IT'S BEEN REAL.

About 20 years ago I wrote an occasional column for the Australian Jewish News. Do you know how long ago that was? It was so long ago, email wasn't invented. I did have a computer though, and a printer, so I would print out the hard copy and take it to the AJN office myself.
It was about the stuff that is now so common place, it's a total yawn, unless it's really, really well done. About life and things that happened and my philosophies and my family and my experiences as a mother and wife- a lot like this blog actually.
After a few years, a new editor came who knew not Joseph, and some of my hand-delivered columns just kind of disappeared. And I got the hint. I also was doing a bit of what I laughingly call 'stand-up'. Yes, it involved being funny in front of an audience with a microphone in my hand; but it was always for some sort of Jewish benefit or charity or something, and of course I never got paid or anything like that. And my children mock me when I say 'When I did stand-up yada yada' so I don't seriously think I really did stand-up comedy. Even though I was. Standing up. In front of an audience. With a mike. Being funny. I have no pretensions.
Anyway, it turned out that all the stuff I was writing to service this non-stand-up I was doing meant that I couldn't really publish any of it because then, everyone would know what I was going to say, and then they would be bored, and maybe heckle, and, I don't know, maybe I would have said something spontaneously angry, who knows, or worse, said something stupid and boring. So I didn't try to publish any of my possibly humorous observations of life.
And then, well, things happened in my life which I won't go into, and it was like suddenly my sense of humour just disappeared. Poof. There was nothing there. So it was a career that spanned but a few years. In the city of Melbourne. For the Jews, mainly. Lucky I was only an amateur, and that my real training is in Medicine, hey?

But right from the beginning, right from the first by-line in the AJN, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake. I had not published anonymously. I had not taken a nom-de-plume.
Because when you put anything out there, and you put your name to it, then everything you say is meticulously examined by everyone who knows you and every member of your extended family, and everyone has something to say about it. This is incredibly inhibiting to the creative spirit. It is like walking around while constantly looking over your shoulder; you can't see the path ahead. You live in a mild state of paranoia. You have to have the skin of a rhinoceros. And on top of everything, Melbourne is a shtetl, so that even people who don't know you know someone who might know you.
Once my name was out there, I represented my family, my kids, my shul, my kids' schools, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox women, etc etc etc and I had to watch every word that I wrote and said for fear of bringing it all into disrepute.
It's not just a matter of being thin-skinned; I'm not THAT delicate. It's like the superheroes' secret identity; the anonymity protects others. Who then have to bear the brunt of someone's reaction to something I said or wrote. And the other thing is that I have to live in this town. And the comments can be wearing.

SO. History is now repeating itself, as it will for those who have not learned the lessons of history. I did not publish this blog anonymously- though I don't know if I could have anyway- and here we go again. People getting upset. People getting offended. People basically projecting their own crap on what I write, and getting offended over that too. People making negative comments to my friends and family. And you know what? Screw it. Maybe Joan Rivers could deal with that, and more, times a million, but I can't, and I'm no Joan Rivers.

This is the 100th published post on my Doctor Booba blog, and right now I think it will be the last one.
So long from the Booba, nice knowing you, my faithful 17 followers. It looks like Melbourne hasn't grown much in the last 20 years.

I might write again if the demon possesses me, but for now, peace, out.

RULES OF THE KOSHER KITCHEN

In case you have been wondering where I've been (as if) over the last few weeks, I've been upsetting people and having to take down posts. I've been feeling a bit beleaguered.

My most recent effort was my comment on My Kosher Kitchen Rules (MKKR), a program based on the TV show My Kitchen Rules (duh), which I have never watched, but I do believe that it is quite popular. I've never watched Masterchef either but I get the gist of it.

