Bent Spoon Winner 1999

Michael Willesee

By Barry Williams

Bent Spoon Winner

The annual Skeptics Dinner, held in conjunction with the national conference, was the forum for the announcement of the two annual Australian Skeptics awards, the Bent Spoon Award and the Australian Skeptic of the Year.

The Bent Spoon Award (presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal piffle) for 1999 had attracted a substantial number of nominations, including various media outlets, and also included a couple of political nominations, namely both the Australian Democrats for insisting that various untested ‘alternative’ therapies should be GST free, and the Federal Government for agreeing to it. A strong local candidate, in the person Father Andrew Nutter and his Yankalilla Anglican church with its ‘miraculous’ patch of bad plastering, was heavily favoured by the local smart money.

However, when it came to voting, the strong last minute run by the programme, Signs from God (9 Network), fronted by the formerly sceptical journalist, Michael Willesee, could not be ignored by the judges, and he was adjudged the very deserving winner. This programme, seeking to capitalise on the irrational millennial fears of many people, rehashed a plethora (a most appropriate word in the circumstances) of bleeding and weeping statues, stigmatics and other pseudo-religious clap-trap. It sought to give this nonsense a patina of respectability by consulting various scientists and theologians, only to ignore their contributions in favour of sensationalism. Despite its claims of sceptical investigation, this show differed in no significant way from the rash of other nasty millennial doom-crying tripe being pushed down our throats by TV channels as the calendar rolls along towards 2000.

Playing on people’s fears might be good for ratings, but it ignores the real harm that it can do to vulnerable people whose grasp on reality is in some way under attack. As too often happens after one of these irresponsible pieces has been to air, Australian Skeptics was contacted by a seriously distressed woman who had been so disturbed by what she had seen that she feared for her sanity. We could only tell her that such programmes were “junk TV” and were designed to rate and not to inform.

Nominations:

• Channel Seven's "Today Tonight"
• Mike Willesee
• Queensland Community Benefit Gaming Fund
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• Charissa Smith (Veterinarian)
• The Australian Democrats
• Pat Cash
• Reverend Andrew Nutter
• Dr. Sandra Cabot (author of The Liver Cleansing Diet)

Australian Skeptic of the Year

After the Bent Spoon we had the pleasure of announcing the winner of our Australian Skeptic of the year (presented to a person whose activities have contributed most to the promotion of critical thinking). In past years this award has gone to distinguished scientists, Profs Derek Freeman, Peter Doherty and Michael Archer. This year’s award represented a break with the tradition, when we named a woman who has conducted an almost single-handed campaign to expose to critical scrutiny the potentially dangerous unsubstantiated claims made by manufacturers of various electronic gadgets that are alleged to cure every known illness. She is a modest woman who seeks no personal publicity, and for this reason, and because of her concerns about threats she has received, at her request, we will name her only as Nurse Cheryl.

Cheryl was a nurse working for an overseas aid agency who, through her duties, suffered from a debilitating injury that reduced her ability to work. She returned to Australia where, finding that orthodox medicine could do little to alleviate her pain and suffering, she sought the attention of various “alternative” practitioners. It was this experience that caused Cheryl to begin her campaign to expose the claims made by promoters of various “cure-all” therapies to the light of critical inquiry. Her own knowledge of medicine told her that no one type of treatment could possibly be efficacious against the wide range of ailments that affect people, yet this is precisely the sort of claims that are made, particularly by those who peddle various electronic gadgets.

There are numerous versions of these devices, but they generally seem to be variations on a theme, an alleged discovery by one Royal Rife in the early 1930s. He claimed that each pathogen, be it viral, bacterial, toxic chemical or anything else that might cause illness, is subject to destruction by a specific electromagnetic frequency. That this idea is implausible seems obvious, but even were we to assume it to be true, there is no logical reason to suppose that only pathogens should be adversely affected by specific frequencies. Thus, in the interests of safety, it would be expected that the construction and operation of the powerful machines designed to generate these specific healing frequencies should be very carefully monitored to prevent the wrong frequencies causing damage to healthy organisms. This is not the case, as we will show later.

Further, it should be remembered that this claimed theory of biophysics was postulated before Chadwick had discovered the neutron, and appears not to have won other than fringe acceptance, while the study of physics, biology and electronics have undergone revolutionary discoveries and changes in the 70 years since it was first postulated.

One would expect that such revolutionary, but essentially simple, devices would by now be standard tools used by medical practitioners for the treatment of disease, but that is not the case. There are ‘clinics’ where people can be ‘treated’ with these devices, or they can be purchased so people can ‘treat’ themselves, but they have no support among the medical or scientific communities and there is no evidence that they can perform any useful healing function at all, let alone cure all known ailments.

The machines in question are often designated as “Rife” machines, “Hulda Clark” machines, (Dr Hulda Clark, the proponent of this version, was recently arrested in California for extradition to Illinois where she faces indictment for activities associated with the use of these devices.) “Zappers” and various other names. A related device, one that is claimed to produce “colloidal silver”, is an equally suspect gadget, its efficacy allegedly based on the supposed bactericidal capabilities of that substance. (Concentrated H₂SO₄ is also an effective bactericide, but we know of no one promoting its use in therapy—yet.)

