2006 Millenium Awards

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First Place - The Anus Maximus Award

Joseph Mercola

One of the headlines on Joe Mercola's alternative medicine web site when these awards were being judged said "Red Hot Chili Peppers May Cure Type 1 Diabetes" It was followed by the words "A breakthrough discovery could lead to a natural cure for a disease previously thought to be incurable. ...". The link led to a page on the Mercola site with the same heading where Mercola reported on a study of mice where injection of capsaicin (or a related peptide) into the pancreases of specially-bred mice resulted in temporary reversal or inhibition of some of the precursors of diabetes. Please note that these mice are designed to get diabetes, they did not consume "red hot chili peppers" in any form whatsoever, and they were mice, not humans. The research was not looking for a cure for diabetes by injecting a chemical derived from capsaicin - the objective was to examine the role of certain pain-detecting pancreatic cells in the development of diabetes.

In Mercola's comments he starts off by saying "Nearly 75 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and while only 5 percent have the Type I version, its supposed incurability makes it by far the more challenging form of the illness. So this new research is potentially great news for Type I diabetics. Type 2 diabetes, of course, is already virtually 100 percent curable with natural methods frequently described on my site". It goes without saying that there are no methods described on the site which provide a "virtual 100 percent" cure for diabetes. He then goes on to suggest that the discovery of capsaicin and its action on pancreatic pain cells will not be good news for the pharmaceutical companies, using the words "However, the good news is that this may end up having nothing to do with the drug companies. Seems like once the protocol is worked out, it may be something the average lay person will be able to implement". Yes, that's right - the average person will be able to extract a peptide from peppers and inject it into his own pancreas. Oh, by the way, capsaicin "can also be useful for preventing and treating cancer". Of course it can. It's natural.

You might think that I am biased against Mercola just because he tells lies about diabetes cures, but let's look at his "causes" of autism.

• Pasteurised milk - http://www.mercola.com/2003/jul/2/pasteurized_milk.htm
• Fluoride - http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/25/tooth_decay.htm (when consumed by pregnant women)
• Aluminium - http://www.mercola.com/2006/apr/11/there_are_more_toxins_in_vaccines_than_mercury.htm
• Mercury (of course) - http://www.mercola.com/2004/nov/3/mercury_vaccines_medicine.htm
• MMR (of course) - http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/28/mmr_autism.htm
• Malnutrition - http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/26/autism_malnutrition.htm
• Lactose - http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/26/autism_malnutrition.htm (it goes with the malnutrition)
• Glutamine - http://www.mercola.com/2004/may/1/glutamine.htm (makes autism worse)
• "An excess of grains, sugars, underground vegetables, and any fluid other than water" in the diet - http://www.mercola.com/2000/may/21/ritalin_prozac_adhd.htm (Mercola lies about achieving "near miraculous improvement" by following his advice.)

I could go on, but what's the point? Mercola is prepared to push any form of lie, nonsense or quackery if it can help him to sell things. At least he's consistent about something.

Quote of the Year

The otherwise anonymous MaxC

The name of Dr Otto Warburg crops up frequently in alternative medicine discussion groups. Dr Warburg won the 1931 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discovery of the nature and mode of action of the respiratory enzyme", but according to altmed folklore he won his Nobel for finding a cure for cancer, with this cure sometimes having something to do with oxygen and sometimes to do with sugar, depending on which particular sect of altmed is doing the telling. He is also credited with winning the same Nobel Prize again in 1944, but it seems that nobody has told the Nobel people because they think it went to Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser. When the lies about Dr Warburg surfaced again, I mentioned that his Nobel Lecture did not contain the word "cancer", a strange oversight if that was what he was getting the award for. My comment triggered the appearance of someone hiding behind the pseudonym "MaxC". It soon became obvious that Max was determined to keep trying until he said something stupid or ignorant enough to make him eligible for Quote of the Year. He offered a series of comments about how Dr Warburg might have made a speech in support of his nomination (when he was told that candidates don't do anything to support their nominations, and I gave the example of Peter Doherty (Medicine, 1996) who told how he first knew he was nominated when the Nobel people gave him ten minutes notice of the media release of the news of his win, Max said that nobody could write a speech in ten minutes) and how laureates like the Dalai Lama and William Faulkner gave speeches with a different name. Max also told me that using Google was "the lazy man's way" of finding information on a web site. What wins him Quote of the Year, however, is this:

Show us all here how giving a 15 page lecture to those giving a Nobel Prize is customary. I'm not just going to take your word for it, especially since it doesn't even make sense. The web site is right there. Find some other Nobel Laureates that gave lectures to the audience upon receiving an award. If it's customary, it should be easy to prove your point.

