John Benneth on getting ahead of the wave, talk radio, capitalism vs. socialism, health care vs. minimum wage asking Is paranormal broadcaster Clyde Lewis the new Messiah? Is man-made climate change pseudoscience? Is use of the public airwaves politically fair and balanced?
Yes, is it not poor use of the public airwaves for radio stations to broadcast invitations to present political opinion in a call-in radio program and then abuse those callers who opinions, beliefs, ideas and comments aren’t grooming the host? Can we have diversity please?
My father, 89, an active man with a razor sharp mind, has been my chief sponsor and bottle washer. Yes, this is the same man who interrupted my boyhood pastimes, collared me and strapped me to a high chair to give me a sharp haircut, much in the same way the shepherd collars the lamb in the crook of his staff for shearing or offering to the Gods. I never was sure of which, as Genesis 22 was dad’s favorite passage to quote when I was bad, excluding the part where Jehovah interrupts Abraham’s pending infanticide to say “don’t kill the boy, I was just kidding.”
I would try to hide in places never visited by human eyes, but he would always find me out, hook me and drag me flailing in a death struggle to bind me to The Chair.
Perhaps this was a replay, because last night he continued this occupation of hunting me down, this time with a phone call, to inquire what the hell was my last blog about.
“Was this the great inspiration you were talking about at McDonald’s today?”
“Well, not exactly, I posted it before I. . ”
“I thought you said you were going to change the face of medicine.”
“Well . . I . . not me . . I”
“I’d dump it if I were you,” he said. “I couldn’t tell who or what you were talking about.”
I had to silently agree with him that it was problematic, but there comes a time when a boy becomes a man and keeps his own mind and tonsure. So, I had to disagree with him that it was final, and not just for the pharmaceutical industry.
Not to ruin it for everybody, but that blog was just the inhaling part of a blast on a predictable material phase change in modern pharmaceuticals.
In my last blog, The Death Knell of Chemo Medicine, I am trying to prepare for the mere possibility that, at least where water is involved, there is no such thing as a simple chemical reaction that is electromagnetically void, free of subsequent supramolecular effects.
Everything has a buzz to it, but especially the cold plasma we know as water. This nails it. By more than my account water is known as the primordial energy absorber, and as such, it is the Great Transducer, as it absorbs energy, most notably the background radiation, water emits energy.
Water emits a converted signal.
We can all see it in the reflection of a puddle or a pool, light being a very narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But it does not necessarily reflect the same signal it absorbs. Water has a tetrahedral molecular shape similar to glass, and as such it might be expected to have qualities similar to glass, molten and frozen. So water acts as a lens, and this lensing action is not confined to warping visible light.
Solutes, guest molecules in an aqueous host solution, will cause structural changes in water that can be detected spectrographically, changes that can be detected in serial dilutions beyond theoretical mole limits, such as those used in homeopathy.
The current model for the action of the ionized pharmaceuticals used in homoeopathy is a corollary to tritium oxide, which is 3H2O, or radioactive water. The strength of the signal is from enthalpy (induced heat), which is created in the succussion phase of manufacture.
Just as the radiation from an atomic bomb blast will vitrify (convert into glass) materials such as soil, the electromagnetic radiation passing through water from solutes and external sources, such as sunlight, will cause structural changes in water that will continue to resonate and radiate the specified signals long after the instigators have absquatulated . . or been turned off.
According to a University of London computer modelling post grad, drug companies are ignoring the ramifications of aqueous structuring around the company’s synthesized molecules and the inevitable biologically relevant electromagnetic effects.
The following mind bomb was posted in Jerome Burne’s blog BODY OF EVIDENCE by Jazz Rasool:
One stunning bit of research for simply validating the mechanism of homoeopathy that few people dare to embark on is to use the computer modelling of drug molecules prior to being approved for clinical trials. Many drug companies and universities heavily fund computer simulations of drug behaviour. Some modelling looks at whether a drug binds properly to the molecules it must interact with in the body. Another kind of modelling, a ‘Solvation Study’ typically surrounds a drug molecule with a cluster of water molecules to simulate the mostly water environment they may encounter in the human body. Pressure, temperature etc are altered and the water molecules start to move around based on Quantum Physics simulations. Some of them bash against the drug molecule deforming it. If the drug is stable enough it will return to its starting shape or not deform too much and if that is the case the drug is probably suitable for going to real drug trials. If the molecule is unstable then bits will break off which is not good as those might go on to cause side effects and in that instance the drug company won’t bother with a drug trial if the side effects are deemed too risky. I know these things because I did such simulations as part of my Masters degree in Computer Modelling of Molecular and Biological Processes at Birkbeck College in the University of London. One glaring issue I had with such studies was how all the focus was on the drug molecule and how the water molecules affected its shape and function rather than any attention be paid to the drug molecules effect on the shape and function of the cluster of water molecules. Water molecules typically can cluster around the drug molecule and can sometimes drift away intact in their joined up architecture that has within it an imprint of the drug molecule. This ‘imprint’ of the drug molecule within the water cluster means that the water cluster, from a biochemical point of view, is a negative or ‘antidote’ to the original drug’s actions. Of course Homoeopaths will tell you that’s exactly what homoeopathic remedies often behave like – with behaviour opposite to the substance from which they were formed from. For some bizarre reason drug companies across the world and researchers in universities almost universally ignore how the water molecules glue together into forms that can have their own biochemical effect. Randomised trials are not the place to start for evaluating efficacy of Homoeopathy -the place to start is with basic research that can be done on a computer at a university and, with ever more powerful home computers, something that can even be done by an amateur scientist at home.
This is an explosion in the face of the pharmaceutical industry’s chemical engineers, for as is known, structural clustering of the aqueous vehicle is the primordial vehicle and cause for the redox and ionization of materials used as medicine in homeopathy, something that homeopathy haters stridently insist isn’t supposed to happen if they are to sustain accusations of implausibility and placebo.
This is further testament to the fact that homeopathic medicine is based on currently observed and explainable physics that are not exclusive to homeopathy.
So pardon me while I laugh long and hard. We homeopaths have been maligned for two centuries, and now suddenly who’s disovered practicing accidental homeopathy. Oh Hippocrates, I have to stop typing so I can wipe my eyes and dab the keyboard . .
Anyone can see what’s going on here. The industrial pharmaceutical arts can’t explain homoeopathy because it’s not in their interest to explain homeopathy. But in not recognizing the biomagnetic effects of the chemistry involved in synthesizing unstable molecules for patenting, they’re running into inescapable physics made cryptic to them by their own denials, whilst their products transmogrify into deadly wildcards.
Make a lot of money boys, you’re going to need it. Homeopathy will find you out and it will bind you to The Chair . .
” . . drug companies across the world and researchers in universities almost universally ignore how the water molecules glue together into forms that can have their own biochemical effect. “ Jazz Rasool
HOW THE HOMEOPATH BECAME KING , Chapter 2: The Vindication of Jacques Benveniste
In our last entry, amid some inflammatory allegations, we pointed out some salient facts.
Homeopathy has not been the sole domain of fools, as scientists-in-name-only (SINOs) would have us believe. After being informed by a failed stage magician that the materials used in homeopathy are nothing but plain water, SINOs get factamnesia; tritiated water, i.e. radioactive H2O, as used in medical isotopes for tracking, is also, by the same critieria, just plain water!
We know what the enemies of homeopathy want it to be: What they said it was. But it’s not. What it really is threatens their dress code, which is, among SINOs, if you look right you will be right. Therefore, anything that threatens looking right, anything that threatens to desynchronize the lock step ridicule of what was touted “scientifically” wrong, has to be attacked, even though it is shown to be demonstrably right.
SINOs get factamnesia when it is pointed out that supporters of homeopathy include real scientists who have gone against the weathered tide, some of them Nobel laureates for physics and medicine, such as physicists Brian Josephson and Emil von Behring, and virologist Luc Montagnier, who recently replicated Jacques Benveniste’s discovery that the supramolecular* medicines used by homeopaths have electromagnetic indices.
