Becoming a Professor at Exeter University

Lately I have been thinking that I might seek to become the U.K.’s first Professor of Fossil Anomalies and I would naturally prefer this post to be established at Exeter University, where you can apparently become a Professor in things you know virtually nothing about. 

Most universities, of course, would not allow that.  The least they would require, if they were looking to find the ideal candidate for a Professor of History - for example - was that the person was at least an historian.  Any Chair in the field of Mathematics, naturally you are looking for a mathematician.  This is because the role of a Professor is to “profess”, and in order to do that, expert knowledge is required.  Here is a handy list from Wikipedia of the fundamental tasks that any Professor might be expected to be able to attend to:

Professors are qualified experts who may do the following:

Conduct lectures and seminars in their field of study (ie. they “profess”), such as the basic fields of science, humanities, social sciences, education, literature, music or the applied fields of engineering, design, medicine, law or business

Perform advanced research in their fields

provide pro bono community service, including consulting functions (such as advising government and nonprofit organizations)

teach campus-based or online courses with the help of instructional technology

train young or new academics (graduate students)

carry out administrative or managerial functions, usually at a high level (e.g. deans, heads of department, librarians etc.).

The summary goes on to explain that the exact balance of these tasks will vary from one situation to another.  Nevertheless the pre-requisite here in all cases is that the Professor needs to be a qualified expert (my emphasis) in his/her field.  

Now this rather rules me out, when it comes to being the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Fossil Anomalies because although I have seen and handled fossils on occasion, I have no training, qualifications or useful experience in that field.  Or rather this would rule me out were it not for the extraordinary precedent of Edzard Ernst, who became the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University without knowing anything about complementary medicine at all really.  Exactly how this came about is a bit of a mystery when one considers that there are so many medical practitioners in Europe who also provide CAM therapies as a matter of routine… or to quote Ernst directly:

“On the continent, CAM practitioners would normally be doctors.”

Ernst is a doctor, but he is not a CAM practitioner and never was.  Obviously there are a lot of scientists out there who might be fine doing the research part of the professorship in Complementary Medicine, but they aren’t doctors, so that might let them down at the interview stage because of the assumed ‘medical’ angle.  Then there are CAM practitioners who are doctors, but don’t really have the ’scientific research’ background.  Ideally - it rather goes without saying - the successful candidate for the Professorship would have to have all three.  Ernst is a doctor, and as a former head of department at a Viennese medical school he certainly has a research background.  So far so good.  But I would have loved to have been present at his interview for the post of the U.K.’s first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine when they asked him:  “So, Edzard: tell us what you know about the field of Complementary Medicine!”  Because according to what we know from the various tales told about all this in the media over the years, his knowledge is limited to:

“He comes from a culture where alternative therapies have long blended with the mainstream. He is from four generations of medical doctors but, he says, “Even as a young boy I was treated with complementary therapies - mostly homeopathy.”

“His first post was in a homeopathic hospital in Munich, where he was greatly impressed.”

“He treats his French wife with homeopathy, he says.  “We were both brought up with it.”

What - and that’s IT?  You have no formal training in any Complementary Therapy?  You have never provided any form of Complementary Therapy professionally as a physician?  You’ve used homeopathy on your wife even though you have never had formal training?  And that makes you an expert, who can profess to the world about it?

By the way, the above ‘qualifications’ are evidently sufficient to persuade some media commentators that his subsequent and relentless demolition of the credibility of CAM therapies through the deeply suspect meta-analyses route is:

“…particularly important since Ernst is a former advocate for CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) who was able to objectively look at the scientific evidence…”

Wrong! In truth this is part of the Ernst media-myth: he has never been an advocate of CAM or a practitioner himself, so this suggestion that his supposed ‘conversion’ adds to his overall credibility is utterly fake.  

No allegiance, and indeed no connection with it whatsoever.  Edzard Ernst has clearly anticipated the predictable objection to his total lack of training and experience with regard to the professional provision of CAM therapies which might normally preclude even brief consideration for a Professorship in that very subject… by suggesting that research into the effectiveness of CAM therapies will only arrive at the truth if:

“…well-trained scientists (rather than CM enthusiasts with a mere veneer of science to hide their biases) conduct the research.”

Oh, really?  That’s assuming that even well-trained scientists might lose their scientific objectivity if they have any enthusiasm for what they are studying, is it?  Tell that to NASA. Or is it just a swipe at CAM enthusiasts particularly, a sort of Catch 22 that if you are a CAM enthusiast you cannot possibly be a well-trained scientist?  Or is it a clumsy attempt at self-justification from a man who knows damn well that in reality, he didn’t even have a “mere veneer” of specialist knowledge about CAM therapies when he was mysteriously appointed to a Professorship in that very subject!

Now, Professor - let me ask you this: What happens if a pathological skeptic with a mere veneer of scientific objectivity conducts the research?  We get 17 years of over-zealous CAM-bashing posing as objective scientific enquiry using the badge of the university to give it credibility, and the university starts to get a bit uneasy about it, naturally.

By the way, Exeter - I may know nothing about Fossil Anomalies but that’s actually an advantage according to Ernst.  Professing about such things doesn’t require any specialist knowledge, it just requires a Science Badge and a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm.  Well, Ernst certainly has a lack of enthusiasm for CAM therapies - that’s pretty damn clear - but that did not develop gradually over time, it was there from the start.  All that media bullshit about supposed connections to homeopathy were just a cynical ploy to try to appear objective!  But you have to be a bit of a clod to imagine that you can say things like that in the media, then behave like the most anti-CAM campaigning zealot and no-one will notice the difference!  

CAM-bashing gets you an instant following from all the people who know nothing at all about the field of complementary medicine but just assume it is all fake, even dangerous.  All Ernst has really done is stir it up like a hornets’ nest, which is very easy to do and you can easily make a name for yourself in the short-term.  But the majority of people are not that cynical, and will know of people who have benefited from CAM therapies or have used them themselves, and they will realise at some stage that this is not objective scientific enquiry, it is simply posing as such.  It is, and always has been from the start a relentless cynical CAM-bashing exercise and it does not belong in a British university. 

