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Home >History > Front page updates April 2005
Updates made to The Millenium Project in April 2005
John Edward – get ready to puke (2/4/2005)
Pretend psychic John Edward, the man accurately described in the television show South Park as "the biggest douche in the universe", is about to give his stage show in Sydney. His latest claim to fame is that he communicated with Terri Schiavo before she died and she knew what was going on. People like to say that frauds like Edward do no harm and are just entertainment, but when they exploit tragedy 
for their own profit they are no better than criminals. Edward will be appearing on a high-rated television show next week to promote his books and show, so I sent the following email to the producers. I don't expect a sympathetic reply.
To: morningtalk @ nine.com.au
Subject: John Edward
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 10:44:53 +1000
I believe that fake psychic John Edward will be appearing with Kerri-Anne on Monday. Perhaps she could ask this repulsive creature to comment on his outrageous and disgusting claim that he was able to communicate with Terri Schiavo and report that she was "definitely clear on what's happening now around her".
http://mediamatters.org/items/200503250006
John Edward update (9/4/2005)
I received the following reply from the television show: "Thank you for your email, we appreciate your comments". Someone in the audience approached the show's host after the performance and asked if she would be interested in meeting people who could do Edward's cold-reading act and admit that it was a stage trick, not something mystical or spiritual. The host expressed surprise that such people existed but said that she would like to have them on the show sometime. Progress! By the way, she did ask Edward a general question about Terri Schiavo and Edward simply diverted the discussion nicely by saying that one should seek the services of grief counsellors if you are in need and psychics should be your last option. Right!
Pyramiders want me to get the point (2/4/2005)
Since I started paying more attention to the tautologically-described multi-level marketing scams I have been getting good advice about my ignorance, stubbornness and general loserness from many Independent Business Owners. All seem agreed that I know nothing, want to know nothing and have failed at MLM by never trying it. Here is a summary of this week's correspondence:
Speaking of Nobel prizes ... (2/4/2005)
I 
have commented in the past (see here and here) about the practice by people with no facts of claiming that their opponents secretly supported them but only admitted their apostasy on their deathbeds. Another version of this is a simple appeal to authority, usually accompanied by a spurious or doubtful quote. (You can see an example of this here.) I found an excellent example of this during the week, where James Watson is cited as an authority supporting the position that conventional treatments for cancer are all bad and the only answer lies in quackery. The quote appears in several places, but I found it on a site which is positively encyclopaedic in its infatuation with quackery. I knew it was a lie as soon as I saw it, but a true skeptic always looks for evidence rather than just trusting in instinct. Here is the quote:
Dr. James Watson won a Nobel Prize for determining the shape of DNA. During the 1970's, he served two years on the National Cancer Advisory Board. In 1975, he was asked about the National Cancer Program. He declared, "It's a bunch of shit."
I wrote to the people at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where Dr Watson has worked for the last few years. I received the following prompt reply:
I have confirmed that Dr. Watson did not say the quote below. Dr. Watson gave a lecture at MIT, March 1975, for The Academic Community and Cancer Research. He was misquoted in the New York Times, stating that the "National Cancer Program was a sham." His reference was actually to the National Cancer Plan, not the National Cancer Program, and the Times reporter later issued a retraction.
Hope this clears it up for you...
More on Amway (2/4/2005)
Here are two advertisements for comic strips available from Ucomics. Both are part of the Big Top series by Rob Harrell. You can see the full series here.
SkeptoBear's World Tour – Day Five (2/4/2005)
What would you do if you had a day free in Las Vegas and you were not a gambling person? SkeptoBear might be a gambling bear but he is smart enough to not go anywhere without his handlers in a strange city, so the day had to be spent in another way when they remembered that their home town has more gambling machines than the entire state of Nevada. What better way for a group of skeptics to fill in some time than to seek the evidence for the best and worst of the town? Read about the quest for class in Las Vegas here.
On the wireless (2/4/2005)
I will be on ABC Radio 774 in Melbourne with Derek Guille on Monday night, April 4, at about 7:45pm to discuss what I will be talking about at the Australian Skeptics 
public meeting later in the week. This news is probably only useful to people in Melbourne because ABC Radio 774 isn't streamed to the world yet and you have to listen with one of those old-fashioned radio devices. Here are the details of the meeting on Wednesday:
Every generation believes that it has invented everything, and the Internet generation is no exception. Scams like the Nigerian letters, snake oil sales, pyramid schemes, credit card fraud and even phishing (using false documents to get sensitive information) have been around for decades, if not centuries. The Internet just makes it easier for some scamsters to go about their business. On the other hand, it has also made it easier to expose some of them. This talk will be about how to identify scams, how to fight them, and how to laugh at how transparent some of them are.
