Looking for some uranium?

Any website that has uranim for sale using an animated gif like the above is ok in my book.
www.unitednuclear.com

Also check out their maiming super-magnets: http://unitednuclear.com/magnets.htm

“Two Supermagnets can very easily get out of control, crush fingers and instantly break ribs or even your arm if opposing poles fly at each other.”

What a super website!

Indeed

The shuttle Atlantis transiting the Sun

Apparently one of the Atlantis crew members stared at the sun too long, went mad and then turned into a burnt crisp person and chased the other crew members around the spaceship until he fell into a gravity well. Oh – hang on, that was that other documentary Sunshine, wasn’t it?

Venus of Hohle Fels

The Times: “A piece of Prehistoric pornography”

The Telegraph: “Could be seen as bordering on the pornographic.” (quoted without attribute)

The Guardian: “Erotica through the ages”

The Irish Independent: “Porn from prehistory”

The Independent: “Erotic art for cavemen discovered”

So, the Venus of Hohle Fels is declared ‘pornographic’ by the quality press. How predictable and depressing. Presumably that’s how these journalists are used to assessing images they find on the internet…

Apart from the difficulty of speculating on the uses and reasons behind something 35,000 years old, surely this object is more likely to be a fertility object of some sort rather than ‘masturbatory accessory’ as they seem desperate to imply.

Have these journos never heard of the Venus of Willendorf, of which this object would seem closely related to?

What is even sadder is that the World’s Greatest Media have focussed entirely on this one, rather unattractive object, when in fact there have been other far more beautiful objects found at Hohle Fels, and which give even more an insight in the creativity and artistic impulses of human beings in the neolithic period:

The head of a horse:

Water bird:

(This is exquisite. If you’d rather look at an ugly figurine with big tits, go for it)

(the above two from: archaeology.about.com)

Lion-man?!

(Geo.de)

Humour, skill, artistry.

And yes, sex is important too, but the relentless obsession…?

Gets tired. Move on press people.

I Know What I Did Last Summer

Whilst on holiday I like to take an 800 page history of science and translate all the scientists and their achievements into a massive wall chart. I mean, who doesn’t?

Below are 4 sheets of the 19 sheet behemoth, all blessed with last summer’s beautiful Tuscan sunshine. Click to enlargen a scan of it beyond the size of your puny monitor!

[Click to enlargen]

The book in question was John Gribbin’s History of Science, and I can’t recommend it enough. On Amazon UK

History of Astronomy

The telescope may celebrating it’s 400th anniversary this year, but astronomy is as old as humanity.

Below is a rough history of the last 2000 years. It’s not complete (I need to add Thomas Harriot who drew the first picture of the moon’s craters, and Arabic science isn’t very well represented yet), but it’s sufficient to demonstrate the extraordinary increase in human knowledge between 2AD and 2003AD.

(btw, this is a first draft. I’m sure there’s a much better presentation possible, but I don’t have the time. If any l33t skillz web designer wants to get in touch to create a more aesthetically pleasing timeline, I would be very happy to discuss)

Sources:
John Gribbin, ‘History of Science’
Isaac Asimov, ‘History of Science’
Various other similar type books.

Important

Perhaps people should be demonstrating on the streets about actual evil perpetrated, rather than spurious G20 silliness.

This is a shocking chapter from  the new edition of Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’. It was not originally published in the first edition due to this deeply unpleasant Matthias Rath character attempting – and failing – to sue Dr Goldacre and The Guardian into oblivion.

Read it and pass it on…

—————————–

This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009.

You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud,

as long as you don’t change it – including this bit –
so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net

The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book,

because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the

vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally,

and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only

mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public

that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they

would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in

the public sector, I don’t own a flat. The Guardian generously

paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his

case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has

paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow.

Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time

off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with

endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

On this last point there is, however, one small consolation,

and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more

about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My

notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room

where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man

himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the

fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. This chapter, I

should also mention, is available free online for anyone who

wishes to see it.

Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost

academic distance of this book. For the most part we’ve been

interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad

science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious

academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling,

and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand,

these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of

our decadent Western context into a situation where things

really matter?

In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment.

AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people

have died from it already, three million in the last year alone,

and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it

kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people

every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3

million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of

all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under

the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has

appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1

per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years

later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.

It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers,

but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk

into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you

would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you

were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I

suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark.

This man, we should be clear, is our responsibility. Born and

raised in Germany, Rath was the head of Cardiovascular

Research at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto in California,

and even then he had a tendency towards grand gestures,

publishing a paper in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine

in 1992 titled ‘A Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular

Disease Leading the Way to the Abolition of this Disease as a

Cause for Human Mortality’. The unified theory was high-dose

vitamins.

He first developed a power base from sales in Europe, selling

his pills with tactics that will be very familiar to you from the

rest of this book, albeit slightly more aggressive. In the UK, his

adverts claimed that ‘90 per cent of patients receiving

chemotherapy for cancer die within months of starting treatment’,

and suggested that three million lives could be saved if

cancer patients stopped being treated by conventional medicine.

The pharmaceutical industry was deliberately letting

people die for financial gain, he explained. Cancer treatments

were ‘poisonous compounds’ with ‘not even one effective treatment’.

The decision to embark on treatment for cancer can be the

most difficult that an individual or a family will ever take, representing

a close balance between well-documented benefits and

equally well-documented side-effects. Adverts like these might

play especially strongly on your conscience if your mother has

just lost all her hair to chemotherapy, for example, in the hope

of staying alive just long enough to see your son speak.

There was some limited regulatory response in Europe, but it

was generally as weak as that faced by the other characters in

this book. The Advertising Standards Authority criticised one of

his adverts in the UK, but that is essentially all they are able to

do. Rath was ordered by a Berlin court to stop claiming that his

vitamins could cure cancer, or face a €250,000 fine.

But sales were strong, and Matthias Rath still has many

supporters in Europe, as you will shortly see. He walked into

South Africa with all the acclaim, self-confidence and wealth he

had amassed as a successful vitamin-pill entrepreneur in

Europe and America, and began to take out full-page adverts in

newspapers.

‘The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here,’ he proclaimed.

Anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and a conspiracy to kill

patients and make money. ‘Stop AIDS Genocide by the Drugs

Cartel’ said one headline. ‘Why should South Africans continue

to be poisoned with AZT? There is a natural answer to AIDS.’

The answer came in the form of vitamin pills. ‘Multivitamin

treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug.’‘Multivitamins

cut the risk of developing AIDS in half.’

Rath’s company ran clinics reflecting these ideas, and in 2005

he decided to run a trial of his vitamins in a township near Cape

Town called Khayelitsha, giving his own formulation, VitaCell,

to people with advanced AIDS. In 2008 this trial was declared

illegal by the Cape High Court of South Africa. Although Rath

says that none of his participants had been on anti-retroviral

drugs, some relatives have given statements saying that they

were, and were actively told to stop using them.

Tragically,Matthias Rath had taken these ideas to exactly the

right place. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa at the

time, was well known as an ‘AIDS dissident’, and to international

horror, while people died at the rate of one every two minutes

in his country, he gave credence and support to the claims of a

small band of campaigners who variously claim that AIDS does

not exist, that it is not caused by HIV, that anti-retroviral

medication does more harm than good, and so on.

At various times during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in

South Africa their government argued that HIV is not the cause

of AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs are not useful for

patients. They refused to roll out proper treatment programmes,

they refused to accept free donations of drugs, and they refused

to accept grant money from the Global Fund to buy drugs.

One study estimates that if the South African national

government had used anti-retroviral drugs for prevention and

treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape province (which

defied national policy on the issue), around 171,000 new HIV

infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented

between 1999 and 2007. Another study estimates that between

2000 and 2005 there were 330,000 unnecessary deaths, 2.2

million person years lost, and 35,000 babies unnecessarily born

with HIV because of the failure to implement a cheap and

simple mother-to-child-transmission prevention program.

Between one and three doses of an ARV drug can reduce transmission

dramatically. The cost is negligible. It was not available.

Interestingly, Matthias Rath’s colleague and employee, a

South African barrister named Anthony Brink, takes the credit

for introducing Thabo Mbeki to many of these ideas. Brink

stumbled on the ‘AIDS dissident’ material in the mid-1990s,

and after much surfing and reading, became convinced that it

must be right. In 1999 he wrote an article about AZT in a

Johannesburg newspaper titled ‘a medicine from hell’. This led

to a public exchange with a leading virologist. Brink contacted

Mbeki, sending him copies of the debate, and was welcomed as

an expert. This is a chilling testament to the danger of elevating

cranks by engaging with them.

In his initial letter of motivation for employment to Matthias

Rath, Brink described himself as ‘South Africa’s leading AIDS

dissident, best known for my whistle-blowing exposé of the

toxicity and inefficacy of AIDS drugs, and for my political

activism in this regard, which caused President Mbeki and

Health Minister Dr Tshabalala-Msimang to repudiate the drugs

in 1999’.

In 2000, the now infamous International AIDS Conference

took place in Durban. Mbeki’s presidential advisory panel

beforehand was packed with ‘AIDS dissidents’, including Peter

Duesberg and David Rasnick. On the first day, Rasnick

suggested that all HIV testing should be banned on principle,

and that South Africa should stop screening supplies of blood

for HIV. ‘If I had the power to outlaw the HIV antibody test,’ he

said, ‘I would do it across the board.’When African physicians

gave testimony about the drastic change AIDS had caused in

their clinics and hospitals, Rasnick said he had not seen ‘any

evidence’ of an AIDS catastrophe. The media were not allowed

in, but one reporter from the Village Voice was present. Peter

Duesberg, he said, ‘gave a presentation so removed from African

medical reality that it left several local doctors shaking their

heads’. It wasn’t AIDS that was killing babies and children, said

the dissidents: it was the anti-retroviral medication.

President Mbeki sent a letter to world leaders comparing the

struggle of the ‘AIDS dissidents’ to the struggle against apartheid.

The Washington Post described the reaction at the White House:

‘So stunned were some officials by the letter’s tone and timing –

during final preparations for July’s conference in Durban – that

at least two of them, according to diplomatic sources, felt

obliged to check whether it was genuine.’Hundreds of delegates

walked out of Mbeki’s address to the conference in disgust, but

many more described themselves as dazed and confused. Over

5,000 researchers and activists around the world signed up to

the Durban Declaration, a document that specifically addressed

and repudiated the claims and concerns – at least the more

moderate ones – of the ‘AIDS dissidents’. Specifically, it

addressed the charge that people were simply dying of poverty:

The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clearcut,

exhaustive and unambiguous … As with any other chronic

infection, various co-factors play a role in determining the risk

of disease. Persons who are malnourished, who already suffer

other infections or who are older, tend to be more susceptible to

the rapid development of AIDS following HIV infection.

However, none of these factors weaken the scientific evidence

that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS … Mother-to-child transmission

can be reduced by half or more by short courses of antiviral

drugs … What works best in one country may not be

appropriate in another. But to tackle the disease, everyone must

first understand that HIV is the enemy. Research, not myths,

will lead to the development of more effective and cheaper

treatments.

It did them no good. Until 2003 the South African government

refused, as a matter of principle, to roll out proper antiretroviral

medication programmes, and even then the process

was half-hearted. This madness was only overturned after a

massive campaign by grassroots organisations such as the

Treatment Action Campaign, but even after the ANC cabinet

voted to allow medication to be given, there was still resistance.

In mid-2005, at least 85 per cent of HIV-positive people who

needed anti-retroviral drugs were still refused them. That’s

around a million people.

This resistance, of course, went deeper than just one man;

much of it came from Mbeki’s Health Minister,Manto Tshabalala-

Msimang. An ardent critic of medical drugs for HIV, she

would cheerfully go on television to talk up their dangers, talk

down their benefits, and became irritable and evasive when

asked how many patients were receiving effective treatment.

She declared in 2005 that she would not be ‘pressured’ into

meeting the target of three million patients on anti-retroviral

medication, that people had ignored the importance of nutrition,

and that she would continue to warn patients of the sideeffects

of anti-retrovirals, saying: ‘We have been vindicated in

this regard.We are what we eat.’

