Quack Quack Oops:Speed Your Death To Me.

What's wrong with having aromatherapy, acupuncture, and other alternative medicines on the NHS? They can't do any harm and even if it only makes people FEEL better rather than actually make them better what harm can it do?

 

That's roughly the argument you'll here some people make when you discuss alternative medicine with them (if medicine works it tends to be just called medicine, no need for the word alternative) and Michael 'Marsh' Marshall, Project Director of the Good Thinking Project and all round good egg, was at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub in The Duke of Greenwich (last time in that venue as, sadly, the pub is closing - not the first time this has happened with Greenwich Skeptics - a curse!? - soon, though thankfully they've found a new venue in the nearby Plume of Feathers - alas on a Monday, quiz night on BBC2, rather than a Wednesday) to thoroughly debunk such ideas in a talk he'd given the none too snappy title of Using Data to Counter Quackery and Alternative Medicine.

Luckily the talk was much snappier. Marsh is a great speaker and a fantastic communicator though I still suspect the reason my blog about Flat Earth belief from 2019 is the most viewed EIAPOE blog (38,800 and growing) is probably more to do with a Macedonian bot factory than Marsh, myself, or even Flat Earth belief.

As a full time Skeptic (where can I get that job?), Marsh has looked into the NHS wasting money on homeopathy and found that the majority of it goes to four homeopathic hospitals in his home town of Liverpool, in London, in Bristol, and in Newcastle). He observed that the consultations were full of homeopathic obsessives so his team got involved in that and brought science and evidence to the table with the result that the NHS now very rarely funds homeopathic treatments - and have saved themselves £5,000,000 through mass cessation of quackery funding.

Marsh went on to speak about a woman he read about who claimed that mistletoe injections were keeping her breast cancer at bay (an idea that originally comes from the occultist and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner) but mistletoe has been proven not just to not cure cancer but to be very dangerous. As Marsh said, it's up to the individual if they want to try dangerous, potentially lethal, methods but it's up to the newspapers to report these stories accurately and, by and large, they're not doing so.

A feel good story told the tale of a mother of two who claimed that drinking raw fruit juice was curing her cancer. The Daily Mirror picked up this story and ran with it though when she, not long after, tragically died of a cancer that she had been given a 90% survival chance of the Mirror went very quiet. Woman dies of cancer is, sadly, not as good a story as woman finds miracle cure for cancer. Lovely fluffy human interest stories are rarely based in fact. They may have a kernel of truth in them somewhere but inaccurate reporting skews the picture in a very dangerous way.

It's hard for those of a skeptical or rational bent to make any headway. If you approach the patient then you're seen as the bad guy - for obvious reasons like taking away crumbs of hope from a person in a near hopeless situation. It's never constructive to tell people off in life and it's certainly not constructive to tell off well meaning donors to JustGiving or GoFundMe pages who have acted out of kindness. Shouting at journalists, often time poor and stressed about deadlines, doesn't work so the obvious answer would be to confront the 'clinics' who offer these alternative, and often very dangerous, 'treatments'.

The trouble is that many of them are abroad. Often in Germany, Mexico, and the US, and are therefore outside the jurisdiction of UK trading and advertising standards authorities. Often the people who run, and work at, these clinics are true believers rather than grifters. More difficult still is that some of them are very very libellous which I'll come on to.

Marsh took a deep dive into fundraising on JustGiving and GoFundMe related to people with cancer. He looked at the treatments, often incredibly expensive, that people were raising money for. He looked to see if they were scientific or pseudoscientific treatments and he also looked at the results. Are the people raising money for treatment still alive now?

Covering a two and half year period, he found five hundred and ten pseudoscientific appeals that between them had raised over £6,000,000 in donations. Half of that large sum of money went to one clinic in Germany. Just over 40% of these appeals saw positive press coverage and a thoroughly depressing pattern emerged.

It looked like this. Patient #1 comes off chemo, begins to feel better (but not get better), patient #1's story is picked up by the papers so patient #2 becomes inspired to do the same. Then patient #1 dies. By that point patient #2's story has been covered by the papers and patient #3 becomes inspired. Needless to say that patient #2 is, by then, also dead. It's a conveyor belt of people being exploited in the last few months of their lives by a very litigious German clinic that has threatened to sue the BBC if they cover the story and have also threatened families of the bereaved with legal action if they try and do anything. Understandably, in the depths of grief and often having lost almost all of their money, most families choose to draw a line under this terrible sequence of events.

Marsh was able to find that just shy of half of the people using these fund raiser have since died of the cancer that they'd been told by quacks was curable. He suspects, but can't prove, that the figure is likely much higher. A predatory clinic forcing people to die penniless so they can essentially steal all of their money. Cancer is terrible and tragic but if you have only six months left do you really want to leave your loved ones penniless as well as grieving. Do you really want to spend those last six months of your life drinking raw fruit juice and having coffee enemas? I don't think I would.