SINO’s become amnesiacs after learning that among notable medical doctors like Mendelsohn and Menninger . . who have practiced homeopathy . . is Royal S. Copeland, MD, a US. Senator from New York , who taught it, and was chief sponsor of the Federal Drug and Cosmetics Act. Copeland was The Godfather of the FDA, the iatric who crowned the homeopath “king of physicians,” from which this series takes it title.
I certainly can understand that it is a go-along to get-along world, and for this I give my errant siblings some slack. I confess homeopathy might not be all I crank it up to be; after dragged from the shuttered cave, a fraction my years spent in Parmenides’ light, compelled I am to admit, it may be part illusion.
But I don’t think so . .
Among the long list of notable users of homeopathic medicine were some arch-skeptics. Mark Twain, the world’s most oft quoted man, dean of American letters, the Lincoln of her literature and author of the first “Great American novel” . . not because it was the first to be composed on a typewriter, but because of its insight into humanity. Twain was nobody’s huckleberry, and Twain was a regular patron of homoeopathic physicians.
Whereas atheists are infamous homeopathy bashers, after ten years suffering from an incapacitating, unrelenting and mysterious stomach complaint, Atheist Jesus Charles Darwin was cured by Disraeli’s homeopath, Dr. James Manby Gully, MD. And so the list of renowned users goes on and on. The richest man to have ever lived, John D. Rockefeller, was a lay homeopath who offered free homeopathic treatment to all his Standard Oil employees. He passed over at 97 with his own personal homoeopath by his side. Legendary songwriter (perhaps the greatest of all time) Paul McCartney of the Beatles is quoted as saying, “I can’t manage without homeopathy. In fact, I never go anywhere without homeopathic remedies. I often make use of them.”
Twain’s great love/hate relationship was with a homeopath who also just happened to be, by Twain’s account, one of , if not the most powerful, and perhaps the richest American woman of her time, Mary Baker Eddy, revelator of the new American Christian Science religion and founder of its church.
Her first marriage was to a homeopath, Daniel Patterson. Her son, Ebenezer Foster Eddy, was also a homeopath. The inability of physical science to explain the healing action of homeopathy was taken by her as proof of spiritual healing. It was homeopathy, she said, that led her to the discovery of Christian Science, by breaking the hold that materialism had laid hold on her mind.
Having witnessed cures that had no explanation in physical science, Eddy concluded that they had to have originated in the mind. The problem with this reasoning are the biochemical effects of homeopathy’s supramolecular ionized materials, unless of course you are willing to extend psychokinesis to the petri dish and the effects of homoeopathy on plants and animals,
But this isn’t good enough for SINOs.
Up until 1988 pre-clinical testing of high dilutions as used in homeopathy was simply ignored as being ridiculous. If there were no plausible explanations for the action of supramoleculars, then they had to be fictions. But that blew up in critics faces in 1988 with publication by Nature magazine (impact factor 30.98) of a trial by INSERM, the French medical research institution’s replication of basophil degranulation by a dilute of histamine (Poitevin) that showed blood cells, in vitro, reacting to dilutions as used in homeopathy (Davenas).
Like Nobel laureate physicist von Behring’s 1901 threat after receipt of the prize for the diptheria anti-toxin, stating that all vaccines are homoeopathic, the rule among the medical Illuminati of giving aid and comfort to the homeopaths had been broken. For this, the chief scientist at the French National Institute of Medical Research, INSERM, Jacques Benveniste, had to be punished. He was subsequently subjected to vigilante justice, an embarrassingly unscientific trial and patently phony “debunking” by thugs, a pederast magician and a sweating magazine editor, invading INSERM and playing sleight of hand with the results of the double-blind, random controlled trial (RCT), provided by Benveniste.
Knowing that simply trashing Davenas and it’s director wasn’t enough, Nature commissioned a highly reputable lab (Hirst) to replicate the test and prove there was no effect. This also blew up in their faces. When Hirst’s results showed there were indeed biochemical reactions to supramoleculars, they had to be attributed to an unknown flaw in the equipment.
That the world’s top science magazine would employ such blatant pseudo science is stunningly tragic. But for the plucky, it’s suicidally depressing, like watching your parents fight, finding out you’re adopted and then getting kicked out of the house before the age of majority in a world wide economic Depression under a 3-branch Republican administration with nowhere to go but God or Hades.
After almost 200 years, conventional science still hadn’t caught up with homoeopathy.
But for a quiet, unassuming Nobel laureate there was a thin lifeline for Benveniste. He was an English physicist by the name of Brian Josephson. I have never been able to quite figure him out. The Josephson Effect and the Josephson Connection are his eponyms, exemplars of a supercurrent, a macroscopic quantum phenomenon, generally classified as such when the quantum state is occupied by a large number of particles . . typically 10^23, which is Avogadro’s number! The emphasis here might seem meaningless, but in the case of Avogadro’s number it is surprisingly relevant to homeopathy. Avogadro’s number is the mark of the complete phase change between gas and plasma, i.e. the ionized primary, or fourth phase in the revolving door of matter. It is also the point of dilution, the 23rd, at which the homoeopathic dilution embarks into the non-material world. 10^23 stands for the Holy Grail of homeopathy, for it is the 23rd to 24th decimal dilution in homeopathy when all the original starting material has theoretically been diluted out. It is the stumbling point at which materialism goes off the tracks in trying to understand the physically identifiable component of supramoleculars.
Get this: The theoretical size of the Universe is calculated to be 10^23 times larger than the observable. The implication here is that 10^23 is the demonstrable connecting point between what appears to the atheist as the real and the unreal; to the theist it is the connection between the material and spiritual world, and here, the poor dog guarding this gate is the Cerberus of real science.
It is the point at which the homeopathy’s dilute solution becomes ionized, purely supramolecular.
These are startling coincidences, or they should be to the non-opiated.
In other words, the critics of homeopathy are totally ignorant of an entire phase of matter!
And so this is why I find Josephson puzzling. The “effect” implies a “connection” if not an explanation for homeopathy, as if he is patiently waiting for someone else to make it. One of the observations of 1910 Dutch Nobel laureate Johannes Diderik van der Waals, was that phase changes are contiguous and the liquid and the gas phase of a substance merge into each other in a continuous manner and show that the two phases are of the same nature. One of the touted mysteries of water is the simultaneous appearances of what are generally recognized as its three phases, but as anyone with a connection to Wikipedia can see in reality there are four basic phases of matter and locally 18 in water. By van der Waals criteria, water could then be considered a cold plasma that carries along the specificity of it ionized solutes. If three phases can show specificity, why should there be any surprise in finding it in all four global and the 18 localized in water??
In addition to being multi-phasic, water shows several qualities of being a plasma. It is made of of two gasses, has a high electrical component, both in internal tension and supercurrent. It emits electromagnetic signal indices. And so you can see, within the Josephson effect is the connection between science and homeopathy.
In the 1990’s French scientists Rolland Conte and Yves Lasne discovered that the materials used as medicine in homeopathy had extraordinary emissions of beta radiation. Beta radiation is in the quintillion Hertz frequency range, overlapping the higher end ultra violet range and the lower range of x-rays. They published their results with beta scintillation and nuclear magnetic resonance in a remarkable book entitled Theory of High Dilutions and experimental aspects. They proved their findings in a very simple test using hospital x-ray film. Laying a pattern of homeopathic Natrum muriaticum 30C in rectangular tablets on the film, they burned the image of two letters into it, an “H” and a “P”, to stand for Hyper Proton, which Conte describes as the absence of matter, the opposite of a black hole, which coincidentally fits the definition of plasma!
