Spam for fraudulent HIV "cure"

Just wanted to mention, I got this spam from "Gina" for a fraudulent HIV "cure" – whatever you do, keep in mind that these quacks want to take your money.

My name is Gina, i am from Cape Town in South Africa, I was once a prostitute in my area. I got effected with HIV due to the nature of my job, In May 06 2013 i was tested positive to HIV, this is a true life experience. I never taught there's some one who could ever get my HIV-AIDS cured with his healing spell, i have tried almost everything but I couldn't find any solution to my disease. I always spend a lot to buy a HIV drugs from hospital and taking some several medications but no relieve, until one day i was just browsing on the internet when i came across of abuyespelltemple@xx I quickly contacted him, and he asked me some few questions and i did all things he asked me to do, i did not pay him for his service until I was finally cured, only to see that at the very day which he said i will be healed, all the strength that has left me before rush back and i became very strong and healthy. I went to hospital for the final test to the virus and the result shows i am HIV

If see such a spam comment, do not contact them! It is best to delete their spam.

[Update] Well, two spam comments on the same day, probably from some sockpuppet, on how this quack supposedly helped people with spells and holy water:

Am from UK I give thank to a great doctor who help me out of my illness I was very sick I thank god who use this man to help, it started when i travel to Florida for visit there I meet a lady not knowing to me that she HIV positive I really like the lady because she was beautiful I always see her every moment I close my eye I went to tell her how I feel for her but I don’t know if she know that she HIV I went to bed with her I contacted the virus too when I get home for month my doctor come to check on me and he discover that I have HIV he was shock and tell me I was so confused and so surprised to hear that I was taking HIV drug to cure it for good a 2year I decided to look for cure them I meet this post on internet I contacted him for help… well DR. OKORUNDO proving to be a great man and he heal me.. According to him he said is the power of his gods well I thank god am back again if you need cure for your HIV….you can still contact him or his email or number I promise he is 100% he

And this one:

I want to say hello to the world at large, I am very grateful for the good deeds DR. OKORUNDO did for me, I was a HIV patient, everything went bad for me, I couldn’t do things with my friends anymore, I loosed my job, I loosed everything, I was even waiting for death itself, I went searching on the internet I saw many testimonies on how different spell casters helped people in curing their deadly diseases, I collected one spell caster’s email, which dr.okorndo I emailed him and he answered me, I told him all problems, he ask me not to worry, that I will be free from the deadly disease, which I did, he casted the spell, and told me that he will send a holy water to me through courier services, I was surprised, because he did not mention it to me before, I paid for the courier delivery service, I got a holy water, he asked me to drink it which I did and he asked me to go for a medical check-up in a hospital, I went to the hospital I went for a HIV test, I was tested HIV negative, I was

If you contact him, I will guarantee you will loose your money and you will loose what what remains of your health.

Loose Ends And Chasing Ghosts

I might have made some progress, but some loose ends make me feel like I am chasing ghosts.

The good news is, I think I am making progress. In summer this year my health was tiny bit better then half a year before. Now it is again a tiny bit better than in summer. Alas, I do less, so maybe that is the reason why I feel better… And whenever I try to do something I still get worse. But my tolerance for doing stuff is slowly improving (I think, I have no real measure). I did some light work on Friday, and today (Saturday) I felt the work from yesterday, but could still do some more –  after that I felt awful.

One "trick" I found is that when I feel awful after doing some (light) work, I can feel better when I drink water – more water than I would normally drink (e.g. two glasses when I would drink only one). However when I drink too much, I feel sick… Fear not, I found another "trick": After drinking too much water, I need to take some sugar (a teaspoon or two, or a fruit) to feel better again. (and oh, I forgot to mention: I feel immediately better – within a couple of minutes – after I take a dump. I wish I knew if this is some blood pressure thing, or if this is some liver thing, or what.)

Another thing I noticed: When I take a bit of sugar, my nose "cleans up". Usually it feels a bit congested, but after taking a bit of sugar (which has to contain fructose – glucose alone does not do the trick!) my nose clears up and I can better breathe (BTW, funny thing, sometimes an orgasm clears up my nose as well…). However if I take to much sugar my nose "dries up" a bit. Something is wrong here, and I don't know what.

The improvement is so slow though, that it is painful (not literally painful, but every day seems like the last). And, whenever I do a bit more (maybe an hour or two a day), I get worse again.

And while I gained about one kilogram over the past month (or two), I am still eleven kilogram under my March weight. I have been carelessly eating stuff when I am not hungry, and that's the revenge for this.

What seems to unchanged is that my sleep is not a slightest bit restorative – on the contrary, I feel much better before sleep, than compared after a "good night's sleep". Shucks. In the morning my muscles hurt and they are stiff. My brain feels only half awake in the morning. I need to take a strong coffee, take a hot shower and about 2 to 3 hours to feel halfway like a human being.

Unfortunately there are still some loose ends. A couple of months ago I made an experiment of only eating fish, no more pork. During that time I developed some slight acne again. Which got slightly worse after I stopped fish and ate pork again. I even got some aphthous ulcers.

