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Home >History > Front page updates June 2012
Updates made to The Millenium Project in June 2012
Almost unimaginable filth (2/6/2012)
Judy Wilyman is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong. The research for her thesis consists of finding evidence for the harmfulness of vaccines. She is not interested in vaccine safety, becau
se she doesn't believe any vaccine is safe. She is not interested in vaccine efficacy, because she doesn't believe any vaccine has any use. She decided these things before she started researching, so it is a mystery that she has been undertaking her doctorate for several years. She could have simply written her thesis off the top of her head and submitted it to either of the supervisors she has had, because both of them agree with her prejudices completely.
Ms Wilyman is beloved of the Australian Vaccination Network because she can be used as an authority whenever vaccines have to be denigrated. She can also usually be relied on by sensible people to scrape so hard at the bottom of the barrel that a cooper has to be called in afterwards to do repairs. Today, she went even further and accused the parents of a child who died of pertussis of being paid to support vaccination. Salvador Dali's illustration from Dante's Divine Comedy at the right has a title that expresses the disgust that thinking people must feel at Wilyman's actions: "We must depart from evil so extreme".
Here is what Judy Wilyman, PhD student at the University of Wollongong, posted to an Internet forum:
So here are some facts, Ms Wilyman (get someone to look up "fact" in a dictionary if you are not sure of the meaning).
In 2009 the McCaffreys (note – no apostrophe) were the inaugural winners of the Australian Skeptics' Thornett Award For The Promotion Of Reason. This gave me enormous pleasure, firstly because I was the person who suggested naming the award after our late friend Fred Thornett and secondly because I could not think of any worthier winners. Their bravery in the face of tragedy and their preparedness to speak out so that other families would not have to go through what they did stand in stark contrast to the actions of people who are prepared to see children maimed and die as the inevitable result of an insane agenda opposing the greatest life-saver in the history of medicine. That would be people like you, Judy Wilyman.
Ms Wilyman, you have been asked by the McCaffreys to leave them alone and to stop mentioning their daughter. I realise that their requests mean nothing to you because it is more important to you to deprive children of good health. Perhaps the best thing you could do would to be to get that dictionary out again and look up the meaning of the abbreviation "STFU".
Taking one for the team (2/6/2012)
I was alerted by the Ratbags Media Monitoring staff about this advertisement in the local paper:
How could I resist the offer of free DVDs (or even free DVD'S),so off I went in the company of four other members of Western Sydney Freethinkers. (I wasn't going to go alone in case I needed someone to arrange bail.) It was, as expected, an event promoted by the Scientology front organisation, the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights.
The first video, Dead Wrong, was interesting. It consisted of the mother of a boy who committed suicide wandering across the country talking to doctors who opposed psychiatry, interspersed with an afternoon tea party of mothers who had had their children destroyed or killed by psychiatric drugs. The acting was competent and the editing and camera work were very professional (there were at least five cameras used for the tea party), but it would only have required a little rewriting of the script to be made into an anti-vaccination film. In that version the "mommies" would be talking about how vaccines made their kids autistic. (One of the doctors interviewed actually said that the mercury in vaccines might have contributed to the deadly effects of psychiatric drugs.) Lies were continually told about how anti-depressant drugs cause suicide and how psychiatrists don't bother doing diagnoses before prescribing pills and are just in it for the money, but all of these were expected given the source of the DVD. There was a lot of crying and emotion from relatives of dead kids, but as I pointed out to my companions I was more moved by the last five minutes of an old episode of Law & Order SVU that I'd seen during the week and that show wasn't pretending not to be fiction.
The second video, Diagnostic & Statistical Manual, was actually funny, although we kept our amusement to ourselves. It was an attack on DSM, and most of it consisted of ridiculing various diagnoses and disorders mentioned in the book. It is rather easy to ridicule any large, comprehensive book but even as someone who is not too familiar with it I could see that often what was being said bore little relationship to what was on the page in the background. Much fun was made out of comments made by psychiatrists at a convention, although it is hardly a secret that many psychiatrists don't use the book in a fundamentalist manner when treating patients. The non-secret that health insurers won't pay out on psychiatric treatments that aren't listed in DSM was presented as some sort of collusion by psychiatrists to commit insurance fraud rather than an example of the universal policy of insurers everywhere and of all kinds to try to find reasons not to pay claims. There were many experts who denied both the usefulness of DSM and psychiatry itself, but three of them stood out for me because I had had dealings with them in the past.
