A week ago, I noted that one of the stranger and less credible conspiracy theories promulgated by quacks and their believers was still going strong nearly three months after the first death that triggered it, the death of autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, apparently by suicide. Basically, three months ago, Dr. Bradstreet, who has long been a fixture in the "autism biomed" movement and a frequent speaker at autism quackfests like Autism One, was found dead in a river from a gunshot wound to the chest, an apparent suicide. A recent story about the investigation into Dr. Bradstreet's death included an interview with the investigating police officer, who described what appeared to be an open-and-shut case of suicide, although clearly many of Dr. Bradstreet's fans refuse to believe this.
Since Bradstreet's death, there have been a number of conspiracy theories, mostly originated by Erin Elizabeth at the appropriately named HealthNut News. Elizabeth is the significant other of über-quack Joe Mercola, and her construction of a conspiracy involving the deaths of multiple "holistic" practitioners under allegedly suspicious circumstances, including the death of Nicholas Gonzalez has been epically entertaining. After all, Nicholas Gonzalez appears to have died of a sudden cardiac death, and there's no compelling evidence that his death was due to anything other than natural causes. Now, each time a "holistic" practitioner dies, Elizabeth seems to find a way to weave the death into a grand pharma conspiracy.
What started this conspiracy is not so much the death of Jeff Bradstreet due to suicide, though. What started the conspiracy is that Bradstreet's suicide occurred soon after his clinic, the Bradstreet Wellness Center in Buford, had been raided by the FDA. Given Bradstreet's long history of peddling various quack treatments for autism, the raid could have been provoked by almost anything, but it just so happens that in this case it was provoked by Bradstreet's latest and greatest quackery for autism. I'm referring, of course, to Globulin component Macrophage Activating Factor (GcMAF), which is isolated from human blood and his business collaboration with David Noakes, the head of the Guernsey-based company Immuno Biotech, which manufactures and sells GcMAF The reason the time is ripe for another update on the Bradstreet saga is because the BBC's 5 Live Investigates just broadcast a new investigation into Immuno Biotech and First Immune, which is the trade name under which GcMAF is sold. (The MP3 can be heard here and downloaded here. The GcMAF story starts around 5:49.) In it, Adrian Goldberg takes a tough look at Immuno Biotech.
Before I discuss the report, I should probably do a brief recap about GcMAF. The full version is here; the CliffsNotes version follows. So what is GcMAF? It’s an immunomodulatory protein that is found normally in the blood of healthy people. By "immunomodulatory," I mean that GcMAF activity affects the function of the immune system. The glycoprotein (a protein with sugar molecules attached) GcMAF results from sequential deglycosylation (removal of sugar molecules) of the vitamin D-binding protein (the Gc protein). The protein that results is thought to be a macrophage activating factor (MAF). MAFs are a class of protein known as a lymphokine, and they regulate the expression of antigens on the surface of macrophages. One of their functions is to “activate” macrophages, which can under the proper circumstances attack cancer cells. Of note, the production of GcMAF can be blocked by an enzyme called Nagalase (alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase), produced by many cancers, which led to its first incarnation in quackery, as a “cure” for many cancers by Bill Sardi and Timothy Hubbell based on dubious science and a clinical trial that didn’t show what its proponents claimed it did and was later retracted.
Over the years, the therapeutic claims for GcMAF expanded, so that it wasn't just for cancer any more. Thanks to Bradstreet and other autism quacks, GcMAF became the next big thing in "autism biomed," and Bradstreet was a true believer in it as a potential cure for autism, as evidenced by this video of one of his talks from 2012 touting the miracle of GcMAF. In a single-arm, uncontrolled study published in a highly dubious journal, Bradstreet claimed to have observed improvement in autistic symptoms due to GcMAF. Another study with which Bradstreet was involved in claimed that GcMAF could normalize abnormal gene expression in the endocannabinoid system of autistic children, which, of course, links his work with claims made by some in the “autism biomed” movement that medical marijuana treats autism. Of course, this was an unrandomized, unblinded study.
Thanks to the efforts of an Irish woman named Fiona O’Leary, who investigated Immuno Biotech and complained to UK health authorities, the First Immune GcMAF production facility in the UK was raided by British health authorities earlier this year. They found that the facility did not meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and expressed concerns over the sterility of the medicine being produced and the equipment being used, leading to further concerns that the product could well be contaminated. More than 10,000 vials of GcMAF were seized and production was halted.
So what's become of Immuno Biotech and First Immune? That's where Adrian Goldberg's report comes in. As he notes at the beginning of his report, GcMAF is represented as a "miracle cure," a claim that's not supported by science. The product is not licensed in the UK, and it's been put on the market by an entrepreneur with no medical training, a man who makes claims like: If you have terminal cancer with two months to live and use GcMAF you can confidently expect to be cancer-free in a year. I kid you not. The audio is there. Immuno Biotech claims that First Immune GcMAF can cure cancer, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, and HIV/AIDS. For such a miracle, Immuno Biotech charges £500 for a small vial of the substance, which if you believe the hype is a bargain.
One of the stories culled from online discussion forums sounds like a Stanislaw Burzynski story. It's a tragic story of a 6 year old girl with a brainstem tumor that's grown to the point where she can no longer function. She's bed ridden, has trouble communicating and eating, and was estimated to have only about a month to live by her oncologists. It's a heart-rending situation. The reporters also note that David Noakes recommends that people who start using GcMAF for cancer stop using conventional chemotherapy and other treatments, claiming that his treatment "rebuilds the immune system" with no side effects.
The good thing about this report is that it brought Kat Arney, of Cancer Research UK, who wrote this excellent deconstruction of the claims made for GcMAF. I actually had wanted to meet up with her while I was in London a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately it just didn't work out between her travels, my conference, and other issues. Such is life. Here, she does a fine job of explaining why the claims made by Noakes about GcMAF are not credible. I particularly love how she echoes a statement I make a lot (as do other skeptics examining miracle cure claims for cancer) about the conspiracies cancer quacks invoke in which "pharma" is keeping a cure for cancer from you. As she points out (and as I have pointed out), cancer is such a common group of diseases that few are the human beings who have made it to adulthood who haven't had a friend or relative suffer and/or die from some form of cancer. Certainly, I'm no exception. My grandfather died of liver cancer when I was a child; my aunt died of lung cancer; my uncle died of lymphoma; and most recently my mother-in-law died of metastatic breast cancer. If GcMAF were really a cure for many forms of cancer or if there really were an alternative cure for cancer, I'd be all over it, as would anyone with a career in cancer research and treatment. We battle cancer because we've seen what it can do.
