Updates made to The Millenium Project in August 2005

Advance apology (6/8/2005)
As I will be at the Australian Skeptics' National Convention next weekend it is highly unlikely that there will be any significant update to this site. I will be taking my laptop computer with me so that I can check my email from the hotel, but even with the best intentions in the world I can't see myself having enough free time to write anything. I will be giving a talk about the cult-like operations of MLM motivational organisations and I haven't written the speech yet so maybe I can make next week's update of The Millenium Project out of reviews of the books I am using as references plus the text of the speech.

There will be other speakers at the convention on topics as diverse as nuclear power, the treatment of addiction, the effect of violence in video games and David Hume's thoughts about miracles. It's not too late to get a seat, and I will buy a beer for any Millenium Project readers who identify themselves using the secret password. (Hint: This site has a search engine.) You can see the full list of topics and speakers and book for the convention here.

TAAP – The Anti-vaccine Aspersion Project (6/8/2005)
There is an outfit named TAAP, which stands for The Autism Autoimmunity Project. On August 3, 2005, a message was sent from a TAAP email address to at least one anti-vaccination liar mailing list with the subject line "Autism Reaches Epidemic Levels; Concerned Parents Believe Vaccines Are The Cause". The message contained a transcript of an interview of TAAP President April Oakes by someone named Greg Ciola, identified only as the editor of a publication called "Crusador". A link was provided to a demented anti-medicine site where the interview appeared with the dateline of July 31, 2005. I wrote to TAAP (the verse from Psalms at the end is taken from the TAAP web site):

I have just seen the interview between Greg Ciola and April Oakes in Crusador.

It is almost farcical to see someone described as the Vice President of an organisation interviewing the President of the same organisation and pretending that it is just the editor of a publication doing his job. The fact that nowhere in the interview is the relationship mentioned is no less than I would have expected from an organisation which bases its existence on lies.

The part where the President asks the Vice President "How can someone contact you for more on this topic?" makes me want to withdraw the word "almost" from the previous paragraph.

The stated aims of your organisation are:

1) Fully define immune etiologies in autism;
2) Develop appropriate treatment options for individuals who have autism through autoimmunity or immune system deficiency;
3) Develop mechanisms for prevention of immune-based autism.

Several people have tried to tell me that The Autism Autoimmunity Project actually believes in these goals and is not just some anti-vaccination liar outfit, but then I read in the pretend interview: "My first child, Casi, was a victim of the vaccination program. I thought I was being a good parent when I held her down while she was being vaccinated. Today, one child in 150 is labeled "autistic" and there is a great deal of evidence showing that vaccines play a role in the cause. Casi died on June 13, 1999 and since her death, I've made the commitment to warn the world that vaccines are both worthless and dangerous. Everything we've been told about them is simply not true. One of the most blatant lies is, "no shots, no school, no kidding". What a joke! There are exemptions in 48 of the 50 States. Another very glaring lie is that vaccines have eradicated certain diseases. Most of these diseases were being eradicated BEFORE the introduction of vaccinations".

I guess that you can no longer deny the fact that TAAP is not the least bit interested in its stated goals, because if it was then it would be looking for the real causes and cures for autism and not chasing after fantasies like vaccine dangers.

The list of officials of and advisors to TAAP is also instructive, as a more venal collection of child haters would be hard to find. At least one of them, however, has found a guaranteed way of preventing autism, but whether Alan Yurko's method of beating kids to death before they become autistic is likely to be widely promoted is something only you and your ilk can decide.

Whenever people ask me why I spend my time fighting the anti-vaccination liars who so endanger our children, I simply quote from Psalm 94:16 "Who will rise up against the evildoers? Or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"

I received a reply which said that TAAP had not received my email (?). (My email was sent to the address from which the reply came, it did not bounce, and a BCC sent to a colleague of mine was delivered so the email left my server correctly.) In this reply I was told that the reason that Mr Ciola's affiliation with TAAP was not mentioned was that he had not been Vice President when the interview took place. This piece of sophistry attempts to ignore that the point at issue is not what he was when he did the interview but what he was when it was published. TAAP also sent a message to anti-vaccination liar mailing lists with the deceptive subject "TAAP under attack for exposing the TRUTH about vaccines" calling on people to write to me to set me straight. Since then I have been receiving a stream of hate mail ranging from polite, considered hopes that I get sick and die, through claims that I have said things which I would never be stupid enough to say (like accusing me of denying that vaccines have anything to do with the immune system), and going on to ALL CAPS rants where the splattering mouth foam made a mess of my monitor. Several mentioned baby-killer Alan Yurko's good work, and others criticised my choice of Bible quotation, apparently without noticing that I got it from the TAAP site.