It’s an eerily familiar catchphrase. Tshabalala-Msimang has

also gone on record to praise the work of Matthias Rath, and

refused to investigate his activities. Most joyfully of all, she is a

staunch advocate of the kind of weekend glossy-magazine-style

nutritionism that will by now be very familiar to you.

The remedies she advocates for AIDS are beetroot, garlic,

lemons and African potatoes. A fairly typical quote, from the

Health Minister in a country where eight hundred people die

every day from AIDS, is this: ‘Raw garlic and a skin of the

lemon – not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but

they also protect you from disease.’ South Africa’s stand at the

2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto was described by

delegates as the ‘salad stall’. It consisted of some garlic, some

beetroot, the African potato, and assorted other vegetables.

Some boxes of anti-retroviral drugs were added later, but they

were reportedly borrowed at the last minute from other

conference delegates.

Alternative therapists like to suggest that their treatments

and ideas have not been sufficiently researched. As you now

know, this is often untrue, and in the case of the Health Minister’s

favoured vegetables, research had indeed been done, with

results that were far from promising. Interviewed on SABC

about this, Tshabalala-Msimang gave the kind of responses

you’d expect to hear at any North London dinner-party discussion

of alternative therapies.

First she was asked about work from the University of Stellenbosch

which suggested that her chosen plant, the African

potato, might be actively dangerous for people on AIDS drugs.

One study on African potato in HIV had to be terminated

prematurely, because the patients who received the plant extract

developed severe bone-marrow suppression and a drop in their

CD4 cell count – which is a bad thing – after eight weeks. On

top of this, when extract from the same vegetable was given to

cats with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, they succumbed to

full-blown Feline AIDS faster than their non-treated controls.

African potato does not look like a good bet.

Tshabalala-Msimang disagreed: the researchers should go

back to the drawing board, and ‘investigate properly’. Why?

Because HIV-positive people who used African potato had

shown improvement, and they had said so themselves. If a

person says he or she is feeling better, should this be disputed,

she demanded to know, merely because it had not been proved

scientifically? ‘When a person says she or he is feeling better, I

must say “No, I don’t think you are feeling better”? “I must

rather go and do science on you”?’ Asked whether there should

be a scientific basis to her views, she replied: ‘Whose science?’

And there, perhaps, is a clue, if not exoneration. This is a continent

that has been brutally exploited by the developed world, first

by empire, and then by globalised capital. Conspiracy theories

about AIDS and Western medicine are not entirely absurd in this

context. The pharmaceutical industry has indeed been caught

performing drug trials in Africa which would be impossible

anywhere in the developed world. Many find it suspicious that

black Africans seem to be the biggest victims of AIDS, and point

to the biological warfare programmes set up by the apartheid

governments; there have also been suspicions that the scientific

discourse of HIV/AIDS might be a device, a Trojan horse for

spreading even more exploitative Western political and economic

agendas around a problem that is simply one of poverty.

And these are new countries, for which independence and

self-rule are recent developments, which are struggling to find

their commercial feet and true cultural identity after centuries

of colonisation. Traditional medicine represents an important

link with an autonomous past; besides which, anti-retroviral

medications have been unnecessarily – offensively, absurdly –

expensive, and until moves to challenge this became partially

successful, many Africans were effectively denied access to

medical treatment as a result.

It’s very easy for us to feel smug, and to forget that we all have

our own strange cultural idiosyncrasies which prevent us from

taking up sensible public-health programmes. For examples,we

don’t even have to look as far as MMR. There is a good evidence

base, for example, to show that needle-exchange programmes

reduce the spread of HIV, but this strategy has been rejected

time and again in favour of ‘Just say no.’ Development charities

funded by US Christian groups refuse to engage with birth

control, and any suggestion of abortion, even in countries

where being in control of your own fertility could mean the

difference between success and failure in life, is met with a cold,

pious stare. These impractical moral principles are so deeply

entrenched that Pepfar, the US Presidential Emergency Plan for

AIDS Relief, has insisted that every recipient of international

aid money must sign a declaration expressly promising not to

have any involvement with sex workers.

We mustn’t appear insensitive to the Christian value system,

but it seems to me that engaging sex workers is almost the

cornerstone of any effective AIDS policy: commercial sex is

frequently the ‘vector of transmission’, and sex workers a very

high-risk population; but there are also more subtle issues at

stake. If you secure the legal rights of prostitutes to be free from

violence and discrimination, you empower them to demand

universal condom use, and that way you can prevent HIV from

being spread into the whole community. This is where science

meets culture. But perhaps even to your own friends and neighbours,

in whatever suburban idyll has become your home, the

moral principle of abstinence from sex and drugs is more

important than people dying of AIDS; and perhaps, then, they

are no less irrational than Thabo Mbeki.

So this was the situation into which the vitamin-pill entrepreneur

Matthias Rath inserted himself, prominently and expensively,

with the wealth he had amassed from Europe and America,

exploiting anti-colonial anxieties with no sense of irony,

although he was a white man offering pills made in a factory

abroad. His adverts and clinics were a tremendous success. He

began to tout individual patients as evidence of the benefits that

could come from vitamin pills – although in reality some of his

most famous success stories have died of AIDS. When

asked about the deaths of Rath’s star patients, Health Minister

Tshabalala-Msimang replied: ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean that if I

am taking antibiotics and I die, that I died of antibiotics.’

She is not alone: South Africa’s politicians have consistently

refused to step in, Rath claims the support of the government,

and its most senior figures have refused to distance themselves

from his operations or to criticise his activities. Tshabalala-

Msimang has gone on the record to state that the Rath Foundation

‘are not undermining the government’s position. If

anything, they are supporting it.’

In 2005, exasperated by government inaction, a group of 199

leading medical practitioners in South Africa signed an open

letter to the health authorities of the Western Cape, pleading for

action on the Rath Foundation. ‘Our patients are being inundated

with propaganda encouraging them to stop life-saving

medicine,’ it said. ‘Many of us have had experiences with HIVinfected

patients who have had their health compromised by

stopping their anti-retrovirals due to the activities of this Foundation.’

