I feel a bit bad this week.
You see, since Tuesday I've been pretty much wallowing in some of the most outrageous woo, antiscience, and abuses of logic and reason I've ever come across, courtesy of the merry band of clueless antivaccinationists over at Age of Autism. I had thought that I should try to do a serious science post for today. But I got back from work too late, and those sorts of posts are a lot more work than the usual run-of-the-mill post. There's all that reading, analysis, and sometimes looking up of references. True, they're intellectually satisfying, but I can't do them every day. Still, I do like to try to get at least one done a week, and this week I clearly failed. Besides, exposing myself to the malignant stupidity of AoA threatened even Orac's logic circuits.
Then what to my wondering (and shocked) eyes should reappear but "Dr." Robert O. Young once again. We've met him before in the context of his cancer quackery, in which he proclaims that cancer is not a disease, but a manifestation of too much acid, even going so far as to describe cancer as an "acid" liquid.
Apparently bacteria and viruses are the same thing:
The purpose of this email is to open your mind to the illusion of the germ theory that imprisons many us and to study the history of how this illusion was created.One must challenge everything in the modern construct of
immunology and what is said to be the immune system. The basis of modern immunology is founded on Louis Pasteur, the fraud, impostor, deceiver and self promoter. There is a serious problem to where every word and part of the anatomy must be questioned to find their use and function because of the fraud of Louis Pasteur.
Great. Germ theory denialism. Even after having delved into the depths of utter woo that I've subjected myself to, it still astounds me that in the year 2008 there are still people who apparently seriously believe that bacteria and viruses do not cause disease. To believe such a thing requires an ignorance of science on such a monumental scale that it forms a black hole of antiscience that sucks the science out of whatever it touches. I mean, when was the last time the germ theory of disease actually controversial? The Victorian era? Yet here's this Robert O. Young, "Ph.D., D.Sc." spouting the most amazing nonsense. Of course, to him "everything" must be challenged. I agree. Scientists challenge every precept of every theory every day. But they do it based on experiments that give results inconsistent with current theory. Then they try to construct hypotheses consistent with the new results and then test their predictions. Of course, to overturn a scientific theory as well-supported as germ theory requires a mass of evidence even greater than the current mass of evidence that supports germ theory. So where is that evidence refuting germ theory?
Nowhere to be found, but Young knows how to weave a hilarious story:
For example, the word influenza means influence. Originally, influenza was said to come from the stars or heavens. The Avian Influenza is an influenza of a bird influence. More specifically, it is an influence of bird waste. The bird consumption industry in Southeast Asia is overcrowded to the point that the chickens are consuming their own waste, producing an over-acidification of the birds and workers that must work in the acidic air and waste.
It could be more accurately called Acidic Bird or Chicken Excrement Influenza that is only contagious to those consuming acidic birds, like chicken or breathing chemically altered air from chicken excrement. Because chickens do not have a urinary tract system, like humans and animals they are more likely to absorb their own acidic urine into their tissues. I guess you could say that's what makes chicken flesh or turkey flesh taste so juicy and why chicken or turkey flesh should never be consumed by humans!
That's right. Because "influenza" means "influence" and because flu was origianlly believed to come from the heavens leads Young to the idea that bird flu is caused by overacidification of the chickens from consuming their own waste. However, the most hilarious part of that is Young's "reasoning" that chickens don't have a urinary system. They actually do have a urinary system; they just lack a urinary bladder, so that the uric acid is excreted into the cloaca and excreted with the feces. In any case, he thinks that this means that chicken or turkey flesh should never be consumed by humans.
Truly, the failure of reason and science is a sad thing to behold. But it gets even worse:
Here is a second example of Pasteurian scientific dogma. The word virus is originally Latin meaning poison, as in snake venom, (being too acidic). When a serious snake bite releases venom or acid into the skin and soft tissues, the small sweat vessels become so enlarged that red corpuscles can flow into the tiny seat glands, showing red skin patterns and allowing the venom or acids to escape through the skin. Acidity dissolves and enlarges blood vessels for the movement of acidic fluids or gases. Alkalinity constricts and normalizes the blood vessels.
