Millions of people worldwide swear by such therapies as acupuncture, herbal cures, and homeopathic remedies. Indeed, complementary and alternative medicine is embraced by a broad spectrum of society, from ordinary people, to scientists and physicians, to celebrities such as Prince Charles and Oprah Winfrey.
In the tradition of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things and Robert Parks's Voodoo Science, Barker Bausell provides an engaging look at the scientific evidence for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and at the logical, psychological, and physiological pitfalls that lead otherwise intelligent people--including researchers, physicians, and therapists--to endorse these cures.
The book's ultimate goal is to reveal not whether these therapies work--as Bausell explains, most do work, although weakly and temporarily--but whether they work for the reasons their proponents believe. Indeed, as Bausell reveals, it is the placebo effect that accounts for most of the positive results.
He explores this remarkable phenomenon--the biological and chemical evidence for the placebo effect, how it works in the body, and why research on any therapy that does not factor in the placebo effect will inevitably produce false results. By contrast, as Bausell shows in an impressive survey of research from high-quality scientific journals and systematic reviews, studies employing credible placebo controls do not indicate positive effects for CAM therapies over and above those attributable to random chance.
Here is not only an entertaining critique of the strangely zealous world of CAM belief and practice, but it also a first-rate introduction to how to correctly interpret scientific research of any sort. Readers will come away with a solid understanding of good vs. bad research practice and a healthy skepticism of claims about the latest miracle cure, be it St. John's Wort for depression or acupuncture for chronic pain.
Kitchener, Ontario - November 1998 Bob Barefoot came to town. His job was to convince a room full of Mennonites that he had the cure for cancer, AIDS, MS, and arthritis. He held it in his hand, it's simple, neat and painless, and it's safe for the environment, and apparently the prying eyes of Health Canada. After all, it's natural, and it's called Coral Calcium. Two years later and he is still flogs this stuff to Canadians, and our government doesn't care.
Have you been scammed out of your hard earned money?
Is this Dr. Carl J. Reich - or your local distributor of Coral Calcium?
Smart chicks of Okinawa - a tale of broken yolks, empty promises and
health robbery
Views from behind the golden haze
Terry Polevoy
Kitchener, Ontario the town formerly called
Berlin, brings the world Oktoberfest each Autumn. It sits in the middle
of Waterloo County, surrounded by picturesque Mennonite farms and an enthusiastic
population of quacks and alternative practitioners. Some of those people
are Mennonites themselves, while others prey on their sensitivity in favour
of home-grown cures and remedies.
The academic and medical community have remained silent during the years
that I have lived in town about the quacks, including some of their own.
Since last summer, the local newspaper, taken over by SUN media out of
Toronto, has placed quacks on a pedestal, with large feature articles on
iridology, wholisitic medicine, and has basically ignored the scientific
basis of medicine in their pages, if they challenged those who would defraud
the public.
A German marketplace selling snake-oil to the masses
On November 30, 1998 I learned that snake-oil
salesman and author Robert Barefoot was coming to the Kitchener Public
Library to give a noon time talk about Coral Calcium. I had
followed this scam, and others like it for months, but had never had the
chance to see one of their ace pitchmen up close. Barefoot is basically a scam artist who happens to work for HTN
(Health Technologies Network) out of the U.S. I was eager to absorb all
of his rants with an open mind.
I had listened eagerly the day before when CFRB, Canada's largest market
AM news-radio and talk station, broadcast a rather abbreviated interview
with him. I couldn't believe the outrageous claims he made
for his products and for the work of a Canadian born doctor, Carl J. Reich,
the co-author of the book called "The Calcium Factor".
As soon as he mentioned Reich's name, my ears perked up because I seemed
to remember a story about him and his quack cures. Reich had actually lost
his license about 15 years ago in Alberta and in California for quackery.