Ernst has said that he has had several tempting offers from the U.S. where he has quite a following. “For a long time, I loved going over to America because they would fall over with admiration there.  I felt so flattered.” 

Yeah, they would.  That’s the land where they have TV adverts with people dancing and singing about Viagra.  You’d fit right in, you CAM-bashing Pharma-loving cynical Professor Against Complementary Medicine.  So here’s my suggestion: you go there, get fat, rich and flattered and stop pretending to be any sort of expert when it comes to the practice of complementary medicine because you never have been, and I’ll abandon my idle notion of bringing the academic world into disrepute by becoming a Professor of Fossil Anomalies. 

Filed under: Drugs on Trial, The Campaign by Chris
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Recently a couple of contributors to this blog - who have started to take Champix or Chantix themselves and feel fine on it - have commented that the page they are reading here ”seems very negative”.

This is my sixth blog post on Champix/Chantix. I check all comments that come in, and with the obvious exception of spam each comment is added to the site, which means that what you read here is exactly what I have received. If I suspect a comment is bogus I will still add it to the site, and then say why I think it is bogus. Even when it seems I’m mistaken about that, I leave the whole exchange up there for everyone to read, I don’t cover it up. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is genuine and what is not.

So if someone suggests that it seems too negative, I suggest that they read all the comments that follow all six blog posts, the majority of which follow the original post entitled “Champix/Chantix” and the fourth one “Champix/Chantix 4: Enough Already”.

Now look at this:

Review Centre

You might reasonably ask the question “Why do these reviews mostly seem very positive when the ones on Truth Will Out mostly seem pretty negative, often alarmingly so?”

The answer seems to lie in the fact that many of these ‘rave’ reviews are posted very early on in the Champix users experience.  The fact that they feel no urge to smoke at that stage makes a very big impression, and if side effects are minimal at that point it is not surprising that the review they post is bordering on ecstatic.

But we know from the trials that at least half of those smokers will start again when they come off the medication, so this kind of early assessment is premature.  We also know from the comments that have come in to truth Will Out that although nasty side effects can kick in quite quickly, it is more common for them to happen with prolonged use beyond the six-week or eight-week point.  

Now read the latest comment to pop up in my mailbox:

Sheanin wrote:

“I’m so glad I found this website - I only wish I had found it a little sooner.

You have confirmed what I had started to suspect myself as a user of Champix. Although I had only smoked on and off for about 6 years, I was prescribed the drug to help me quit a few weeks ago. As I was desperate to quit once and for all, I went for it. I soon wished I hadn’t.

Last week, I had to admit to myself that I was quickly becoming ill on so many fronts that I had to see my doctor again - and fast. I was told to stop taking Champix immediately. I had spent just over a week feeling as though I had been locked into a tiny little cocoon somewhere in the furthest corners of my mind while a robot took me over.

Sure, I got little waves of euphoria here and there each time I reached a milestone - but with each milestone that euphoria would crash to an even deeper low. In addition, my body was going to pieces; I was constantly nauseated, constantly wishing I could curl up and sleep, suffering from aches and pains absolutely everywhere - it was never ending. As a single mum to two small children, one of whom is disabled, I knew - even from the depths of that little cocoon - that I couldn’t let things continue.

I grew up around depression and mental illness and I had always sworn to myself that my children would never be exposed to those things. So, upon seeing the doctor, I was told to come off the drug immediately, which I did four days ago. And even now, I am suffering the consequences. Since that day, I have gone through what I now know to be terrible withdrawal; every side effect suffered during those few weeks has returned with a vengeance. I have been almost permanently locked in my bathroom, unable to eat, unable to look after my children, permanently in pain. At one point, I felt like I was dying.

All I can say is that I am so relieved to have come off this drug, even if I am still suffering now. I’m sure this sickness will pass and I’m positive that I need no crutches whatsoever to stop me from smoking at this stage, I haven’t had a smoke in almost a month and now associate cigarettes with the sheer torture I’ve gone through during the last few days. If I’d never started smoking in the first place, I’d never have been introduced to the absolute terror that is Champix and I wouldn’t be sitting here now clutching my abdomen with tears in my eyes. This drug should be banned completely; the government slaps scary pictures on cigarette packets but continues to sell them - while nobody gets thoroughly warned about Champix and what it’s highly likely to do to your body.

I’d sooner spend the rest of my life licking tar from the footpath.”

Not Worth The Risk

My point about Champix is really very simple: why risk a hideous experience like that if you have not already tried all the methods that CANNOT POSSIBLY do that to you?  Especially when hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr method and acupuncture all produce better results anyway! (See Evidence section.) 

To save money? 

And to all those sweet innocents who have suggested brightly that if they feel a bit funny they’ll simply stop taking it, over to Sheanin:

“I was told to come off the drug immediately, which I did four days ago. And even now, I am suffering the consequences. Since that day, I have gone through what I now know to be terrible withdrawal; every side effect suffered during those few weeks has returned with a vengeance. I have been almost permanently locked in my bathroom, unable to eat, unable to look after my children, permanently in pain. At one point, I felt like I was dying.”

And some people have.  Take risks if you want, people, but don’t kid yourself this could never happen to you.  I mean even with Russian Roulette, if there’s six chambers and only one bullet, the odds are very much in your favour that you won’t die the first time you pull that trigger.  Wanna play?

Filed under: Champix/Chantix, Drugs on Trial, Hypnotherapy, The Campaign by Chris
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Hurrah for Uncle Edzard Ernst, his merry band of scoffers and the pharmaceutical industry! NHS funding for homoeopathy has been withdrawn they have claimed their first scalp. Now, which CAM therapy shall we pick on next? Which seems - on the face of it - the most implausible? And on we will jolly well go, until nothing but unnatural chemical concoctions (drugs) can be prescribed by doctors and funded by the taxpayer for mass consumption. Doesn’t matter if those “evidence-based” drugs kill people in their thousands, by the way. Their deaths are not in vain. They died to protect the human race from things like homoeopathy. Hurrah!

Here’s the story:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7279872/Homoeopathy-should-not-be-funded-on-the-NHS-says-report-by-MPs.html

In the comments below the article, this exchange caught my eye:

“Patients treated by homeopathy on the NHS are satisfied with the treatment they received.”

