Due to my activities at the Society of Surgical Oncology meeting in San Antonio, somehow I didn't manage to crank out a bit of that Insolence, Respectful or Not-So-Respectful, that you all crave. So, given that this is Friday, I thought I'd to a "rerun" of a bit of classic woo. This one's a little newer than the reruns I usually do, only two and a half years old. So, if you've been reading less than two years, it's new to you!
In the nearly two years of its existence, I have strived to feature only the finest and most outrageous woo that I can find. It's mostly been medical quackery but sometimes it's other topics as well. Oddly enough, the vast majority of the woo featured nearly every week never attracts the attention of any regulatory bodies. Given the hilariously, extravagantly pseudscientific or spiritual claims made to support some of these devices, it's hard to image how so many of them never attract the loving attention of the Food and Drug Administration or the counterpart of the FDA in other countries in which these devices are marketed, but, by and large, they don't.
Until now. Pity the poor manufacturer of the VIBE Machine.
First, let's review what the VIBE Machine does, as described about two months ago right here on this very blog:
Human DNA conformational changes have been previously used to measure energetic influences of subtle energy generated by healers. This new bio-assay measures direct resonances with the physical DNA as well as underlying quantum process associated with hydrogen bond formation. Experiments reported here were designed to measure possible correlations between psychotronic and biochemical measurement of DNA in real time as physical DNA rewound following thermal denaturation. Physical measurements of DNA were made in NY using a spectrophotometer and radionic measurements were made in Ohio using the Harmonic Translator. An active phone line created a connection between the two locations and allowed exact timing for simultaneous measurements using both devices.
And:
One way to efficiently and safely raise cell voltages is with a device called a VIBE machine. An earlier type was invented by Georges Lakhovsky in the early 1900's. Dr. Lakhovsky discovered that healthy cells acted like little batteries and discovered how to recharge them (raise their voltages). He found that transmitting energy in the range between 750,000 hertz and 3,000,000,000 hertz raised the cell's voltage. Dr. Lakhovsky had great results with all types of physical imbalances.
Not only was his unit able to return sick cells (and people) to health, but also those who used it regularly noticed that they rarely became sick. He proved the principle that life forms can absorb radio wave energy. The VIBE uses that principle to strengthen the healthy cells of the body, so that they can resist physical imbalances. Knowing the right frequencies and putting them out simultaneously does not necessarily destroy an infection, but we believe it charges the cell making it strong enough to resist the infection.
Fuse this with a bit of Secret-style wishful thinking, and you have woo deserving of being featured here on Friday!
As you may also recall, the manufacturer had changed his website in the time since the VIBE was added to my Folder of Woo and when I actually wrote about it, necessitating a trip to the Wayback Machine to demonstrate that, yes, the woo as I described it was really and truly once on the VIBE Machine website. Hilariously, what now greets visitors to the VIBE Machine website at the very top of the web page is a message:
Currently the V.I.B.E. Machine is going through FDA clearance...
In the meantime, learn how to heal your mind-body
with ancient techniques in our Manifesting Manual below!
No doubt this was in response to this warning letter from the FDA sent to Gene Koonce, the President of VIBE Technologies, LLC in Greeley, CO:
During an inspection of your firm located in Greeley, Colorado, on November 5 through November 16, 2007, an investigator from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined that your firm manufactures the V.I.B.E., Vibrational Integrated Bio-photonic Energizer (VIBE) Machine. Under section 201(h) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act), 21 U.S.C. 321(h), this product is a device because it is intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or is intended to affect the structure or function of the body. The Act requires that manufacturers of devices that are not exempt obtain marketing approval or clearance for their products from the FDA before they may offer them for sale. This helps protect the public health by ensuring that new devices are shown to be both safe and effective or substantially equivalent to other devices already legally marketed in this country for which approval is not required.
Quite frankly, this is seriously down the rabbit hole. Just a perusal of the ridiculous and overblown claims made for the VIBE Machine should be enough to demonstrate that it can't possibly do what was claimed for it. If it could, as is the case for homeopathy, large swaths of what we know about physics, chemistry, and biology would have to be not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. For the FDA to write a letter like this shows that, truly, bureaucrats have trouble calling B.S. bluntly when they see it. Comments Linda Rosa:
The Colorado director of the National Council Against Health Fraud, Linda Rosa of Loveland, said she has been studying the VIBE because it has become known in the community.
She routinely goes through the administration's warning letters so that she can add some to the Web site Quackwatch.org, she said.
The VIBE machine concerns her because of its "outrageous" price, which is about $18,000, and because "it looked very much like other quack devices that have been on the market for decades," she said.
Indeed it does. But Mr. Koonce vows to soldier on:
Greeley resident Gene Koonce, owner of VIBE Technologies LLC, said he already is in compliance with the administration and is working to clear the VIBE machine as a medical device, so he can make medical claims.
The cited violations were found by an FDA investigator who visited the Greeley office in November.
"The FDA did not deem it as any type of fraud; they deemed it as a medical device," Koonce said.
That's right; if you make medical claims for a device, it's a medical device and you have to back up those claims with strong evidence. Or at least you should have to, and the Quack Miranda Warning shouldn't shield you.
Unfortunately, even the FDA's attention can't seem to stop quacks who have already purchased the VIBE Machine from continuing to charge marks to use it:
While under FDA investigation, Koonce cannot sell or market the device.
Businesses that already own the machine can still use it, as long as they don't make medical claims, Koonce said.
Business at Loveland's V.I.B.E. Villa, 1966 W. 15th St., is continuing as usual, said co-owner Callie Stewart.
"We just can't use words like cure, treat or heal -- things we've always had to be careful about," she said.
Of course they can't, and of course they have.