It seems that he claimed that his treatments would cure AIDS and other
diseases. It was as simple as the litmus test, the paper to measure the
pH of the saliva indicated to Reich whether or not a patient had an underlying
condition. It's sort of like the old VW's back in the 50s where you had
to take a yardstick and put it in the gas tank to see if you were running
on fumes. Reich, obviously trained in modern medicine in Canada and Germany,
failed to prove his theory when he was alive. The blood's pH, or acidity/alkalinity
system could be the sum total of all the conditions of man, that he Reich
could diagnose and successfully treat with his methods. If his aim, living
in an alkaline environment, were indeed true, we would probably all be
sinking back into the perverbial slime, although according to his crooked
theories, we would be free of mold and cancer. How would his successors
carry on with his madness? They would have to come up with, not a magic
bullet, but with a magic potion. It's not difficult to imagine that a simple
answer to all the world's health problems would make desperate and simple
minded people jump through hoops into his office for 30 years, especially
those who have little or no faith in organized medicine, or no basic knowledge
of science.
I bought about $42 worth of books and plunked
down $5.00 as a guest and sat down to listen to whatever Mr. Barefoot would
have to offer. Were these Mennonites aware of what they were getting into,
or were they actually behind the move to bring Mr. Barefoot to Kitchener
in the first place?
Mr. Barefoot, introduced as the "King of Calcium", started
the ball rolling with a joke about Mormons and lawyers, not exactly my
two most favourite subjects. I dare say that he didn't get much laugh from
the folks in the audience until he told the lawyer's joke. He then began
a story about his relationship with Dr. Carl J. Reich, his mentor. It seems
that this maverick doctor, born and trained in Canada, became famous for
his theories he developed after he did some work with Otto Warburg, a German
doctor won two Nobel Prizes.
He then enlightened the audience with lie after lie about twin studies,
calcium, vitamin-D and how other doctors have cured patients of terminal
cancer with pancreas injections into cancer masses the size of cantelopes.
Then picture this, a huge dark slice of putrid carcinoma dying in the beaker
bathed in alkaline solution, and yet nothing happens when it is plunked
in acid. Wow, what a picture!
The original German quack doctor sort of resembles Abe Lincoln in his
top hat
showing that the cancer rates had gone from 20% in 1952 to 38% in 1998.
He failed to mention that of course medical science had conquered polio,
measles, smallpox, and a host of other diseases.
But the audience was unmoved. Instead they were treated to Mr. Barefoot's
repeated contentions that "doctors" were the "generals"
who have lost the war and that we continue to kill people with our losing
war on disease. If only they had followed Dr. Reich's insane revelations
that all you had to do was to check the pH of the patient's saliva, feed
him calcium salts and presto-chango - all disease will be prevented. And,
all good companies, of course will sell out of their coral calcium products.
I am not an epidemiologist, but I have studied sociology, marketing,
and mass movements that are driven by false prophets. I guess that Dr.
Reich must be smiling from his grave at the sight of Mr. Barefoot's staunch
support for his quack ideas.
Then comes the really interesting stuff about the Hopi Indians who "have
no cancer", the Eskimos who had "no disease" until white
man came and fed them Coke and Pizza, the Hunzas who eat a dozen eggs a
day, the Georgians who bathe themselves in yoghurt, and the natives who
lived in Bolivia at high altitude who drink glacial milk laden with calcium
and other goodies. They lived of course without disease and made it into
the world's record books with their centenarians who lived until age 150.
The fact that there are no birth records for these folks didn't stop Bob
from spreading these lies.
Then he started in with the main theme of the day, the Okinawan miracle
of miracles, there are 3 million people who live on this island and
there is no cancer. Hey folks, it's the Shangri-la archipelago.
Over the next twenty minutes or so, Barefoot covered all the mistakes
that doctors made in treating hypertension and high cholesterol. Granted
though his degree was in a basic chemistry and he never went to medical
school, or took a course in epidemiology, he must have done his homework.
He held up article after article on vindicated doctors who had been targeted
as being unscientific, as if Dr. Reich's ideas would be resurrected and
all of us would be reaching for the alka-seltzer or calcium carbonate fizzies
to cure our Alzheimers.
