#623: Harvey & Marilyn Diamond

“Fit for Life” is a fad diet book based on “Natural Hygiene” and on the legendary woomeister Herbert Shelton’s reality-oblivious theories of food combining – if one eats the food in the wrong order they “cause fermentation” in the stomach, and “dead foods clog” the body, whereas “living foods cleanse” it. The ideas have been refuted by research, but this seems not to matter for Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, who have sold millions of books promoting the bullshit. Harvey Diamond has his degree in nutrition from a diploma mill, and it shows – most of the book is firmly based on the ecological fallacy, including the ridiculously false and misleading but exasperatingly common idea that “animals in nature are magnificently healthy in comparison to the health that we humans experience” whereas pets and zoo animals develop “many of the problems of humans” (there are alternative and better explanations for why it is rare to see debilitating diseases in the wild than invoking natural as some sort of white magic). The main claims of the Diamonds are covered here, though see also this admirably comprehensive list of dubious health practitioners.

Diagnosis: There are quite enough of these loons around, and exposing them will probably help little or nothing. Still, we have a duty to try, and the Diamonds constitute yet another scheme to exploit human biases and anecdotal evidence for purposes that have little to do with truth or well-being, regardless of what the Diamonds themselves may believe. 

#588: Gabriel Cousens

Gabriel Cousens is a health writer who describes himself in the following manner:

“Dr. Sir Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, a physician of the soul, teaches and lives the sevenfold peace. To the process of awakening and healing, Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), weaves a background as a holistic physician, medical researcher, world-recognized live-food nutritionist, psychiatrist, family therapist, homeopath, Rabbi, acupuncturist, Ayurvedic practitioner, expert on green juice spiritual fasting and detoxification fasting, ecological leader, Reiki master, internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, culture-bridger, world peaceworker, to give a unique holistic approach to nurturing the hungry soul.”

That ought to tell you quite a bit about what kind of cretin we are dealing with here. Cousens’s work, in all its glory, centers around New Age woo and bullshittery (a mixture, it seems, of sycophancy and criticism of those whose unsupported claims differ from his own – e.g. Johnny Lovewisdom (criticism) and Adi Da (endorsement)). A mainstay of his particular kind of woo is Raw foodism, and he employs a wide arsenal of crackpottery (particularly the Gerson protocol) and New Age religious fluffery to prop up his advice, as well as primitive medieval vitalism: the uncooked baby carrot is “alive”, while the cooked carrot is “dead”; Hence, cooking and pasteurization “kill” food, and raw food is “living”. Why it would be an advantage that the carrot is alive is not entirely obvious, but Cousens does at least have pictures of the auras of energy surrounding the food to prove it. His rainbow diet is aptly featured here.

Apparently Cousens is the founder of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, “the world's leading spiritual, vegan raw and live food retreat center,” and the author of Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days, in which he claims that enzymes are food-qi and that treating diabetes is easy. It is discussed here. He’s got … anecdotes to back it all up, endorsements by one Joel Fuhrman – who appears not to know the first thing about reality – and plenty of thoroughly false and rather random-sounding assertions. In the accompanying video he does tone down the woo a little to make it more mainstream (without making it anywhere near reality-based), but both the video and the “Raw for Life” Encyclopedia on his website feature “expert” commentaries from Morgan Spurlock, Mike Adams and Gary Null, which shouldn’t exactly confer much authority to his claims.

Cousens has been involved in a lot of nasty bullshit over the years, including raising some controversy over his fantastically crankycellular therapy, and he has been responsible for at least one death, though according to Arizona’s board of homeopathic medicine (yes they have one) Cousens wasn’t guilty of malpractice by their standards – “standards of homeopathy” aren’t much to write home about, though.

With one David Wagner Cousens has also written Tachyon Energy: A New Paradigm in Holistic Healing. No, it is not evidence-based; and yes, it is quantum woo taken just a few steps further.

Diagnosis: A staunch enemy of humanity, Cousens is a monstrous supercrank who unabatedly continues his campaign to fool people into ruining their own lines. Repugnant.

#544: Stanislaw Burzynski (?)

