The Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH) are one of the bodies purporting to regulate homeopaths and protect the public. Their Registrar, Steve Scrutton, has one of the most insane, dangerous and idiotic websites I have ever seen a homeopath unleash upon the internet.
On the failure of conventional medicine he has this to say:

Conventional medicine is dangerous. Its drugs are killing more and more people every year. Conventional drugs are something to avoid - at all costs.

Conventional medicine is expensive. The NHS spends over £80 billion per year. Some drug treatments can cost over £30,000 - per individual - per year! Good for the Pharmaceutical Companies, bad for the taxpayer.

Conventional medicine is ineffective. Despite spending increasing amounts on health care over the last 60 years, we are facing epidemic levels of disease such as Autism, Alzheimer’s Disease, ADHD, Suicide, Cancer, Allergy, Asthma, COPD, Cornary Heart Disease, Diabetes, Arthritis, IBS, osteoporosis - etc., etc.

He also believes that homeopathy can prevent cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, diphtheria, polio, tetanus, malaria, meningitis and yellow fever.

Let us put this in perspective with some figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Cholera - 131 943 cases, 2272 deaths in 2005.

Hepatitis -

A - 1,399,000 cases, deaths unknown.

B - 2 billion people infected worldwide, 350 million suffering from chronic HBV infection, 500,000-1.2m deaths per year.

C - WHO estimates that about 3% of the world’s population has been infected with HCV and that there are more than 170 million chronic carriers who are at risk of developing liver cirrhosis and/or liver cancer.

D - Worldwide, more than 10 million people are infected with HDV.

E - Sporadic outbreaks with varying levels of lethality.

Typhoid - The very conservative annual number of typhoid cases for the year 2000 is estimated at 17 million with 600 000 deaths.

Diphtheria - The disease can be fatal - between 5% and 10% of diphtheria patients die, even if properly treated. Untreated, the disease claims even more lives.

Polio - Thanks to vaccination Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries then, to 1997 reported cases in 2006. In 2008, only parts of four countries in the world remain endemic for the disease - the smallest geographic area in history.

Tetanus - 15,000 cases in 2006.

Malaria - A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. More than one million people die of malaria every year, mostly infants, young children and pregnant women and most of them in Africa.

Meningitis -

Yellow fever - Thanks to vaccination just a few hundred cases and around 100 deaths in 2004.

It is absurd that this idiot is permitted to play at pretend medicine by society, much less promoted to a prominent position of responsibility by an organisation that purports to regulate homeopaths.
What we have here is a flat out rejection of medical reality in favour of some absurd and utterly unbelievable pseudo-science. Steve Scrutton tells potential customers “remember that homeopathy is a complete system of medicine, and can deal with any ailment, illness or disease.”.  If the UN, WHO and governments believed Steve Scrutton’s claims then they would be responsible for the deaths of untold billions.  Thankfully they don’t, however homeopaths are encouraged to adopt crude PR tactics, to lobby and recruit MPs and spread disinformation and lies about science and medicine.  This is a monstrous folly and I urge everyone as homeopathy awareness week looms to make the public aware of the true nature of homeopathy.  A harmful and wilfully ignorant conceit that ignores science, hates medicine and offers only illness, disease and death.

I have just noticed that Nelsons, a major supplier and manufacturer of homeopathic pseudomedicine and assorted quackery, have developed a PR toolkit for homeopaths with an organisation called 4homeopathy. Now I’ve never heard of 4homeopathy and google reveals little apart from a defunct website, however they are described as ‘media specialists’. Perhaps they are some dubious front group, the homeopathic equivalent of Trotyskyist groupuscules, either way I’m not interested. What is of interest to me is the motivations, means and methods of this toolkit and the now public sally of Big Quacka into the fray before Homeopathy Awareness Week (HAW) 14th-21st June.

In a public letter Nelsons/4homeopathy state that they produced this toolkit to aid homeopaths because

it is vital to reach local people in order to grow your client base, keep in touch effectively with your clients and make use of local or regional newspapers to print positive stories about homeopathy.

This frank admission that homeopathy requires positive spin to allow practitioners to attract new customers to increase revenue and profit is very revealing and lends serious weight to all those who have argued that homeopathy as a profession is not interested in research or evidence and is primarily motivated by profit. They then go onto admit that Big Quacka are spending a lot of money on advertising and influencing the national press in attempts to promote homeopathy and that homeopaths should work with Big Quacka to promote their peddling of sugar pills.

Nelsons has already been working hard to get positive information about homeopathy printed in national newspapers and women’s magazines – being successful in reaching over 13 million people with press coverage in their 2007 Homeopathy Awareness Week campaign, but the time has come for us to all work together for maximum effect.

While I am making no moral judgement here about those who collaborate with commercial interests, after all we do live in a free market democracy, I just hope this acknowledgement that homeopaths are working in conjunction with Big Quacka will lead to an end of the inaccurate, scurrilous and offensive attacks on those, such as David Colquhoun and Ben Goldacre, who make it a point of principle not to accept money from Big Pharma. Unlike homeopaths these people do not seem to be motivated by profit which personally I find laudable.

So what are the means by which Nelsons/4homeopathy intend to promote homeopathy? They have drawn up a list of key facts about homeopathy, frequently asked questions, and a homeopathy research page. Now the key facts page is laughably brief and consists of more celebrity endorsements than facts, the homeopathy research page merely links to the Faculty of Homeopaths (FoH) and Society of Homeopaths (SoH) research sites, both ably dissected by apgaylard and the FAQ just trots out the usual canards along with this glaring example of the dangers of jumping into bed with commercial interests:

Where can you obtain homeopathic remedies?
Homeopathic remedies are widely available and can be found in good pharmacies, health food stores and online at www.nelsonshomeopathy.com

Ahh subtle advertising. Love it.

So it’s clear that shameless PR piff puffery is the best argument Nelsons/4homeopathy can make for homeopathy one hopes for their sake that the ‘media specialists’ at Nelsons/4homeopathy can demonstrate some original thought in their methods.

They have thoughtfully provided some templates for press releases and articles on the site ensuring that all evidence of originality and imagination will be squashed by trained (and quite probably lethal) ‘media specialists’.

The template press release begins:

PRESS RELEASE

HOMEOPATHY AWARENESS WEEK 2008

14 to 21 June

Local homeopath (insert name) provides (insert town)

with natural health solutions

Approximately one in four of the UK population will suffer from an allergy at some point in their lives, according to the British Allergy Foundation and the number of people affected is increasing by five per cent each year. So this year, Homeopathy Awareness Week is focused on helping those who suffer from allergies including hayfever, perennial rhinitis and even food intolerances. It is also the perfect opportunity to contact your local homeopath, (insert name) to help cure those other niggling health concerns that may be on your mind.

Homeopathic remedies can help tackle the symptoms by triggering the body’s system of healing. (Insert name, title and what activities you may be organising - maybe talks at your local community centre, taster consultations at your local health food store – here is an example, ‘Registered Homeopath Laura Kenyon LCH RSHom will be explaining more about how homeopathy can help with common everyday health issues at Nelsons Homeopathic Pharmacy, Duke St, W1 on 16^th June from 12 o’clock’.)

(Insert name and quote – here is an example – ‘Laura Kenyon said: “Despite a growing interest in healing in natural ways, there are still many myths and misunderstandings around homeopathy…….”’)

The template then goes on to mention celebrity endorsements, because we all know how good celebrities are when advising on medicine, before finishing with a plug for Nelsons as big as the rest of the press release. Most amusingly the rest of the links for templates are broken, depriving poor homeopaths of the PR expertise of ‘media specialists’.

While it is clear that homeopathy is beginning to struggle in financial terms it is a shame that the fightback  has not come from individual homeopaths or their (purportedly) regulating organisations but from large commercial interests and that it does not focus on evidence, the benefits of a sympathetic chat or even patient satisfaction but resorts to crude attempts to educate homeopaths in PR and spin their way out of trouble.  All the PR in the world will not prove homeopathy works and the willingness of homeopaths to climb into bed with Big Quacka compromises any protestations of independence or integrity.

