MYTHs of Homeopathy - A Series. Ep. 4

“Homeopathy is just a placebo effect”

It is frequently argued that homeopathic medicines are ‘just sugar pills’ that don’t contain any active ingredients, so any benefits patients report are due purely to the placebo effect i.e. people believe the pills are going to help and this belief alone triggers a healing response.

With any medical treatment there is likely to be some degree of ‘placebo effect’ and in this respect homeopathy is no different, but the theory that homeopathy’s effects are only a placebo response is not supported by the scientific evidence.

If homeopathy is really just a placebo effect, how does one explain:

1. The existence of positive high quality placebo-controlled trials? These trials are designed specifically to separate out the placebo effect from the real clinical effect of the treatment being tested.
2. Homeopathic medicines having effects in laboratory experiments? Effects have been seen on white blood cells, frogs and wheat plants to name just a few examples.
3. The fact that homeopathy works in animals? A rigorous research study found that homeopathy can prevent E. coli diarrhoea in piglets¹ – a big problem in commercial farmingMore

References

Find out more about similar statements:

“A top research organisation in Australia just found homeopathy doesn’t work for anything and is just placebo”

“The UK Parliamentary report has looked at the evidence and said it’s just placebo”

Influence of pediatric vaccines on social behavior in the rhesus monkey

NBTS P02

Influence of pediatric vaccines on social behavior in the rhesus monkey

• B. Curtis^a,
• K. Morrisroe^a,
• V. Yutuc^a,
• C. Ferrier^a,
• G.P. Sackett^a,
• L. Hewitson^b

doi:10.1016/j.ntt.2014.04.047

Pediatric vaccines have been considered controversial due to potential negative effects on development, particularly impaired social interaction and communication, hyperactivity, and repetitive stereotyped behaviors that are characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some reports suggest that exposure to ethyl mercury (EtHg), in the form of thimerosal, in pediatric vaccines may play a causative role in such negative effects. Male infant rhesus macaques (n = 79) were assigned at birth to one of six study groups (12–16 subjects/group) as follows: (1) the pediatric vaccination schedule from the 1990s including thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs), (2) the same 1990s schedule but accelerated to accommodate the developmental trajectory of the infant rhesus macaque, (3) TCVs only (saline placebo for Mumps–Measles–Rubella [MMR]), (4) MMR only (other injections replaced with saline placebo), (5) the expanded vaccine regimen from 2008 (where fewer vaccines contained thimerosal), or (6) a control group following the 1990s schedule with all vaccines replaced with saline placebo. Subjects began socializing at approximately 25 days of age and were socialized 5 days per week in a 4-monkey peer group. Social behavior data, collected between 15 and 18 months of age using a computer system capturing a variety of social and non-social behaviors, were included in this analysis. Data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVAs with Dunnett's test post-hoc procedures following significant experimental group or group × age interactions. No significant differences in non-social or social behavior were found when comparing the animals in the vaccine groups to controls. The data do not provide any evidence of abnormal social behavior in rhesus macaques exposed to low-dose thimerosal and should provide reassurance that TCVs do not contribute to the negative effects associated with ASD. Support from the Johnson Family, the Ted Lindsay Foundation, and SafeMinds is gratefully acknowledged.

Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.

#59 – Human Retrovirus, Chronic Illness, and Scientific Prejudice ** January 14, 2015 Guest // Judy Mikovits, PhD ** Host // Sayer Ji Listen to Fearless Parent Radio online on PRN.fm at 7pm ET or on your phone by dialing (401) 347-0456. Once the show has aired, listen via our Archived Shows page, iTunes, or Podbean.

#59 – Human Retrovirus, Chronic Illness, and Scientific Prejudice ** January 14, 2015Guest // Judy Mikovits, PhD ** Host // Sayer Ji

Listen to Fearless Parent Radio online on PRN.fm at 7pm ET or on your phone by dialing (401) 347-0456. Once the show has aired, listen via our Archived Shows page, iTunes, or Podbean.

http://fearlessparent.org/radio-blog-human-retrovirus-chronic-illness-scientific-prejudice-episode-59/

On July 22, 2009, a special meeting was held with 24 leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health to discuss early findings that a newly discovered retrovirus was linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), prostate cancer, lymphoma, and eventually neurodevelopmental disorders in children.

When Judy Mikovits, PhD finished her presentation, the room was silent for a moment, then one of the scientists said, “Oh my God!” The resulting investigation would be like no other in science.

Host Sayer Ji will give us the down low on what happened, how this relates to scientific prejudice, and what it all means.

• Why is Judy’s new book called Plague?
• What’s a human retrovirus and how does transmission occur? What’s the amount of retrovirus found in the normal population?
• What do we know about retroviruses and chronic disease?
• How do environmental toxins add to the problem?
• Why do the CDC and NIH view Judy’s research as a threat? Is it related to author Hillary Johnson‘s foreword: A Disease Able to Affect the Economies of Nations?
• What kind of research is urgently needed? What advice would you give regarding the best way to structure and fund these studies?
• What are things we can do to protect our families?

Judy Mikovits, PhD earned her BA from University of Virginia and PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from George Washington University. In her 35 year quest to understand and treat chronic diseases, she has studied immunology, natural products chemistry, epigenetics, virology, and drug development. In 20 years, she rose from lab tech to director of the lab of Antiviral Drug Mechanisms at the National Cancer Institute before leaving to direct the Cancer Biology program at EpiGenX Pharmaceuticals in Santa Barbara, CA. She became attracted to the plight of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and autism and is primarily responsible for demonstrating the relationship between immune based inflammation and these diseases. She has published over 50 scientific papers. View the book trailer and listen to a short conversation with the authors of Plague.

Sayer Ji is a Strategic Advisor for Fearless Parent™, our business partner, and dad of two. He founded GreenMedInfo in 2008 to provide an open access, evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. It is one of the top five natural health sites in the world (Alexa ranked), internationally recognized as the largest, most widely referenced health resource of its kind, with over one million visitors a month. Sayer is on the steering committee of the Global GMO Free Coalition and an advisory board member of the National Health Federation.

http://fearlessparent.org/radio-blog-human-retrovirus-chronic-illness-scientific-prejudice-episode-59/

Myths about Homeopathy - A Series. Ep. 3

“Scientists say homeopathy is impossible”

Not all scientists believe homeopathy is impossible. Prof Luc Montagnier, who won a Nobel prize in 2008 for his role in discovering HIV, says homeopaths are right to use these high dilutions.

In an interview for Science magazine, when asked, “Do you think there’s something to homeopathy…?” he replied, “…What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.”¹

More

Science is a constantly evolving field and what the scientific establishment declares to be ‘impossible’ in one era, is often proved to be ‘fact’ in another.