The point being that viruses are molecular liquids or gases (venom) that can be created by chemical imbalances in humans, plants and animals (by malnutrition or toxic acidic food and/or drink consumption), also created in humans, plants and animal glands, sometimes used in defense (snake venom) or emergency (overactive adrenals), also can be crystallized in laboratories, rarely, if ever crystallized in vivo, and foolish to call viruses contagious when viruses are nothing more than acidic liquids or gases from biological transformation or rotting matter.
I love the way Young somehow bases his "rationale" for his arguments on the etymology of words and then goes right off the deep end with it. Unfortunately, he not only went of the deep end, but he went off the deep end of comprehensibility, too. He also demonstrates just how ridiculous pseudoscientists can be when they rely on analogies instead of the scientific method for their "truth." The passage above also demonstrates how quacks also tend to fixate on an idea and then attribute all disease to it. For example, there's Hulda Clark, who thinks that all disease, especially cancer and HIV, is due to a liver fluke. Her cure for all disease then boils down to killing the nonexistent fluke using a quack device known as a Zapper. And here we have "Dr." Young who attributes all disease to an "imbalance" of acid-base. Consequently, to him the answer is always to alkalinize, even though his methods of measuring the acid-base balance are not based on any physiology or science--just like his concept of what causes disease, even to the point of saying something as ridiculous as this;
If bacteria, yeast, fungus or mold are transferred into another individual it must be made in a balanced liquid medium to support that fragile microbe or insignificant entity in order to survive. The main point here is that bacteria, yeast, fungus or mold do not cause sickness and disease (including cancer) as theorized by Pasteur and most recently suggested by Dr. Simoncini, an oncologist from Rome, Italy --- sickness and disease (including cancer and HIV) is a result of excess acidity or antigens that have not been properly buffered by antibodies or bases such as sodium bicarbonate. These fragile microforms or microbes are the expression of cellular transformation from once healthy human, plant or animal cells due to an over acidic environment. Sickness and disease can only be caused by an over acidification (abundance of antigens) of the fluids of the body due to our own personal lifestyle and dietary choices.
Oh, no! Not Dr. Simonici again! You remember him, don't you? He's the guy who thinks that cancer is a fungus. I guess birds of a feather quack together. Dr. Young also doesn't seem to realize that a lot of bacteria, fungus, and mold are actually pretty darned hardy. They grow under some pretty harsh conditions; culture medium is just a way to make sure they grow well. They are not "insignificant entities." But what's most despicable about this woo is that it blames the patient for any illness he or she has.:
As you contemplate the cause of the flu, cold or any so-called infection, may I suggest that each of us take personal responsibility for the consequences of our choices, rather than blame a phantom Avian Influenza virus, cold virus, flu virus, cancer virus or some non-existent HIV virus. If you get sick, it is your own fault and not the cause of some phantom virus that you can blame to cover your own lifestyle and dietary transgressions.
In other words, if you get sick it's your fault, and if you don't get better it's also your fault for not heeding Young's advice and "alkalinizing." If there's anything I find so despicable about so much of "alternative" medicine, it's how much of it blames the patient in the name of "empowering" the patient. This goes far beyond science-based assertions that drinking too much will cause illness like liver cirrhosis or that smoking will cause lung cancer. In Young's world, even infectious disease is the patient's fault for living the "wrong" lifestyle. Well I have news for Young and quacks like him: Lots of people get cancer through no fault of their own. Lots of people develop heart disease because of an unlucky genetic background that predisposes them to it. Lots of people catch various contagious diseases through no fault of their own, many of them children. Indeed, infectious diarrhea kills hundreds of thousands of babies a year in developing worlds. Right here, before the vaccine was developed, measles, pertussis, and a number of other childhood illnesses ravaged our population, and polio paralyzed thousands. In Young's world, it was their fault for not "alkalinizing" enough, not the result of microbes tuned up through millions of years of evolution to infect human hosts.
