Welcome to H&C,,, where I aggregate news of interest. Primary topics include abuse with "the church", LGBTQI+ issues, cults - including anti-vaxxers, and the Dominionist and Theocratic movements. Also of concern is the anti-science movement with interest in those that promote garbage like homeopathy, chiropractic and the like. I am an atheist and anti-theist who believes religious mythos must be die and a strong supporter of SOCAS.
Dumb ass me forgot to include the for shit and giggle URLs. In other words, more information if you choose to delve further in. Instead of adding on to original post, I have made a separate one because of length. I hope to touch on Kerri Rivera next week.
These are in no particular order nor is this list exhaustive. There is much good information available, this is just some that I have found.
If you notice, in the comments, a reliance on the notion of acid/alkaline theory of disease. Simply put diseases can't live in an alkaline environment. This same premise is behind the diet.
Similar to the Project Camelot video noted in the main article; Jim Humble and the MMS narrative. Notice where he say his Ministers of Health "expect donations if they succeed" [11:20 mark].
Debunk
MMS Debunked (Regretfully this site nor YouTube channel have remained active.)
The comments on this are just so special, typical MMS apologetics.
Since 2010, Health Canada has issued seven health warnings for MMS.
The mixture — also sometimes known as Chlorine Dioxide Solution (CDS) — is being used in some cases by parents who are looking for a way to "cure" their children of autism.
"We have several case studies that have been published of people that have consumed sodium chlorite and had very serious side effects, including renal failure," said Lynda Balneaves, the director of the Centre of Integrative Medicine at the University of Toronto, which tests alternative medicines for safety and efficacy.
This comment says it all, "So We Have An Ex Scientologist Who Claims He's From Another Planet, A Mother With Absolutely No Medical Knowledge And A Make Shift Doctor With A Fake Degree Telling Us We Need To Rid Our Bodies Of Parasites And Diseases Like Cancer, Autism And Arthritis By Drinking Industrial Grade Bleach And Using It As An Enema And Photographing The Results Of Each Toilet Break To Check And Get Rid Of These Parasites??" [sic]
Connection to Rivera
Although not Humble, it is on his forum for the G2C. Much like the Christian Revisionists prefer to cite the Declaration of Independence, these apologists cite patents; like they mean something. From 2012,,,
If the medical establishment diagnosed my son or daughter with Autism, the only documentary I’d be producing is the one that handed neurotoxic needle-pushing poison peddlers their backsides. I’d then be off to looking under every rock for my child’s cure (because I know they wouldn’t be); and if I found it, I’d produce another documentary that handed them their frontsides. This would be my only mission in life - if my son had Autism.
,,,
Much unlike Drezner, we will be contacting the parents of the children that have reportedly made significant improvements using MMS, and we are currently collecting case by case clinical data showing MMS does what those singing its praises claim.
The thought crossed my mind; who’s underwriting Drezner, someone with ties to the FDA or Big Pharma? In a huge effort to not allow myself to be given over to absolute speculation like Drezner, I will wait and report my findings when they become factual.
Please note I have only linked, to videos to avoid any extraneous trouble.
So last week we kind of dibbled and dabbled around the edges of Jim Humble's, Genesis II church. This week we are gonna dive in head first. I want you to see how dangerous these people are. I want you to see that these "believers" are talking ingesting, as well as giving enemas, of a known dangerous chemical(s) to their autisticchild(ren).
This according to the G2C, I want you to pay attention to their usage of words. This is just one paragraph concerning whether MMS is bleach.
MMS (drops of chlorine dioxide mixed with water) is not a bleach. Every single chemical known to man can be poisonous when taken in too large of quantities,,, I am very very sorry that no scientist or scientific laboratory has ever written up and signed a scientific paper stating that MMS is not a bleach. The fact is, no laboratory ever thought that it would be necessary to come out and say that. It never occurred to any of them that someone would be dumb enough to start calling dilute solutions of chlorine dioxide a bleach. (Industrial strength Chlorine dioxide solutions has absolutely nothing to do with MMS.) MMS is only a few drops of Chlorine dioxide (or even just Sodium chlorite) diluted in plenty of water – it simply does not have the potential to bleach anything at all. That is ridiculous - to push the idea that MMS is a bleach, as no one has ever used MMS for a bleach. [Internal citation removed]
Now for shits and giggles, and I have noted this before, "Chlorine dioxide is mainly used as a bleach. As a disinfectant it is effective even at low concentrations, because of its unique qualities."