To take just one famous example of medical U-turns, in 1982, when Dr Barry Marshall and Dr Robin Warren first put forward their theory that bacterial infection was an underlying cause of stomach ulclers, their idea was ridiculed.²  

Scientists said it was impossible for bacteria to survive the acidic environment in the stomach, let alone thrive there, but years later Marshall and Warren were vindicated when it was finally accepted that they were right – Helicobacter pylori infection is indeed the commonest cause of stomach ulcers.

In 2005 they were awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology. In the Nobel citation the doctors were praised for their “tenacity, and willingness to challenge prevailing dogmas”.

While scientists continue to investigate how homeopathic medicines have a biological effect, perhaps we should be more cautious about using the word ‘impossible’ when it comes to medical science.

References

Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism

doi:10.1111/j.1479-6988.2006.00041.x Int J Evid Based Healthc 2006; 4: 180–186 SCHOLARLY ARTICLE

Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism

Dave Holmes RN PhD,1 Stuart J Murray PhD,2 Amélie Perron RN PhD(cand)1 and Geneviève Rail PhD1

1Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, and 2Department of English, Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Background Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena.

Objective The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm – that of post-positivism – but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure.

Conclusion The Cochrane Group, among others, has created a hierarchy that has been endorsed by many academic institutions, and that serves to (re)produce the exclusion of certain forms of research. Because ‘regimes of truth’ such as the evidence-based movement currently enjoy a privileged status, scholars have not only a scientific duty, but also an ethical obligation to deconstruct these regimes of power.

Key words: critique, deconstruction, evidence-based, fascism, health sciences, power.

Correspondence: Associate Professor Dave Holmes, Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON, KIH OM5, Canada. Email: dholmes@uottawa.ca

Introduction

We can already hear the objections. The term fascism repre- sents an emotionally charged concept in both the political and religious arenas; it is the ugliest expression of life in the 20th century. Although it is associated with specific political

© 2006 The Authors Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

systems, this fascism of the masses, as was practised by Hitler and Mussolini, has today been replaced by a system of microfascisms – polymorphous intolerances that are revealed in more subtle ways. Consequently, although the majority of the current manifestations of fascism are less brutal, they are nevertheless more pernicious. We believe

that fascism is a concept that is not associated with any particular person or location. Therefore, we will use this term as defined by Deleuze and Guattari,1 and now used by a number of contemporary authors.

Within the healthcare disciplines, a powerful evidence- based discourse has produced a plethora of correlates, such as specialised journals and best practice guidelines. Obedi- ently following this trend, many health sciences scholars have leapt onto the bandwagon, mimicking their medical colleagues by saturating health sciences discourses with concepts informed by this evidence-based movement.2 In the words of Michel Foucault, these discourses represent an awesome, but oftentimes cryptic, political power that ‘work[s] to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it’ (p. 136).3 Unmasking the hid- den politics of evidence-based discourse is paramount, and it is this task that forms the basis of our critique.

Drawing in part on the work of the late French philoso- phers Deleuze and Guattari,1,4 the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and danger- ously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. The philosoph- ical work of Deleuze and Guattari1 proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm – that of post-positivism – but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure.

Evidence-based health sciences: definition and deconstruction

As a global term, EBHS (evidence-based health sciences) reflects clinical practice based on scientific inquiry. The premise is that if healthcare professionals perform an action, there should be evidence that the action will produce the desired outcomes. These outcomes are desirable because they are believed to be beneficial to patients.5 Evidence- based practice derives from the work of Archie Cochrane, who argued for randomised controlled trials (RCTs being the highest level of evidences) as a means of ensuring healthcare cost containment, among other reasons.6 In 1993, the Cochrane Collaboration, serving as an international research review board, was founded to provide clinicians with a resource aimed at increasing clinician–patient interaction

time by facilitating clinicians’ access to valid research.2 The Cochrane database was established to provide this resource, and it comprises a collection of articles that have been selected according to specific criteria.7 For example, one of the requirements of the Cochrane database is that accept- able research must be based on the RCT design; all other research, which constitutes 98% of the literature, is deemed scientifically imperfect.6

At first glance, EBHS seems beneficial for positive patient outcomes, which is a primary healthcare objective.8 As a consequence, it is easy for healthcare researchers and clini- cians to assume that EBHS is the method to assure that patients receive optimal care.9 While EBHS does acknowl- edge that healthcare professionals possess discrete bodies of knowledge, EBHS advocates defend its rigid approach by rationalising that the process is not self-serving because improved healthcare and increased healthcare funding will improve patient outcomes.2,7,10

Consequently, EBHS comes to be widely considered as the truth. 9 When only one method of knowledge production is promoted and validated, the implication is that health sci- ences are gradually reduced to EBHS. Indeed, the legitimacy of health sciences knowledge that is not based on specific research designs comes to be questioned, if not dismissed altogether. In the starkest terms, we are currently witnessing the health sciences engaged in a strange process of elimi- nating some ways of knowing. EBHS becomes a ‘regime of truth’, as Foucault would say – a regimented and institution- alised version of ‘truth’.

The health sciences take their lead from institutional medicine, whose authority is rarely challenged or tested probably because it alone controls the terms by which any challenge or test would proceed. Once it was adopted by medicine, the health sciences accepted RCTs as the gold standard of evidence-based knowledge. It is deeply questionable whether EBHS, as a reflection of strat- ification and segmentation, promotes the multiple ways of knowing deemed important within most health disci- plines. Moreover, we must ask whether EBHS serves a state or governmental function, where ready-made and convenient ‘goals-and-targets’ can be used to justify cuts to healthcare funding.6 We believe that health sciences ought to promote pluralism – the acceptance of multiple points of view.2 However, EBHS does not allow pluralism, unless that pluralism is engineered by the Cochrane hierarchy itself.7 Such a hegemony makes inevitable the further ‘segmentation’ of knowledge (i.e. disallowing mul- tiple epistemologies), and further marginalise many forms of knowing/knowledge. Importantly, the evidence-based

© 2006 The Authors Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse 181

182 D Holmes et al.

movement is neither ‘progressive’ nor a ‘natural’ develop- ment in health sciences: it is a trend that is engineered. As a response to this, a vigilant resistance must arise from within the health disciplines themselves, and one way of deploying such resistance is by using a tool called ‘decon- struction’.

Drawing on the work of the late French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, deconstruction is notoriously difficult to define because it is a practice, and not a fixed concept based on abstract ‘facts’ or ‘evidence’. For our purposes, we might say that it is the critical practice of exposing the foundations that underpin the apparent truth-value of a certain concept or idea, challenging the way that it appears to us as self-evidently or ‘naturally’ so. In the words of one of Derrida’s early translators, the task of deconstruction is ‘to locate and “take apart” those con- cepts which serve as axioms or rules for a period of thought’.11 More precisely, deconstruction works to dem- onstrate how concepts or ideas are contingent upon his- torical, linguistic, social and political discourses, to name but a few. We deconstruct our taken-for-granted ‘truths’ by attending to how they came to be constructed in the first place. One method is to critically analyse the sets of binary oppositions that have informed the history of West- ern thought, for example, mind versus body. While each term is implicit in the definition of the other (suggesting they are not utterly discrete), Derrida argues that within such binaries, one term is always privileged at the expense of the other. Here, we might think of mind over body (matter), but to these we might add sets of correlative terms – essentially hierarchies – such as reason over emo- tion, male over female, logic over myth or even quantita- tive measure over qualitative measure. In the name of a justice-to-come, deconstruction looks towards the future by interrogating the hierarchical power that operates at the heart of these binaries.