(As an aside, we are entirely too interested in food. I mean, I am very interested on a personal level, and I think we need to get back to basics and stop eating crap because we are all too fat and more so are kids. I have never seen so many obese children in my life; just look at a school letting out at hometime. Back in the day, I was The Fat Kid in my class for most of my school life. OK, small school, but still, maybe 2% of the kids were fat. Now 20%-30% are properly fat, not talking about so-called 'puppy fat'. And my mother was fat and my brother was fat, and clearly there was some tendency there. Now I see, not only fat kids with fat parents, but even with slim parents. The culprits are convenience foods and snacks and excessive screen time as well as parental paranoia about letting children walk to school, and it's a toxic mix. And let me tell you, it's all very habit-forming, the non-hungry eating of energy-dense foods, and the unwillingness to get up and move your fat butt. It takes huge effort to change these habits once a child has learned this sort of behaviour. (Believe me, I know from bitter personal experience.) And you have to be very delicate about it because, along with skyrocketing obesity, we see the flip-side; eating disorders, aka anorexia and bulimia and all sorts of shades of disordered eating. Anyway, now pizza has inserted itself into our culture, not as a special treat but as a legitimate meal on a weekday. If you're going to give your kid pizza for dinner, for G-d's sake, at least put out a range of cut-up fresh veggies on a platter, with some hummus or tahini dip or something if you have to, and also learn how to make your own pizza, which is NOT a big deal.
This post is turning into something else entirely. The whole thing is a digression.
What I really wanted to say was that the cultural obsession with food and sport makes me think of the decline of the Roman Empire, bread and circuses and all that.)

OK, back to MKKR. I can't comment on what my post was because people will get upset all over again, and then I'll have to take it down again yada yada. I will say, I think there was an over-reaction to my spoiler, and I won't apologise because nobody actually contacted me to complain, they merely threatened another person who was involved. Guys, if you have something to say to me, please just say it to me, OK? Then we can talk. I will also say the old maxim: ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY. More than one person has told me that they looked at the MKKR website only because of my blog post, by the way. So I hope you all unknotted your knickers. Because now, I will critique.

I have watched the You-Tube programs - intro, Episodes 1,2&3- and I'm happy to say I think that it's very well done. It's lots of fun to watch. The production values are good. The characters are all entertaining. I would like to hear more of David Trakhtman because clearly he really knows what he is talking about (and I am in 100% agreement that bok choy and strawberries do NOT go together!). And YES, back to basics, we need to know how to minimise our use of processed food, how to cook fresh from simple, natural ingredients. For the sake of our health and our families' health.

MKKR is a fun program and it's for a good cause and you should have a look at it.

What, were you expecting some sort of vitriol from Doctor Booba? Sorry to disappoint. That's not the Booba's style. Enjoy! That's the main rule of the kosher kitchen. Which rules. Just enjoy.

BAD GRANNY?

I did a terrible thing last week. I violated the sacred trust of Booba-dom. I said I would come to Grandparents' Day at the kinder to watch my 4 year-old granddaughter do stuff, sitting with her at little tables, jostling the other adults, and fingerpainting and making collage cardboard picture frames (for the photo of the two of us taken by the teacher- I've been to a lot of these.). Last Wednesday, 9.30am till 10.45, as usual. But this time, work got in the way and I just wasn't able to make it. It was also too late to ask anybody else; you see, my husband works and my mother-in-law, who would have filled in, was ill.
I confided in a fellow medico at work; I made a clean breast (sorry) of my sin. And she, mother of 3 young children, said to me:
'Do you know how many times my parents came to these things at my kids' school? ZERO. Not once. They were working. Life is full of many kinds of disappointments and this is just a little one. It will make your granddaughter able to face worse disappointment later in life.'
I said, 'That sounds like the Nietzschian school of child raising: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't know about that, she's only 4.'
'She'll get over it.'
'But will I?'

So it turns out that she was the ONLY ONE who had nobody there with her. Her cousin had 4 grandparents. FOUR. Doesn't anybody work? I work part-time and I've been able to attend - until now-unless I've been overseas (VISITING OTHER GRANDCHILDREN I might add). My husband works long hours but has in some cases been able to attend. Of course, when things are on public holidays, there is a far better chance that the dads and granddads can attend; but this was mid-week on a normal work day. So the assumption is that the Grandmas are all unemployed, and clearly the assumption is correct.