In the end, I still can't fathom how, given the more than a century's worth of evidence from many different lines of investigation supporting it, anyone can deny germ theory. It strikes me as nothing more than a form of wishful thinking where, if you just wish hard enough, you can stay healthy because wishing makes those nasty microbes unreal.
A pretty good effort, but he loses points for failing to mention Pasteur's alleged deathbed recantation.
Ack! You're right!
How could I have forgotten to mention Pasteur's alleged deathbed recantation and take points off for it?
As a mitigating factor, it was after midnight when I finished the above post. :-)
Yet another HIV and germ denier - that's all we need!
I see that his current offering is a response to an email he recieved from a guy with HIV called Felix from London, who feels that he does not have HIV.
The story itself seems full of holes as it is related by the patient (but I guess it's easy for someone to misunderstand and easier still for doctors to unintentionally mislead)
It appears a chap called Felix was admitted to Guy's hospital in August last year with weight loss and renal failure. He was diagnosed as having HIV, had dialysis and was succesfully established on HIV meds, which worked well (Viral load undetectable). But he still seemed to be in a degree of denial, feeling like he couldn't have HIV.
Then Felix opened an email from "Dr" Young, visited his web site, and this is the result:
then....
Yup... Thanks "Dr" Robert O Young...., You might boast about this on your blog as though you are this man's saviour, but the reality is you've as good as killed him. Unless he comes to his senses when he becomes ill again, and is not too late for his doctors to salvage something out of the wreckage you have provoked.
What a putrid bit of slime this guy is.
I got chills down my spine from Felix's mention of his libido coming back - particularly since it seems unlikely that somebody who doesn't believe they have HIV, or that HIV even caused his symptoms, will be responsible enough to use condoms! I hope his wife has a better head on her shoulders (though if she does, she probably ought to divorce the idiot) and insists on it. Otherwise, "Dr" Young will likely have at least one new HIV infection for which he is directly responsible.
(I'm assuming that she doesn't already have it, incidentally. It seems likely it would have been mentioned in the email if she did.)
The scary thing is if his wife believes he is cured and has unprotected sex with him. Then the deaths of TWO people may lay on the head of one Dr. Young.
Orac, you're slipping. Chalk it up to lack of sleep, or power-down time, or scheduled maintenance.
You clean missed the truly remarkable aspect to this: one woo-master saying unkind things about another woo-master! This may not be a first, but it's an incredibly rare event.
I'm going to get so much mileage out of this. I actually laughed out loud a little bit at work. Good think no one's here yet.
The line about disease being the patient's fault sounds alot like thinking back in the middle ages, where if you had disease it was god punishing you, and you just had to 'pray harder' to be 'cured'.
Thanks for posting that; it gave me a good laugh! When my dad had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (he's doing great now), I had people who really should have known better asking me questions aimed at "what did he do wrong to get this?" He biked daily, he ate lots of healthy food (growing his own vegetables) and he didn't smoke. He didn't "deserve" to get cancer - I can't imagine anyone who does.
I think people want to believe that it isn't random because the alternative is terrifying. No matter what you do right or wrong, there is still a chance of getting a disease. Easier to blame someone blameless; of course, they have to deal with that as well as their disease.
For a good explanation of this charming phenomenon, I will recommend that people read Kushner's classic "When Bad Things Happen to Good People."
This essay by David Horton is a little old and aimed at religion, but since alties think religiously it could apply. I take comfort from it with every woo report:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/life-is-random-get-over-_b_1…
So is this guy willing to eat a sandwich sprinkled with E. coli O157:H7 to prove his claim that the germ theory of disease is wrong?
The sructure of Young's spiel is so similar to the crap I used to hear from a guy I knew back in the '70s, including the love of the argument from etymology, that I'm tempted to conclude that Young really does have an acid problem.
Just like my erstwhile friend, at some point in his life he dropped too much acid.