Thus, implicit in deconstruction is a suspicion of the essen- tialist and hierarchical nature of institutional knowledge. In a deconstructive vein, we must ask not only, ‘What consti- tutes evidence?’ but also, what is the ‘regime of truth’ (Kuhn would call this a ‘paradigm’ and Foucault an ‘épistèmé’) that dictates when or how one piece of evidence shall count as evidence, while another is denigrated or excluded alto- gether? In other words, what makes one piece of evidence so ‘self-evidently’ meaningful for us at this precise historical moment, while another appears so ‘self-evidently’ meaning- less or nonsensical? Attending to this internal logic of exclu- sion is both democratising and, arguably, it is just better science! It is not insignificant that the word ‘evidence’ con-

© 2006 The Authors Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

tains the Latin root videre, which means ‘to see’. The ety- mology of the term itself suggests a visual bias that still holds sway in the ‘enlightened’ empirical sciences today.12,13 But we might ask: what is the fate of that evidence that is invisible to us – invisible, and yet still marginally felt and attested to?

Unmapping health sciences

It is becoming increasingly evident that an unvarying, uni- form language – an ossifying discourse – is being mandated in a number of faculties of health sciences where the dom- inant paradigm of EBHS has achieved hegemony.14 This makes it difficult for scholars to express new and different ideas in an intellectual circle where normalisation and stan- dardisation are privileged in the development of knowledge. The critical individual must then resort to resistance strate- gies in front of such hegemonic discourses within which there is little freedom for expressing unconventional thoughts.

Rather than risk being alienated from their colleagues, many scientists find themselves interpellated by hegemonic discourses and come to disregard all others. Unfortunately, privileging a single discourse (evidence-based medicine (EBM)) situated within a single scientific paradigm (post- positivism) confines the researcher to a yoke of exactly reproducing the established order. To a large degree, the dominant discourse represents the ladder of success in aca- demic and research milieus where it establishes itself as a weapon used against those who praise the freedom of sci- entific inquiry and the free debate of ideas. When only one discursive formation (EBM) finds itself on the discursive ter- rain (health sciences), academics and researchers constitute a united community whose ways of speaking and thinking thwart both creativity and plurality in the name of efficiency and effectiveness.

We believe that EBM, which saturates health sciences dis- courses, constitutes an ossified language that maps the land- scape of the professional disciplines as a whole. Accordingly, we believe that a postmodernist critique of this prevailing mode of thinking is indispensable. Those who are wedded to the idea of ‘evidence’ in the health sciences maintain what is essentially a Newtonian, mechanistic world view: they tend to believe that reality is objective, which is to say that it exists, ‘out there’, absolutely independent of the human observer, and of the observer’s intentions and obser- vations. They fondly point to ‘facts’, while they are forced to dismiss ‘values’ as somehow unscientific. For them, this reality (an ensemble of facts) corresponds to an objectively

real and mechanical world. But this form of empiricism, we would argue, fetishises the object at the expense of the human subject, for whom this world has a vital significance and meaning in the first place. An evidence-based, empirical world view is dangerously reductive insofar as it negates the personal and interpersonal significance and meaning of a world that is first and foremost a relational world, and not a fixed set of objects, partes extra partes.

Of course, we do not wish to deny the material and objective existence of the world, but would suggest, rather, that our relation to the world and to others is always medi- ated, never direct or wholly transparent. Indeed, the socio- cultural forms of this mediation would play a large part in the way the world appears as full of significance. Empirical facts alone are quantities that eclipse our qualitative and vital being-in-the-world. For example, how should a woman assign meaning to the diagnosis she just received that, genetically, she has a 40% probability of developing breast cancer in her lifetime? What will this number mean in real terms, when she is asked to evaluate the meaning of such personal risk in the context of her entire life, a life whose value and duration are themselves impossible factors in the equation?15–18

From a variety of perspectives, those we label as ‘post- modern authors’ offer a robust critique of evidence-based health sciences and their objectivist world view. The French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard sees postmodernism as the end of universal or ‘meta-narratives [grands récits]’ that characterise the totalising Reason of Modernity.19 In broad strokes, postmodern authors provide a critique of the knowing subject, who is alleged to be a contextless, abstract and autonomous ego, implicitly male, white, West- ern and heterosexual. The clinician can often be considered such an institutional subject who is presumed both to know the truth of disease and to have the moral and intellectual authority to prescribe treatment. Foucault, for one, is criti- cal of this power, which he describes with the metaphor of the ‘clinical gaze’ – a panoptic kind of ‘expert seeing’ that both determines in advance what will appear, and, more ominously, what will be silently internalised by the patient, and will govern his or her own inner experience and signif- icant values. ‘That which is not on the scale of the gaze’, Foucault writes, ‘falls outside the domain of possible knowl- edge’ (p. 166).12 Thus, the authority of the clinician must be understood as a discursive power that shapes the realm of the possible and, in doing so, often ignores certain symptoms that would allow a more appropriate diagnosis. At the same time, the absolute authority of the gaze becomes the manner in which the patient will see him- or

herself. Obvious examples here are the hysterisation of the female body and the pathologisation of homosexuality within medical discourse. In the face of such phenomena being now widely regarded as social/medical constructions, we might have hoped that health sciences would become more critical of its authority and the process through which it re/produces modern binaries (e.g. normal/pathological, male/female).

A starting point for health sciences would be to promote the multiplicity of what Foucault describes as subjugated forms of knowledge (savoirs assujettis): these forms of knowl- edge are ways of understanding the world that are ‘disqual- ified as non-conceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naïve knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, [and] knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity’ (p. 7).20 These forms of knowledge arise from below, as it were, in contra- distinction to the top-down approach that characterises the hegemonic thrust of EBHS. For Foucault, a subjugated knowledge is not the same thing as ‘common sense’. Instead, it is ‘a particular knowledge, a knowledge that is local, regional, or differential’ (pp. 7–8).20

In our view, this positive process begins with a critique of EBHS and its hegemonic norms. As we have argued, accord- ing to postmodern authors, these norms institute a hidden political agenda through the very language and technolo- gies deployed in the name of ‘truth’. Again, Foucault sums up this position in his critique of modern medicine: ‘Medi- cine, as a general technique of health even more than as a service to the sick or an art of cures, assumes an increasingly important place in the administrative system and the machinery of power’ (p. 176).21 Here, in such an ‘adminis- trative system’ and a ‘machinery of power’, we find a classic allusion to what Hannah Arendt defines as totalitarianism or fascism, as we defined it earlier. For her, somewhat optimis- tically, totalitarian regimes are not the simple result of an innate evil in humankind; rather, totalitarianism is a political phenomenon that emerges from a confluence of socio-his- torical forces. She writes that 20th century totalitarianism is essentially an ideology that arose to fill a political vacuum in post-World War I Europe, when positive laws increasingly came to be replaced by terror.22