Oops,,, although not a "scientific paper" it is a statement on a company website that consults and provides "water treatment solutions" for various entities.
And some FYIs:
1] The PDF document cited by G2C - Chapter 4: Chlorine Dioxide, "Alternative Disinfectants and Oxidants, EPA Guidance Manual" - does not in any manner speak to CD/MMS not being a bleaching agent. It discusses CD's relevance as a comparison to chlorine, a member of the halogen group, as well as a oxidizer in industrial settings, primarily water treatment and as a disinfectant.
2] No where, in any anti-MMS material, has CD been equated to household bleach (sodium hyperclorite or NaOCl) BUT MMS or CD is a bleaching agent. Bleach is defined as a chemical substance that removes color, whitens and disinfects, often by oxidation. So yes, CD is a bleach, it just is not household bleach; contrary to what G2C states.
,,,but the woman that has been parading out the data and idea that MMS is a bleach, is making those statements like she knows what she is talking about - and therein is the lie. She doesn't know what she is talking about and thus she is trying to sell us with the idea that her opinion is the truth. And that is the lie. No one has ever used MMS as a bleach, as it cannot possibly bleach anything. But she says everything with such confidence, that she knows when she cannot know. Something that cannot do what a bleach should do, cannot be a bleach.
3] "I hope you understand this point, because one woman assumed for some unknown reason that MMS is a bleach - thereby causing irreparable harm to many people by continuing to push the idea, as there will be those with autistic children that will walk away without giving their children a chance to be cured this way." [Internal citation removed]
Well Jim, this is all I have to say,,, As Emily has easily shown if it looks like bleach, smells like bleach and acts like bleach,,,guess what? It's bleach!! If you force your autistic child to drink it and/or endure an enema, you are guilty of child abuse!
4] Dose does make the poison. Remember in last weeks episode I mention Rivera making a batch of 3000ppm CD solution. Remember as well that I mentioned that CD has many industrial uses, some of which we do ingest. What I left off, residential tap water can contain up to 0.8 ppm of chlorine dioxide. "However, the variable strength of the mixture is one of the two large drawbacks to using MMS. You should not need a degree in chemistry to be able to safely use an over the counter supplement,,,"
Autism cannot be cured. Evidence is building that while autism has both environmental and genetic causes, genetics play a predominant role. Shortly after scientists linked high-confidence genes with low functioning autism, I wrote a piece called Sorry Dr. Oz and Jenny McCarthy: More scientific proof vaccines, GMOs don’t cause autism. From that article:
“[S]cientists have now linked mutations in over a hundred genes to autism in two recent studies published in Nature. Unlike the heritable variants I mentioned, about 30 percent of those found in these studies are de novo mutations, meaning they occurred either within the sperm or egg cell from which the baby was conceived, or early in embryonic development. In conjunction with inherited variants, these de novo mutations appear to contribute to causing the more severe, lower IQ autism symptoms on the ASD spectrum. Higher-functioning autism seems to be influenced by inherited variants rather than de novo mutations. Notably, many disease-causing mutations are recessive, meaning that a child must inherit two defective copies, one from each parent. Interestingly, autistic individuals with any of six of the strongest causal variants are heterozygous, meaning they only inherited a defective copy from one parent.”
Even more recently, a study of hundreds of identical versus fraternal twin pairs suggests that heritability of autism ranges from 56% to 95%. While this doesn’t eliminate the role of environmental contribution to autism, it sure as hell corroborates the fact that YOU CAN’T BLEACH AWAY AUTISM. [Internal hyperlinks removed]
FYI:: GcMAF is a topic unto itself and one I may tackle sometime in the near future.