Well, it's been like ripples in a pond. It's the butterfly wing flap that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. After the first text message, I apologized and thought that that was the end of it. But it seems that someone at the kinder made a rather snide remark concerning my daughter-in-law's priorities and that she didn't care enough about her child to remember to tell me. Apart from the fact that this is absolutely untrue in all respects, and very mean and rude, and very unprofessional of the person to say this to someone I know (surely everyone knows each other in that group, so it is only to be expected that whatever anyone says will get back to me), I mean, GIVE ME A BREAK. This is yet another chapter of the Mommy Wars, isn't it? This need to feel that one's own parenting is so much better than another's, as if there is a brass ring that the mommies are trying to grab. As if there is some mythic scale of perfection that only the select few can achieve, and anything less than this makes you beneath contempt as a parent.
I also detect a little schadenfreud there too, where the perceived failure of a mommy makes the other mommies feel better about their own lack of perfection.

Well, ladies, I've got news. Perfection and control are illusions. There is no such thing in child-rearing. And if there was, I mean if there really was a perfect mother out there, who never got angry or never got hassled or never forgot to get the kids' clothes ready the night before, or was feeling sick, or gave her kids mac and cheese for dinner 3 nights in a row, or whatever- then what sort of namby-pamby kids would that mother have? Or kids eaten by anxiety anytime something doesn't go to plan. Or kids who fly into a rage when they don't get what they think is their perfect right.

There's no such thing as a perfect mother. Or a perfect grandmother. There is the 'Good enough' mother and grandmother, and human. There's only life and the challenges it throws at us. Sometimes we catch the ball and sometimes we drop the ball. And maybe my doctor friend hit the nail on the head with her slightly harsh take on life and its disappointments.

So the kid has forgotten about it and moved on, but the mommies are still sniping and seething; if not about this, then something else.

What will it take for mommies to quit this behaviour? A little understanding. The expression is Melamed Zchus, see the good side first, show some compassion. After all, sooner or later YOU will be needing someone else's understanding and compassion.

Chodesh Ellul. Not that I particularly want to be preachy about it all, but Jeez, lay off of each other! And me. Seriously.

Ksiva ve chasima tova.

Defending Marriage

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Israel, the news came that the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) had been defeated in the US and thus it has become legal for same-sex marriage to take place in NY state, among other places. It was deemed unconstitutional to describe marriage as possible only between a man and a woman. Many people rejoiced at this verdict, and I read of couples rushing to have their union legalised, and some who raced to have their marriage solemnised under the chuppah, including a Jewish lesbian couple who had been together for decades. They were, as one would imagine, elated.

It was the chuppah thing that brought me up short. And next, the lovely Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, has stated that he would be open to officiating at same-sex weddings.
OK. Well, considering that many of his congregants are of Persian origin, and pretty reactionary in their politics and religious observance, I thought that was possibly a brave or even foolish stance to take. But that's not my problem.

In Australia, our recently deposed Prime Minister is unmarried, living in a de facto relationship with her male partner of many years. In the cabinet is a lesbian Finance minister who is married to her female partner with whom she has a child. So this sort of stuff has been fairly high profile over the past few years. In my own practice in Breastfeeding Medicine, I have assisted several lesbian couples to breastfeed successfully. I also, when taking a medical history, no longer use the word 'husband' when I ask about the health of the patient's spouse; rather, I ask about the partner. Because some women are married and some are not, and some are single mothers, and you know, I don't get shocked and I didn't come down with the last rain shower. I mean, if the patient is a Haredi woman with a hat on top of a sheytel on her head, I will say 'husband'- tradition. But generally in Australia,  everyone calls everyone 'mate' - G'day, mate! How ya doing, mate! Watch out, mate!- everyone is your mate, except for the person you mate with- that's your partner.
And de facto couples, or common law families, or whatever you like to call them, are fully entitled to the same legal rights as a married couple; property rights, inheritance, insurance, child custody, the whole deck of cards. Because it's about the Law, not about religion.

