January 13, 2005

• "...he observed that some patients labeled 'mentally ill' were in fact suffering from diet related mind altering disorders." I think, therefore I eat bad things, and therefore I get crazy. Am I reading that right?
• "Bate says she and her husband paid Shortt at least $26,000 over the course of eight months..." "Is his practice some sort of scam for money? 'No, I don't make much,' says Shortt. 'This is a mission for me.'" Right. As far as the treatment goes, at least there's some sort of theoretical mechanism, which is more than you can say for some other practices (e.g. acupuncture). If it hasn't been seriously studied, then it should be-- not very hard, after all, to make a double-blind test with all the trimmings. Sounds like the promoters do downplay the risks a lot, regardless of potential benefits. The pages promoting it also set off my bullshit-o-meter in various ways. E.g., it's promoted as a miracle cure which works against half of all known diseases, they use analogies which don't really hold up, etc. Anyway, I'm no doctor, so I'll stop here.
• I'm no Dr. either, but I thought that when you got a shot they always flicked the syringe to bring any bubbles to the top and squirted out the air - because an air bubble in your blood stream could kill you. So how does the "pure oxygen" allegedly released by Hydrogen Peroxide not cause bubbles that could harm you. Or is that whole thing an urban legand or something... off to Google.
• I kinda fell in love with the thalidomide baritone, myself.
• Yeah, that link copy sets off the bullshit meter. Reminds me of the stuff you find on sites recommending ionic silver therapy. Mercurious - the oxygen released by the low concentration peroxide reaction inside your body would not be concentrated enough to come out of solution and form an air bubble. It would remain dissolved in your blood, just like the oxygen that fish survive on in water.
• Goofyfoot, me too. And the girl who went to school on a goat scholarship.
• wow, that's almost as deadly as that damned Dihydrogen Monoxide
• So, putting coffee up their butt wasn't good enough for them, eh?
• *giggles at fes*
• Hydrogen peroxide has a remarkable clearing effect on the skin. After only a few intravenous treatments the skin takes on a translucent clarity usually seen only in children. Jesus. Sounds remarkably like taking arsenic for clear, white skin.
• Y'know, at a certain point-- and I'm usually not aiming at the victim-- you have to wonder if this is just a sick (for lack of a better word) example of supply and demand. The victims went to a doctor that offered treatments with no scientific evidence to back them, and a doctor that was not in *anyone's* coverage plan. The article notes that these folks based on anecdotal testimonies only... and yes, while I think this guy should be put away, why is anyone amazed at the audacity of this quack? It's the same as the miraculous-yet-untested-and-unspecific diet pills, etc. ad nauseum.
• I live in Peru, South America, and had never even heard of hydrogen peroxide before I came here (I'm Icelandic and have only lived here for a little over 4 years). A couple of years ago I went into the jungle, and fell down around 2 meters (yards) and cut my leg pretty badly on the sharp rock I landed on. It cut into the bone. I was in the jungle for a week after this accident, and had develloped a really bad infection. The picture here is taken the day's after the fall: http://hraunfjord.com/1/stills/saridmittfina.jpg Infection was just starting to kick in. After the week, I was not able to walk or stand in my leg, nor could I have the leg lower than my body, due to the blood pressure build-up... making me go crazy. Once I reached "civilization" again, I started a hefty antibiotics treatment, which just made things worse, cause my digestive system went out of order. Then I was ordered to get strong penicilin injections, which kicked me in the butt as a wild horse would do.... and that was not pleasant at all. 2 months went by, and the wound was only getting worse and worse.... with pus pouring out of it every single minute, every single day. My wife's parents were both highly qualified doctors (mother passed away late last year), had a specialist to come and take a look at my wound... and he stated that I would just have to continue my antibiotics treatment, regardless of the side effects. 2 months, and not able to move around... and no pills or injections worked.... I had the housemaid to buy me one small bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide, which a friend of mine had used in the jungle to clean the wound on the first day... thinking that it was much gentler than cleaning the wound with hot soap water... as I had been doing. I used a spray nozzle and sprayed the pure solution (50%) on the wound until it was totally clean. Every 10 minutes I would put around 5 drops into the wound, to remove the constantly reappearing pus from the wound. On the second day I could walk for the first time in 2 months without immense pain. After 2 day's more, the wound was HEALED and closed. I had spent several hundred dollars on strong medication, destroyed my intestins and massive pain every time I got penicilin shots in my butt... And the bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide only costed me around 25 cents of a US dollar, and it contained more than enough to treat 100 similar wounds. Of course that is exterior use, but it proved to me that doctors will stick to their traditional medicine, rather than do the obvious: recommend the cheapest and best solution there is. Of course this is only for external use, and not IV as the treatment the woman that died got, but still, I regard this to be a miracle medicine, and I won't ever enter the jungle again without a bottle of it in my pocket. I wouldn't disregard it's positive functions in other forms as well... and in this above mentioned case, the woman who died, had been on some medication, that may have been the real cause for her death. Thousands of people are seemingly receiving, and have received the exactly same treatment as she got, without ever having problems (except economical ones would be my guess.... $26.000 pr 8 months when administering something that costs no more than $5 for a gallon (in pure form he would thin to a solution of 0.03% or something like that).... that's robbery!