Homeopaths like to present themselves as a caring profession with their talk of holistic medicine and treating the person not the disease. One might also be inclined to think that they themselves are of sensitive disposition as their innocent bleatings grow ever louder as their ideas come under attack. Indeed I have often said that I believe homeopaths are fundamentally decent people. However, a recent lecture announcement questions the assumption that homeopaths are well meaning if querulous quacks. This lecture is billed as “REVEALING THE INNER CONFLICT” and the lecturer, Liz Lalor, will:

present[s] a body of work which is new and interesting. Liz will teach homeopaths and students alike how to listen for the mental and emotional dialogue within the patient and how then to use the Mind and Delusions sections of their repertory to best advantage.

Far from being the well meaning pseudo-psychoanalysis (if there is such a thing as a pseudo-pseudo-science) one might expect it seems this lecture exposes the dark heart of homeopathy. The belief that the patient brings their pain, suffering and disease on themselves. It’s not their environment, their genes or bad luck that causes disease, it is the patients state of mind.

In homeopathy, if we can delve into the original crisis that created the first emotional stance or psyche, we immediately become aware of how the person has constructed their self and their presenting disease around the Mind’s Delusions. Once we have the Mind or Delusion rubric, we have the cure for the crisis and conflict of the person’s existence and subsequent disease. Homeopaths have often underestimated the power of the insight that lies behind the psyche, the emotional disturbance or the Theme of a Constitutional case, which is the connecting link between the physical, emotional and mental disturbance.

The proposed format will include video cases to illustrate Liz’s methodology.

Each case presented believes deep within their own self that they deserve the disease state or the emotional pain they are currently suffering.

Liz expands on this theory in more detail in the supplemental material to the advert. First off she makes the staggering assertion that the cases she present

believe[s] deep within their own self that they deserve the disease state or the emotional pain they are currently suffering.

before issuing a

challenge to all homoeopaths is to find me a patient with a serious illness - whether it is Mental, Emotional or Physical - who does not believe they have caused their own demise. I know if you don’t know how to look for and find that Disturbance inside of the patient you will not find the interplay of the Simillimum; that interplay is our homoeopathic philosophy of ‘like cures like.’ If we as homoeopaths do not know how to find the ‘eye of the storm;’ we will not find the Simillimum.

So much for any pretence at being caring and on the side of the patient. Liz seems to be proposing the idea that the patient is responsible for their illness and it is the homeopaths jobs to point this out (while charging for the privilege). Liz goes onto expand this idea:

There is always interplay with the correct remedy. ‘Like cures Like’ ruminates with energy; that energy is the Simillimum. Inherent in the medical pathology and somatic presentation of our most serious diseases like Cancers and all the Auto Immune diseases is internal conflict and destruction. If you want to treat patients with these serious diseases and be able to cure, you have to be able to find the disturbance which caused the destruction. The reason why it is important to know the disturbance in a case is because any severe disease state is always a reflection of our deep sub conscious struggles; our inner angst.

Disturbance within a patient will cause such conflict and pain that it will eventuate in a physical illness or mental and emotional illness which is reflective of the intensity of the conflict. Do we know how to find the ‘Like to Like’ energy interconnecting the Mental disturbance; the Emotional Disturbance and the Physical disease? In homoeopathy we do not treat the disease we treat the person; but the Simillimum is the remedy which is able to contain the same intensity of conflict and destruction to match the disease presentation. Our patients with Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s, Rheumatism, and Cancer to list just a few, all ruminate with the energy of conflict.

If you can’t identify the inherent conflict you will not be able to help your patient; it is as simple as that. If you as a homoeopath do not know how to look for the inner conflict in the case you will not find the Simillimum.

l cannot be alone in finding this a deeply unsavoury and unsympathetic way of approaching illness. I wonder if the customers paying £60/hour know that that apparently kind and sympathetic homeopath listening to their problems is really thinking ‘it’s your fault you’re ill’.

Via the ever hilarious Zeus mailout I have come across this article from the What Doctors Don’t Tell You site (WDDTY):

It was news when it was first revealed three years ago – and it was news again last week: antioxidant vitamins can speed up the development of cancer. But the researcher who first published the study has now admitted that she got it wrong.

The original study – which made headlines around the world – found that cancer patients who took either vitamin A (beta-carotene) or E (alpha tocopherol) supplements were 40 per cent more likely to suffer a recurrence of their cancer than those who didn’t take any supplements.

Ever since, nutritionists and alternative therapists have been on the back foot, and have tried to defend the antioxidants. But their task was made even tougher last week when the prestigious Cochrane Collaborative released a meta-analysis that suggested that antioxidants may even shorten our life.

But the researchers, led by Isabelle Bairati from the Quebec Research Centre, who published the 2005 study, have re-analysed their original data, and have discovered they got it wrong. The only people in the study who were seeing their cancer return were smokers who refused to kick the habit while they were receiving radiation therapy or chemotherapy.

Now leaving aside the odd inaccuracy such as that beta-carotene is a Vitamin A precursor and not Vitamin A by reading this article you would get the impression that supplementing with vitamin A and E has no effect on cancer recurrence but smoking does and that the researchers were forced into a humiliating retraction. This is merely CAM lies.
If we look at the actual paper (paywalled I’m afraid, copies by request) we see a very different conclusion. Abstract:

There has been concern that the efficacy of radiation therapy may be reduced when patients smoke or take antioxidant vitamins during treatment. Cancer prevention trials with beta carotene supplements documented adverse effects only among smokers. We conducted a randomized trial with alpha tocopherol (400 IU/day) and beta carotene (30 mg/day) supplements among 540 head and neck cancer (HNC) patients treated by radiation therapy. We examined whether smoking during radiation therapy modified the effects of the supplementation on HNC recurrence and on mortality. During the follow-up, 119 patients had a HNC recurrence and 179 died. Cox models were used to test the interaction between smoking and supplementation and to estimate the hazard ratios (HR) for HNC recurrence and death associated with the supplementation. Cigarette smoking either before or after radiation therapy did not modify the effects of the supplementation. In contrast, the interactions between supplementation and cigarette smoking during radiation therapy were statistically significant for HNC recurrence (p = 0.03), all-cause mortality (p = 0.02) and mortality from the initial HNC (p = 0.04). Among cigarette smokers, the HR were 2.41 (95% CI: 1.25-4.64) for recurrence, 2.26 (95% CI: 1.29-3.97) for all-cause mortality and 3.38 (95% CI: 1.11-10.34) for HNC mortality. All corresponding HR among nonsmokers were close to 1. These results could best be explained by the hypothesis that the combined exposures reduced the efficacy of radiation therapy. Particular attention should be devoted to prevent patients from both smoking and taking antioxidant supplements during radiation therapy.

While the authors have had to rethink their original conclusions this is hardly the damning retraction that WDDTY report it as. In fact it very clearly shows that taking vitamin A and E as well as smoking while undergoing treatment is in fact worse than merely just smoking. While the reconsidered evidence from this trial does not appear to show that non-smokers supplementing with vitamin A and E are at greater risk it does not put them at lesser risk either. There is still no benefit to vitamin A and E supplementation during treatment for non-smokers and for smokers it is more harmful than smoking alone. The conclusion is that at best supplementation may do no harm, at worst it is a significant risk factor. WDDTY do not state this, they misrepresent this paper to make it appear like it is smoking alone that is the problem.
WDDTY is frequented by many CAM practitioners who will gain their information from it and pass it on to their customers. It is easy to imagine practitioners telling their patients that these scientists were forced into a humiliating retraction and that supplementation is safe. This would not be true, they would be repeating WDDTY lies.

Shame on WDDTY.

Alternative medicine has long debased the ideals and principles of science in private and in public.  Now, as David Colquhoun shows, it is beginning to corrupt science in universities with the awarding of B.Sc degrees in various facets of alternative medicine.  These degrees don’t teach the intellectual rigour and critical thinking required to understand and appreciate scientific thinking, rather they teach credulous notions of auras, healing crystals and vitalism without any sign of critical thought.

Please read David Colquhoun’s article.  It’s both a damning expose of the unthinking thinking behind alternative medicine and the corruption of academic standards in the face of profit.

According to their website the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT) is a conscientious professional organisation for nutritionists. It’s primary function is described as being

to assist its members in attaining the highest standards of integrity, knowledge, competence and professional practice, in order to protect the client’s interests, nutritional therapy and the Nutritional Therapist.

BANT makes clear that:

[it] was set up as a Company Limited by Guarantee in February 1997. It is a non-profit organisation funded neither by pharmaceutical, agrochemical or government agencies but by member subscriptions and donations.

and that:

BANT promotes high standards of education in Nutritional Therapy and high standards of practice and ethics within the profession.