So I think that people in a same sex relationship of several years, or whatever the legal equivalent of a de facto relationship demands, should also be entitled to these same legal rights. I think that individuals, no matter what their sexual orientation, are entitled to the protection of the Law.

So, if same sex-marriage means that you go off to the registry office or you sit in front of a lawyer or a legal celebrant, and you sign marriage documents, and you exchange rings or gifts or what-have-you, and then you have a party with your friends afterwards- well, why not. Be happy.

Yet, this isn't enough, it seems. No. Many same-sex couple want their union not only recognised and supported by law and by secular society; they want religious recognition also. The minister, the priest, the rabbi, the chuppah, the whole nine yards. And here's where I say no.

Because, Rabbi Wolpe notwithstanding, the chuppah is a sacred place and it is not about a political statement or a personal desire. The chuppah, and I guess I am also talking about the holy sacrament of marriage, which takes in other religions, is indeed about the union in the eyes of G-d of a man and a woman. Because the Torah makes it quite clear about male homosexuality being unacceptable in G-d's eyes, and nobody has a right to try to turn these words and twist them into another meaning. Granted, lesbianism isn't as harshly dealt with as male homosexuality as there is no wastage of semen (which is why masturbation is also a sin) but it is referred to in the Talmud as 'Ta-avat Mitzrayim', the lust of Egypt, and is not condoned. (The chuppah is also, by the way, not a place for mixed marriages either; take note, Chelsea Clinton and numerous others, and whatever 'Rabbi' married you. But I wish you happiness.)

The dream of every Jewish parent who knows anything about being Jewish, is to take your child under the chuppah to be wed to a Jewish member of the opposite sex. Having stood under the chuppah with six of my children, I can attest to the power of the ceremony and how meaningful it is. To see that same-sex couples wish to appropriate it is deeply offensive to me. It is taking a thousand and more years of tradition and custom and Jewish continuity and struggle, and suborning it to a personal desire or a political statement, and I have every right to be offended at this, without some troll labelling me a homophobe. As for the ministers of religion who are happy to jump aboard, well, I'm sure you can guess what I think about that, gentle readers.

It's all early days yet, but where there is marriage, there is also divorce. The statistics at the moment show that same-sex marriages are less likely to break up than traditional marriages, but these statistics are not that meaningful as there hasn't even been a '7-year-itch' scenario yet. So the people who use these bogus figures to say how this shows that same-sex couples love each other more, are idiots. People are people and there will be good relationships and toxic ones, good spouses and abusive ones, and let's not play games here. I also wonder about legalities like consummation or non-consummation of marriage, and what constitutes adultery, or other grounds for divorce etc, but I'm sure the clever lawyers will work something out.

Now, you may have noticed that I have written a whole piece on same-sex marriage without using the word 'gay'. This is deliberate, as the word 'gay' nowadays seems to not include female couples, so I think it is discriminatory! But deep down, I am also upset at the appropriation of a wonderful word which was so useful in describing a certain kind of happiness and joy, so that kids now would snigger at the words to the old song about 'kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be.'

The other word I don't like being swiped by the same-sex male relationship, is 'husband'. The word means 'manager' (eg to husband one's resources, or animal husbandry) and when a homosexual man refers to his 'husband', I think that he is just showing off. As I said earlier, here in Australia, we use 'partner' anyway, so what's wrong with that? Or 'spouse', a perfectly gender-neutral word describing a partner in marriage. Lesbians' use of 'wife' is less annoying, as the word 'wife' just means 'woman' (eg 'midwife', meaning one who is with a woman in childbirth, or fishwife or housewife.) But 'spouse' would still work here too, even if 'gay' doesn't anymore. (I know these are picayune details, but it's my blog and I can talk about what annoys me, no matter how small.)

