobra venom and anthrax.

Citation needed

• World governments have contacted the formulator, taking samples home, in an attempt to break the formula….North Korea, China, the President and Health Minister of Liberia, and most recently, a team from Israel.

Jebus, all these scary governments have scary water with an alkaline pH? ARGHH.

But this one truly takes the cake.

• US Biological and Germ Warfare has contacted the formulator demanding he reveal the formula. His answer. “God told me not to tell anyone” still stands.

WTF.

There’s more, but I’m on the floor and unable to breathe.

It was entitled “OUR RELATIONS WITH HOMEOPATHY”

and was in response to speeches previously published regarding “..prevailing professional laxity and charlatanry, in connection with the homeopathic quackery”.

Dr McCormack had some pretty scathing things to say about homeopathy and its use by “…shallow men and women…able to lure lucre by every imaginable wile from the sick and the silly”.

He went on to say;

“When patients are once secured, they are, ….retained by the combination of every current medical novelty which may at the time be most in favour with the moneyed throng of quack-fanciers“.

“..homoeopathy…is truly a combination of any and every available charlatanic trick,…..and therefore all that remains for us, as men of science and men of integrity, is to give notice, that we exclude from all professional intercourse practitioners who are in any way engaged in using or upholding a system which we think bears upon its very face fraud as well as absurdity“.

Wow, pretty serious stuff. One might imagine you could now get sued for saying things like this, ala, the BCA and Simon Singh.

But McCormack went further than this by listing a series of guidelines desscribing how clinicians who used or practiced homeopathy should be received by their medical colleagues;

—–

“1. That it is the opinion of this (Provincial) Association, that homoeopathy as propounded by Hahnemann, and practised by his followers, is so utterly opposed to science and common sense, as well as so completely at variance with the experience of the Medical Profession, that it ought to be in no way or degree practised or countenanced by any regularly educated medical practitioner.

2. That homoeopathic practitioners, through the press, the platform, and the pulpit, have endeavoured to heap contempt upon the practice of Medicine and Surgery as followed by members of this Association, and by the profession at large.

3. That for these reasons it is derogatory to the honour of members of this Association to hold any kind of professional intercourse with homoeopathic practitioners.

4. That there are three classes of practitioners who ought not to be members of this Association, viz.-lst, real homeopathic practitioners; 2nd, those who practise homoeopathy in combination with other systems of treatment; and 3rd, those who under various pretences meet in consultation, or hold professional intercourse with those who practise homoeopathy”.

—-

Finally;

“To adopt resolutions setting forth that the homeopathic dogma and the doctrine of infinitesimal doses have no truthful basis, and are, in fact, mere nonsensical delusions…The worst part of homeopathy, is in my opinion, the DISHONESTY of the majority of those who live by it”.

So there you go, homoeopathy, declared bullshit as early as 1851.

You can find the full reference here.

Tip o’the hat to Jo Benhamu.