Two, although MMS is touted as a "cure all" for every disease known to man (via a statement attributed to Jim Humble), my focus is only on its use to "cure" autism.
This breakthrough can save your life, or the life of a loved one. In 1996, while on a gold mining expedition in South America, I discovered that chlorine dioxide quickly cured malaria. Since that time, it has proven to restore partial or full health to hundreds of thousands of people suffering from a wide range of disease, including cancer, diabetes, hepatitis A, B, C, Lyme disease, MRSA, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, malaria, autism, infections of all kinds, arthritis, high cholesterol, acid reflux, kidney or liver diseases, aches and pains, allergies, urinary tract infections, digestive problems, high blood pressure, obesity, parasites, tumors and cysts, depression, sinus problems, eye disease, ear infections, dengue fever, skin problems, dental issues, problems with prostate (high PSA), erectile dysfunction and the list goes on. This is by far not a comprehensive list. I know it sounds too good to be true, but according to feedback I have received over the last 18 years, I think it’s safe to say MMS is able to overcome most diseases known to mankind.
I will specifically be looking at Kerri Rivera as she is the main proponent with claims stating her protocol is responsible for 214 children cured. A past headline speaker for Autism One who fancies herself a "bio-med" consultant, she advocates through her book and lectures for MMS use.
,,,Let’s take Ms. Rivera at her word that approximately 40 children out of 400 families did indeed lose their autism diagnoses. This in no way implies that the bleach did it. Autism, after all, is a condition of developmental delay, not developmental stasis [dead URL]. As many as 19% of children diagnosed with autism at age two lose their diagnosis before their seventh birthday, either due to maturation, intervention, or over-diagnosis at age 2; so even if Ms. Rivera is not deluding herself about all these “recoveries,” what she is presenting is nothing spectacular that couldn’t be achieved by doing nothing at all outside of the mainstream. Yet she pours bleach down children’s throats and pumps it into their colons and then congratulates herself for results that could easily be achieved without MMS,,,
Three, l don't give two flying fucks what this "church" believes. Keep it in the privacy of your home with consenting adults, you could fuck a tree for all I care; go off-grid, and shit in the woods. BUT the second you hatch a little one, all bets are off. Just as I, and many others, have issues with "faith healing" you bet your sweet ass I'm not gonna say nice things about you or your little cult. There is no peer reviewed, scientific evidence to support your stance. Regardless of whether your cult leader is "very very sorry that no scientist or scientific laboratory has ever written up and signed a scientific paper stating that MMS is not a bleach." Science trumps your "logic" every time.
You know this crap is shit, yet in your delusion you have chosen to ignore the science whether for profit (and I'm not so nice to believe you are some sheep led astray or that you are being exploited) or to alleviate your guilt - your child is not injured or damaged, so stop parrotingJenny McCarthy.
And in that moment I died, but I also knew he was right. That was that mommy scary instinct going, “Yes, this is part of my journey, and this man is telling me the truth, and I need to do something,” which was pretty much cry in a ball, because he had no direction for me. It was just: “I’m sorry, he has autism, and there’s not a lot you can do. There’s some therapies, behavior therapies, but I’m sorry.”
,,,
The first time I heard about the vaccine and autism connection was a month before Evan received his MMR shot. And I walked into my pediatrician’s office during the MMR time and said: “I don’t want Evan to have this shot. I’m really scared. It was in Time magazine. Parents are really concerned that this is the autism shot.”
And he got very angry at me — very, very angry — and swore at me and said: “It’s just parents’ desperate attempt to blame something. Has nothing to do with it.” My instinct was screaming, “No,” yet my husband, who was with me, wanted it. So he signed the paperwork to get the MMR. I couldn’t even do it. And that’s when the train kind of started to regress with Evan.
Having autism, is not the end of the world, nor is it a "holocaust".
They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country,' Kennedy added.