BANT acts as a professional body regulating the activities, training and Continuing Professional Development of its practitioners.

So far so good, any professional body that sees itself as a regulator must remain untainted by whims of the market and must uphold the highest standards of public behaviour. However, as Holfordwatch discovered last year, BANT see themselves as

a professional association and not a regulator

so it is quite mystifying why their public webspace would use the word ‘regulation’ when what they really mean is that they don’t regulate. Regardless of this bit of Orwellian doublespeak one would expect a professional association, as BANT claim they do, to promote high standards of ethics and practice.

Now a common complaint amongst purveyors of what civilised society calls complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is that Big Pharma have a disproportinate influence on health professionals. While nobody denies that Big Pharma are often unprincipled, unethical and sometimes outright bastards in their tactics it is important to note that professional regulators, like the General Medical Council (GMC), ensure that their members operate ethically despite the best attempts of big business to buy their affection.

Now it might be expected that BANT would be similarly professional and as they claim not to receive funding from “pharmaceutical, agrochemical or government agencies” would be independent of commercial concerns. Sadly this is not true.

As Holfordwatch have pointed out, the BANT Code of Ethics allows nutritionists to exploit their clients for commercial benefit by receiving commission from supplement sales. This is quite extraordinary, especially when you consider that the GMC impose heavy sanctions on its members who do similar things as this example shows. A recent Holfordwatch post draws parallels with the financial services industry and emphasises the need for regulation in all sectors where it is possible for an advisor/practitioner to earn commission from recommending products to consumers.

The offical BANT sanction of commission is curiously unethical behaviour and, despite BANT specifically denying receiving commercial funding, one which would seem to benefit big business as it allows an unhealthily direct pipeline from manufacturer to practitioner to customer with commercial inducements encouraging the practitioner to profit at the expense of the customer. One might wonder if BANT were got at by Big Nute Nutra when codifying their Code of Ethics. This would appear to be the case.

BANT have helpfully provided the 2004 issue of their Code of Ethics, here (PDF), which contains this interesting addendum covering the changes since the last revision:

Item: 7.3 Changed: Commission payments can now be accepted under specified conditions.

Item 7.3 is this section:

7.3 Trade discounts and commission payments.
The main income, generated as members of BANT, should come from consultative, advisory,
educational and promotional aspects of Nutritional Therapy. (G).
a) In addition to supplying supplements as an integral part of a consultation, the Member
may also act as a supplier of laboratory tests, or any other products related to Nutritional
Therapy. The member may choose to benefit from trade discounts and commission payments
when offered by the supplier on products purchased by him for such use. The member
decides whether such payments, in whole or in part, are retained in his Nutritional Therapy
business, or passed onto the client. (B).

b) The Member may accept commission directly from the supplier. This can also apply when
repeat orders for products prescribed by the Member, are placed directly by a client with the
supplier, with the prior agreement of the Member. However, to protect both the Member and
the client, both parties must be in a formal client relationship and implementing the
prescribed programme of treatment, timings, review meetings and record taking as arranged
initially between the parties. (B).

One might wonder where the impetus for this change came from. Luckily BANT have also provided the minutes of their 2004 AGM, here (PDF), that shed some light on this. Under the Ethics section these minutes state that:

A trade association complaint about the apparent constraints placed on their membership set by the BANT codes

and

Regarding commission payments: Code 4.8 currently gives permission to act as a retailer. Provided this ‘interest’ is disclosed to the client then the trade discount can be retained. It remains impermissible at this time to receive commissions from ‘down-line’ (unknown users who are not clients) as in multi-level marketing. However practitioners are free to purchase such products, when considered best suited to the needs of their clients, by providing them directly to current clients whilst part of a programme agreed with, and regularly reviewed with, the client – preferably on a face to face basis..

Now curiously code 4.8 is is absent from the 2004 (and subsequent) Codes of Ethics and has been replaced by 7.3 which appears more lenient. in fact 7.3 places no obligation on the practitioner to pass this commission on to the customer. Curiouser and curiouser, it seems the 2004 Code of Ethics was issued in August 2004 while the AGM took place just 6 weeks earlier in June. It certainly looks like the trade association complaint had the desired effect.

So next time you hear a nutritionist on the radio alleging inappropriate financial influence of Big Pharma you should remind yourself that, as a BANT member, they belong to an organisation that while it claims to be professional and a regulator does no such thing and is willing to sacrifice ethics for profit at the behest of Big Nute. BANT are little more than an unprincipled opportunistic trade organisation that exists to maximise revenue for Big Nute and nutritionists at the expense of customers. It is absurd to consider them professional or regulators.

*update*

Dr*T over at the badscience forums thinks Big Nutra is better than Big Nute.  I concur.  Big Nute does sound like the kind of lizard overlord Ken Livingston would summon should he not win the London Mayoral election.

Patrick Holford is a fellow of BANT. BANT have a code of ethics (thanks to Holfordwatch for the link). The BANT code of ethics clearly allows its members to earn commission and profit from selling products to clients which, as Holfordwatch point out, is inappropriate behaviour from want-to-be healthcare professionals. However, despite its faults, the BANT code does apply to its members and they are expected to adhere to its strictures.

Patrick Holford makes a career out of selling products and books and his grasp of science is shaky at best. I recently discovered a webchat from early last year that superbly illustrates the idiocies and unethicaliness of Patrick, who might be expected to adhere to the BANT code of ethics, as well as highlighting the relentless profit driven proselytising of his own products. In fact I have my suspicions that the bulk of the Holford Head is a clockwork counting machine that, with a ping and the roll of a pound sign across Patrick’s pupils, rapidly calculates the commercial benefit of any given situation. So I have decided to analyse this webchat with respect to Patrick’s ignorance, bad advice, wrong advice, profit making and breaches of the following sections of the BANT code of ethics:

6.3 The Member should strive for a good relationship and full co-operation with medical and other recognised health professions. Clients must not be led to believe that Nutritional Therapy replaces medical care.

7.1 b). The Member must never promise cure or recovery. Nutritional Therapy claims that the advice given may enhance the body’s natural means of resistance to disease.

7.1 e). The Member must not advise a client in any case which exceeds his capacity or competence, but should call in another nutritional therapist or refer the client to the appropriate practitioner or Registered Medical Practitioner.

12.1 The Member, placing an advertisement, must satisfy the requirements of the British Code of Advertising Practice and the Advertising Standards Authority (www.asa.org.uk).

Anyway, let us begin………….

Patrick Holford: Good morning! If you want to solve a health problem and find out how to feel fantastic I am here to help you! So keep sending your questions….

Honor: Where can you get an allergy test from?

Patrick Holford: That’s easy. Go to www.yorktest.com. These tests are done using a home-test kit and are excellent.

Yorktest kits are here and the allergy kits cost £89.50. The Advertising Standards Agency had this to say about the yorktest allergy kit:

we were concerned that those tests were not used by medical practitioners as sole diagnostic tools and concluded that YorkTest had not justified the implication that allergy could be diagnosed using the YorkTest allergy testing service alone.

So Patrick Holford is flogging an expensive kit that doesn’t work rather than recommend a visit to a GP or specialist which will cost nothing. He is also in breach of section 12.1 as the ASA have ruled against York Test.

Linda M: Can you suggest a diet that will help relieve the symptoms of Fibromyalgia?

Patrick Holford: This is not an inflammatory disease, so anti-inflammatory painkillers rarely help. Try Magnesium Malate 300mg a day and eat magensium rich foods such as pumkin [sic] seeds. My book Say No to Arthritis has a chapter on it if you want more info.

While Patrick is right in saying this is not an inflammatory disease he is wrong about anti-inflammatory painkillers, according to the Mayo Clinic they may be of use in conjunction with other medications. The evidence that magnesium supplementation may help is almost non-existent in the peer reviewed literature. Not only does Patrick provide misleading and plain wrong information to Linda but he recommends she pay for his book, a bargain at £6.49 from Amazon, instead of suggesting she visit Fibromyalgia Association UK for unbiased free advice. Given that questions must be asked of Patrick’s competence as it is clear he doesn’t understand fibromyalgia is is fair to assume he is in breach of 7.1 e).

Trina: Can diet make any difference to fatigue caused by MS?