Bill finds the Blog (2/4/2005)
The material from the front page of the Millenium Project is reproduced on a Blog. This is done to spread the word to a wider audience and to attract visitors back here to the main site. The Blog has come to the attention of Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group, who put on his Gutless Anonymous Liar mask to post some of his usual vacuous filth as comments. The name William reminded me of a great work of literature:
"In my Youth", father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
Hal's back! (2/4/2005)
One of the funniest racists and bigots on the 'net is back. Hal Turner seems to have overcome the financial problems which closed his web site and radio program last year, and he is back in business. You might ask 
why I find him funny when what he says is outrageous. It is because he is so over the top. If he were subtle he might be a danger, but anyone this foam-flecked can only be an object of ridicule, and I am just the person to do the ridiculing. Actually, ridiculing him is difficult, as he does such a good job of making himself look like a parody. Here is an example news item from his front page today:
RUMOR: CARDINALS MAY SELECT AN AFRICAN OR LATIN AS NEXT PONTIFF TO REACH OUT TO THE THIRD WORLD
If they do, it will rightly mean the total destruction of the Catholic Church
Non-Whites can never be Pope because they are not of God's Chosen; Jews have been trying to steal the title of "God's Chosen" for centuries, but those of us who understand the Bible know that only whites constitute God's Chosen. It says so in the Bible, Book of Genesis
Apology (9/4/2005)
The Millenium Project was unavailable for just under three hours on Friday, April 8. This was because the organisation hosting the site had been presented with a demand by an MLM company for removal of material from this site, exploiting a change to Australia's copyright laws which came into effect on January 1, 2005. The company did not contact me first, but there is no reason for me to expect courtesy from them anyway. Their claim was that certain material on this site violated their copyright and should be removed immediately. The hosting organisation acted properly in this case, and spent a week in negotiation with the company before notifying me of their intention to take down the site. They had no real choice in this matter as they did not want to leave themselves open to possible criminal charges. The take-down process has several stages, but unfortunately someone was a bit hasty and did everything at once and this meant that the site became inaccessible only 21 minutes after the notification to comply was emailed to me. I have since received an apology for the disruption and the site was back up literally within minutes of my informing them that I had made the necessary changes. At no time was any other part of the RatbagsDotCom site affected and nobody at OzHosting was anything other than helpful and sympathetic, including their legal representative. I know of other hosting organisations which would have had no hesitation in simply cancelling my account and shutting down the complete domain, and I would like to publicly thank everyone at OzHosting for the way they conducted themselves and their demonstrated commitment to customer service (and free speech).
It is possibly a coincidence that the attack on this site started about a week after the MLM company had been found by the Federal Court of Australia to be operating in breach of the anti-pyramid-scheme section of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
They can't stand the heat, want kitchen changed (9/4/2005)
The method chosen by the MLM company to attack my freedom of speech was to claim that I had breached their copyright by publishing materials which belonged to them. It is always encouraging when people react to criticism not by responding to the criticism but by trying to suppress the evidence which supports the criticism. It is doubly encouraging when they admit by their actions that the suppressed material is factual. If they own it and it is protected by copyright then they cannot deny its existence or legitimacy. This lesson was learnt by the criminal cult of Scientology when they simultaneously tried to argue that material published on the Internet was both a fabrication and a disclosure of trade secrets. It can't be both. When they finally decided on the trade secrets argument they were admitting to the validity of the documents.
Most of the company's alleged copyrighted material could be removed from this site without doing any damage to my criticism, but there were two issues which I would like to comment on further.
The first of these was a photograph of a building located in North Sydney. The photograph in the company's advertising material shows this building without any signs on its roof, although in reality there are two large neon signs advertising an insurance company. I am very pleased that the company has formally admitted, by their claim of copyright, that the photographs in their brochures do not show the building as it really is but have been modified to disguise the facts. Put simply – the company has stated that images which have been modified to hide the truth are their property and they use them to influence people who may potentially do business with them. I thank them for this, and for confirming my original claim that the advertising brochures were misleading. By the way, in a discussion I had with a lawyer about this the argument was raised that the company probably do not own the copyright for the image in question 
as it could be considered an original artistic work of whoever it was who digitally modified the photograph to remove the insurance company logos. In any case, all instances of the allegedly copyrighted image on this site have been replaced by my original work of art which can be seen at the right of the screen.