It is the last point I would like to focus on ATM before delving into the cult mind-think. There two thoughts that abound in this CD cult, and they loosely fall within the parameters of a child being injured or damaged.
One, "you (the parent) do not love your child; if you did, you would do anything to cure your child." The second being the notion that death is better than having an autistic child. It is the denial that ASD is a lifelong disorder with "peaks and valleys" attributing any success in the growth and maturity autistic children is due to this miracle cure. With therapy and age these kids can learn better behavior and communication. Shoving a bleaching agent up their ass only teaches avoidance. Abuse a child long enough and they will try to avoidwhatever causes the abuse by any means necessary. [64,73]
In a bit of irony, parents who love their children will latch on to most anything that gives them hope of alleviating their children's suffering, or the suffering they experience watching their children with whatever ailment. This is what charlatans like Rivera, Humble, Kalcker and others rely on to make their millions.
Think it is not abuse or a form of Pavlovian behavior modification, think again.
(Bear in mind hidden within this POV is the belief that anything but genetics plays a role and that autism is a developmental delay not stasis. Children do progress as they get older. This view of delay has a mixed reception among the AV crowd and is not accepted by all. I am also aware that more needs to be done for ASD adults, that is an argument for another day.)
Years ago, when Charlie was little, my husband and I accepted that not only would he be autistic for life — autism isn’t something you just grow out of — but also that he will need caregivers all of us his life, that he will not go to college, get married, have children. Taking care of Charlie requires a lot of energy — he and my husband ride at least 12 miles a day on their bikes and Charlie and I put in a few miles of walking and running every day, rain and shine. I noted a number of special events at Autism One (“Spa Night,” “Dad’s Night Out“) meant to help parents “relax” because they “deserve it” (they do). While Charlie’s life is limited and his challenges many (he talks only a little and does not seem able to read, though lately we’ve seen a tiny flurry of progress in this area), we see no need to “expunge” — to bleach out — the autism from him. Charlie is never a burden and his being autistic is no tragedy: Hope dawns every day for us as we see him grow up and become the young man, the individual, that he is.
What is truly baffling in all this, “Healthcare fraud is a huge business in the US, and parents of children with autism are often targeted. Fringe treatment providers prey on desperation and fear, and deceive parents with numerous unfounded claims.” Humble's book is full of them, as is Rivera's. The fence sitters or "at wits end" parent I can sorta understand and have mixed feelings.
A mild example that advocates of this crank with standard talking points
It is the peddlers of this shit that show up in the comments, or those who ignore all the science when presented, I have issue with. It is one thing to have questions or seek answers, it is another to deny science based on a homeopath's say so and that is all Kerri Rivera is. Remember neither she nor Humble are trained in any related field.
Children with autism go through peaks and valleys with their behavior, and any child can eventually improve. If the treatment actually worked, these autistic children should be cured, but this isn’t the case, and when the child exhibits bad behavior the parents are encouraged to give a “double dose” of CD, which is a ten drop maximum into a 500 mL to 1 liter of water, well over the limit of what the FDA rules is safe for human ingestion. And perhaps the good behavior after the treatments are just signs of fatigue brought on by intense dehydration due to diarrhea, is this what a loving parent considers success?
But of course, Rivera cleverly absolves herself should anything go wrong. At the bottom of her website, it plainly states that she isn’t a professional and parents assume full responsibility for their own children, even if they act on her advice.
I have only briefly touched about this area of concern. What clinched it for me was these two comments from about a year ago. (Yes, I have been saving this for over a year.) It is an attitude that is becoming more prevalent today and it pains me.
(Although the originating post is public and from a public figure, I have chosen to remove the names from the comments. A current check of the posting shows that one individual has removed said comment.)
With both thoughts, a very important question that needs to be asked, "why do autistic people need to suffer so fucking outrageously before anyone notices? Is it because many of them are too young or non-verbal to stand up for themselves?" Hopefully it is something I can shed some light on in the next section.