This of course begs the question of what, exactly, Callie Stewart tells patients while pitching the VIBE Machine, if she doesn't say it can treat or heal anything. Without those claims, it's just a box with a glowing light. It's all just more evidence of the code language of woo, in which woo-meisters substitute terminology and words that everyone interested in their quackery understand to be health claims but that avoid the use of distinct claims. Truly, up is down and down is up in the wacky world of woo, and regulatory agencies appear distressingly impotent in the face of even the most outrageously priced and dubious devices.
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This sounds like the testing dr. Gonzalez does to see if his patients still have cancer,and other health factors, by a lady in LA, but his is worse. Did anyone see that news special (not sure which station, NBC I think). How can he get away with this?
She tells her patients-excuse me, marks: "Well, because Big Pharma pays the FDA, they won't let me use words like 'heal' and 'treat', but (knowing wink) we don't need them to tell us what we expect to happen here.
She expects the mark to pay her money and the machine to do nothing; the mark expects to feel better after seeing the box with the glowing lights.
how can you avoid commenting on the Tribune story
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-0306-homeopathy-20110306,0,45…
Few things rile skeptics more than homeopathy, a form of alternative medicine in which patients are given highly diluted and vigorously shaken preparations to trigger the body's natural healing ability. Most analyses conclude there's no evidence it works better than a sugar pill. Yet homeopathy hasn't just survived the years of scathing criticism; it's prospering.
Have you no shame sir?
j a higginbotham:
Perhaps if you had read the first paragraph of the article you would realize that Orac is busy at a medical meeting. He is probably at this time in an airplane flying home from Texas.
Also, one very irritating thing are people who tell bloggers what to write about. If you look in the archives by using the search box on the upper left part of this page you will see that homeopathy has often been a subject here.
Oh, wait it is Saturday, not Sunday (been that kind of day). Perhaps he is listening to a very long speech at a the end of a dinner in a large dining room.
Another irritating thing is people who take blog comments too seriously, especially those offended on another's behalf.
Wow, you are a sanctimonious fool. Either you are concern troll or just silly.
"Have you no shame sir?"
Why should Orac feel any shame about that article? He hasn't been successful in showing believers in homeopathy that homeopathy is nonsense, but then neither has anyone else; no shame in being unsuccessful in the same endeavor where others have been likewise unsuccessful. Disabusing believers of their delusions is a thankless task.
The people you should ask that question of are those making fortunes by preying on those who believe the nonsense of homeopathy.
The FDA did a Class 1 recall on the VIBE Machine -- the most serious type. (http://www.aboutlawsuits.com/vibe-machine-recall-1588/)
However, VIBE Technologies (Greeley, Colorado) is now selling a device called the "Quantum Pulse" which looks identical to the VIBE:
http://www.thequantumpulse.com/how_it_works.htm
The last time I checked, both the VIBE and the Quantum Pulse have been listed on VIBE Technologies' website with the same patent number.
@ Linda Rosa: Thanks for the link; I don't see the Vibe Machine on his site, but he has sold the Quantum Post device to a number of chiropractors, spas, holistic practitioner, etc. He has a list with hundreds of these sites with locations, phone numbers and email addresses...so that you don't have to purchase your own Quantum Post...for $ 18,000 upward.
He does have a disclaimer at the bottom of his web page that it is not a medical device and makes no claims for curing any diseases, etc.
I also checked into the FDA "search" site and there is nothing about reviewing/recalling the Quantum Post.
The guy is slick. He removed all claims for disease treatments and cures from the Vibe Machine, notified all customers who purchased the machine and complied with the FDA requirements...and his "newest" machine is now marketed as the Quantum Post. What a sleaze bag.
I must be on the wrong business. $18k for a few pieces of electronics and a few pages of woo? wheee are the people who spens money on this crap? I have some invisible quantum quarks that arrange DNA too, and I want to sell it to them, lol.
You can slam the machine all you want. But until you have used it for any length of time your opinion means crap.
I have one of the machine and I do NOT let the public use it. I bought it jut for myself.
I bought it for one simple reason IT WORKS for what I bought it for. In 4 minutes of use I can go from being mad or depressed into a positive state of mind. EVERY TIME SO FAR!
Since I took time to post I might as well get a link to my affiliate site
Now people take expensive drugs that have side effect to do that also. This machine has only had positive benefits for me.
I also have noticed increase immunity and recovery from illness faster.
As far as curing cancer I have read from other users and talked to some about such claims and they had no vested interest in my purchase.
Could it be a placebo maybe but who cares if the person gets results. Drug companies are having harder times getting new drug approved because placebos are scoring almost as high as the drug these days. The placebo effect is well documented in science, Medicine and folk medicine.
All I know is this machine works for what I use it for and people I have let use it feel a difference.
It's pure ignorance to say it does does nothing or that it's just a light show. If you look at a cell phone where there is no reception you could say the same thing. Or a new cold laser medical treatment.
Nothing works 100% for everyone. You have proven medical treatments and drug that fail all of the time and people die from it. Yet it's funny how no one calls any of those a scam. But take a device or treatment that many people have had success with and one or two people it does not work for oh well that must be a scam!
Such a joke those of you that kiss the ass of the medical mafia and look to them for their stamp of approval on something.
The medical Mafia is the biggest scam in this country far worse than big tobacco.
@buy vigrx:
I clicked on your sig, and I just want to know one thing: How big is your penis?
Please help me find a vibe machine to heal my body.I live in fort lupton,co..Ive been injured and am on crutches and alot of drugs for pain..Im desparate and know the machine will help me heal internally faster..
Cindy 303 3744658 thank you
Dear Cindy, please actually read the article, and don't waste your money on scams.