Rath’s adverts continue unabated. He even claimed that his

activities were endorsed by huge lists of sponsors and affiliates

including the World Health Organization, UNICEF and

UNAIDS. All have issued statements flatly denouncing his

claims and activities. The man certainly has chutzpah.

His adverts are also rich with detailed scientific claims. It

would be wrong of us to neglect the science in this story, so we

should follow some through, specifically those which focused

on a Harvard study in Tanzania. He described this research in

full-page advertisements, some of which have appeared in the

New York Times and the Herald Tribune. He refers to these paid

adverts, I should mention, as if he had received flattering news

coverage in the same papers. Anyway, this research showed that

multivitamin supplements can be beneficial in a developing

world population with AIDS: there’s no problem with that

result, and there are plenty of reasons to think that vitamins

might have some benefit for a sick and frequently malnourished

population.

The researchers enrolled 1,078 HIV-positive pregnant

women and randomly assigned them to have either a vitamin

supplement or placebo. Notice once again, if you will, that this

is another large, well-conducted, publicly funded trial of vitamins,

conducted by mainstream scientists, contrary to the

claims of nutritionists that such studies do not exist.

The women were followed up for several years, and at the end

of the study, 25 per cent of those on vitamins were severely ill or

dead, compared with 31 per cent of those on placebo. There was

also a statistically significant benefit in CD4 cell count (a measure

of HIV activity) and viral loads. These results were in no sense

dramatic – and they cannot be compared to the demonstrable

life-saving benefits of anti-retrovirals – but they did show that

improved diet, or cheap generic vitamin pills, could represent a

simple and relatively inexpensive way to marginally delay the

need to start HIV medication in some patients.

In the hands of Rath, this study became evidence that

vitamin pills are superior to medication in the treatment of

HIV/AIDS, that anti-retroviral therapies ‘severely damage all

cells in the body – including white blood cells’, and worse, that

they were ‘thereby not improving but rather worsening

immune deficiencies and expanding the AIDS epidemic’. The

researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health were so

horrified that they put together a press release setting out their

support for medication, and stating starkly, with unambiguous

clarity, that Matthias Rath had misrepresented their findings.

Media regulators failed to act.

To outsiders the story is baffling and terrifying. The United

Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as ‘wrong and misleading’.

‘This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised

treatment without any scientific evidence,’ said Eric

Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who

pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued

him.

It’s not just MSF who Rath has gone after. He has also

brought time-consuming, expensive, stalled or failed cases

against a professor of AIDS research, critics in the media and

others.

His most heinous campaign has been against the Treatment

Action Campaign. For many years this has been the key organisation

campaigning for access to anti-retroviral medication in

South Africa, and it has been fighting a war on four fronts.

Firstly, it campaigns against its own government, trying to

compel it to roll out treatment programmes for the population.

Secondly, it fights against the pharmaceutical industry, which

claims that it needs to charge full price for its products in developing

countries in order to pay for research and development of

new drugs – although, as we shall see, out of its $550 billion

global annual revenue, the pharmaceutical industry spends

twice as much on promotion and admin as it does on research

and development. Thirdly, it is a grassroots organisation, made

up largely of black women from townships who do important

prevention and treatment-literacy work on the ground, ensuring

that people know what is available, and how to protect

themselves. Lastly, it fights against people who promote the

type of information peddled by Matthias Rath and his like.

Rath has taken it upon himself to launch a massive

campaign against this group. He distributes advertising material

against them, saying ‘Treatment Action Campaign medicines

are killing you’ and ‘Stop AIDS genocide by the drug

cartel’, claiming – as you will guess by now – that there is an

international conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies intent

on prolonging the AIDS crisis in the interests of their own

profits by giving medication that makes people worse. TAC

must be a part of this, goes the reasoning, because it criticises

Matthias Rath. Just like me writing on Patrick Holford or

Gillian McKeith, TAC is perfectly in favour of good diet and

nutrition. But in Rath’s promotional literature it is a front for

the pharmaceutical industry, a ‘Trojan horse’ and a ‘running

dog’. TAC has made a full disclosure of its funding and activities,

showing no such connection: Rath presented no evidence

to the contrary, and has even lost a court case over the issue,

but will not let it lie. In fact he presents the loss of this court

case as if it was a victory.

The founder of TAC is a man called Zackie Achmat, and he

is the closest thing I have to a hero. He is South African, and

coloured, by the nomenclature of the apartheid system in

which he grew up.At the age of fourteen he tried to burn down

his school, and you might have done the same in similar

circumstances. He has been arrested and imprisoned under

South Africa’s violent, brutal white regime, with all that

entailed. He is also gay, and HIV-positive, and he refused to

take anti-retroviral medication until it was widely available to

all on the public health system, even when he was dying of

AIDS, even when he was personally implored to save himself

by Nelson Mandela, a public supporter of anti-retroviral

medication and Achmat’s work.

And now, at last, we come to the lowest point of this whole

story, not merely for Matthias Rath’s movement, but for the

alternative therapy movement around the world as a whole. In

2007, with a huge public flourish, to great media coverage,

Rath’s former employee Anthony Brink filed a formal

complaint against Zackie Achmat, the head of the TAC.

Bizarrely, he filed this complaint with the International Criminal

Court at The Hague, accusing Achmat of genocide for

successfully campaigning to get access to HIV drugs for the

people of South Africa.

It’s hard to explain just how influential the ‘AIDS dissidents’

are in South Africa. Brink is a barrister, a man with important

friends, and his accusations were reported in the national news

media – and in some corners of the Western gay press – as a

serious news story. I do not believe that any one of those jour-

nalists who reported on it can possibly have read Brink’s indictment

to the end.

I have.

The first fifty-seven pages present familiar anti-medication

and ‘AIDS-dissident’ material. But then, on page fifty-eight, this

‘indictment’ document suddenly deteriorates into something

altogether more vicious and unhinged, as Brink sets out what

he believes would be an appropriate punishment for Zackie.

Because I do not wish to be accused of selective editing, I will

now reproduce for you that entire section, unedited, so you can

see and feel it for yourself.

The document was described by the Rath Foundation as

‘entirely valid and long overdue’.

