Black Jesus’ Bad End, NewAge Diarrhea, Someone To Watch, Someone Not-Too-Watched, And A Real Keeper

‘Black Jesus’ castrated 

after cult sacrifices

Tico doctor, homeopath arrested 

in natural medicine scam

Shailene Woodley's Alternative Lifestyle: 

Star Makes Her Own Medicine, 

Toothpaste

Calif. Baby died of drug overdose 

from breast milk

Meet the world's bendiest woman who says twisting her feet behind her head and cramming herself into a 50cm square box 'just feels very natural to me'

I-So-Lay-Shun (And When I Say "Shun" I Mean "Shun")

There's a reason I've become an (online) old fart:

One night while in Vegas, I met up with a group of friends—who were in town at another, unrelated conference—and I struck up a conversation with a woman who seemed reasonably intelligent and decently informed. Interrupting her soliloquy on the importance of eating natural foods, I mentioned that I was afflicted with type 1 diabetes. Her eyes widened, savoring the opportunity to help. She offered something that no endocrinologist previously had: a possible cure. “Switch to a raw-food diet,” she advised. Now my eyes widened. “You mean that raw food would help lower blood sugar?” I asked. “No, no,” she said with exasperation. “It can cure diabetes.” When I doubted that chewing on uncooked yams would kick-start my crippled pancreas, she accused me of lacking an “open mind.”

A friend was advising me recently, saying that even before I got injured, I stayed indoors too much. I was always working. I should get out more, like he does.

I told him no thanks, I have my friends and see people when I go shopping or to work, and there's no need to do more because, honestly, I no longer wanted to hear anybody's crazy beliefs. Actually watching and hearing people say crazy shit to my face, and then attacking me (as the speaker in the quote, above, did)? I'm done with all that. The rest can spout their "energy" baby talk to each other, use it to get laid, and then find someone else to do the Round Robin with - it's "fun" as Ann Althouse famously defined it - but it's also too stupid a way to go through life for me.

My friend, bless his heart, was only concerned for me. That I'll never meet another woman (he knows I won't make the effort) will shop alone, and one day die that way, too.

But, based on the evidence, I'd say my "problem" is I've already met waaay too many women.

Enough to know dying a hermit, sometimes, can be a pretty damn inviting proposition,...

 

A Little Of This And That (Whole Lot Of Nothing)

Here's a few things we've run across online that go into our "We Told You So" file:

Stop kidding yourselves:

Dogs are smarter than cats.

Those people who trained for Obama's "green jobs"?

Still waiting for Obama's "green" jobs.

Liberals are unhappy. (We know, you thought it was us.) Here's a tip:

Give them a friend to betray - somebody really close to them - they'll cheer right up.

The United States economy is growing faster than Europe's.

The United States economy will always grow faster than Europe's.

Vladimir Putin thinks Leonardo DiCaprio is "a real man". Hugo Chávez thinks the same of Sean Penn.

We think they're all communists.

Whole Foods sucks.

That's it - Whole Foods sucks.

And Roseann Marulli Rodriguez of SuperVegan wants you to know she's "all for natural alternatives, but they often don’t seem to work. As the research has borne out, homeopathy doesn’t do us a damn bit of good."

Yea, but spreading that particular news will help us all immensely.

O.K., that's it - hope it keeps you busy - Happy Holidays!

Now & Forever More: Free Society From Fraud

Alright, now that the Tea Parties are getting politics taken care of - and are, rightly, warning politicians to stay away from social issues - it's time for the rest of society to get it's collective head on straight.

To that end, The Daily Mail is stepping up with some rules for How To Spot A Quack:

Rule One: They are very, very sensitive to criticism and are liable to reach for their lawyers should anyone pour cold water on their claims. Naturally, and fairly, companies will wish to protect their livelihood and reputation. No one should advocate uninformed criticism that is malicious, deliberately untruthful or personal. But criticising a claim, like criticising the cooking in an expensive restaurant, should come under the definition of fair comment.

Rule Two: the more extreme the claim, the less likely it is to be true, aka there is no such thing as a free lunch,...There are (probably) no creams which will give you bigger breasts, smaller breasts, firmer tummies, longer willies or rounder bottoms. There ARE creams which may tone your skin slightly, make it smoother and softer, perhaps even a little plumper. But that is the best you can hope for.

Rule Three: The more ‘scientific’ the claims sound, the less likely they are in fact to be true. Beware long lists of obscure chemicals with extremely long names, especially those involving Greek letters. Keywords to be suspicious of include ‘pathways’, ‘DNA’ and, especially, ‘quantum’ and ‘nanotechnology’. Many of the looniest products combine all these terms and more with effortless and shameless ease.


Rule four: water is just water. If it is not water, it is something else; a medicine, a soft drink, a harmless concoction - or a poison. Water on its own cannot restructure your genes, it has no quantum ‘memory’, and nothing that comes out of a bottle will be any purer or better for you than that which comes out of a British tap. We spend several hundred million pounds a year on still bottled water in this country - money literally down the drain.

Rule five: few things you smear on your skin will have much effect on your insides, and if they do they should be treated with respect. Your skin is there to keep the outside world away from your delicate innards, a job it performs with admirable efficacy. Plenty of chemicals can cross this barrier, but they tend to be the sort of chemicals you really want to avoid. And if not, they are drugs, and should be licenced and controlled.


