Debunking Antibody Testing & Online Charlatans
Mort Zuckerman
lPick...@cdc.gov, Durlan...@yale.edu, Aa...@columbia.edu,
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Subject: Debunking Antibody Testing & Online Charlatans
Date: Jun 15, 2010 6:25 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
=================================
This non-scientist appears to not
understand that antibody testing in
an era of pandemic fungi - inhaled
(asthma) or otherwise - is the
scientific equivalent of promoting
bloodletting.
See Justin Radolf:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PIIB.htm
And the non-production of antibodies
from the HIV vaccine (LYMErix) trials:
Anthony Fauci, the head of NIAID:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/9/888
"Pam3Cys/LYMErix HIV gp120 does not produce
antibodies. Hmmm. Maybe we should
look into the STRUCTURE of this antigen."
CDC officer and former head of the NIH
Rocky Mountains Bioweapons Lab (the reason
the USA recruited Willy Burgdorfer)
discusses the auto-vaccination of
spirochetal blebbing:
"It's using some sort of stealth-bomber-type mechanism," he says. Or,
using another diversionary tactic called blebbing, the spirochete can
pinch off bits of its membrane in order to release its surface
proteins. Explains Barbour: "It's like a bacterial Star Wars defense
program," in which released surface proteins might intercept
incoming host antibodies, keeping the spirochete safe from
immunological attack.
The mechanisms of failure of the
Tuberculosis lipoprotein vaccines:
http://www.actionlyme.org/FUNGAL_VACCINES.htm
"Immunosuppression." "Fails to produce
antibodies." "Appears to make existing
infections worse."
Therefore, rather than produce any
science, this quack adheres to Ancient
History. Let us hope he doesn't suggest
hypnosis and other forms of psychiaquackery
to be the answer to pre-term births:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20456021
"However, TLR2 is expressed and functional in the developing
telencephalon from early embryonic stages and infectious agent-related
activation of TLR2 [fungi, mycoplasma, OspA] inhibits NPC
proliferation. TLR2-mediated inhibition of NPC proliferation may
therefore be a mechanism by which infection, ischemia, and
inflammation adversely affect brain development."
These kinds of self-selected online
medical expert fools should not be
allowed near *any* humans, much less
women of child-bearing age.
Think: The Whore Factory of psychiatry
is the reason for the epidemic of infertility
due to endometriosis, too.
It's a sad thing, ain't it? None of these
quacks want any chronic patients of any kind.
The usual office fee is less for a follow-up
visit, and rather than fight the insurance
companies... they attack us, the double
victims (disease and US sci-med incompetence).
Happens all the time. No matter what,
we "wimmins is the culprits."
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org
===========================
Plumbing the depth of quackery at HuffPo
Category: Medicine
Posted on: June 14, 2010 4:33 PM, by PalMD
One of the questions addressed in this space is, "what makes a
particular condition susceptible to quackery?" Some of the common
features we've seen over time are:
1. Diverse and protean symptoms: fatigue, "brain fog", diffuse pain,
and other vague symptoms are often used as diagnostic criteria for
controversial entities such as morgellons and chronic Lyme disease.
2. Lack of diagnostic certainty: there are no definitive tests to make
the diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease or morgellons (or fibromyalgia
for that matter) making objective diagnosis difficult.
3. Children affected: autism affects children (and of course their
parents) and our natural desire to protect children makes us
vulnerable.
There are a number of ways that quacks can churn out their product
using just these three trends. When a patient suffers from
generalized fatigue or malaise but a good work up fails to reveal a
specific problem, a real doctor will listen carefully and take a
cautious wait-and-see approach. A quack will rush into action,
applying unproven treatments and even making up their own diseases.
Making up a disease may sound easy but if you want people to really
buy it, you need to follow a few principles. You have to make it
sound plausible to lay people, and you have to create the best kind of
lie---the one based on a nidus of truth.
It helps if you have tests---everyone loves tests. Diagnostic testing
is a complex field. Tests need to be validated in several different
ways so that any test's characteristics are well understood. For
example, if I want to use a hemoglobin A1C level to diagnose and
follow diabetes, I need to know how results are distributed across the
population of interest, I need to know how well the test itself
technically works, and I need to know how well it works
statistically. Without this information, the test result is
meaningless. Quacks get around this in a few different ways: they
make up their own tests; they misinterpret tests by, for example, re-
define the normal range in proven tests or giving a result meaning
that it does not have; they send tests to labs with less "stringent"
quality controls; they use tests that have not been proven to show
what they claim.
All this is by way of introduction to another crappy piece in the
Huffington Post. The piece, "Why Lead Poisoning May Be Causing Your
Health Problems," is by Mark Hyman, a doctor and non-toxicologist.
The title seems to imply that lead poisoning is common and causes just
about everything. Hyman claims that "[n]early 40 percent of us have
toxic levels of lead in our bodies." If this is true, this is
potentially one of the greatest public health problems we have ever
faced.