If this all sounds a little cultish, that's because it is. MMS was "discovered" by a man named Jim Humble, a former Scientologist who started his own church, called Genesis II, of which he is now the self-styled Archbishop. The church appears to be little more than a marketing organ for his alleged miracle cure, though it's worth noting that the site doesn't sell the actual wonder product it extolls [sic], but offers a host of supplementary materials like a $199 "MMS Home Video Course" and information on expensive MMS seminars.
The article continues,
If Humble is the pater familias of this wolfpack [sic] of chicanery, a woman named Kerri Rivera seems to be its den mother. A bishop in Humble's church, Rivera is the author of a book titled Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, in which she recommends giving autistic children "hourly doses" of chlorine dioxide and advocates chlorine dioxide enemas as a way to "kill pathogens in the brain."
I have had a hard time putting together a short bio of the "creator" of MMS and the G2C. It is hard to take anything this man says seriously when in 2011 he propagated a newsletter stating the FBI had a "kill order" for his life and the science is so flawed. He is a promulgator of some out there narratives and lacking any reference point, fact checking is virtually impossible.
On the other hand fact checking some of his more ardent detractors have also proved difficult. For the sake of sanity, there are some questionable highlights in his past that will be ignored, none of which at time of this writing I can confirm or deny. That aside, my interest really is the creation of this so-called church and the dubious scientific claims made. The woo I have traveled through in putting this together has been quite interesting to say the least. [Transcribed from interview noted below.]
I like to believe that I’m a highly spiritual guy but not religious. I believe that uh, that the more spiritual a person is, and the more he looks into doing the things that he knows is right to do, the more power he has. I believe that in the whole movement towards a better health movement, towards making people well who are sick, which is totally against what the medical people are doing nowadays, but I believe the more people work towards right things, the more power they have.
,,,
What’s happening to me in a sense is, people are showing up to talk to me about powerful things. I’m not free to discuss most of them but I think we are on the edge of a paradigm change in the healing industry and I think that change will happen in the next very few years.
,,,
These things weren’t happening 10-20 years ago. Believe me the paradigm shift is coming, because there are a lot of people on Earth now that are beginning to do what they know is right.
,,,
In the past, many millions or thousands of years ago; there was a group of us who agreed to be here and work on that paradigm shift (CP: I’m one of those too!) – a lot of people! I’m meeting them, people calling me on the phone…
It's actually a decent interview but one that needs to listened to with a discerning ear, notice the anti-government/anti-pharmaceutical angle throughout. [You will notice the commonality to Hovind's mind-think in this area.] The bad science, well I just ignore that since I have dealt with it before. At about the 54:00 minute mark, and this is a point that many detractors harp upon in defending science, listen to his explanation as to why no clinical studies. It boils down to basically this one line.
Yes there’s a possibility but I discourage that! I’ve had chances – people have asked me if I wanted to do that and I have discouraged it because we have been a grass-roots movement from the very beginning. We’ve been very successful in being a grass-roots movement and when I say grass-roots I mean below the governments’ radar. They haven’t been aware of us.
I had one of my friends check with the FDA the other day, he went in and went to the third man in control in the FDA and asked him about MMS – what do they think about it? The guy said “well that’s just crap, we don’t worry about things like that. We have these multi-million dollar corporations that are furnishing herbs that are replacing some of the drugs and we have, we have a lot of, we don’t have enough money to control them” he said, “why are we gonna worry about some guy down in the street selling MMS!”
So they aren’t aware of what MMS will do, aren’t aware of what’s happening. I want to leave it that way.
I
don’t want the governments and the various different drug companies
finding out about it. I’ve had chances to go in national newspapers and
one or two chances to go on national TV and I’ve always rejected it,
although I’m happy to go on the internet and I’ve had a lot of different
internet attention.
I didn’t wanna get it spread out so much
that the government’s gonna get their hand in it – because you know what
they do, they stop, they stop whatever they can. So I’ve been avoiding
that.
Eventually it’s gonna come, though, eventually the news is gonna get out, but I’m gonna wait as long as I can on that.