According to Barefoot there are 155 diseases caused by low calcium
levels in the body. Why if a baby had to go off milk, they would have
to eat 22 lbs. of spinach, or 15 lbs. of broccoli to make up the difference.
"We need another source", he exclaimed.
We could drink milk, it can lower heart disease by 1000% he says. We
could do the same for breast cancer. Did you know that according to this
HTN guru that "vegetarians die 9 years earlier than meat eaters."
What happened to all those Seventh Day Adventist studies from Loma Linda
that said just the opposite?
Did you know that people don't get cancer if they spend time in the
sun? Wow, I wish they would have told that to Claudia, my partner who
died of melanoma in 1993.
In a room full of men and women of the
Mennonite faith, Mr. Barefoot stood there and said that for Christmas each
and every one of those in the room should go out to the department store
and buy their loved one the skimpiest bikini and send them out to get some
rays. To say the least, I stood up and reminded him about the epidemic
of melanoma up here. (He comes from Arizona, where no one goes out in the
sun because it's too damn hot anyway).
Finally, the reason we all came, the story about the Coral Calcium from
Okinawa.There were signs everywhere, books on the table two feet high,
newspapers with pictures of chiropractors, satisfied customers, and testimonies
from all.
Dr. Allen Dubner's story about a female patient of his who had tried
every modality known to mankind to treat a swollen knee that had swollen
to "twice its normal size", and was in a wheelchair. She was
finally given one glass of the "coral calcium" and "within
40 minutes she felt energy, strength, and stability she hadn't felt in
months. She was able to stand up and take several steps with much less
pain" Within 24 hours her atrophied leg was recovering its muscle
mass.
Eugene Jolliff balanced his diabetes
Wanda Clark who cured her psoriasis
Why are the Japanese who live on Okinawa so healthy? According
to HTN's front-man Barefoot, it's because the coral reef is disintegrating,
and there is coral sand everywhere, even in the air. All they have to do
is "breathe it in". He says that the average Okinawan ingests
12,000 mg. of calcium a day. "There are no doctors, no disease, and
they live to 149," he rants.
Why, 540 years ago chickens that lived near the ocean waves, and obviously
must have inhaled the calcium-laden air, gave the best eggs. The people
ate the eggs. For two hundred years the coral calcium was hauled off to
Europe, principally Scandinavia, where they soaked up the stuff. I guess
they don't have oysters, or clams, or limestone or maybe even intelligent
chickens up there.
He then answered some questions, none of them from any of the Mennonites
in the audience, who were either snoring, or praying that either something
from heaven should fall through the roof and strike this man down, or that
the person who brought them there should suffer a fate worse than death.
It was hard to read the stoical crowd.
I think that there were a few people in the audience who were sent there
by a local newspaper or two, I don't know. I had to leave to go back to
my medical office and destroy more zits for fun and profit. I just don't
get it. Perhaps I should have bought some of the Coral Calcium and a spray
gun for Christmas.
Alternative medicine does not support coral calcium
Andrew Weil, M.D. - Coral calcium is an aggressively promoted – and pricey – product that supposedly provides incredible health benefits. I do not recommend coral calcium. I have seen no scientific research supporting any of the health claims made for it. Furthermore, these products may be contaminated with harmful heavy metals. I certainly wouldn’t rely on coral calcium to treat cancer, diabetes or any other disease.
Michael T Murray, ND - I have been angered by the shameless marketing of bogus products with unsubstantiated, absolutely ridiculous claims. The latest in this growing list of shame is “coral calcium.”
Bill Sardi - a huckster in his own right - Robert Barefoot, the popular "scientist" advocate for coral calcium and author of a book on the topic, claims there are 200 degenerative diseases caused by calcium deficiency. If this were so, the Masai tribesmen of Africa who consume large amounts of calcium would be free of these diseases. They are not.
It is interesting that the book THE OKINAWA FACTOR (2001), written by Drs. Bradley and Craig Wilcox and Dr. Makoto Suzuki, notes that women on Okinawa who live to be 100 years of age only consume about 400 to 625 milligrams of calcium per day
The Truth About
Okinawan Drinking Water
Subject: Calcium from Okinawa
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999
From: Ozz <ozz@usa.net>
I read with interest your letter
to Okinawa Times. I lived in Okinawa for 13 years and can tell you
that Okinawans do not mine coral reefs for calcium. Their major
source of calcium is fish.