Although I concede I've not been diagnosed with a life threatening condition yet so don't know in reality how I would react. One of my best friends was - and he died of cancer - but he was at least able to spend his last weeks and days surrounded by family and friends, surrounded by love. I think I'd prefer that to a rapacious quack offering me 'medicine' that doesn't work. It's immaterial at that point if they're grifters or true believers.

Marsh talked about some of the other related work he'd done (including a pseudoscientific cancer charity in the UK that uses homeopathy to 'help' Botswanan rape victims!) and he took a particular interest in NHS maternity wards that have been placed in special measures because of increased examples of bad neonatal results.

Some of these maternity wards, mainly one in Gloucester, were advocating use of aromatherapy and water jabs for women in pain during pregnancy and childbirth. Rawdogging it basically. Women, it is well known now, have for years not been believed by a lot of the medical establishment when it comes to health issues but surely it's just common sense to offer doctors and actual medicine to women in pain during childbirth and not aromatherapy.

Marsh found examples of pregnant women being given jasmine for pain relief, lavender for healing of wounds, grapefruit for fear and panic, bergamot for depression, and geraniums for irritability. It's cheaper than offering professional medical staff and proper medicine but the downside is that it can, and it has, result in women dying during childbirth.

Studies into the efficacy show that aromatherapy doesn't work except, it seems, in Iran and to a lesser extent in Turkey where independent researchers have questioned the validity of the studies. It seems odd that a medicine would work in two countries but not in others. It seems much less odd that vested interests may manipulate studies to get the results they want.

The studies from Iran are seen, and used as evidence, by people involved with our own NHS resulting in some very disastrous outcomes for pregnant women in the same way that the move towards quackery is causing premature death and robbing people of dignity in their final days. So if the question is "what harm can it do?" then the answer is "a lot".

Thanks to Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub, host Chris French, The Duke of Greenwich (for the last time), Paula - for chatting, and, most of all, Marsh for, as ever, en enlightening and impassioned talk. 

TADS #73:Tilbury to Stanford-le-Hope (or Mucking About/About Mucking).

"The tide is high but I'm holding on, I'm gonna be your number one" - The Tide Is High, The Paragons

"We are the pigs, we are the swine, we are the stars of the firing line" - We Are The Pigs, Suede

 

Essex always proves to be an interesting place for a TADS walk. The walks are usually full of surprises - both pleasant and not - but they certainly seem to have their own very unique feel and that was certainly the case when eight of us yomped from Tilbury to Stanford-le-Hope on Saturday. It's not often you see wild horses and feral pigs on the outskirts of London but in Essex, it seems, they do things differently.

I'd risen early (unlike the recent TADS two dayer) and taken the Windrush from Honor Oak Park to Whitechapel and then the District line to Barking where I had a little explore before getting the C2C on to Tilbury Town via such exciting stations as South Ockendon, Grays, and, best of all, Chafford Hundred. The others were in another train about half an hour behind me so I had plenty of time to enjoy the toilet art of The Dock Cafe in Tilbury (imagine an Athena poster) before ordering cheese omelette and chips with bread and butter, a cup of tea, and a Coke.

What a glutton. It only marginally defeated me too. It wasn't long before the rest of the gang arrived and there were more of them than I expected too. Adam, Teresa, Shep, Pam, and James in one batch and then, a bit later, Roxanne and Clive who weren't partaking in brunchington. Yet again I was able to grab my sides in a camp fashion and declare a "good turnout".

We left The Dock Cafe, and Tilbury Town and soon passed a church with a Union Jack outside. Not the last flag of the day - sadly and predictably. Teresa went to have a look at the church and I said it looked like she'd joined Operation Raise The Colours. Flying a flag isn't racist but Operation Raise The Colours and the roundabout painting knuckle draggers that support it clearly are. Racist graffiti on Chinese restaurants, people sieg heiling, it's hard to argue that shit isn't racist.

I wonder why if these 'patriots' love their country so much they don't do something more worthwhile for it. Volunteer, donate to charity, help out, celebrate the incredible literary, musical, and artistic heritage of the UK, or even just learn how to correctly spell some English words. Don't paint roundabouts and put up flags. That's just not very British. Also don't throw McDonalds wrappers out of your car window in the countryside. I'd never seen so much rubbish despoiling the roads as I did between Tilbury and Stanford-le-Hope. An absolute disgrace and one that made me think, well - know, that none of this flagshagging shit is about patriotism whatsoever. Because if you were generally proud of your country you wouldn't want dumped fridges and lager cans on almost every inch of otherwise beautiful rural roads.

Tilbury, and around, has incredible history and history that should be celebrated (in places) and studied (in others) but you don't see a lot of tourists in the area. You don't see a lot of visitors in the area. Hell, you don't see a lot of people in the area. Eight curious walkers was possibly quite a sight if only there'd been somebody else to witness it.

Tilbury, like Gravesend we could see across the broad river, has much of its history tied to the Thames. There is archaeological evidence of Roman occupation there, in 1696 Daniel Defoe lived in the are and operated a brick and tile factory - he spoke of the "Essex ague" which we would now call malaria, and in 1588 Queen Elizabeth I reviewed her troops there in preparation of the invasion of the Spanish Armada.