So, please, same-sex couples, legalise your union if you wish, live in safety and freedom, be in love and happy, and may your lives together be wonderful. But don't expect religious people, myself included, to be happy at the travesty you wish to make of our religious customs and traditions.

A Confluence of Sorrow

Tonight is Tisha B'Av and I was in shul tonight sitting on the floor listening to the horrors described in Eicha, Lamentations. As I said last year, fasting and praying in commemoration of the Destruction of the Temples and the loss of Jerusalem really brings home the historic link that we Jews have with Israel and Jerusalem. It is a tragedy that many Jews just don't know what Tisha B'Av is and, by corollary, do not understand this link. The fact is that the Jewish People are the Children of Israel in every sense of the phrase, and we are the indigenous people of the land. You do not mourn the loss of something for 2,000 years as a form of, what, propaganda or marketing. It is deep and true and real, and if all Jews in the diaspora AND in Israel knew this, well, Moshiach would have come by now. 

Anyway. After the reading, there were two speakers, both Holocaust survivors, both in their 80's. One was my father-in-law Nathan Werdiger. 

The first speaker, originally from Romania, told his story of being rounded up and sent to forced labour camps, escape, recapture, Auschwitz and survival. He recounted how his sister refused to flee until the Vishnitzer Rebbe told them to; and then the Rebbe himself fled with a 'select group of Hasidim' and tens of thousands of his followers were abandoned, most perishing at the hands of the Nazi murderers. 

After the war, he fled Judaism and lived in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining town, for 30 years. He pledged never to marry and have children as he could not countenance the thought of bringing children into such a world. On a recent visit to Melbourne he saw a Shul and entered it for whatever reason, was warmly welcomed by the Chabad rabbi and now has returned to Judaism. 

My father-in-law told his story; forced labour in Auschwitz, working as a slave for IG Farben, witnessing hangings of fellow Jewish slaves for trivial offences, starvation, disease; participating in a Kol Nidrei service after dark in the bunkroom, weeping for the beauty of remembered Yom Kippur services, fasting -fasting! In Auschwitz!- for what turned into 2 days due to collective punishment by the Nazi kommandant ; Death march to Buchenwald; being liberated close to death, pulled off a pile of corpses by his one surviving brother hours before the Americans arrived,  being nursed back to health, learning how to walk again, 4 years in a Davos sanatorium; failing the medical to go to the US to be with his brother but being sponsored by a cousin to come to Australia. It is impossible, he said, to convey the absolute hell of the camps; and he is right. There are no words in any language to convey the depths and extremes of these experiences, not to a listener who hasn't been there himself. 

But my father-in-law took a different turn from the other speaker. Despite all that he experienced, he held on to his Judaism. He married and created a family which now numbers over 100 souls. He dragged himself out of the ashes of the Holocaust and he chose Life. 

I never ever presume to judge a survivor; nobody can. I don't know how anyone could ever function in any way after such experiences. But I know that I am grateful that Nathan Werdiger chose to live. 

It's Tisha B'Av. We Jews have experienced unspeakable tragedies throughout history, many linked with this day and many only because of our Judaism. We are still here. We are the descendants of the survivors who chose Life. 

Moshiach hasn't come yet and I don't know what it will take; but we wait to be redeemed and returned to our home in Eretz Yisrael. We will be redeemed. We will return. 

Am Yisrael Chai. 

LIKE TALKING TO A WALL

So by now you may have heard about the unseemly behaviors which took place at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Av. The Women of the Wall, in their tens, wanted to have their Rosh Chodesh services in their tallitot and kippot, in some cases, Tefillin, and the Women FOR the Wall, Orthodox women, got there first, in their many hundreds, and packed the women's section where they prayed quietly and traditionally. Except for one woman with a whistle, who was trying to disrupt the WOW - I can only guess that she blew the whistle to drown out the voices of women singing, this saving the men the trouble. The WOW group were blocked from reaching the Kotel itself by the numbers of orthodox sem girls and women. One WOW participant, a rabbi, wrote how she was jeered when she pleaded with some girls to put a kvittel in the Wall to pray for the health of a friend recently diagnosed with breast cancer; she was very upset. 