“Satisfaction was discussed in the report- if you read it- and ultimately satisfaction is not a big enough factor as to whether it works and shouldn’t be a determining factor.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter if you think homoeopathy has worked for you. That is an irrelevance. It only matters that Edzard Ernst has SELECTED enough studies for publication that suggest it is useless, that the SUGGESTION that it cannot possibly work because it is IMPLAUSIBLE is accepted by people who have never used it anyway and don’t know any different and that the politicians don’t care enough about homoeopathy to risk backing something that the general public are likely to agree sounds implausible. That’s all it took to get the funding withdrawn. Was it the right decision? Well, it rather depends upon what (and whom) you choose to believe.

Most people have never tried homoeopathy. The testimony of those that have tried it - we are told here -”is not a big enough factor as to whether it works and shouldn’t be a determining factor”. So we’re left with Ernst, that world-famous Professor Against Complementary Medicine.

More later…have to pause here because I have a client waiting to be hoodwinked by my mumbo jumbo. No matter that they sing the praises of hypnotherapy from the rooftops - that’s an irrelevance.

…I’m back now. The chap who just left my office has been here before, in November of last year to quit smoking. He was smiling wryly as he admitted that he didn’t think it would work, but he was not a miserable cynic (they never come here), just skeptical. He had already tried lots of things before, and they hadn’t worked so naturally he was doubtful that hypnotherapy would be any different. He was, of course, under the distinct impression that it was really hard to stop smoking - so how could a single session of hypnotherapy possibly change that? It seemed… implausible.

Why Implausibility Should Never Be A Determining Factor

To the majority of people, nearly everything we do in hypnotherapy would sound implausible on the face of it. So if someone scoffs at it, many of those people would probably assume they are right to do so. Patrick was genuinely astonished when he found that the urge to pick up a cigarette had gone. He was really impressed - he has just been telling me - when several days had passed and he found that he could still stand chatting to a colleague on their smoke-break and not feel any inclination to smoke himself. He became ‘a believer’ simply because at that point he would have to be a complete idiot to believe anything else. It worked, exactly how I had described. He was very surprised by that, but I wasn’t, I’ve seen that happen thousands of times.

I tell all my smoking clients: If you have any problem later - even if it is years later - ring me, because I would know exactly what to do about it. In changing any habitual behaviour there is always a possibility of relapse. An occurrence of relapse is nowhere near as significant as how individual clients choose to react to that development. The correct reaction is: “Ooops! Better ring Chris.” Hypnotherapy does not “wear off”, relapses are a common enough feature of therapy for positive change, and hypnotherapy will minimise the risk of that but cannot prevent it entirely. It can certainly fix it, though - and when Patrick found himself smoking again after a nasty period of unwelcome change in his personal life, he very wisely (and logically) concluded that the best thing to do about it would be to return to the therapy that worked.

So I just spent about 90 minutes sorting that one out, and he went out a happy non-smoker once again. I used the relapse scenario to point out to the subconscious mind that prompting him to return to tobacco did not, in fact, help him with the stressful circumstances, it simply gave him back his smoking habit, which he had been glad to get rid of. It didn’t make him feel any better anyway, it simply gave him another problem on top of the one he had already, but without solving the first problem - a useless strategy which was not worth attempting again even if he was having a bad day. I explained to his Subconscious mind - which had prompted the relapse in the vain hope that tobacco might prove to help - that the fact that Patrick had come back to get the problem fixed again proved that he was unhappy about the return to smoking, and so in future, no matter what kind of a day he was having… even if a tree fell on his house, he didn’t want the old smoking habit back because it wouldn’t help at all - just as the experience of the relapse proved.

And that’s how I use a relapse experience to prevent a future one. Implausible? Only if you don’t know how the Subconscious mind works. Like this other gentleman for example, whose recent review of my book included this:

“Finally, just a thought on hypnotherapy itself; how many people do you know that have quit smoking ? And how many of them quit by seeing a hypnotherapist ? Thought so. Personally, i have never met 1, and I have met/know a lot of ex smokers. I even tried it myself once, and it was cobblers; lit up as soon as I got home.
Anyone see Celebrity Quitters on Channel 5 recently ? 4 Micro celebrities quit, and were force fed NRT. They were followed for a month and monitored using carbon monoxide meters to ensure they were not cheating. Of the 4, one decided to have hypnotherapy as well. Strangely enough, he was the only one to relapse during the 4 weeks….
Still, according to Mr Holmes, quitting is as easy as a 2 hour session appealing to your mysterious subconscious, that (conveniently) only a hynotherapist can communicate with.
You can believe in his miracle cure, and no doubt hand over a large sum of cash in the process…”

I charged Patrick £40, my standard fee for a back-up session if it is needed within the first year after the first session. The first session only cost him £120, so that is a total of £160, which he saved back in the first month of not smoking anyway. It certainly isn’t a miracle, I do these sessions virtually every day of my working life, and I’ve been doing that for ten years. most people probably do know someone (or know of someone) who has quit smoking with hypnotherapy - it’s not uncommon at all. How celebs behave on television programmes is hardly a reasonable assessment of how well hypnotherapy performs across the board! What is their main motive in agreeing to take part in that show? To quit smoking? Or to get their face on the telly again and get paid for it? Not rocket science, is it?

“…appealing to your mysterious subconscious, that (conveniently) only a hynotherapist can communicate with….”

Actually all sorts of people communicate with the Subconscious mind - advertisers for a start! There’s nothing especially mysterious about that, is there? but it is true that only experienced and talented hypnotherapists can do expert hypnotherapy, only heart surgeons can do heart surgery, only pilots can fly airplanes. Only miserable pathological skeptics write reviews like that, and I feel sorry for them, I really do!

When my book Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was was featured on The Breakfast Show on Channel M television last year I was asked if I could eliminate the smoking habit of one of their staff, a woman called Samantha. I did one session with her at my office and it was a complete success. We went back on the show six weeks later and she hadn’t smoked, hadn’t wanted one, no willpower involved, no weight gain, no over-eating. That was almost exactly a year ago, and I had a call from her boyfriend earlier this week who wanted to come and see me about some other issue. His main reason for calling me was because Samantha had never smoked since.