The first was Professor Robert Spillane of Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Professor Spillane was billed as "Professor of Psychology", although according the the MGSM web site he is "Professor in Management" and his teaching area is "People & Organisations". Professor Spillane's close ties with CCHR were not mentioned. The second was lawyer Jonathon Emord, who was Highly Commended in the 2009 Millenium Awards for his unselfish action in putting his client's needs ahead of his principles. He is the lawyer for the National Vaccine Information Center. It was the third one that really had us working to suppress laughter – homeopath Dana Ullman. Why a homeopath was asked for an opinion on the diagnosis of mental illness is a mystery, but as most of the other "doctors" seemed to be detached from reality anyway he probably wasn't too far out of place.
And was Scientology mentioned at all? Don't be silly. Of course it wasn't.
AVN News (2/6/2012)
So what's been happening recently at everybody's favourite anti-vaccination organisation, the Australian Vaccination Network.
There has been a survey. Now I'm not about to mention who came first in class in survey design when I was at university, but I will say that asking a question like this one would not have scored high marks. You can see my answer and reason. Many of the reasons were published on the AVN's blog, but unfortunately mine seemed to slip between the cracks in the floor.
You might remember that back in May I notified the NSW Office of Fair Trading that the AVN's new web site "The Real Australian Sceptics" did not seem to carry the legally required identification of the site owner. I have received this letter from the OFT.
Perhaps Ms Dorey, AVN President, will treat this as another government request that can be ignored. I will check, and If I can't find what I'm looking for I'll probably have to tell the OFT to ask again. I don't think they like asking twice.
Are Canadian cancer patients safe at last? (9/6/2012)
I haven't heard much lately from Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group. For those who came in late, Mr O'Neill made me a long-standing project starting in early 2000. His first email to me was this:
From: "peter bowditch" <peterbowditch@hotmail.com>
Subject: fetid dung heap
Date sent: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 01:34:47 GMT
you are such an incredibly dumb fuck...........and your wife's a real babe..........
you deserve all the lawsuits you fetid dung heap
Yes, it was posted anonymously, but I soon found out where it came from.
A few days later this attempt at writing comedy came in:
From: "CCRG" <william@ccrg.com>
Subject: Canadian Cancer Research Group
Date sent: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 08:35:54 -0500
Please be advised that in the event reference, link, or mention of the above website, group, or related individuals is not removed from your website by the close of business Friday, February 18, 2000, a libel action will be filed with the World Court seeking exemplary and punitive damages.
Please act accordingly.
William P. O'Neill
CEO-Founder
Canadian Cancer Research Group
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
For the next several years a regular stream of lunacy from this quack was spread by email and through Usenet newsgroups. You can see the collection where he identified himself at the CCRG Correspondence File, and the anonymous stuff from the Gutless Anonymous Liar in the GAL Chronicles. Enjoy!
The 99 names of … |
What reminded me about Mr O'Neill this week is that I did my normal monthly check for broken links and found that the CCRG web site is totally unreachable. And I mean totally. A trace across the 'net gets as far as a server in Texas but stops there as that machine seems to be turned off. The domain name is still current, but for some reason ownership is hidden. (Doing this for a commercial site makes almost no sense. I do a similar thing for ratbags.com, but that is because I learnt a lesson when I was sued. In any case, I'm still too easy to find. Ownership of my commercial domains is very public, as it should be.)
And why should this matter? Well, on 63 occasions Mr O'Neill has told the world that the ratbags.com web site has been closed by someone, never to return. 63 times. Sixty-three! You will forgive me if I smile a little at the thought that this revolting man and his deadly business have finally gone to that great sewer in the sky. I won't break out the champagne just yet because things like CCRG have a habit of sprouting from hidden corruption like toadstools after a storm, but I'll keep the flute glasses handy.
Persistence! (9/6/2012)
In
May I had an email conversation with someone using the name "bam bam". He seemed to think I am a promoter of mercury, one of the five most deadly chemicals in the world (the others being Ritalin, Prozac, aspartame and fluoride). Apparently he wasn't happy with what I had to say, and so he has tried again to convince me that I am wrong.
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:54:35 -0700
Subject: Re: you need a hard punch
From: bam bam
People like you will allow for millions of people to be injured with no accounting via mercury.
If millions of people were being harmed I would certainly care, but they aren't so I don't.
There are no safe guards..mercury symptom warnings*like a bottle of aspirin warning) given by doctors for low level chronic exposure to mercury vapor given at the time the amalgam is placed..
As hardly any dentists use amalgam these days I don't see what your problem is. (Dentists make much more money installing composite fillings. Why would they want to take the time and trouble to mix amalgam when they can do the job quicker and get paid better?) Did you notice that I told you that my dentist told me about mercury when I was about eight years old?
rarely if ever ...and almost never does a defender of mercury amalgams speak to the ramifications of dentistry finally saying oops we goofed up..and the millions of patients that could do a class action law suit...
You keep talking about the millions of damaged patients as if they exist.
the logic to deny fault is the major reason the established dental association can not conduct studies..fund studies...and approve of studies on Mercury Amalgam.