I assume that this barrage of mail will go on for some days, so I am going to wait until it is over before formulating a response. As I will be away next weekend, my answer should appear here in two weeks time. During that two weeks about 20,000 children will die of measles, about 11,000 of pertussis, about 15,000 of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and another 15,000 from the effects of rotavirus (which caused almost orgasmic delight to the anti-vaccination liars when the vaccine was withdrawn in the US). The anti-vaccinators will be quite correct when they point out that these children were all saved from any potential dangers of vaccines.

Deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases – 2002
World Health Organization

Gutless Anonymous Effluvium (6/8/2005)
I still get the occasional rancid email from the Gutless Anonymous Liar. When I said that I had been ill with the flu it sent me an encouraging email which said "great news...get sick real slow and die real slow......" and just this week , under the heading "Go fuck yourself useless child-fucker", it issued the following challenge: "Wanna take me on in usenet? How about in person you useless fucker pedophile". I just love the way that it hides but still pretends to be brave. I will, of course, take it on anywhere it likes.

GAL once expressed doubt about the existence of the person for whom it acts as amanuensis, so all messages I receive from GAL are now immediately forwarded to Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group. If this irritates, upsets or annoys Mr O'Neill in any way then I can only say "Excellent!". Mr O'Neill has not been bothering me under his own name for some time now, but he reappeared this week threatening to sue the operator of a blog which had mentioned his name. The blog owner asked me if Mr O'Neill might actually have a relationship with the lawyer named in his demand. My reply was that the last lawyer whose name Mr O'Neill used in one of his failed attempts to intimidate me disappeared from the scene after I forwarded to him 150 email messages that I had received following a weekend spent by Mr O'Neill trying to subscribe me to mailing lists. Also, a check of the CCRG web site shows many uses of the "©" copyright symbol when what is actually meant is a claim for trademark protection. This suggests that Mr O'Neill has been working without the benefit of an intellectual property lawyer. (It is just as well that the phrase "intellectual property" has a widely-recognised meaning, otherwise I could be accused of committing an oxymoron by using those words in the same sentence as a mention of Mr O'Neill.)

Bookish weirdness (6/8/2005)
I received an email the other day from Amazon.com reminding me to check on my affiliate book sales for the last quarter. The first thing I noticed is that I get a lot less money out of book sales since Amazon dropped the commission rate by two-thirds. The second thing I noticed was that someone had connected to Amazon from here and had then gone on to buy a book called Red Hot Tantra: Erotic Secrets of Red Tantra for Intimate, Soul-to-Soul Sex and Ecstatic, Enlightened Orgasms. I am pleased that The Millenium Project could provide this service to one of its visitors, and I hope that the purchaser was able to put the advice in the book to good use. And what was the best-selling book in the last quarter? Get a bucket ready to catch the puke. The Cure for All Diseases by überquack Hulda Clark. At least the Australian Council Against Health Fraud will get a few dollars commission to help pay for the fight against crooks like Clark

There was no update on the weekend of August 13 and 14, 2005, because I was at the Australian Skeptics National Convention.

I'm back!! (20/8/2005)
The Australian Skeptics National Convention was held last weekend and I have to agree with many of the other people there that it was one of the best sceptical conferences I have ever been to, with excellent speakers, a good venue and very nice catering at the dinner. The organisers, from Australian Skeptics' smallest branch, must be congratulated. On a personal note, I would like to congratulate the amateur audio-visual crew who were able to fit a lapel microphone in twelve seconds rather than the hour required by the professionals at James Randi's conference. I gave a talk about multi-level marketing which is in the process of being translated from "man in front of PowerPoint presentation" into something useful. As I have to write three versions (one for here, one for the Australian Skeptics site where I use a slightly different literary style, and one for print) you will have to wait to read my comments about these frauds. I am sure that regular readers here will have little doubt about my level of sympathy towards the scamsters who use these schemes to relieve innocent people of their money, friends and dignity.