The second matter was a list of the first nine things that a new representative should do in order to firmly establish his or her "Global Enterprise". The company claimed that the material I had here had been taken from their web site, but it had, in fact, been downloaded from the personal web site of someone who was instrumental in setting up the scheme in Australia (and who was a co-respondent in an action brought against the company by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for apparent breach of the anti-pyramid-scheme provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974). It is quite normal for multi-level marketing organisations to pretend that web sites run by representatives are autonomous, thus giving them a form of plausible deniability for statements and claims made on those sites. It is good to see that this company is not trying to distance itself from the representative's site and are claiming it as their own. You can see some more about this here.
Pure filth (9/4/2005)
Today marks the start of Homeopathy Awareness Week, and the following appeared on a sign at the launch of this festival of farce in Sydney.
The boy whom Amy Lansky, PhD, claims to have cured of autism is her son. I have written to her in a kind and gentle manner with my views about people who treat their children's medical conditions with witchcraft.
To: lansky@renresearch.com
Subject: Your book about Max
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 18:51:43 +1000
Dear Ms Lansky,
I am writing to you under my policy of maintaining kind and gentle relationships with people with whom I do not necessarily agree.
Some people say that the lowest form of human life is that group of people who abuse children. I see that you are opposed to vaccination so you are ipso facto a child abuser even though that abuse may be vicarious.
There are actually two classes of people lower than vicarious child abusers or those who prey on the children of other people. The first of these are the people who abuse their own children. The extreme of badness, however, must be people who abuse their own children for profit.
People like you, who sell books proudly announcing that you have a sick child and that you are pretending to cure him with witchcraft. I cannot imagine anything more vile than someone who lies about their children to sell books and make money. It is bad enough that you should lie to the parents of autistic children and give them false hope about magic cures, it is bad enough that you tell them not to vaccinate their children and therefore leave them exposed to deadly and disabling diseases, but it is almost beyond belief that you would exploit your own son in order to sell your lying book. That you choose to suggest the idiocy of homeopathy just increases the evil, as you are not even suggesting something which might have a faint hope of success.
I would ask you how you sleep at night and how you face your reflection in the mirror without vomiting, but I realise that for people like you these are not problems. If you ever had a conscience it would have been thrown away at the sight of the first dollar.
At least the title of the book has some truth in it. It certainly is an Impossible Cure. I suppose that you will fall back on the literal meaning of the words if anyone takes your advice and finds that their child is not cured. You will be able to say "Didn't you read the title of the book? I said it was impossible".
Have a nice day. Millions of children who have died or been disabled by vaccine preventable diseases won't have that opportunity.
Dr Lansky replied to the above by assuring me that her son had really been cured of autism and that she made no money from her book (her website says that it is the number one best selling health book at Amazon.com). She then went on to lecture me about the effectiveness of homeopathy. Her response suggested that she is either too stupid or too self-opinionated to know when she is being insulted. As she has a PhD in computer science it is probably fair to assume that she is not stupid. Speaking of her PhD, an acquaintance of mine suggested to Dr Lansky that her mention of the degree in the context of a totally different intellectual field might be deceptive, and Dr Lansky replied that she only mentioned it to gain credibility. Perhaps she is stupid after all, if she can't see why this is a problem.
A bit more kind and gentle stuff (9/4/2005)
77% of the polio in the world is in Nigeria. The government plans to do something about this with a massive vaccination campaign.
To: vaccineinfo@tesco.net
Subject: Polio in Nigeria
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 17:57:36 +1000
Dear Ms Nakken,
"138 220 vaccinators will spread out across Africa's most populous country for four days" WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I know that the thought of all those Nigerian children with polio gives you a warm glow in the crotch, but do you have to be so enthusiastic about it in public?