Arendt herself draws the link between totalitarian ideology and the modern sciences, and so we are justified to turn to her, among others, to find a trenchant critique of EBHS. The ‘regime of truth’ that has emerged from the EBM is an ideology that is supported by a number of contingent fac- tors – contingencies that EBHS would mistakenly classify as ‘truths’. An ideology is monolithic: those who adhere to

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Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse 183

184 D Holmes et al.

the ideology believe it ‘can explain everything and every occurence [sic] by deducing it from a single premise’ (p. 468).22 She warns that totalitarianism ‘is quite prepared to sacrifice everybody’s vital immediate interests to the exe- cution of what it assume[s] to be the law of History or the law of Nature’ (pp. 461–462).22 But, as we have remarked, History and Nature are made; these forms therefore call for an ever-renewed critique.

Fascism and the fall of thought

The ossifying discourse that supports EBM is the result of an ideology that has been promoted to the rank of an immu- table truth and is considered, in learned circles, as essential to real science. We could add here that its ossified language is a method of communicating in coded form, in stereo- typed and dogmatic phraseology – an ideological message that will not be contradicted or challenged by its authors, but will always be understood by initiates.23 In this way, in its capacity as an ossifying discourse, the term ‘evidence- based movement’ (including concepts associated with it) sustains itself with its lexicon of acceptable ideas and forms.

In his famous novel 1984, George Orwell coined the term Newspeak to describe a revised language purged from any affective tone. Newspeak, the ‘official language’ of the fic- tional Oceania, is extraordinary in that its lexicon decreases every year – ostensibly in the name of efficiency and effec- tiveness. As the character Syme puts it:

Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. . . . If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well. . . . Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘double- plusgood’ if you want something stronger still. . . . In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. (pp. 45–46)24

Newspeak may be efficient, but in the ‘destruction of words’ it also operates to radically restrict the ways in which humans are mediated with their world and with others. The totalitarian regime governing Oceania understands that complex – or pluralistic – languages would pose a threat to its security, and so the true goal of Newspeak is to take away the ability to conceptualise revolution adequately, or even to conceive of the terms by which such a resistance might emerge. According to Oceania’s state manual, available only to elite Party members and entitled ‘The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism’:

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they

© 2006 The Authors Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

are not permitted to have standards of comparison they never even become aware that they are oppressed. (p. 171)24

We argued above in terms that resonate immediately with Orwell’s totalitarian vision: The EBHS seldom question the authority of their own discourses, but deploy them unknow- ingly – they risk becoming the servo-mechanism of their own technology, unable to conceptualise the terms that would lead them to think outside this narrow world view. And indeed, why should they, when they can enjoy institu- tional promotions and accolades, public recognition and state contracts of all kinds? EBM and its related concepts are highly promoted in academic spheres, so much so that a research article free from these taken-for-granted concepts risks being labelled as scientifically unsound. Applying the work of Orwell in a critique of EBM in health sciences might surprise the reader; however, after an in-depth reading of 1984, we feel that Orwell’s vision is gradually becoming a reality. Currently, a large number of scholars in the health sciences follow their colleagues in medicine down a narrow path leading to uniformity and intolerance. There is there- fore in our opinion, the creation and advancement of a new ‘language’ that is supplanting all others, attempting to dis- credit or to eliminate them from the discursive terrain of health. This is scientific Newspeak. It is a highly normative and recalcitrant scientific language that stands in opposition to that sense of hope that sustains every freedom-loving individual.

The mastery of scientific Newspeak is, for the most part, a regurgitation of prefabricated formulas (buzz words or catch words) that is informed by a single, powerful lexicon. This new guide book of scientific vocabulary, including terms connected with EBM (e.g. systematic literature review, knowledge transfer, best practices, champions, etc.), is taken seriously in the realm of health sciences, so much so that it is considered vital as a reflection of ‘real science’. The clas- sification of scientific evidence as proposed by the Cochrane Group thus constitutes not only a powerful mechanism of exclusion for some types of knowledge, it also acts as an organising structure for knowledge and a mechanism of ideological reinforcement for the dominant scientific para- digm. In that sense, it obeys a fascist logic.

Along with Deleuze and Guattari,1 we understand such fascist logic as a desire to order, hierarchise, control, repress, direct and impose limits. Fascism is one of the many faces of totalitarianism – the total subjection of humanity to the political imperatives of systems whose concerns are of their own production.25 In light of our argument, fascism is not too strong a word because the exclusion of knowledge ensembles relies on a process that is saturated by ideology

and intolerance regarding other ways of knowing. The pro- cess at play here is one that operates hand-in-hand with powerful political or ‘power’ structures and that gears and sustains scientific assertions in the same direction: that of the dominant ideology. Unfortunately, the nature of this scientific fascism makes it attractive to all of us – the sub- jected. In Foucault’s words:

the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism. . . . And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini – which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effec- tively – but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. (p. xiii)1

Fascism does not originate solely from the outside; it is a will within us to desire, although often unwittingly, a life of domination.1 Such a ‘lovable’ fascism requires little more than the promise of success (grants, publications, awards, recognition, etc.) within its system to get us to participate wholeheartedly.25 Perhaps it is time to think about governing structures that impose their imperatives (academic, scien- tific, political, economic) on academics and researchers, and to ask ourselves what drives us to love fascist and exclusion- ary structures.

The Cochrane Group has created a hierarchy that has been endorsed by many academic institutions, and that serves to (re)produce the exclusion of certain forms of knowledge production. Because EBM, as a ‘regime of truth’, currently enjoys a privileged status, there exists a scientific and ethical obligation to deconstruct such regime. Given the privileged relation to knowledge defining the intellectual mission, intellectuals are well located to deconstruct the ‘truth’ and to ‘speak truth to power’, to use Foucault’s expression. Unfortunately, most would prefer not to hear alternative, marginalised discourses because the latter tend to expose the very power relations that create our current situation and prop up those academics/scientists with a vested interest in the status quo.26 However, we believe that one of the roles of the intellectual is to decolonise, to de- territorialise the vast field of health sciences as it is currently mapped out by the EBM.

Final remarks

Critical intellectuals should work towards the creation of a space of freedom (of thought), and as such, they constitute a concrete threat to the current scientific order in EBHS and the health sciences as a whole. It is fair to assert that the critical intellectuals are at ‘war’ with those who have no regards other than for an evidence-based logic. The war metaphor speaks to the ‘critical and theoretical revolt’ that

is needed to disrupt and resist the fascist order of scientific knowledge development.