This is truly a remarkable physical test of proof for the mechanism, mode of action and physical efficacy of the unexplained materials used in homeopathic medicine. It shows the presence of Tritium, as found in tritiated water. It should elicit a yeow from anyone with a discerning mind who can see that it leads to the natural conclusion . . that these highly diluted, or supramolecular substances used in the curative medical practice of homeopathy, are not only specific radiant emitters in the class of low energy radio pharmaceuticals and medical isotopes, it also leads to other conclusions. Homeopathy is, albeit unwittingly, nuclear medicine. It is the product not of a chemical but of a nuclear reaction. A change occurs in the nucleus rather than a rearrangement in the electron shell.
It means (at last) we have found the scientific grail for real medicine, real cures for what conventional “modern”medicine has profited on as “incurable.” Like Linda Loman pleading for her husband Willie, “Homeopathy never made a lot of money, not like corporate medicine. It never had big ads in the newspaper or TV commercials showing people riding horses in fields of daisies or walking on the beach at sunset holding hands. It may not be able to cure everything, but it is real medicine, and a terrible thing is happening to it. So attention must be paid to it, it must not be allowed to fall to its grave like an old dog. Attention! Attention must finally be paid to such a medicine!”
LOL, she’s right! And I would like to see the Lasne Conte beta scintillation film test replicated by American scientists in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, and published in a peer reviewed journal with high impact. In the name of real health care I call upon my colleagues and all science minded individuals and organizations to see this work done by the most credible workers available.
Please contact me if you think you can help to prove homeopathy in this way and vindicate one of the great scientists of all time, who stood up for homeopathy, and was shouted down.
In place of the letters “HP” I would prefer it to read “HOMEOPATHY WORKS.”
Chapter Two of HOW THE HOMEOPATH BECAME KING. To be notified of amazing Chapter Three, “The One Thing that Will Put Homeopathy Over the Top,” join the growing number of people now subscribing to THE JOHN BENNETH JOURNAL.
* supramolecular means “beyond the molecule” and refers here to the high diluted . . beyond the molecular limit . . used in homeopathy, identified by structural analysis. Not well understood by traditional chemical analysis, but a legitimate branch of chemistry since the 1950’s.
John Benneth, Homeopath vs. James Randi, Pseudoscientist
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information,which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
Herbert Spencer
It’s been said John Benneth carries a grudge against James “the Amazing” Randi because 12 years ago Benneth took Randi’s Challenge to prove homeopathy . . and Randi backed out.
But it could also be said the Benneth carries the torch for Randi, because Randi has been regarded as the King of the Skeptics, a man with a kind of laser like x-ray vision who can see through any kind of deception, detect any kind of fraud, and I, John “the Prosaic” Benneth just keep plodding along in search of the facts.
Take this video for instance. Note the differences in Randi between his stage appearance at TED in 2007 and the video recording done in the JREF library in 2011. Notice especially his eyes. It is my suggestion here that Randi’s continued abuse of Calms Forte, which essentially is not homeopathic, but slips past FDA regulations by claiming to be homeopathic, has created irreversible effects, both seen and unseen . . the unseen being intestinal cancer.
Make your own investigation here. Watch the video and then read my commentary below. decide for yourself what is real, what is illusion . .
What follows the commentary is a transcript of the video for your analysis and search engine indexing.
This gets even more mysterious when we examine the item Randi slam dunks . . Calms Forte . . more closely. It isn’t homeopathic. It may say it’s homeopathic, and by US government standards of the HPUS it may technically may be homeopathic (although I doubt it), but neither are the ingredients of Calms Forte being used homeopathically, nor are they of a truly homeopathic potency!
That’s right. It only says it is. Because it says it is, the majority of users assume it is. Homeopathic “drugs” are not subject to the same testing requirements of commercial patent medicines, and so this allows the manufacturer to bring an actual drug, in it original molecular form, to market without question.
I’ll prove it to you, slowly, inexorably, but with a dogged appetite for reason..
“Why John, why?” you may ask, and the answer is simply this. This is inextricably woven into how we think about what is medicine, healing and cure. This is about a racket, probably the world’s greatest operating sub silentio, protected by illusion, supported by the likes of a confessed charlatan.
Zicam did exactly the same thing, calling a crude molecular concentration of zinc “homeopathic” for its cold remedy, and then got in trouble with the Feds when people began reporting that after using it they were losing their sense of smell . . permanently!
Now how could people lose their sense of smell from something that James “the man with the x-ray eyes” Randi insists has nothing in it? Because if you read the ingredients, you’ll find that the ingredients are well below Avogadro’s limit, which is the point of dilution where none of the original substance remains, the point where the energetic powers of the solution take over completely, reversing the effect of the diluent, the substance that left its elctromagnetic imprint in hydrogen bonding on the solution used to “medicate” the tablets or pilules, the “little sugar pills” as skeptics love to call them.
Here’ the catch: A substance does not have to be devoid of a molecular substance to be homeopathy. The word homeopathy does not necessarily mean diluted past recognition, as Randi is inferring Calms Forte to be. It is not. Calms Forte has a lot of an herbal sedative in it!
If it seems I’m beating this thing to death, in this case hopefully appearances aren’t deceiving. I want to make this perfectly clear that Randi is fooling his audience at TED, and anyone else who cares to be duped by this rascal, that he is ingesting an inert susbtance that has no detectable substance of what is listed on the box! And the question that follows should be why?
Why is he gulping something that has a measurable quantity of sedative in it (Passionflower, the main ingredient in Calms Forte), traditionally known for its ability to influence sleep without narcotic effects, when he could just as easily do his demonstration with a homeopathic remedy, indicated for sleeplessness, that is truly without any detectable active substance in it?
“I am satisfied it (Passiflora, Passionflower) is no narcotic. It never stupefies or overpowers the senses. A patient under its full influence may be wakened up and he will talk to you as rationally as ever he did ; leave him for a moment and he will soon be off to the Elysian Fields again. I have tried it, my friend, in all sorts of neuralgic affections, and have usually astonished my more enlightened patients with it. Many times I have them to ask me what in the world it was that had such a sweet influence over them.” Dr. L. Phares, of Newtonia, Miss., States.) from the chapter on “Passiflora” in New, Old and Forgotten Remedies by Edward Pollock Anshutz.
So here is my question to you: Could it be that Randi has found, that repeatedly doing this demonstration with an actual high dilute as used in homeopathic remedies, has caused long term adverse effects?
It could be possible. The old school medical doctors, who saw the effects of homeopathics on thousands of subjects, reported that too many applications of a remedy of too high a potency could actually graft symptoms permanently onto the patient!
Perhaps Randi knows this and has found himself to be in too deep, to deep to return tothe Styxxian shore.
Look at his eyes!
The clip of Randi on stage is from TED talks. TED is an acronym for “Technology Entertainment and Design.” It is a series of conferences, presented globally, produced by a private non-profit organization . . the Sapling Foundation, which was formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.”
The lecture featuring Randi was recorded in February of 2007. The “idea” he presents isn’t worth spreading. It’s a confusion, a menace to the public health. It should either be continued or put into it proper context as it has been done here.
It as worthless as what he claims homeopathy to be.
Two piece of prima facie forensics to note here. One is that Randi explicitly tells his audience to ignore the instructions for use . . the warnings . . for what are labelled as sleeping pills.
The TED audience seems to think this is funny.
I don’t.
“I’m going to take some medication,” he says, “a full bottle of Calm’s Forte . . ignore the instructions, that’s what the government has put in there to confuse you, I’m sure.”
He then appears to dump the whole bottle of what he just said is medication, a substance used for medical treatment, in his mouth.
Is this a scientific experiment? Entertainment? A publicity stunt? Mass delusion, at $4,000 a throne?
After telling us we need to think critically, he asks us to join him in his assumptions. And the TED audience gullibly swallows it as quickly as he dumps the contents of the container into his mouth.
Randi is a proponent of critical thinking?
What hypocrisy!
“But Pee Wee, what does it mean?”
The word critical is a borderline one-word oxymoron, for it has meanings that are comparatively contradictory . . it can mean expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of something . . or it can mean simply expressing adverse or disapproving comments.