SkeptoBear's World Tour – Day Six (9/4/2005)
The quest for the worst of Las Vegas continues. But can there be such a thing? Or is such a search simply a downwards spiral which reconnects with itself to become an endless loop like that Escher drawing of people walking on stairs? Would it be better for the small group of skeptics to take on a more feasible search, something with more chance of success? Squaring the circle, finding the real Holy Grail or detecting the science in Creation Science, perhaps? When time runs out, you take what you can get. Read the next chapter in the saga here.
Speaking of downward spirals ... (9/4/2005)
One of the tactics of supporters of multi-level marketing is to start off with an innocent question as if really seeking some advice and then to gradually reveal their true agenda. This is a form of lying, but it is not surprising that they tell lies because lying is an essential element of the MLM sales technique. Here is an example of this which is very short but illustrates the principle perfectly:
Email Number 1 – March 25:
USANA is not listed on your list what do you think of this Company ?
USANA was added to the list on June 26, 1999. It is a fraud, as are all MLM businesses.
Email Number 2 – March 26:
Why is it connected to Amway too. Usana is listed on the american stock exchange.
> Why is it connected to Amway too.
Same business, different products. An MLM scam is an MLM scam, so they get listed together.
> Usana is listed on the american stock exchange.
So what? So was Enron. The stock exchange doesn't care about the nature of a business, only that it is legal and meets exchange listing requirements.
Email Number 3 – April 3 (CCed to me and many other people – I was probably copied by mistake):
Hi,
I have a web site that sells nutritional, skin and health food products. Pharmaceutical grade products If you or any one is interested contact me or visit the secure site.
http://DecemberDecemberDecemberxxx.usana.com
The MLM company tries again, fails again (16/4/2005)
Yet again, a representative of an MLM company has attacked my right of free speech by demanding that "copyright" material be removed from this web site. Under a change to Australian copyright law passed late in 2004, the hosting ISP has no choice but to take down any allegedly offending material, whether or not copyright has been established. All that is necessary is for someone to say that something is copyright, and it is then up to the ISP and the web site owner to prove otherwise in court. This absurdity in the law was exploited by the MLM company this week when they claimed that something was copyrighted because it had been republished from their web site when in reality it had not been on their site at all but had been emailed to me by someone claiming to represent the company. This is a clear abuse of the law, and can only be interpreted as an attempt to harass both me and my hosting ISP. If they had any problems with copyright material on this site the time to mention it was in the first complaint, not in what appears to be a pattern of harassment by claiming a new infringement each week.
The material which they claim is covered by copyright was transmitted to me in an email by a person who was one of the people involved in the early stages of setting up the scheme in Australia and who in his first communication with me referred to himself as "a representative of " the company. Interestingly, simultaneously with saying that they needed to change things to become legal they also claimed that they had done nothing wrong. This sort of doublethink is common in the world of multi-level marketing.
The first line of the email said: "I'll be very pleased if we can get some accuracy on your site", and it then went on to reproduce an email which had been sent to company representatives in Australia. At the time he wrote to me, the writer was fully aware of the policy at this site of publishing any and all critical communications. It would be also reasonable to assume that someone saying "I'll be very pleased if we can get some accuracy on your site" and then providing some information would expect that information to be published. Now that the company is claiming that the information should not be made public one can only infer that they are ashamed of what it said or they would prefer that it not be read as it casts a bad light on them. What they cannot claim, now that they have asserted copyright, is that the email does not exist or that the words which were reproduced here from it misrepresented the message in any way.
An anniversary (16/4/2005)
April 15 was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. This was the day on which the true horror of the Holocaust was revealed to the world. Holocaust deniers will tell you that there is no evidence that any atrocities took place and that the whole story was made up to discredit the Nazis and to somehow profit Jews. You can go here to see a slide show of photographs taken in the camp in 1945 and also hear the words of journalist Richard Dimbleby as he describes what he saw. Deniers will reject his eye-witness testimony, of course, but what would you expect from liars. Never again.
Parents, Babies & Children's Expo (16/4/2005)
This event, which is described as Sydney's most popular parenting show, is on this weekend and I just couldn't stay away. In amongst all the stands promoting useful products and services for children and parents there were two which were not only promoting quackery but were also advising parents not to vaccinate their children. One was a collection of chiropractors offering sample neck twists and the other was a homeopathy stand selling water. I will have a full story about this here next week, complete with many violations of copyright where I reproduce some of the egregious lies in the brochures distributed by these charlatans. I would have some photographs as well, but my companion is not really familiar with his new digital camera yet and when we were accosted by the security people and told that there had been complaints by shy people about us capturing their images it turned out that there were no pictures in the camera at all. He is reading the manual so that he doesn't make the same mistake again.