What next, advising people to take a swig of NaOH for their health? That'll alkalinize 'em!
So what does he think of bacteria like C. Botulinum which doesn't tolerate low pH environments and becomes deadly in alkaline culture media. Perhaps someone should put down some good alkaline preserves for him and after a while feed them to him.
Why do you bother with point-by-point refutations of this garbage? It's like trying to engage the bum outside the liquor store in meaningful discourse. Well done, Orac, you have convinced me that some dribbling insane loony-tunes nut-job isn't in full possession of the facts! Fantastic, a day well spent I'm sure.
Because I felt like it. I need no other reason. Don't like it? Don't read. Then you won't get frustrated trying to post the same scolding, oh-so-superior comment twice. You'll be a lot happier.
That was a truly neuro-necrotising read...
Why, oh, why these people feel the need to torture chemistry like this ? What has the poor discipline ever done to them ?
And what in hell is a "molecular acid" (or a D.Sc., for that matter) ? I mean in all my years in chemistry I've seen protic acids, Lewis acids and even superacids, but I've never heard of a molecular acid.
"Alkalinity constricts and normalizes the blood vessels."
Owww... That hurts my brains. I feel like putting this guy on a 4M NaOH IV. He shouldn't object to having his blood vessels "normalized" (more likely saponified), shouldn't he ?
New skeptic in the ring here. I am a PhD student, so still a trainee and so much to learn about poking fun at the giant ball of crazy that is pseudoscience. I wonder if "Dr" Robert O-So-Crazy Young has any PhD students of his own? How would it feel to be working under the watchful eye of Mr Young (I think for the sake of this post we strip him temporarily of his title)? It's difficult enough to defend a good thesis when the science is sound. Wouldn't it be next to impossible to defend one when it is riddled with fairys and goblins? I am guessing thats what he would be asking his students to write.
Aren't all acids ... well ... molecular?
There's definitely acid involved here, but I suspect it's all in tablet form under Young's tongue.
Not necessarily. The whole idea is to dissociate the protons from the anions, so technically they're not really full-up molecules when they're being acids. Subtle distinction and I won't swear to have it right.
"but I've never heard of a molecular acid."
Watch the movie Alien. The captain of the Nostromo, Dallas, discovers that the blood of the alien brought aboard is acid and he equates it with "molecular acid". Obviously, we are still primitive and have not discovered "molecular acid" yet.
Wow, his blog would be a beautiful thing if it were written for The Onion. I left him a love note for good measure.
My neighbor, a woman from Panama, has zip scientific knowledge. Her 16 yr. old son spent some days in the hospital with pneumonia last Spring. She attributes it to a "resfriado" or strong chill. Perhaps with patient explanation and time, she could be brought around to a better understanding.
Another neighbor is "Rapture ready"; Totally irrational belief which can't be falsified. Pack it in.
But what is the scripture of these secular woomeisters? They can be falsified. Is there a genetic irrationality? I like the the Bacterial sandwich idea. Would "Dr." Young accept the challenge and Heaven Gate it? I doubt it. These characters want to take a whole gaggle of others with them.
We have MDR tuberculosis along with various resistant staph strains in a BSL 3 lab one building over from me, right now. If we could get it past our IRB (which we surely couldn't), Young could come by and have us swab selected samples on his mucosa. Give it a couple weeks, then he can beat the infections by "living right."
Not necessarily. The whole idea is to dissociate the protons from the anions, so technically they're not really full-up molecules when they're being acids. Subtle distinction and I won't swear to have it right.
That's the definition of a protic acid. And that is complicated by the fact that H+ doesn't really exist in itself but as different solvated species... And that's without considering Lewis's more general definition of an acid as an electron acceptor...
And I really don't understand this fear people have of acids. Actually, anyone who's worked in a chemistry lab beyond high school level is much more scared of bases than of acids... I've seen somebody get splashed in the eye with concentrated H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) without losing her eye... But the guy in the graduate lab next door who got splashed with triethylamine wasn't so lucky.