The well water which
is probably high in mineral deposits as Okinawa is primarily a limestone
island, is undrinkable due to pollution.
Before 1960 or so a large percentage
of the rural population obtained its drinking water from wells, springs
or streams, and I imagine there was a higher content of minerals in the
water. Okinawa has the distinction of the highest ratio seniors over the
age of 100 in comparison to the general population of any prefecture in
Japan. I don't think there are any quite a 150 years old, but Okinawa has
boasted the oldest people in the world for some time. The Okinawans who
live that long all share several things in common:
1. High fiber, low fat diet. Lots
of rice, "yama-imo" mountain potato, other root vegetables, "miso"
made from soy beans and barley and other grain. The primary meat intake
was fish. Pork and goat meat were considered delicacies and only consumed
on special occassions.
2. Exercise. Rural Okinawans worked
hard for a living. Cultivation was by hand. They did not have many work
animals. Fishermen swam and dove without benefit of equipment. Women had
to haul water etc. etc. If they went anywhere they walked.
3. Attitude. Okinawans have the
attitude that, generally speaking, close enough is good enough, if it doesn't
get done today there is always tomorrow. They are very friendly and magnanomous,
rarely getting upset, and go with the flow. I have visited 7 or 8 countries
and Okinawans are the most easy-going I have encountered, by a long shot.
These are just general observations
that I have made while living there. Japan has one of the lowest cancer
rates for a first world country, but with the change in diet, lots of McDonalds,
etc. that the younger generation is accustomed to the cancer rate has been
going up. Japanese women who relocate to the US and change diets, breast
cancer rates are the same as for US women within a couple of decades. Women
who remain in Japan and keep a traditional diet, have a much lower breast
cancer rate.
Anyway I digress. Bottom line, the
folks who are selling this calcium from the coral reefs are full of it.
That source of calcium is no different
from any other source and will not make you live longer. If you want to
live longer, move to rural Okinawa, change your attitude and diet and hope
for the best.
Hope I answered your question and
didn't ramble too much.
Ozz
Odd balls, goof balls, and calcium balls - it's
all just shattered dreams
The Wolfe Clinic used to be in- Nova Scotia
The
Wolfe Clinic - Ontario, then Nova Scotia, and finally Quebec homepage - Self proclaimed doctor of acupuncture
Darrell Wolfe, the publisher of "Reclaim your inner terrain",
holds down the front lines in his search for invisible parasites and an
unbalanced pH. He wants you to believe that because the brown spots on
a banana indicate mold, that you should go out and buy Coral Calcium and
a few dozen other potions.
Here are a few comments from his tape and his
pamphlet
Our health system is structured for the benefits
of the few, not the many
...germs do not cause disease
pH balancing is the greatest weapon for the health
of mankind
There is only one sickness, one disease, and
one cause
Life and death are in the blood
How are you inner streams?
Cancer is a four letter word and that word is
acid
...anything acidic is lacking in oxygen
Auto Warburg received the Nobel prize for proving
that a lack of oxygen causes cancer and with further studies with Dr. Reich,
they proved that it was actually a lack of nutritional calcium. (He
can't even spell Otto right, so why should we trust his scientific
knowledge?
...if you've got the right philosophy and you've
got the right products then you are going to get results
Once you start taking disease and putting them
into a hundred different slots, that's when all of the confusion begins
Look, if you don't want to take supplement, you
haven't got a chance
When we're stressed, we release hormones. Their
adrenals are dumping out hormones and....this causes acidosis, it cuts
down their oxygen supply to the brain and nervous system, eating up calcium.
(I thought most of the calcium was either
in the bones or bound to protein?)