Regurgitation time (16/4/2005)
During the week some old stories have risen to the top of the swamp again. One of my favourite entertainers, the late Mr Peter Allen, could not have put it better when he sang "Everything old is new again".
Advanced Allergy Elimination (16/4/2005)
On 
Thursday, April 14, the television current affairs program Today Tonight ran a story under the heading "New allergy treatment" which featured a form of quackery known as "Advanced Allergy Elimination". Not only was this nothing new, but the same quackery had been shown on a competing program (which airs at exactly the same time as TT each night) in September 2003. As this was 583 days after ACA ran the story I suppose it does constitute a "new" story in television current affairs world. I sent the following message to Today Tonight, but I don't really expect a reply.
I am amazed that you would run an advertisement for the obvious scam of AAE, particularly as the same story had run on A Current Affair in the past (September 2003).
Australian Biologics (16/4/2005)
A friend informed me that there was some sort of alternative medicine conference in Sydney during the last week and one of the speakers was a quack named Jennie Burke, who used to sell (and probably still does sell) 
scientifically unproven, worthless diagnostic tests. The entire content of her talk was apparently about how she had triumphed over the Australian Competition and Consumers Commission and the Australian Skeptics. Her victory over the ACCC can be seen in this media release, where it says "Australian Biologics and Ms Burke have agreed that these tests are not diagnostic tests and the results of such tests are not indicative of a specific medical condition". In the newspaper advertisements which Australian Biologics were required to run it said "There may be insufficient scientific and medical evidence to support all of these claims about our services. These tests are not diagnostic tests and the results of such tests are not indicative of a specific medical condition". Some victory.
I assume that by Australian Skeptics Ms Burke meant Professor John Dwyer (who first alerted the ACCC to her quackery) and me. Professor Dwyer is not now and has never been a member of Australian Skeptics (although he is a good friend of the organisation) but facts have never been of much use to the sort of people who promote useless medical quackery. Ms Burke's victory over me consisted of employing two law firms to threaten me, both of whom retreated when I quite reasonably asked them to produce the apocryphal published scientific papers which supposedly validated Ms Burke's ludicrous claims.
You can read the entire saga here.
Hillsong: An open book (16/4/2005)
I recently met someone who has been commissioned to write a book about my local Church of Mammon, Hillsong. She is (or at least, was) a member of the church. It is quite usual when writing books to contact any people who might be mentioned or who can provide information which allows a balanced view to be presented. The author wrote to Pastor Brian Houston to try to arrange some interviews with him. (The letter has been edited here only to remove the signature which would identify the writer.)
Dear Brian and Bobbie,
I hope this finds you well.
As you may be aware, I have recently been given the opportunity to write a book. My publishers, Allen & Unwin, have asked me to write a book on my experience growing up in Australia as the daughter of a Jewish mother and an English father, who both became born again Christians, and then Pentecostals.
The story is very much about what it is like to grow up in a small church, leave, only to come back and find that the church is anything but small and is now influencing governments and communities in a way that I believe is uniquely Australian.
The rumour mill, reliable as it may or may not be, has questioned me as to why I have not contacted you for an interview. My immediate response was that I had not wanted to waste your time — I am still trying to get my head around everything that's going on. However, I think it would be appropriate for us to meet, so that my attending Hillsong does not become an issue for anyone, particularly for you. Meeting with you would be an opportunity for me to extend a formal courtesy and to minimise unnecessary sparks from the rumour mill. To me it seems simplest for Hillsong members to know that the leadership are working with me directly, and thus they have nothing to fear.
Ideally, I would like to meet with you every month or two if your schedules allow over the next few months. This is a big work for me, and I have by no means begun to write. A one-off interview would not serve the personal purpose I am trying to achieve, any more than a one-off visit to Hillsong would depict the big picture.
Perhaps a cup of coffee in the next couple of weeks would be a good start. Look forward to hearing from you.
I have been told on several occasions that Hillsong is open to any investigation and has nothing to hide. (I always ask the defenders of the "church" to fax me a copy of the accounts. Nobody ever does.) Here is the response to a perfectly legitimate request to meet to clear the air and gather reliable information. Note that the reply did not come from Pastor Brian, but instead from someone with the title of "General Manager". Does your church have a General Manager? Probably not, but then your church could very well be a church, not a business enterprise.