Final Word on Homoeopathy

When the mesmerists were thrown out of the medical profession about 150 years ago, it was through ignorance and prejudice. The hypnotherapy profession developed out of the work they did independently, and then in the mid 1950s the British Medical Association finally admitted the mistake by officially recognising hypnotherapy as a genuine therapeutic modality - which means that hypnotherapy isn’t even alternative, it is officially orthodox, has been for half a century. So perhaps the withdrawal of NHS funding is not such a big deal for homoeopathy in terms of their long-term future: hypnotherapy never had that at all, and we do alright. As I have said before, I have no idea whether homoeopathy works but I do know that Edzard Ernst claimed that hypnotherapy is no use for smoking cessation, and that is very misleading indeed, in fact it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The only question is, is he incompetent or is he speading misinformation about CAM therapies deliberately? I’m giving homoeopathy the benefit of the doubt, and some of my clients over the years have told me that it has helped them. Forgive me if I’d rather believe them than Ernst and the pathological skeptics.

Filed under: Hypnotherapy by Chris
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Filed under: Drugs on Trial, Nicotine, Smoking, The Book, The Campaign by Chris
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The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) have blocked an NHS advertising leaflet which claimed that smokers were “twice as likely” to quit with Nicotine Replacement products and “four times as likely” to quit if they also used NHS Stop Smoking Services. For the very first time since the Truth Will Out Campaign was launched, the claims have been rejected because quitting success implies a permanent solution but the NHS were relying on the results at only four weeks, which the agency concluded was not the same thing at all, and was therefore likely to mislead the public.

I’ll say it is. And since we now know from the Borland report that the results dwindle to 6% success at the end of twelve months, which is the same result as a number of studies have found for willpower alone, we feel vindicated in claiming that NRT doesn’t work at all in the long run, and is therefore a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and the NHS should abandon it altogether. Instead they’re going to waste more valuable resources printing up leaflets that say something like “Did you know that nicotine skin patches and chewing gum can be effective in aiding withdrawal from nicotine?” (The bit in bold type is a direct quote from the British Medical Association’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Dorling Kindersley 2002.) And now over to the March Hare, for the weather…

Here’s the link to the ASA story:

The Argus

This is quite an interesting development too, from our friends Down Under:

pjonline

Hypnotherapy is the easiest way of all, and despite the best efforts of Uncle Edzard we will establish this as scientific fact and common knowledge in the end.  The sooner the better. Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was fully explains the reasons for the complete failure of the medical approach and exactly how hypnotherapy wipes out compulsive habits like smoking, usually in a single session. As it says in the book, there is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”. Give it up, Doc.

Filed under: Drugs on Trial, Nicotine, Publicity, Smoking, The Campaign by Chris
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When Dr Ben Goldacre recently voiced concerns in the British Medical Journal about drug companies ‘engineering’ drug trials, resulting in what he called “bad evidence, which distorts medical decision-making, and harms patients”, we only have to look at the Champix fiasco to see how true that is. But that is not the only type of ‘trial engineering’ that has been going on in the last couple of decades… is it, Professor Ernst?

Folks, if you bought the official cover story, The University of Exeter’s Professor of Complementary Medicine has been toiling away for the last seventeen years to discover ‘the truth’ about CAM therapies. This work was allegedly paid for by a £1.5 million grant from The Maurice Laing Foundation, established from the wealth of the Laing building firm.

Now, here’s a funny thing. Well, to be more accurate, here are a number of distinctly funny things:

Funny Thing No.1

There is no obvious connection between the Laing Foundation, a.k.a. the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, and complementary medicine, except what has been told to the newspapers that covered the story at various intervals. Where did they get that information - investigative journalism? No, press releases from the Ernst camp, where else would it come from. A grant of £1,500,000 is a very large amount of money, an extremely generous donation from a charitable foundation which would suggest a seriously deep commitment to health matters of a complementary nature. Yet if you visit the website of The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, you will find no mention of it anywhere. Have a look!

Funny Thing No.2

Not only that, but the whole Maurice Laing Foundation website is evidently about nature conservation projects, mainly overseas. If you want to apply for a grant for something like that, there is a facility for doing so, but no other contact details. No email address. No general ‘Contact Us’ facility. No postal address. So why the anonymity? What if you just wanted to ask them about something - what are you supposed to do?

Potential applicants are told to expect that funding for new projects would be “normally of up to £5000″. The difference between that modest sum and the vast amount of money that we are told was initially pledged to establish the Laing Chair occupied by Ernst is striking, to say the least! Also, this is an astonishingly basic website for an organisation which we are told could afford to give away two million quid to a single project. It reminds me of the old TV testcard, or a sign on a door that says “Back Later”. Hastily thrown together or what? Hope they didn’t pay much for that job! Obviously it’s not just some kind of front, because when people do that they usually take the trouble to make it look convincing. So I think it’s genuine, I really do…

Funny Thing No.3

Although the reference to Maurice Laing is made over and over again, his is the only name that has ever been linked to this project when it comes to funding. Clearly some other money has been involved during the last seventeen years, so why have we not been kept informed about that? There is brief mention in Sarah Boseley’s article of the unit submitting lots of other grant applications - more than 200 - but according to the article, only “roughly 1 in 20 is funded” and Boseley reports that Ernst’s “biggest frustration is over the lack of funding for the research he wants to do.”

There is a pretty obvious gap between this tale of woe, and the fact that Ernst has been able to not only keep going but expand and take on more researchers…. who is paying for all this really? Who is paying for it NOW, now that they can no longer claim it is an incredibly philanthropic CAM supporter?

Funny Thing No.4

During the course of the first ten years to 2003, Ernst published 700 or so papers, all of which suggested that complementary medicine was of no use, or only very limited use. The suggestion made over and over again was that any positive results were really down to the placebo effect - in other words, belief and expectation, little more than that.

The constant repetition of these published ‘findings’ has encouraged the use of the term “faith-based medicines” as distinct from “evidence-based medicines” - conveniently ignoring the problems to which Dr Goldacre refers - and the project seems to be to drill that simplistic message into the minds of an unsuspecting public over a long period.