Using the term "mercury amalgam" shows that you have no knowledge of chemistry. All amalgams contain mercury, so a mercury amalgam would be a mixture of mercury and mercury. This would be a liquid and therefore would be of no use whatsoever for filling upper teeth. It might be used for filling lower teeth but you would have to keep your head very still to stop the fillings from spilling out.
Let me see – as of today a PubMed search for "dental amalgam" returns 8870 published papers. Nope. No research being done at all. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=dental%20amalgam
They are like the tobacco industry and will say anything to cover there tracks, and find sympathizers like you.
In what way to they "cover there (sic) tracks"? Do you remember that 1966 book by the American Dental Association I told you about?
If you trust a mercury study done on an orphanage Casa Pia((you should google this)) where there was a major sex abuse scandal on the kids during the mercury trail as proof you are crazy. That is our well funded american dental association buddy. They go to a country with problem to get kids to lay in their trap. It was funded by the same people that are at stake with their careers and the liability associated with admitting fault the ADA. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21053054
But I thought no studies were done? And did you notice that this study showed that mercury in fillings can make it into the bloodstream? This doesn't mean it causes any harm, just that it gets there. This is not surprising in any way.
If you trust humans that have something to loose in that situation you are crazy.
Should that be "something too loose" or "something to lose"? Neither makes any sense but at least they would be correct English syntax.
If you think people are not being hurt by low level chronic exposure to mercury amalgams you are one of the looniest people in the world. Thousands of doctors mds scientists affected patients are educating themselves and finally putting all the disinformation together and seeing the evil once and for all.
I'm sure they're "putting all the disinformation together". There's plenty of disinformation to go around. Just look at any anti-mercury web site and you will find disinformation galore.
You are a sympathizer with this evil.
mercury in fish harms you. mercury in industry harms you.
Did I mention chemistry? Methyl mercury in fish and industrial waste is not elemental mercury.
mercury in your mouth does not harm you??? it harms no one?? even up to 20 fillings worth..grams of mercury in someones mouth..???? and it does no harm??? you are amazing harmfully deficient in human intellect and common sense.
Even if someone had 20 amalgam fillings, how many grams of mercury would this be? And how fast does the mercury leach out of the fillings? Please don't point me to that ridiculous video showing smoking teeth. I can find enough new stuff to laugh at without listening to old tired jokes like that one.
By the way, how many grams of calcium are in an average person's mouth. Have you seen the MSDS for calcium?
Section 4 First Aid Measures
Keep away from heat and ignition sources. Harmful if swallowed. Avoid breathing vapors. Use with adequate ventilation. Avoid contact with eyes, skin, and clothes. Wash thoroughly after handling. Keep container closed.
FIRST AID: CALL A PHYSICIAN. SKIN: In case of contact, immediately flush skin with water for at least 15 minutes while removing contaminated clothing and shoes. Thoroughly clean clothing and shoes before reuse.
EYES: Wash eyes with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes, lifting lids occasionally. Seek Medical Aid. INHALATION: Remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen
INGESTION: Give several glasses of milk or water. Vomiting may occur spontaneously, but DO NOT INDUCE! Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person.
Section 11 Additional Information
Contact with skin while moist or perspired may cause burns due to reactions. Eye contact can cause irritaiton. If inhaled can cause irritation to mucous membranes.If ingested can cause burns of mouth and esophogus.If comes in contact with skin or eyes wash with water. If inhaled rlemove to fresh air . If ingested, Do not induce vomiting . For all above situation get medical assistance immediately. Persons with pre-existing disorders may be more susceptible
forget your sympathetic ways for the dental establishment. it is just common sense ..the cover up
What cover up? There seems to be no secret.
It's Alan Turing's birthday this weekend (23/6/2012)
Cancel the good news (23/6/2012)
The system I use to check for broken links and missing web sites doesn't tell me about anything until it's been returning the same error for three months. This is deliberate, and allows for temporary connection errors, people moving sites from one place to another, forgetting to pay the hosting bill (I forgot this myself once and came within a day or two of this site going dark), and other things which fix themselves after a short interruption. Last week my link checker told me that Mr William P O'Neill and the Canadian Cancer Research Group had been unreachable for the qualifying period.
Sadly, reader Karen F has detected a recrapulation of the site. It is back and as bad as ever, full of lies and promises to desperate people and with a puppy-like eagerness to steal all their money.
The CCRG site went missing once before, so I wonder why it goes into occasional hibernation. Lack of funds, legal problems, who knows. One thing you can be sure of, Mr O'Neill doesn't take it down as a gesture of good will towards cancer patients, who can only benefit by deceptive, thieving quackery sites being off the air.