I am in the bullseye (20/8/2005)
It has become impossible to hide from my detractors, and, thanks to Google, they can now accurately target my house for demolition by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Seriously, though, I have heard the first rumblings from people suggesting that Google Earth is some sort of threat to society because it lets spies see things that the spied upon do not want seen. One example near my place is the Coca Cola factory, where the people from Pepsi can zoom in real close and see that Coke uses trucks which are painted red, and a few streets away spies from Qantas can see that the buses at Westbus are yellow. Are anyone's secrets safe any more?

Ratbag Castle – under the big gum tree

TAAP – Truthless Avid Anti-child Perverts (20/8/2005)
I will leave my discussion of the correspondence with The Autism Autoimmunity Project and their supporters until next week. Since I first mentioned it two weeks ago, TAAP have come up with yet another cause for autism and I want to throw this back at them as well as other inconsistencies in their campaign against vaccination (and against finding any real cause or cure for autism). In the next week about 10,000 children will die of measles, about 15,500 of pertussis, about 7,500 of Hib, and another 7,500 from the effects of rotavirus, but these numbers will be welcomed by TAAP because none of these dead children will have been placed at risk of becoming autistic as a result of vaccination. In any case, these numbers drop into insignificance when compared with the autism epidemic which will see about 50 children diagnosed with autism in the next week in the state of California alone.

You can read some of the mail I have received about this here.

Misdirected email of the week (20/8/2005)
I just had to let this one through Mailwasher. It wasn't addressed to anyone who might have anything to do with psychics, but instead went to an unused email address under the domain used for my real-life business. I have had a careful look at the corporate web site and I can't find anything among the information about software products and support services that has much to do with psychics (unless it's the almost paranormal abilities required to install certain software and get it working correctly), so I don't think I will take John up on his kind offer to exchange links.

Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago... and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I think your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of psychics and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great aspects of psychics that I'd like to give my visitors more information about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Psychics i Resource Directory at http://psychicsi.com/johnedwardpsychic

Is that OK with you?

Can I ask a favor? Will you give me a link back on your site? I'd really appreciate you returning the favor.

Thanks and feel free to drop me an email if you'd like to chat more about this.

Best wishes,
John
psychicsi.com

Radio Ratbags (20/8/2005)
I will be appearing on the TripleM breakfast program in Sydney (104.9FM) and Melbourne (105.1FM) at a bit after 8:00am (Sydney time) on Monday, August 22, to talk about psychics and other such nonsenses. If you are not in either of those cities you can listen over the 'net through the TripleM web site. By the time most people read this the show will be over, but it will be available by podcast from TripleM some time later. It will also be available from my new Radio Ratbags page, which lists some radio appearances I have done over the last few years and gives the necessary details for you to subscribe to my very own podcast. I am working on a plan with Australian Skeptics to make a fortnightly half-hour show to follow up the success we had with the Skeptic Tank in 2002.

She's back!! (20/8/2005)
A couple of weeks ago I reported that the web site of egregious fake psychic Sylvia Browne had been missing in action for a few weeks. Unfortunately, it is now back on the air. It seems that the temporary disappearance may have been related to Sylvia moving her office to a new location, although that may have simply been a coincidence. It doesn't augur well for someone with supposed psychic powers to fail to notice that their web site has been dead for six weeks. (Did you like the way I casually threw in the word "augur" when talking about a psychic? The homonym "auger" can also be appropriate, as psychics certainly screw their clients.)