And it is indeed, all very upsetting. During the 3 weeks, beginning of the 9 days of mourning which commemorate the destruction of the Temple, at the same very site, Jews fighting Jews. 2,000 years ago, they all would have been dead as each other, slaughtered and enslaved by Romans. Or 60 years ago, by the Nazis. You can say that about any Jew-on-Jew fight. And of course, irony of ironies, the Temples were destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, or baseless hatred. 

I am in two minds about WOW. Part of me feels that, since the Kotel is for all Jews, the WOW should just be left alone to wear their cute little tallitot etc and just do their own thing; but a large part of me feels that  they are a bunch of attention seekers. WOW- even the acronym is an attention grabber. (WOTW would be more accurate but it lacks the -excuse me- wow factor.)

Because I truly feel that this brand of Judaism is inauthentic. That's how I feel about Reform Judaism. I'm sorry if I offend fellow Jews, and I know that I do, but you can't begin to imagine how offensive are some of the 'reforms' of Reform Judaism to me and other Orthodox Jews. Declaring in 1984, for example, that patrilineage is an acceptable decider of Jewish identity rather than the thousands of years of matrilineage. Not to mention conversions, divorce, observance (or not) of basic Jewish mitzvot such as Shabbat, Kashrut, Mikveh. The result is muddying of the water of Jewish identity and, as we see in the US, astronomical rates of intermarriage and assimilation. So excuse my not believing in pluralism too much. 

So the various media picked up on the battle of the Wall and it all looked awful, a Shunda, ugly haredi women blowing whistles and picking on the WOW ladies in their fetching garb etc. Of course it was a total beat up, and if you want to know what really happened, go the The Real Jerusalem Streets, Sharon Altshul's terrific photoblog, and see.  http://rjstreets.com/2013/07/09/rosh-chodesh-av-at-the-western-wall/

The other thing about WOW is that they want it all. They won't stop. They want to have reading from the Torah at the Kotel, they want to sing and dance and pray and wear Tefillin, and they want everybody to smile and clap and chant with them, and support everything they say and do. It doesn't bother them that the vast majority of Jewish women, observant or not, have no desire at all to do this. We observant women feel that we have enough 'feminine' mitzvot to do, and we feel that these are important enough, considering that they underpin the observance of Judaism, that we need not demean them by declaring that the only way to go is like the men. Public prayer, tefillin, kippah, tallit, reading from the Torah, etc. This reminds me of 70's feminism where you could only be a true feminist by behaving like men and rejecting any traditional feminine role. 'Essentialism', the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, was mocked. And that all worked out well, hey? 

If a group decided that they would express their Judaism by, say, jumping on pogo sticks, (and stranger things than this have occurred in the history of religious observance) and then took their pogo sticks to the Kotel to jump in pure religious zeal and ecstasy, there would be two lots of upset people: those who were bumped and those who were outraged and affronted, feeling that they and their hundreds of years of Mesorah, tradition, were being mocked. And then, what if the pogo jumpers went to the Law and insisted that they have their own little spot, right there, right at the wall. And the Law agreed! So as to protect both the jumpers and the non-jumpers. How sweet! How infuriating for the rest. 

At the Kotel, nobody minds when non-Jews come and pray or stick bits of paper containing prayers into the wall, or if women wear clothing that is not what a religious person would wear, as long as the boundaries aren't pushed too far. In the plaza, groups of people sing and dance- non Jews, secular Jews, mixed groups of men and women dancing the hora, religious groups, whatever. Nobody cares. No Haredim are punching people up or insisting that everyone behaves in a Haredi way, merely in a respectful way. 