So where’s the science?
What if someone, a young person for instance, who is confused about what is “homeopathic,” repeats this stunt to impress his friends, and in doing so takes something that isn’t as inert as he thinks it is, whether it’s homeopathic or not?
Does he end up with intestinal cancer, like Randi did, two years after this stunt? Or might he end up dead with little or no idea what caused his final illness?
What Randi is saying, “don’t bother to look more closely at this thing I’m doing, I’ve got it covered.” In this way it may seem to be a very coherent act, to the impressionable . . which is what magicians want you to be. And Randi is a lifelong magician. And one thing I’ve noticed about magicians, is that they can’t help but eventually reveal the mechanism of their deceptions . . because they’re essentially show oafs, and like most criminals, they actually want to be caught . .
“Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of
the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his
own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son
may, but at the length truth will out.”
Launcelot, The Merchant of Venice
Magicians want you to keep your seat. They can’t have you wandering up on stage to look behind and deeply into things, spoiling their act.
And so Randi doesn’t want you Googling the ingredients of Calms Forte, even after it seems he’s have impllied TED should use critical thinking, but not invetigation, to do just that, for these people will see only what he wants them to see, when he wants them to see it.
He’s living off your assumptions.
If you attempt closer analysis, without his invitation or approval, he will metaphorically, or by simile, hang an “Out of Order” sign around your neck . . or call security.
“No no no! Stay away from that! Don’t go there! Don’t look behind the JREF curtain!”
In Randi’s World,you’re not supposed to read the instructions . .THE GOVERNMENT PUT THEM THERE TO CONFUSE YOU!
You MIGHT actually stumble upon the actual ingredients!
Now, all of what has transpired here is implied by presentation and performance, and here Randi is demanding critical thinking about things outside of his venue . . but . . not within. Only things other than what are in his own hands are to enjoy the chimera of scrutiny, at a distance, by dint of the moderator.
But time has caught up and passed Randi. Now we have the Internet. We don’t have to pay $4,000 a seat to watch some high school drop out try to pull the wool over our eyes. We can just sit here for free . . and then watch him pull the wool over our eyes . . or we can let our fingers do the walking and rip off the hoodwink!
Google the ingredients for Calms Forte.
See for yourself what it is made of. 1x means one part in ten! And here they say it is triple strength! Does that mean that a third of it is the sedative Passiflora?
There is a heavy, measurable crude dose of Passiflora incarnata in Calms Forte . Here is what is listed as the actual ingredient of what Randi is over-ingesting.
Here Randi can’t demand passivity from his audience given the authority of the stage, the license he’s using to control what he has made out to be an investigation of homeopathy. . but which in fact is a hoax that has more than one layer of illusion.
JOHN BENNETH: My name is John Benneth, honorary post graduate of Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, London,
JAMES RANDI: Hello, I’m James Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation
JOHN BENNETH: And we’re about to have a little discussion about homeopathy.
JAMES RANDI: I’ve used demonstrations to show audiences the importance of thinking skeptically about pseudoscience.
JOHN BENNETH: Good idea. Let’s take a skeptical look at what Randi is claiming, which you will see is in itself a prima facie example of pseudoscience, beliefs and practices that claim to be science without employing the METHOD of science, So in this case instead of an objective experiment, scientific test, or ranom controlled trial, Randi is using a dangerous stunt to try to prove what he wants to be true.
JAMES RANDI: One demonstration I’ve done many times is downing an entire package of 32 homeopathic sleeping pills. (cut to TED lecture) I have to do something uh now which seems a little bit strange, for a magician . . but I’m going to take some medication . . this is uh . . a full bottle of Calm’s Forte . . I’ll explain that in just a moment . . ignore the instructions, that’s what the government has put in there to confuse you, I’m sure. I will take enough of these (appears to empty bottle into mouth) mmh . . indeed the whole cantainer. (Drinks water. Loud swallowing sound) Thirty two talets of Calms Forte.
JOHN BENNETH: Which is an example of pseudoscience. Randi is asking us to think skeptically about pseudoscience and then uses himself as an example to show exactly what it is that he’s talking about.
JAMES RANDI: The recommended dosage by the way is two to three pills. just to show that these scam medications have no effect.
JOHN BENNETH: Oh yeah? Well, look at his eyes, he can barely keep them open. Don’t do what this man is doing until you’ve heard the whole story, or . . you may saddle yourself with lifelong symptoms. I agree with Randi that you’re being scammed, but the scam here is Randi’s. And in this and other videos I prove it to you. Because homeopathic remedies make use of such highly diluted substances, it is understandable that some people may be doubtful as to whether or not these substances can have any biological action whatsoever, but that isn’t any reason to substitute a pseudoscientific stunt of the type Randi is performing here for the scientific method. Plants, for instance, make much better subjects for testing the action of homeopathic remedies, and likewise extensive testing has been done on plants using homeopathic remedies, objectively showing their biological action. There are simple tests you can do yourself. Homeopathic remedies can either accelerate or stunt plant growth, and they can be used phytopathologically , which means they can be used to control plant pests and diseases. If they work on plants, then it stands to reason tht they can also work on other living subjects, such as biochemical subjects. But Randi, who purports to be a proponent of the scientific method, is not talking about the extensive biochemical testing done on homeopathic remedies. This is a powerful form of medicine that is challenging what is thought to be the only treatments for human illnesses.
JAMES RANDI: There’s a warning on the box to call the poison control center .
JOHN BENNETH: There should also be one of the box made especially for him to call a psychiatrist. This man is publically encouraging people to intentionally overdose on substances he knows little if anything about in order to further a dangerous racket. However, the manufacturer of those homeoapthic sleeping pills would probably sell twice as many if they put a picture of him on the box.
JAMES RANDI: But that’s a joke.
JOHN BENNETH: So is James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge, and I will prove that to you too in alater video.
JAMES RANDI: But that’s a joke . .
JOHN BENNETH: Tune in and turn on to homeopathy, real medicine that really works and watch as Randi and I continue go head to head on homeopathy. Two men go in, one man comes out. Listen very carefully to what Randi says. Its been carefully scripted, and I will reveal to you his lies. Subscribe to the Bandershot channel here on Youtube for more about the Million Dollar Challenge to homeopathy, and homoepathy’s trillion dollar challenge to the patent medicine racket.
JAMES RANDI: I’ve overdosed on homeopathic medicine many times and my eyes are still open.
Like a domestic spat, or like any argument at all, where one side is being held to account for some nasty business, and violently changes the subject . . so it is when homeopathy holds allopathy to account for genocide.
Man oh man
I’ve never seen such traffic in all my days. I was about to write that yesterdays numbers were the highest ever, ten times that of my most highly viewed blog, one of the most viewed blogs on WordPress — but today’s has already broken that record.
Wow! Wowee!
I’m a star, just like mama used to say.
Fire PZ Myers, in one and a half days garnered over 17,000 views. But judging from the commentary, only a few really bothered to read it. They wrote mostly obscenities for commentary. If someone did ask a question, it was a leading one, or a question that was already answered in the article. Or it was complaining about their obscenities in previous commentaries not being published, and then complaints that their complaints weren‘t being published, etc. etc.
But every now and then a gem appeared, like something from Kaviraj, what for him is a scrap, what for the rest of us is a meal.
It just proves my point, that that the only intelligent commentary is coming from the homeopaths, and all the idiocy from the allopaths.
Let me give you a profound demonstration of what I say.
The allopaths say there’s nothing to homeopathy, that it’s a placebo. Of course they don’t define what they mean by placebo, they don’t show any tests that prove placebo either. The next thing we hear from these whiz kids is how powerful the Placebo Effect is. SO does that mean that homeopath , compared to placebo, is powerful medicine? LOL!
The next tact from these acolytes of scientism is to fire off another broadside from the other side of their sinking ship, like “there‘s no science to back it up.”