Stop Violence Against Women (20/8/2005)
Amnesty International, my second-favourite good-works organisation (I won't say who is first because then I could be accused of favouritism), is currently running a campaign to raise awareness of the problem of violence against women. In Australia they are calling for a national plan of action. See what they have to say here, and give whatever support you can. If you think that this is not a severe problem in a civilised country like Australia, be aware that this week a court in Australia sentenced a man to only one month's imprisonment for raping a 14-year-old girl. The reason given by the judge for imposing such a long sentence was that he wanted to send a message to the community that conduct like this is not acceptable. The reason for the ludicrously short sentence was that the rapist was an Aboriginal man and the victim had been given to him as a wife. We have to respect culture ...

The inchless have been foiled (20/8/2005)
I finally got sick of people who either can not or will not read what is written on my page about penis enlargement spam and who keep writing to me asking for help with their genital inadequacies. While I have sympathy for these poor young men (not only sympathy for their disability, but most of them seem to be suffering from AOL as well) there is nothing I can do for them, as it quite clearly says on the page. I have now changed the contact message on the bottom of the page to say "Don't bother emailing the Proctologist", but if they still feel an uncontrollable urge to click and send they will receive the automated reply below. In order to make them feel better about themselves, the reply comes from the email address "14inches@ratbags.com".

If you have read far enough down the page to get to the email address link, you must have seen where it says, in very big letters, "I don't know how to make your penis bigger. Don't keep asking me!" I really mean it. I don't know. Your request for assistance with your dicklessness has been deleted. Have a nice day.

Administration stuff (20/8/2005)
Some of the material appearing in The Millenium Project is also published in other places, such as the Australian Skeptics site, the Australian Council Against Health Fraud, my personal site which is just about me and my family, and even in other parts of the ratbags.com site. It was a bit tedious keeping different copies of images for different places and some things just don't convert to greyscale well, so I have decided to rationalise everything and use the same pictures everywhere. To make this happen, I have gone to the enormous expense of installing a full-colour printing press at Ratbag Castle and there is now spot colour appearing on this site. Everything has not been reprinted yet, but the transformation will continue as time permits.

Homeopathy is bunk! So what's new? (27/8/2005)
A study published in The Lancet in August 2005 (The Lancet 2005; 366:726-732) looked at the results of 110 clinical trials of homeopathy and came to the following conclusion:

The evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies is weak, according to a study. The investigators conclude that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are compatible with placebo effects. Aijing Shang and colleagues compared randomised placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy with matched RCTs of allopathy. When the analysis was restricted to large trials of high quality there was no convincing evidence that homoeopathy was superior to placebo, whereas for conventional medicine an important effect remained.

You can only read the paper in The Lancet if you pay some money, but a fair representation of the findings can be found in this BBC news story. And what are the homeopaths and alternauts saying about this scientific research revealing the vacuity of this particular magical fraud? Well, not much at all as far as I can see. This is consistent with history, where the one or two unreplicated experiments which show some faint indication of statistical significance are shouted to the rooftops (ignoring all criticisms of the research methods and statistical analyses used) and anything approaching science and common sense is either ignored or rejected. As an example, the BBC article quotes some unnamed spokesperson for homeopathy who says:

It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy

In other words "This stuff is so useless that the standard tests for efficacy of pharmaceuticals can't show that it works, but that's OK because we are going to keep selling it anyway".

Every now and then I get some complaint from a homeopath about my article "Homeopathy – all the idiocy that fits". Here are a couple of recent examples. (The first was sent to the Australian Council Against Health Fraud.) I usually don't reply, as I have enough to do without wasting my time on people who believe in magic. I wonder if Mr Barr would allow me to watch him going through the 800 steps which a non-lying homeopath has to perform to make a 200C preparation, or would he just go out to the kitchen and fill the bottle with water and then let me watch him sticking the label on the bottle.

Date sent: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 05:30:08 -0700
From: Roger Barr
Subject: Homeopathy

Your article "Homeopathy – all the idiocy that fits" is wonderful in its lack of scientific method.

When there is a reproducible natural phenomena that is not understood (like say ... gravity, or like cures like, or the power of homeopathic dilutions) you dont dismiss it, off hand, because some of the attempted explanations for the phenomena dont make sense or fit with your conception of the universe. Instead you investigate the phenomena _thoroughly_ and attempt to find a better theory that fits the facts.