This story isn’t about Matthias Rath, or Anthony Brink, or

Zackie Achmat, or even South Africa. It is about the culture of

how ideas work, and how that can break down.Doctors criticise

other doctors, academics criticise academics, politicians criticise

politicians: that’s normal and healthy, it’s how ideas

improve. Matthias Rath is an alternative therapist, made in

Europe.He is every bit the same as the British operators that we

have seen in this book. He is from their world.

Despite the extremes of this case, not one single alternative

therapist or nutritionist, anywhere in the world, has stood up

to criticise any single aspect of the activities of Matthias Rath

and his colleagues. In fact, far from it: he continues to be fêted

to this day. I have sat in true astonishment and watched leading

figures of the UK’s alternative therapy movement applaud

Matthias Rath at a public lecture (I have it on video, just in case

there’s any doubt). Natural health organisations continue to

defend Rath. Homeopaths’ mailouts continue to promote his

work. The British Association of Nutritional Therapists has

been invited to comment by bloggers, but declined. Most,

when challenged, will dissemble. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘I don’t really

know much about it.’ Not one person will step forward and

dissent.

The alternative therapy movement as a whole has demonstrated

itself to be so dangerously, systemically incapable of critical

self-appraisal that it cannot step up even in a case like that

of Rath: in that count I include tens of thousands of practitioners,

writers, administrators and more. This is how ideas go

badly wrong. In the conclusion to this book, written before I

was able to include this chapter, I will argue that the biggest

dangers posed by the material we have covered are cultural and

intellectual.

I may be mistaken.

This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works License described here, you’re free to copy it wherever you like as long as you keep it whole, and do please point people back here to badscience.net so that if they like it, they know where to find more for free.

Heavy Rock

[my brother has located the following using something called 'Google':]

08:06 01Apr2009 Gas/condensate discovery in the North Sea – 15/6-10
Det norske oljeselskap ASA
Trondheim, 2009-04-01

Gas/condensate discovery in the North Sea – 15/6-10

ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, operator of production license 029B, has completed the drilling of the wildcat 15/6-10. The well is located about 30 kilometers north of the Sleipner field in theNorth Sea. Det norske oljeselskap (Det norske) has drilled the well onbehalf of ExxonMobil.

The purpose of the well was to prove hydrocarbons in reservoir rocks of Middle Jurassic age in the “Freke” prospect.

The well found a 30 meter gas/condensate column in rocks of Middle Jurassic age. It was not tested but extensive data collection and sampling have been carried out. The licensees will further evaluate thediscovery.

This is the 1st exploration well in production license 029B which was carved out from production license 029 in 2001. The well was drilled to a vertical depth of 3677 meters below sea level, and was completed in rocks of Upper Triassic age.

The water depth was 111 meters. The well will now be permanently plugged and abandoned.

The well was drilled by the semi-submersible rig Bredford Dolphin that will now proceed to production license PL 027D in the North Sea to drill the wildcat 25/8-16S (the Eitri prospect) operated by ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, where Det norske will act as drilling operator.

The licensees in production license 029B are StatoilHydro (50 percent), ExxonMobil (30 percent) and Det norske oljeselskap (20 percent). Det norske is currently experiencing its highest exploration activity ever, with four ongoing exploration wells.

This week operator StatoilHydro started to drill sidetrack well 30/11 7A to appraise the Fulla-gas and condensate discovery in PL 035B/PL 362. The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate reported on February 5, 2009 that StatoilHydro had made a discovery of 6 million boe to 18 million boe of gas and condensate on the Fulla prospect. Det norske has a 15 percent interest in the license. The aim of the appraisal well is to prove more resources.

Talisman Energy has spudded exploration well 15/12-21 on the Grevling  prospect as operator in PL 038D. Originally, Det norske had a 5 percent interest in the prospect, but this was recently lifted to 30 percent. Grevling is an oil prospect north of Varg, and a discovery could be tied back to the field and help extend production from the field.

StatoilHydro is currently drilling exploration well 16/2-5 on the Ragnarock Graben prospect in PL 265. Det norske has a 20 percent interest in the license.

In addition to this, Bredford Dolphin’s next assignment will be to drill the Eitri prospect eight km east of the Jotun field where Det norske has  a 35 percent interest. Det norske will drill also the well on behalf of license operator ExxonMobil.

About Det norske (DETNOR`):
Det norske is the second-largest operating company on the Norwegian Continental Shelf with 27 operatorship and interests in a total of 47 licenses. Det norske is the operator of the Frøy Field development and will also operate eight to nine exploration wells in the North Sea and Norwegian Sea during 2009. Det norske’s scope of activities is limited to the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).

——

Pretty good news, huh?

Bryawn Appleyawn: writes a controversial article ’shock’

“THE question nobody can really answer is: outside science, what difference did Darwin make? It is reasonable to answer: none whatsoever.” – Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

Bryan Appleyard is a bore. He bored me for years as a teenager reading the household Sunday Times, and even now he’s being boringly provocative with his articles which challenge convention and put a cat amongst the pigeons in the world of science.

“We were descended not just from monkeys but also, ultimately, from the same ancestor as bacteria, flowers and slugs. It was and is, for many, a grim vision.” -Byan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

Maybe he doesn’t really believe what he writes and is just a ratings chaser; an identifier of hot topics that are guaranteed to provoke reaction. A successful strategy of a great deal of journalism these days.

“Science itself is divided” – Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times

Or, perhaps the Great Commentator believes this stuff and thinks he’s geniunely getting to the nub of things or revealing that the current scientific zeitgeist is flawed and the people must be told!

“What has Charles Darwin done for you? Do you feel better or worse for the news that a gibbon is your close cousin? Do you even believe it, deep down?” – Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times.

I wouldn’t normally mind. If I worried about every anti-science sentiment on the web I wouldn’t get anything else done, but when this kind of posturing is presented by someone who clearly thinks himself an intellectual heavyweight and publishes ponderously stupid articles in a supposed non-tabloid newspaper– well, sometimes I have to scratch that itch.

“What has Bryan Appleyard done for you? Do you feel better or worse for having read his articles? Has he truly uplifted your soul and amazed you with his descriptions of science and the beauty of the natural world?…nah, didn’t think so.” – Oli Freke, beneficiary of 3.5 billion years of evolution, whose ancestors include - but are not limited to – gibbons*, bacteria, flowers and slugs.