The WOW are kidding themselves if they think that they are all so kumbaya and represent all that is good in Judaism, and everyone who is not with them must be against them and a meanie.  Most people don't care or are amused or bemused. But many worshippers are offended, and I believe, with good reason. Mind you, this doesn't give them the right to a slap-down. 

During this last week before the fast day of Tisha B'Av, let's try to tolerate each other, even if we can't love each other. But let's also try not to get up each others' noses. And may the righteous Moshiach redeem us and end our exile. Amen. 

PS If you want to pray for the recovery of a sick friend, by the way, sticking a kvittel in the Kotel is a pretty infantile way of doing it, in my opinion. Say Tehillim, give Tzedakah, do a mitzvah. You don't need the kvittel or the Kotel for that, Rabbi. 

Snake oil, anyone?

During the 19th century there was a growth industry of so called 'patent medicines', that is, substances produced in various forms- pills, powders, liquids- pre-mixed and sold direct to the public as cures for many and multiple diseases. Many of these products were originally under 'Royal patent', hence the name. Stuff like this has been around forever, but the birth of the advertising industry really created awareness, and the newspapers of the times earned a lot of revenue by running these ads for Doctor So-and-so's miracle cure for everything from pimples to TB and cancer. The good doctor was usually fictitious, but a well-moustached face usually illustrated the label, looking most distinguished. Or the remedy was attributed to some Indian tribe or some exotic ingredient from faraway lands. Some of these medicines did in fact contain bio active ingredients such as opium or mercury or cocaine (hello, Coca-cola!) and good old ethanol, and many patients poisoned themselves. But many felt better; most of their ailments were self-diagnosed in the first place, so it was a neat fit, the 'cure' for the 'illness'. 

The traveling medicine shows of the US marketed to small towns across America into the 20th century, and people bought all manner of medicines hawked by dubious 'Doctors' with many a fake testimonial from a shill planted in the audience. They were such simple, uneducated, unsophisticated folk, weren't they? Not like us today, right?

What's amazing is how little has changed. Except now, instead of a horse and cart and hoopla of a traveling show, or unsubstantiated ads in newspapers, we have the power of the Internet. Yet people don't change. 

Not long ago a friend forwarded me a video on Facebook claiming that a product called MMS has cured Malaria. 157 out of 157 patients in a Ugandan trial, under the auspices of the Ugandan Red Cross, were cured of malaria. Wow! I thought. Bring out the Nobel Prizes! Ring the bells! Hallelujah! The scourge of malaria, which kills more people annually worldwide than just about every other disease combined, is defeated! Except I didn't, because MMS is a bullshit substance and the 'study' was a bullshit study. The only thing that amazed me was that the Red Cross allowed its name to be used at all in conjunction with this bullshit clinical trial. 

Why was this trial absurd? Here's what was done. 

All the villagers in a rural area of Uganda were rounded up.  They were tested with a malaria field testing kit where a drop of blood is put on the little stick which records the presence of malarial  antigen in the blood. One stripe appears if the patient is clear; that's a control strip. If 2 or 3 stripes appear, then the person has been infected with one or other strain of malaria. 157 villagers tested positive. These were then given the Marvellous Mineral Solution MMS, which is sodium chlorite- ie bleach- several drops in water which is then 'activated' with citric acid- releasing chlorine gas- and the patients drank the solution. The next day they fronted up for a repeat test with the test kit and all but 2 showed negative! The rogue 2 had apparently spat it out- couldn't blame them, really- but they were re-dosed and the next day, they were also cured! Wow! And many villagers jumped with joy and praised The Lord. 

So let us analyze this 'trial'. 

Firstly the test kits do not show who is sick with malaria but who had had malaria exposure several weeks or longer, before. It is notorious for showing false positives. The only way to really diagnose active malaria is to do a blood film exam under microscope, looking for the parasite in the blood. 

Secondly, the video seemed to infer that a cure was shown by no lines appearing in the kit; but this really means an invalid test. 

Thirdly, even when a person has recovered from malaria, the antigen is not cleared from the blood for weeks, so no way is it possible for the field test kit to become negative overnight. 