The Burzynski Clinic, operated by Stanislaw Rajmund Burzynski, has offered clinical trials for alternative cancer treatment using antineoplastons. “Antineoplaston” is Burzynski’s name for “a group of peptides, derivatives, and mixtures” that he uses in the trials. The compounds are not licensed as drugs and Burzynski is not licensed to treat cancer with his mixture. He claims to have a lot of anecdotal evidence for his treatment, though looking more closely at what he’s actually doing reveals a lot of curious details, for instance that conventional cancer treatments are used as well in his treatments, and that the success part of his success stories is nevertheless not always unambiguously ascribed to those conventionaltreatments. The treatments at the Clinic are enormously overpriced, and given the time period in which the antineoplaston treatment has remained on the “clinical trial”-stage without breaking peer review (more on his “studies” and publications here), the cost of the treatment regimes, and the way Burzynski actually treats his patients, some have raised questions whether Burzynski himself actually believes in the efficacy of antineoplastons. If he does not, then “crackpot” would obviously not be the most apposite description. You can find a nice and concise explanation of why Burzynski’s practices are questionable here, and a discussion of some of the anecdotes he uses to back up his claims here.

He does, however, have a “documentary” that promotes his treatments and paints him as a brave, pioneering maverick, which he – despite the assertions of his followers – emphatically isn’t, and a pinnacle of honesty and actual care in a world where ordinary doctors are prevented by greed from seeing the light (discussed here). Burzynski is, admittedly, rather skilled at providing dubiously honest framings of his work, and has at least made him popular with an endorsed by the usualy stock of prominent suckers for anything that smells of conspiracy, such as Mike Adams and Joe Mercola (Mercola’s endorsement is discussed here).

A follow-up to the “documentary” was announced in January 2013, and described as being about as honest, investigative and reality-based as the first. Film-maker and Burzynski champion Eric Merola decided to call it “Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Chapter 2: A Modern Story,” and you can see a discussion of some of the details surrounding the production here (some reports from an early screening are discussed here and here). Merola himself seems to be currently keeping himself busy as some sort of Burzynski watchdog, arguing that criticism of Burzynski’s practices amounts to hating and baselessly accusing critics of being corrupt pharma shills - standard fare from the denialist movement, in other words. Some have questioned Merola’s intellectual honesty, and his response to critics is not the only reason. Here is Merola’s secret weapon against the skeptics unveiled.

Another propaganda video posted by Burzynski’s new PR man, Wayne Dolcefino, featuring Josh Duhamel, is discussed here.

In November 2011 the clinic quickly rose to fame after one Marc Stephens, associated with the clinic, threatened several skeptical bloggers and organizations with rather hilariously unfounded lawsuits (one example here). The Clinic eventually had to disavow Stephens and his antics, but reading the press release from Burzynski’s PR flak Renee Trimble, one realizes that they do not explicitly disavow his methods for responding to critics. The sudden public interest in the clinic was bound to cause something resembling a Streisand effect, however, and the clinic did at some point face some further scrutiny. Unfortunately, despite repeated warnings from the FDA, Burzynski and his clinic are still going relatively strong, and he got off the Texas Medical Board investigations on a technicality.

A particularly worrisome aspect of the Burzynski affair is the media’s credulous take on his practices; after all, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t let reality get in the way of a nice narrative about a maverick hero facing the establishment all by himself.

More here. One of the stories that led up to Burzynski’s quick rise to fame in November 2011 is found here; discussion here. There’s another tragic story here. Quackwatch has been following Burzynski for years, and fortunately there are other powers of good that have taken notice and are trying to make the world a better place.

Burzynski is at least the proud recipient of this year’s Pigasus Award in the Scientist Category for his efforts.

Diagnosis: A little hard to pin down; a diagnosis would depend on what exactly Burzynski thinks he is doing, which is currently a little murky. That there is just cause for concern regarding his practices, however, is uncontroversial.

Update: This is a really good resource as well.

#529: Amber Brooks & Charles Chapple

Although the two loons presented in this entry are probably no more loony than a horde of other like-minded altmed practitioners they still deserve exposure because they i) are still loons – the numbers don’t change that; and ii) they both appeared at the 2011 version of the annual quackfest Autism One among a host of other pushers of woo. Indeed, in one sense their appearance there brillianty illustrates what the antivaxx movement is really about.