Indeed, RJ.
"it's got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it."
Well, kemist, as they say, there are acids and then there are acids. I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and one of the most commonly used chemicals in my department was HF. Neat little acid, and vital for producing semiconductors, since it will etch Silicon (it has to be stored in plastic bottles). However, if you happened to get splashed with HF, you might be in serious trouble. It doesn't feel like acid, doesn't burn your skin at all. But... 3-4 ours later you begin to feel an ache, deep under the skin - that's your bone dissolving, since HF DOES attack calcium. At least 4 people I worked with were missing fingers (one was missing his whole right hand) from HF burns - it tends to travel, and the only real treatment is amputation, coupled with massive shots of calcium directly over the affected site.
This is old; I haven't worked in that industry in 20 years, there may be more effective treatments by now, I don't know.
Go ahead and mock Robert Young all you want, but he was a fine Dad on TV to Princess, Bud and Kitten. And I never heard Jane Wyatt say a bad thing about him.
@ Blaidd Drwg
Shivers... Oh my, yes, I had forgotten about that nasty HF stuff... It goes through anything.
And that remembers me about sulfochromic acid accidents while cleaning glassware...
One of the worse accident I've seen in a teaching lab though involved a glass pipette, concentrated aqueous NaOH, and somebody's veins... That student was very lucky to get out of there alive.
Hey, now, there's no need for the scare quotes. Robert Young WAS a doctor -- Marcus Welby, M.D.!
~David D.G.
DT: "Yup... Thanks 'Dr' Robert O Young...., You might boast about this on your blog as though you are this man's saviour, but the reality is you've as good as killed him."
It's worse than that. Did you notice that the man bragged that his libido was coming back? An HIV-positive man who doesn't think he has HIV, and is not taking any treatments, now is interested in sex again. I shudder to think about what will happen to any new partners of his.
Minor correction: HF etches silica -- silicon dioxide. Silicon is (IIRC) etched with something-or-other hydroxide, which has the handy property of etching monocrystalline silicon anisotropically. Useful, that.
Also IIRC, one of the uglier aspects of HF is that it's neurotoxic. Not nearly so ugly for bone as for nerves, and (again IIRC) it will travel up them towards the CNS. Amputation isn't to remove damaged tissues, it's to save the patient's life.
Chris Lundy: your neighbor who believes a resfriado caused her son's pneumonia would probably require more than patient explanation to come around. Those beliefs are tied into religion.
My late great-grandmother was quite serious about them too. I used to annoy her by patiently repeating that colds are caused by a virus, not catching an internal draft. (She was, however, probably on to something using marijuana-infused alcohol as an arthritic joint rub.)
Now, now. All you eggheads are getting much too complicated in your interpretation of Young's arguments. Can't you tell from "...have not been properly buffered by...bases..." that all people need for what ails them is a good stiff dose of Alka-Seltzer?
I was going to post a refutation of this quack's theory, but I remembered that I am just feeling irritable because I ate some some lamb, which even Hippocrates recognized as choleric. Obviously my humours are too acidic. Off to the bloodletters' I go!
Terribly sorry for the repeated comments above. That's what I get for trying to comment from a spotty wireless network!
I hope this Young has a good insurance policy, when working in HIV prevention I had to have a $1,000,000 policy incase I gave information that was incorrect and somebody was injured. If I were the wife, or other sexual partner, of the HIV patient I'd be suing Young til he bled from the ears!
Leeches. I'm waiting for someone to rediscover leeches.
You are soooooooooo too late. Sterile, lab-grown leeches are used to maintain circulation in reattached body parts. Interesting story about them a while back where a little boy with a reattached ear called the leech that latched onto his earlobe his "tickle friend."
Orac: "Then what to my wondering (and shocked) eyes should reappear but "Dr." Robert O. Young once again."
Orac is also a fan of Casablanca ?
Captain Renault: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! "
Well, as we all know, the word atom is Greek for indivisible, and therefore the entire area of sub-atomic physics is a sham perpetrated by greedy scientists.