Your grasp of scientific method is as good as the 14th century papacy.

Roger

Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:36:10 -0700
From: Roger Barr
Subject: come out of an anus and see the light

Dear Proctologist,

All you have to do is visit any homeopathic pharmacy to see the remedies made, exactly as claimed.
Roger Barr

Professional Homeopath

The radio show (27/8/2005)
Last Monday morning I appeared on the breakfast radio program on TripleM in Melbourne and Sydney (and maybe other places as well) where I was embarrassingly over-praised by being described as "Australia's greatest skeptic" and then asked to debate a psychic. During the program the psychic made certain claims which suggested that she might be a potential claimant for the $100,000 prize offered by Australian Skeptics for anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. Unfortunately, the edited version of the program released on the station's web site (and available for listening on my Radio Ratbags page) had most of what was said cut out, including where I told the psychic how she did her tricks and the several minutes between the time she offered to do a reading on me and the time when she reneged. I tried (and failed) to get a complete recording of the segment to check some things, but there is a high probability that a formal offer to the psychic to put up or shut up may be in the offing.

It should be made quite clear that nothing would please and thrill me and everyone else at Australian Skeptics more than finding someone who really can defy the rules of the universe. Maybe this lady is that someone. Maybe she isn't. What I do know is that she ran away from doing a reading on me. Perhaps it was because I wanted it done for free and she charges a minimum of $75 for a chat.

Cheatlation. Yes, that is how it should be spelled (27/8/2005)
On Tuesday, August 23, a 5-year-old boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama was killed by a quack in Portersville, Pennsylvania. (Read the story here.) He died because his mother believed that a charlatan could cure the boy's autism using a process called chelation. The killer, a real doctor named Kerry, is not saying much but the story is being spread around that the boy was being treated for lead poisoning. Of course this will be the story, because that is the only legal use of the chelating drug administered by the quack and he has to make sure that the authorities don't shut him down and that his victims' parents can claim on their health insurance. Put another way, the quack is not only a killer but he practices insurance fraud. The mother is quite clear that she brought her son from England to have mercury taken out of him, not lead. If Abubakar had been suffering from lead poisoning he would have been eligible for treatment under the British National Health Service, and nobody can claim that the parents didn't know this because the father is employed by the NHS. Of course, had Abubakar really been suffering from mercury poisoning he could have been treated for that under the NHS as well.

The fraud of chelation is just another way for charlatans and criminals to steal more money from the parents of autistic children. They lie about mercury in vaccines, they lie about the ability of EDTA to chelate mercury (it is far more likely to extract calcium, leading to heart failure), they lie about the results they get. They care about nothing but money, and what makes it worse is that these criminals are supported and endorsed by organisations (like Generation Rescue and TAAP) which pretend to be acting in the interests of autistic children.

Here are some quotes from alternative medicine supporters expressing their "outrage" at this needless death:

• The boy who died from EDTA chelation treatment would be just as dead if it had been done to him for lead poisoning
• Of course, the press will probably not mention some of the ugly truths that are out there about how our children die from other treatments
• Abubakar is a "true soldier in the struggle"
• This death may have resulted from an allergic response to one of the chemicals used, but chelation does work. (Note: Dr Kerry lists "allergist" as one of his specialities.)
• lol,Well he probably would have died sooner if he had gotten vaccines

Convention DVD (27/8/2005)
In what must be world record time for someone working for a volunteer organisation, my friend Richard Saunders (of the Mystery Investigators) has produced and published a DVD containing all the talks from the Australian Skeptics 2005 National Convention. You can buy a copy here.

Speaking of email, which I wasn't but I am now ... (27/8/2005)
I have received some interesting emails lately, and the rest of this week's update will examine some of the better ones.

Someone respects child abusers (27/8/2005)
Here's a lucid one which came in this week. I assume the writer is referring to where I accused some child abusers of abusing children.