Okay, so when we show them some clinical trials they say, “they weren’t properly double blinded.”
Okay, so when we show them clinical tests that were double blinded, they say “it wasn’t published in a peer reviewed magazine.”
Okay, so when we show them double blind clinical tests published in peer reviewed non-homeopathy journals, they say “there are no reputable tests published in prestigious, non-homeopathy peer reviewed journals that show the effects of high dilutes to be no greater than placebo.”
Well, here’s one that was published in an AMA journal.
Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1998;124:879-885.
Homeopathic vs Conventional
Treatment of Vertigo
A Randomized Double-blind Controlled Clinical Study
Michael Weiser, MB; Wolfgang Strösser, MD, MB; Peter Klein, MS
To this the answer has been “it was discredited.”
In other words, somebody didn’t like it because it compared homeopathic treatment against an allopathic drug without a third set of victims given . . placebo.
But wait a minute . . I thought they said homeopathy was the placebo! Oh, bwahahahahahaha!
[Note the interjection of the word “victim.” How would you like to be somebody’s science project. If PS Myers had have a real problem, do you really think that he would take a chance and be part of the placebo group. This is the main problem with clinical testing, which, if you read on, I shall correct]
Here’s an exhaustive collection of references to homeopathic research in a google knol by Dr. Nancy Malik. . Google it.
Scientific Research in Homeopathy
by Dr. Nancy Malik
Triple Blind studies, Double-Blind Randomised Placebo-Controlled Trial, Systematic Reviews & Meta Analysis, Evidence-based Medicines for specific disease conditions, Ultra-molecular dilutions, Animal Studies, Plant Studies
130+ studies in support of homoeopathy medicine published in 52 peer reviewed international journals out of which 46+ are FULL TEXT which can be downloaded
So we’re answering allopathy’s wild shots with pinpoint accuracy, and they’re going down with the ship, sinking under an epidemic of heart failure, diabetes, cancer . . diseases sufferers could be helped with through homeopathy.
Look, at this point we’re not trying to make assertions about how well homeopathy works, we‘re just trying to show that it does. The problem is that the public is getting that mixed up in their minds. The anti-homeopathy crowd is substituting evidence for how well it works for evidence that it does work. We are avoiding simple decisive tests.
We have extensive records comparing homeopathic with allopathic treatment, both modern (Bracho) and old (Bradford) . . but comparison is a point that should be examined after we see that the substances used in homeopathy have objective indices not found in clinical trials.
Just as no one symptom should be taken alone as the only indicator for which homeopathic remedy should be used, neither should any one test for homeopathy be used to determine its efficacy, and pre-clinical testing should come first in examining homeopathy as a potential clinical modality.
If you’re out in the woods and you’re scrounging around for food and find something that looks palatable but you’re not sure of, you feed it to the dog first. If he doesn’t get sick, then you eat it. That would be a pre-clinical test.
But oh no, the pseudoscientists dive into this subject answers first . . and the questions that support the answer second, without first finding out if these substances have physical, biochemical and biological action.
What the wise will do is first consult the literature on the subject.
This is what James "the Amazing" Randi looks like without his glasses and phony beard, taking my phone call. He accepted my application for his phony "Million Dollar Challenge" 11 years ago and is still running from me to this day!
That brings us to the first real question in this investigation. What do we know of pre-clinical tests for high dilutes?
In 2003 Becker-Witt C, Weibhuhn TER, Ludtke R, Willich SN sought answers to that question in a study entitled, “Quality assessment of physical research in homeopathy” . J Alternative Complementary Med. 2003;9:113–32.
Becker-Witt reports:
“Objectives: To assess the evidence of published experiments on homeopathic preparations potencies) that target physical properties (i.e., assumed structural changes in solvents).
“Method: A suitable instrument (the Score for Assessment of Physical Experiments on Homeopathy SAPEH]) was developed through consensus procedure: a scale with 8 items covering 0 criteria, based on the 3 constructs, methodology, presentation, and experiment standardization.
“Reviewed publications: Written reports providing at least minimal details on physical experiments with methods to identify structural changes in solvents were collected. These reports were scored when they concerned agitated preparations in a dilution less than 10^23, with no other restrictions. We found 44 publications that included 36 experiments (the identity of 2 was unclear). They were classified into 6 types (dielectric strength, 6; galvanic effects, 5; light absorption, 4; nuclear magnetic resonance [NMR], 18; Raman spectroscopy, 7; black boxes of undisclosed design, 4).
“Results: Most publications were of low quality (SAPEH , 6), only 6 were of high quality
(SAPEH . 7, including 2 points for adequate controls). These report 3 experiments (1 NMR, 2 black boxes), of which 2 claim specific features for homeopathic remedies, as does the only medium-quality experiment with sufficient controls.
“Conclusions: Most physical experiments of homeopathic preparations were performed with inadequate controls or had other serious flaws that prevented any meaningful conclusion. Except\ for those of high quality, all experiments should be repeated using stricter methodology and standardization before they are accepted as indications of special features of homeopathic potencies.”
To summarize, Becker-Witt found six different physical tests for homeopathy. Eight criteria were rated, generating a potential total score of zero to 10. Reports for tests that had scores of six or less were considered to be of low quality, which they said constituted most of them.
Seven trials were found positive results were of high quality. Two out of seven high quality studies claimed distinctive features for homeopathic remedies.
What is important about Witt is she reveals more than one method for finding distinctive features which “science,” inplied by the Myers mindset, says does not exist.
Out of NMR 18 studies, only two were unable to get positive results.
The highest NMR SAPEH scores, went to three studies conducted by one name, Demangeat et al.
Since the 2003 Becker Witt review, Demangeat continued with his NMR investigation
Here is a 2008 report by Demangeat that can be read online.
2008 July 26 Journal of Molecular Liquids, Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci (2009) 1: 81–90
NMR water proton relaxation in unheated and heated ultrahigh aqueous dilutions of histamine: Evidence for an air-dependent supramolecular organization of water
Jean-Louis Demangeat, Nuclear Medicine Department, General Hospital, Haguenau, France
“We measured 20-MHz R1 and R2 water proton NMR relaxation rates in ultrahigh dilutions (range 5.43·10-8 M–5.43·10-48 M) of histamine in water (Hist-W) and in saline (Hist-Sal), prepared by iterative centesimal dilutions under vigorous agitation in controlled atmospheric conditions. Water and saline were similarly and simultaneously treated, as controls. The samples were immediately sealed in the NMR tubes after preparation, and then code-labelled. Six independent series of preparations were performed, representing about 7000 blind
measurements. R2 exhibited a very broad scatter of values in both native histamine dilutions and solvents. No variation in R1 and R2 was observed in the solvents submitted to the iterative dilution/agitation process. By contrast, histamine dilutions exhibited slightly higher R1 values than solvents at low dilution, followed by a slow progressive return to the values of the solvents at high dilution. Unexpectedly, histamine dilutions remained distinguishable from solvents up to ultra high levels of dilution (beyond 10-20 in Hist-Sal). A signi!cant increase in R2 with increased R2/R1was observed in Hist-W. R1 and R2 were linearly correlated in solvents, but uncorrelated in histamine dilutions. After a 10-min heating/cooling cycle of the samples in their sealed NMR tubes (preventing any modi!cation of the chemical composition and gas content), all of the relaxation variations observed as a function of dilution vanished, the R2/R1 ratio and the scatter of the R2 values dropped in all solutions and solvents, and the correlation between R1 and R2 reappeared in the Hist-W samples. All these results pointed to a more organized state of water in the unheated samples, more pronounced in histamine solutions than in solvents, dependent on the level of dilution. It was suggested that stable supramolecular structures, involving nanobubbles of atmospheric gases and highly ordered water around them, were generated during the vigorous mechanical agitation step of the preparation, and destroyed after heating. Histamine molecules might act as nucleation centres, amplifying the phenomenon which was thus detected at high dilution levels.