Patrick Holford: Absolutely. MS sufferers often have high ‘homocysteine’ levels (get this checked), solved by supplementing more folic acid, B12 and B6. Try Higher Nature’s H Factor supplement. Also, up your intake of essential fats - both Omega 3 from fish and Omega 6 from seeds.

The peerless Holfordwatch have a lot to say about Patrick’s obsession with homocysteine, and of course there is no evidence that supplementing with various vitamins or essential fats can effect homocysteine levels and fatigue caused by MS. A months supply of H Factor is £15.40 but a visit to to Multiple Sclerosis Society or a GP would cost nothing, it is no surprise that Patrick recommends the route that puts cash in his pocket. Now as Holfordwatch have amply illustrated Patrick’s incompetence in this matter it is fair to assume this is another breach of 7.1 e.

Julie: Can you suggest what to eat to prevent/treat osteoporosis?

Patrick Holford: It’s not just about calcium. There are many minerals needed to make healthy bones - zinc, magnesium, silica to name a few. You also need vitamin D. But one of the main reasons for osteoporosis is hormonal imbalances. If you are menopausal look into ‘natural progesterone’.

Patrick Holford: The best website on this is by Dr John Lee. Look it up on Google.

Patrick is of course quite correct in stating that there more to osteoporosis than a calcium deficiency but it seems odd that he neglects to mention dietary and lifestyle interventions instead choosing to focus on minerals (available in supplement form from a nutritionist near you). As Patrick implies one of the main causes of osteoporosis in women is different hormone levels following menopause, although his comment about natural progesterone is a little odd, progesterone is progesterone - that is it has a specific chemical structure whether it is synthetic or natural, perhaps Patrick is concerned about progestins, progesterone analogues, but it is hard to tell as his grasp of science is so obviously lacking. Anyway, this comment is notable as Patrick is kind of in the right continent in terms of accuracy and hasn’t plugged any of his own products. Oddly Patrick recommends the website of John Lee, John Lee is dead and his recent works have been ghostwritten by others. Personally I would have suggested people might want to visit the National Osteoporosis Society website or their GP for advice instead of relying on a dead man’s advice. I will be charitable because Patrick is kind of in the right direction, albeit +/- 90 degrees, and not classify this as a breach of the BANT ethical code.

Rach: Hi, I’m 20 and having a lot of problems at the moment. I feel sick when I eat, constantly tired and no energy… any advice?

Patrick Holford: Either see one of my nutritionists - go to www.patrickholford.com and select ‘consultation’, or have an on-line consultation with me (costs £24). I also have a book Beat Stress and Fatigue. As you’ve seen cyronic[sic] tiredness is easily solved in days not months.

Here we have Patrick recommending a book, priced at £6.99, and a £24 consultation or trip to a fee charging nutritionist instead of recommending a visit to the GP which will cost nothing. I’m tempted to flag this up as a breach of 6.3 and 7.1 e) as Patrick is both assuming competence and implies that nutritional therapy is better than proper medical advice.

Pinky: Could you give me any information on a diet for someone suffering with LUPUS?

Patrick Holford: This is an auto-immune disease. You definitely should see one of my nutritionists and get allergy tested. The last person I treated had complete relief!

First of all we should question Patrick’s claims of complete relief as lupus is a recurring incurable disease and complete relief implies that it does not recur and hence is cured. I am not sure of the medical rationale for recommending a £89.50 allergy test instead of a visit to the GP. I can only hypothesise that the former involves profit for Patrick. I think this also breaks section 7.1 b), and 7.1 e) as complete relief can be construed as cure and, as always, Patrick lacks competence.

Gill: what foods and supplements can I use to increase my sex drive and are they safe to continue during pregnancy?

Patrick Holford: General ‘optimum nutrition’ increases sex drive. Specifically getting enough zinc (in seeds but also supplement 10mg a day) and essential fats (again in seeds but worth supplementing) ups sex drive and is brilliant for pregnancy. Read ‘Optimum Nutrition Before During and After Pregnancy’.

Needless to say there is little evidence that zinc has any effect on libido so it is mystifying as to why Patrick should recommend it. His book costs £6.49, roughly the same price as a half decent bottle of wine and a couple of candles which when used in the right environment can increase sex drive. I can only question Patrick’s competence in the sex department, a breach of 7.1 e).

Audrey: Hi, my husband has suffered with mood swings for many years and won’t go to see anyone - can you recommend some supplements?

Patrick Holford: My all-time favourite, which I gave to Sarah, is Mood Food Formula (2 twice a day) and Omega 3 Fish Oil. The best value is the ‘mood pack’ on www.healthproductsforlife.com. There’s a chapter on Beating the Blues in my book ‘Optimum nutrition for the Mind’.

Who is Sarah? Is she Patrick’s other half or some other female of his acquaintance whose mood swings have to be controlled through regular doses of supplements. Is Patrick really suggesting that the best solution to a person with a bad mood is to drug them with teh happy pills? Incidentally a months supply of the mood pack costs £51.90 and the book costs £9.74. Evidentially Patrick considers £60/month money well spent when controlling a moody female.

Meggy: Hi, I follow a vegan diet, how do I ensure that I get sufficient Omega oils?

Patrick Holford: The difficulty is Omega 3. They are in flax seeds, pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds, so have a spoonful (ideally ground) a day. But the conversion to the really powerful EPA/DHA Omega 3s found in fish is poor.

Patrick Holford: I’m a ’smoked salmon vegan’ because I don’t think you can get enough of the really powerful Omega 3s from seeds alone.

Well this is a sensitive discussion of somebody’s principled dietary stance. Tell them they are not getting enough omega 3s then mock their position with a flippant comment about salmon. Nice one Patrick. I suspect his science is bollocks too.

Alex: Hi..I think my dad suffers from depression. Can what you said on the show really help?

Patrick Holford: Absolutely. Just do what I said for Audrey. The book is really helpful. Exercise and sunlight also improve mood. So get him out for walks.

Treat you dad like a dog, Alex. Walkies. It will do him good. Oh and buy my book.

Rahma: Good morning. I suffer from really bad paranoia. It eats up my life - is there anything that can help?

Patrick Holford: I am director of the Brain Bio Centre in London, where we work with people such as yourself. Check it out on www.brainbiocentre.com. Our success rate is very high.

Personally I would recommend a visit to the GP to ask for a referral to a mental health specialist. Patrick recommends a visit to a centre, staffed by largely non-medically qualified individuals, that makes him money. I will flag this up as a breach of 6.3, implying his therapy is better than medical care, 7.1 b) for implying cure through his success rate and 7.1 e), on grounds of (in)competence.

Tina: Hi, at Easter I changed my eating habits. I cut out coffee, chocolate, pasta, bread and dairy. I now eat lots of fresh fruit and veg, drink lemon juice with water and fresh fruit juices. I’ve lost weight and feel better for it except for one thing. I am constantly constipated. Please help.

Patrick Holford: Have soaked oats or porridge in the morning with a big spoonful of ground flax seeds. Drink lots of water. Take up yoga or something that gets you doing abdominal breathing. The exercise ‘udiyama’ is brilliant for constipation.

There is of course no yoga exercise called ‘udiyama’, perhaps Patrick means ‘uddiyana’. I am also not sure what Patrick’s rationale is for any link between breathing and constipation, in Patrick’s case there certainly is a link between speaking and defecation but the problem certainly isn’t a blockage. Yet another mark for 7.1 e), competence.

David P: Dear Patrick, I have a heart arhythmia and take magnesium and a number of other supplements. I’ve heard that Vit K2 is good at preventing clacification of the arteries. Is this true and do you know where I can source it in the UK?

Patrick Holford: It’s not where I’d focus. CoEnzyme Q10 (90mg a day) helps improve heart muscle function. Make sure your homocysteine level has been checked and is low. Yorktest also do a homtest kit. See www.thehfactor.com.

While Patrick is right in saying that Q10 may have beneficial effects in the case of arrhythmia, no wait he doesn’t use the caveats necessary to imply the uncertain nature of research - he makes a definitive statement that is too strong to be supported by the literature. Also, the H factor is a website that recommends a £75 test and a book priced at £6.74. That’s another breach of 7.1 e). Regretably there is nothing in the BANT code to prohibit taking financial advantage of clients.

Sharon: Hi, I was watching LK today and it was like looking in the mirror. Everything Sarah said related to how I feel and have done for years. I also feel that this has affected my family life as I am always tired, have headaches and do not seem to have any get up and go.