Naturally, since a quarter of the population use CAM therapies it would be plain stupid to just claim that they “don’t work”, so what better approach than to damn them with very faint praise in a drip, drip series of literally hundreds of publications whilst whispering “placebo, placebo” - a mantra picked up by every well-meaning ‘armchair scientist’ who knows nothing at all about CAM therapies in practice and has no idea he/she is being cynically manipulated, as is the media.

Why should I suspect that? Well, for a kick off there is Funny Thing No.5: We are actually expected to believe that after funding ten years of this ‘research’, which certainly didn’t find anything in Complementary Medicine to get excited about, The Maurice Laing Foundation mysteriously decided that £1,500,000 wasn’t enough, and they ought to pay for another three years of this exercise, during which hundreds more publications would add to the weight of the ‘evidence’ that they weren’t going to find out anything very exciting! Ernst has suggested in the media that this indicated a particularly admirable quality in Maurice Laing, when in reality it is simply hard to believe, because a charitable foundation which now warns applicants to expect no more than £5000 for any project would surely have concluded that another half a million after ten years of disappointing findings - if indeed that’s what Laing and Ernst thought the publications were - would surely seem to any sane person like throwing good money after bad! And really, how gullible do Ernst supporters have to be to simply accept that without raising an eyebrow? This leads us straight on to:

Funny Thing No.6

On the strength of these ‘findings’, Edzard Ernst was one of those notorious 13 ‘eminent’ professors who signed the open letter by Professor Michael Baum in 2006 calling for NHS funding for Complementary Medicines to be withdrawn. So at the same time that Ernst was suggesting that public money shouldn’t be ‘wasted’ on these therapies, based on his publications over a decade, the Maurice Laing Foundation apparently decided exactly the opposite, based on the same findings! Funny how Ernst didn’t object to that!

Yeah, strange, that is. He might have been considerate enough to say to them: “Look, guys - I know you mean well, but as we’ve just been explaining to the public and the NHS you really are flogging a dead horse! Fact is, you’ve pretty much wasted £1,500,000 and it turns out sugar pills are just as good, so seeing as how you’ve got all these other nature conservation applications coming in, I really should give you the same advice we gave the government: spend your resources more wisely!

No, he took the cash.

Funny Thing No.7

Still, that extended funding would have run out in 2006, wouldn’t it? And Ernst is still going strong. Seventeen years. According to Wikipedia’s summary of his work:

“He has said that about 5 percent of alternative medicine is backed by evidence,[5] with the remainder being either insufficiently studied or backed by evidence showing lack of efficacy.”

So either the Laing Foundation have coughed up another few million to perpetuate this pointless exercise indefinitely (seriously doubtful - why would they? And anyway, we’d have been told for sure, right?), or some other major players have been helping all this along right from the start - but we aren’t being told who any of them are.

Question: Who applied to the Maurice Laing Foundation for the original funding? Was it Ernst? If it wasn’t, then who was it? How was Ernst selected? Were there any other candidates? He states in the Boseley article that after ten years in the post: “I know what I’m talking about, whereas 10 years ago, to be frank, it was more of a hobby-horse”.

WHAT? You accepted responsibility for private funding of £1,500,000 and it was just a “hobby-horse”? What numbskull selected HIM for that post? It’s not as if he was familiar with ANY of those disciplines except homeopathy, and no great expert in that. Part of the original cover story that sought to make him sound impartial (HA!) was that he uses homeopathy on his wife, the explanation being; “We were brought up on it”! Ernst, I was brought up going to Sunday School… I don’t still go. The truth is this man had no real qualifications for this post at all, and the only reason he has so many supporters is because he is publishing exactly what all those people want to hear. But that doesn’t make it true.

Trial by Engineering

Which brings us back to Dr Ben Goldacre, who has been very vocal in dismissing CAM therapies in the media, probably influenced in no small degree by the last seventeen years of publications from Ernst, who is now not only the U.K.’s first Professor AGAINST Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter but also director of complementary medicine of the Peninsula Medical School (PMS) since 2002. We are not told who funds that post.

Dr Goldacre must have been irritated to have his legitimate concerns simply dismissed in the BMJ by one Vincent Lawton, “a healthcare consultant and non-executive director at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in London”, who suggested that his concerns really related to past issues, and everything was all right now. Since Goldacre’s description of the current system was that it is “dangerous and absurd”, clearly they cannot both be right.

What Dr Goldacre may not realise is that the practice of engineering trials to produce the ‘results’ you want to arrive at is not limited to the shady practice of drug companies themselves. How many of Ernst’s ‘findings’ have been produced by the sharp practice of ’selective systematic reviews’? This is not new research - which Ernst has suggested was impossible due to “lack of funding”, Ha Ha! Nice one, Ernst! - but the cynical practice of sifting through old research to filter out all studies that show exciting (or just good) results, and selecting all the ones that didn’t, which you then publish. To the uninitiated, this looks for all the world like ’scientific proof’ that CAM therapies are pretty useless overall, but as I said before, to make this seem broadly credible you have to include some minor examples of success here or there - a price worth paying in the overall project of hoodwinking the media and the public at large.

So when Ernst suggested that hypnotherapy was of some limited use as a treatment for anxiety, and also pain relief, but no good for smoking cessation - that’s when I realised that Ernst certainly does not know what he’s talking about, because I’ve spent most of the last ten years helping thousands of smokers quit with hypnotherapy, usually in one session. And HE’S supposed to be the expert?

No surprise, then, to note that Ernst is also a member of the Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), just like the bloke who blithely dismissed Dr Goldacre’s very real concerns.

Wonder how Ben feels about that? Maybe he thought for a moment that if you raise fair points about unscientific practices which risk harm to the public he would get a fair hearing? No, he got slapped down and he seems to have dropped it now, which makes us wonder if someone has had a quiet word, because they don’t like troublemakers and whistleblowers in the medical profession. They don’t give a shit if you’re right.

And as for Ernst - drop the bogus Tales Told in the Media about how you came to find yourself in the Laing Chair, and tell us who is REALLY paying for this enormously expensive, apparently endless operation to manufacture and spread misinformation about complementary medicine?