A quack wins in court? I don't think so. (23/6/2012)
Truehope is a Canadian organisation that sells grass clippings in pills designed to stop piglets chewing each other's tails off. These pills are supposed to cure a host of illnesses in humans, most notably psychiatric conditions. In 2006 they managed to find a judge either insane or corrupt enough to rule that they had an obligation to break the law by selling the pills without having the requisite government permission. The Canadian government wasn't too happy about this, so they went ahead and seized as many of the pills as could be found. The crooks appealed. Now read on ...
One of the other people who has been following the Truehope saga is spokesphincter to the quacks, Tim Bolen. I assume that he is trying to attach himself to a money teat, as he seems to hop onto any quackery bandwagon that goes past. In his latest newsletter to "millions of health freedom fighters" he talks about meeting one of the principals of the Truehope scam at a conference somewhere. (I almost typed "principles" there, but that particular word has no meaning in this context.)
Anthony Stefan, from Canada, came, and we had lunch the day of the event. Many of you will remember Tony's efforts from the famous Truehope v Health Canada case where Tony successfully argued that his supplement EMPowerplus, a powerful anti-bipolar product, was a "necessity" for Canadians. In short Tony frog marched Health Canada through the Courts – a tactical lesson for us all.
In an interesting note, when "Anthony Stefan" emailed me in 2006 he was called "Anthony Stephan", but I guess Tim has to include some spelling mistakes in case the lie quotient drops too far.
So let's look at the latest "frog march", shall we. You can read the court report here, but the significant parts seem to be:
[21] It is not contested that, in 2003, Truehope was offering EMpowerplus for sale in Canada through its website without the required Health Canada authorization. It is also not contested that the seizures under review were conducted as a direct result of TrueHope's failure to comply with Health Canada's demand, first made in 2001, that it cease its unauthorized conduct. Therefore, apart from the Charter challenge aspect of the present Application, there is no question that Health Canada had sound legal reasons to perform the seizures for breaches of the FDA and the FDA Regulations as they existed in 2003.
So the crooks are appealing against the seizure but admit the seizure was legal.
[128] In my opinion, the following factors establish that Mr. Hardy and Truehope have no credible basis upon which to make a Charter complaint about the seizure: in the two years preceding the seizure there was a high degree of personal contact between Mr. Hardy and officials of Health Canada; during this period, Mr. Hardy knew that TrueHope and Synergy were acting in violation of the FDA and the FDA Regulations; Health Canada was patient in making it clear that the violations could not be disregarded and compliance with the law was required; and, most importantly, Mr. Hardy flatly refused to devise a way to put Synergy and Truehope into compliance. Thus, when all factors are considered, I find that Mr. Hardy and Truehope has no privacy right in the product seized, and, as a result, the seizure had no superadded impact on either of them.
So the crooks knew they were breaking the law but refused to do anything about compliance.
[135] The Application is dismissed.
So there it is. Health Canada was certainly "frog marched". Right into winning a case against the liars who sell grass clippings to sick people. Sometimes the Internet meme "Die in a fire" is so very appropriate.
See more from Judy Horacek here
Free speech breaks out in Anti-vax Land? (23/6/2012)
One of the hallmarks of the anti-vaccination movement in Australia is their lack of tolerance of any dissent. Anybody disagreeing with any of their lunacy is immediately blocked from commenting on blogs, and removed from mailing lists, Facebook groups and any other forums they control.
A new forum named "Vaccination – Respectful Debate" was recently created by the management at the Australian Vaccination Network with the following charter: "This is a place for people from both sides of this very polarised vaccination debate to meet and discuss the issues concerning vaccine safety, efficacy and necessity. All viewpoints are welcome provided they are respectful". I thought I would test this new-found commitment to free speech, so I posted a respectful introduction which included the following five lies that are continually told by people opposed to vaccination.
1) Vaccines contain parts of aborted foetuses
It is true that in the manufacture of some vaccines a cell line is used which was derived from the lung cells of a foetus aborted in 1962. It was a legal termination undertaken to save the mother's life and the mother donated the foetus to science. Attempts have been made to claim that Catholics, for example, should therefore refuse to use these vaccines. In 2003 the Vatican issued a ruling on this matter, making it perfectly acceptable for Catholics to use these vaccines on the basis that they had an overriding responsibility for the health of their own children and those they came into contact with. (The AVN issued a media release about the Vatican's ruling. The headline on the release was "Vatican says, 'Parents must oppose vaccines from human foetal remains'". I'll let you judge the truthfulness of those words.)
2) Polio was not reduced by the 
introduction of vaccines but has simply been renamed.
The obvious absurdity of this is apparent to anybody who lived through the early 1950s. If polio is still present then where are the callipers on children's legs, where are the iron lungs? When I asked a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner for evidence of this I was pointed to a reclassification of statistical categories in 1958 where the CDC ruled that paralysis had to last for 60 days for a case to be recorded as "paralytic polio". It was not a renaming of anything, it was a refining of the way cases were reported. (You can see some more about this here. Scroll down until you see the newspaper clipping with the headline "Vaccination Politics".)