Another point she makes that I and others frequently make is that dead people can't give testimonials. Only the living can. In these testimonials, we have no idea what conventional therapies the patients had undergone, what stage they were, and the like. I myself started this blog pointing out that many of these alternative cancer cure testimonials rely on a confusion between primary therapy for cancer and adjuvant therapy for cancer given after the primary treatment (almost always surgery) in order to decrease the risk of recurrence.
Then there's the issue of how GcMAF is made. I didn't even really mention this in my previous post on the topic other than in passing, but GcMAF is a blood product. Part of the reason why the British Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found that David Noakes' First Immune manufacturing facility did not meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and expressed concerns over the sterility of the medicine being produced and the equipment being used, leading to further concerns that the product could well be contaminated. Also, the MHRA found that the plasma used to make GcMAF was designated for research purposes only and was therefore not intended to be used to make products to be administered to humans or used in human drug products. It was also pointed out that the filtration system in the manufacturing facility was inadequate.
There are two disturbing parts of this story (as if the above weren't disturbing enough) that are new. The first is an interview with David Noakes, who makes all sorts of excuses for his activities, claiming that he employs doctors and claiming that the papers that were withdrawn on GcMAF were the victim of pharma and that the MHRA protects the interests of big pharma manufacturers. He invokes the "two percent gambit" on chemotherapy. He accuses the MHRA of corruption without answering the specific charges other than denying them. We later learn from a former PA who "hated everything he was doing" who worked for Noakes that he often used his own blood to make the products.
Overall, Noakes comes across as incredibly slimy, unctuous, condescending, and, to be frank, a liar—and not a very good one. As a cancer surgeon and researcher listening to him, I felt a rising urge to reach through the computer and strangle him (metaphorically, of course). The man is a despicable quack, and hearing the story of a Swiss clinic where GcMAF was administered to desperate cancer patients for £2,000 a week to stay there.
Of course, the way that GcMAF became famous after the death of Dr. Bradstreet was because of his claims that it can cure autism. Indeed, the report points out that David Noakes claims an 85% response rate in autism, as he does in this video, and this is how the story circles around to its conclusion, with interviews with a mother who gave GcMAF to her child and a representative of the Guernsey branch of the National Autistic Society, who accused him of contacting various autism groups to promote his product. He also apparently spoke of autism as a viral disease, which shows a lack of basic understanding of the pathophysiology of autism, which is a neurodevelopmental disorder, not a disease.
Finally, a reporter called the company posing as a customer, a mother trying to buy GcMAF for her autistic child. The company was apparently willing to sell GcMAF, as long as it wasn't shipped to a UK address. As long as the reporter provided a European shipping address, the company was willing to sell the drug, this after the MHRA had raided it months ago and shut down its manufacturing facility. The reporter's phone call was replayed, and the customer service representative was rather cagey about where the GcMAF was being sold from, telling the reporter that it was being shipped from within Europe to European addresses. Noakes, when confronted about his company selling GcMAF, claims that it's a substance that "mimics GcMAF" and that this supplement is legal in Germany and Europe and that people who order GcMAF get that supplement instead, not GcMAF—and that customers are told that. This leads Goldberg to make a sarcastic remark about how Noakes is now telling him that his company can't be trusted to provide what it says it will, after which the reporter states that she asked for GcMAF, was told about the new product, but was told she was ordering GcMAF.
The whole thing is even more damning than I thought it would be. David Noakes comes across as what he has appeared to have been all along: An unscrupulous scammer. One can only hope that he really is shut down this time.
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Having flashback right now of the time we discovered that blood offered for donation was inappropriately treated and contaminated people with HIV and/or HCV.
Before that, the half-illegal traffic in human pituitaries (for growth hormone treatment) which resulted in the propagation of Creuzfeld-Jacob prion among treated people also comes to mind.
Both events had quite horrific consequences.
Noakes' wild claims aside, just the shaddy way his products are manufactured is highly disturbing, indeed.
At least one of these doctors was unquestionably murdered from news reports- Dr. Teresa Ann Sievers. I wonder if Erin questions the official narrative on that case? Or is she only skeptical of the officials when they don't tell her what she wants to hear?
GcMAF is a blood product
In one form it is touted as such. But recall that there are various shysters claiming to extract it from fermented milk or colostrum, using bacteria to 'transform' bovine proteins. In the absence of any *test* for a product labeled "GcMAF", people can sell whatever they want.
Noakes seems to have switched suppliers... after another recent interview he claims "our scientists extract GcMAF from colostrum":
http://www.autismdailynewscast.com/david-noakes-gcmaf-controversy-exclu…
This may be what he has in mind when he talks about 'a substance that “mimics GcMAF”'. The BBC may have dropped the ball if they are still hung up on his previous association with plasma as a source.
Worth mentioning that Noakes was previously involved in the DCA-cures-cancer business.
an enzyme called Nagalase (alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase), produced by many cancers
The University of Google advises me that it is also produced by a normal functioning body, and that the results of a deficiency are rather nasty. The idea that it was a marker of or even a factor in disease seems to have been tested and disproven.
"At least one of these doctors was unquestionably murdered from news reports- Dr. Teresa Ann Sievers. I wonder if Erin questions the official narrative on that case? Or is she only skeptical of the officials when they don’t tell her what she wants to hear?"
Erin insists that she hasn't connected the Holistic Doctor Deaths (it's a form of Just Asking Questions, doncha know). She had a healthnutnews update when two suspects were charged in the Sievers murder, but sidestepped how these guys might have been part of the Pharma Lizard conspiracy.
The latest I've seen from her was when she was proclaiming the 11th holistic doctor death of Mitchell Gaynor (not connected to any of the others, though he was supposedly in great health and his death was mysterious and he was the 11th, you know). Turns out Gaynor's death was ruled a suicide, but of course we know better since he was #11.*
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/health/mitchell-l-gaynor-59-manhattan…
*NaturalNews is just asking questions too, saying that even if a "sinister organization" is not pulling the strings, it's, well, disturbing.
People want the magic red pill.
I'm also known as tim;
people are indeed here to kill me; psychological attack for two weeks -- 2 of them can be heard in this recording
http://www.filedropper.com/recording-347423758
please do spectral analysis; my father is one of the plotters; many more recordings
the officer is on their take
i may not leave alive
i am not kidding
fbi, please!
the file is AMR formatt -- there are many others I don't know how to upload a whole folder
http://filedropper.com/recording-347423758
27688 eagle road
harvest, alabama
35754
phone is redirected.. contact madison county field office
256 684 6270
@ Dangerous Bacon
Well, yes. Of course it's disturbing. It's turning out enlightened, positive-thinking alt-med health warriors could die suddenly like the rest of us humble peons.
@ Dangerous Bacon:
Say what you will, Erin must have insider info about shadowy secret societies and diverse threats to humanity:
after all, she's just warned us about the dangers of the....
man bun.
@ Helianthus:
It's interesting that when an alt med provider dies, followers need to attribute the death to external causes like conspiracy by pharma rather than causes like heart attacks or suicide which originate with the person. Murder for personal causes ( e.g. by a spouse or rival) also seem unlikely to them.
That was a great report. Definitely worth listening all the way through. I can't imagine why Noakes thought it would be beneficial to agree to an interview. I think anyone but those who are already true believers who hears that interview will see Noakes for what he is.
About the reporter ordering on the phone, I was amazed that when asked about getting it into the UK the saleswoman recommened labeling it as vitamin D. IANAL but that seems like a huge legal liability; it's basically advising their customers on smuggling.
I think it was Kat Arney who said that miracle cures don't make sense since the pathophysiology of these disease are so different that one cure for all of them doesn't make sense. I'm sure that's been said here before but I don't recall when. It's a nice simple argument that really cuts to the core of the magical thinking that prevades quackery.
@ captkrunch:
One of the ways the quacks get around that ( different physio but same cure) is to say that:
- all ills, cancer, heart disease, ASDs, etc- result from inflammation and then, peddle diets/ supplements that combat inflammation.
- attribute everything SOMEHOW to insufficient nutrition,
then sell the nutrients or 'better' food.
I can’t imagine why Noakes thought it would be beneficial to agree to an interview.
Hubris?
Good to know that nagalese is produced in a healthy body for the next time anti-vaxxers claim it's being put into vaccines as a conspiracy to give us all cancer or whatnot.
NN/Mike Adams seem to be rejecting all my comments as spam at the moment though, and I've seen nothing even mildly critical on their pages recently. Perhaps he's gone into even more paranoid meltdown mode?
I was wondering myself why on earth Noakes would agree to be interviewed for radio by investigative journalists. Listen to the radio show while it's still available (apparently it's only available for 30 days after broadcast). He does not come off looking good at all.
This isn't the first time that the BBC has profiled Noakes. They aired a TV investigation into GcMAF about a month before the Bradstreet suicide and interviewed Noakes in his Guernsey office. At one point, Noakes stormed out of the room and slammed the door, only to immediately storm back in and say he would finish the interview. At another, Noakes demanded that the reporter give him the tape of the interview, got up and put his hands on the camera, then threatened to break it. I don't know how his fans reacted to the segment (assuming they watched it), but he couldn't have looked good to potential marks... er, I mean, customers.
Here is part one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL0Gqm5dx_0
Here is part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbj7ZItgpm4
(Sorry for the shit video quality.)
Oh, right in the GcMAF, you MTHFR.
Indeed. This seems to be a common pattern among many alt-med snake oil salespeople. They are so sure they will be able to convince anyone to buy their wares, there is never a thought that they might fail. And if they do fail, it is not because they are wrong, but because 'conspiracy'.
@ Denice
Yep. It looks like an obsession with control, everything should be having an explanation.
(to be fair, no-one is really immune from this tendancy to look for patterns - or to think that "it" only happens to other people)
To state the obvious, it's also about reinforcing their own beliefs in their leaders' importance and their own sense of martyrdom/elitism. No way this great man could have died so trivially, in the general indifference.
So do y'all think Noakes is a True Believer, or a cynical fraudster who cackles about his victims behind the scenes?
I haven't listened to the BBC report or watched the videos yet, will do so after work tonight.
One thing to be careful of: Using VOIP (voice over internet-protocol), it is possible to get phone numbers _from_ any country _in_ any country. Thus someone could set up a UK phone number in a "safe haven" country (along with a web site) to take orders, ship the stuff from a second "safe haven" country, and have the money go via some kind of electronic funds transfer to a bank account in a third such country with the ability to transfer funds back to the UK disguised as whatever. Think of how Silk Road operated while it existed (illegal drug sales via internet, complete with delivery via legitimate parcel carriers). The same mechanisms can be used in the US.
If we're going to shut this kind of thing down, we are going to need serious international cooperation. The key to success is to go after the bank accounts and the various funds transfer mechanisms.
herr doktor bimler @ 4
Spend enough time in internet discussion groups with autism parents,you will run into parents whose children were thought to have "autism",and have later been found to have lysosomal storage disorders,like Schindler Disease Type III.All types of metabolic disease that present as autism,involve regression.Doctors need to run every genetic and metabolic test possible on a child that regresses.The failure of doctors to run such tests,and to educate parents about "metabolic autism",is what creates antivax parents.
– all ills, cancer, heart disease, ASDs, etc- result from inflammation and then, peddle diets/ supplements that combat inflammation.
FWIW, the ME/CFS support groups are a good source of information about the shifting suppliers of GcMAF.
So do y’all think Noakes is a True Believer, or a cynical fraudster who cackles about his victims behind the scenes?
To some extent he has convinced himself, is my theory. Were he just a pure con-man, he might be better at it. As it is, he doesn't seem to realise that people find his demeanour off-putting, and that this impacts on his credibiity. Patients report in their blogs and fund-raisers that Noakes' manner is disturbing, but they are reassured by the presence of his colleague Marco Ruggiero (of GcMAF-yogurt fame), who is far more personable and convincing.
We later learn from a former PA who “hated everything he was doing” who worked for Noakes that he often used his own blood to make the products.
This claim is unconvincing; I rather doubt that Noakes contains enough plasma to provide much of a supply. It's the word of a disgruntled ex-employee, and the BBC journalist weakens his case by taking it seriously.
Early in the BBC program they mention that David Noakes ran against Nigel Farage for leader of the fascist lite UKIP. This appears to be a case of Scumbag Magnetism.
If we’re going to shut this kind of thing down, we are going to need serious international cooperation. The key to success is to go after the bank accounts and the various funds transfer mechanisms.
Two other GcMAF suppliers are Lesley and Trevor Banks -- erstwhile business partners of Noakes who went rogue -- through their businesses Cytoninnovations and '1st Pro Engineering'. They took up with Amanda Mary Jewell (a character who would be too obviously fictitious if she appeared in a novel), who had previously been invested in the whole MMS / Genesis II Church / bleach-up-the-bum scam, and who owns Pearl Lodge (a run-down hotel / industrial park in Bulgaria where dying patients could go for a Spa Retreat and undergo an curative regime of bleach enemas).
So 1st Pro Engineering is now using Bulgarian mailing addresses as conduits for purchases and supplies of fermented-milk GcMAF.
Herr Doktor - I wondered why these scamsters were using a location in the UK when there are a baker's dozen former Warsaw Pact countries where the authorities are prepared to look the other way.
DAMN YOU, MilAg, for giving me that earworm.
Denice Walter
Oh yeah, the nagalase connection; Cousin of the toxin gambit. I remember a really awful paper that showed elevated levels of nagalase in autistics that lowered with GcMAF and supposedly corresponded with reduction in symptoms. I wish I still had it but just deleted a bunch of PDF's I had lying around yesterday.
Sebastian L. Jackson Âû@17
Thanks for those links. That was hilarious.
Gray Squirrel@21
The more I think about it, the more evidence I see for herr doktor bimler's thoughts in #24. That said, to me he just comes off as a slimy conman. I can't verbalize why but I get the feeling that he's a liar through and through.
herr doktor bimler@24
Yeah, that part made me cringe a little, especially since the rest of the report was quite compelling. I wonder why they felt the need to include that when the actual truth (or at least Noakes' story) was still damning and 100 times more believable.
This tim..i'm being blacked bagged by my father listed nym
Amanda Jewell happens to be facing criminal probes in the UK and Bulgaria. In the UK she is being investigated for promoting MMS, and in Bulgaria she is being investigated for deaths which occurred at her hotel. She and her husband spent the summer hopping around the Caribbean trying to avoid attention.
This article is about the Bulgarian investigation, but it's in Cyrillic: http://www.otzvuk.net/news/hotel-na-anglichani-lekuva-nezakonno-rakovo-…
You can still plug it into Goofle translate. I can get the gist of it (I know several Slavic languages, but none of them are South Slavic), but it would be kind of a labor for me to read through the whole article.
She and her husband spent the summer hopping around the Caribbean trying to avoid attention.
Alas, Amanda Jewell's conception of "avoiding attention" consists of "blogging and vlogging about the naivety of Caribbean islanders; getting into a stoush with local newspapers; then claiming to be the next target of the Big Pharma hit-squads and demanding diplomatic protection from the UK regulatory bodies".
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2015/08/what-fresh-hell-is-this-farnha…
She is loath to accept the possibility that drama might be in progress, somewhere in the world, without a central role for her. Her twitter feed is hilarious:
https://twitter.com/AmandaMJewel
(at one point she was claiming to have been the real target of the German holistic-quack / party-pill overdose incident, only she didn't make it to the meeting in time).
in Bulgaria she is being investigated for deaths which occurred at her hotel.
Ha. The website for 1st-Pro-Engineering was down for a day or two (according to Amanda Jewell's twitter feed, it had been HACKED by the evil PHARMA HACKERS), and now it is back up, it lists their preferred physical address as an apartment in Sofia:
Someone thoughtfully archived an earlier version of the website in the Wayback machine, from a time when their preferred address was
(that is, Pearl Lodge).
HDB A33 and 34
The name Amanda Jewell rang a bell, now I know where I had heard of her before. It is very considerate of them to give the pharma hit squad their home address in Sofia.
Ah, but the 1st-Pro phone number is a UK one; the Bulgarian connection is more for convenience than for actual residence.
^ A UK *mobile* number, I should clarify.
@Yvette #2:
Five out of Erin's list of 15 doctors were murdered. In two cases the intimate partner has been arrested, and in a third - that of Teresa Sievers - her husband's best friend has been charged. In a fourth police have a person of interest, and the fifth appears to have been a home invasion and robbery of a retired gynaecologist originally from California.
@ Orac #16:
Although Noakes comes over like a slimy grifter to most people over mainstream media, bad publicity is still better than no publicity. At this stage of proceedings he is hoping that a groundswell of support from the extensive online paranoid crackpot community will save him from the criminal proceedings that appear otherwise inevitable.
@Herr Doktor Bimler #24
Given how little of the alleged active ingredient is claimed to be present in the product, there's no reason why a single plasma donation couldn't be enough for a whole production lot of it.
@capnkrunch #29
The paper is called "Initial Observations of elevated Alpha-n-AcetylgalactosaminidaseActivity Associated with Autism and Observed Reductions from GC Protein—Macrophage Activating Factor Injections" and is still up, although the vanity journal it was published in is now defunct.
http://www.la-press.com/redirect_file.php?fileId=4674&filename=f_3450-A…
Of the three authors, Lynda Thyer was one of Noakes' "scientists"; Bradstreet we all know about; and Emar Vogelaar was the director of the Dutch pathology company that did most of the world's nagalase testing (he was arrested for fraud, forgery and money laundering last year).
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/04/alternative_medicine_test…
@Herr Doktor B #33
The German holistic-quack / party-pill overdose incident turns out to have been a gathering of disciples of Swiss psychiatrist and cult leader Samuel Widmer, who advocates the consumption of psychedelics including 2C-E for "therapeutic" purposes. This is not the first time one of his gatherings has gone terribly wrong.
http://bazonline.ch/schweiz/standard/schweiz/standard/Spuren-des-Drogen…
Thank you Orac for a great article highlighting this unforgivable Quackery!
The fact that David Noakes is still operating this dangerous scam is downright disgraceful!
He has threatened me several times for exposing his snake oil and recently told me via a telephone call that "I deserve a punishment and will get what's coming to me"
Noakes is a Tyrant and a criminal who hopefully will be jailed for the crimes he has committed!
Fiona O'Leary.
ART Autistic Rights Together.
Http//autisticrightstogether.ie
I was working out of a temporary Red Cross facility on Long Island after Superstorm Sandy and had a Canuck volunteer check in from Halifax. All I asked him was "Do you wish you were in Sherbrooke now?" and he sang two verses and the chorus, on the spot.
I'm guessing it's a Nova Scotian thing.
RK: The failure of doctors to run such tests,and to educate parents about “metabolic autism”,is what creates antivax parents.
No, what creates anti-vaxxers is simply stupidity and hatred of their own children. If we had more and better science education, if women could have kids without sacrificing their careers, and if we had better support for special need kids and adults, and if we had no suburbs, we'd have no anti-vaxxers. As it is, we have a bunch of former career women slowly losing their minds in suburbia who can't admit they hate their kids and can't do what they really want: leave hubby and kids and house and drive into the sunset.
Mrs Pointer @38:
My reading of the report in Die Welt is that the convener of the seminar is a disciple of Widmer's drug-therapy gospel; it wasn't clear whether the rest of the group were directly linked to Widmer. They might have been talked into it by the one charismatic cultist.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/09/21/the-conspiracy-to-kill-alt…
There seems to be an increasing cross-over between GcMAF grifters and the stalkers and stoners of the broader 'truther' community -- people who have moved on from denying any one specific official account (9/11, Sandy Hook) to a general philosophy of *everything* is a Gubblement Lie.
Look on the Facebook profiles of any one of the "reverends" in the Genesis II Church. They'll literally believe anything. Their representative in the Dominican Republic at one point was obsessing with touting flat-earth trutherism. Seriously.
It was a dark and stormy night when, having just read about the Coen Bros style murder of Dr. Sievers and the possibly related disappearance via woodchipper of a Missouri preacher, I readjusted the ergonomic controls on my chair to keep it from spinning around as I read further down this page about selling products made from your own blood, the Bulgarian connection, and Tim getting black bagged by his father. Suddenly, I remembered this is a sterile, rather technical blog about quackery and my cat yowled with ferocious menace.... Chair wheel on tail again, sorry, but still, WTF?
Oh FFS, Politicalguineapig.
Stop. Please just stop.
Look on the Facebook profiles of any one of the “reverends” in the Genesis II Church. They’ll literally believe anything.
Brilliant in depth article. I have interviewed Noakes and find him to be extremely misinformed. We spoke yesterday and he told me he knows autism is a viral disease! Complete and utter rubbish and dangerous to say with naive gullible and nd vulnerable desperate to try anything.
As someone who has had face to face dealings with David Noakes. It is my opinion that that he does actually belive much of the bonkers conspiracy theory stuff he spouts. The scary thing is how easily he seems to have been able to convince people that he is right.
I assume he moved to Guersey for the favourable tax, but I think he also hoped that as we were outside the UK/EU there would be less restriction on his activities. His modus opperandi locally was to turn up at support group meetings and announce he could cure ( whatever). He seems to have unshakeable self belief and is arrogantly patronising about parents like my self who have challeneged the claims he makes, we autism mums apparently dont want our children improved beause being an autism mum makes us feel special and Noakes thinks it is morally indefensible that people like me should deny autistic children the chance to be cured.
He seems incable of realising how illogical much of what he says is and he trots out utter garbage with complete confidence.
He rubbishes my opinions on GcMaf as worthless becuase I am not a scientist or Doctor. Niether is he but his opinions are supposedly more valid becuse he is quoting 200 drs and scientists who have written 120 scientific papers and GcMaf has been used to treat 9,000 people for 50 diseases.
On average then 4 drs, 2 to 3 papers on 180 patients per disease!
The best claim yet from DN has to be one he made last week on some obscure US radio station --- vacines are dangerous because they contain mercury, nargalese and ..... viruses!
Yes folks, vaccines actually contain viruses .... bet non of you knew that eh!
Never mind big Pharma hit squads it says much for my self restraint that I havent strangled him myself.
Mrs Pointer@38
Thanks for the link. I thought it was a Bradstreet paper but this is the first I heard of the other two. The company you keep, huh...
herr doktor bimler@42
When I was searching for that GcMAF paper yesterday I noticed that there was a GcMAF thread on Above Top Secret. For those of you unfamiliar it is a repository of every batsh!t conspiracy out there. It's funny how at home Big Pharma conspiracies are alongside credulous discussions of Dulce Base and Skinwalker Ranch.
JF: Look, the truth is, without Park Avenue, Orange County and suburbs across the US, the anti-vax movement wouldn't have the huge support that it does. Suburbs foster a particular environment, in which there is little cooperation, high competitiveness, low services and few social networks that don't involve one-upmanship. Therefore, you end up with a bunch of miserable families, who end up turning on the most vulnerable members, falling for a bunch of conmen and preying on vulnerable people from the urban population.
@PGP: just STOP! You come across as a bigoted jerk. Please stop generalizing all people from the small sector you've experienced, and the things you read on the internet. You know nothing about the rest of the country. Not everyone who lives in the suburbs fits your picture - goodness knows, *I* don't. Stop the knee-jerk mouthing off.
"Look, the truth is, without Park Avenue, Orange County and suburbs across the US, the anti-vax movement wouldn’t have the huge support that it does"
Not even remotely close to the truth. Our local lab school is the only high school in the county with 100% vaccine compliance and you better believe the kids there and their parents fit your silly soccer-mom stereotype.
a groundswell of support from the extensive online paranoid crackpot community
I am impressed how much faster things develop now. A few months, none of these nimrods had ever heard of Nagalase; now it is an article of faith that a normal, necessary enzyme is in fact an unnatural product cooked up in a lab somewhere, alien to all life-forms, and if you find any in a human body then it must have been injected in childhood vaccines and has lingered around ever since.* As part of the Depopulation Agenda.
Thus Amanda Mary Jewell:
* Previous claims from the same people that Nagalase is produced in the body by viruses and cancers are no longer operative.
Dawn: How can it be bigoted? Most of the anti-vaxxers are whiter than I am.Not to mention far richer..
Shay: Our local lab school is the only high school in the county with 100% vaccine compliance and you better believe the kids there and their parents fit your silly soccer-mom stereotype.
Well, there have to be outliers..
PGP@ 50: For goodness sake, let this insanity about suburbs are evil go already. It's an obnoxious fixation and makes you look as foolish as all the other conspiracy theorists.
Also: anti-vax? Way, way older than suburbs. Dates back to when the only vaccine was for smallpox. Stop being so ignorant and small-minded.
PGP, when you stereotype all members of a demographic, you're a bigot. It has nothing to do with skin color...you're as prejudiced as any member of the KKK, not only because you refuse to see people as individuals, but you because take your prejudice to ridiculous extremes. All suburbs? Seriously, all suburbs?
I'd call you an idiot except that you aren't. I'm not sure what to call you. Denice may have a name for your condition.
Of course all these cases are murder. If you're a true altie, you won't ever die.
@ shay:
I'm not sure what to call it but
- I think that it's mostly self-protective and a way to separate herself from a group she dislikes
- Actually, there's a grain of truth in the stereotype: after all didn't Orac do a post about research that showed that anti-vaxxers were predominantly white and well off?
- PGP sometimes mixes up "some" with "all".
Stereotypes are shortcuts as well as armament. Perhaps seeing a disliked group as being NOT very different from yourself is painful so exaggeration is necessary for separation.
I think that PGP suffers from anxiety which makes social threats seem more likely and closer than they really are- you're always vigilant and anticipating attacks. It's not easy to live like that
It's possible that she's had early contact with a group of people who did not treat her well and who fit the stereotypes.
Actually, there is a nearby Posh Town SOME of whose denizens are so artfully, sickeningly politically correct and nature-loving, so preciously bohemian bourgeoise that I can't stand going there-
even though they have very good restaurants and films- even though I'm just as liberal as they are and enjoy many of the same things they do- art, fashion, foreign films, ethnic restaurants.
The stuff works. All of the propaganda in the world won't discourage people from seeking a cure. Watch any of the 3,000 YouTube videos - there isn't a single negative posting.
As smears go, this one is a little more florid than most.
Politicalguineapig:
I LIVE in a suburb, and I can tell you for a fact that that is not my experience. There is a good deal of cooperation, and services are pretty good.
Please. Just. Stop.
@zenpiper, YouTube videos are not evidence. Try again.
Watch any of the 3,000 YouTube videos – there isn’t a single negative posting.
Dead people rarely post on YouTube XD
I assume [David Noakes] moved to Guersey for the favourable tax, but I think he also hoped that as we were outside the UK/EU there would be less restriction on his activities.
There was also an element of "Ah, a wee Channel Island far from civilisation, they're all country bumpkins there; I can wander around scattering largesse upon the populace, and they will tug their forelocks and look up to me as Lord of the Manor."
Pity you dont have the courage to put your own name to this "expose?" Hiding from what? You do not need to stress about being "suicided" as not important enough. Do you know nothing about the FDA at all?
Gutless would not post my message!
Apologies - my initial message posted
@Judith Allison:
Click on Orac's name at the top of the page. It will take you to the "About" Page that reveals Orac's true name. This is regarded as an unofficial intelligence test. You failed.
Lucky Orac, here is someone from Australia to explain to you what the FDA is!
OT, but could someone please fix the interface? The "recent comments" list is very useful for frequent readers.
Thank you.
"OT, but could someone please fix the interface?"
And I want a pony.
Don't go to Popehat with that kind of attitude.
"The “recent comments” list is very useful for frequent readers."
It is showing for me on Chrome and Windows Explorer. The latter shows the RSS feed better:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/comments/feed/
Should clarify MS Windows Internet Explorer shows the RSS feed better than Chrome.
It's showing for me in Firefox on my laptop and desktop, which both run Ubuntu. It doesn't show on my Kindle-thingy, though, which uses Amazon's "Silk" browser. I thought perhaps it was a new "mobile" interface? It is annoying, in any case.
"Don’t go to Popehat with that kind of attitude."
Heh! Any attitude is acceptable if one only lurks. But just to be clear, I was not criticizing Orac.
So did I, but it looks just as bad on my phone. No list of recent comments on any device in the place.
Are you in Alabama? If not, that may be the issue.
It looks OK on my Kindle (I prefer the Ocean browser you can get free in the Amazon store) as landscape, though no list of recent comments, but portrait mode looks awful. Whoever tried to make this site mobile-friendly screwed up, which is very easily done, to be fair.
I've seen some bad mobifications (the first SBM iteration springs to mind), but this absurd. The basic fact of the matter is that mobifying an entire site rather than detecting the user agent and serving the appropriate style is pathognomic of wholesale incompetence, not that there's ever been any question that that was the case hereabouts in the first place.
"I’ve seen some bad mobifications (the first SBM iteration springs to mind), but this absurd."
What changes? I checked Chrome, Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox, and it looks just the same as before.
On my iPhone the stuff on the right hand side of the page is just a grey band. On my PC everything looks fine.
Chrome on my iPhone has the same issue.
Add another reason for me not browsing on my tiny smart phone. This morning RI looked fine on my tablet (though it does have trouble with some pages, for a couple of days a comics site could not be viewed).
All of the "comments" on this site seem to be written by the same person. ScienceBlogs is a fraud set up by Big Pharma to confuse people and create doubt about the murder of Dr. Bradstreet and at least eight other doctors.
And we're all Bonnie Offitt.
Does this comment seem to have been written by the same person who wrote your comment? All the comments on all the other blogs? That person must be really busy, to be able to discuss medicine, biology, physics, librarianship, information science, and all the other topics SB covers.
Scienceblogs has been around since at least 2006.
I don't know long RI has been here. Your accusation is that Big Pharma plotted, nearly ten years ago, to off "Bradstreet and at least eight other [unidentified] doctors", and included Scienceblogs as part of their planned coverup. All the other blogs are part of the coverup, too, I suppose: or are they just covering up for the coverup? Yeah, right.