The ultimate cancer cure site - This site may be dead. The Stop Cancer Web site. Lots of goodies here. While you visit this convention, don't get too close to your CRT, it may suck you in and then spit you out with your molecules rearranged. Really, honest, cross my heart and hope to god that she strikes me down if I'm not telling the truth.
Dr. Don Nakatsuchi - Texas
optometrist and MLM guru
CoralTM
- yes folks someone actually trademarked the name Coral. Coral
grains are grains of the skeletal structure of reef-building coral that
has become defunct. Moreover, the method by which they are obtained does
not destroy living coral reefs or in any way damage the environment.
More MLM companies that sell
or promote Coral Calcium products that some claim will change the pH of
your blood, prolong life, and may prevent cancer - all while trying to
make you think you can get rich quick
Transcript of Barefoot interview by Lee Davis - Pick a disease. You can cure it. I've seen diabetics off insulin in a few months. I've seen recently in Denver a woman who had MS and she was in a wheelchair for 27 years. Three months ago she started on Coral Calcium and all the other nutrients and she now runs nine miles a day. Now, you want to see miracles, just stick around the Coral Calcium and you'll be hearing about hundreds of them.
The
Millenium Team - We find that there are two types of people in the
world, doers and watchers. If you are a doer, are interested in health,
wealth, and time freedom, then go to The Millennium Team page
Prevention
and management of osteoporosis: Consensus statements from the Scientific
Advisory Board of the Osteoporosis Society of Canada - Calcium nutrition
and osteoporosis
Tim M. Murray, MD, FRCPC Canadian Medical
Association Journal 1996; 155 (suppl): 935-939
SALIVA
AS AN ANALYTICAL TOOL IN TOXICOLOGY- What can you see from analyzing
saliva? It appears that Dr. Carl J. Reich never lived long enough to know
that saliva is a crystal ball into all sorts of useful diagnostic areas
of medicine. But, checking the pH of it is never mentioned at all in this
over 100k file from the Utrecht Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
in Holland.
Pharma
Nord Research links on Calcium - pay attention to the absorption and
cancer studies. It may take a while to download as some of the files are
over 130k, but it will be worth it. I think that Mr. Barefoot's contention
that we should all pig out on bacon, butter, eggs and milk products is
not the best idea. Cancer rates in vegetarians if far lower than meat eaters.
Calculate
your calcium needs - Smith Kline Beecham - Use the "Calcium
Calculator" to estimate your current daily calcium intake,and learn
about sources of calcium to help you achieve your recommended daily intake.
(Hey, I entered the word "coral"
into the database and it didn't register....how strange, eh?)
Quack science and scientists
often associated with Carl Reich, or his successors
Oxylist
Re: theory of cancer cause- links
about Otto
Warburg and Carl Reich. Only one of them won fought for the Kaiser,
worked in Nazi Germany, and won two Nobel Prizes. What exactly Dr. Reich
did is not very clear, even from their own publications.
Dr.
Otto Warburg:From the book The Warburgs: The
Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family, by Ron
Chernow. New York: Random House, 1993.
Warburg was a doctor and winner of 2 Nobel prizes.
The first was in 1931 for physiology and medicine. In spite of his Jewish
ancestry and outspoken hostility to the Hitler regime, he was permitted
to continue his work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Because
of his Jewish ancestry, in 1941 he briefly lost his post at the Institute,
"but a few weeks later received a personal order from Hitler's Chancellery
to resume work on his cancer research." Otto Warburg's decision to
collaborate with the regime, writes Chernow, "incensed colleagues
outside Germany." The scientist "justified his decision to stay
in Nazi Germany by claiming that he was performing extremely important
cancer research that would save lives and that he couldn't transfer his
research operation abroad."
Ripples
From O.C. Healer's Case Spreading - the amazing world of Salvatore
Anthony D'Onofrio According to D'Onofrio, inserting ozone through tubes
in the vagina is a powerful, immediate way to activate the immune system.
Sound almost as crazy as Dr. Carl Reich's theories, but much more kinky.