Let’s set Ben and Ernst a little test, see how they respond. Ernst demanded that Boots the Chemist stop selling homoeopathy remedies because his publications suggested it doesn’t work any better than placebo. Now that we know from the University of Iowa study and others that the success rate for willpower alone is about 6%, and from the Borland report that the NHS Services long term (1 year) results are also about 6% will Ernst and Ben Goldacre now join the Truth Will Out Campaign in calling for Boots the Chemist to stop selling that as well, unless they label it clearly as being no more effective than a placebo? If so, my faith in their integrity will be restored - which would genuinely please me, actually - but if they find some way to wriggle out of that simple test of their real motives, their position will be revealed as exclusive CAM-bashing, NOT having the best interests of the public at heart at all. And before some dim spark suggests it is not Ernst’s job to do that…. actually it IS, because he is also a member of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) - a fact strangely omitted from the original cover story - funny how he never called for Prozac to be withdrawn, or Champix the Suicide Pill - no, the dangers all lie in the evil world of acupuncture and chiropractic.

Now that the Laing money has run out, should it still be the Laing Chair? One of the comments I thought was interesting was when Ernst suggested in the media that “no-one wanted to touch that funding” until the University of Exeter accepted it, supposedly because the subject of study was CAM therapies. He said: “It was hotter than cigarette money”. Was it? Actually Ernst, the reason people got edgy about tobacco money was because it came from tobacco companies, which was latterly regarded as ‘dirty money’. But you said the money came from a charitable organisation set up by a family who made their money in building. Why on earth would that be regarded as “hotter than cigarette money”?

Unless of course it really came from somewhere else, and Ernst made a little Freudian slip there…

Thanks to my new friends at Bad Science blog for helping me to edit this post and make it more accurate. We’ll get to the truth in the end.

Filed under: Champix/Chantix, Drugs on Trial, Publicity, The Campaign by Chris
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The weird and wonderful internet just threw up another amusing splinter of craziness in the form of an email message, sent through the Truth Will Out Contact Form facility, from a website called ChampixMagic.  It purported to be from a person called Jay, and it said:

Jay wrote:
Dear sir/webmaster,
I am the responsible person for link exchange at chantixmagic.com  I visited your site and feel,it’s a quality one and relevant to my site theme. So I hope that you would consider link exchange with us. If you determine that a link to our site is appropriate, Please let me know whether you are interested or not. If yes please provide your site info.

I find it very hard to believe that Jay has ever visited the Truth Will Out site.  I think it is much more probable that this message is sent out automatically to any site that mentions Champix a lot.  There follows here an excerpt from one of my earlier posts that mentioned it under the heading CHANTIX CHAMPIX KILLS, BUT A.S.H. WON’T TELL THE SMOKERS, and it also mentions the ChampixMagic site:

Now look at this, which purports to be a “Trusted Information Bank” about Champix (Chantix).  At the base of the page, a disclaimer states “We don’t encourage the buying and selling of Chantix without prescription”, which is a weird thing to claim when you can buy it right there, via the site!  It mentions nothing about any dangers, but says:

“Chantix is the latest blockbuster drug approved by the FDA on May 11, 2006 that is indicated as an aid to quit smoking. Manufactured by Pfizer Inc., Chantix offers a new approach, different from the existing smoking cessation therapies to quit smoking.”

It does not mention that the drug is now under investigation by the FDA for serious side effects.   Instead it uses crude scare-tactics in the first two, very badly written paragraphs about the dangers of smoking to suggest that Chantix is your ‘only hope’, if you are a smoker, to escape ‘certain death’. The site is called ChantixMagic and it is dangerously devoid of any serious warnings about how this medication could wreck your life or even end it.

In reality, Champix is a pretty faint hope because it doesn’t work for at least 80% of smokers even with all that hype.  In contrast, expert hypnotherapy has a 60% success rate in first sessions alone.  If you include the successes that took more than one session (some do, it’s inevitable, people are not all the same) then the overall success rate is well over 80% PROVIDED the therapist is a smoking cessation specialist with plenty of experience.

I should also qualify the above statement by saying that I’m talking about success rates in countries in which tobacco use is in general decline.  I work in the U.K. where only about 26% of adults still smoke, so smoking is not the norm.  In countries like Greece and China where there is a much greater proportion of smokers, the long-term success-rate of hypnotherapy would not be as high because the influence of other people smoking has a bearing on relapse rates for all quitting methods, including hypnotherapy - as does the general social perception of what is “the norm”.

So you see, ChampixMagic, I already have a link to your site but I don’t think it was quite what you had in mind.  Since all you want to do is sell more prescription medications without prescriptions and without proper warnings regardless of whether it harms or kills people, I suggest you link up to a hand grenade and we’ll ask one of the relatives of a deceased Champix victim to pull the pin and retire to a safe distance while it blows you to hell.

Filed under: Champix/Chantix, Drugs on Trial, Hypnotherapy, The Campaign, The Site by Chris
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President Barack Obama said today: “Where there is inefficiency, where there is corruption, we expect those people to be held accountable.”

That is a fine democratic principle.  Well said, Mr President.  Of course he was talking about the government of Afghanistan, warning those people that they could not expect continued support from Western governments if they did not root out corruption wherever it is identified.

I take it, then, that President Obama would recommend the same remedial action to be taken within the U.S. administration and indeed their counterparts in the UK government, wherever it can be clearly shown that inefficiency and corruption are wasting valuable resources and attempts are made to conceal this, rather than rectify it.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy doesn’t work at all in the long term according to the government’s own research.  Already, following the press release in July this year from the smokers’ rights group Freedom2Choose which cited my research demonstrating clearly that the NHS advertising claim that smokers are “four times more likely to succeed” by using those services was actually false, we note that in the latest TV campaign promoting those services, the bogus claim has been quietly dropped!

This is not enough. Let me just remind you what the Borland report found when that group investigated the long term results of the NHS approach to smoking cessation at the 12 month interval:

What they found, at 12 month follow up, was that the in-practice treatment scored only 2.6% success at one year, whereas the Stop Smoking Services delivered a staggering 6.5%.  And then they actually concluded: “Where suitable services exist, we recommend that referral become the normal strategy for management of smoking cessation in general practice”.