Patrick Holford: This approach is so powerful. GMTV put up some great links for each topic. My book ‘The New Optimum Nutrition Bible’ tells the whole story and it’s so doable.

Ahh Sarah must be a prize patient of Patrick’s to be paraded in front of the media, no doubt a Holford administered pilled up passive participant. Patrick’s book will cost you £8.44 with all profits going to his enterprises. I’m not sure a book by a man who openly admits giving his patients mood altering drugs then dragging them on tv (in an altered state?) to push his pills will be balanced and reliable, questions over competence - another breach of 7.1 e)

Paula: I constantly crave sweet things all day long. Please help.

Patrick Holford: I put Elaine and Sarah on my Holford Low GL Diet (see www.holforddiet.com) and gave them a supplement of chromium 200mcg x 2 with breakfast. If you do the diet and take chromium your cravings will go.

Holfordwatch did an excellent examination of Holfords claims regarding chromium and it turns out that he is displaying his usual talent for pseudo scientific reverse coprophagia. A months supply of Patrick’s chromium pills will cost you £14.95. The chromium episode also revealed the striking ignorances in Patrick’s knowledge, another breach of 7.1 e). Holford Watch also have an excellent examination of the GL diet here.

Clare: Hi Patrick. I have had an undiagnosed hip problem since the birth of my son 4 years ago which flares up when I am stressed. Have you any idea what foods can be the cause of this?

Patrick Holford: It sounds like inflammation. Meat and dairy encourage it, while fish and flax seeds are anti-inflammatory. You may have a food allergy and it’s worth getting tested (see www.yorktest.com).

Will Patrick’s powers of internet diagnosis never cease to amaze? Clare’s problem is undiagnosed implying that she has not seen a GP or a GP failed to find anything wrong with her, this doesn’t stop Patrick from coming up with an instant diagnosis of inflammation. This is a modern medical miracle. Patrick must have awesome superpowers to remote diagnose problems based on a one sentence description. There is of course no evidence to support his assertion on food types and inflammation, but this doesn’t perturb this diagnostic savant, he is also happy to plug his test kit which costs how much? Oh and another breach of 7.1 e) - competence.

Laura: Please could you tell me the best place to get a food intolerance test and roughly how much it will cost? Thanks.

Patrick Holford: www.yorktest.com. A full 113 food allergy test is about £200, but what they do (from a hometest kit which costs £20) is test if you have any allergic reaction. If not, you’ve wasted £20. If so, they’ll have your blood, deduct the £20 and recommend you have the full allergy test. It’s worth it.

Anybody else have the start of Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ running through their head at this point? Patrick probably does. Now while wasting £20 may seem like nothing to a successful businessman like Patrick it probably is to those on low or average income. I’m curious as to how many of the £20 customers are told that they don’t have any allergies so don’t have to pay for the full kit?

Louise: Hi, I have seen your article today about tiredness and depression. I think I have the same symptoms. I am still breastfeeding - are the supplements suitable for me to take?

Patrick Holford: Yes. Everything I’ve recommended is suitable for both you and your baby. Supplementing fish oils makes your child smarter.

Here is a case study showing that over the counter supplements can cause health problems in young children. I wish Patrick would be more careful in his advice. Perhaps he did not receive enough fish oils as a child. Another breach of 7.1 e).

Artyone: I have a daughter who over the last year has had 3 kidney infections, bladder infections and inflamed gall bladder. She was a veggie for 7 years and started eating meat 18 months ago. She has gained 1 stone in weight. Can you help?

Patrick Holford: She needs to see one of my nutritionists. Go to www.patrickholford.com, select ‘consultations’. I’ll tell you who to see locally. It’s a free service.

Of course Patrick would never recommend that somebody see their GP, perhaps because it is free and won’t fatten the Holford wallet? It’s also odd that Patrick seems to suggest that he personally replies to people who fill out forms on the consultation section of his website, wouldn’t it be a better use of the Holford time, and time is money, to employ somebody to deal with such enquiries? Maybe this happens already and Patrick is lying to us, or maybe Patrick is his organisation, a vast money making pill pushing symbiotic organism. A superorganism - a cybernetic blend of organic life, inorganic minerals and technology all striving towards a common purpose. Scary.

Donna: Hi, I’ve not long had a baby, she’s almost 8 wks old, and I’d like to know what diet you would recommend to help me lose the baby fat!

Patrick Holford: Go on my Holford Low GL Diet. It’s available at www.holforddiet.com. It works brilliantly. Also, get your muscles back in shape.

Patrick Holford: There’s a brilliant exercise system- Psychocalisthenics - takes 15 mins. By the way, this weekend I’m teaching my 100% Health Weekend Workshop to transform people’s health. You learn this in the process. See www.patrickholford.com

The Holford Low GL Diet, yours for just £7.99. The GL diet is scientifically proven to be no better than the alternatives but endorsed by Holford. Is anyone surprised? Psychocalistenics appears to be absent from the academic literature. Sigh, yet another breach of 7.1 e) - competence.

Ross: Hi Patrick, I’m 17 years old and was diagnosed with crohn`s disease last year. I was on a diet of only elemental 028 liquid for 9 weeks, howerver I have gradually got back to eating most foods. Are there any foods that you would recommend that I eat or avoid to help try and control my condition?

Patrick Holford: Everynoe [sic] with Crohn’s has allergies. Get yourself tested. Most react to either wheat, milk or yeast, not oats. I suggest you read ‘ Imrpvoe Your Digestion’ - there’s a chapter on Crohns, available at www.patrickholford.com.

I suspected that Patrick’s assertion that everybody with Crohn’s disease has allergy is bollocks, I can’t find any evidence to support his claim. “Improve Your Digestion” clocks in at £5.49. I’m not surprised that Patrick doesn’t recommend that Ross check out the National Association for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease for their free advice as it would mean no royalties for him. And as is becoming clear - profit makes for happy Patrick. He doesn’t seem to care that his advice breaches 7.1 e) on yet more (in)competence.

Judy: Hello Patrick, How do I find a nutritionist in my area please, who can offer the same advice as you?

Patrick Holford: Either go to my website and click on ‘consultations’ or have me as your nutritionist by comnig [sic] to this weekend’s 100% Health workshop.

Patrick’s weekend seminars typically cost upwards of £126 depending on how much money you have given Patrick for other services. It’s not cheap but if you want to get healthy the Holford way then the more you spend the better you get, it’s like scientology really.

Nicki: Hi my name is Nicki, can you help me please? I suffer from low energy levels and lightheadedness, I follow the Weight Watchers programme, but do drink about 4 cups of tea a day, is there anything I can do to make me feel better?

Patrick Holford: You’d be much better off on what’s called a Low GL diet. This involves ‘grazing rather than gorging’ on the foods that keep your blood sugar level even. Read my Holford Low GL Diet.

Now personally I’ve never had to follow a diet plan so can’t vouch for the efficacy of various programmes. However, Weight Watchers has been shown to be reasonably good for you. There has been no scientific research in to Patrick’s Low GL diet, although GL diets in general have been shown to have no specific advantages, however there are numerous books written by Patrick on the subject. Profit for Patrick trumps evidence yet again. Of course 7.1 e) competence is breached yet again.

Dee: Hi, Is there anything I can include/exclude from my diet to help with aching joints? I am only 34 but when I get up in the morning, feel like I am 60 because my back aches and my ankle joints are stiff and crack. Thanks.

Patrick Holford: You almost certainly have allergies. Everyone is different. Also read ‘ Say no to Arthritis’ - available on my website.

Again this shows the remarkable remote diagnostic powers of Patrick Holford. If only establishing allergies was as easy as taking the word of a pill peddler. And buying his book at £6.49. What is it with Holford and allergies anyway, one would think every medical complaint has its roots in an allergic reaction. Does Patrick have a commercial interest in allergy testing? Oh and he is clearly incompetent, once more another breach of 7.1 e).

Paul: I have become really confused by the many conflicting diets that are around. Where can I get advice as to what constitutes a healthy diet?

Patrick Holford: The place to start is my book ‘The New Optimum Nutrition Bible’. It’s based on our 25 years research at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition and will clarify all your confusion.

The ION might have been doing research for 25 years but they have published nothing in peer reviewed journals. Instead they have consolidated Patrick’s business creating a network of nutritionists in hock to the charms of the man and his product. The book is £8.49. Profit for Patrick is better than scientific research.