For what are Brooks’s and Chapple’s areas of “expertise”? Nothing less than CranioSacral Therapy. Basically, Craniosacral therapists (the main guy appears to be one John Upledger, who runs his own clinic in Florida and also does dolphin therapy), who belong to the more dubious end of osteopathy, claim to be able to detect a craniosacral “rhythm” in the cranium, sacrum, cerebrospinal fluid and the membranes that envelop the craniosacral system, and the balance and flow of this rhythm is considered by such therapists to be essential to good health. The rhythm is measured by the therapist's hands. Any needed or effected changes in rhythm are also detected only by the therapist's hands. It has not been detected by other means, and will presumably never be detected by other means. The idea is thoroughly silly to begin with. There is a good discussion of CST here.

Brooks’s talk at the antivaxx happening was entitled “CranioSacral Therapy: Its Role in Autism Recovery & Childhood Development,” and she managed to claim that “CST has been shown to help the individual with autistic features gain a calmer and more relaxed state of being by decreasing structural stress and strain,” where “shown” certainly does not mean “suggested by controlled, double-blinded studies with a reasonable, unbiased sample size,” if anyone were ever to believe that. Chapple, a chiropractor, gave the talk “Affecting Sensory Processing, Primitive Reflexes with Chiropractic and Cranial Sacral Therapy.” You do the math.

Diagnosis: Kooks who bring to the table not only homemade theories (as crackpots are wont to) but also homemade evidence (ok, crackpots are in general prone to that as well). The plural of anecdote is not evidence, but that’s probably not something Brooks or Chapple are likely to grasp as they lend their services, however insignificant in themselves, to the forces of evil.

#522: Barbara Brennan

Barbara Ann Brennan is an author and intuitive healer who works in the field of “energy healing”. According to the Watkins Review she was the 94th most spiritually influential person in the world in 2011. Brennan has pretty much adopted every conceivable form of imaginary woo, from Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone energy to chakras and astral healing, as well as most other typical crank baggage, such as promoting herself as a doctor of philosophy (Greenwich University) and doctor of theology (C. Norman Shealy’s Holos University), both from unaccredited diploma mills.

Brennan’s first book, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, is still viewed as a classic among the reality impaired. In writing it Brennan claimed to “receive intuitive information about her clients during sessions, and to see repetitive patterns in the energy fields of her clients indicating common roots underlying their difficulties”, and the whole thing is a mess of auras, “energy fields” that interact with each other, and promotion of “the seven-layermodel of the energy field, each layer being structured of differing frequencies and kinds of energy and performing different functions.” The chakras are supposedly transformers that receive and process universal energy. It is hard to believe that Brennan actually believes any of the bullshit she’s spewing.

According to Wikipedia Brennan “is best known for taking a methodical, scientific approach to energy healing,” but – suffice to say – it is doubtful that anyone taking Brennan seriously has the faintest clue about what a scientific approach implies (hint: “let anecdotal evidence take you where you want to go” is not a scientific approach).

As mentioned Brennan has developed “energy healing techniques” (she calls them “full spectrum healing”) to work on the seven layers of the human energy field or auras, including what she calls “spiritual surgery” applied to the “fifth level” using the power of a spirit surgeon. It really is all about energy, and neither Brennan nor her adherents understand what energy actually is (hint: energy is not a buzzing, glowing, luminescent. magical cloud surrounding objects that one can tap into by the right means – even if focusing one’s will were “the right means”).

In 1982, she established the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, designed to train professional healers in Florida, which has come to be known as one of the epitomes of New Age healing. It is licensed by the State of Florida Commission for Independent Education (i.e., it is unaccredited) and listed here. She herself has moved to Austria to open more branches of the school (there are branches in Austria, Germany, and Japan).

Brennan has a listing in Quackwatch’s helpful Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare, Alternative Medicine, Paranormal Healing, and Related Methods.

Diagnosis: The epitome of New Age healing, few people do woo more thoroughly than Barbara Brennan. She’s had a lot of influence and must be considered a dangerous enemy of reason and reality.