Thank you for your email dated Friday 8th April 2005.
Your email has been forwarded to me, as we are aware that during your attendance at our recent Colour Your World Women's Conference you caused significant disruption to the meetings you attended.
It is for this reason that we ask you to refrain from attending any future Hillsong church services or events; including accessing Hillsong's land and premises at any time.
In relation to your request, Hillsong Church's leadership and staff are unable to provide assistance for your proposed book.
Yours sincerely
George Aghajanian
General Manager – Hillsong Church
Brief update (23/4/2005)
This week's update is late and short because I had to spend some time dealing with lawyers and thwarting their attempts to interfere with my life. All because some company doesn't like people talking about them.
From the mailbox (23/4/2005)
Not all the email I receive is hate mail. By far the majority is favourable and encouraging. Some of it is very gratifying, such as when I hear that someone has decided to vaccinate their children, has gone to a real doctor instead of a quack or has managed to escape from the vortex of a multi-level marketing scam because of something they saw here.
Another sort of email tries to educate me. This education usually takes the form of repeating easily dismissed falsehoods which I have already written something about, as if repetition alone was all that is necessary to make something true. Here is an example, where almost everything has already been answered somewhere on this site in the past.
Dear Proctologist,
I am curious. What is the purpose of your website exactly and what motivated you to create it? I think I understand, but am not 100% certain, so I will let you tell me instead of just making assumptions.
I would have thought that it was quite clear what the purpose of this site is. It is to allow me to comment on things that I don't like, and the linking theme of all of the categories is that people are being lied to. Whether it is people selling false hopes and medical cures, people lying about vaccination, racists pretending that ancestry or skin colour have intrinsic meaning, religious bigots promoting superstition, or people promoting fraudulent "business opportunities", the common thread is deception and preying on those who lack critical thinking skills. None of this is criticism of the victims.
Ok, now for another question. I listen carefully to the criteria that you demand/expect, and then listen to the criteria you allow for yourself…….. and to quote, "I bet (pretty unscientific if you ask me) with a little effort and a few pieces of paper……………etc". Ok, what I would like to know is how many patients do you think you would need to sift through in order to accumulate a total of 100. I can guarantee you that it would be in incredibly large amount.
Perhaps I should word the Cancer 100 Challenge differently. I could replace the word "bet" by "am sure that" or even "can guarantee that". The fact is that a large teaching hospital which has been operating for 25 years and which has at least two specialist cancer divisions could quite easily produce records of a hundred cases where the patients had been cured. No quackery clinic can do this, because they do not keep records and they do not cure anyone. Feel free to name the quack cancer clinic who can prove me wrong.
Next, I would like to point you in the direction of two people in regards to curing cancer. The first is two time nobel prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg. He took some 40 some odd species of animal (including amphibious creatures) and caused cancer in all of them, then went about curing them all within 30 days or less, many within 3 days. He received his nobel prizes for this work.
I have lost count of how many times I have seen this lie. I know it is a lie because the facts are so easily checked. Dr Warburg received the Nobel Prize only once. He was the laureate for the 1931 Physiology or Medicine Prize, which was awarded, and I quote, "for his discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme". Nothing to do with cancer, although he would of course have won in a landslide had he found a cure for cancer.
Secondly I would like to point you in the direction of Royal Rife. Royal Rife's work has been documented quite well. Many newspaper articles on his research.
There have been many newspaper articles on Bigfoot and UFOs. This means nothing.
A Short synopsis of him is basically this. "Brilliant Renaissance type" who created the worlds most powerful microscope. More powerful then the electron microscope of his day.
This was not difficult as the electron microscope had not been invented when Rife produced his first miraculous microscope. When he created the Universal Microscope in 1933 there were electron microscopes around, but it was only in that year that Ernst Ruska made the breakthrough which allowed electron microscopes to reach a magnification less than one quarter of that claimed by Rife. Rife's claims were ridiculous, not because scientists suppressed his ideas, not because lens grinding is an imperfect art, but because fundamental laws of physics limit the resolution (and therefore magnification) which can be achieved by an optical microscope. In one biography I have seen of Rife it said that he worked for Zeiss. There is no way that this company would not have exploited his discoveries if they had had any merit. Perhaps the Zeiss corporate slogan, "Limited only by the laws of physics", was what made them reject his ideas.