Remember that Max had implied that he could do a better job than Google of finding stuff on the Nobel site? I simply referred him to http://nobelprize.org/nobelfoundation/publications/lectures/, which says:

Nobel Lectures is an English-language series of all the Nobel Lectures from 1901, along with related biographical notes, prize citations and presentation speeches. The official Nobel Lectures are given by the Nobel Laureates in the days leading to the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony held each December in Stockholm.

Since 1901 the Nobel Foundation has annually published Les Prix Nobel, containing reports from the Nobel Prize Award Ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo, as well as the biographies and Nobel Lectures of the Nobel Laureates.

Highly Commended

The Scientific Proof of God

George Hammond has discovered a Scientific Proof of God (SPOG). This is not a Scientific Theory of God (STOG) or even a Scientific Hypothesis of God (SHOG). It is a Proof!! What more needs to be said?

Gentlebirth/Spontaneous Creation

For some years, anti-vaccination liar Jock Doubleday has had a bogus challenge where he supposedly offered $20,000 to any doctor who would drink a concoction of vaccine components. Any doctor who took him up was soon made aware that there was no way of proceeding, and Doubleday himself admitted this when he said that he didn't want to be responsible for the deaths of anyone who drank the mixture. The amount of money now supposedly on offer is $75,000, but the amount doesn't matter because Doubleday has no intention of giving anything to anybody. The "challenge" exists simply as a way of derogating doctors by claiming that they are too frightened to accept the offer. There is no money, there is no challenge.

Encouragement Awards

Vaccinations Harm Psychic Abilities

This site needs our full support to reveal a hidden danger of vaccination. While most campaigners are telling us of the health dangers of vaccines, someone has at last pointed to an even greater danger - the loss of psychic powers. Children die every day from spider bites, drowning and being run over by cars. Now we can attribute these deaths to vaccines as well, because without the vaccines the kids would know what was about to happen and would not have to constantly remember to avoid creepy crawlies, stay out of rivers and to look both ways before crossing the road.

What a load of insanity!

The Lesbian Studies Institute

No, not an academic think-tank which examines the sociology of gay life or the art and literature produced from the milieu of lesbian culture, but a site warning the world against the imminent takeover of society by lesbians. And Jews. This site is being given an Encouragement Award to prompt them to widen the sphere of hatred. Why limit it to just lesbians and Jews, when there are so many other classes of people to hate? As the site stands now it is merely ordinarily pathetic. With some effort it could become extraordinarily ludicrous.

Annwn Publications - Gnosticism, Evil, Aliens, Ufos, Prophecy, Conspiracy

This site needs encouragement because it has not been updated since April, 1999, although there is always the possibility that it hasn't been updated because it was perfect in the first place. Here is yet another set of answers to the great questions. J. S. Chiappalone has developed a new system of metaphysics which renders obsolete all previous philosophies, religions, sciences, epistemologies and ontologies in order to tell us "what is going on". He is also a racist and holocaust denier, but these are just byproducts of the reinvention of thought. He, too, has an answer to the creation/evolution debate by declaring that creation is continuous and competitive. "Creation is massive and involves continual experimentation and correction. Out of one experiment an essence which contradicted all the Principles of Creation emerged and resisted correction. This defiant essence, termed Evil, for it exploited the situation, seized the opportunity and gaining powers in a manner humans cannot conceive, set about creating false dimensions and false beings within them. These form the Counterfeit Creation as distinct from the Divine Creation created by the Divine "God" Consciousness. The process has been labelled as the Celestial Error in the texts of the Ancients." Frederick Nietzsche said "Language falsifies reality". He was right.