“These unexpected findings prompted further investigation, notably in other conditions, in order to rule out artefacts, such as possible interactions of silica with the glass material used for the preparation, or possible misinterpretation of the NMRD data due, for instance, to an unknown dependence of the frequency dispersion on the dilution level. So, the present study was carried out at a fixed frequency of 20 MHz and with histamine as solute, beyond the 4th centesimal dilution, i.e. beyond the known threshold of NMR sensitivity to detect histamine protons or any paramagnetic contaminants of the solute. It will be shown that the variations in R1 observed as a function of ultrahigh dilution in the NMRD study [16] are reproducible with histamine at a fixed frequency, and that these variations totally vanish after heating of the samples.
Here is the most recent and what I think is the best physical test of all:
2009 Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences
Luc MONTAGNIER1,2*, Jamal A¨ISSA1, St´ephane FERRIS1,
Jean-Luc MONTAGNIER1, Claude LAVALL´EE1
1(Nanectis Biotechnologies, S.A. 98 rue Albert Calmette, F78350 Jouy en Josas, France)
2(Vironix LLC, L. Montagnier 40 Central Park South, New York, NY 10019, USA)
Abstract: A novel property of DNA is described: the capacity of some bacterial DNA sequences to induce
electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions. It appears to be a resonance phenomenon triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves. The genomic DNA of most pathogenic bacteria contains sequences which are able to generate such signals. This opens the way to the development of highly sensitive detection system for chronic bacterial infections in human and animal diseases. Key words: DNA, electromagnetic signals, bacteria.
Montagnier, being a Nobel laureate, strikes a hard blow for homeopathy, so a lot of pseudonymous posters want to say that Montagnier wasn’t testing the kind of dilutions used in homeopathy.
These criticisms come from pseudoscientists who haven’t read the study carefully enough. The equipment Montagnier used was designed by Benveniste for detecting EM signals in high dilutes.
The Montagnier study is one of the most remarkable scientific studies ever published, for it confirms the Benveniste assertion that homeopathy is a new medical paradigm.
The operative mechanism for homeopathic can be found in clathrate hydrates, nano-crystalline gas inclusion molecules, what Montagnier refers to as aqueous nanostructures. These liquid aqueous structures produce an amplified analog signal of the guest molecule.
Montagnier was able to actually filter them out, and in doing so was able to give them actual physical dimensions.
Once filtered out, the signal stopped.
Read the study, it’s fascinating for these and other anomalies it reveals.
In an article referencing homeopathy (online) entitled “The Memory of Water,” the world’s top authority on water physics, Professor Martin Chaplin, states “water does store and transmit information through its hydrogen bonded network,” once again implying hydrogen bonding as being critical to the homeopathic mechanism.
Exactly what I’ve been saying for years.
John Benneth, self portrait
So here we have two studies that support my hypothesis that the action of homeopathic remedies is electromagnetic and produced by measurable structuring in the solvent, nucleated around clathrates.
Material scientists Roy et al, in their seminal work, . The structure of liquid water; novel insights from materials research; potential relevance to homeopathy. (Roy R, Tiller WA, Bell IR, Hoover MR Materials Research Innovations, 2005; 9-4: 577–608.) confirm polymorphic structuring in water at liquid temperatures as the key to the homeopqthic mechanism.
“This paper does not deal in any way with, and has no bearing whatsoever on, the clinical efficacy of any homeopathic remedy. However, it does definitively demolish the objection against homeopathy, when such is based on the wholly incorrect claim that since there is no difference in composition between a remedy and the pure water used, there can be no differences at all between them. We show the untenability of this claim against the central paradigm of materials science that it is structure (not composition) that (largely) controls properties, and structures can easily be changed in inorganic phases without any change of composition. The burden of proof on critics of homeopathy is to establish that the structure of the processed remedy is not different from the original solvent . .
[YOU ARE NOW READING THE WORLD’s MOST READ HOMEOPATHY BLOG]
“The principal conclusions of this paper concern only the plausibility of the biological action of ultradiluted water remedies, they are based on some very old (e.g. homeopathy) and some very new (e.g. metallic and nanobubble colloids) observations which have been rejected on invalid grounds or due to ignorance of the materials research literature and its theoretical basis. This constitutes an excellent example of the common error in rejecting new scientific discoveries by using the absence of evidence as evidence for absence.”
It is not such a difficult matter to explore this phenomenon, if you’re not PZ Myers, or one the similar horde. If that’s the case, then putting homeopathy to the test becomes impossible.
If you have comet his far in reading this it shows that you have the spirit of inquiry and not take the easy route by fashionably dismissing the evidence. Now that we have looked at the physical tests, let’s take a look at the biological.
Be assured that I’m moving in for the killshot. As tedious as it may seem, it is exploding myths propagated by phony challenges made by people like James “the Amazing” Randi, of whom I’ve included a picture of, sans phony disguise of Darwin like beard and glasses, as I did with my revelation of Myers in a previous blog. This is working up to a challenge to PZ Myers. More specifically, within Myer’s claimed realm of biology, there are more biochemical tests beyond those referred to prior.
After the 2003 review of physical tests, Witt and her team turned their attention to biochemical testing. Here, Myers ought to wake up from his napping.
For the biochemical assessments they used a modified version of the SAPEH test.
Their investigation found six different types of biochemical tests reported for homeopathy: non cellular systems, cultured cells, erythrocytes, neutrophile and basophil granulocytes, and lymphocytes.
(NB: If you think this is tough reading, consider what it’s like to type. But it’s important for this discussion. I haven’t seen this posted anywhere before.)
Witt produced the best and most exhaustive review of the literature for pre-clinical testing of homeopathics.
The WItt review shows that the basophil degranulation test has been done more than any other kind of biochemical test, but nevertheless is still only one type of biochemical testing among six.
Some of the most remarkable biochemical testing was done by William E. Boyd, MD, whose team spent years examining the action of dilute mercuric chloride on starch at Glasgow.
The Boyd experiments were designed by two Barbour scholars and overseen by Professor Sir Gowland Hopkins. The reporting panned 15 years, was extensive and elegant, designed for replication, representing a project that would be cost prohibitive by today’s standards.
Now we’re squarely in the bailiwick of Myers, reportedly an academic biologist who has taken what appears to be a knowledgeable stance on this problem. Neither opponent or proponent would be likely to say that it isn’t a problem.
If you’re looking at this problem objectively, you can see that there is a wide spread in the reported quality of testing results. However, most reporters, like Ennis, conclude there should be more testing.
Where is the prudence in the face of this evidence, of not putting it to the test?
Since 2007, the basophil degranulation test has been done specifically for replication by two of its finest conductors, Sainte Laudy and Belon.
Homeopathy. 2009 Oct;98(4):186-97.
Inhibition of basophil activation by histamine: a sensitive and reproducible model for the study of the biological activity of high dilutions.
Sainte-Laudy J, Belon P.
Why is it that someone who comments on this subject as an expert witness, as Myers does, not provided us with a greater examination of the available evidence? If Pee Zee Herman here is the expert he makes himself out to be then why . . with his X-ray vision and the mysterious, supernatural ability to make such definitive conclusions about the awesome psychogenic powers of these homeopathic placebos, WHY does he not enlighten us as with the Holy Protocol for Placebo?
Come on, Jesus of Science, if it truly exists, then give us the Placebo Commandment! Where are the Holy Writs, the double blind studies published in the sacred texts of prestigious peer reviewed journals?
Teach Me!
Why is P MYers not conducting his own biological tests, and proving to us, without a grain of prejudice, that homeopathy, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is NOT what the evidence has led many of his misguided colleagues have concluded it to be . . biologically active.
If this is a scientific inquiry and not a political argument, then why is it that so many people are trying to answer a pre-clinical question with clinical evidence?
The Myers mindset isn’t posing a question, it is merely answering an implied one with evidence that will lead the unwitting away from non prejudicial answers.