*Or at least Australopithicus, one of the earliest known common ancestors of modern humans and other primates.

Das Newton Spiegelteleskop

The Newton Reflecting Telescopee – in cardboard!

Picked up this lovely cardboard kit telescope at Astrofest last weekend. It maybe cardboard, but it has a proper silvered glass reflector and two different eyepieces with different magnifications, 15x and 30x. It’s about the same strength as the one Newton invented and does a very good job of showing the moon and craters, and shadows and all that splendid stuff.

(get your own here: http://astromedia.de/)

Before the reflecting telescope was invented, early telescopes used lenses, which have the problem of chromatic aberration – the fact that light bends differently at different points on the lens causing the rays to diverge. This appears as a haze of colour round a point source, like a star, and is very unhelpful for accurate astronomy.

So Newton invented a telescope with a curved mirror that avoided that problem, clever  chap.

Astrofest itself was also super cool. Lots of lectures about sunspots, great red spot of Jupiter, Thomas Harriot, the anthropic principle and Reg Hunt speculating about whether there might be water present on the moon (to which Sir Patrick tactfully interupted with the comment “pure bunk”)

Incidently, Astrofest was organised by my lecturer Iain Nicholson who I studied with when I did a year of an Astronomy degree way back when.

You do know that 2009 is the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope don’t you?

Bad Science: the missing index

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is probably the finest book published last year. But it has one big flaw – no index. There’s a vast amount of information in it, but without an index it’s obviusly very difficult to look anything specific up.

Therefore I have created an unofficial index for it. See below for the online searchable version.

I have also created a Word doc version which is better formatted and will fit in the book! Download it here

See bottom of post for caveats and so forth.

BAD SCIENCE – index

abortion 250-1

acupuncture 65

Afzal, et al 302, 303

Agent Orange 293

AIDS 162-4, 180, 184-5, 277

alcohol 91-2

alternative therapists 83-4

amino acids 23

Angola 11

anti-arrythmic drugs 200

antibiotics 39

anti-depression drugs 151

anti-oxidants 99-111

Apotex 203

Aqua Detox 2

Archimedes 220

Arnall, Cliff, Dr 209-211

Asher, Richard 73

Asperger Syndrome 284-6

Astel, Karl 218

Australasian College of Health Sciences, Oregon 125

autism 273-314, 284-6 (subsection)

