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To: The_Republic_Of_Maine
So, while I was typing, I spoke to him and asked if you called. He said that he has not had a call from anyone this afternoon that he did not know.

Are you for real??? Do you seriously expect me to call some phone number someone sends me on the internet and give you access to my name and phone number, while you pressure me to give you even more info so you can more easily access my bank and credit cards?

Now, I do not know if "Pastor Bob" is your shill, or you would have slipped into the persona of "Pastor Bob" had I called--either way, I am not interested in becoming a victim of your con job.

For all the years I have spent trying to educate people against health-related scams, you are the first actual con man I have encountered. I certainly did not expect my efforts to educate people so they don't fall for scammers like you to actually make me a target of a scammer. Do not attempt to scam me again. I will be contacting an anti-scam organization to report this attempt (they'll probably have seen this approach before, but I want to add to their database).

As the old saying goes, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

For anyone else who reads this, be aware that scammers hook their marks with anecdotal testimony and often employ shills who pretend that they profited from whatever it is that the scammer is trying to sell you, whether it's a miracle snake oil or an investment scheme.

Don't be taken in. Do your homework. Therapeutic drugs are registered with the FDA. The documents related to the drug approval are public record, and anyone can access them. I suggest using Google to search for them, not the FDA website (the search engine of the FDA is not very good). Clinical trials that demonstrate drug safety and efficacy are published and databased at www.pubmed.org. Again, anyone can access this database and at least read abstracts about the clinical trial results. Another resource is www.clinicaltrials.org, which lists a large number of trials--not all of them yet, but the goal is for every clinical trial taking place to be registered there. The WHO also maintains a clinical trial database, and you can sometimes find a trial there that isn't registered on the US site.

Scammers often provide references that look real to "prove" that their snake oil actually does cure everything. However, they engage in a practice called "cherry picking", which is to say that they are very selective about quotes from those references, and do not provide any context for those quotes. For example, I could sell dioxin supplements and tell you that they prevent breast cancer, which is true. But I would be deceiving you by not telling you the whole picture, which is that dioxin also causes other types of cancer, disrupts the immune system, and causes birth defects. Scammers also invent references that look real but are utter fiction--they count on you not to fact-check the references for yourself. If a miracle drug does what its promoters claim, you should be able to find references supporting such a claim for yourself--if the only references are those which those selling it provide, and you can't find other references in the medical literature, be suspicious.

In the case of laetrile, there is no data to support its use as a cancer treatment. A search of "laetrile clinical trial" on PubMed returns 32 results, most of which discuss the non-effectiveness of laetrile against cancer and confirm its dangers.

In closing, I will quote from a published review of cancer "treatments":

Alternative cancer cures: "unproven" or "disproven"?
Vickers A.
Abstract
Oncology has always coexisted with therapies offered outside of conventional cancer treatment centers and based on theories not found in biomedicine. These alternative cancer cures have often been described as "unproven," suggesting that appropriate clinical trials have not been conducted and that the therapeutic value of the treatment is unknown. Contrary to much popular and scientific writing, many alternative cancer treatments have been investigated in good quality clinical trials, and they have been shown to be ineffective. In this article, clinical trial data on a number of alternative cancer cures including Livingston-Wheeler, Di Bella Multitherapy, antineoplastons, vitamin C, hydrazine sulfate, Laetrile, and psychotherapy are reviewed. The label "unproven" is inappropriate for such therapies; it is time to assert that many alternative cancer therapies have been "disproven."

56 posted on 06/02/2015 4:01:48 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: exDemMom

Your bullshit has become boring. Go away.


57 posted on 06/02/2015 5:45:48 AM PDT by The_Republic_Of_Maine (In an Oligarchy, the serfs don't count.)
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