The evidence-based enterprise invented by the Cochrane Group has captivated our thinking for too long, creating for itself an enchanting image that reaches out to researchers and scholars. However, in the name of efficiency, effective- ness and convenience, it simplistically supplants all hetero- geneous thinking with a singular and totalising ideology. The all-embracing economy of such ideology lends the Cochrane Group’s disciples a profound sense of entitlement, what they take as a universal right to control the scientific agenda. By a so-called scientific consensus, this ‘regime of truth’ ostracises those with ‘deviant’ forms of knowledge, labelling them as rebels and rejecting their work as scientif- ically unsound. This reminds us of a famous statement by President George W Bush in light of the September 11 events: ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’. In the context of the EBM, this absolutely polarising world view resonates vividly: embrace the EBHS or else be con- demned as recklessly non-scientific.

In conclusion, in The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt points to one way to combat totalitarianism. For Arendt, the opposite of totalitarianism is politics, by which she means, politics guided by free speech and a plurality of views:

speech is what makes man a political being. If we would follow the advice, so frequently urged upon us, to adjust our cultural attitudes to the present status of scientific achievement, we would in all earnest adopt a way of life in which speech is no longer meaningful. (pp. 3–4)27

When the pluralism of free speech is extinguished, speech as such is no longer meaningful; what follows is terror, a totalitarian violence. We must resist the totalitarian program – a program that collapses words and things, a program that thwarts all invention, a program that robs us of justice, of our meaningful place in the world, and of the future that is ours to forge together. Paradoxically, perhaps, an honest plurality of voices will open up a space of freedom for the radical singularity of individual and disparate knowledge(s). The endeavour is always a risk, but such a risk is part of the human condition, and it is that without which there could be no human action and no science worthy of the name.

Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live. (p. 8)27

Acknowledgements

Dave Holmes and Amélie Perron would like to thank the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – Institute of Gender and Health for funding. Stuart Murray and Geneviève Rail

© 2006 The Authors Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse 185

186 D Holmes et al. would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities

Research Council of Canada for funding.

References

1. Deleuze G, Guattari F. Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophre- nia. Preface by Michel Foucault. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.
2. Holmes D, Perron A, O’Byrne P. Necrospective: evidence, viru- lence, and the disappearance of nursing knowledge. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nurs 2006 (in press).
3. Foucault M. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House; 1978.
4. Deleuze G, Guattari F. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press, 1987.
5. Sackett D. Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2000.
6. Traynor M. The oil crisis, risk and evidence-based practice. Nurs Inq 2002; 9: 162–9.
7. Winch S, Creedy D, Chaboyer W. Governing nursing conduct: the rise of evidence-based practice. Nurs Inq 2002; 9: 156–61.
8. Barrett EAM. What is nursing science? Nurs Sci Q 2002; 15: 51–

   60.

9. Walker K. Why evidence-based practice now?: a polemic. Nurs

   Inq 2003; 10: 145–55.

10. Bonell C. Evidence-based nursing: a stereotyped view of

    quantitative and experimental research could work against professional autonomy and authority. J Adv Nurs 1999; 30: 18– 23.

11. Derrida J. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

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Foucault M. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Random House, 1973. Jay M. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth- Century French Thought. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

Holmes D, Gastaldo D. Rhizomatic thought in nursing: an alter- native path for the development of the discipline. Nurs Philos 2004; 5: 1–10. Lupton D. Risk. London: Routledge, 1999.

Robertson A. Embodying risk, embodying political rationality: women’s accounts of risk for breast cancer. Health Risk Soc 2000; 2: 219–35. Robertson A. Biotechnology, political rationality and discourses on health risk. Health 2001; 5: 293–309.

Rose N. The politics of life itself. Theor Cult Soc 2001; 18: 1– 30. Lyotard J-F. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Foucault M. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. New York: Picador, 2003.

Foucault M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Arendt H. The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1st edn. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt, 1976.

Antoine G. De la langue de bois au politiquement correct. 1997. Accessed February 2006. Available from: http://www.asmp.fr Orwell G. 1984. New York: Signet Classic, 1950. Pronger B. Body Fascism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Foucault M. Fearless Speech. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2001. Arendt H. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Priorities and methods for developing the evidence profile of homeopathy

Priorities and methods for developing the evidence profile of homeopathy Recommendations of the ECH General Assembly and XVIII Symposium of GIRI

M. Van Wassenhoven^†

^†Vice president of the GIRI, Research Coordinator of ECH.

Received: December 9, 2004; Received in revised form: December 24, 2004; Accepted: January 24, 2005;

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.homp.2005.01.001

Abstract

To achieve scientific acceptance, homeopathy must investigate several questions:

• 1.

  The activity of very highly diluted preparations. The consensus of the meeting was that there is clear evidence of this.

• 2.

  The content of very highly diluted homeopathic preparations. More research is needed but evidence exists that a specific signal is present in homeopathic preparations.

• 3.

  A theoretical framework in which the effects of homeopathic diluted preparations can be explained. The ‘Body Information Theory’ is such a theory.

• 4.

  The clinical effectiveness of homeopathy. Because they avoid the placebo effect, animal studies are a priority.

For human trials using Quality of Life questionnaires, studies on the activity, content and theoretical basis of homeopathic preparations were reviewed approximately 70% of cases; more in children showed improvement. Homeopathy reduced costs and allowed a better improvement in work-days lost compared with conventional practice. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) implicitly test the placebo hypothesis; RCTs have been performed and meta-analyses conclude that there is clear evidence of efficacy which cannot be attributed to placebo effect.

Priorities depend on the audience. More research is needed especially regarding the content of homeopathic preparations and the transmission of information. Theoretical issues are also important to avoid incorrect design of research protocols. More effort should be dedicated to veterinary research. Clinical effects analysis in humans remains important. Many other questions should be prioritised, such as the potential of homeopathy to avoid invasive procedures in children and the long-term effects of homeopathy in preventing chronic complications.

http://www.homeopathyjournal.net/article/S1475-4916%2805%2900025-1/fulltext

Studies Show Measles Vax Spreads Virus; Should the Recently Vaccinated be Quarantined to Prevent Outbreaks?

Should the Recently Vaccinated be Quarantined to Prevent Outbreaks?

Health officials are blaming unvaccinated children for the recent measles outbreak that started at Disneyland. However, with no known status for over 90% of the cases, one blood test showing the patient’s measles was actually a reaction to the MMR vaccine, and only 9 cases confirmed as wild genotype B3 measles, another likely source of the outbreak is a recently vaccinated individual, according to published science.²⁰

Scientific evidence demonstrates that individuals vaccinated with live virus vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), rotavirus, chicken pox, shingles and influenza can shed the virus for many weeks or months afterwards and infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.^{1,2 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,19}

Furthermore, vaccine recipients can carry diseases in the back of their throat and infect others while displaying no symptoms of disease.^11,12,13

“Numerous scientific studies indicate that children who receive a live virus vaccination can shed the disease and infect others for weeks or even months afterwards. Thus, parents who vaccinate their children put others at risk,” explains Leslie Manookian, documentary filmmaker and activist. Manookian’s award winning documentary, The Greater Good, aims to open a dialog about vaccine safety.