 They come in many guises, some, at the lower end of the price range, are single frequency devices, while the more expensive items, running into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, have adjustable frequencies. They are often built by back-yard electronics enthusiasts, from plans sold by others. Items that have been tested by trained electronics people have often produced frequencies far different from what is advertised. They are usually advertised in those journals whose editorial contents are dedicated to conspiracy theories, or in publications advocating all manner of “alternative” (ie untested) therapies, usually carrying the editorial line “people must be allowed to make their own choices about their health care”. A noble sentiment, but meaningless without the qualifier “informed”. They are promoted, not with evidence of successful clinical trials, nor any of the other tests that might support their efficacy, and assist people in making an informed choice, but by personal testimonials and word-of-mouth. Given the sort of products they are and given the media in which they are advertised, it is hardly surprising that they are also supported editorially by all sorts of “suppression” conspiracy theories.

This is the area in which Cheryl decided to concentrate her efforts of exposing untested claims to critical analysis. The nature of her campaign is covered to some degree in a series of articles written by journalist Maureen FitzHenry, run earlier this year in the Newcastle Herald and summarised in the Skeptic (19:1 pp. 8-12) but it has generally been ignored by the rest of the media.

Cheryl’s story is one of courage, determination and frustration, in the face of an almost universal lack of interest and bureaucratic buck-passing among the regulatory and consumer protection agencies of state and federal governments. Initially the task of regulating this sort of gadget came under the aegis of the (Federal) Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), however this body said that as the devices concerned were not therapeutic goods, their regulation fell outside the jurisdiction of TGA. No doubt that is true, but that is not what the public has been led to believe. Changes in advertising standards for therapeutic devices was supposed to control the claims made for such gadgets, and while that might have had some effect on published advertisements, it did nothing to prevent the promoters from making all sorts of claims to individual purchasers, as Cheryl and others have found.

State authorities are no more willing to tackle this than are their Commonwealth counterparts. Complaints about these sort of devices forwarded to the NSW Health Care Commission are usually passed on to the Dept of Fair Trading (because they are not medical complaints) and Fair Trading seem to ignore them as well. It appears that it is all too difficult for the bureaucratic bodies set up to protect the citizens and it often seems that these bodies wish that Cheryl and other concerned people would just go away.

However, there just might be some light shining through. A federal government reallocation of jobs saw responsibility for investigating these products transferred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which is at least trying to do something about the problem. A quotation from their web site will explain:

[ACCC] filed proceedings in the Federal Court against Colin Ronald Dixon, Vital Earth Company Pty Limited and its director Darryl John Jones and Raylight Pty Ltd and its director Herbert Nathan, alleging breaches of sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

Raylight has marketed alternative therapy products including the ‘Parasite Zapper’ and the ‘colloidal silver kit’. Advertisements published in Nexus New Times, a health magazine, claimed that the ‘Parasite Zapper’ passes an electric current through a person’s blood and that this is effective in treating a number of serious medical conditions including HIV, hepatitis and herpes as well as obesity. Raylight has also claimed that the colloidal silver kit is able to produce colloidal silver and that this is effective at killing intestinal bacteria and viruses. Vital Earth has marketed a number of products including the ‘Vital Silver3000 Zapper’ and the ‘Vital Silver 2000’ which it represents as being able to create colloidal silver which it is claimed has been used successfully to treat a number of serious medical conditions including AIDS, leukaemia and cholera. Representations concerning products marketed by Vital Earth were posted on Internet sites operated by Colin Ronald Dixon. The ACCC is seeking refunds, injunctions and corrective advertisements.

Well that’s a start and we commend the ACCC for the action it has taken, but who has heard about it? One would have thought that this was precisely the sort of story to capture the imagination of any investigative journalist worth his or her salt, but to our knowledge nothing at all has appeared in the media about it.

This is a big and diverse industry, with lots of players and there is a lot of money being made from a lot of vulnerable people. If the media (isn’t that supposed to be a contraction of news media?) spent a little less time and space on navel gazing about the ethics within their own profession, or the latest cock-up in the Olympic preparations, and did a little investigation, there is a big story to be told.

Unfortunately, both the regulatory authorities and the media seem only to be interested if they can be presented with complaints from victims of these things, and neither group seems to be interested in doing any sort of investigations on their own behalf. Do we have traffic regulations in this country only because people have complained about being run down by cars? Do people have to die from lack of proper medical treatment because they have fallen victim to plausible sounding sales pitches? If so, how many need to die before someone in authority will take responsibility - will show that they care?

Cheryl has done everything she can to expose this dangerous trade, though her resources are limited and her health is not robust. But Nurse Cheryl cares and for this reason we are very pleased to award her the accolade of Australian Skeptic of the Year for 1999.