Let me answer it first philosophically. The anti-homeopathy argument, the infrastructure of which is atheistic, is based on the concept of non-Being. It is a decided feature of solipsistic thinking that has crept its way past the scientific method into science, to change it from science into scientism, from global skepticism into local skepticism, i.e. pseudoscience, that which masquerades as science, but in reality is serving the masters of capital and fashion.
For in order to believe in non-Being, one has to put Parmenidean logic aside. There is no such thing as non-Being. Placebo or not, homeopathy is a reality.
If this isn’t so in this case, then let us see PZ Myers put homeopathy to a simple yet proper biological test:
There is the literature, here are the methods, now let’s see some results!
And if Pee Wee Myers cannot reasonably find biological indices, then let us see him provide us with psychological indices drawn from trials that test for psychogenic effects, trials that show beyond the shadow of a doubt that homeopathy is nothing more than The Placebo Effect, and all the pre-clinical evidence the result of error and lies.
Let me put it more explicitly:
Professor Myers, do these substances, as used in homeopathy, as defined in the literature, have biological action on subjects not influenced by the placebo effect?
Simple question , simple answer that can be determined thorough simple tests. If Myers isn’t purposely avoiding the question and the literature that addresses it, then why isn’t he accepting that literature as evidence of non psychogenic action or why isn’t he submitting these substances to his own superior testing?
PZ Myers will have so much explaining to do, he’ll have to schedule extra classes in Pseudoscience and Advanced Prevarication!
For instance, we have reports from numerous sources, myself included, that have witnessed the phytopathological action of homeopathics on plant growth and diseases. That’s a simple, biological test any school kid can do. So why is it so far beyond the reach of Myers, reportedly a professional biologist?
The problem here that now confronts Myers, in order to meet my challenge, is that he’ll have to fish the evidence out of the looney bin, and if does find an effect, by his own previous criteria, he’s screwed.
Do you understand? Myers has effectively recused himself from obtaining negative results by having shown his bias.
The only way for him to back out of this trap now is to collaborate with others who are experienced in biological testing, such as M. Brizzia; L. Lazzarato; D. Nani; F. Borghini; M. Peruzzi; L. Betti at the Department of Agro-Environmental Science and Technology at Bologna University in Italy, workers who have conducted extensive testing on heat, replicating the exhaustive work of Lilli Kolisko.
Professor Myers, I challenge you to commission a design for a simple biological test, done by people who know what they‘re doing, without having a stage magician with a million dollars to lose handling the key to the double blind, as he did with Benveniste.
Put it to the test. That‘s fair enough. Isn‘t it?
And now for our movie!
Prof. Rustum Roy vs. Steven Novella, the Homeopathy Hater
If you watch carefully you will see that the man standing in the shot as Professor Roy is being introduced is homeopathy basher Steven Novella, a professor of neurology at Yale and the President of the solipsistic New England Skeptical Society. Apparently Novella thought he was going to be introduced next. Watch and listen as Professor Roy takes him down a notch or two . .
In light of evidence, University of Minnesota biology professor PZ Myer’s hate campaign against homeopathy just might backfire .
“High dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.”
Professor Madeleine Ennis after replicating controversial experiment for homeopathy.
One of the last John Benneth Journalentries for 2010 , IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.
Most notably is PZ Myers, an American biology professor and pharma stooge whose specialty is trashing homeopathic medicine at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM).
His blog is Pharyngula. In 2006, it was the top-ranked blog written by a pseudo scientist.Myers has called IN ONE YEAR “nonsense.” Other commentary has been”mental straightjacket”and remarks too obscene to be reprinted here.
It follows a posting by Myers of clips of my controversial video, “The Mechanism,” juxtaposed with scenes from Star Trek to characterize my supramolecular description of the homeopathic remedy as techno babble.
My name is John Benneth. I’m a homeopath.And this is story about biologists, three in particular, who have studied . . it.
It is fashionable with atheists and pseudo scientists like Myers to trash it and its research. It is a compulsion. They can’t help themselves. They have to do it, for it puts everything they hold dear at risk.
Trashing it is like a cheap magic trick, hawked as self working and E-Z-2-DO. It gives the trasher the feeling he’s accomplished something for himself under the guise of protecting society from what they characterize as ineffective medicine. But like the cheap magic trick, when it finally arrives in the mail, you realize it was misrepresented.
Pretty good trick . . on you.
PZ Myers, Pseudoscientist
Really what it is, it’s hate speech, using the same kind of tactics used against minorities by hate groups. It really shouldn’t have any place in academia, but pseudoscience has become the infrastructure of higher education.
What can they tell you that you can’t find out for yourself now through the Internet? It’s not really education, it’s fashion.
What Myers says has very little to do with science and more to do with the politics of self aggrandizement.
Look at the case against it: It’s full of general, vague, contextual accusations and insinuations. But try to find within this haystack of lies a needle of truth. It contains more errors of commission and omission than the invasion of Iraq. It doesn’t state its criteria or identify or it sources for verification. It always ends up being exactly what it complains of, and PZ Myers provides us with a wonderful sample of it.
He wastes our time with anecdotal evidence and fails to adequately explain the etiology of the phenomena. If its effects are psychogenic, where are his proofs for psychogenic? If it’s bunk, what mechanism has made it so popular, where is the proof for the reported action? It’s usually nothing more than a sloppy pudding of self contradicting anecdotes.
“EZ Pee Zee,” a pudding of lies.
Science will always turn against the pseudoscientist.
Read on and watch it slowly turn against Myers.
We have heard repeatedly, over and over again, from people like E-Z Pee Zee Puddin’ Myers, that homeopathy doesn‘t work, but when asked “how do you know?” the best they can come up with is that it doesn’t work because it shouldn’t work.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Nothing more!
No evidence of biological action is ever admitted without first seeking fault by the homeoapthy hater. Any corroborating tests are conveniently ignored.
I seriously doubt EZ PZ Puddin’ Myers could sustain much of a real explanation of its effects, because somewhere along the way he would have to confront things he didn’t know and doesn’t want to know, because they begin to work against his foregone conclusions.
Criticism by pseudo scientists like Myers is never global. It is always localized against something, like homeopathy. The evidence con is always given greater play over the evidence pro. And it avoids addressing the evidence pro in specificity within the context of explicit criteria.
For instance, the most well known in vitro test for homeopathy is a test on white blood cells, the basophil degranulation test. It was done by renowned immunologist Jacques Benveniste after his criticism of it was challenged. An assistant had found that water exposed to an allergen via serial aqueous dilution, could provoke an in vitro response, as if the allergen were present.
This is called basophil degranulation.
Benveniste, like other investigators, was puzzled by the results. What appeared to be pure water was causing a biochemical reaction.
Benveniste reportedly did the test over 1,000 times.
After he published the results of his testing in Nature, a prestigious science magazine, (to the resounding explosion of the usual outrage) Nature sent a team to investigate Benveniste’s work. The team consisted of Sir John Maddox, the editor of Nature, James “the Amazing” Randi, a notorious illusionist with a large sum of money to lose if proven wrong, and a debunker by the name of Walter Stewart.
According to Dana Ullman, the experiment was first replicated three times for the Nature team without any blinding of the experimenters. These first three experiments performed for the team showed positive results.
The fourth experiment blinded the person doing the counting of the basophils, and the results of this experiment were also successful. But the Nature team deemed this test invalid, claiming that the blinded experimenter knew in advance which test group she was counting.
The Nature team then began to behave disruptively. The next three experiments blinded the person doing the counting and the person doing the pipetting. Randi performed magic tricks during a crucial part of the experiment, making it difficult for the experimenters to perform their work, while Stewart was acting so hysterically that he had to be asked several times to stop shouting by Maddox and Benveniste.
All three of these experiments did not show any difference between the active verum samples and the inert control group. The Nature team immediately deemed that there was no evidence that the microdoses have biological action and reported that the tests failed to show convincing results.
Benveniste had violated the laws of Nature!