Both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals are at risk from exposure to those recently vaccinated.Vaccine failure is widespread; vaccine-induced immunity is not permanent and recent outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough, mumps and measles have occurred in fully vaccinated populations.^14,15 Flu vaccine recipients become more susceptible to future infection after repeated vaccination.^{16, 19}

“Health officials should require a two-week quarantine of all children and adults who receive vaccinations,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “This is the minimum amount of time required to prevent transmission of infectious diseases to the rest of the population, including individuals who have been previously vaccinated.”

“Vaccine failure and failure to acknowledge that live virus vaccines can spread disease have resulted in an increase in outbreaks of infectious disease in both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals,” says Manookian, “CDC should instruct physicians who administer vaccinations to inform their patients about the risks to others posed by those who’ve been recently vaccinated.”

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, the best protection against infectious disease is a healthy immune system, supported by adequate vitamin A and vitamin C. Well-nourished children easily recover from infectious disease and rarely suffer complications.

The number of measles deaths declined from 7575 in 1920 (10,000 per year in many years in the 1910s) to an average of 432 each year from 1958-1962.¹⁷ The vaccine was introduced in 1963. Between 2005 and 2014, there have been no deaths from measles in the U.S. and 108 deaths from the MMR vaccine.¹⁸

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for its 15,000 members, supports 600 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly international conference. The Foundation phone number is (202) 363-4394, www.westonaprice.org, info@westonaprice.org

References

1.        Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011  http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/27/cid.ciu105

2.        Detection of Measles Virus RNA in Urine Specimens from Vaccine Recipients http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7494055

3.        Comparison of the Safety, Vaccine Virus Shedding and Immunogenicity of Influenza Virus Vaccine, Trivalent, Types A and B, Live Cold-Adapted, Administered to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-Infected and Non-HIV Infected Adultshttp://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/181/2/725.full

4.        Sibling Transmission of Vaccine-Derived Rotavirus (RotaTeq) Associated with Rotavirus Gastroenteritishttp://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/2/e438

5.        Polio vaccination may continue after wild virus fades http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2008/10/polio-vaccination-may-continue-after-wild-virus-fades

6.        Engineering attenuated virus vaccines by controlling replication fidelity http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v14/n2/abs/nm1726.html

7.        CASE OF VACCINE-ASSOCIATED MEASLES FIVE WEEKS POST-IMMUNISATION, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA, OCTOBER 2013http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20649

8.        The Safety Profile of Varicella Vaccine: A 10-Year Review http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/197/Supplement_2/S165.full

9.        Comparison of Shedding Characteristics of Seasonal Influenza Virus (Sub)Types and Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09; Germany, 2007-2011  http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051653

10.     Epigenetics of Host-Pathogen Interactions: The Road Ahead and the Road Behind  http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003007

11.     Animal Models for Influenza Virus Pathogenesis and Transmission http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063653/

12.     Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate mode http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063653/

13.     Study Finds Parents Can Pass Whooping Cough to Babies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/health/03coug.html?_r=0

14.     Immunized People Getting Whooping Cough  http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jun/12/immunized-people-getting-whooping-cough/

15.     Vaccine Failure — Over 1000 Got Mumps in NY in Last Six Months http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/06/vaccine-failure–over-1000-get-mumps-in-ny-in-last-six-months.aspx

16.     Impact of Repeated Vaccination on Vaccine Effectiveness Against Influenza A(H3N2) and B During 8 Seasons  http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/29/cid.ciu680.full

17.     http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm

18.   http://vaccineimpact.com/2015/zero-u-s-measles-deaths-in-10-years-but-over-100-measles-vaccine-deaths-reported/

19.  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/18/flu-shot-increases-flu-illness.aspx

20.  http://www.inquisitr.com/1801210/genotype-baltimore-mmr/

- See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/studies-show-measles-vaccine-spreads-virus/#sthash.98VYXKA2.dpuf

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/studies-show-measles-vaccine-spreads-virus/

MYTHs about Homeopathy - A Series. Second episode.

“There isn’t a single good quality clinical trial showing homeopathy works”

Examples of high quality randomised controlled trials showing homeopathy works

Many people believe that all high quality randomised controlled trials (RCT) testing homeopathy have been negative. This is untrue. Below are examples of positive high quality RCTs and systematic reviews/meta-analyses testing various types of homeopathy:

• Individualised homeopathic treatment for diarrhoea in children. A meta-analysis of three placebo-controlled randomised trials by Jacobs et al. 2003 showed that homeopathic treatment reduced the duration of diarrhea (p=0.008).¹
• Individualised homeopathic treatment for ear infections (otitis media) in children ^2,3
• The homeopathic medicine Galphimia glauca for hay fever (allergic rhinitis)⁴
• The isopathic medicine Pollen 30c for hay fever⁵
• The homeopathic medicine Oscillococcinum for the treatment of influenza⁶. This study showed that Oscillococcinum was effective at treating influenza, but ineffective for preventing it.
• The complex homeopathic medicine Vertigoheel for vertigo.⁷

More research is needed to confirm the findings of these promising studies, particularly large-scale repetitions by other research teams.

To find out more about promising areas of clinical research, see ‘Homeopathy on trial – The need for targeted research’ by Tournier & Roberts, 2013.

The issue of ‘cherry picking’

An argument often heard when such studies are presented is that selecting the evidence in this way amounts to ‘cherry picking’ i.e. selecting only positive trials when negative trials also exist. This is an important issue when interpreting evidence, which is why there has been a recent focus on forcing research institutions and drug companies to disclose all trial results – both positive and negative – so that the balance of evidence can be considered in it’s entirety.

To our knowledge, there are no other repetitions of the above trials (either positive or negative), so here we are presenting the entire available evidence at this time on these treatments.

As research in homeopathy is a relatively new field and there is very limited funding to support new trials, few high quality studies have been carried out, let alone repeated – something HRI is keen to change.

As and when more studies become available testing these same homeopathic treatments further, the evidence base will be updated as these findings are either confirmed, or invalidated, by new results.

References

Why All the Anger? by Dr. Jack Wolfson Special to Health Impact News

Why All the Anger?

by Dr. Jack Wolfson Special to Health Impact News

I recently did an interview which was aired on NBC Phoenix. I was asked my opinion on vaccinations in response to the current measles outbreaks that have occurred at Disneyland in California. My reply has generated quite a bit of anger in thousands of people.

There has also been a tremendous amount of support to my comments and opinions. In short, The Society Against Injecting Our Kids With Chemicals (TSAIOKWC for short) has a lot of followers.

I want to address all this misguided anger and see if we can re-direct it where it belongs.