Lead exposure affects children and adults unequally. The reason so
much effort is focused on young children and lead is that lead has a
devastating affect on a growing, developing child. Lead intoxication
in kids leads to all sorts of serious problems including anemia and
abnormal cognitive development. Although childhood lead levels in the
U.S. are declining, there is still reason to be concerned. In the last
reporting period (1999-2004) about 1.4% of American children had lead
levels above 10 mcg/dL, the level usually considered problematic.
Recent research is giving us reason to be less sanguine about lower
lead levels as well (see references). Even blood levels below 7.5 mcg/
dL are correlated with decreased intellectual function, although the
data are a bit murky.
In adults, the effects are less clear. Leaving aside occupational
lead exposures, there is some evidence that environmental lead
exposures cause cognitive problems in adults and may also contribute
to hypertension and other common problems, but it's hard to draw
conclusions about causation. Differentiating chronic and acute lead
exposure and its effects is a significant problem in adults. States
are responsible for collecting data and use different cut-offs but
according to the data that are available (2005), the average rate of
elevated blood lead levels in U.S. adults is about 8.7/100,000. To
get a more complete picture, we would have to use other measurements
for adults in addition to blood. But even a worst-case scenario of
adults plus children brings us nowhere near the 40% figure cited by
asserted by Hyman.
While Hyman's alarmist statistics may not be anywhere near accurate,
one of his basic premises is: lead is dangerous to children and too
adults, even at levels lower than traditionally measured. After that,
he flies right off the rails.
He describes very much overplays the state of the research into adult
lead toxicity. It appears to be correlated with a number of common
health problems, but that's where it ends for now. There is not yet
convincing data to show a strong causal relationship between low lead
levels and common health problems. The data is certainly concerning
enough to continue reducing human lead exposure, but beyond that,
things are murky. For some reason, after describing the potential
damage caused by lead exposure he states seemingly out of nowhere:
Wow! Take a moment to digest that. Chelation therapy saves lives
and billions of dollars. But your doctor probably isn't offering this
as standard treatment, because, as I have said many times, doctors
don't learn two of the most important things in medical school: How to
help people improve their nutrition and how to deal with environmental
toxins.
Chelation for lead poisoning is indicated only when lead levels are
very high. At lower levels, avoiding the source of the lead is the
treatment of choice. There is no evidence that chelating adults or
children with low lead levels leads to positive outcomes. With
avoidance alone, children with elevated lead levels get better. There
is no evidence that, as Hyman enthusiastically suggests, chelation
"saves lives and billions of dollars." I'm also not sure what his
medical education was like, but we certainly learned about nutrition
and environmental toxins. What I learned, however, was based on
actual evidence.
Hyman then gives six tips to "getting the lead out" which are also
curiously devoid of evidence. While I won't torture you with all of
them, I do suggest you read it for the giggle-inducing shoe
suggestion. His first suggestion is the worst of them. He recommends
to be screened for lead toxicity through chelation-provoked testing.
The American College of Medical Toxicology specifically recommends
against this practice:
It is...the position of the American College of Medical Toxicology
that post-challenge urinary metal testing has not been scientifically
validated, has no demonstrated benefit, and may be harmful when
applied in the assessment and treatment of patients in whom there is
concern for metal poisoning.
Hyman has done a good job of using a kernel of truth around which
crystalize and entire diagnostic and treatment fiction. He
encourages people with vague symptoms to undergo unproven medical
tests and to then subject themselves to potentially dangerous
treatments. He should be ashamed.
But of course, he has no shame.
References:
Jusko, T., Henderson, C., Lanphear, B., Cory-Slechta, D., Parsons, P.,
& Canfield, R. (2007). Blood Lead Concentrations Environmental Health
Perspectives, 116 (2), 243-248 DOI: 10.1289/ehp.10424
Lanphear BP, Hornung R, Khoury J, Yolton K, Baghurst P, Bellinger DC,
Canfield RL, Dietrich KN, Bornschein R, Greene T, Rothenberg SJ,
Needleman HL, Schnaas L, Wasserman G, Graziano J, & Roberts R (2005).
Low-level environmental lead exposure and children's intellectual
function: an international pooled analysis. Environmental health
perspectives, 113 (7), 894-9 PMID: 16002379
Hu, H., Shih, R., Rothenberg, S., & Schwartz, B. (2006). The
Epidemiology of Lead Toxicity in Adults: Measuring Dose and
Consideration of Other Methodologic Issues Environmental Health
Perspectives, 115 (3), 455-462 DOI: 10.1289/ehp.9783
Shih, R., Glass, T., Bandeen-Roche, K., Carlson, M., Bolla, K., Todd,
A., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Environmental lead exposure and cognitive
function in community-dwelling older adults Neurology, 67 (9),
1556-1562 DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000239836.26142.c5
Liu X, Dietrich KN, Radcliffe J, Ragan NB, Rhoads GG, & Rogan WJ
(2002). Do children with falling blood lead levels have improved
cognition? Pediatrics, 110 (4), 787-91 PMID: 12359796
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci