ultraviolet blood irradiation

The invasion of well-meaning quacks into West Africa continues apace, part deux

oracknows — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 09:00:40 +0000

The invasion of well-meaning quacks into West Africa continues apace, part deux

I realize that I risk getting repetitive by writing about this again, but it's a rich vein that just keeps on producing and producing. It also demonstrates that, for every tragedy as huge as the ongoing Ebola outbreak that has killed over 5,000 people in West Africa thus far, there always exist well-meaning people who are into such utter quackery that they can't help but risk making things worse. In my talk at Skepticon on Saturday I discussed how The Secret's Law of Attraction is, to my mind, the Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine, the idea that, if you want something bad enough and wish for it hard enough, you will attract it to you and the universe will somehow provide. I gave many examples. I also pointed out that the flip side of The Secret is how, if positive thinking can cure you (hence the Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine), then that must mean failure to get better is due to negative thoughts. Heck, even getting sick in the first place must mean that you brought it on yourself.

I don't believe the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone, for instance, brought Ebola upon themselves. Unfortunately, in a sort of "Secret"-like way, the suffering and horror of dying of a deadly infectious disease has attracted like (quacks who will cause more suffering) to themselves.

Last week, at the end of a post about homeopaths continuing to invade these countries to offer their useless watery nostrums to people suffering from a virus with a 50% case fatality rate even with the best care and an up to 90% case fatality rate in essentially untreated people, I noted that another practitioner of dubious medicine, a man by the name of Robert Rowan, was heading to Sierra Leone to ply his particular brand of quackery on hapless Africans suffering from Ebola. To recap:

We will oversee the training and treatment by our trainees. We will be teaching them everything Dr. Robins knows about the Robins Method of DIV Ozone Therapy gained over the past 23 years. I will teach them everything else about ozone and other oxidation therapies, and every other method of delivery, from rectal to joints. We will prepare them to receive ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy if that equipment follows us.

So, basically, Dr. Rowan was heading to Africa to teach African doctors how to do ozone therapy quackery. The press release announcing his trip was dated October 15. What's happened since then. Unfortunately, over the weekend while I was away at Skepticon, I found out.

Ultraviolet blood irradiation is one of the dumber forms of alternative medicine out there, as is IV ozone therapy. They're often combined. In any case, if you see the actual devices, you'll understand even better why this is such a ridiculous and scientifically implausible therapy, and, in fact, the Wikipedia page on UV blood irradiation has pictures of some of these devices, which range from an IV catheter that goes in a vein on the forearm and is usually attached to a small laser, producing a nice red glow under the skin. Another version is the "intranasal" version, and, yes, it is exactly what its name implies. It's a red laser light that is inserted into one of the nostrils and...oh, hell, I can't resist showing you the picture because it's so ridiculous:

"NoseApp2S" by Hemal - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Yes, basically it's a small laser light that you stick in your nose and use tape to hold in place. The rationale is that the light will have access to the rich vascular plexus in the nasal mucosa, where the blood vessels are close to the surface. Of course, even the relatively thin epithelial lining of the nasal cavity is enough to stop UV Sometimes, the "irradiation" occurs through the skin. Of course, one can't help but note that the particular laser irradiation of the blood shown in the Wikipedia article is not ultraviolet at all, given that the laser shown is a 1–3 mW helium–neon laser at a wavelength operating at 632.8 nm. That's well within the visible spectrum towards the red end, hence the color. One can understand why this must be, because UV radiation is far more energetic than radiation towards the red end of the visible spectrum. Using actual UV lasers in the nose might produce the results desired, if you know what I mean.

The variety of devices claiming to radiate the blood for therapeutic effect is huge. A Google Image search for such devices brings up a veritable cornucopia of images of questionable devices, some of which are just laser lights at the end of a catheter, but some of which involve removing blood from the body, irradiating it with a UV light, and reinfusing it. By far the most common, however, appears to be the little catheter that sits in the the cephalic vein (one of the veins near the crease of your elbow) and glows its little glowing light.

The funny thing about UV blood irradiation is that there was a bit of a craze for it in medicine a few decades back, with a bunch of papers published. Its purported mechanism of actions included bactericidal effects, which no doubt UV light can produce. It's used to sterilize. Of course, the reason it's not used in people is because it's rather nonspecific; it causes tissue damage, as anyone as pasty white as I am can attest after having spent too much time in the sun. Aloe was my friend. Unfortunately, it was not enough. Yikes. Then there are the usual other "explanations" for how UV blood irradiation "works," such as detoxification, increased oxygenation (which is the same claim as intravenous ozone therapy, or, as it usually is in practice, intravenous peroxide therapy), photosensitization, and others.

In any case, UV irradiation therapy has a long history that started out reasonable, given the science understood at the time, as Mark Crislip describes, and then descended into the nonsense we see today. After all, it was first observed over 100 years ago that cutaneous tuberculosis could be treated with UV light. Unfortunately, light being light and all that, not to mention UV light not having much penetration beyond the skin, direct exposure of the blood to UV radiation would be needed if any purported healing effects were to occur. It is also difficult to envision a mechanism by which irradiating a tube of a patient's blood and then reinfusing that blood could produce a therapeutic effect, just as it's difficult to come up with a plausible mechanism by which shining a light in a vein in the arm could irradiate enough blood to have an effect even if there were an effect from irradiating the blood. As Mark Crislip put it, color me skeptical that irradiating such a small amount of blood could have beneficial effects on such a wide range of diseases with such disparate pathophysiologies, particularly given that the medical literature, such as it exists out there, gives no real support to using UV blood irradiation.

As for IV ozone therapy, that is a therapy that's even more ridiculous, but it is of a piece with UV blood irradiation in that in Rowan's world both are "oxidative therapies," in which the oxygen content of the blood is supposedly increased. There's no evidence that UV radiation does that, although ozone therapy will do so, but trivially. The reason is that the vast majority of the oxygen in the blood is carried by hemoglobin, which is usually maximally saturated. Under the best of circumstances, taking all these sorts of claims at face value, all getting ozone or hydrogen peroxide into the blood would do would be to increase the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the blood. However, that wouldn't really do much, as I explained in detail in a post from 2006 about "oxygenated" water. Same rationale, different oxygen quackery.

Yet UV blood irradiation and IV ozone therapy are the "oxidation" therapies that Dr. Rowan uses, and now he's claimed to have cured a patient with Ebola! Science, right! Let's see if you can figure out why this anecdote is not nearly as convincing as it's being portrayed in a press release entitled Rapid Ebola Infection Cure, November 22, 2014. Basically, on November 14 a physician at an Ebola treatment center suffered a needle stick injury from a needle that had been used on a patient with Ebola. Now here's the anecdote:

Dr. Rowen was informed of the needle stick on Sunday November 16, 2014, but was not advised that symptoms had yet developed. Rowen sent back instructions to treat him preventively and immediately with the protocol, believing the exposed doctor to be at great risk for symptoms to develop within 5 days. Dr. Robins, informed shortly after, concurred with the preventive protocol and urgency of treatment.

Unbeknownst to Dr. Rowen, symptoms did develop on day 2 (Sunday November 16) -the doctor reported high fever, loss of appetite, abdominal distress, and significant fatigue, which symptoms were rapidly progressing, classic signs of Ebola. Treatment began the third day after the needle-stick.

After just 2 days of treatment (November 18, 2014), all symptoms were gone.. The doctor chose not to get an Ebola blood test at the time. A positive test would have mandated forced confinement in an Ebola treatment center where he would have been denied the ozone therapy. He believed this would likely have cost him his life, as the best clinics in Sierra Leone have a 60% death rate.

Rowen and Robins did not want to wait for a positive test, which can take several days to occur, believing the earlier this life-taking viral infection is aggressively treated, the higher the chances of recovery. Active treatment will be maintained for at least 10 days with reduced frequency for 7 days thereafter.

The first thing I noticed about this testimonial is that Ebola symptoms showed up very rapidly (on day 2). Ebola symptoms can show up that rapidly, the time frame reported by the CDC generally being between 2 and 21 days, with an average of 8 to 10 days after exposure; so right away this looks a bit fast to be Ebola, but (barely) within the usually reported window. The second thing I noticed is that there is no confirming evidence that this physician ever actually had Ebola in the first place, as he refused to be tested. Reading this, I wondered: Would the authorities in Sierra Leone actually give the doctor any choice in the matter? He had a needle stick injury, followed by a fever and GI symptoms, even if those symptoms were a bit soon after the needle stick injury to be classic Ebola. Actually, come to think of it, any physician who had a needle stick from an Ebola-contaminated needle would be expected to undergo testing for the virus a few days later, just as any health care professional in the US who suffers a needle stick injury from a needle contaminated with, say, hepatitis B or C would be offered testing for those diseases.

But let's say this doctor didn't report the needle stick, which, reading between the lines, I suspect is what happened. Otherwise, one would think that his failure to show up for work on November 17 would have been a big red flag waved at his colleagues that he might have been infected with Ebola after his needle stick exposure. If that's true, how freakin' irresponsible can a physician be not to report something so critical, especially if he started feeling sick? Rowan reports that the mortality from Ebola is 60%, in the Ebola wards but untreated the mortality is more like 90%. In any case, most likely what happened is that this physician's symptoms were a self-limited viral disease that happened to occur the day after he suffered a needle stick and lasted only a couple of days, after which he got better. That's far more plausible an explanation than the claim that ozone therapy somehow prevented the Ebola infection from developing after exposure.

There's another scary aspect to this story. The press release was dated November 22. That's only eight days after the needle stick is reported to have occurred. Ebola symptoms can begin as long as 21 days later. This physician, his reliance on ozone therapy quackery notwithstanding, is anything but out of the woods yet. I haven't (yet) been able to find an update. Heck, even on Rowan's Facebook page, a reader of his press release noted:

It's not good that there's no proof he had Ebola but I'm glad he's cured! Hopefully he'll now have the antibodies that will make his work safer.

Another commenter simply shrugged his shoulders and wrote:

Great news! No problem getting confirmation of his infection, there is no shortage of other Ebola patients there so you can get one with a valid Ebola dx! Hoping you get one documented eventually, otherwise it will be poo-pooed.

Yes, sadly there are many Ebola patients right now for Brave Maverick Doctors like Dr. Rowan to experiment upon as they "fight" for the right to use their quackery, as Rowan describes elsewhere:

Please know that this was a JOINT mission between Dr. Howard Robins and myself. I stayed 2 extra days which were well worth it to stand up to the political turmoil that happened when government ministers obstructed treatments at the Ebola center. I sure hope the people of the world will begin to stand up to the forces of disease-maintenance evil that has taken over the world to pharm us. All of us together can change the history of the world. Please, all of you reading these pages, help us do this.

To me, it sounds as though those unnamed government ministers were the ones really fighting to help Ebola patients, by trying to keep the quacks away.

oracknows Tue, 11/25/2014 - 04:00

Categories

Medicine

The earlier quack-invasion post attracted an indignant comment defending Rowan; that commenter linked he excerpt quoted in the present post. A number of us, uh, questioned this at the time.

Also, thanks for the information on the blood-irradiation therapies, and the deliciously comic picture of the guy with the laser up his nose (and for pointing out that 632 nm is not ultraviolet -- facepalm). Your commentary shed quite a bit of light on the subject.

"And now for something completely different: a man with a tape recorder up his nose."

That was the irresistible thought running through my mind as I saw that picture. :-D I'll go read the rest of the article now.

I betcha anything that if that doctor does develop Ebola, we won't hear a word of it from his quack buddies.

" the little catheter...glows its little glowing light"

Think of how that might work for raves.

high fever, loss of appetite, abdominal distress, and significant fatigue

Hmm...non-specific symptoms that also happen to occur as a result of eating improperly cooked foods or, say, drinking untreated water in a different country (drinking, brushing teeth, eating fresh fruit/veggies washed with tap water, etc.). Lacking any test to confirm the diagnosis, food poisoning seems a likely alternate explanation, especially considering the rapid onset of symptoms and relatively fast resolution.

Anyone happen to know the infectious dose for Ebola virus? Depending on the severity of the needle stick, he may not have gotten a large enough dose to cause disease, or he has yet to develop symptoms and what he experienced was a coincidental illness.

the deliciously comic picture of the guy with the laser up his nose

Call him Rudolph.

@palindrom: The next time somebody on your "pre-health" committee advocates reducing the amount of physics such students should take, you can point to this device as evidence that on the contrary, our health professionals aren't learning enough physics. Somebody who can't distinguish between a red laser and UV light should not be working for a hospital in any capacity, including as janitor.

@Todd #5:

Anyone happen to know the infectious dose for Ebola virus?

1-10 organisms by aerosol, lower by blood infection. Now that's nasty.

Let’s see if you can figure out why this anecdote is not nearly as convincing as it’s being portrayed in a press release entitled Rapid Ebola Infection Cure, November 22, 2014.

That's putting an awful lot of effort into a self-congratulatory (self-adulating?) advertisement on a grifter's website.

“And now for something completely different: a man with a tape recorder up his nose.”

I've got a ferret sticking up my nose
And what is worse it constantly explodes.

@ #9:
And from the same part of the world and more or less the same time, Judith Durham and The Seekers - "This Little Light of Mine".

That picture, especially given the "patient's" uber-serious expression, is just hilarious! Given the size, the nose-light is probably a diode laser or just a red LED, but in those cases the wavelength would still be 650-630nm, and thus very very red. They actually make LEDs in the near-UV, I wonder why they wouldn't use those? What am I saying -- nonsense plus nonsense is still only nonsense. Perhaps they think that nasal tissue has some frequency-doubling properties.

I have to say, though, that it looks like it might be alien technology that would be used on UFO abductees.

The rationale is that the light will have access to the rich vascular plexus in the nasal mucosa
No optical enema? I am disappointed.

No optical enema?

What, you want them to put their laser where the sun does not shine?

I haven’t (yet) been able to find an update.

Dr. Rowan might not be so forthcoming with updates if the fellow actually presents with Ebola.

If there's a virologist onboard, correct me -- but what we are hearing (in public health) is that the vomiting and diarrhea show up 3-4 days afterthe initial spike in fever. That, together with the quack's refusal to be tested, should make anyone suspicious of this alleged cure.

What, you want them to put their laser where the sun does not shine?

The Optical Enema crosses the streams of woo. I am surprised that none of the usual suspects are marketing it already.

I’d love to see what that little red light would produce if attached to an anal probe--as in “the aliens took me to their ship and probed me”.

Question? Are the “Dr”s in this piece MD’s or just diploma mill supposed PhD’s?

I do not want to know about their 'rectal ozone therapy'.

I do not want to know about their ‘rectal ozone therapy’.

I don't believe you for a moment.

If there’s a virologist onboard, correct me — but what we are hearing (in public health) is that the vomiting and diarrhea show up 3-4 days after the initial spike in fever.

IANAV. From 2011, "All reports agree that Marburg and Ebola HF patients become ill abruptly with a variety of nonspecific signs and symptoms, including fever, chills, fatigue, headache, myalgia, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea."

This one is apropos for more than one reason, though: "For example, the incubation period after a needlestick injury with Ebola Sudan virus was 6 days [35], and it was 7 days for a similar exposure to Ebola Zaire virus [32]."

I regret to report that [32] is from Инфекционные болезни.

I was going to post this response to "Herb's" indignant and very defensive comment on the other Ebola thread questioning how we could possibly call Dr. Rowen a quack.

Even if this Ebola thing had not come up, all you need to know to correctly call Rowen a quack, many times over, can be found on his website. On the "Services" page we learn "Dr. Rowen was trained in acupuncture and Chinese medical philosophy, including the meridian system. Dr. Su (his partner) actively practices acupuncture. Knowledge of Chinese medicine can help diagnose and treat "mysterious" ailments."

Uh-huh. I smell a duck. Let's read on, shall we? This is getting good.

"We also offer cold laser therapy, pulsating electromagnetic field therapy, and other forms of energy medicine which can assist in the regulation of your cells. We are excited to announce we now offer the highly advanced therapies for eye diseases Inclusive of macular degeneration) pioneered by our friend and colleague, Ed Kondrot, MD. (www.healingtheeye.com), which includes his phenomenal treatments of Frequency Specific Microcurrent."

I hear quacking. And it's getting louder. One more excerpt:

"Some ask, are there really miracles in healing? While we have steadfast faith in the Divine Creator, we believe that the miracle of healing lies within His Creation, and that means inside YOU! If you remove what is impairing your ability to activate your repair processes (detox), and supply the raw materials (nutrition), reduce stress which wears down your body, exercise, eliminate energetic interferences to your body's physiology, and get oxygen, the ultimate healer, into afflicted areas, "miracles" will be an everyday occurrence."

So it's quackery AND faith healing.

Oh, what the hell. One more to drive home the point:

"Remember, we concentrate on assisting your body to heal itself, and treating you, not a "disease". So, all medical/health challenges are "fair game". We believe that even the most challenging of "diseases" such as circulation, immune dysfunction (auto-immune diseases, infection, etc.), Lyme, and even cancer can be assisted by supporting the self healing mechanisms God/Nature designed in us.
Of course, we see a lot of pain. But we are not a "pain clinic" that dispenses pain pills. We are looking for causes and triggers for your pain, so that they can be eliminated. Then you can be restored to normal function. "Normal" does not involve pain (which is warning you of some abnormality within). And, while we see patients challenged with cancer, we don't treat "the cancer". We do treat, in order to optimize its function, your own immune system. Hence, we can interface with any decision you make regarding your cancer treatment choices."

Oh! I just saw this on the "About Us" page:

"We believe that there are three fundamental causes of dis-ease: malnutrition, toxins and stress."

BINGO! The quack actually used "dis-ease"!

THIS IS WHY, "Herb" (Dr. Rowen?), we call Rowen and his ilk a quack.

"Conditions" treated:

We prefer not to list "conditions", as that may be limiting. Remember, we concentrate on assisting your body to heal itself, and treating you, not a "disease". So, all medical/health challenges are "fair game". We believe that even the most challenging of "diseases" such as circulation, immune dysfunction (auto-immune diseases, infection, etc.), Lyme, and even cancer can be assisted by supporting the self healing mechanisms God/Nature designed in us.

Ok, but for example put together in a tablet medication and herbs creates fewer side effects and more therapeutic potency but is not done for economic speculation

maurizio: [citation badly needed] How would adding multiple substances give you fewer side effects? Herbs aren't somehow magic that can never do any harm: foxglove is one of many that can kill you if you consume too much of it. It's harder to overdose on Camellia sinensis in leaf form; putting the active ingredients in a tablet increases the risk.

for example put together in a tablet medication and herbs creates fewer side effects and more therapeutic potency

Err... Do you have a concrete example in mind of adding herbs resulting in fewer side effects for the same or higher potency? Citations would be great.

but is not done for economic speculation

If someone is willing to buy it, someone will sell it. Look at e-Bay.
I have a hard time understanding how withholding a product could make anyone richer, even more so in a competition-driven market. Especially if the benefit is less side effects for equal potency - people would still need to buy the same amount of pills to get cured, so there is no market loss here for the seller. Quite the contrary, in fact.
The regular reformulation of drugs with new adjuvants and/or dosage is a real-life business model for pharmaceutical companies. It allows them to extend their patents and provides them with a competitive edge by proposing different formulations of the same drug - the customer is encouraged to switch to the enhanced formulae.

In this model, passing the opportunity to add an extra component providing higher potency (or allowing to reduce the needed amount of the base drug) and/or reducing side effects (more faithful customers, less bad rep) would be very silly.

we help you design a program to detoxify. Methods here could include, but not be limited to: nutritional supplements, sauna/sweat therapy, chelation (for metals), herbs, homeopathy, oxidation therapies. We do offer chelation therapy by several routes, including oral and IV. Chelation therapy has recently emerged (in orthodox literature based on a long term major study) as a valuable help in vascular disease.

Struth. This dude is not going to turn down an income stream, is he?

Dr. Rowen is currently the chairman of the oxidation workshop of the American College for Advancement in Medicine.

Did ACAM own up to lying about chelation, and promise to stop doing it? I do believe they did.

At this point the caveat usually arises that "Perhaps this mook isn't actually trying to scam his customers; perhaps he has deceived himself as well as them about the effectiveness of his treatments". I don't see the self-deception excuse as applicable to Rowan. Words like "grifter" and "fraud" and "quack" and "scammer" and "low-life skidmark" are all inadequate.

Good points well made as usual by Orac. I do, however, have one disagreement. I think describing the quacks as "well-meaning" is way too charitable. To me, I see mainly self-aggrandisement, part of a desperate desire for validation, if not outright fraud. If they were genuinely motivated by altruism, they would be more likely to work with the authorities or legitimate aid organisations rather than getting in their way & lying about their activities.

It is of course possible that Orac is being sarcastic but it can be hard to tell on the internet.

DrB, I could make a good argument that anyone who would voluntarily travel to west Africa right now to work with Ebola victims has his/her heart in the right place.

Their brains? Not so much.

@weirdnoise

I have to say, though, that it looks like it might be alien technology that would be used on UFO abductees.

It would definitely be preferable to what I experienced the last time that happened.

David, you are too charitable. This is not well-meaning quackery, it's "me, me, me, how can I exploit this for personal gain" quackery. It's as bad as the homeoquacks. They spout platitudes and pretend to care but the only thing that matters to them is getting something they can use to boost their business.

They are vermin. They deserve the highest opprobrium.

Looking at Dr. Rowen's website, the one thing i don't find is a standard quack Miranda warning. Doesn't that leave him liable for offfering false claims of efficacy with respect to depression, autoimmune disorders, Lyme disease, etc.?

we now offer the highly advanced therapies for eye diseases Inclusive of macular degeneration [...], which includes his phenomenal treatments of Frequency Specific Microcurrent.”

The careful wording there -- "offering a highly advanced therapy" for MD rather than specifically "treating" or "curing" -- points to a clear awareness on Rowan's part of how close to the wind he can sail when he's extracting money from desperate people facing progressive blindness.

I see mainly self-aggrandisement

Even that may be too weak. This is a person whose reports from Sierra Leone concentrate on his reception from the President of that country. This is a person who writes of himself in third person -- "Ebola Battled By Robert Rowen MD!" -- in his self-adulatory advertisements "press releases" for himself (on his own website, on FB, on the ACAM website). These feature the claim that

Dr. Rowen is known as “The Father of Medical Freedom”

, presumably in the hope that if it is repeated enough, people other than himself might start calling him that.

the one thing i don’t find is a standard quack Miranda warning. Doesn’t that leave him liable for offfering false claims of efficacy with respect to depression, autoimmune disorders, Lyme disease, etc.?

He is careful to insinuate rather than promise explicitly.

We prefer not to list “conditions”, as that may be limiting

We prefer not to list “conditions”, as that may be limiting incriminating

Fixed that for him

We prefer not to list “conditions”, as that may be limiting...

Yeah, it "limits" what Rowen can "diagnose" and charge for his useless supplements and "therapies." This way, Rowen can invent anything he feels like conning his patients into believing and then sell them all his BS "treatments."

We prefer not to list “conditions”, as that may be incriminating

Yep. The careful parsing of words and avoidance of responsibility in Rowan's promises does not fit the "well-meaning and self-deluded and wrong" account.

Woofighter's list of Rowan's Quackmarks (comment #21) misses one; the way he bangs on about offering his customers the privilege of access to secrets -- "the secrets of optimal health" -- these secrets being presumably guarded by the cognoscenti, in the manner of Rosicrucian esoterica

HDB

Even that may be too weak

Fair enough in Rowan's case. I was talking about quacks generally (my comment probably should have been in the previous thread on this subject).

[i]Remember, we concentrate on assisting your body to heal itself, and treating you, not a “disease”.[/i]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why people continue to fall for the woo.

They're looking for personalized and personal care as much as they are looking for treatments (more accurately cures). Quacks feed into that need in a way that real doctors have a hard time doing because of the perverse incentives of our health care system that force the real doctors to see a new patient every 10 minutes just to keep the doors open.

Facts don't matter to a patient who wants a relationship with health care provider.

That thing might be good for a sinus infection--

Researchers at Tufts University, in collaboration with a team at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, have demonstrated a resorbable electronic implant that eliminated bacterial infection in mice by delivering heat to infected tissue when triggered by a remote wireless signal

http://www.biospace.com/News/wireless-electronic-implants-stop-staph-th…

*resorbable* == much less 'dark ages' than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3_Hfn3ea8E

6nm nm light is widely reported to speed wound healing. US Navy use in submarines. Suggested mechanism , Mitochondrial absorption and activation. Seems less likely that nasal light would produce whole body effective attack against haemorrhagic virus. :
Anecdote: I use incandescant light, rather than LED 630 bulbs, the hot light produces local inflammation as well, which is effective in speeding small lesion, boil, etc healing.
If Ebola exposed, I would try the nose thing. Im not clear what "conventional" therapy you are defending when you reject 630nm light because it looks funny. Iv saline or plasma drips might look funny, I'd take them too if available.

630nm not 6nm. The problem with quack medecine. is the quacks never discuss failure rates, not that their methods look silly. I am presuming that this guy is not discussing his failure rates. If Ebola under best care has 50% death rate, then red light is worth a try, as long as it doesnt get in the way of drips, antibiotics, or whatever is best practice, absent plasma extracts from survivors. What is failure rate for them?

@c t skinner,

1. Have you heard from b f lately?

2. More seriously, 630 nm is red light, the lowest energy end of the visible spectrum. It doesn't even have enough energy to help your body make vitamin D, much less penetrate the skin to affect cells in the blood or other tissues underneath.

If just exposing yourself to light of that wavelength could heal you, almost no one would be sick.

Do you have any published studies to support your claims?

Mitochondrial absorption and activation.

Despite George Lucas' claims of the contrary, mitochondria are not chloroplasts.
Any evidence of mitochondria reacting to any light?

The ones who fall hardest for woo are ones who are either scared by diagnosis and its recommended treatment, or patients offered few treatment options from SBM.

I must be too kind. I can't believe all woo practitioners are jaded con artists. Some have to actually believe this stuff (thinking of former neighbor, a vegan massage therapist).

It doesn't mean there aren't con artists too, just means some suffer from the hopeless belief that magic is real, and mystery is more powerful than what is known.

Do you have any published studies to support your claims?

To be sure there are published studies, but the relevant question (as is the case with all those studies purporting to demonstrate a causal association between mercury/aluminum exposure and autism spectrum disorders) is what is the quality of the evidence these studies present, and does it support the claims the authors make?

A good palce to start looking at Low Level Laser Therapy (LLLT), also known as "Cold laser Tehrapy", is this article found on Skepvet's site

http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2010/05/cold-laser-therapy/

Mechanism of quaction: 'Powerful emotions are true. Any statement or experience that incites or is accompanied by a powerful emotion, is true.'

The above gets us the True Believer quacks and their True Believer patients.

Quack Contagion: A person who has a powerful emotional experience whilst being treated by a quack, is more likely to go on to become a quack practitioner him/herself.

Conservation of Quack Energy: The number of days of study that the totality of a given quack's patients devote to becoming quacks themselves, add up to the number of days of study that the original quack who treated them devoted to becoming a quack, minus frictional losses.

For example Alice spends 400 days of study to become an ND. She has 500 patients, of which forty are so 'impressed' with the quack paradigm that they decide to become quacks themselves. On average each of the forty patients can be expected to spend ten days' efforts toward becoming quacks themselves, minus frictional losses such as time spent explaining to their friends that they haven't lost their minds, and time spent explaining to their families that their new profession will be more remunerative than whatever they were doing before.

Testable hypothesis, eh?;-)

The invasion of well-meaning quacks into West Africa continues apace

oracknows — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 07:15:58 +0000

The invasion of well-meaning quacks into West Africa continues apace

Here we go yet again.

I’ve been interested in the Ebola outbreak that’s been going on for months in west Africa for a number of reasons. First, it’s a bad disease, and this is the largest outbreak in history. over 5,000 people have died. Second, there’s been a lot of unreasonable fear mongering about the disease here in the US far beyond its actual threat level to the country. Third, of course, and perhaps most pertinent given the usual subject matter of this blog, is that the Ebola outbreak in Africa has been a godsend for quacks, cranks, and conspiracy theorists. There is no quackery or conspiracy theory too quacky or too nutty to be considered improbable by the likes of Mike Adams. (Well, maybe one.)

When last I visited this subject, I was following the saga of homeopaths bravely (stupidly, actually) plunging into the middle of the Ebola outbreak with their magic water, thinking that it would be useful. There are two issues with homeopathy for Ebola. (Well, three issues, one of them being that homeopathy is total quackery and no different than giving desperately ill patients water or little sugar pills.) One is the ridiculousness of one common homeopathic remedy, namely using the venoms of various snakes (rattlesnake, yellow viper, and Bushmaster) because they cause symptoms similar to Ebola, in particular bleeding. Given that homeopathic remedies are diluted to nonexistence, I’m not so worried about these. One, however, is very scary, perhaps because it’s most in tune with homeopathy, and that’s to use blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids from an actual Ebola victim as the remedy to be diluted to nonexistence. Given how easily containers could be contaminated with the Ebola virus and how it might stick to the vessels used to dilute the bodily fluids, the thought of a homeopath actually using the bodily fluids of Ebola victims this way is too scary to contemplate, so scary that even über-quack and über-crank Mike Adams couldn’t countenance such a suggestion.

And don’t even get me started on “auto-urine” therapy for Ebola.

So it was with a mixture of alarm and amusement that I learned that homeopaths are still at it. They’re still trying, but the World Health Organization (WHO), to its credit, has for now put a stop to them, an action that has enraged the homeopaths who “were just trying to help”:

Homeopathy could have cured Ebola if the World Health Organisation had not stepped in to prevent a trial, according to members of a group who travelled to Liberia hoping to try out remedies including rattlesnake venom and the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly.

The four doctors were the subject of widespread ridicule online after MailOnline revealed that they travelled to the West African country intent on using Ebola victims to put their controversial theories to the test.

But today the homeopaths dismissed their critics as 'armchair intellectuals' and insisted they made the 'dramatic and traumatic trip' to Liberia because they had a duty to try to help.

Organisers of the trip are still inviting donations from supporters of homeopathy - whose ranks include Prince Charles - to fund a second attempt to run an Ebola trial in Liberia.

Seriously? The WHO basically saved these homeopaths’ sorry posteriors from their own stupidity and belief in magic. They’ve also saved the suffering Ebola victims in Liberia from being subjected to homeopathic quackery. (But I repeat myself.) One thing that’s depressing that I learned in this story is that the homeopaths who think that treating Ebola patients with snake venom diluted to nonexistence while believing that the water somehow “remembers” the properties of the snake venom are...physicians.

I hang my head in shame. Fellow physicians, believing in magic water! Oh, the shame. The shame.

It gets worse:

From her office in Mumbai, India, Dr Medha Durge said they had been keen to try out their own medicines on Ebola victims alongside more conventional treatments.
'Is it possible that four doctors with over 25 years practice will go all the way to Liberia and harm/exploit Ebola victims? We wanted to help and that too because nothing was helping them,' she said.

'Also we wanted to give homeopathy along with the drips.'

She confirmed that they had used homeopathic treatments on patients, despite the instructions from health officials in the capital Monrovia not to do so. She said she had not felt the need to quarantine herself after returning to India but was monitoring her own condition for any signs of the disease.

She also affirmed that “We treated all types of cases in the hospital with homeopathic medicines.”

In other words, these homeopaths lied when they assured health officials that they would not use homeopathy on Ebola patients. Why am I not surprised? So not only are these physicians falling prey to the most magical of magical thinking, as is absolutely required to believe in homeopathy, but they are apparently insubordinate and/or dishonest as well. It does explain how they were allowed near Ebola patients, though. Given the shortage of physicians in the areas most devastated by the outbreak, a physician interested in helping would be far more likely to be allowed in to help than a homeopath. Unfortunately Dr. Durge is both. In any case, if you don’t believe that these homeopaths are almost certainly lying, check this out about another homeopath, Dr. Ortrud Lindemann:

'To say we offer false hope is ridiculous,' she said. 'We were four qualified doctors who answered a call for volunteers and put our own lives in danger to try and help. If there is something to be done on top of the conventional treatment to help a patient, then we have a duty to try.'

Back in Mumbai, Dr Durge claimed that the Liberian government had been 'very helpful, kind and accepting of homeopathy. They appreciated us arriving there under the circumstances.'

However, senior health officials involved in the fight against Ebola in Liberia told MailOnline they had not realised the doctors were homeopaths and that when they found out, they gave strict instructions that they were not to use their techniques on patients.

Trusting homeopaths not to use their quackery on Ebola patients? Those senior health officials were either naive or desperate, probably a bit of both. One wonders if these physicians even remember how to use conventional medicine, given their reliance to treat woo. The only good thing about this is that they probably didn’t hurt anyone. That doesn’t make up for the fact that these deluded homeopaths were planning to do, in essence, human experimentation without informed consent or any supervision:

He revealed that they had consulted other leading homeopaths in the hope of coming up with a potential cure that could be tested on Ebola patients.

'I've used homeopathy for 40 years and there's a lot of research various epidemics including Yellow Fever, which is similar to Ebola in symptoms,' he said.

'When we went to do this we had some of the very best international homeopathy physicians who we consulted and worked with for many months before hand.

'And again we looked at which remedies would fit the pattern to cure, we had some good ideas about what medicine works and what would be beneficial. Again, we needed the experience so that was our preparation.'

He confirmed that rattlesnake venom and Spanish Fly were among the possible cures that they wanted to test out.

And he said he was disappointed that conventional medicine had closed its mind to homeopathy.

No, I’m disappointed that there are actual physicians, who presumably graduated from real medical schools and undertook real residencies, who believe that you treat symptoms by administering something that causes those symptoms and that you make that remedy stronger by serially diluting it until it is highly unlikely that a single molecule remains behind because the water remembers the “healing essence” of the remedy.

Sadly, it doesn’t end there. If the quacks themselves can’t treat Ebola patients themselves with their quackery, they’ll teach doctors there how to treat Ebola with quackery. Witness Robert Rowan:

The President of SL, probably on arrival, will receive us. We will be taken to a non-patient center where we can begin teaching our methods and special Ebola protocols. The doctors we train will soon thereafter begin treatments in the SL treatment center.

We do not intend to treat any Ebola patients ourselves. The risk is not necessary. We will oversee the training and treatment by our trainees. We will be teaching them everything Dr. Robins knows about the Robins Method of DIV Ozone Therapy gained over the past 23 years. I will teach them everything else about ozone and other oxidation therapies, and every other method of delivery, from rectal to joints. We will prepare them to receive ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy if that equipment follows us. We will also be directly treating malaria patients. I will be carrying a ton of gloves with me.

Imagine my relief.

Those poor Ebola patients. Not only do they have to deal with the possibility of catching an infectious disease that kills over half the people who get it in a very unpleasant manner, the poverty, the decimation of their medical resources through the deaths of many doctors treating Ebola patients, but they also have to deal with an invasion of well-meaning quacks trying to use homeopathy, UV blood irradiation, ozone therapy, auto-urine therapy, and all manner of other quackery to treat them.

oracknows Thu, 11/20/2014 - 02:15

If this individual (to be very polite) ends up turning Ebola loose in a place like Mumbai, the consequences should be very, very serious if she survives. That would be the worst of the worst case scenarios.

How many counts of criminally negligent homicide would it take to get a life sentence India?

He confirmed that rattlesnake venom and Spanish Fly were among the possible cures that they wanted to test out.

So ... IRB, they don't need no stinking IRBs. Informed consent? What's that? Let's just show up and try whatever shit we think might work and see what happens.

If course, if the "drips" referred to worked, they will credit the homeopathy. And if they don't, well, they waited too long to start homeopathy or something.

The fact that some physicians are susceptible to this kind of nonsense emphasizes once again that one can make it through medical training without any real understanding of what science is and how it works -- all you have to do is jump through the hoops and get the grades.

On the other hand, some physicians are excellent scientists by inclination and by training. Being equipped with blinking lights certainly helps.

Considering India now has a seperate minister for yoga and traditional medicine, I'm not sure we can count on the Indian government to go after quacks.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-shripad-naik-takes-charge-as-minis…

Found you some more material Orac:
http://prn.fm/category/articles/health/vaccinations/

I am curious what your views are on pitbulls being a public health threat. I don't know if that is outside of the scope of this blog.

controversial

I don't think that word means what the author of the Daily Fail article thinks it means. The implied controversy does not exist: there is no plausible mechanism that would allow homeopathy to work as claimed, and anybody who has taken high school chemistry should have learned this. Unfortunately, as palindrom notes above, it is all too easy to obtain an MD without actually learning the content of the courses taken along the way. For example, a high school classmate of mine, who was known for having the best grades money could buy, eventually became a doctor practicing in Florida. I have had no contact with him since high school, so I don't know if he is into woo, but given his background I wouldn't be surprised if he were unfamiliar with Avogadro's Law.

In other words, these homeopaths lied when they assured health officials that they would not use homeopathy on Ebola patients.

Did they lie on their visa applications, or only after arriving in Liberia? The latter is bad enough. The former would be visa fraud, which is a serious offense. You are likely to be jailed or deported, and your visa cancelled, if you are caught lying on your visa application.

Considering India now has a seperate minister for yoga and traditional medicine, I’m not sure we can count on the Indian government to go after quacks.

Oh, it's worse than that. Just last month, in the 24 October issue of Science, there was a rather credulous article on page 410 titled Searching for science in India's traditional medicine, with the following summary:

The Indian government is pushing hard to show that Indian traditional medicine, or Ayurveda, is based on sound science. With hefty government support, the nascent field of "ayurgenomics" has roped in dozens of researchers from leading institutions and it has published papers on the genetic bases of Ayurvedic traits, some of them in leading journals. But the effort has also stirred a rising chorus of criticism. Skeptics point to failed attempts to derive drugs from the herbal concoctions used in Ayurveda and other schools of traditional medicine. And some say the Ayurvedic premise of body types is unscientific, which undermines any studies that rely on them.

As I started to read this story, I wondered, "What would Orac think of this?" The author did get a "balance" quote from a certain good friend of Orac's, obviously edited for brevity. But the whole story was treated in an "Opinions Differ Regarding Shape of Earth" manner. That the Indian government is funding such research is legitimate news, but the author seemed to think there was a reasonable theoretical basis for the research being funded.

Well, as most of these countries do not have actual medication to treat Ebola and therefore all they can do is mostly oral rehydration as they don't even have intravenous Celine solution available to any great extent this may be the only disease in history other than cholera that homeopathic "medications" can help with. All you need to do is give them in big enough volumes and with some added a lecture lights. Can they make homeopathic Gatorade by using it for the last dilution?

Do I have to add that this is sarcasm?

Do I have to add that this is sarcasm?

No, but these attempts to re-purpose Mx. Dion must stop.

@ The Light's Bane:

Unfortunately, we know all about PRN...
although every now and then they do pull in an unsuspecting legitimate author or someone who attempts challenging their towering walls of nonsense, nearly everything printed or broadcast is woo, conspiracy mongering or outright poppycock.

pitbulls being a public health threat.

I personally dislike medicalizing pit bulls. They should be sold over the counter, not requiring a prescription.

The four doctors were the subject of widespread ridicule online after MailOnline revealed that they travelled to the West African country intent on using Ebola victims to put their controversial theories to the test.

Because of course the only these controversial theories can be 'put to the test' is by treating actual patients during the outbreak of a deadly viral disease, without IRB approval and in the complete absence proper informed consent from their subjects.

The couldn't possibly test those theories instead by condcuting IRB approved, appropriately controlled and blinded clincial trials aginst less serious viral diseases, with documentation of proper informed consent from the subjects.

Oh, wait...

Mephistopheles -- you owe me a new keyboard. I just sprayed tea on mine. :-D

I see that in the Daily mail article there is a photo of Dr Mhedha's clinic in Mumbai.

It is shared with Dr Nisheeta, "consulting cosmetologist".

Dr Medha's advertised healthcare products are as follows:
Travel kit
Children's kit / tonic
Senior citizen kit
Injury kit / first aid kit
Weight slim
Low haemoglobin
Memory booster
Acidity and piles

I am sure she has a lot to contribute to the suffering masses in Liberia.

Now I can see how liters of homeopathy could be used for 'weight slim' but seriously 'low haemoglobin'.

Denice @15: I can see how the law of similars would lead to a homeopathic cure for low hemoglobin. Since hemoglobin carries oxygen from your lungs to your cells, a homeopathic solution of hemoglobin must be even more effective at carrying oxygen. So you drink the homeopathic solution to dilute your blood. Right? Of course that depends on homeopathic logic rather than real world logic. Same with most of the rest of that stuff. The "weight slim" might backfire, depending on your propensity to retain fluids.

The first aid kit might be useful, if it includes stuff like bandages and gauze. Sometimes, that's enough to treat an injury. Or at least enough to let you get the victim to a hospital alive, which is the point of first aid. Of course I would want a real disinfectant and a real analgesic, rather than the homeopathic versions thereof.

The first aid kit might be useful, if it includes stuff like bandages and gauze.

Even better if it contains homepathic bandages and gauze, however: you open the sterile wrapping and there's nothing there, but when you pretend to dress the wound the bleeding stops...

I mean, if there can be homepathic 'shipwreck' why not?

‘I’ve used homeopathy for 40 years and there’s a lot of research various epidemics including Yellow Fever, which is similar to Ebola in symptoms,’ he said.

So illnesses with similar symptoms can be successfully treated with...wait. I'm not processing this.

(Oog, as Pogo would say).

Turns out the people behind the Miracle Mineral Solution have been claiming they can cure Ebola as well, though I don't know what kind of presence they have in Africa. I do know, however, they have been touring Australia and New Zealand, and the press down there went to town on them:

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/investigation-into-church-s-miracle-cur…

http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/fears-over-bleach-based-miracle-cure-v…

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/genesis-ii-church-of-health-a…

Sorry, this was supposed to be that last link: http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/3aw-breakfast-blog/miracle-water-just-a-tox…

There's a certain level of "we're better than those poor Africans" too on the quack front. Us great Northerners will come with our spectacular cures using Special Water when your poor Southern folk medicine practitioners couldn't figure out how to save your own people. What about the Ancient Wisdom? Many ethnic groups on the continent do still have traditional healers, who are every bit as "effective" as our naturopaths. (Not!) The doctor shortage is frightening, though.

The President of SL, probably on arrival, will receive us.

Not that Robert Rowan has an elevated sense of self-importance, oh no.

@ e canfield:

Although I suppose colonialism is technically nearly dead, the attitude persists. However the alties would prefer we reject white man's science and accept native woo except that homeopathy is a white man's woo performed by white people.

No one asks the natives what they would prefer: I suspect it would involve hospitals, IVs and serums.

Not that Robert Rowan has an elevated sense of self-importance, oh no.

That ACAM item was from October. There's a report of their activities floating around.

Denise -- well, in this case, the Indian homeopaths did ask the Liberias what they'd prefer, in a way, by announcing that they were homeopaths here to help. They just ignored the answer.

Organisers of the trip are still inviting donations from supporters of homeopathy – whose ranks include Prince Charles – to fund a second attempt to run an Ebola trial in Liberia.

Few things would cheer my dark and stony heart as much as seeing Prince Charles hold fast to his principles and proclaim his unswerving support of homeopathy from the rooftops, each and every time he is let out in public.

Yes, Considering India now has a seperate minister for yoga and traditional medicine, I’m not sure we can count on the Indian government to go after quacks!

@ e canfield:

A minor correction, no remedy can be less effective than naturopothy, although some may be more dangerous. Zero effectiveness is the ultimate baseline.

Spammer at #27!

ProgJohn @28 -- Or, it could be counterproductive.

"I make furniture to be installed in kitchens", said Tom counterproductively.

No one asks the natives what they would prefer: I suspect it would involve hospitals, IVs and serums.

We know that was true of Mao Zedong, who insisted on Western medicine even as he was promoting traditional Chinese medicine for his people. There, as in sub-Saharan Africa, part of the problem was a lack of doctors.

OTOH, we just saw some First Nations leaders fight in court for their right to use white men's woo rather than actual medicine. So the historical record is decidedly mixed.

Well, you can feel a bit better about at least one of these so-called doctors. "Dr." Mehta Durge is not an MD. Her degree is from a homeopathy "hospital". She has no medical training, though she claims at least one of her teachers was an "alopathic" doctor. Ugh. https://in.linkedin.com/pub/dr-medha-durge/12/a46/406

In other words, a diploma mill.

Great.

Your comment about Dr Rowen is utterly contemptible. Here's a doctor who went to SL at his own expense, risking his life to train doctors in a non toxic inexpensive therapy that he and hundreds of doctors use every day to effectively treat many infectious and other medical conditions and you ridicule him. And which has very clear and plausible mechanisms of action.

Ok Now ridicule this. http://www.docrowen.com/ebola-cure-press-release.html

I'm sure you and others here on this site will either ignore the press release describing the alleviation of Ebola symptoms, or you will find reasons to be critical of Dr Rowen's conclusion, but what I can guarantee you will not do is retract your vile characterization of Dr Rowen as a quack - because that would discredit most anything you espouse.

I apologize for not searching for PRN on here, I was on my mom's phone and it's hard to search on it. LOL, we got our pittie from a rescue, is that considered OTC or prescription? Seriously though, I was wondering if these dogs are really as dangerous as the media makes them out to be.

Pit Bulls are relatively chill by nature. They were once the 'classic' American family dog. They are very strong, and unrelenting when angered. They usually only become dangerous when trained as fighting dogs or guard animals, a conditioning that generally involves pretty major abuse of the dog.

A genetically 'normal' pit bull that has not been trained for aggression is more safe than some breeds that are naturally aggressive. If your dog is a rescue, you'd want to know it's history probably, especially the older it is. Sometimes dogs have been trained to be hostile to a particular category of person — just men, just children, just women, just people of color, etc. — but are sweet as apple pie otherwise. My dad had a rescue dobie like that, who'd been pulled out of a car abandoned in some kind of drug-dealer apprehesion. He was a wonderful dog inside the house — sweet, lovable, fun. But on to occassions she got loose and attacked people on the street who fit her trained 'trigger' and they had to euthanize her lest her hurt someone and/or engender a lawsuit. It was so sad that someone had done that to such a wonderful creature.

Herb @35 -- I seem to have missed the "very clear and plausible mechanisms of action" in the press release.

Herb - If I read the press release correctly, an unnamed doctor was exposed to the Ebola virus, diagnosed himself with symptoms similar to Ebola, treated himself, and now claims to be cured. Ebola was never independently diagnosed.

Not that I doubt any of their sincerity, but can you understand how someone might want more data to confirm this?

I’m sure you and others here on this site will either ignore the press release

Not only is it a press release -- that is, an advertisement fro Rowen's grift -- but the advertisement is so egregiously cringe-worthy in its self-hagiographic smarm that he can't persuade even the laziest of newsmedia to embarrass themselves by printing it, and instead we must be directed to Rowen's own website.

Self-congratulatory piffle on one's own website are not persuasive, Herb.

As an antidote, dispatches from an RN working on mission in Sierra Leone. Part the first.

http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-i-am-going-to-liberia.h…

I suspect that many people who know me know some of the reasons I have chosen to work in the Ebola response in Liberia; I fell in love with Africa and its people during my first trip to the continent in the late 1980s, I became a nurse because I wanted to work in Africa, I have a passion for public health and tropical medicine, I'm Catholic, and I want to set an example for my son.

There is another reason that requires some explaining.

To help reduce the spread of disease.

These interventions, isolating and treating people with EVD, contact tracing, and facilitating safe burial practices require personnel who are able to care for people with the disease and work with communities to change behaviors that place people at risk for infection.

That is why I'm going to Liberia.

(Rollosson ended up being assigned to Sierra Leone)

Ok Now ridicule this.

OK.

"Unbeknownst to Dr. Rowen, symptoms did develop on day 2 (Sunday November 16) -the doctor reported high fever, loss of appetite, abdominal distress, and significant fatigue, which symptoms were rapidly progressing, classic signs of Ebola."

So that's an incubation period of what, 1 day?

Part the second:

http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/10/change-of-plans-sierra-leon…

I learned this week that Partners In Health (PIH) would like to send me to Sierra Leone rather than Liberia. During a conference call today I learned that we will be the first group that PIH sends to Sierra Leone and that we will be working in villages where there are no Ebola Treatment Units (ETU) but in which the communities have set up isolation units. We will be providing technical assistance while the ETUs are being built.

I'm excited about this opportunity. They told us that they were looking for people who could be flexible. I guess they figured from my background and my interviews that I fit that bill.

Part the third

http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/11/cdc-ebola-safety-training-c…

The course includes lectures on Ebola virus disease (EVD), its transmission, epidemiology, treatment, infection control, and disinfection. The focus of the training is preparing health care professionals to safely work in Ebola treatment units (ETU) in West Africa. Our afternoons are spent in a mock ETU where we practice putting on ("donning") personal protective equipment (PPE), working in PPE, and, most importantly, removing ("doffing") contaminated PPE safely. There is a lot of bleach used throughout the process.

Each time we go through we partner up with another person, assist each other with donning PPE, ensure that there are no breaches (exposed skin or tears in the material), and ensuring that our partner remains safe while in the ETU. On Tuesday only did I learn that the sleeves of an extra large Tyvek coverall are too short for my arms, the back ripped open while I was working in the ETU. I'm very glad that I learned that here and not in Sierra Leone.

Part the fourth

http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/11/greetings-from-freetown-sie…

If you expect me to say something like, "Nothing can prepare you for the first time you see a patient with Ebola," you're going to be disappointed.

I've read several descriptions of the clinical presentation of EVD. In general, there's nothing in the appearance of a person with EVD that distinguishes it from other acute febrile illnesses. That's one of the problems early in an Ebola epidemic. Health care providers are often exposed to ebolavirus before anyone suspects that the ill patients they are seeing have EVD. People with EVD look like they could have malaria, typhoid fever, or any number of infectious diseases that are common in developing countries. Confusing the issue even more, Lassa fever, another viral hemorrhagic fever, is endemic in this part of Africa.

Part the fifth

http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/11/ebola-oral-rehydration-solu…

Greetings from Port Loko, Sierra Leone.... We've been working in the Ebola treatment unit (ETU) 10 or more hours every day. A new crew of nurses and doctors arrived a few days ago, so now we're able to work overlapping six hour shifts. This is the first time I've been able to sit down, listen to music, and write a post. I'm tired, sore, and a little sunburned, but I enjoy the work that I'm doing.

I could tell you heartbreaking stories of the deaths that I've seen here. Several people die in the ETU every day. I've chosen not to write about those deaths in this post.

Two of the most prominent features of Ebola virus disease (EVD) are vomiting and diarrhea. Death from EVD is usually due to dehydration and loss of sodium and potassium, electrolytes that are required for normal cellular function. There are no medications that treat the viral infection itself, so treatment of EVD is aggressive replacement of water, sodium, and potassium. That can be achieved using intravenous (IV) fluids but, for most people with EVD, the risks associated with IV rehydration outweigh the benefits.

Part the sixth (today's post)
http://fullyvaccinated.blogspot.com/2014/11/ebola-stigma.html

Saturday we discharged several Ebola survivors from the confirmed ward; people who had recovered from Ebola virus disease (EVD). That was the first time survivors had been discharged from this Ebola treatment unit (ETU) since it opened.

Although discharging Ebola survivors was a cause for celebration, I will not post photographs of patients on this blog or any other social media. Survivors in this epidemic and in previous epidemics have been stigmatized and even become the victims of violence.

(some paragraphs omitted)

Many of my colleagues from the U.S. have also experienced discrimination because of their work in the Ebola epidemic response. One of the physicians I worked with was asked not to return to her apartment for 21 days after leaving Sierra Leone. A firefighter I met was harassed by her coworkers. Several of my colleagues quit their jobs to come here after their employers refused to allow them time off. Several people have told me that they are not welcome at their families' holiday celebrations.

I hope you will all go to Matthew's blog and leave comments.

#35...I wasn't suggesting that the press release articulated the mechanisms of action, just that the literature on ozone describes these mechanisms. The mechanisms of action are easily discovered with a simple search.

#40 and #41 and #43. My comment was not intended to argue that ozone cured the doctor described in the press release. It was a plea for having an open mind - something in short supply in this neighborhood - instead of labeling Dr Rowen as a quack. I find that characterization so offensive, so egregious, so ignorant and so arrogant, and yet so characteristic of this blog.

Engage Dr Rowan and ozone on the medical and scientific merits. That's all I ask, and it's sad - though hardly surprising -that I should have to make that plea, and that not one person (as I predicted with close to 100% certainty) has expressed the slightest open mindedness or curiosity about this therapy, and its potential to treat ebola.

Engage Dr Rowan and ozone on the medical and scientific merits. That’s all I ask

No, you came right out of the gate with bluster. Now whimpering about having to make a "plea" and lack of "the slightest openmindedness or curiosity" does not constitute a meaningful response.

If Herb doesn't like me calling Dr. Rowan a quack here, he's really not going to like this:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/11/25/the-invasion-of-well-meani…

Engage Dr Rowan and ozone on the medical and scientific merits.
Loath though I am to belabour the obvious, we can't engage the self-proclaimed "Father of Medical Freedom" about the medical and scientific merits of shining red light up the nose and blowing cold smoke up the bum, because he ain't here.

Herb: "Engage Dr Rowan and ozone on the medical and scientific merits."

Cough, cough.

You don't seem to understand the lack of science in that press release. Come back when the dynamic duo of Rowan and Robins have published their findings in a well documented PubMed indexed case report.

@LizDitz

I hope you will all go to Matthew’s blog and leave comments

I just hope he doesn't get stignatised like the proverbial leper when he returns home, like Kaci Hickox did (where she received online death threats for her decision to breach the politically motivated unjustifiable quarantine restrictions placed upon her, and earned a comment from our dear antivax friend Cia Parker that she hoped Kaci would get Ebola)

#52 Orac

https://www.facebook.com/DrRobertJRowen/posts/305854789612529

Well now Dr Rowen describes a doctor who contracted what appeared to be Ebola,
tested positive for Ebola, had ozone treatment, and now his symptoms have largely disappeared and now tests negative. I'd say that's worth notice...

But since you're so invested in ozone being an quack treatment I assume you'll find yet another reason to disparage if not ridicule this report. To be clear, I'm not saying that this proves ozone cures ebola, just that the treatment - and these cases - deserve respectful inquiry and not respectful insolence.

But since you’re so invested in ozone being an quack treatment I assume you’ll find yet another reason to disparage if not ridicule this report.

"Dr. Robert Rowen and Dr. Howard Robins now openly announce to the world the first CONFIRMED case of Ebola which has been apparently cured with the Rowen-Robins Ebola protocol, which features the Robins method of DIV ozone administration."

Wait, so the one that you barfed up before now isn't "confirmed"? Rowen sure the fυck made it sound that way:

"Drs. Robert Rowen, of Santa Rosa California and Howard Robins, of New York City, announce the first cure of the Ebola infection in the world with a safe treatment costing less than 40 USD."

Since Rowen claims that Dr M'Briwa was also being treated with "Advance Cellular Silver, Vitamin C and Glutathione", how are we to know which of these (not to mention the normal supportive treatment which I assume M'Briwa also received) should get the credit for his recovery?

Are "Advance Cellular Silver, Vitamin C and Glutathione" the normal protocol at Freetown's Ebola treatment centre? I cannot help wondering who prescribed them.

Howard Robins is podiatrist in New York who has written a few quacky exercise-related tomes with Gary Null. Vitamin C megadoses, IV ozone, glutathione etc are amongst the panacaea ( protocols) prescribed for everything from hiv/aids to the sniffles. He was associated with a group of 'healers' sincs the 1980s and possibly is still involved with a woo-fraught nurse, Luanne Pennesi, who operates Metropolitan Something clinic.

The aforementioned group is Metropolitan Wellness - the woo-nurse there can hook up clients with practitioners who prescribe the IVs. The website even mentions their own preferred blend of coffee for enemas.

@ Narad:

And before I depart:
isn't you-know-who up against the time limit on his re-appeal of his lawsuit?

herb, can you provide a citation for any articles or studies authored by Dr Rowan, documenting evidence wupporting the premise that DIV ozone administration is a safe and effective treatment for viral infections (including but not necessarily limited to EBV), published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal?

Because if all you've got to offer in support of this claims are anecdotal accounts found on social media sites like Facebook you're wasting everybody's time, including your own.