I THINK YOUR WHOLE LINE OF IT BEING CHILD ABUSE IS ABOUT FAR FECTCHED AS THE PARENTS HAVEING ALLOWED THESE CHILDREN TO CATCH THE CHICKEN POX. WHAT AN IDIOT U ARE. THE INTERNET HAS BECOME A BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE SO THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO RUN TO THE DOCTOR OVER EVERY LITTLE COUGH OR SPOT. SOME OF US DON'T HAVE MEDICAL INSURANCE AND HAVE TO PICK WHEN TO GO AND WHEN NOT GO, AND THEN PRAY THAT WE PICKED RIGHT. SO GOT TO HELL. I THANK THE PARTENTS WHO HAVE PUT THE PICTURES ON SITE. WHEN I THOUGHT THE MY CHILDREN HAD CONTACTED THE CHICKEN POX THE FIRST PLACE I TURNED TO WAS MY COMPUTER, AND PHONED THE DOCTOR. BETWEEN THE DOCTOR AND THE PICTURES I HAD THE INFORMATION. WHICH MEANS INFORMATION = POWER I KNEW THEN HOW TO HANDLE IT. IF U GET YOUR SICK KICKS FROM LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS FOR MORE THEN WHAT THEY ARE INTENDED FOR THEN STAY OFF THE SITE AND LET THE PARENTS USE IT FOR THE PURPOSE IT WAS INTENDED FOR.... INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, AND POWER.

Mannatechies keep writing (27/8/2005)
Another thing I get a significant amount of mail about is the Mannatech multi-level marketing and medical quackery fraud. A Mannatechie wrote to me some time ago and wasn't happy that I didn't drop everything to reply. Here is the exchange of correspondence.

Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 17:43:12 -0400
Subject: I was Skepticle too

A friend of mine bought into Mannatech about 5 years ago. He has experienced overwhelming success with this company as well he has reaped the benefits of wellness in his life and has witnessed the benefits of Mannatech's products in the lives of others. I'm not writing this email to convince you of anything. After looking at your webpage about the Millenium project I have to lay some truths about the company and glyconutrients out in plain view. It's simple so don't expect me to get to complex about the subject. I don't know if you've ever heard of Harpers Biochemistry, most likely you have because you seem like a knowledeable and intelligent person. I do believe though that you have been misinformed when explaining or trying to make a point on the bodies natural ability to obtain necessary monosaccharides from our every day sources of food. Chapter 56 in Harpers Biochemistry is titled Glycoproteins and is devoted to the recently discovered area of glycoscience. W hen our everyday food is consumed the body immediately begins to break down whatever it is that we consumed and only 2 or 3 of the necessary 8 monsaccharides are found in our consumed diets. These 2 or 3 monosaccharides become useful in the bodies functions ie: metabolic rate, immune functions, etc. This is the problem that we run into those other monosaccharides(or missing links in the human diet) are necessary for proper cellular response and function. I recently have started to take Mannatech's products and I can attest to the fact that indeed they do work. I have never had a severe medical problem or ailment. I've kept my body in good shape and workout consistently. I have noticed that my focus at work and in my personal life is more deffined. I also can tell you that my healing rate for working out is much more responsive. I know you can say that it's a state of mind perhaps, that when I started taking these products that I convinced myself that they were going to be ef fective. I've been practicing a highly intense weight training program for a good part of my life. I can promise that these products, Ambrotose in particular, allows my body to respond better to weight bearing stimuli and produce more energy while exercising. A few other points that I would like to make are the fact that many Olympic athletes use this product in their training and Mannatech is also supported by the NFL's Player Association. Just one more thing to actually reiterate on the subject of the Nobel Prize. I have no intention of correcting you I just would like to set the record straight. Four of the last eight Nobel Prizes for medicine( the medical field does participate in the Nobel Prize) have dealt with the cellular communication process and its importance to our welness. The 1999 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Dr. Gunter Blobel for his work in this new field of Science-Medicine called Glycobiology. I hope that you will take this information that I hav e brought to the table and make an educated reanalysis of your view on glyconutrients and Mannatech's role in the world today. I am in no way a certified physician or clynical expert but I have studied and taken courses in college on the human body and it?s response to carbohydrates. Glyconutrients takes this approach to carbs for energy a step further and proves the usefullness of the product towards cell communication and the body's immune boost response. Remember there is nothing magical about these sugars, I hope the magical comment was not a shot taken in hopes of distastefulness. I think that anyone with knowledge of how the body works will agree that Mannatech's products help treat the underlying condition of illness at the cellular level and do not just treat and rid of symptomatic illness, such as do many pharmaceutical drugs. I believe that many people in the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry may feel threatened by the science of glycobiology but this very well could be what we've been looking for, that is a product for the body's WELLNESS and not treatment. Hope to hear back from you.
Mannatech User and Associate,
Robert Goldrick

Robert was less than happy with the speed of my response, and wrote to me again.