Rule six: ‘Detox’ is a myth. You possess an organ, the liver, which is the most efficient detox system known. If you have eaten too much rich food, drunk too much hard liquor and smoked too many cigarettes, by all means cut down. But ‘detoxing’ for a couple of self-righteous days is no substitute for adopting a healthy lifestyle, and buying products which claim to help you do so is throwing money away.

Rule seven: ‘natural’ is not the equivalent of ‘safe’. Hemlock is ‘natural’, as are arsenic and Death Cap toadstools. And all three will kill you.

Rule eight: ditto for ‘pure’; Poor Socrates must have wished his hemlock was less than pure. Sadly it was first-class stuff, completely unadulterated.

Rule nine: obscure fungi and algae from remote tropical islands or forests may amount to the elixirs of life/youth/wellness, but rest assured that if they are, and it is known that they are, then they are far from secret and that a great deal of money is being invested in finding out how and why. There is a good chance that a great many of the medical breakthroughs of the 21st century will come from nature’s medicine chest; but wait for at least the preliminary results to be published in a scientific journal before throwing your money away.

Rule ten: if you hear about a product in an unsolicited email, ignore it (and delete the email, it’s probably infested with viruses). Too obvious to be worth saying? Perhaps. But remember that hundreds of people every year fall for the most outrageous Internet scams. There is one born every minute. Don’t be that one.

Got it? Don't be the one.

These people have "made a fool of everyone" since before the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi arrived in the West. Now's the time to end their run, and for the people of the West to get the upper hand again.

Throw the book at all of them as we find them.

Shun these people. (Start with Arianna Huffington even.)

Clean house.

Make it so.

NewAge Should Come With A Warning Label

"Fawcett's case had a,...component that potentially sent the wrong message to other patients. In addition to the traditional cancer treatment she was receiving in the United States, the actress traveled to Germany six times to receive a combination of natural supplements and immune treatments not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These trips were chronicled in a moving documentary, Farrah's Story, that aired on NBC in mid-May. In seeking this type of therapy, Fawcett mirrored a choice made by actor Steve McQueen, who futilely traveled to Mexico in 1980 in search of a cure for his malignant mesothelioma. McQueen's Mexican doctors treated him with dozens of enzymes and vitamins, coffee enemas, and an anti-cancer drug called Laetrile, which was ultimately shown to be worthless.

Did the alternative treatments help Fawcett? It is unlikely. As Laurence R. Sands, a Florida surgeon who treats anal cancer patients, told WebMD, there is no scientific proof that such immune system stimulants work. Nevertheless, one of the German doctors involved in Fawcett's case claimed that the treatments had shrunk her tumors and substantially prolonged her life.

Once again, media coverage of Fawcett's case, while ostensibly providing useful information, ran the risk of sending the exact wrong message. Thousands of desperate end-stage cancer patients traveled to Mexico upon hearing Steve McQueen's story. The new destination may now become Germany."

-- Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University, reaching the same conclusions I did about Farrah Fawcett's cancer treatment, on Slate.

So - this may sound like a stupid question - but shouldn't the media be warning people against quackery? Can anyone explain, logically, why that isn't happening?

Bullseye

Hat Tip: Lucid TV

Natural Crimes ("They" Don't Want You To Know About) Are The Only Crimes Worth Committing

"The fascinating tales of the founders of some of the largest supplement companies:

Gary Caton, founder of Alpha Omega, was a counterfeiter.

The founders of Metabolife had previously been impisoned for running a methamphetamine lab.

Robert Occhifinto, whose company (NVE Pharaceuticals) sold ephedrine pills deliberately named after street terms for speed (Yellow Jackets and Black Beauties) served 18 months for importing hashish before he realized where the real money was.

Kevin Trudeau had spent two years in prison for larceny (cheque and credit card fraud) before his $2.5 million in fines for making false and misleading claims.

A. Glenn Braswell, founder of the Journal of Longevity, has had: 138 complaints of false representation lodged against him by the U.S. Postal Service; mail fraud, perjury, and tax evasion convictions; been sentenced to 3 years in prison; and over $11 million in fines levied against him and lost $3.5 million in seized assets. His magazine promoted and reviewed (always positively) supplements manufactured and sold by subsidiaries of GBData Systems, a company owned by A. Glenn Braswell.

[He was pardoned of convictions for fraud, and other crimes stemming from false claims about a hair-growth product, by Bill Clinton. He was found dead in October, 2006 - TMR]

Is there a lesson there? Certainly: Braswell's companies have thus far grossed over a combined $1 billion. Who couldn't learn from that? In 1999, 22 vitamin and supplement selling companies were charged with anti-trust behaviour, forming global price-fixing cartel nicknamed "Vitamins, Inc." and were fined nearly $750 million for their practices: all those companies are still around, and in business, today. From the New York Times (October 1999):

"It was, in the words of Joel I. Klein, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, 'the most pervasive and harmful criminal antitrust conspiracy ever uncovered.'""

-- Polite Company, doing a review of Dan Hurley's Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry - an excellent book - and you can read an online excerpt.