Now it took some time before the acne wound down again, during which time I removed olives, mustard, bananas and sausages from my nutrition.

Yesterday I ate a banana (not completely ripe), fish (smoked mackerel) and olives and got one slight ulcer.

So what did cause my acne/ulcers outbreak over the past months?

• Some weird fish protein / pork protein thingy
• Olives
• Mustard
• Sausages (or rather the casing of sausages)
• Bananas (possibly unripe?)
• Smoked meat/fish
• Food contaminations
• Toothpaste (certain brand)
• Something completely else
• All of the above
• Some of the above
• None of the above
• No external cause

Back to chasing ghosts…

And lest I forget: I have been occasionally eating some bread, and I do have the impression that I feel worse afterwards. The effect isn't too strong (and I could not swear that it is caused by bread), but I feel kind of "dehydrated" and "dry" for half a day to maybe one day.

The War On Cancer

Peter Attia:

… I don’t need to say much about cancer that you don’t already know. You probably know that about one in three Americans will develop cancer in their lifetime, and you probably know that about half of them will succumb to the disease. What you may not know, however, is that we have made virtually no progress in extending survival for patients with metastatic solid organ tumors since the “War on Cancer” was declared over 40 years ago. In other words, when a solid organ tumor (e.g., breast, colon, pancreatic) spreads to distant sites, the likelihood of surviving today is about what it was 40 years ago with rare exceptions. We may extend survival by a few months, but not long-term (i.e., overall) survival.

We screen better today for sure, but subtracting lead-time bias, it’s not clear this extends overall survival. We’ve had success in treating and even curing hematologic cancers (e.g., some forms of leukemia and lymphoma). Certainly testicular cancer patients (especially seminomatous) are better off today and those with GI stromal tumors (GIST), too. Surgical control of cancer is much better today and some local treatments (e.g., specific radiation), too. But for the most part, when a patient has metastatic cancer today, the likelihood of living 10 more years is virtually unchanged from 40 years ago.

…

Nutrition Research: "Dissonant With Scientific Principles"

But by not training mentees in the basics of science and skepticism, the nutrition field has fostered the use of measures that are so profoundly dissonant with scientific principles that they will never yield a definitive conclusion. As such, we now have multiple generations of nutrition researchers who dominate federal nutrition research and the peer review of that work, but lack the critical thinking skills necessary to critique or conduct sound scientific research.

Steve McIntyre has some of the details.

The ME/CFS Zoo Hypothesis

A constant question regarding ME/CFS (and fibromyalgia) goes something like this:

Is it one disease, or is it a "spectrum", or is it multiple (distinct) diseases that look the same?

I that regard: I find the "Blind men and an elephant" parable helpful – and would like to expand it.

First of all, let me recount from the Wikipedia page a slightly modified summary of the parable:

In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each blind men feels a different part, but only one part, such as the trunk, or an foot, or the tusk.

A Jain version of the story says that six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant's body. The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

Afterwards the blind men talk to each other and learn that they are in complete disagreement. Some of the stories differ in how violent the conflict becomes, and how (or if) the conflict among the men and their perspectives is resolved.

In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to "see" the full elephant. When a sighted man walks by and sees the entire elephant all at once, they also learn they are blind. While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth.

My impression is that many in the ME/CFS "community" think that most of the studies are equally "true" – I think that is the first mistake. To stay in the parable: Some of the blind men have never touched an elephant (or any other animal, for that matter) and simply make things up. Here you have blind men who describe not an elephant, but maybe an park bench, or an found umbrella, or maybe an object that exists only in their fantasy (and even describing that they suck). Yes Virginia, I'm talking about Lombardi, Mikovits and Ruscetti. There are others. Like those blind men trying to describe the color of the elephant. Somehow, now I have to think of the names Meirleir, Maes and Gerwyn.

And even if you sieve out all the blind men describing inanimate objects (or worse, make-believe objects), you get some who grabbed some random animal in the zoo and tried to described it. Now if they can describe two (or more) of those animals, and the differences between them, and if they do not try to make you believe that they describe the whole animal, I think they are much more trustworthy than those who want to make you believe they describe only an elephant, and that they know the entire elephant.

If you have someone who says "Here I found two animals with distinctly different tusk, one has leather like skin, the others is furry", well then we are on to something. Currently I have seen few people who would fit that bill: Alan Light (et al.), and maybe Julia Newton (come to my mind).

But one thing should be clear, all those harping about how we need better criteria to "sieve out all non-elephants" (to stay within the parable) should know that:
a) Your are an "blind men" yourself
b) You might be an "non-elephant" yourself
c) The studies you trust might describe non-elephants
d) The studies you trust might describe non-elephant animals that are different from you

Yes, better (and more stringent) criteria might be helpful, but what we need are ways to look at "a collection of zoo animals" (parable again), and learn to differentiate them properly, both in a research setting, and in a clinical setting.