Rob: Drinking guiness puts me on a high the next day, this presumably indicates low iron, should i get a blood test done by my doctor before getting a good multivitamin?

Patrick Holford: Guiness [sic] is higher in B vitamins too. If you’re not pale and chronically tired I’d just take a multi. I take Higher Nature’s Optimum Nutrition Pack for Mind and Body (www.healthrpoductsforlife.com).

I’m surprised Patrick with all his nutritional knowhow didn’t correct Rob and point out that, actually, there isn’t that much Iron in Guinness. However Guinness is fairly well endowed in the vitamin department and while it may not be good for you, it certainly is less bad for you than some if its competitors. The Optimum Nutrition Pack is a snip at £34.95 for a months supply. Or you could buy 10 pints of Guinness (in a classy establishment or London) for the same and have much more fun.

Jo: Would like to know if the GI diet is ok for someone who is underweight?

Patrick Holford: I’m recommending a GL diet which is better. If you are underweight the same principles apply, but not the quantities. Underweight often means digestion problems. Try taking a digestive enzyme with each meal.

Of course, as previously pointed out, there is no evidence that the GL diet has any special advantage. There is anecdotal evidence that it may increase the size of Patrick’s purse. I also think it is odd that Patrick would hypothesise that Jo might not produce enough digestive enzymes. If he really thought this was the case should he be advising an urgent trip to the GP and referral for a battery of tests as it would be a really, really fucking serious problem? Once again we must criticise Patrick’s competence - breach of 7.1 e)

Sparkle: Hi, I’ve suffered from panic attacks for the last 3 years and I’ve tried anti-depressants but the panic attacks came back. Im now seeing a psychologist to talk through the anxiety but was wondering if there any changes to my diet that may help? I’m 26.

Patrick Holford: The best option would be to come to our Brain Bio Centre (www.brainbiocentre.com). If you can’t do that read ‘Optimum Nutrition for the Mind’. There’s a lot in there that might help you.

An NHS psychologist will not cost the patient anything (directly, albeit through taxation we all fund it). The Brain Bio Centre state the costs as follows. “Most patients spend about £600 to £1100 over several months, plus between £2 and £3 per day for supplements over this time.”. Scandalous. Optimum Nutrition for the Mind is £9.74. I can see the pound signs revolving in Patrick’s eyes. This is a clear breach of 6.3 as he implies that his method is better than medical care, likewise a clear breach of 7.1 e).

Jennie: I have just watched your piece on fighting depression and the importance of fish oils, but I don’t like fish, is there anything else I can take?

Patrick Holford: Can you swallow a fish oil capsule? Best value is Omega 3 Fish Oil at www.healthproductsforlife.com. Flax and pumpkin seeds contain Omega 3 but not enough for a mood boost.

Now Patricks fish pills will cost you £15.94 for a months supply. Your local supermarket will no doubt be cheaper. I am also slightly concerned that Patrick is advocating pill popping for improving ones mood. I though the days of mothers little helper were long gone.

EileenAli: I would like to start trying for a baby in the new year and am confused what diets are right for me - eg GI, Low Carb etc.

Patrick Holford: My Holford Low GL Diet is perfect for everybody, pregnant or otherwise. Also read ‘ Optimum Nutrition Before, During, After Pregnancy’.

As before it is worth pointing out there is no published peer reviewed evidence stating the perfection of Patrick’s profitable diet programme. His book will set you back £6.49. Personally my advice for trying for a baby is unprotected sex and lots of it. Probably best with the same person though.

Hazel: Hi Patrick I’d really like some advice on good (and tasty) snacks to help keep my blood sugar levels even - I don’t like much fruit (although i do like fruit smoothies) and a handful of nuts and seeds doesn’t really appeal. At the moment I reach for a packet of crisps.

Patrick Holford: Get some Clearspring Roasted Pumpkin seeds. Surpisingly delicious. And try Nairn’s Oat Cakes and oat biscuits. The ginger ones are my favourite. Strawberries are great for you.

Well this is a first, Patrick recommending somebody else’s product. He has obviously not got into the oat cake business. However, the intention was to recommend a low sugar product then it aint oatcakes or biscuits. Oh, it turns out that Patrick officially endorses Nairn’s oatcakes. Kerching, profit in the Patrick pocket.  Funny how he neglects to mention his financial involvement with Nairns when plugging their product.

Rebekah: Please can you help with nutrition during the early stages of pregnancy?

Patrick Holford: You must either eat oily fish twice a week or/and supplement fish oils. Again, my book ‘ Optimum Nutrition Before, During and After Pregnancy’ tells you everything.

You must, must you? This man is an arsehole. He has no expertise in nutrition while pregnant. You need to see a GP or a dietician for that, which will cost you nothing. Alternatively you could pay £6.49 or Patrick’s book. The choice is yours, Rebekah with a ‘k’. Oh and yet more incompetence, 7.1 e) breached more times than the levee’s of New Orleans.

Jo: Hello Patrick, have you any ideas what could help my mother who is experiencing very severe menopausal hot flushes? She has cut out stimulants like tea and coffee etc and is taking black cohosh with no effect.

Patrick Holford: The most effective is ‘natural progesterone’ - look at the Natural Progesterone Society. Eat some soya everyday. Phytoestrogens help. Abdominal breathing helps big time. You’ll learn this in a yoga class.

I’ve previously pointed out that progesterone is progesterone whether synthetic or natural. Also, there is little if any scientific evidence that soya or phytoestrogens help despite Patrick’s claims. Patrick’s ignorance of yoga has been highlighted earlier. The man is a clueless pillock. Another breach of 7.1 e), competence.

Fiona: Hello. Can you recommend any foods to combat the symptoms of polycystic ovary?

Patrick Holford: This is mainly caused by ‘insulin resistance’, which is caused by blood sugar fluctuations, which is solved by follwing my ‘Holford Low GL Diet’ - see www.holforddiet.com.

Oh for crying out loud Patrick. You are wrong. Polycystic ovaries have many causes and there is a correlation with insulin resistance in some patients. It is not mainly caused by insulin resistance. Also while dietary interventions may help you would be best advised to discuss this with a GP/dietician. Still there is no profit in sensible advice for our Patrick, there is profit in ignorant pill and book peddling. I will also mark him down for breaching 6.1 for mentioning his product but not a medical practitioner, 7.1 b) for implying cure, ie solving, and 7.1 e) for incompetence.

Jackie: I am a 53-year-old woman, just about starting the change of life. I am not fat anywhere but my stomach, I have even been asked if I am pregnant by aquaintances! I have tried the slimming world plan but can’t seem to loose my tummy! Should I seek help from my GP?

Patrick Holford: You’ve probably got bloating. This means you are either allergic or not digesting properly. See www.patrickholford.com/ibs. Also, the exercise system I teach in my 100% Workshop this weekend is brilliant for flat tummies! See the website. There’s 8 places left.

Now looky here. Here we have somebody entertaining the thought that they should visit their GP. Look how quick Patrick is to remote diagnose then recommend his expensive workshop at the expense of a free visit to the GP. Can he sink any lower? Clear breach of 6.3, replacing medical care with his therapy, and of course 7.1 e) competence.

Antie: I suffer with heavy periods. Are there any particular foods or vitamins that could help combat this problem? Thanks.

Patrick Holford: Generally, this relieves quickly if you follow the advice for PMS on www.patrickholford.com/pms. If not, read ‘ Balancing Hormones Naturally’.

I would recommend the NHS pages on PMS, written by qualified individuals, rather than Patrick’s version of reality. His book costs £5.49.

Heather: Hello, I’m Heather and I’m 13 years old. I feel really sad all the time and I’m seeing a counsellor at school but I’m always crying and it’s really horrible - please help me!

Patrick Holford: Firstly, do what you can from www.patrickholford.com/depressionandmood. Secondly, do take a fish oil capsule and chromium 200mcg x 2 am. Thirdly, have you thought of calling Childline? If your folks can afford it come to my Brain Bio Centre. There is a solution. We’ve just got to find it.

OK, this is it, the ultimate low, taking advantage of children. Patrick Holford’s standards have finally dragged their flaccid underbelly across the floor of the Mariana Trench. Why the fuck should Patrick recommend his website, then recommend a bullshit capsule combination before mentioning Childline? Priorities Patrick. Your profit is not more important than child welfare. 7.1 e) breached of course.