Seriously folks, I ask you: is it possible to believe that anyone - any collective group of people - could be so unutterably stupid as to recommend the continuation of either of those approaches to smoking cessation, at the taxpayer’s expense, based on failure rates of 93.5% and 97.4% respectively?  Also, what happened to the supposed 15% success rate claimed by the Ferguson report?  Gone - reduced to 6.5% at best. This proves that the report was flawed and misleading and should never again be cited to market NRT products or NHS services.  No wonder they buried it.

Finally, if the 1992 University of Iowa report found 6% for willpower over very large sample numbers, as did Cohen (4%), then how is 6.5% “up to four times more likely to succeed”?

The fact is that it is not.

At the start of the Truth Will Out Campaign, I reported that smokers were being lied to about the effectiveness of these services and drug company products, and reproduced in the Evidence section of this site published NHS and DoH documents that claimed up to 90% success rates for short-term results (4 weeks), but did not report at all on long-term outcomes.  When they finally did, they claimed 15% success at one year, which I have now proved is also very misleading.

I said, right from the very beginning, that it was 94% failure.  Thank you Borland et al, you just officially confirmed it. (Reproduced from the blogpost Dept of Stealth 6)

These results do not indicate that smokers should be directed to the Smoking Cessation Services.  In fact they make it blindingly obvious that the whole sorry, stupid failure should be scrapped before any more valuable resources are wasted on it.  Any fool can see that, so before we start lecturing the Afghan government about corruption, we should take that fine democratic sentiment and use it to investigate the corruption at the heart of the British government, and the role of the global drug companies that are bleeding the NHS to death.

If you agree, link up - spread the word.  Let’s end it!  Where are the bloody investigative journalists these days?  Wake up, Health Editors!  THIS IS A SCANDAL!

*Update 15.01.10
Apparently in some NRT promotions this New Year the ‘Four Times More Likely To Succeed’ claim is still being used. This is not “evidence-based medicine”, unless of course the DoH and the MHRA are going to cynically attach that label to any officially approved medicines REGARDLESS of what the evidence actually is.

Hear that trickling sound, Doc? That’s the sound of your credibility steadily draining away. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Filed under: Drugs on Trial, Nicotine, The Campaign by Chris
6 Comments »

In response to the post Champix Kills, But Don’t Tell The Smokers a comment came in from James which raised a number of important points, so I have decided to reproduce it here, along with my response to the points he raised:

JAMES on October 27th, 2009 at 7:11 am Said:

I am in two minds regarding Champix. I have many friends who have taken it, the majority have stopped smoking for good (so far). One had a bad reaction and had to stop the course. Depression.

I will be getting the pills tonight and I am optimistic about them. Even though I have read many, many of the horror stories surrounding the drug, I have read many, many, many more that support its use from satisfied patients.

I suggest having a look through this forum: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/interactive/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=6901&f=11&postdays=0&start=1

There are many people on there who are using/used the drug, detailing all their side effects and most of them come out on top, even after suffering the more drastic ones such as depression. Funny that, I don’t think a single one ever mentioned “suicidal tendencies or thoughts”. I don’t deny this, but when it comes down to either Tobacco companies generating insane amounts of revenue at the cost of my health, or a Chemical company offering me something with a 20% (based on your figure) success rate of quitting smoking that has many people praising, or spending hundreds of pounds on hypnotherapy.. I’m going with the pill.

The one thing I DO agree with, is that the NHS / Health Associations are all corrupt. I read Alan Carr’s book, which helped me stop smoking for 6 months previously. Reading it again does not have the same appeal, naturally, but his points do stand. If the NHS actually thought for themselves, or did some research, they really would find out that hypnotherapy is far more successful than NRT, although the costs of such would not necessarily benefit them. I imagine hypnotherapy is more expensive than patches!!

It does not suprise me that hypnotherapists are very anti-champix, as naturally, it is one-side fighting for revenue against another. Saving lives is the most important, but this can really split peoples trusts.

Needless to say, I will be taking Champix, I am aware of the risks and will keep an eye on my mental state very closely (along with the help of others). If I don’t quit using it, I cannot afford hypnotherapy. Therefore, its either the cigarettes or the Champix that will no doubt, one day kill me.

Even though you have your own ideas about Champix already, and can back them up, if it helps 20% of smokers to become non-smokers, then withdrawing it is a BIG mistake.
Those 20% who do quit with it, may not be able to afford the several-hundred pounds cost of hypnotherapy (based on last time I checked a session at an Alan Carr clinic). You could be giving them a death-sentence, if they continued to smoke.

Smoking is expensive enough, I’ll take my chances with a prescription fee

James

P.S.. Interesting read, nonetheless!!

CHRIS on October 28th, 2009 at 5:45am Said:

Hi James, thanks for your thoughts.

I had a look at the “netdoctor” site, and what struck me immediately was that nearly all the posts on the first page are from people on Day 1 or Day 3 of the course! These are “so far, so good” posts that many champix blogs are littered with, which create a totally false impression. That’s like someone sending you a text message that says they’re 12 minutes into their hypnotherapy session, and so far they haven’t wanted a cigarette! Only people who have been off the tablets for weeks or months can truly report their own experience as a success. Don’t forget, half the people in the original trials who were counted as successes were smoking again within 28 weeks.

Most of the horrific side effects have kicked in after weeks on the drug, so please don’t be falsely reassured by these early comments.

Who or What is netdoctor?

Down at the bottom of the homepage it says that netdoctor.co.uk is a trade mark. Is it? And what trade might that be, then? And do you suppose that the lack of posts reporting serious side effects might be because the site moderators think that those sort of reports might be bad for “trade”, so they don’t get approved for display on the site?

Hypnotherapy v. Champix?

I’m not against Champix simply because it is competition. If it were as straighforward as that I would be against the Allen Carr people and acupuncturists too, but as anyone can see from reading Truth Will Out, I am not - in fact I recommend them. I do claim hypnotherapy has the greatest success of the three, but then I back that up in the Evidence section. This site is all about evidence, and so is the book. You don’t have to buy the book to see that, because I publish a lot of it here for free.