3) Vaccines have never been tested in clinical trials
The largest clinical trial in the history of medicine in terms of numbers of test subjects was the trial of the Salk polio vaccine with about 500,000 subjects. Clinical trials for Gardasil and Rotateq both included more than 30,000 test subjects. At the time of writing this, PubMed returns 19,352 papers for the keyword search "vaccine clinical trials" and 9,681 for "vaccine safety".
4) Vaccines are injected into the bloodstream
Nothing more needs to be said about this than "No, they are not". If someone tells you this you should immediately correct them. If they persist then you know that you don't have to listen to anything more that they have to say.
5) No disease has ever been wiped out by vaccination
Smallpox, rinderpest (in cattle), with measles and polio on the horizon (although the horizon gets pushed away at times by either opposition to vaccination or nonsensical minimisation of the harm these diseases do)
There were five responses which indicated that people either didn't read what I wrote or felt that repetition is all it takes to make something true.
I was questioned on the 9,681 papers found using "vaccine safety" and asked if all these papers were just repetitions referring to each other and the same research and also if I personally had read them all and could say how many of them said vaccines were safe and how many said the opposite. I replied that I wasn't actually talking about the content of the papers, only that there were people who said they didn't exist.
I was presented with about a thousand words saying that there had never actually been any clinical trials of vaccines because placebos hadn't been used and the research was funded by pharmaceutical companies and governments and was therefore not trustworthy.
Another person wanted to know whether these clinical trials of vaccines had incorporated long-term (over decades) studies of vaccinated people against unvaccinated to look for differences in overall health.
The fourth was the best of all. He told me that it was good that I raised these points but polio had been renamed, smallpox had not been eradicated, vaccines are injected into the bloodstream and there has been no research into vaccine safety or efficacy. He didn't express an opinion on the aborted foetus matter but I've met him before so I could guess his position on that as well. (He once expressed amusement and pleasure at the fact that 800 children had been paralysed by polio in Indonesia.)
Elsewhere in my introduction I had mentioned the fraud committed by Dr Andrew Wakefield. (Wakefield published a paper in The Lancet in 1998 (since withdrawn by the journal) which purported to show a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. It was almost totally a work of fiction.) The owner of the list asked me for evidence of this fraud so I supplied it. Her response was to smear the person who had exposed Wakefield and to provide ten lies from Wakefield himself as evidence. She then banned me from the list, without either a warning or notification. My final response was not published, leaving the impression that I had not been able to supply an answer.
So yet again we see that anti-vaccination liars cannot stand any dissent from their religion. They talk of free speech, but like their talk of concern for the health and welfare of children, such talk is a lie. Why did I ever expect it to be anything else?
Speaking of the AVN ... (23/6/2012)
Sometimes claims made by anti-medicine campaigners are so unbelievable that they generate the Internet memes WTF? and LOLWUT. This is one of those occasions, courtesy of Meryl Dorey of the Australian vaccination Network. I don't think it needs any comment from me.
This is a joke, right? (23/6/2012)
Every 
time I think that homeopathy can't get any more ridiculous, something new comes along that triggers a LOLWUT reflex. Professional comedy writers would have trouble making up the stuff that homeopaths say, and if they did audiences would walk out because they felt insulted. Science fiction writers who have no trouble with instantaneous faster-than-light travel between planets light years apart would refuse to include homeopathic principles in their stories because of the lack of plausibility and credibility. People locked inside asylums would say "That's nuts. Don't be silly". Children in kindergarten would ask their teachers to talk sense and treat them like five-year-olds, not little babies. In short, some of the things that homeopaths say are so unbelievable that saying them is almost evidence of the multiverse that physicists speculate about. Homeopaths live by the rules of a universe different to ours.
In the past I've mentioned such insanities as a homeopathic use of the light from Saturn, and there's Dr Werner and her new physics. This week I found another example, although it has been hiding since 2004. It is a proving of the Peregrine Falcon. That's right – homeopathic raptor bird can cure things. I am not making this up. I couldn't.
First to the proving. This is when homeopaths test things to see what symptoms they cause so that treatments can be developed. This had to be done to see what Falco peregrinus might be useful for. Here are some reports from provers, with comments about falcons in italics. I have selected a sample here. You can read more at the link above, but make sure you have a bottle of Baseballbat headbashus handy to treat the resultant brain damage. (Baseballbat headbashus is a homeopathic remedy proved by hitting people hard on the head with a baseball bat. Under homeopathic principles it is therefore useful to treat brain trauma caused by blunt force instruments.)