Kate: How can i make an appointment to see you and is it expensive?

Patrick Holford: I don’t see people one-to-one but I do advise you via my 100% Health Weekend Workshop - and stay with you for 3 months afterwards. The next one is this weekend. I do have a team of great nutritionists. All the details are on www.patrickholford.com.

Patrick Holford: Great questions! If you have any more go to the question/answer section of www.patrickholford.com.Remember the definition of insanity is….to keep doing the same things and expect different results. This stuff works.

Well the 100% Health Weekend Workshops start at £159 for non-members.  This is expensive.  As always I must point people to the mighty Holford Watch when it comes to analysing Patrick’s claims for his products.

So in the course of this brief webchat Patrick has breached the BANT code of ethics numerous times, which as a Fellow one would expect him to respect, plugged well over a thousand pounds of his own products and courses, and offered advice that is at very best misleading and is mostly staggeringly wrong.  It is clear the man is a complete chump only interested in profiting from his bullshit ideas and scientific illiteracy.  It is also doubly staggering that BANT see nothing wrong in a man like Patrick who relentlessly takes financial advantage of others, is demonstrably stupifyingly ignorant and breaches their code of ethics.  In fact one might be compelled to complain to BANT about this.  It beggars belief that this man is taken seriously by some sections of the media and allowed to indulge in advertorials masquerading as advice sessions in their name.  Sometimes I feel like I am one of the few sane people in this world, even respectable instituitions such as the University of Teesside have fallen for his slick patter, sometimes I wonder if the definition of insanity is a world in which people respect the opinions of Patrick Holford.

Patrick Holford’s inadequate grasp of science and medicine has been pointed out many times before and he has even inspired a blog to correct his frequent and egregious errors and Clintonesque misstatements. Patrick was the subject of approximately 10 minutes of criticism by Ben Goldacre in his excellent Radio 4 series on lifestyle nutritionists past and present. Regrettably we didn’t get to hear Patrick’s dulcet tones, a voice that has pushed a million pills, as he felt that Radio 4 were:

quite aggressive and suggested a preconceived agenda to trash nutritional therapy with a highly-biased presenter, who has won numerous awards funded by the big pharmaceuticals.

Instead Holford has listed questions from the BBC and his responses on his website. Now Ben Goldacre may indeed be a Big Pharma shill, an anti-nutritionist bigot and the son of Satan but unless any evidence is forthcoming we should judge him on his words and on his deeds, as we should do with Patrick Holford. In fact Ben Goldacre, playing a synthesis of Copernicus and Galileo to Holford’s Pope Urban VIII, makes it clear that the world does not revolve around Patrick Holford:

As I believe the BBC explained repeatedly we were making a general programme about the misuse of science by nutritionists and the $56 billion food supplement industry in the Radio Science Unit, not a consumer programme about the various problems with Patrick Holford, and I personally am not very interested in a programme simply examining Patrick Holford….[]

Now it would be easy to mock Holford’s egotistical musings, after all even the most inflated ego can be let down by a small prick, but of more concern is Holford’s grasp of science and evidence in responding to the BBC’s questions. When examined superficially Holford’s responses seem reasonable and appear to cite evidence in favour of his argument, however, when a little bit of scrutiny is applied the evidence and arguments are revealed as little more than smoke and mirrors hiding a deep and dangerous ignorance.

Q. Chapter 24 of the latest edition of the ONB where he states that “AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug ….is proving less effective than Vitamin C” (p.208). Could Mr Holford explain how he comes to make such a dramatic claim when the single study he references is in fact an in vitro test that does not once mention AZT?

A. You have an old edition of the book. The 2007 edition cites the studies that shows this to be true. The author of the study, Dr Raxit Jariwalla, states “Patrick Holford’s conclusion that ‘AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug is proving less effective than vitamin C’, as interpreted from the results of our experiments, is correct. In two published studies in which we compared vitamin C to AZT in chronically and latently infected cells, our experiments consistently showed that AZT was less effective than vitamin C. I made this clear in my letter to the Guardian and am surprised that the Guardian journalist continues to wrongly accuse Mr Holford.’ There has been one human trial of high dose vitamin C and N-Acetyl Cysteine, the results of which are extremely encouraging. As I say in my book ‘It is a tragedy that this simple, non-toxic treatment hasn’t been further tested.’

Now it is pleasing that Holford has at last acknowledged errors in the older edition of ONB, especially as it was only last September that he was offering thinly veiled legal threats at Professor David Colquhoun for having the temerity to highlight inaccurate claims on vitamin C and AZT. It does appear though that Holford is perpetuating these inaccurate claims in his response above. I have nothing further to add to Prof Colquhoun’s criticisms of these papers and Holford’s interpretation, also Holford has not answered the question. He still refers to in vitro tests, which are cell culture experiments and cannot be extrapolated to whole organism physiology, and as Prof Colquhoun points out:

Holford also forgets to mention (or perhaps didn’t notice) that the concentrations of Vitamin C that are used in these in vitro studies are something like 10 times greater than can be achieved in man even with very high oral doses,

So even the corrected version of Holford’s book cannot justify his claims regarding vitamin C being better for treating AIDS than AZT. There is also no sign of the human trial on PubMed and Patrick has not provided a reference for it so he really has no basis to cite it in support of his arguments. Ironically there may be a role for vitamin C in conjunction with AZT, it appears that high doses of vitamin C may prevent some of the side affects of AZT in animal models. I wonder how long it will be before Patrick ignores his previous conclusions and peddles his vitamin C pills based on this research?

Q.That in the same book, Chapter 24, still on the subject of vitamin C, Mr Holford cherry picks studies in order to back up his claims about the role of vitamin C in the treatment or prevention of colds. What is Mr Holford’s reasoning for using a retrospective analysis of data from studies carried out before 1974 only and ignoring the many studies that have taken place since?

A. “The referenced study used in the Optimum Nutrition Bible in relation to colds and vitamin C, was the most up-to-date systematic review of studies on vitamin C, published in 2000. The most recent systematic review of studies on vitamin C, published last year reaches more or less the same conclusions that Vitamin C supplementation reduces the duration of symptoms, reduces the severity of symptoms, but there is no convincing evidence on reducing incidence ie the number of colds. It reports that the strongest effect is for immediate high doses on the onset of a cold, for example if 8 grams is taken 46% of subjects have a cold for no more than a day. That is the equivalent of 176 oranges, hence the recommendation in the Optimum Nutrition Bible to supplement vitamin C in high doses when you have a cold. When the book is next updated I will cite this more recent review.

The most recent review of vitamin C and the common cold is this one from the Cochrane Library. The plain language summary is below:

Plain language summary
Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold

The term ‘the common cold’ does not denote a precisely defined disease, yet the characteristics of this illness are familiar to most people. It is a major cause of visits to a doctor in Western countries and of absenteeism from work and school. It is usually caused by respiratory viruses for which antibiotics are useless. Other potential treatment options are of substantial public health interest.

Since vitamin C was isolated in the 1930s it has been proposed for respiratory infections, and became particularly popular in the 1970s for the common cold when (Nobel Prize winner) Linus Pauling drew conclusions from earlier placebo-controlled trials of large dose vitamin C on the incidence of colds. New trials were undertaken.

This review is restricted to placebo-controlled trials testing at least 0.2 g per day of vitamin C. Thirty trials involving 11,350 participants suggest that regular ingestion of vitamin C has no effect on common cold incidence in the ordinary population. It reduced the duration and severity of common cold symptoms slightly, although the magnitude of the effect was so small its clinical usefulness is doubtful. Nevertheless, in six trials with participants exposed to short periods of extreme physical or cold stress or both (including marathon runners and skiers) vitamin C reduced the common cold risk by half.

Trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically (starting after the onset of symptoms), showed no consistent effect on either duration or severity of symptoms. However, there were only a few therapeutic trials and their quality was variable. One large trial reported equivocal benefit from an 8 g therapeutic dose at the onset of symptoms, and two trials using five-day supplementation reported benefit. More therapeutic trials are necessary to settle the question, especially in children who have not entered these trials.