The Relative Costs

Although I often state that the Allen Carr Easyway method is a form of hypnotherapy - which is true - it is not the best form by a long way. In fact I would suggest to anyone that the best version of the Allen Carr approach is to read the original book, the one that actually made him famous in the first place. The group sessions involve too many people, it complicates matters and brings down the overall success rate. The book is something you contemplate, and can return to - there are fewer distractions, just as in a one-to-one hypnotherapy session it is a more personal experience.

Please don’t assume hypnotherapy costs hundreds of pounds just because the Allen Carr franchises charge hundreds of pounds for their sessions. I confidently regard myself as an expert in this field, but I only charge £120 for the Stop Smoking session I offer. I also have a reduced-fee back up session, so even those smokers who need two sessions - most do not - only pay £160 in total. Most smokers save that back in a month.

Now, some colleagues have suggested that I should charge more, and I certainly could charge more. But it is also true that some smokers - like yourself - would not choose hypnotherapy if I did that, so it would be the opposite of promoting the wider recognition of hypnotherapy as a therapeutic mode, something to which all professional hypnotherapists are supposed to be committed.

You are suggesting that Champix is attractive because you only pay a prescription fee. For many people that may turn out to be true. But over the last two years I have been told of many people who have paid a much higher price. Some of them are dead. So what you are suggesting only remains a valid conclusion if none of that happens to you personally. It is exactly the same “It won’t happen to me” assumption that many smokers adopt with regard to heart attacks and cancer - but in your case you have transferred it to Champix instead, accepting the suggestion that “it has to be better than dying of cancer”, as if those were the only choices! It’s a marketing suggestion and it apparently works very well, but it has a very hollow ring later for the unlucky ones.

Is it really about money? Those people who have posted their horror stories here and on other blogs, the ones who are terrified they will never feel normal, happy and healthy again - how much money would they pay to get their health back, or to be able to turn back the clock and never take the damn stuff in the first place?

How much did you pay for your last holiday? Was it £120? That was over in a flash, and now you have only your snapshots and your memories, but the benefits of stopping smoking last a lifetime.

What I am telling everyone is the truth, and I don’t just state it, I’m providing plenty of evidence and plenty of references so people can find out more - far more than the drug company lackeys are telling them. Then I am suggesting that you make an informed choice, and I think it is logical to try all the non-risk options first: hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr method and acupuncture have never harmed anyone, but they have certainly helped a lot of people to quit smoking.

In the context of your safety, your good health and the whole of the rest of your life, the investment in these non-risk approaches is peanuts, really! How much money do we burn up every year simply on our own idle entertainment?

I am only suggesting that the use of methods that have already harmed people should only be considered when all the safe methods have already been tried. You would think doctors would agree with that, wouldn’t you? As for the NHS funding hypnotherapy sessions for smoking cessation, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Too many fingers in too many pies, my friend. The annual NHS bill for medications alone topped £10 billion some time ago, and it is rising still… do you really think the use of pharmaceuticals saves the NHS money?

It is killing the NHS. And we’ll see the end of the NHS before we see the end of the stranglehold the drug companies have over the medical profession. Hypnotherapists can’t stop it. Doctors can’t stop it. Even the drug companies can’t stop it, because they are in competition with other drug companies, and they have obligations to their shareholders. They have to sell more drugs, which means the NHS has to buy more drugs, which means people - such as yourself - have to take more drugs. They can’t have you going off to see a hypnotherapist - if everyone started doing that it would only mean one thing for drug companies: hard times. So of course they do everything in their power to steer you away from that, and netdoctor.co.uk is doing its bit there.

The question is, who do you trust? Those of us who have never hurt anyone but have helped thousands of people to safely stop smoking, or the people who have a long and apparently shameless history of killing and maiming tens of thousands of ‘unlucky ones’ with a whole list of nasty concoctions over the years, every one of which was mistakenly passed as “safe”?

Whatever you choose to do, James, I wish you well. Please do keep us posted about your progress.

*This exchange was four weeks ago.  So far James has not been back to tell us whether he did start taking Champix that night as he planned, or how the first four weeks went.

Filed under: Champix/Chantix, Drugs on Trial, Hypnotherapy, Smoking, The Campaign by Chris
5 Comments »

This development, I am certain, has nothing whatever to do with the Truth Will Out Campaign, but it is a bit ironic: I’ve just been invited to become an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine!

This is because I am involved - to quote the letter - “in one of the many medical and related professions”.  There are several advantages to attaining this status, which the letter goes on to list, including: “The comfort and exclusivity of a ‘Members-only’ Society” - which sounds a bit snobbish to me - “Private fine dining” - which I’m not really into - and “access to one of the most modern medical libraries in Europe”.

Question: Has it got my book in it yet?  it’s called:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Volume I: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century

No?  Thought not.  In that case I’ll say: Thanks, but no thanks.  Ask me again when it does, because that will indicate that medical science is finally beginning to catch up with the world of Hypnotherapy.

My name’s Chris Holmes by the way. And if you’ve never heard of my book yet, Doc, don’t worry.  You will. It is the first book ever to prove, by clear, logical argument alone - in other words, scientifically - that the nicotine tale is a lie, and that Nicotine Replacement products are entirely based upon a myth.

Cravings are behavioural impulses controlled by the Subconscious mind which we can easily shut down in hypnotherapy on request, usually in a single session.  Tobacco smoking is entirely a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction and the whole ‘nicotine’ angle is bogus and incorrect, which is the main reason NRT has no long term success outside of the normal willpower range of about 6%.

So you can ignore it if you like, Doc, but smokers aren’t ignoring it! They are reading it in ever-increasing numbers and the reviews are terrific.  In fact I challenge anyone - anyone at all, it doesn’t have to be a smoker because the book is about compulsive habits generally, not just smoking - to read that book cover to cover, and then tell me they still believe in a thing called nicotine addiction.  And that’s why doctors are going to have to address this sooner or later whether they like it or not, because the plain fact is they are wrong.  They are wasting smokers’ time with NRT, and vast sums of money that actually belongs to the taxpayer, and they have the temerity to blame the failure of all that on the smoker.  But the Truth Will Out.

Filed under: Hypnotherapy, Nicotine, The Book by Chris
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