What they didn’t report was that the results were just what one would expect if someone switched the active samples with the inert controls.
Some of the samples, coded inert, produced a reaction, whereas some of the samples coded as active were reported inert. A switch had been made.
Randi had sabotaged the test by mixing up the results!
When you’re finished reading here, watch the accompanying video at the end of this article and hear Benveniste describe what happened. And particularly note Maddox, the editor of Nature, confessing that he went to Benveniste’s lab for the sole purpose of discrediting his work as fraudulent.
Skeptics herald this as conclusive proof that homeopathy doesn’t work.
There are some more facts that EZ Pee Zee doesn’t tell you, because without additional information we may be easily led to an incorrect conclusion about in vitro testing for homeopathy . .
What Pee Zee doesn’t tell you is that the basophil degranulation test for homeopathy wasn’t invented by Jacques Benveniste. JB’s test was the fourth replication of it. There have been many replications of it since, most notably a multi centered one that included homeopathy skeptic Professor Madeleine Ennis of the Respiratory Medicine Research Group at The Queen’s University of Belfast.
Here is a mashup of Ennis reporting on the activation of human basophils by ultra-high dilutions of anti-IgE, dilutions of the type used in homeopathy.
ENNIS: “This could be an exceedingly short paper, since in my opinion, from a conventional scientific background, when there are no molecules of the active agent left in a solution there can not be any biological effects. However, a search in PubMed combining homeopathy with basophil revealed 15 items. Interestingly this did not include the now infamous article in Nature or the papers that attempted to repeat the work. Changing the search to homeopath and basophil increased the total to 21. Including phrases such as ‘high dilutions’ or ‘extremely low doses’ only resulted in 33 publications.
“Witt and co-workers used several different databases in their review and found a total of 75 publications and further evaluated 67 of them. One of their sources was the HomBRex database which specialises in basic research in homeopathy and as of February 2009 contained 1301 experiments in 997 original articles including 1172 biological studies. Using the CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) Database and putting in basophil resulted in 95 hits. The question of publication bias is also worth considering – is it easier to publish a paper with negative results or with positive results? Normally, trials or studies with negative results are difficult to publish. However, it is possible that the opposite is true for studies using ultrahigh dilutions.
“In 1988, Poitevin and colleagues published a paper in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in 1988 which was a follow-up to an earlier paper which had reported that incubation of basophils with high dilutions of the homeopathic drug Apis mellifica was able to inhibit allergen-induced basophil degranulation. In this paper, they reported that very low concentrations of anti-IgE (ca. 10–100 molecules per well) activated basophils and that this was inhibited by very high dilutions of the preparations
“Overall, using the histamine degranulation assays, as standardized by Sainte-Laudy, it was found that histamine at both conventional pharmacological concentrations and at high dilutions inhibited allergen and anti-IgE induced basophil activation. Examining a range of dilutions from 5c to 59c, the response was periodic in form, with maxima at ca. 7c, 17c, 28c, 40c and 52c.”
“This work was pioneered by Sainte-Laudy and colleagues beginning in the 80s and continuing to the present day… I first heard about this work at the 1984 meeting of the European Histamine Research Society where Sainte-Laudy bravely presented his data to a crowd of extremely skeptical and rather hostile scientists and clinicians.
“Apart from the natural scientific objections to solutions containing essentially water having a biological effect, a number of other issues were raised:
(1) the biological validity of the test;
(2) the reproducibility of the phenomenon,’
(3) the subjectivity of cell counts and
(4) that the data nearly all came from the same laboratory. In answer to these points, at that time, this form of examining basophil activation was a recognized procedure. Sainte-Laudy had performed repeated experiments, indeed in a series of 6 experiments he repeated each measurement 16 times and got the same answer.
“In order to answer points (3) and (4), it was decided to perform a multi-centre European Trial and it is at that point that I ‘dipped my toes into the waters’ of homeopathic research. As an ardent sceptic, I was invited to take part in the trial, which involved one coordinating laboratory and laboratories performing the research. This study has been published.
“In brief, all the laboratories were trained in the basophil counting method, with the counts verified by Sainte-Laudy’s laboratory. The dilutions were made in 3 different laboratories and coded by the coordinator (histamine and water solutions made up identically from 15c–19c). All study materials were from the same source and shipped to the performing laboratories. The data were returned to the coordinator and then analysed by an independent biostatistician. When the results for the histamine solutions were compared to those for the water solutions, there was a small but statistically significant inhibition of basophil degranulation caused by the lowest concentration of anti-IgE used in 3 of the 4 laboratories. When all the data were combined together, there was a statistically significant inhibition for the histamine containing solutions. Thus this multi-centre
study indicated that high dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.
“In the multi-centre trial described above, 3 of the laboratories independently examined the effects of high dilutions of histamine and to a varying degree all demonstrated inhibition of basophil activation with these dilutions. Flow cytometric is employed in most immunological laboratories and there have now been a series of independent laboratories investigating the phenomenon. These will be discussed in detail.” Basophil models of homeopathy: a sceptical view, Madeleine Ennis, Respiratory Medicine Research Group, Centre for Infection and Immunity, Microbiology Building, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
The Witt review of in vitro tests for homeopathy carefully analyzed and scored all known biochemical testing, up until 2007. You don’t see the criteria employed by Witt being employed by those who conclude that homeopathy is merely the use of inert substances.
Like Pee Zee, they have to make up their own, unknown, unseen, OCCULT criteria!
PZ Myers claims to be a biologist. But look at the way Myers approaches the problem before him. Instead of giving you the full story, Myers gives only what he wants you to hear, which is mostly ridicule. Myers doesn’t mention his colleagues who have actually conducted the basophil degranulation test. He hasn’t done it. So how is it that we are supposed to believe Myers over Ennis, Sainte Laudy, Belon, Benveniste and all the others and their staff assistants, and the hundreds, possibly thousands of repetitons of these tests, unless Myers is presenting an answer we want to hear?
I’m trying to think of careers and activities that would be more suited for telling people what they want to hear, other than science. How about politics? LOL! No wonder his blog is so popular! Most people aren’t interested in science for anything more than the status it gives them in the eyes of others.
Being a skeptic gives you that “cachet.”
But when it comes to the real complexities of science . . please! Don’t confuse me with the facts! Let’s just pretend we’re scientists, okay?”
Ennis on the other hand, rolls up her sleeves and gets her hands dirty. She then, as a real scientist, is compelled to truthfully report what her colleagues are loath to hear . . the truth about homeopathy. What was it again? Oh yes . . “high dilutions of histamine did indeed have biological effects.”
I hear Myers screaming when he reads this, holding his head, “Noooo! I hate homeopathy!”
Ennis comes up with the same statement that Benveniste, Poitevin and dozens of others have come up with. In the glass the truth about homeopathy has been found.
Benvneiste proposed a whole new biological paradigm. Does Myers have the courage to do the test? Or is he more likely to try to sabotage it with word and censure?
If Pee Zee Myers cannot be a real scientist and meet the challenge of homeopathy head on, as Professor Ennis and others have done, then I say fire him and let him go on writing his stupid blog as the prime example of pseudoscience. Why would anyone but the opposition want a joker like Myers poisoning the minds of our youth? He doesn’t teach biological science, he teaches political science. Look at his useless, mindless deblogatory activities
How embarrassing for such a fine institution like the University of Minnesota! To have such an unscientific voice as Myers blathering away while his hands are doing nothing useful, when there are real scientists, like young versions of Rustum Roy at Penn State, who could be teaching biology at the University of Minnesota.
Education should not be about destroying people, as PZ has made it out to be. It should be about building people up, not tearing them down, and learning how things work in world.
The war over homeopathy is getting hotter. In the last 60 days there have been three devastating revelations about toxic pharmaceutical drug scams of megalithic proportions, which in turn have forced the drug cartels, through their shills, to issue warnings against what will overtake them for it by mere default. Continue reading →
The John Benneth Journal 
