Cancer is a fungus. And can be cured by baking soda. Barmy

So claims the notoriously accurate David Icke. I was alerted to this nonsense by a conspiracy-obsessed friend on Facebook.

One such case is the Italian doctor, Tullio Simoncini, a brilliant and courageous man who has refused to bow to the enormous pressure he has faced, and continues to face, after he realised what cancer is and how it can be dealt with.

Simoncini's 'crime' has been to discover that cancer is a fungus caused by Candida, a yeast-like organism that lives in the body in small amounts even in healthy people. The immune system keeps it under control normally, but when the Candida morphs into a powerful fungus some serious health problems can follow - including cancer.

Naturally, Icke has an explanation for why Big Pharma is trying to silence Simoncini (I can't bring myself to give him the title "Doctor").

But look at what has been happening as cancer numbers worldwide have soared and soared. There has been a calculated war on the human immune system that has got more vociferous with every decade.

The immune system is weakened and attacked by food and drink additives, chemical farming, vaccinations, electromagnetic and microwave technology and frequencies, pharmaceutical drugs, the stress of modern 'life', and so much more.

What defences are today's children going to have when they are given 25 vaccinations and combinations of them, before the age of two - while their immune system is still forming for goodness sake?

This is how the Illuminati families are seeking to instigate a mass cull of the population. By dismantling the body's natural defence to disease.

Yes, of course it's all a dastardly plan by those blood-sucking lizards to keep the human population down. How could we ever have doubted otherwise?

We can leave aside Icke's deluded ravings, but cancer is a serious business. Cancerous cells reproduce uncontrollably inside the body, invading and destroying healthy tissue. Generally, the only treatment is to remove the cancerous cells, and then follow up with courses of radiation or chemotherapy, to ensure all the cells are destroyed. This also damages healthy tissue, and unfortunately doesn't always succeed. The prognosis for some cancer survivors, even after surgery, may be less than 50/50.

Given such an unpromising diagnosis, it's understandable, I suppose, that many turn to alternative (or as I like to call them, untested and dangerous) treatments. And this is where quacks like Simoncini enter the picture. According to Icke:

Instead, Simoncini found something much, much simpler - sodium bicarbonate. Yes, the main ingredient in good old baking soda (but I stress not the same as baking soda, which has other ingredients).

He used this because it is a powerful destroyer of fungus and, unlike the drugs, the Candida cannot 'adapt' to it. The patient is given sodium bicarbonate orally and through internal means like an endoscope, a long thin tube that doctors use to see inside the body without surgery. This allows the sodium bicarbonate to be placed directly on the cancer - the fungus.

Baking soda. 

A quick bio of Simoncini:

Tullio Simoncini lost his offcial license to practice medicine in 2003  in Italy. On May 2006 he was convicted to 3 y. for manslaughter of the first patient and 16 months for having charged 7.500 EUR each to the other 2 patients.

Even a prison sentence didn't stop him. In 2010, a Scottish man suffering from cancer turned to Simoncini after refusing chemotherapy on the NHS.

"I've always refused chemotherapy because it just kills your immune system. I think if I'd gone through it I'd maybe even be dead by now.

Of course, Simoncini's baking soda doesn't come for free.

He has agreed to treat Mr Fyvie, from Musselburgh, but they must come up with £10,000 by 21 March to make the procedure happen.

He has the full backing of his children, one of whom ran a sponsored ten miles on Friday to add to the £1,200 they have already collected.

£10,000. One pound of baking soda costs £1.47 from American Soda. By my calculation, that money could have bought 6,802 pounds of baking soda. That's one big shopping trolley.

In any case, it did Fyvie little good, because within six months, he was dead.

The family of Robert Fyvie has been left devastated after he passed away last Friday morning, with his 10-year-old son, Marc, distraught his dad will not be there to see his first boxing match.

Mr Fyvie, 54, of Eskview Terrace, died peacefully beside his wife Angie as they slept, five months after he travelled to Rome in the hope that a cutting-edge treatment would help him overcome his illness. Sadly, it was not to be.

Still, presumably Simoncini put the money to good use.

I do think Fyvie's actions were fundamentally irresponsible towards himself and his family - he also travelled to Thailand for herbal treatments for cancer, and refused chemo, so he was dicing with death anyway. But Simoncini deserves nothing but shame for taking an obscene amount of money from a dying man and his desperate family for his sham treatments. People like that are wasting perfectly good oxygen for the rest of us.

The Republican plan for healthcare, exclusively revealed by Alan Grayson

Having sung the praises of Rory Stewart, I would still trade him in for an MP like Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida. Grayson recently lost his seat in Congress, which means we'll lose scenes like this classic from September 2009 in the House of Representatives.



We need more standups in the House of Commons, the comedians in there just aren't funny anymore.

H/T to Dangerous Minds.

Faith healing, or faith killing?