Around the 32:00 minute mark, Humble mentions the healing hands BS. Can we say Reiki or energy healing.
PC: Because you were a threat to the power struggle?
Maybe.
One woman came to me with pain in her hands. She put her hand on mine
and I said ‘can you feel my fingers?’… ‘oh! the pain’s going away, I can
feel the tingling’. A missionary came in and said stop it, stop it… she
decided I was evil.
I developed a technique for healing by
touch. The basic theory is that the brain controls all the healing in
your body so if you can increase the communication between the brain and
the area that’s bad, it will heal faster. In minutes sometimes… a
little bit like reiki but not really!
but notice he blames the ever elusive pathogen which is absurd. Diabetes is a metabolic disorder, not one "caused" by a infectious agent. This is one reason why this man's science can not be taken seriously. He does not fucking know what he is talking about.
This is but some issues I have surrounding Humble's so-called church. While I do not think ingesting a bleaching agent wise, I could give two shits what an adult does to their own bodies. It is when they go to the extremes suggested by Kerri Rivera, who I hope to highlight next week, I have issue with. While he doesn't quite advocate, although that view may change, Humble does support her work.
[Note: please be advised that some of my information is quite dated but still relevant. As I dig more into Rivera next week, the dialogue may change. I have noticed that Humble does follow a script of sorts in touting MMS and very rarely mentions Rivera's protocol. Whether this is by design, I don't know. They do or did communicate although that may have changed since Rivera has jumped ship for GcMAF.]
On to the church,,,
The following is from a 2010 newsletter in which Jim Humble made a statement to the church when it was being formed. While Humble states he is "spiritual but not religious" and comes off as a humanitarian type in various interviews, the sole purpose of his "church" is to bypass the government.
In the first paragraph, he makes that quite clear:
He is using the notion of SOCAS to protect the money mill.
He continues, by stating again, that his church exists primarily to side-step tricky governmental interference, and POWER.
And finally, we have Humble's personal claim to power, his citing of some religious mumbo-jumbo.
To have the power of a church we need the legitimacy of the Church and that depends upon me. I was ordained in the lineage of Bishops traced all the way back to Christ. Actually, the apostles were Bishops, and they were given the power to create Churches and other Bishops by Christ,,,
In the end. IMO, all this for money and power. Humble is not the gentle confused old man who wants to do good. He is a conniving old man with a want for power and fame. He is a manipulator who has convinced desperate people to drink the kool-aid.
,,,they’re not selling the substance but simply spreading their religious values.
“As
long as I’m just telling you about it, it’s just education,” said
78-year-old Floyd Jerred, a bishop in the Genesis II Church of Health
& Healing, which has made the elixir the centerpiece of its
religion. “And if they do lock me up, I know how to do out-of-body
travel. I can go anywhere, see anything I want to see anyway.”
Its
pretty simple. You have the the right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. MMS is a way for those with severe disease to continue
with life and liberty… and when I say liberty I mean liberty from the
dicatates [sic] and controls of the Pharmaceutical industry and the AMA
and their death drugs and forced vaccination and water contamination
with fluroide [sic] and forced protocols of chemo, radiation and surgery
throught [sic] the hands of doctors trained in this deadly death
medicine.
Churches have a long history on providing
haven and protection to civil liberties and rights. In this case the
Genisis [sic] II,,,
I get asked, as a non-parent why I give a rats-ass about this issue. It's a multipoint answer but I will say this. I want to see the snake-oil salesmen like Humble and Rivera taken down a few pegs. In all honesty, they need to be in jail and all profits forfeited. All MMS and CD pushers, they're the ones making money off telling people to abuse their autistic children. They're the ones defrauding the public spanning 63 countries. So I think if enough awareness is raised, we will see people jailed and this pulled off the market.
This saddens me greatly. Instead of working to understand why children are as they are, instead of accepting them as precious beings in their own right, instead of educating ourselves, we resort to what would have been called witchcraft in earlier times,
_____
As some of may be aware of, I recently suffered a stroke to which I am now in recovery. It's slow going and I am looking at it as a new adventure.