Falco peregrinus is the homeopathic remedy produced from the Peregrine Falcon. A small piece of feather and a sample of blood were taken from Nesbit, a captive bred Peregrine Tiercel, 2 years of age, to produce the remedy.
You will read short statements on the Peregrine Falcon taken from different reliable sources (in italics). Each statement is followed by observations of provers after having taken the remedy.
Breeding habitat for Peregrine Falcons was historically restricted to natural cliffs, especially those near water. – generally favouring wetlands."
"Went to look at a hill, felt that I was on top of the world. Felt optimistic about moving."
"By the sea. Strong emotional response to looking at the sea; the waves and the sun reflecting off the water. Felt like crying. Much stronger response than I've had in the past."
"My feeling welled up in me and I rushed off into the night with a sleeping bag and spent the night in my car on the moor."
"There needs to be more freshness and more air and space around."
The falcon eyesight is 8 times better than human eyesight and can spot a bird flying 1000 feet below. They have very good eye sight ~ they can spot a meal up to a mile away.
"Upon opening my eyes, Vision brighter and more clarity."
"Vision clearer, brighter"
"Vision quite clear – more sharp clarity than normal"
"Everything felt very sharp visually"
"Vision really sharp – kept looking at some bright yellow flowers outside."
"Everything still sharp (vision) – it's a bit like being a child again, and seeing everything super-sharp and bright."
"Sharp, outlines seem quite definite. Eyes getting caught by bright colours more than usual."
"People said I had a 'faraway look in my eye'."
"Vision sharper"
"Eyes feel shiny, looking outside, things seem sharper, clearer."
Their eyes are black
"People at the restaurant observed that I looked "spaced out", and that my pupils were so enlarged that they could not tell my eye colour."
The legs end in long toes with strong hooked claws.
"My nails, which have always broken and flaked, had become stronger."
"Desire to grow nails long. Grew very long and strong. Have not had them long for about six years and used to be much softer and flakier."
"Nails have been much stronger."
That's enough. My psychiatrist doesn't like me calling at the weekends with a mixture of crying and giggling.
MLM shills just don't give up (23/6/2012)
This week's conversation with a multi-level marketing scheme promoter. I felt I was being dragged deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole.
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 13:44:13 +0100
Subject: Your comment on my blog
From: Jenny Fletcher
You asked in a comment on my blog what happened to the Xocai business.
Did I? As far as I know the thirteenth word in your email is the first time I have ever seen the word "Xocai". Of course, it could simply be a case of it being so inconsequential that I have forgotten.
Remind me. Where is this blog of which you speak?
A number of things.
1. The US/GBP exchange rate changed so that it became prohibitively expensive to buy the product. The exchange rate is now a lot more favourable but I had to consider my finances at the time and those of my prospective customers.
2. I was not well. You can see that there are some big gaps in blog posts. I have suffered severe depression and been suicidal. Nothing to do with the business, and not prepared to discuss with you.
I'm sorry to hear that. I know people who have been through the same experience.
3. A member of Xocai in my upline tried to say that another business I was pursuing was against the rules. It was an entirely different product and not against the rules at all. I got a letter from Xocai legal department to prove it and she was removed from her position as a top UK representative. She concocted a hate campaign against me which did not help my depression. I really had no other option than to pull out.
As it is the job of the upline in any pyramid scheme to tell lies I am not surprised at this.
Thanks to the help of my local adult mental health services I am now a lot better and engaging in life and business again.
I looked at your site. The section on religion and creationism is very funny but I regret to say that the rest of the site is mostly ill informed trash. If you take the next logical step along your idea path, you will come to the conclusion that the Government and taxation systems of the free world are also pyramid schemes.
No, I would not. Didn't your upline tell you to mention General Motors, the usual example taught in MLM school?
Believe what you will, but your comments are not welcome on my blog.
Run away, then. It is typical of people involved in scams to want to suppress criticism. As MLM is a scam by definition participants don't necessarily know they are involved in fraud, but they are taught how to react to exposure.
Thank you. Have fun, but be aware that one day, a legal action against you for defamation WILL happen if you push the envelope too far in your criticism of the network marketing industry.
The network marketing industry is fraud from top to bottom. Deal with it. And who am I defaming? Most of the participants are innocent dupes who just happen to believe the lies told by salespeople.
Jenny Fletcher
Thank you for telling me about Xocai. I will be adding it to the list of MLM scams at my site in the next update. (And yes, for the pedants, "MLM scams" is a tautology.)
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:11:38 +0100
Subject: Re: Your comment on my blog
From: Jenny Fletcher
Mr Bowditch,
Don't be disingenuous. You know perfectly well which blog and which business.
No I don't, which is why I asked. As far as I know the first time I ever encountered the word "Xocai" was in your email. Why do you want to keep it a secret?