As it happens, there was an announcement only last week (April 22) in the journal Science of a breakthrough which could increase the magnification possible with an optical device by a factor of about 10. It is very early days yet and it may never have practical applications, but science is exciting.
Using natural light sources and very powerful magnification, he was able to see bacteriums change over the course of their life. This went against the grain of conventional medicine who believed all bacteria were monomorphic…. Meaning non changing during the course of their life. He proved that they were actually pleomorphic and went through 4 phases ultimately becoming what he identified as a cancer bacterium.
Rife did not prove this at all – he asserted it. The fact that nobody has ever been able to observe it since suggests that it just isn't so. In any case, Rife claimed to be observing viruses.
The REASON that this eluded the electron microscopes is because they used a method (still in use today) of "staining" the slide, which kills the bacterium and allowed the scientists to observe them dead and in place. That was the first miracle to his credit.
Next, he believed that all organisms have a frequency. I believe it is called an electromagnetic frequency that he believed could be measured. He also believed that if he could find the correct frequency, that that frequency could destroy the microorganism. The premise was similar to taking two drops of water suspended over a pool of still water, and simultaneously dropping them into the water (a few inches apart from one another) that as the concentric rings collided, they would cancel one another out. In theory, if there was nothing to impede a droplet of water in an endless pool of water, under the right conditions, those concentric rings would go outward ad infinitum. He built the first every frequency generator. In his original work, he did find the frequency to destroy (literally explode) the bacterium and kill them.
No he didn't, but that hasn't stopped any number of cancer quacks since then from coming up with their own versions of Rife's ideas and machines. They have all had the same success as Rife did at blowing up bacteria and viruses. Which is none.
The man who then headed up the A.M.A. and ruled the health agenda of the American Nation wanted to buy into this cure. Royal Rife said the cure was not for sale, it was for humanity. For whatever reasons (one can only assume or guess), the head of the A.M.A. set out to "destroy" (my choice of words) Royal Rife, and using his power told Rife that since he was only a scientist and not a Doctor he was not legally allowed to treat/cure cancer.
Sorry, wrong cancer "curer". It was Harry Hoxsey who, mythology states, was the subject of the attempted and rejected buy-off by Morris Fishbein, head of the AMA. Except that Fishbein wasn't the head of the AMA, he was the editor of JAMA. Except that Hoxsey said it was Martin Harris, who was the President of the AMA at some stage but not when he was supposed to be buying-off cancer "curers".
Rife went "underground" for a couple of years perfecting this science, and then surfaced again working in conjunction with Doctors at either USC or UCLA (forget which now) and I believe ( I am 45 and memory is getting feeble – would have to read the references in the book again) the very first 16 or 32 cases of cancer he worked on………… he CURED.!!! Now what was Rife's reward? When he got back to his lab and office, they had been mysteriously burned to the ground. In short, Rife died a "broken man" an alcoholic, living in a 1 bedroom apt.
There is a wonderful book out there called The Cancer Cure that Worked – 50 years of suppression. Written by research journalist, Barry Lynnes. I challenge you to read up on both Mr. Proctologist. Barry Lynnes has some very good credentials as a research journalist. The book is chock full of verifiable, documentable evidence. Newspaper clippings, letters from other doctors whom he worked with and so on, including pictures of his amazing microscope.
So the secret is out! If the evidence is in Lynes' book (and has been since 1986) then what is the problem? Surely anyone could reproduce Rife's work and win a number of Nobel Prizes. I'm surprised that the book hasn't been suppressed out of existence by the orthodoxy (I found a copy at an underground bookshop called Amazon.com. I even found a video recording there which can show me how to make the bug blaster beam machine.)
And lastly, IF you are still reading this and have not dumped it into the trash before finishing, I too believe cancer is simply cell mutation. The "kind of cancer" is not important. It is all the same. It is simply different cells mutating. Whether the cancer attacked the liver, the lungs or the pancreas……………cell mutation is cell mutation. Just depends on where/which cells are mutating.