QED, bitches.
It's not real acids they're afraid of, it's movie acids - you know, the ones that will dissolve almost anything almost instantly, bubbling evilly and giving off green smoke all the while.
Most people don't have the faintest idea of what an acid actually is.
This explains the popular attitude that is so prevalent among people of blaming sick people for being sick, no matter what, because obviously they must not have eaten enough veggies or punished their body in the gym enough. It completely degrades people as human beings.
I suggest the creation of another award, similar to the Darwin Awards, that is awarded to the most consumate, self-deluding, life-endangering, ill-informed, anti-scientific paranoid nutcases that surface on teh interwebs. Extra points awarded by being prosecuted, or being mentioned here.
C'mon, it's almost as if there's a willful-stupidity contest going on with these woo-meisters. they all seem to be trying to outdo each other with even more outrageous claims.
I'd suggest the Galileo awards as a title, just to illustrate that, despite all evidence to the contrary, people will stick to what they think is true, despiite the proof of their own eyes and experimental data.
Just an idea. Not copyrighted or anything :)
This is one of the worst aspect of the alt med movement. But it lets healthy people reassure themselves: if they do the right things, nothing bad will happen to them. I've seen a friend sick with cancer blame her recurrence on eating sugar, for FSM's sake. And other so-called friends agree with her.
These same people have also tried to convince me to stop taking T4 for my auto-immune hypothyroidism in favor of some chiropractor-hawked supplement. After having been sick for months, and just recently starting to feel a little better, I told them to go **** themselves.
"Sorry, no, I don't mind taking a little pill every morning for the rest of my life, if it keeps me from feeling like crap & losing all my hair."
Gah, Emily and Kemist, I couldn't agree more! (Just posted about it recently, in fact. /shameless blog-hawking.) I'm on medication for bipolar disorder after having been diagnosed late in life, and I will gladly remain on meds for the rest of my life! There are still a couple of my friends that have difficulty grasping this notion, that science-based medicine has turned my life from a rollercoaster-hell into a great place to be! "No, vitamins and chiropractic adjustments do not help, but thanks very much for your concern."
Dead on, Dunc.
I got an ad in the mail for a water purification system that will, of course, cure everything. It specifically says that it will produce pure water which is alkaline to restore your body's pH. Also that the pure water will contain vital minerals.
*shakes head*
I find it baffling that anybody could print something like that and pay money to have it sent out to zillions of potential customers when it is so thoroughly nonsensical. Either they're lying and have a wicked sense of humor or they don't have any better grasp of chemistry than their marks do.
I don't want to discuss this new article, but instead Simonici's idea.
There are many fungus's that can infect the body, not just candida... which he discusses. Dandruff, toe-nail fungus, etc...
Baking Soda is a legitamate fungicide; it will kill candida. There are certainly other ways to kill candida as well, including the "azole" drugs, borax, etc...
Anti-fungal drugs have been studied for cancer treatment in the past, and sometimes with some positive effects.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=19896348
Itracon-azole has also been shown to have some positive effects on one type of cancer in one study (decreased growth).
Fungus are complex organisms with over 4000 genes. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that these could sometimes interact with the human body and mutate.
Thrush, or Candida, has been known to cause skin ulcerations.
****
As discussed in the thread, the idea is that the body is 80 percent water, and you can think of it like a fish tank. If this fish tank becomes too acidic, then bad things grow in it. Increasing the alkalinity will kill some of these bad things.
If your body doesn't have to waste effort trying to kill these things, because alkalinity killled them, then perhaps it has more chance to repair dna and focus on other things. This is only a hypothesis, though.
*****
Note: there are many different types of cancer... there's no magic bullet like this doctor Simonici has described. Baking Soda is cheap and safe and does kill candida; it will also helps fish and reefs live longer (by raising ph in a fish tank).
Possible New Cancer Treatment? Antifungal Drug Stops Blood Vessel Growth
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070427120221.htm