Or do you insult so many people in a day, you forget what blogs you commented on. You will have had an email from google Blogger telling you that your comment was held for moderation.
I have received 26 emails with "blogger" in the headers in the last year and 11 with "blogspot". None of them have anything to do with moderation of any blog message I've posted.
You made a clear allegation that I am or was knowingly involved in some kind of illegal business. This is not the case.
I don't think MLM schemes are illegal (although they should be). They are immoral, but there are lots of strictly legal activities that fall outside the bounds of common morality and decency. One of the management skills of MLM scheme promoters is ensuring that their activities are right on the edge of legality without actually breaking laws.
If you now turn your attention to my current business I will bring it to their attention and let their legal department deal with you.
As I don't even know what your last business was I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to commenting about any new business you might be in. Have you joined another pyramid scam?
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:31:34 +0100
Subject: Re: Your comment on my blog
From: Jenny Fletcher
Peter YOU COMMENTED ON MY BLOG and you asked about 'my chocolate business'. Don't add more lies to gross stupidity.
Then you will have no problem giving me a link to the blog and my comment to refresh my memory.
If you are so thick that you really can't remember, then I am not going to help you by explaining how you find out what sites you've visited. Idiots like you don't deserve air to breathe.
No, I don't necessarily remember every web site I ever visit. That is why I am asking you to remind me. Why can't you do that?
On your pathetic little site you refer constantly to all network marketing business as being a 'pyramid scam' and therefore illegal. You can't worm out of it. Or perhaps you are saying you didn't write that?
Please provide a link to anywhere where I have said that all MLM schemes are illegal. In fact, if you go to https://ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/thedream.htm you can see a perfectly legal MLM scheme that I created myself.
26 emails ? Is that 26 instances of accusing legitimate business owners of being criminals?
No, it is exactly what I said. Emails that had "blogger" somewhere in the headers.
Just close down your site and go and sit in the shade. The sun has obviously addled your brain.
Why should I close down my site? It performs a useful service warning people about scams like MLM.
Jenny Fletcher
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:45:50 +0100
Subject: Re: Your comment on my blog
From: Jenny Fletcher
You can look back through your own damn browser history.
How far back. One month? One year? Right back to 1999 when I started this site?
Are you saying you don't recall asking the question?
I have said that several times. Do you have a comprehension problem?
How did you come by the blog in the first place?
Which blog would that be? Why can't you tell me this?
There is no point you going back to my blog. None of the comments you could make will ever appear there. I am not responsible for refreshing your memory.
So I assume that you are lying. Otherwise you could point me to your blog and prove me wrong.
Either network marketing businesses – MLM in your parlance are legal or they are scams. No shades of grey.
I'll say this real slow for the hard of thinking – all MLM schemes are scams, but they are perfectly legal provided that the promoters have been careful enough to avoid infringing the definitions of pyramid schemes in legislation. Did you even bother to look at the LEGAL MLM scheme that I invented. Legal as it can be, backed by a decision of the full bench of the Federal Court of Australia.
You have a list of what you term illegal businesses. If I find Xocai has been added to that list, I will advise their legal department. The fact that I am no longer their distributor is irrelevant here.
I have a list of what I term "scams". I make no comment about legality. As you have mentioned legal action, I will add this to the list of Vacuous Legal Threats at https://ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/lawyersahoy.htm.
Don't bother replying to this. Your mail is already directed to spam and from there a filter called 'trolls' will permanently remove it as from today.
I'm prepared to bet money that you will read this. People who announce killfiling almost never really do it. And why would you be frightened of what I have to say anyway? All you have to do is tell me where this apocryphal blog is and prove me wrong.
Oh, and before I forget – if Xocai is a multi-level marketing scheme then it is quite probably legal. Immoral, deceitful, but almost certainly legal. Sad, isn't it?
Jenny Fletcher
Persistence is a virtue (30/6/2012)
Some people just never give up. I like that. Here is an email I received this week.
From: "George Eby"
Subject: Eby's ColdCure vindicated
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:38:31 -0500
Hi,
Please go to Eby's ColdCure http://coldcure.com and look at the left-hand column. Especially go down the column until you get to Feb. 15, 2011 Cochrane Review article on zinc lozenges and colds and Cochrane Review plus my feedback See page 41.
You will see that major scientists and major review authorities side with me. However, it is not as simple as they state.
I am not a crack pot as you say!