Aventis 109

Avon lady 8

AZT 93, 163-4

back pain 84

bacteria – growing cultures 264

Baha’I faith 11

Barbie Detox 4

Barbie Liberation Organisation 27

BBC 6, 64-65, 84, 87, 142, 162, 240, 282, 299, 305

Beecher, Henry 64

Berk, Lucia de 257-60, 279

beta-carotene 103-7

bias

.availability bias 234-5

.positive evidence bias 230-1

.prior belief bias 232-3

.social influence 235-8

.selection bias 250

.ecological fallacy 255

.prosecutor’s fallacy 255

Bingham, Professor Sheila 240

BioCare 109, 165, 179

bioenergetic field 5

Blackwell 68

Blair, Leo 286-9

Boiron 59

Bonferroni’s correction for multiple comparisons 249

Boycott, Rosie 243

Bradford-Hill, Austin 94

Brain Gym ix, 13-20

Branthwaite & Cooper 69

British Alzheimer Society 206

British Doctors Study 217-8

British Medical journal 57, 136, 167, 183, 312

Broca, Paul 145

brown goo 2-8

Buddhism 11

Buhalis, Dimitrios 210

Bustin, Stephen, Professor 302

CAM 59, 63, 234

Cambridge University 214

Camp Dorkbot 175

Campbell 51

cancer 86, 93-4, 102-3, 105-7, 240, 306

cannabis 243-6

Caplin, Carole 286-9

Caplin, Sylvia 287

Cardiff University 209-211

cargo cult science 121

carotid arteries 14, 20

causality 94

CBS News 162

Chadwick, Nick 282-3

Chagas disease 187

Chalmers, Ian 159

Chandra, RK, Dr 167

Channel 4 9, 142, 282

Channel 5 177

ChemSol 265-6

chlorophyll 116-7, 121

cholera 105

cholesterol 239-42

Choxi+ 110

Cimetidine 81

cinchona bark 29-30

Clarion PR 214-6

Clark, Sally 254-7

Clark, Susan 156

Claude, Levi-Strauss 77

Clayton College of Natural Health 123

clinical trials 42-59

.randomisation 47-50

.Jadad score 52-54

.meta-analysis 54-55, 66

Clinton, Bill 66

Clomicalm 204

cocaine 246-50

Cochrane Collaboration 55, 106-7, 159, 295, 298, 307

Colquhoun, David, Professor 173

Combat Antimicrobial Hospital Pack 266

Cooper, Gary, Professor 210

cosmetics 21-27

cot death, see also: sudden infant death syndrome 108

Covabeads 22

CP Snow ix

CRASH trial 182

Curry, Oliver, Dr 211-4

Curtin, Lilian 72

Daniel 1:1-16 42

data

.cherry picking results 97-9, 107

.confounding variables 90

.does it exist? 88

.funnel plot 197

Davies, Nick 211

death penalty 232

Declaration of Helsinki 66

Deer, Brian 280

Deferipone 203

Denmark 297-8

Department of Health 158, 166

detox 10-11

detox patches 8

developing world 187-8

diet 87, 130-2

Diprobase 25

DNA 101

DNA evidence in court 256

Doll, Richard 217-8

Dowden, Angela 89-90

drug companies 94

drug trials 186-206

D’Souza, et al 303, 304

Duchess of York 287

Dunning, David 268

duplicate publication 202

Durham Council 136-160

Durham Trials 136-60

dyslexia 315

ear candles 6

eclampsia 187-8

Ecletech 125

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 290, 294

eczema 158

Edison, Thomas 139

Efron, Nathan, Dr 210

Elder Pharmaceuticals 109, 165

Emerald Detox 4

Equazen 141, 143, 146-7, 157

essential fatty acids 144

Ethics Committee 281

evolutionary theory 212

Eye-Q supplement 141, 144, 157

Ezetimibe 204

FDA 198, 202

Female sexual disfunction 153

Feynman, Richard 97, 121, 257

Field, Tony 266

finger that ‘grew back’ 315

fish oil 136-160, 172

Fitzpatrick, Mike, Dr 285-6

flax seeds 133-4

Food for the Brain Foundation 173

food supplements 105

Forbes, Sir John 36

Ford, Dave 141, 142, 149

Forensic Science Service 243

formulas for everything 209

Foster, Peter 286

Fox News 214

Frankfurt, Professor Harry 88-9

Fraser, Lorraine 294

free radicals 101

galenica 157

Garrow, John 125-8

GCSE 140, 160

gem therapy 72

General Medical Council 280, 303

Gibson 51

Gilovich, Thomas 227

Global Forum for Health Research 187

GM food 222, 290, 291

GMTV 142

Google 124

Gould, Stephen Jay 236

GP Research Database 296

GP’s 76, 250

Gracely 74

Graham, Sylvester 113

Gray, Muir 99

Grazia Magazine 156

Great Ormond Street Hospital 281

Greenhalgh, Professor 188

Grunenthal 269

Gryll & Katahn 73

H2O2 25

Hadacol 114-5

Hahneman, Samuel 29

Hawthorne effect 139

Health Products for Life 175

heart attack 239-42

heart surgery 217

Helmont, John Baptista van 48

Hepatitis B 275, 277

Herceptin 205

hiding harm 199

Higher Nature pills 165, 174

Hildebrandt 48

Hill, Austin Bradford 217-8

Hinduism 11

HIV 203, 252-4

Holford, Patrick 93, 109, 156, 161-180

Homeopathy 28-62, 67, 82, 171, 228, 293, 316

.angry homeopaths 61-62

.Boiron 59

.Boots the Chemist 32

.clinical trials 42-59

.dilution 33

.Forbes, Sir John 36

.James Randi 35

.memory of water 34-36

.placebo 58

.Press Complaints Commission 36, 61

.’proving’ 31

.’succussion’ 29-30

.Thompson, Dr Elizabeth 60-61

.what is homeopathy? 29

Hopi ear candles 6

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) 108

horny goat weed 114, 122

Horrobin, David 157-9

House of Lords 171

hydrobase 21

hydrogen peroxide 25

Hydrolysed X-microprotein nutricomplexes 23

Hygiene Hypothesis in MS 222

I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that 96,100, 105

Ibuprofen, see also Nurofen 241

Institute for Optimum Nutrition 161, 174, 177

Institute of Medicine 295

Ionnidis, John 219

IQ 166, 221, 305

Islam 11

ITV 142, 162, 175, 291

Jadad score 52-54

Jainism 11

Jamal, Dr Goran 158

Jariwalla, Dr Raxit 163-4

Jenner, Edward 276

Johnson, Alan 72

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16

Journal of Medical Virology 302

Jurin, James 275

“Just Say No” 246

Kano, Nigeria 265

Kawashima Paper and MMR 283, 301

Kelliher, Adam 143

Kelliher, Catehrine (nee Horrobin) 159

Kellog, John Harvey 113

kidney dialysis 217

Knightley, Philip 270

Knipschild, Paul 97-8

Kocher, Theodore 64

Krigsman, Arthur, Dr 222, 299, 301, 304

Kruger, Justin 268

Laboratory of the Government Chemist 243

Lancet – see The Lancet 56, 80

Laryngoscope Medical Journal 6

Lawson, Nigella 290

LeBlanc, Dudley J 114-5

Lee-Potter, Lynda 290

Leicester University 263

Lewis, Dr David 210

life expectancy 132, 309

Liverpool John Moores 210

Lombroso, Cesare 145

London – MMR vaccination rate 306

London Homeopathic Hospital 83

London School of Economics 211-2

Long, Huey 115

Loratadine 185

lumbar puncture 281

lung cancer 218

MacFadden, Bernard 114

Magaziner, Howard 127

Malysewicz, Dr Christopher 262-72

manufacturing doubt 109

Marx Brothers 115

McBride, William 270

McKeith, Gillian, Dr, PhD 112-135, 223, 273

Meadown, Roy, Sir 254-7

measles 308, 310, 316

Medical Journal of Australia 306

Medical Research Council 296, 299

medicalisation of social problems 84, 152-4, 207

meningiitis 309

Merck 201-2, 204, 293

mercury fillings 305

metabolism 10

me-too drugs 185

MHRA 114, 122

microcellular complexes 26

Minogue, Kylie 306