From: "Goldrick, Robert"
Subject: Where's my response?
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:48:28 -0400

Hello my name is Robert Goldrick. I sent you an email about 1-2 months ago and was wondering if you had a response for my discussion. Just checking in to see if you could come back with anything of substance. I guess not though.
Sincerely,
Robert Goldrick

As I have a limited attention span, I usually refuse to read paragraphs containing more than 300 words. This is based on the perfectly reasonable assumption that the Gettysburg Address contains only 278 words and therefore sets a plausible upper limit on the expression of a single thought. Your first self-serving message about the Mannatech fraud contained more than 700 words in a single paragraph and was therefore rejected by my brain filter.

Having said that, I notice upon scanning your message that it contains the old Mannatech lie about Dr Gunter Blobel and his Nobel Prize. He won the 1999 Medicine Prize "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell", which has nothing to do with Mannatech or "glycobiology", whatever that is. I realise that you are just parroting something told to you by your upline, but facts are facts. At least you didn't give me the absurd nonsense that I received from a previous Mannatech salesperson who made the ludicrous claim that in "1994, Dr Gunter Blobel MD PhD, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery in glycoproteins have with the body's ability to fix itself".

A relative writes (27/8/2005)
In January this year I received an email from a demented professional anti-vaccination liar named Mary Tocco. Someone named "Curtis Tocco" has taken several months to become offended at what I had to say at the time.

Hi, i would like to say that you are the most arrogant son of a bitch i have ever incountered. If you would take the time to RESEARCH vaccinations you would see that they contain nero toxins, thats a FACT not some biased bullshit like what you write. FACT ,The levels of nero toxins in vaccines is 100 to 1000's of times the FDA safety level. FACT, if you put nero toxins in a new born baby who hasnt fully developed his brain SHIT HAPPENS. There in it for the money, they dont care if it hurts people. Also mary tocco is the best vaccination researcher out there, if you visit her website you see that she is not bias in anyway, its documented facts. Now maybe you would like to think that your little world is perfect, but it think its time for a reallity check. Go visit marytocco.com and email me back with these "biased" phrases, i would like to see them.

Thank you for your considered criticism. I can't help noticing that you share a surname with the despicable Mary Tocco. You have my greatest sympathy. If I had a burden like that I would change my name and move to another city.

Another thing – I notice that you mention "nero toxins". Are these like the poison that Agrippina used to kill Claudius so that Nero could become Emperor of Rome in 54AD?

I've heard of Hazelnuts, but are there Sylvianuts? (27/8/2005)
In July a fan of psychic Sylvia Browne sent me an email using colours and graphics which would make Jackson Pollack blush. Kelly has written to me again saying that as she has never visited this site she would like to know how I received her email and why I published it. Unlike psychics who can't see into the future it seems that Kelly can't see into the past, because the way I obtained the email was the conventional method of downloading it from my mail server after it had been sent to me by someone visiting this site and clicking on an email link. You can click on the image below to see the email in all its colourful glory.

I was wondering HOW DID U GET THIS? I've NEVER Visited your site, So I'm wondering just HOW U Got A Hold of This Message?

YES!!!! As USUAL I WENT OVER BOARD WITH MY FREAKING ICONS! Trying to get MY POINT ACROSS!! For I Understand my GRAMMAR SUCKS, and seems to BOTHER THE HELL Out of A LOT of Folks??!! So Tell me something? "Why would U put MY MESSAGE on your Board"??

Sincerely Or Love,
"The Strange, Crazy, Drama Queen"
Kelly.