Now I will admit there are many matters I am quite ignorant of because, well, it could never happen to me. Having a stroke and dealing with the aftermath is one of those issues. So off to Google I went (actually DuckDuck.go), to find basic information. And boy was that a trip,,,, Facebook was quite helpful as well, but for another reason, that is the topic of which I am going to rant about.
The internet can kill my friends, and the fact that it is allowed carte blanche boggles my mind; but that is a whole other topic.
So how helpful was FB, well we have this gem "Natural Remedies to Reduce High Blood Pressure in 5 Minutes". It starts out by stating, "One of the more dangerous diseases of modern age is the high blood pressure which is caused by increased stress, sleeps deprivation, obesity, salty food, smoking and increased consuming of alcohol."
No, no and no!! these are not causes but contributing factors. In "essential hypertension" which 95% of cases a HBP fall, the cause is UNKNOWN.
Might want to get proper medical advise as to what high blood pressure is because "the muscles get really tense, the blood vessels contract and the pressure increases" doesn't even begin to cover it. Your muscles have nothing to do with it.
As you might well guess, it devolves from there.
A second piece of medical woo was shared by a friend of the show with a warning for me to take my BP into consideration. It was a photo post of the "New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine" with all sorts of crap plastered on the cover, In response, I noted, "are they trying to kill their readers?"
Needless to say, I became quite irritated,,, Hell if I was in my old fundie days, I would most likely be dead or severely incapacitated,,, it's bad enough I'm a stubborn ox (it took Deb and friend of the show Dave Foda over three hours to convince me to go to hospital) but people don't need to be pushing this shit,,,
What I posted,,,
I'd be fucking dead if I relied on god,,, quit pushing shit before you kill someone. Recent stroke survivor saved by science not an imaginary sky fairy.
It was deleted within 24 hrs
As frustrating and galling as this situation is, there is hope. There are people actively combating this shit. People like Professor Stephen and Rachel Brown of AoA. Individuals like our very own Heretic Woman. But there are many professionals as well who blog daily about the dangers of bad science. Who take time from their careers as scientists, doctors and researchers to put forth useful, scientifically solid information for the lay public to devour. But the most important group are the ex-woomeisters and that is what I would like to highlight for a moment in closing.
Back home, I tried more alternative medicine for three more years before ending up in the ICU with acute kidney failure and out of control inflammatory bowel symptoms from all of the useless drugs and supplements I was ingesting without proper follow up with a qualified medical professional.
I decided that perfect health wasn’t possible for me, and decided to have the total colectomy. I had not fully transitioned out of my hatred for modern medicine and conspiracy mindset. I had just decided that I didn’t care about being perfect anymore. I just wanted to end the UC flares and eat food again. I agreed to the surgery and all of its risks.
Now I am healthy. Turns out, there’s this thing called a J-pouch, which I now have. I also finally got real help for my mental illness, too. I made friends who don’t moralize food choices and who accept me as I am. I got married to the best person on Earth.
I still have a very complicated relationship with food. Since my surgeries, I’ve allowed myself to eat an unrestricted diet in order to maintain emotional stability and so I ended up gaining a lot of weight.
I’d like to be thinner, but my mental well-being takes precedence. I have to let go of all of those memories of people complimenting me on how great I looked when I was obviously sick and painfully thin. I had to let go of how pious I felt when I was eating “right.”
Someday, I hope to get to a place where I can handle a real healthy lifestyle without conflating determination with obsession. And maybe…someday…women will be allowed to be fat.
Thankfully I never quite fell into that trap in my younger days. Yes I was vegan, but not for ethical reason, I just didn't like the taste of animal proteins. Yes, I dabbled in the woo, but science in the end always won out. Yes, it is an issue I still struggle with at times and the author of the above offered and explanation of why.
I'm certainly not the first to say this, but alternative medicine is a fundamentalist religion. It is the same sort of victim-blaming, life-shaming, sacrificial culture that my husband dealt with growing up in an evangelical church. We discuss our parallel experiences often. Alternative medicine is a salvation based religion, except that instead of an eternity in heaven, you get perfect health.