George Eby
I've had correspondence with Mr Eby before about his claim that he can cure the common cold so I was intrigued that the Cochrane Collaboration might have found something to back him up. He famously published a paper in Medical Hypotheses, a journal with a reputation that suggests its editors almost certainly subscribe to the idea expressed in this Cectic cartoon:
Mr Eby kindly provided a link to the Cochrane paper, where I was able to see this comment on page 41 (where he told me to look):
For the search engines:
Characteristics of excluded studies
Eby 1984
The trial was rated of poor methodological quality. A higher incidence of side effects and complaints in the zinc group may have reduced compliance with treatment (no information was provided on whether compliance with treatment was assessed). Intention-to-treat analyses were not conducted; analyses were only conducted on a subset of those originally enrolled in the trial. The trial relied on subjective assessment of symptoms by subjects. Inclusion criteria were not adequately addressed and therefore there may have been potential for selection bias to occur. In addition, no information was provided on how allocation to treatment groups was concealed, the power of the study was not stated and viral studies were not conducted
While the paper suggested that there might be some small amount of evidence of benefit from zinc supplements (some colds went away after seven days), Mr Eby is drawing a very long bow indeed by suggesting that he has been vindicated. Will this stop him selling zinc lozenges to cure colds? Of course not.
Some should stop persisting (30/6/2012)
Some people should just give up. Here is an email referring to something I wrote about how people won't shut up even when they are proved wrong. I won't bother to reply because I would be like talking to a rock. At least it gave me a site to add to the list of buffoons and liars on this site.
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:20:29 +0700
Subject: WTC7
From: Simon Robert Lane
Just read this:
"A 9/11 Truther challenged me to prove scientifically that Building 7 at the World Trade Center could fall down if it had not been demolished by deliberately placed explosive charges. My reply was that the extensive damage to one side of the building caused by debris from the collapse of the two towers weakened the structure, and when you take out a lot of the struts and reinforcement on one side of a building it can actually fall down by itself. Relying on the fact that it was nearly impossible to get a photograph of the damaged side of the building because this almost required the photographer to stand in the ruins of the towers, he told me that as no photograph existed of any damage, no damage had occurred and therefore the building must have been blown up. I offered a photograph from ABC News, one of the very few which showed the damage to the south face of Building 7 before the collapse. He responded that he didn't believe that was Building 7 because it must have been Building 5 and then changed the subject completely and asked me if I had any evidence that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with the day's events."
OK, so it could have fallen down after one side was damaged. There are many possibilities. So how about looking at the evidence? You'll find a whole load on this website:
http://ae911truth.org/
Kind regards,
Simon Robert Lane.
Another 9/11 troofer film? Does the world need this much idiocy?
Look who's in trouble again (30/6/2012)
I don't know how I missed this back in May, but our old friend Fran Sheffield from Homeopathy Plus! attracted the attention of the authorities again. The real pity is that nobody can shut this quack down completely. You can read the media release from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission here.
ACCC tackles Homeopathy Plus! Whooping Cough claims
Homeopathy Plus! Pty Ltd has removed representations from its website that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission considered to be misleading and deceptive and that could lead to serious health risks for consumers.
The representations were made on the �Whooping Cough � Homeopathic Prevention and Treatment� page which has since been removed from the Homeopathy Plus! website.
"The combination of claims that the vaccine was ineffective and that the homeopathic remedies listed on the page were an alternative prevention and treatment regime elevated this matter to one of extreme concern," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.
The ACCC examined content on the Homeopathy Plus! website following a complaint from the medical profession. The ACCC considered that the Homeopathy Plus! claims that the current whooping cough vaccine is dangerous and ineffective, while the homeopathic remedy is a proven and safe alternative, were likely to be misleading or deceptive.
Reliance on these claims may influence consumers to avoid the whooping cough vaccine and rely solely on the homeopathic approach for treatment and prevention of whooping cough, which is strongly discouraged by medical professionals. Whooping cough is a serious respiratory infection which can cause a long coughing illness and is life threatening for babies.
The ACCC result was considerably assisted by the engagement of the Therapeutic Goods Administration and NSW Fair Trading with Homeopathy Plus! Pty Ltd in resolving this matter.
The ACCC will continue to monitor the Homeopathy Plus! Pty Ltd site for potential breaches of the Australian Consumer Law.
Release # NR 086/12
Issued: 3rd May 2012
Why I do this (30/6/2012)
People often ask me why I bother with this site and the other things I do to fight nonsense and idiocy. I do it because sometimes I get emails like this:
Today a rep from Manatech Australia contacted me about working from home selling Manatech products. Lucky me when I did some research and found your site. Thank you for the information. I will not be joining.
Regards Cheryl
And an email I can't answer (30/6/2012)
And this is why there will always be a need for people to fight nonsense, idiocy and superstition. What possible answer could anyone give to this question?
From: Nadia Ramzan
Subject: interested in getting circumcised
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:12:02 -0700
Hi,
I am so sick of myself for excessive masturbation. I want to remove clitoris entirely even the shaft thats under the skin. Where can I find a doctor ? I live in NY so is there a place close by? thank you!
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