SkeptoBear's World Tour – Day Seven (23/4/2005)
What do you do when your computer breaks down and you are on the other side of the world and you need the computer to give a speech and you are a computer expert and you don't know what to do? Do you run around in circles tearing at your hair and muttering gibberish? Of course you do. Do you curse Bill Gates and all his creations, even unto the seventh generation? Of course you do that too. Do you wail, gnash your teeth, throw a tantrum and refuse to come out of your room? Yes, again. Does any of this make any difference? No. See what happened on the first day of Randi's Amazing Meeting here.
Lest we forget (23/4/2005)
This weekend includes Anzac Day, when Australians reflect on and remember the sacrifices made in the wars that the country has participated in. It is these sacrifices which allow us to protest against wars, elect our 
politicians, and enjoy the rights which should be available to all people. It would be wonderful to wake up on an Anzac Day knowing that there was no war going on anywhere in the world, but I don't think I will see that in my lifetime. Unfortunately, while ever people believe that the colour of others' skins or the superstitions in their heads are reasons for killing them, war will always be with us.
Buy a ticket for freedom (23/4/2005)
My favourite non-medical charity Amnesty International Australia is running a raffle to raise funds. I was going to sell tickets here until I found out that I could only sell to residents of two states in Australia and that it would cost me about $1.50 in PayPal charges and postage for each $3.00 ticket I sold. I figure it is better for me to just write a cheque for the whole book of tickets and send everyone directly to Amnesty's web site to buy their own tickets directly. The prizes are excellent, the recipient of the funds is impeccable, and I urge everyone to click here and help to make someone somewhere in the world a little freer than they are today.
It's time for them to put up or shut up (30/4/2005)
The update this week is again brief because again I had to waste time responding to a complaint from an MLM company. They tried two approaches this time. One was their weekly complaint to the web site hosting organisation whining about another supposed breach of copyright that they had found. The second was to fax me a letter accusing me of all sorts of things and giving me a deadline to remove all allegedly offending material from this site. One of the things I was accused of was described to me by a lawyer as "ludicrous", and it was obvious that all the company wanted was for me to become frightened and go away. I don't frighten easily, so I have set my own deadline and they have been asked to list all of the things on this site that they believe are unlawful. If they can't do that then they can hardly come back in the future and claim that there is anything wrong. What these people want is what all pyramid scheme and MLM operators want – they want no publicity which might warn potential victims.
Mind, Body, Spirit Festival (30/4/2005)
Another reason for being short of time this week is that I attended the Sydney Mind, Body, Spirit Festival. Much of the stuff at these festivals is relatively harmless voluntary taxation, but there was a fair smattering of crooks performing allergy tests, iridology, live blood analysis and other forms of medical fraud. Strangely, there were no homeopaths there this time, but perhaps they succussed the exhibition hall after the show last November and have assumed that the place now has a memory of their presence. There were too many chiropractors, though. "Too many" means more than zero. I will be writing something about the show for publication in the mainstream media and it will appear here as well, but I can't start until my aura returns to its usual strength and my kundilini stops ascending. The crystals might help, or perhaps the organic and holistic teas. The photograph below shows someone looking at the festival community noticeboard. In the top right of the board there is an advertisement for a live blood analysis operator, complete with a glowing press clipping about the fraud. In the bottom right of the board is a press release from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission telling how a practitioner of this fraud had admitted that it is fraud. I wonder who put that there. I wonder how long it stayed there.
Alternative medicine "research" (30/4/2005)
Every so often someone points me towards some publication supporting some form of medical quackery and makes a lot of noise about how well referenced the article or paper is. One of the things which almost always amazes me when this happens is how the author of the paper seems to think that nobody will ever check that the cited publications even exist, let alone that the referenced articles actually support the position of the writer. Almost universally, the citations fall into one or more of the following categories:
SkeptoBear's World Tour – Day Eight (30/4/2005)
The real action of Randi's Amazing Meeting starts, with famous speakers, infamous speakers, magicians, illusionists. Problems are overcome and more problems are encountered, then overcome in turn. Americans are introduced to ethnic food and the night ends on a sad note, but on balance it was a very good day, and there is more to come. Read all about the second day of the Amazing Meeting here.
Email change (30/4/2005)
A spammer managed to acquire the email address "mproject@ratbags.com" which had been attached to links on this site. As I am less tolerant of spammers than I am of almost any other form of vermin, that address has been killed. If you want to write to me the links on the site now go to somewhere else, and if you have the "mproject" address in your address book you should remove it.
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