Just as we battle religious and political ideology so to must we battle the charlatans of science. Then maybe, just maybe, we won't have to read about people like Belle Gibson, who according to her mother are allowed to “tell little porky pies”.
Australian health and wellbeing blogger Belle Gibson gained a large online following and was due to release a Whole Pantry app and a book on the basis that she had treated her own terminal cancer by shunning medical treatments in place of a healthy diet and alternative therapies. She encouraged readers to lead healthier lives to beat cancer, rather than accepting medical treatment.
It was revealed earlier this year however that Gibson had never been diagnosed with cancer.
Her mother, Natalie Dal-Bello, has now defended her daughter’s actions in an interview with The Herald Sun. She said: “Belle told a white lie, aged 23-and-a-half. So what?
“Belle is allowed to tell little porky pies. Who the hell doesn’t tell a lie in their life? Nobody complained about Belle when she was helping people and now they want to put her under the microscope.”
Sorry to say Ms. Dal-Bello, most people that tell a lie, don't injure or possibly kill people in the process.
Concise and well presented. Some good counter points to the NARTH position that we all face in our battle with religionist,,,
Homosexuality is neither a mental illness nor is it a psychological issue which requires repair. This is the current crux of the issue between the vast majority of the scientific community and a very minor few who insist that further research is necessary. The current champion of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) is The NARTH Institute. Groups such as NARTH attempt to associate themselves with solid scientific rigor insomuch as they can use this association to further legitimize their cause, all the while bemoaning the fact that the vast majority of their field of study stands in stark opposition to them not because of the current scientific data, but because of the absence of sufficient evidence. NARTH columnist Matt Barbers calls them “Gay-Activist Science Deniers,” but NARTH (or anyone else) has yet to produce scientific evidence for anyone to deny. Anecdotal evidence, data derived from poor to abysmal methodology, and a total lack of statistically significant results carry no weight in the scientific community. Admittedly, aspects of SOCE treatments are grounded in legitimate science and psychology, but, elements of behavior therapy techniques that have been known to be successful in some therapeutic treatments are inappropriate in seeking to alter sexual orientation. Aversion therapy and sensitization/desensitization processes may have usefulness in other situations, but the literature indicates that it is simply unsuccessful in SOCE.
The formula they've concocted has been called the "15 per cent solution" by the Christian Coalition. Even in a well attended presidential election, only 15 per cent of eligible voters determine the outcome,,, "We don't have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us," Guy Rodgers, the Christian Coalition's national field director declared at the 1991 Road to Victory conference. Most of them are staying home and watching Falcon Crest."
One candidate is focused on the "real issues of - education, transportation, taxes." Whilst the other has chosen the road of hot button social issues, counting on that all important 15 percent.
Frey says he’s also talking about business and taxes. He says education is a particular passion, developed while working with then-state senator Michele Bachmann to defeat the “profiles in learning” education platform.
But when questioned about his position on social issues, Frey added that it “does certainly need to be addressed for what it is. It’s not about the gay agenda but about the science and the financial impact of that agenda. It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle.”
Frey then explained his view: “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it's the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”
(This explanation of AIDS has no scientific validity, but it may strike a familiar chord: It is essentially the same one given by Bob's son, Mike Frey, in testimony given before the House Civil Law Committee last year during the debate over gay marriage.)
Of the financial impact, Bob Frey says, “It’s about sodomy. It’s huge amounts of money. AIDS is a long term illness, causing pain, suffering, death, a long-term illness that’s very expensive to treat.”
Media outlets are starting to report on the reintroduction of "post-abortion syndrome" (PAS) and similar junk science that claims a causal link between abortion and mental illness, which is being used in a coordinated attempt to defend restrictive state abortion laws in court. Witnesses claiming abortion leads to mental trauma are being organized by the discredited psychotherapist Vincent Rue, whose theories about PAS were debunked by reporters and experts years ago.