MMR 84,92, 222-3, 234, 267, 289, 270-314, 318, 319

Moerman, Daniel 66-7, 80-1,

moisturiser – how to make at home 22

Monsanto 293

Montgomery & Kirsch 70

Moore, Suzanne 290

morphine 216

Mozambique 11

MRC Centre for Nutrition in Cancer Epidemiology 240

MRSA 261-272

Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial 130

multiple sclerosis 222

mumps 308-9, 311-3

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence 182, 205

Nature Journal 103-4

Nazis 218

Neuroscience, use as persuasion 17

New England Journal of Medicine 198, 201, 202, 307

New York School of Medicine 299

New York Times 307

Newsweek 115

NHS 295, 313, 317

North Karelia Project 131

Nurofen, see also Ibuprofen 69, 82

Nutrileum Complex 22, 26

Nutritionists 86-111, 161

.alcohol 91-2

.Holford, Patrick 93, 161-180

.laboratory research 93-6

.McKeith, Gillian 112-35

.olive oil 92

.wrinkly skin 92

O’Leary 301, 304

Oliver, Jamie 151

Olivieri, Nancy 203

Omega 3 & 6 133-4, 136-60

Ondansetron 199

open trial 140

Optimum Nutrition Bible 162-180

oxidation, efficient relaxed functioning 15

pancreatitis 309

Parkinson’s disease 79

Pauling, Linus 97-8

Pavlov’s dog 79-80

Peckham Report 308

peer review 221

Penicillin 66

Peniscope 114

Peto, Richard 103, 105

Pharmaceutical Industry 183-206

Philips, Melanie 298

Picardie, Justine 294

pill solves complex social problem 152

Pinsent 51

Pirsig, Robert 225

Placebo effect 18, 31, 37-38, 58, 63-85, 106, 138, 150, 189, 319

.animals 80

.angina 71

.different colours of pill 68

.explanations of 75

.ethical placebo 83-5

.exercise 72

.gem therapy 72

.headache 69

.London Homeopathic Hospital 83

.pacemakers 72

.Parkinson’s disease 79

.route of administration 69

.sham ultrasound 70

.sugar pill 78

.tying arteries 71

.Trivaricaine 70

Plato 18

polio 217, 277

Portwood, Madeleine Dr 141, 143, 146-7, 149

Press Complaints Commission 36, 61, 179, 320

primrose oil 158

Prince Charles 84, 250

productivity and light levels 139

Progenium XY Complex 21-27

Prosser, Karen 314

psychiatric patients and violence 252-4

publication bias 195, 200

PubMed 301

Purba, MB 90

Purves, Libby 290

Pusztai, Dr Arpad 222, 266, 291

pyroligneous acid 8

Qlink pendant 175-6

Quesalid 77

Radio Times 116

Randi, James 35, 258

Randomness 226

Reagan, Ronald 246

Regenium XY technology 22

regression to the mean 38-40, 228

Reid, John 266

Reuters 304

Richard and Judy 208

risk – relative & absolute 240

RNA 301-4

RoC Retinol Correxion 22

Roche 109

Royal Air Force 106

Royal Colleges 295

Royal College of General Practioners 283

Royal Free Hospital 277, 279, 289

Royal Pharmaceutal Society 157

Royal Society 241, 300

Rubella 280, 309

Russell Group 214

Sainsburys 110

Savage 51

Schering-Plough 185, 204

Schwitzer, Gary 307

Science in the media 207-224

Scientific American 276, 313

Scientific Method 225

Scolnick, Edward 202

Scottish Herald 122

shamanism 77

Shang 56,57

Shattock, Paul, Dr 299

skunk, see also cannabis 243

Sky News 162

smallpox – anti-vaccine movement 275

Smeeth 296-7

Smith, Dr Richard 167

Snow, John 105

social anxiety disorder 153

Soil Association 112

Spock, Dr Benjamin 108

Sports Illustrated jinx 39

SSRI antidepressants 190, 198, 202

St Mary’s Hospital 5

stastics 239-260, 308

statistical analysis 192-3

sterility 309, 312

Stevenson, Paul, Dr 210

Straten, Michael van 87-8, 93-4

struck by lightning 258

Stryer (textbook) 100

succussion 29

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) 254-7

Summerbell, Carolyn, Dr 172

surrogate outcome 95

Sykes, Kathy 64

Tasmanian Aboriginals 213

Teen Talk Barbie 27

Temple, Jack 286-7

Tenseur Peptidique Vegetal 22, 23, 26

Thalidomide 269

THC (Tetrahydrocannibol), see also cannabis 243

The Daily Express 93, 142

The Daily Mail 86, 110, 136, 141, 149, 175, 209, 210, 241, 282, 287, 294, 298

The Daily Mirror 2, 89-90, 142, 143, 241, 246, 263

The Daily Telegraph 2, 110, 178, 209, 210, 213, 214, 215, 246, 250, 252, 288, 294, 300, 301

The Evening Standard 241, 267

The Guardian 124, 141, 148, 179, 282

The Independent 41, 209, 242-6, 282

The Independent on Sunday 164

The Lancet 56, 80, 169, 174, 270, 277, 280, 301

The Media 320

The Metro 213

The News of the World 263

The Observer 141, 156

The Scotsman213

The Sun 124, 142, 213, 263, 282

The Sunday Mirror 266, 267

The Sunday Times 2, 156, 164, 270, 280

The Times 24, 82, 142, 175, 222-3, 246, 288, 301

Thiomersal 275

Thompson, Dr Elizabeth 60-61

Tonight with Trevor MacDonald 162

Tony Blair 275, 292

toxins 2-3

Toys’R'Us 265

Tramer, Martin 199

Trivaricaine 70

trypanosomiasis 187

tuberculosis 216

turmeric 93, 96

Tuskegee Syphilis Study 66

United Nations Drug Control Program 243

University of Bedfordshire 178

University of Cambridge 240

University of Luton 177

University of Surrey 210

University of Teeside 162, 169, 170

vaccine – MMR 270-314

Valmont Cellular DNA Complex 24

Vaseline 21

Veet Hair Removal Cream 214

Viagra 153

Victoria Health 156

VIGOR trial 201

Vioxx 201-2, 293

Vita-Long 115

vitamins

.vitamin A 22, 106

.vitamin B 166

.vvitamin C 22, 93, 97-8, 134, 163-4, 166-8, 180

.vitamin E 104-7, 169

.vitamin industry 109

vita-niacin 22

Voltaire 38

Vorderman, Carol 290

Wakefield, Andrew 223, 273, 279-82, 289, 293-4, 299, 300, 314, 318

Warwick, Kevin, Dr 208

water Absorption into brain 13

water Memory of 34-36

Weber, Richard, Professor 214-5

Wells, HG 212, 242

Westminister – MMR vaccination rate 306

wild pink yam 114,122

Wilson, Dr Peter 264

winning streaks 227

Winston, Sir Robert 142

Winterson, Jeanette 82

Wolf, Dr Stewart 78-9

Wolpert, Professor Lewis 220

Women’s Health Initiative 130

Women’s Own 142

World Bank 11

World Health Organisation 188, 276-7

WPP 216

Yellow Card system 186, 270

Yom Kippur 11

Zammo 246

Zig-Zag Production Company 64

Zubieta 79

—————————–

***Important: This is an unofficial index which has been created without the knowledge or permission of the author of the book, Ben Goldacre, or the publishers, so any errors are entirely my own. Indeed if it represents any kind of copyright infringement, then someone better let me know. However, I would hope the publishers would take the view that this, if anything, promotes the book and would generate interest in it’s content. That would be my hope, anyway.

Anyone else can link to this or the Word Doc download. If you choose to distribute it yourself, it would be nice to get a mention as it was a fair bit of work!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you spot any errors, corrections or have any suggestions for improvement, this is very much a first draft!