1. Be angry at food companies. Sugar cereals, donuts, cookies, and cupcakes lead to millions of deaths per year. At its worst, chicken pox killed 100 people per year. If those chicken pox people didn’t eat cereal and donuts, they may still be alive. Call up Nabisco and Kellogg’s and complain. Protest their products. Send THEM hate-mail.
2. Be angry at fast food restaurants. Tortured meat burgers, pesticide fries, and hormone milkshakes are the problem. The problem is not Hepatitis B which is a virus contracted by drug users and those who sleep with prostitutes. And you want to inject that vaccine into your newborn?
3. Be angry at the companies who make your toxic laundry detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. You and your children are wearing and breathing known carcinogens (they cause cancer). Call Bounce and Downy and let them know. These products kill more people than mumps, a virus which actually doesn’t cause anyone to die. Same with hepatitis A, a watery diarrhea.
4. Be angry at all the companies spewing pollution into our environment. These chemicals and heavy metals are known to cause autism, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease and every other health problem. Worldwide, these lead to 10’s of millions of deaths every year. Measles deaths are a tiny fraction compared to pollution.
5. Be angry at your parents for not breastfeeding you, co-sleeping with you, and stuffing your face with Domino’s so they can buy more Tide and finish the laundry. Breastfeeding protects your children from many infectious diseases.
6. Be angry with your doctor for being close-minded and not disclosing the ingredients in vaccines (not that they read the package insert anyway). They should tell you about the aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, aborted fetal tissue, animal proteins, polysorbate 80, antibiotics, and other chemicals in the shots. According to the Environmental Working Group, newborns contain over 200 chemicals as detected by cord blood. Maybe your doctor feels a few more chemicals injected into your child won’t be a big deal.
7. Be angry with the cable companies and TV manufacturers for making you and your children fat and lazy, not wanting to exercise or play outside. Lack of exercise kills millions more than polio. Where are all those 80 year olds crippled by polio? I can’t seem to find many.
8. In fact, be angry with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for creating computers so you can sit around all day blasted with electromagnetic radiation reading posts like this.
9. Be angry with pharmaceutical companies for allowing us to believe living the above life can be treated with drugs. Correctly prescribed drugs kill thousands of people per year. The flu kills just about no one. The vaccine never works.

Finally, be angry with yourself for not opening your eyes to the snow job and brainwashing which have taken over your mind. You NEVER asked the doctor any questions. You NEVER asked what is in the vaccines. You NEVER learned about these benign infections.

Let’s face it, you don’t really give a crap what your children eat. You don’t care about chemicals in their life. You don’t care if they sit around all day watching the TV or playing video games.

All you care about is drinking your Starbuck’s, your next plastic surgery, your next cocktail, your next affair, and your next sugar fix!

This post was created with love and with the idea of creating a better world for our children and future generations. Anger increases your risk of suffering a heart attack. Be careful.

Read this article and comment on it at VaccineImpact.com.

About the Author

Dr. Jack Wolfson is a board certified cardiologist in Phoenix. He is known as The Paleo Cardiologist and The Natural Cardiologist. Check out his website TheDrsWolfson.com and follow him on Facebook at The Drs. Wolfson

- See more at: http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/arizona-cardiologist-responds-to-critics-regarding-measles-and-vaccines/#sthash.K6OQaBya.dpuf

Gelsemium sempervirens effects in vitro: A bridge between homeopathy and molecular biology?

Gelsemium sempervirens effects in vitro: A bridge between

homeopathy and molecular biology?

Debora Olioso, Marta Marzotto, Clara Bonafini, Paolo Bellavite

Department of Pathology and Diagnostics, University of Verona

Correspondence: debora.olioso@univr.it

https://www.hri-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/HRI_ResearchArticle_26_Winter_2014.pdf

Homeopathy: meta-analyses of pooled clinical data.

Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20(5):376-81. doi: 10.1159/000355916. Epub 2013 Oct 17.

Homeopathy: meta-analyses of pooled clinical data.

Hahn RG¹.

Author information

Abstract

In the first decade of the evidence-based era, which began in the mid-1990s, meta-analyses were used to scrutinize homeopathy for evidence of beneficial effects in medical conditions. In this review, meta-analyses including pooled data from placebo-controlled clinical trials of homeopathy and the aftermath in the form of debate articles were analyzed. In 1997 Klaus Linde and co-workers identified 89 clinical trials that showed an overall odds ratio of 2.45 in favor of homeopathy over placebo. There was a trend toward smaller benefit from studies of the highest quality, but the 10 trials with the highest Jadad score still showed homeopathy had a statistically significant effect. These results challenged academics to perform alternative analyses that, to demonstrate the lack of effect, relied on extensive exclusion of studies, often to the degree that conclusions were based on only 5-10% of the material, or on virtual data. The ultimate argument against homeopathy is the 'funnel plot' published by Aijing Shang's research group in 2005. However, the funnel plot is flawed when applied to a mixture of diseases, because studies with expected strong treatments effects are, for ethical reasons, powered lower than studies with expected weak or unclear treatment effects. To conclude that homeopathy lacks clinical effect, more than 90% of the available clinical trials had to be disregarded. Alternatively, flawed statistical methods had to be applied. Future meta-analyses should focus on the use of homeopathy in specific diseases or groups of diseases instead of pooling data from all clinical trials.

© 2013 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg.

PMID:

24200828

[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

MYTHs about Homeopathy - A Series of responses.

“There is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works”

This is probably the most frequently quoted, completely inaccurate statement about homeopathy. Homeopathy research is a relatively new field, so it’s true to say that there are not a huge number of studies, but some evidence is very different from no evidence.

By the end of 2013, 188 randomised controlled trials of homeopathy on 100 different medical conditions had been published in peer-reviewed journals¹:

• 44% were positive (82 trials) – finding that homeopathy was effective
• 5% were negative (10 trials) – finding that homeopathy was ineffective
• 47% were inconclusive (89 trials)

How does this compare with evidence for conventional medicine?

An analysis of 1016 systematic reviews of RCTs of conventional medicine had strikingly similar findings²:

• 44% were positive – the treatments were likely to be beneficial
• 7% were negative – the treatments were likely to be harmful
• 49% were inconclusive – the evidence did not support either benefit or harm.

Although the percentages of positive, negative and inconclusive results are  similar in homeopathy and conventional medicine, it is important to recognise a vast difference in the quantity of research carried out; chart A represents 188 individual trials on homeopathy, whereas chart B represents 1016 reviews on conventional medicine, each analysing multiple trials.

This highlights the need for more research in homeopathy, particularly large-scale high quality repetitions of the most promising positive studies.

The difference in quantity is also not surprising when one considers the tiny amounts of funding made available for research into ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM).  For example, in the UK only 0.0085% of the total medical research 
budget is spent on CAM, of which homeopathy is only one example³.

References

https://www.hri-research.org/resources/homeopathy-the-debate/there-is-no-scientific-evidence-homeopathy-works/

http://www.somethingtosayproductions.com/

Homeopathy Safe Medicine Searching for safe medicine. Exposing dangerous drugs and vaccines.