But the main thing is that this is not how a scientific test is conducted. The only way to evaluate any treatment is by a randomized  clinical trial. A double blinded placebo controlled trial, with enough participants to make the study valid. This means that 2 or more groups are randomly allotted to be treated with either the drug being tested or with an inactive substance; the patient doesn't know which he is getting; the health worker doesn't know which he is giving. This is vital because of the power of the placebo effect, which is always present to some degree in every kind of medical treatment.

In the case of malaria, a real trial would need blood films, not field test kits, to see who had active malaria and who merely had antibodies from previous infection.  

These simple folk were lining up to take big medicine to heal them and all of them, 'sick' with malaria, according to the field test kits, them 'cured' according the the kits, were riding the wings of the placebo effect. The rest is flimflam and incompetence. 

But it's a nice video with a pleasant voice over and earnest good people wearing tshirts emblazoned with the Ugandan Red Cross insignia (!) documenting everything, and if you didn't have a clue about how proper trials were conducted, you would be taken in, as was my friend, who is not a stupid person. 

So here I am, droning on about science, but I bet you know someone who took some modern version of a patent medicine and they were cured. And if you look up MMS you will see a cult-like following of people who swear that it has cured their cancer, their depression, their Crohns disease, their halitosis and their HIV and cleared their skin up too. And it's all bullshit. 

It's not a conspiracy by Big Pharma and all the doctors who would be put out of a job by a cure like this. It's lies and anecdotes and placebo effect, and it's meaningless because if the FDA or the CDC does a RCT and it comes up with zilch then them's the facts, and no amount of snake oil can massage away the facts. 

Here's another one: ZYTO, a system of diagnosis and treatment where GSR (galvanic skin response) is analyzed by a computer, the patient's health state is mapped and a treatment system involving supplements bought from the company, is prescribed by the computer, resulting in not only cures of physical maladies but also emotional and spiritual.

WOW. I mean, wow, computer age stuff.  

I found out about this from a very good friend who lives in the US , who has developed some health problems related to life long obesity, and who consulted a chiropractor (don't get me started) who in turn applied the ZYTO system. She emailed me a copy of the charts the computer created and the suggested remedies (basically a mish mash of homeopathy, naturopathy and traditional Chinese Medicine). After I looked this all over and them went to the websites and looked at all the testimonials, I delivered my studied opinion; bullshit. Every testimonial was from a person with no real diagnosed medical issues except for the fact that most of them were fat Americans, some with conditions like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, or just plain old didn't feel well. All praised Dr Chiropractor, who healed them with his hands, or marveled at ZYTO, which knew them better than they knew themselves. 

I mean, how different is this from the old Faradisation machines and Orgone boxes of the late 19th century? Or Mesmerism. Or colectomies or dental clearances done to remove the suspected disease focus in the body. Or Radon treatments, which were thought to be healing until it turned out that radon exposure caused cancer. Or a hundred other treatments which were miraculous until they were eventually ditched because they were either dangerous or ineffective. 

I'm not saying that doctors don't also use unproven treatments.  How many courses of antibiotics have been prescribed for viral infections which would have responded just as well to Panadol and hot drinks and rest and time? But they really help, doctor! I'll tell you what's helping: time plus placebo effect plus the healing presence of a trusted health practitioner. 

I'm not discounting the therapeutic effects of herbs or supplements or whatnot, but if it can't pass muster under a RCT, then you're on very shaky ground. And definitely I do not scoff at the mind-body continuum; I would be a fool if I did. 

But people are on the whole, simple folk, even if they are smart and educated, and the mind and the body are amazing and powerful, and people will believe what they want. 

Yet we see enormous controversy over one of the most powerful, well tested, safe and effective products in human history: vaccines. The same people who swear by MMS and happily ingest dilute bleach 'activated' into chlorine gas, are likely to refuse to vaccinate their children because vaccines are 'too dangerous'. Go figure. 

To be continued.