This review certainly does not recommend the therapeutic use of vitamin C and is clear that the research is uncertain and more trials are needed. With specific regard to Patrick Holford’s claim that the review states that 8 g of vitamin C causes 46% of recipients to have a cold for no more than a day the review actually states:

The statistically significant Anderson 1974e entry combined two different dosage arms. Anderson 1974e administered 4 g/day, and Anderson 1974f administered 8 g/day on the first day of illness only. The mean duration of illness episodes for those in the 4 g/day arm was 3.17 days, while that for 8 g/day arm was 2.86 days compared with the duration in the placebo group #4 of 3.52 days. This 1974 trial was bedeviled, however, by the fact that the investigators originally intended to compare results with two separate placebo groups. One of the placebo groups (#6) had substantial baseline differences when compared with the six vitamin C groups. The comparisons presented here are with the placebo group #4 that was much closer to the vitamin C groups with respect to baseline data (seeHemilä 2006a). If comparisons had been made with the placebo group #6 or a combination of the two placebo groups as the investigators had originally intended, the benefits would have been minimised as the mean episode duration for the placebo group #4 was 3.52, and for placebo group #6 was 2.83. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the placebo group problem, the proportion of ’short colds’, that lasted for only one day was larger in the 8 g/day group (46%; 222 out of 483) compared with the 4 g/day group (39%; 164 out of 417) (P = 0.046), consistent with the possibility of therapeutic benefit at the higher dosage (see p. 42 in Hemilä 2006a).

This is rather at odds with Mr Holford’s analysis of the 8 g claims and alongside his inaccurate claim that the review endorses therapeutic dosage with vitamin C suggests that Mr Holford has problems with comprehension.

Q. In Mr Holford’s article “Anti-Oxidant Review is a Stitch Up” he makes the mistake of confusing randomised controlled trials with observational (correlational) studies by suggesting that the meta-analysis on anti-oxidants (which reviewed only RCTs) left out two studies but in fact they were not RCTs and would not have been included. Does Mr Holford accept that his criticisms were wrong? And will he correct this article and others which make the same mistakes?

A. I accept this criticism and immediately corrected further reports on this study. My two main criticisms of this paper were that the one study, by a Dr Correa from the pathology department at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Centre, that apparently skewed results for antioxidants overall towards a negative, showed a clear protective effective of antioxidant supplements against gastrointestinal cancer. I decided to contact Dr Correa and he was ‘amazed’, he said, because his research, ‘far from being negative, had shown clear benefit from taking vitamins.’ Correa told us, there was no way the study could show anything about mortality. ‘Our study was designed for evaluation of the progress of precancerous lesions,’ he said. ‘It did not intend, and did not have the power, to study mortality and has no value to examine mortality of cancer.’

Also, the summary of this study states ‘treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality’ creating the impression these antioxidants are no good. What it failed to say in the summary, all of which are clearly stated in the results, is that ‘vitamin C given singly, or in combination with other antioxidants did not affect mortality, and selenium given singly or in combination with other antioxidant supplements may reduce mortality’. It also fails to say that ‘beta-carotene or vitamin A did not show increase in mortality if given in combination with other antioxidants’, or that ‘vitamin E given singly or combined with 4 other antioxidants did not significantly influence mortality’. I would call that cherry picking.

It seems strange that Mr Holford should accept the criticism of his criticisms then go on to reiterate his criticisms in a further attempt to avoid criticism. Anyway, as Holford has forgotten to provide references here is a link to the review. Now I cannot find the statement in the review suggesting that the Correa reference skews the results towards the negative. In fact if you look at this table it seems the Correa reference is just one of many showing that mortality in controls was lower than in the anti-oxidant group, certainly the conclusions of the review do not hinge on the Correa paper. Also, while the intention of the paper was not to study mortality it does have data that can be used in later analyses in conjunction with data from other studies to address questions of mortality. The Correa paper certainly does suggest there are benefits in supplementing with anti-oxidants in terms of gastric dysplasia but it does not look at potential side effects such as increased mortality. Given Holford’s previous problems with accurately quoting people may I suggest that Dr Correa’s remarks may have been taken out of context or misquoted.

The second paragraph above contains a number of phrases in quotation marks that are different from the actual phrases used in the paper. The following passage from the results section is the one referred to above:

Vitamin A given singly or in combination with the other supplements did not significantly affect mortality. After exclusion of high-bias risk and selenium trials, vitamin A singly or combined significantly increased mortality (Table 5).

Vitamin E given singly or in combination with the other supplements did not significantly affect mortality (Table 5). Vitamin E given singly in high (1000 IU) or low dose (<1000 IU) did not significantly affect mortality (RR, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.91-1.25; I² = 0% and RR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.94-1.07; I² = 13.0%, respectively). After exclusion of high-bias risk and selenium trials, vitamin E given singly or combined significantly increased mortality (Table 5).

Vitamin C given singly or in combination with the other supplements was without significant influence on mortality, even after the exclusion of high-bias risk trials and selenium trials (Table 5).

Selenium given singly or in combination with other antioxidant supplements had no significant influence on mortality when analyzed separately (Table 5). Selenium given singly or combined significantly decreased mortality when analyzed together. After exclusion of high-bias risk trials, selenium given singly or with other antioxidants had no significant influence on mortality (Table 5).

Holford it seems has cherry picked and altered quotes so that it appears the results do not match the conclusions. However, even the most cursory of readings shows that the reviewers eliminate trials with high-risk of bias from their conclusions. It seems that Holford, for all his talk of pharmaceutical bias, is quite happy to ignore bias when it suits his prejudices. It is not the reviewers who are cherry-picking, it is Patrick.

Q. In the Food for the Brian Child Survey, we asked Professor John Stein to look at the literature review which underpins the very conclusions of this report – a report which was heavily promoted in media and which may possibly go on to have some influence on government policy. His view was that most if not all of the references were systematically misrepresented, or perhaps misunderstood by the authors of the report. As the Food for the Brain project is on-going does Mr Holford agree with these criticisms and will he use his influence to ensure that future reports or statements about Food for the Brain projects accurately reflect the nature of the evidence and do not overstate it in order to promote their cause?

A. “The Food for the Brain Child survey is a simple survey of the diets, academic performance and behaviour of a group of over 10,000 children, a third of which also provided SAT scores. The survey simply reports which food group consumptions are associated with parental ratings of better or worse behaviour and academic performance, and SAT scores. The conclusions are based solely on this data, and make no reference to any other studies. The survey is available for all to see at our website www.foodforthebrain.org/childsurvey. There is a Q&A section for people to post critiques, and for our Scientific Advisory Board to respond. Professor Colquhoun’s critiques have been responded to. Professor Stein has not informed us of any. If there are errors we do our best to correct them.”

The best thing to do here is refer readers to Holfordwatch’s thorough dissection of the errors in this report. Needless to say the errors have not been corrected.

Q. Finally, will Mr Holford make clear any commercial relationship to any company past or present that promotes and manufacturers vitamin and mineral supplement pills, food intolerance tests or similar related products?

A. “If it’s got my name on it, be a book or a supplement, I earn a royalty. I do formulate my own supplements with the scientific experts at Biocare, whom I believe to be one of the best supplement companies in the UK, and for which I do receive royalties, however I do not simply direct people to take my supplements. I explain, in my books, articles and on my website, what to look out for in supplements, how to make sure you are getting the right levels of the nutrients that the scientific evidence supports as beneficial. I categorically am not in the business of simply persuading people to take supplements so that I can make money out of them, but advise supplements for many reasons which are apparent from articles on my website and in my books.”

This is a load of waffle where a simple list would do but it is a revealing insight into the hypocritical nature of the Holford mindset. While stating he is not in the business of pushing supplements to make money out of people he runs a website that charges fees so that:

As a member of the 100%health Club I’ll use all my expertise, contacts and research to bring you clear, unbiased advice on how to stay healthy. That’s what you’ll receive as a 100%health member

Effectively Patrick is acting as a paid consultant making money out of people by advising them on how to stay healthy, usually by taking supplements. It is a shame that, as this very brief look at his responses shows, he distorts evidence, misrepresents and misspeaks making him thoroughly unqualified to offer dietary advice. When you couple this with his clear business interests in profiting from supplements it beggars belief that this man has become an authority in the eyes of the media.

I’ve just come across this astounding press release from the College of Practical Homeopathy which is recognised by the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) and the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH) amongst others.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO TREATING COMPLEX DISEASE

By Hilary Fairclough

Sunday April 27^th 2008, 10am -5pm