Betcha a nickel Bill Murphy never shows up to address any of these points.
create doubt about the murder of Dr. Bradstreet and at least eight other doctors.
Care to predict who's next? Because if your cool story can explain everything but predict nothing, then sorry, it's not a theory -- it's a brain-fart.
I am glad that all of these other faux-people parts of my personality keep commenting while I'm eating, sleeping, or working, so that I/they/we can keep up our goal of doing Pharma's dirty work. The best part is that by splitting myself into so many "posters", I get to keep all of the filthy Pharma lucre!
Keep up the good work, other selves!!
After all, according to the billions/quadrilliions-of-health-freedom-fighters loon, I/they/we/it have compelled the remaining "cutting-edge" docs to arm themselves and/or hire full-time security to avoid becoming the next Holistic Victim.
We/they/I/it/Bonnie are having a real impact!
Dangerous Bacon is correct.
As one of his/ our multiple-personae, I/ we am/ are pleased that someone has DISCOVERED my/ our secret.:
it's so much better psychologically to come out and stop pretending that I'm/ we're( an) individual/ s personality/ies with separate lives, talents and abilities. Also I/ we need never to share my/ our profits.
F@ck, I/we am/are legion!
AND fun at parties.
As my/one of my feminine self/selves, Denice is dead on target.
I applaud her/myself. It is a reminder of why I/she/we are such party animals as well as filthy rich.
There's a party in my mind...And it never stops
There's a party up there all the time...They'll
party till they drop
Other people can go home...Other peoplle they can split
I'll be here all the time...I can never quit
"shill" - the last refuge of the reality-challenged.
Pharmborg!
Pharma-pharma-pharma-Chameleon!
Same thing on my Android (in both Firefox and Dolphin), but this was actually a later development; the first version occupied the whole width, with the comically oversized topics block taking up the entire screen on page load.
Oho! I was scouting around for a cached version or stored image to illustrate the before and after to Chris. When this failed, I thought it might be obvious from the CSS. This involved a lot of poking around with random version numbers, but...
Blocking h[]tp://scienceblogs.com/wp-content/themes/ngs-science-blogs/ngs-science-blogs-base/css/responsive.css?ver=4.3.1 restores the previous appearance.
^ Which, by the way goes ever further to demonstrate the screaming incompetence in play: that's a matter of a tiny bit of JavaScript to choose whether to turn that damn fool wrapper on or off.
On another computer that only has Chrome I noticed the lost "recent comments" bit. But it popped up when I widened the window.
So it goes. I'm pleased as punch to be able to dispense with the mess entirely.
As my brother says, there are two classes of IT support people. Those who do things for you and those who do things to you.
shay@85:
Except, of course, for Bonnie Offitt, who is really Bill Murphy.
Denice Walter@89:
Wait, we had a party and didn't invite us? Man, this hivemind sucks!
@ has:
We're ALWAYS having parties because it's always 5 o'clock somewhere.
Read your/ our messages.
Quackery?! Total Hypocrisy!
Like "vaccines contain viruses...crazy?!
You know NOTHING about mordern medicine and all its evils.
Ignorant dangerous scum.
Look up IG Farben
the SAME convicted Nazi War criminals that built the Chemical factorys in Auschwitz etc are NWO the Chairmen
etc of the Worlds Largest Chemical/Pharma companys
And I quote for you MORONS....
Of the 24 directors of IG Farben indicted in the so-called IG Farben Trial (1947–1948) before a U.S. military tribunal at the subsequent Nuremberg Trials and
served prison sentences but later became leaders in post war-companies include:
Fritz ter Meer, becoming chairman of Bayer AG
etc....
and whats more the initial Auschwitz drug factorys are STILL in operation....
its so MIND-BLOWING you anti Quacks couldALMOST be excused for your pathetic denial
TRUSTING CONVICTED NAZI WAR CRIMINALS with the WORLDS MEDICINE, WTF do you expect
CHEMO was developed from these same poison factorys that exterminated 6 million Jews and NOT satisfied and STILL in operation CHEMO marches on, a 5 year survival rate eg on STOMACH Cancer of....ZERO.7%
THATS NOT A TREATMENT Thats even worse than Quackery
Thats outright criminal torture and mass murder
JOIN the petition the alllow doctors to use ANY safe alternative RATHER than Big Auchwitz Posions sorry Big Pharma
Get Wise you dropkicks on this site
start doing some real research about the absolutely horrific state of Big Pharma and the torrid health of modern medicine countrys and Total abortion that is Chemo etc
AS for vaccines , you buckhead
LOOK UP the
SBV40 Vaccine which MERCK produced and has
caused CANCER in thousands of kids
Here is an US Official Govt Medical link confirming this
there are millions such cases and these Big Pharma set up Billion dollar Funds to pay for all the tragedy they have cuase
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10472327
Now
Come Back and Apologize for your absolutely
outrageous and disgusting ignorance at best
and culpability at worst
Get Wise
Biog Pharma has some tiny useful elements
but is BASICALLY a MODEL from Death Camps
as THAT is WHERE Big Pharma was BORN
Now
Come Back and Apologize for your absolutely
outrageous and disgusting ignorance at best
and culpability at worst
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
At least Ken managed to acknowledge that he's "pro Quack."
Because RANDOM capitalizations of KEY WORDS are so COMPELLING, y'all.
As someone who has healed completely with GcMAF, I feel so sorry for those who can't accept what's really going on here. Open your eyes people - if Noakes and co. weren't on to something, they wouldn't even be worth writing about - this "Quack" article points directly to how threatened some are by the concept of something existing that heals easily and quickly by emphasizing a process the body already uses... it can't be patented, therefore, must be discredited. It works - and it is very powerful and the success stories about GcMAF are true. This article is purposely written to cast doubt and confuse people. The evil in this world is unbelievable.
Focussing at the moment on Amanda Jewell as one particular GcMAF fraudster, minions might enjoy the further reports of her activities that surfaced here:
http://fromtheslaughterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/10/warning-amandas-1stpr…
hdb, my eyes and brain started to glaze over wandering through the page at the link, but I did notice the pic of a woman driving a microscope by clutching one of the ocular tubes - one of my pet peeves when microscopes get used in movies and on TV. Never the focus or stage control knobs, always the oculars.
@hdb 104 i see what you did there. Very nice
For your further entertainment... not about GcMAF as such, but rather, about the Nagalase testing racket:
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2015/10/blood-work.html
One might note that 1stproengineering.com and .eu are now cozied up in the same shipping container (perhaps physically as well, given that the .eu is one down, on .19, in the suballocation, which has about 100 hosts on each.).
Please, do tell us about your healing process! What were you diagnosed with? How did you recover?
One might note that 1stproengineering.com and .eu are now cozied up in the same shipping container
Could that be connected to Amanda Jewell's emphatic but since-deleted tweets from a month ago, protesting that the original .com website was down for a few days, OH NOES, Big Pharma must have hacked it with nefarious intentions?
As I understand you are a Quack and paid by the Super Quack
What outstanding use of logic, evidence and reason, sspro. [/sarcasm]
I am interested in learning the Origin Story for Super Quack. Pecked by a radioactive duck?
Is that the alter-ego of Howard the Duck?
Tribunal finds GcMaf boss guilty of sex discrimination
http://guernseypress.com/news/2015/11/14/tribunal-finds-gcmaf-boss-guil…
I should say that's the least of his problems.
It is an insight into Noakes' general cluelessness, though. What kind of nimrod writes down his sexual-discriminatory employment-related observations all over the paperwork, in the blithe conviction that they deserve to be recorded for perpetuity?
I find this part intriguing though :
This article on this blog that makes me a bit suspicious about the attacks on these alternative health doctors is in this passage:
"Part of the reason why the British Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found that David Noakes’ First Immune manufacturing facility did not meet Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards and expressed concerns over the sterility of the medicine being produced and the equipment being used, leading to further concerns that the product could well be contaminated. Also, the MHRA found that the plasma used to make GcMAF was designated for research purposes only and was therefore not intended to be used to make products to be administered to humans or used in human drug products. It was also pointed out that the filtration system in the manufacturing facility was inadequate."
This portion of the article did veritable backflips to try and make readers believe that no GcMAF was actually produced by criticizing the equipment and source plasma, but ultimately, it looks like, despite being called "frauds" by this blog author, David Noakes' seems to have actually made GcMAF. How is he a fraud then? Another disturbing item to mention about that passage that I read was that 10,000 vials that were confiscated and the authorities claimed any of the GcMAF that was made there "could" be contaminated. "COULD"???? Um, don't you have 10,000 vials of the product in your possession? What condition is the product in? The authorities didn't seem to mention whether the actual product contained the effective ingredient and was either contaminated or not? I think with pretty good certainty that we can assume that the 10,000 vials seized by the British authorities is actual GcMAF and it is indeed "sterile" and contaminant-free, otherwise you can BET they would be telling everyone the 10,000 vials were dangerous. They never made the claim and you can BET the British authorities ran tests on those 10,000 vials only to find they were VALID products!
Do you see how these arguments are constructed? How those who hate alternative medicine operate? How the government doesn't attempt to make any attempt to ascertain the core facts and tell it to the public? They made every attempt to make this man out to be a 'fraud' but instead offer zero evidence that his product was a fraud.
Next, go look on the internet for yourselves. There are now clinical trials in other nations going on for GcMAF. One being done by an Israeli company called, Efranat, I believe. So, if GcMAF doesn't work to treat cancer, then WHY is there so much positive information on the internet about it from actual scientific sources outside the big pharma controlled governments?
Looks like comments are held up for moderation instead of posted. I am curious to find out if my comment I made will be permitted to be seen.
Oh, look. All new commenters go to the moderation queue.
Yes.
Ah, but they're no longer calling it 'GcMAF' -- their clinical trial now refers to 'EF-022'.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150813115911/http://efranat.com/About-Us/A…
Last time I looked at the Efranat website, they had scrubbed all reference to Yamamoto -- previously the Godfather of GcMAF and the company's Founder and President, he has been completely unpersonned.
Evidently the word had finally reached them that Yamamoto's work was completely fraudulent, and that his 'Socrates Institute" doesn't exist, but by that time they had invested too much of other people's money to simply admit that the company's entire aison-d'etre had evaporated.
but ultimately, it looks like, despite being called “frauds” by this blog author, David Noakes’ seems to have actually made GcMAF.
[citation needed]
Our government is controlled by Big Pharma?
Mate, you need to live here and see exactly what a cluster f*ck our government actually is.
Oh, and I should remind you that our current Secretary of State for Health is a believer in homeopathy, as are several other members of the party currently in power...
There are now clinical trials in other nations going on for GcMAF. One being done by an Israeli company called, Efranat, I believe.
More documented version of Comment #127:
For everyone's entertainment, here is the Efranat Board-members page from June 2014, glorifying "Prof. Nobuto Yamamoto, Founder and Director" as "pioneer and discoverer of the GcMAF glycoprotein":
h__ttp://web.archive.org/web/20140627193828/http://efranat.com/About-Us/Board-Members.aspx
A few months later in September 2014 and Efranat are all "Who's that Yamamoto creep, never heard of him!"
http://web.archive.org/web/20140914042632/http://efranat.com/About-Us/B…
The May 2015 version of the "About Efanat" page still acknowledged some role of Yamamoto who "licensed his GcMAF related patents to the Company":
ht__tp://web.archive.org/web/20150213094724/http://efranat.com/About-Us/About-Efranat.aspx
By August 2015,
ht__tp://web.archive.org/web/20150213094724/http://efranat.com/About-Us/About-Efranat.aspx
Yamamoto has gone down the memory hole, as indeed has the name "GcMAF".
Seems to me that if the company had a drug with any actual medicinal value, they would stick to calling it by its original name... rather than changing the label, almost as if the original one had become a flag that signals "grifters and mountebanks".
Efranat's founders are completely screwed, they trusted Yamamoto's claims and now they are left holding a brown paper bag full of pus; but they've spent a sh1tload of other people's money so they can't admit that they're screwed, and they are left whitewashing their website in the hope that their investors won't notice the situation. It is to laugh.