Homeopathy Safe Medicine Searching for safe medicine. Exposing dangerous drugs and vaccines. Sunday, 28 December 2014 Use Homeopathy and stay healthy for a long time! People who use Homeopathy to keep themselves healthy, and help them recover from illness, stay healthy over the long-term. This has been the experience of many people who rely on this highly effective, and completely safe, medical therapy for over 200 years.

Now, what so many of us have believed and experienced for so long, to our benefit, has been reinforced by academic research. And Homeopathy has been found to have a long-lasting benefit.

The question the researchers asked was "How healthy are chronically ill patients after 8 years of homeopathic treatment?" and they set up a long-term observational study to discover the answer. A total of 3,709 patients were studied, and their perceived change in both complaint severity, and quality of life was analysed. The conclusion was simple, concise and extremely clear.

"Patients who seek homeopathic treatment are likely to improve considerably" and "these effects persist for as long as 8 years".

To read more about this research, see these links:

Claudia M Witt, Rainer Lüdtke, Nils Mengler, and Stefan N Willich http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630323/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298309/

So if you suffer from an illness, especially if it is a long-term illness, and despite ongoing conventional medical treatment; or if you just want to stay healthy, you no longer have to believe the 'there is no evidence' school of thought, so loved by our mainstream media!

There is plenty of evidence that Homeopathy works, safely and effectively.

And the main evidence comes from people who use it!

http://safe-medicine.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/people-who-use-homeopathy-to-keep.html

CDC's Own Data: Vaccine-Infant Death Link

The CDC's own research has found that the long denied vaccine-SIDS link is real. If you believe the official pronouncements of top governmental health agencies like the CDC and FDA, all the vaccines in the present day schedule are a priori safe and effective.

Not only are you told that they can't harm you, but that not taking them can kill you.

Parents are under even more pressure. They are told that refraining from vaccinating their infants or children will greatly increase their risk of dying or being disabled. Worse, they are increasingly labeled as 'crazy' and 'irresponsible' anti-vaccine zealots who are putting the lives of others in danger.

But what happens when the actual evidence from the scientific and clinical literature produced by these very agencies contradicts their own vaccine policies?

This is exactly what has happened with the publication of a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics titled ,"Adverse Events following Haemophilus influenzae Type b Vaccines in the Vaccine Adverse Event ReportingSystem, 1990-2013," wherein CDC and FDA researchers identify 749 deaths linked to the administration of the Hib vaccine, 51% of which were sudden infant death linked to the administration of Hib vaccine.

The CDC has boldly denied that there is any evidence supporting a causal link between vaccines and infant death, despite the fact that their own webpage on the topic acknowledges that "From 2 to 4 months old, babies begin their primary course of vaccinations. This is also the peak age for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)." Written off as coincidence, the CDC suggests that stomach sleeping is the primary modifiable risk factor.

Because SIDS is the 3rd leading cause of death in infants, and because the U.S. has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, one would think that more progress would have been made toward understanding its causes. Perhaps, as explored in this past article, the signal of harm is being ignored. Neglect and suppression of available data has recently been exposed with the confession of a top CDC vaccine scientist who was compelled to covered up data revealing an autism-MMR link in African-American boys.

In the new study, the CDC and FDA researchers themselves acknowledge "the scarcity" of postlicensure safety data on HiB vaccines in today's vaccination schedule. They evaluated reports involving the currently licensed Hib vaccines received from January 1, 1990, through December 1, 2013 available on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Presently, the CDC recommends 4 doses of the HiB vaccine at the following ages: 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 12 months through 15 months.

The HiB vaccine is described on the CDC website as "very safe" and "effective" at preventing HiB disease, which it states can be deadly. They list "most common side effects as usually mild and last 2 or 3 days," including "redness, swelling, and warmth where the child got the shot" and "fever". Nowhere is there listed death or disability as a possible side effect.

In stark contrast to these statements the study uncovered the following highly concerning results: CDC's Own Data: Vaccine-Infant Death Link

VAERS received 29,747 reports after Hib vaccines; 5179 (17%) were serious, including 896 reports of deaths. Median age was 6 months (range 0-10.22 months). Sudden infant death syndrome was the stated cause of death in 384 (51%) of 749 death reports with autopsy/death certificate records. The most common nondeath serious AE categories were neurologic (80; 37%), other noninfectious (46; 22%) (comprising mainly constitutional signs and symptoms); and gastrointestinal (39; 18%) conditions. No new safety concerns were identified after clinical review of reports of AEs that exceeded the data mining statistical threshold.

Consider also that VAERS is a passive surveillance system, which suffers from profound underreporting. According to the VAERS site's own disclaimer:

"Underreporting" is one of the main limitations of passive surveillance systems, including VAERS. The term, underreporting refers to the fact that VAERS receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events. The degree of underreporting varies widely. As an example, a great many of the millions of vaccinations administered each year by injection cause soreness, but relatively few of these episodes lead to a VAERS report.

According to Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccination Information Center, underreporting may result in overlooking 99% or higher of all vaccine associated injuries:

"Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler estimated in a 1993 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that fewer than 1 percent of all doctors report injuries and deaths following the administration of prescription drugs. This estimate may be even lower for vaccines. In one survey that our organization conducted in New York in 1994, only 1 doctor in 40 reported to VAERS."

Considering the influence of underreporting, these deaths represent only the tip of the iceberg of vaccine-induced infant morbidity and mortality caused by HiB vaccines. The study also mentioned an earlier analysis which found that infant death is the most common cause of death reported by all vaccine linked reports on VAERS, "accounting for almost one-half of all deaths reported."

Obviously, this is an appalling study. The death of even 1 child for a potentially ineffective medical intervention designed to prevent a rarely fatal illness is a tragedy. Nor can any single vaccine be proven to have prevented any single case of disease because the clinical outcome (end point) is a non-event. This is not the case, however, for vaccine side effects which can be linked directly to the vaccination event with plausible scientific mechanisms.

What is perhaps most astounding is the researcher's conclusion:

"Review of VAERS reports did not identify any new or unexpected safety concerns for Hib vaccines."

This callous disregard for the evidence -- evidence that clearly shows the CDC misrepresents the safety of the HiB vaccine -- speaks to the blind investment in vaccine policy decisions over human wellbeing. Millions of parents have listened to the CDC and FDA and believed that these vaccines not only work but are safe. Informed consent requires those undergoing a quasi-mandatory medical intervention like vaccination to know the true risks associated with it. Failing to do so is clearly a violation of this medical ethical protection against being abused, and in some cases disabled and even killed.

Sayer Ji is the founder of GreenMedInfo.com, an author, educator, Steering Committee Member of the Global GMO Free Coalition (GGFC), and an advisory board member of the National Health Federation.

He founded Greenmedinfo.com in 2008 in order to provide the world an open access, evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. It is widely recognized as the most widely referenced health resource of its kind.

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