Susan M. Grady, who tried to heal her son from diabetes with prayer, and paid for her ignorance wih her son's life, has been charged, rightly, with neglect.

Susan M. Grady, 42, formerly of Broken Arrow, prayed with others over her son, Aaron Gregory Grady, when he became ill on June 2, 2009, according to an affidavit filed Tuesday in Tulsa County District Court. His condition worsened, and he died June 5, according to the affidavit.

Apparently, she never even thought about taking him to the doctor.

Susan Grady told detectives that she did not consider taking Aaron to the doctor. She told them that “I was trying to live by faith and I felt like God would heal him,” according to the affidavit.

What surprised me was that it seems that her deluded beliefs are accommodated, to an extent, by the law.

Oklahoma statutes allow parents to rely on prayer to try to heal their children up to the point that the child’s life is in danger or may face “permanent physical damage.”

According to the law, it is a misdemeanor if parents refuse to obtain care and a felony if the child dies.

If parents refuse to seek medical help for their children, the courts can intervene on the child’s behalf.

Meanwhile, her pastor remains unrepentant that leading Grady to ignore medicine resulted in the death of a child.

“We just preach faith,” said church leader Earl Weir. “It (the Bible) says to give your all. The whole church believes that way.”

Asked why that teaching requires a total denial of medical help even when an illness becomes serious or fatal, Weir said, “That’s everybody’s opinion. We’ve had the doctors kill people.”

In this case, clearly, it was OK that God decided to kill the boy himself. Can't this sham of a preacher be charged too?

Give your loved ones an extra-special prezzy: the HPV vaccine

HPV Vaccine: Would You Give Your Kids Gardasil and Cervarix Vaccines?

Martha Rosenberg's clearly heard of the idea that any question in the headline of an article should be answered "no". In this case, however, it's a resounding "yes".

Even though Merck's Gardasil and GSK's Cervarix are highly advertised to doctors and patients, many women are just saying no to the vaccines, according to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in Philadelphia last month.

The vaccines protect against the Human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus which causes cervical cancer.

In 2007, 12,280 women in the U.S. were diagnosed with cervical cancer and 4,021 died.

So vaccinating against this danger would be a good thing, right? Wrong.

And then there's the morality issue.

"I was greatly offended that Merck suggest I vaccinate my nine-year-old daughter against an STD," says Kelley Watson, a mother of two in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. "Especially insulting to me was that there was never any mention of HPV as being a sexually transmitted disease. It was presented as something women can contract through tampons or nylon stockings -- as if men played no part."

Hmm. Hate to be the one to break it to you, but one day soon, sooner than you think, your nine-year-old is likely going to be experimenting with boys, and possibly men. Why is it considered against morality to recognise that possibility, that your daughter's innocent fumblings might result in a death sentence, remote as that possibility might be?

And after the patronising morality plea, here come the health risks:

In addition to causing fainting, allergic reactions, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and blood clots, 56 girls have died from the vaccine as of September says the CDC. 14-year-old Natalie Morton died last year, soon after being vaccinated for HPV at her school in Coventry, UK though authorities now say she died of a tumor.

Nice. Even though you admit that Natalie Morton's death had nothing to do with the HPV vaccine, you still think it's fine to stick the link in your article anyway. Classy, Martha.

And you don't provide a link to back up your claim that the CDC says 56 girls have died from the vaccine. Why's that? Here, I'll help you. This is the page on the CDC website which, presumably, you took your figures from. And here's a quote.

As of September 30, 2010, there have been 56 U.S. reports of death among females who have received Gardasil. Thirty of these reports have been confirmed and 26 remain unconfirmed due to no identifiable patient information in the report such as a name and contact information to confirm the report. Confirmed reports are those that scientists have followed up on and have verified the claim. In the 30 reports confirmed, there was no unusual pattern or clustering to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine.

Whoa. Hold it a minute. Did you just say

there was no unusual pattern or clustering to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine.

Yes, it did say that. But... that would mean... Martha, you're a dishonest, lying cheat, who takes a figure from a credible health information site, and deliberately leaves out the important bits, like

there was no unusual pattern or clustering to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine

in order to pretend that it's supporting your own fanatically anti-vax views.

Fortunately, among the anti-vaxers and altie fanatics, there are a few savvy teens who have their head screwed on.

School girl said on 21 January 2010

I'm a fifteen year old girl and today i had my second HPV injection. To all those that are passing this up is rediculous. The bad side affects are really rare. All i get is a slight headache and soreness around the injected area fo 24 hours. I would much rather deal with that then actually get cervical cancer. Your daughters are at the age where they can make up their own mind about things and this is definately one of them! I highly recommend! The injection doesn't even hurt. So i think your putting your daughter more at risk from it by not letting her have it because she may not be old enough for screening but doesn't mean she won't get it at her age.