In the past few years there has been a massive
marketing blitz concerning minerals. This blitz has been both good and
bad. On a positive note, it has served to help educate people concerning
their need for minerals. But, at the same time, these same people have
become extremely confused about what form of mineral to take. (In
other words, "Can you have your rocks and eat it, too?")
Mendocino
Water - California - testimonials from one medical doctor says:
"The form of calcium in Mendocino Sparkling
Mineral Water (calcium carbonate) is more readily absorbed by the intestine
than is calcium phosphate (as in milk) or calcium oxalate (as in green,
leafy vegetables)."
Professor Floyd C. Rector, M.D., Chairman University
of California Medical Center, San Francisco
Reef sites
Mother
Jones on the destruction of the coral reefs - Coral mining: People
excavate coral reefs for their limestone and sand, for use in building
materials, resort hotel beaches, tourist souvenirs, even snake-oil medicines:
A Swedish company, Ericssons Preventive Medical Group, claims its Alka-Mine
Coral Calcium will "naturally detox the body by neutralizing the acidity
with which we are all...too apt to pollute our systems." Sweden, of
course, has no coral reefs; the product's mineral-rich coral sand is mined
off Okinawa.
Coral
Calcium scams destroy Okinawan reefs - "The Secret to Longer
Life Now Revealed!" so says the latest bogus health claim. This industry
is mining coral off of Okinawa to sell as a mineral supplement to cure
all kinds of ailments, from arthritis to cancer. Of course, there is no
scientific or medical evidence to substantiate their claims the mining
destroys the reef ecosystem. Drinking Perrier water is a safer bet for
those seeking minerals.
Reef
Relief links - lots of great links about coral reefs around the
world
Alarming
Decline of Coral Reefs Worldwide - by Emil Venere - Whatever the
causes, the potential ecological and economic consequences are ominous.
Theories blame pollution, oil spills and sedimentation caused by construction
and waste discharge."
CORAL
REEFS IN OKINAWA, JAPAN - Kiyoshi Yamazato Meio University Okinawa,
Japan - Coral reefs in the islands of Okinawa were devastated by Acanthaster
planci, the coral eating crown-of-thorns starfish during the period 1974
to 1977. Since then, corals have recovered in some areas, but they are
now under attack by Acanthaster once again. As a consequence, coral
coverage remains at low levels. (So
why are they mining it?)
Yoshimine
Zenji: A Life Dedicated to the Reefs - By
Maggie Suzuki - The movement spearheaded by Yoshimine-san to review public
works in Okinawa, most specifically agricultural improvement projects which
are causing coral-killing soil erosion, has made little progress against
the massive inertia of established practice. Agricultural improvement projects
in Okinawa were causing problems due to red silt runoff pollution, but
the Ministry has never, even up to the present, acknowledged the existence
of the red silt runoff problem or their responsibility in causing it.(What
is in the silt runoff, and are the coral calcium products derived from
those very areas?)
Government links about health
claims for food - give them time and they may stumble across the skeletons
left by coral calcium scams
The multi-level marketing and pyramid selling
provisions of the Competition Act set out the responsibilities for operators
and participants in these types of plans. The Act also explains the differences
between multi-level marketing and a pyramid selling scheme. Multi-level
marketing, if it operates within the limits set by the Competition Act,
is a legal business activity, while a pyramid selling scheme is illegal
as defined by the law.
FTC Complaints Form:
- Send your complaints from anywhere in the world if they involve U.S.
or Canadian based companies who operate to defraud the public.
Better
Business Bureau - Hampton Roads, Virginia - HTN is not a member
of the BBB. Send them a complaint. If it isn't working send them e-mail.
Send
us e-mail if you want to send us specific complaints, or if you have
a story to tell about HTN or any other coral calcium scam.
Healthwatcher.net
938 King St. West
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
N2G 1G4
519-725-4953 Fax only
If you have a story to tell about a quack doctor or therapist in your area, please let us know. If there's a product you see advertised to help you be "more healthy", or perhaps a cure for cancer, send it to us immediately. The government will, as usual, just sit on it and do nothing for months.
Fax your news clippings to 519-725-4953
E-mail to: Healthwatcher