It's where she delivered her famous ""I know I have the body of a weak and frail woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too" line. She's not the only royal to have links with the area. Tilbury Fort, which we passed, was initially built by (or, more likely, on the orders of) Henry VIII in 1539. It's original name was Thermitage Bulwark.

The Tilbury-Gravesend ferry operated continuously from 1571 until just last year when Thurrock Council withdrew funding. Kent County Council were willing to pay their share but couldn't cover the costs of Thurrock as well so, for now, no ferry runs. Broken Britain.

 

 

The World's End pub was closed - probably fortunately - but creating more of a problem was that the tide, as John Holt or Blondie would have it (or Atomic Kitten if you must) was high and there was no way we were moving on. It was peak tide. I check the routes of the walk thoroughly, I check the train times, the cafes, the Indian restaurants, the pubs, and the trains and now it seems I'll have to start factoring in tides as well - at least on estuary walks.

So - a diversion. But one that at least proved interesting - apart from all the aforementioned fly tipping. There'd been wild (or semi-wild) horses wandering around by the riverside already and they were very cute but I hadn't expected to see two feral pigs. Shep's phone told him the black and white pig was a KuneKune and the other pig looked more like a boar. As the KuneKune drank water from a muddy puddle the boar came over for a face off but it never came to anything. The horses seemed completely nonplussed but we were mostly impressed.

The next couple of miles were far less impressive as we had to walk along an unpaved road with the church of St James in West Tilbury looming over us. On Muckingford Road some bigmouths passing in a car shouted at us. I heard "get out the fucking road". Pam heard "rock'n'roll". I prefer her version of events but I rather suspect mine is more accurate.

 Who'd have thought those country boys would dump their fridges in the countryside?

 

 

 

 

Judging by the amount of fucking flags in East Tilbury, those shouting from us at cars may have been Farage supporters. So obviously they disapprove of people enjoying the English/British countryside which they see as somewhere to chuck their broken down freezers and chests of drawers. A far more interesting side of East Tilbury came in the view across to the modernist 1930s Bata shoe factory.

 

A building from an era when the UK celebrated its links to Europe and the wider world, the factory was designed by two Czechs - Frantisek Lydie Gahura and Vladimir Karfik - and predates other celebrated modernist British buildings like the Isokon flats in Belsize Park and Highpoint I in Highgate. Bata, the firm, operated a kind of "company town" (think also of Bournville and Port Sunlight) which had its own theatre, hotel, restaurant, grocers, butchers, post office, and even its own newspaper.

 

Roxanne and Clive had, in the past, done a tour of the factory but, on Saturday, our eyes were fixed on The George And Dragon where we enjoyed a brace of drinks in a pleasant. if unremarkable, beer garden. Shep announced he'd like to start marking the pubs out of ten on the walks and he deemed The George And Dragon a 4/10 which I thought a bit harsh. Although I wouldn't have gone above a six. Still, it was nice to soak up some late summer rays, chat bullshit in the garden, and raise a toast to my brother Steven who would have been 48 years old on the day.

From the pub, we turned into the splendidly named Gobions Park, took some pleasant country paths, went down a dingly dell, saw some jolly fishermen, didn't (alas) see any adders, and passed by the sides of lots of picturesque lakes as well as down the side of a railway track. Proper walking. Away from roads.

 

 

We did, however, see both a peacock and a peahen so that (almost) made up for the lack of snakes. We passed through Mucking itself, the Mucking Green, and the Stanford Warren Wetland but we didn't take the proposed diversion down to the Thurrock Thameside Nature Park and its various hares (Butterfly hare, Starry hare, and Sea hare) because it had been a hotter day than we'd imagined and we made a group decision to take Wharf Road into Stanford-le-Hope itself and The Inn On The Green.

 

Stanford-le-Hope with a population just shy of 30,000 looked a fairly unremarkable place although I used to work with someone from there (Danny Adams) and he was a nice guy. At that point, the nicest Millwall fan I'd met. More famous names associated with the town include Phil Jupitus, Rylan Clark, and Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad who presumably found it quite different to his birth city of Kyiv! The serving MP for the area is now James McMurdock. A man who is most famous for spending time in prison for assaulting his then girlfriend. Something Reform leader Nigel Farage was unconcerned about though McMurdock has since left the party of traitors and scoundrels of his own volition. He's now an independent but he's clearly also still a cunt.

Shep deemed The Inn On The Green worthy of a 6 or 7 out of ten and then went on to slag off the entire concept of slippers. We sat in the garden chatting and laughing over a couple of drinks and then all of us, bar Roxanne and Clive, repaired to Panahar Indian restaurant for, in my case, paneer tikka masala and paratha washed down with a Cobra or two. All except Pam and myself were gone by not long after 8pm and Pam and myself followed an hour later.

 

Thanks to Adam, Teresa, Pam, Shep, Roxanne, Clive, and James for joining me on this TADS adventure and thanks to Pam for snappage and Adam for mappage. I'm off to Sicily now but let's do it all again when I get back. Meopham to Swanley anybody?