UPDATE Archives

• The BAX-3000: Clinically Proven to Lighten Wallets
• Melborne M.D. subjects autistic children to discredited diagnosis and unproven treatments
• Catholic Bishops denounce Reiki

The BAX-3000: Clinically proven to lighten wallets

A Wesley Chapel, Florida, chiropractor claims his $40,000 “BAX-3000” machine can successfully treat allergies according to the May 10th edition of the St. Petersburg Times. www.tampabay.com/news/health/article999784.ece. Although the website for the BAX-3000 says the machine “is not meant to diagnose or treat any condition,” Chiropractor Micah T. Richeson is charging patients $85 for each treatment, which takes about a minute and is not covered by insurance. Here’s how AllergiCare Relief Centers, marketer of the BAX-3000, describes its operation:

“This unique system transmits digital signals to your body for each tested allergen, which when exposed to the digital signal, your body reacts as if it were actually exposed to very subtle and safe levels of the allergen. Through this exposure we are able to monitor your body’s reaction and identify the different allergens in which your body is creating an erroneous response.

Once the allergens are identified, our licensed clinicians use advanced laser technology to stimulate points on the body which correspond with the major organ systems. This stimulation relaxes the body and temporarily strengthens the body's organ system. The laser stimulation is applied simultaneously with the digital signal that represents the allergen being treated. The body associates the positive stimulus of the laser with the exposure of the allergen and no longer perceives the allergen as harmful.” http://www.allergicare.com/treatment.asp.

There are two problems with this:

• It is biologically impossible.
• Not a single study has been done to see if the machine works as promoted.

Small wonder, then, that a representative of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America told the Times reporter that the BAX-3000 “is an unproven method of allergy treatment.”

Melborne M.D. subjects autistic children to discredited diagnosis and unproven treatments

Jeffry Bradstreet, M.D., of Melborne, Florida, owns a clinic specializing in treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder and other neurological and developmental disorders with unconventional diagnostic methods and discredited treatments. Bradstreet promotes the notion that “mercury toxicity” from vaccination causes autism, a theory now thoroughly debunked. Although he did two years of OB/GYN residency and one year of aerospace medicine, he considers himself a family physician but is not board certified in any specialty. A recent decision of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims offered valuable insight into Dr. Bradstreet’s practices through its description, and discrediting, of Bradstreet’s improper diagnosis and treatment of Colten Snyder, one of the clinic’s approximately 4,000 patients. Colten’s parents sued the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming their son’s autism was caused by his MMR vaccination. Snyder v. Secretary of HHS, No. 01-162V (U.S. Ct. Fed. Claims Feb. 12, 2009), available at http://www.autism-watch.org/omnibus/snyder.pdf.

According to the court, starting in 1999, “Bradstreet’s treatments [of Colten] included a wide variety of dietary supplements, secretin infusions, immunoglobulin therapy, chelation, glutathione, and prednilisone. He ordered numerous laboratory tests, many of which were non-standard tests not approved by the FDA, or ones performed outside the U.S.” Snyder, at 231, (brackets added).

The Special Master hearing the case remarked on the unsuitability of Bradstreet’s unconventional diagnosis and treatments at several points in the opinion:

“Petitioners failed to establish that measles virus can cause autism or that it did so in Colten [as Bradstreet had diagnosed]. They failed to demonstrate that amount of ethylmercury in TCVs causes immune system suppression or dysregulation. They failed to show that Colten’s immune system was dysregulated. [Again, as Bradsteet had diagnosed.] Although Colten’s condition markedly improved between his diagnosis and the hearing, the experimental treatments he received cannot be logically or scientifically linked to the theories of causation.” Snyder, at 3, (brackets added).

“Doctor Bradstreet’s opinions on causation informed his treatment of Colten, and for that reason, if for no other, they warrant consideration. It is clear that Colten’s condition materially improved between the time he began speech therapy in April, 1999, and the time of the hearing. However, it is far from clear that Colten’s improvement was due to Dr. Bradstreet’s treatment. It is even less clear that the treatments were designed to remove a dangerous virus from his body, and the evidence that any of the treatments were capable of doing so is nonexistent.” Snyder, at 275 (emphasis added).

As commented by Stephen Barrett, M.D. on the Quackwatch website:

“Rarely has a court ruling described a health-related scam more thoroughly. Having concluded — without justification — that mercury toxicity is a causative factor in autism, Bradstreet and his allies run phony provoked tests to look for it. But even when the tests are negative, they often treat it — with methods that are not even the appropriate ones for the conditions they claim to diagnose.” Stephen Barrett, M.D., “’Autism Specialist’ Blasted by Ominibus Special Master,” Quackwatch, http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/bradstreet.html (accessed May 28, 2009).

Perhaps the saddest part of Colten’s unfortunate history is that his parents genuinely believed they were helping their son overcome his autism. The Special Master wrote compellingly about Colten’s parents' love for their child:

“Petitioners are caring and committed parents who have focused considerable time, effort, and financial resources on Colten’s medical treatment, educational needs, and general welfare. No one who observed the hearing could doubt their commitment to Colten, or their good faith belief that Colten’s condition is the result of his childhood vaccines. They have acted on that belief in determining many of the treatments Colten has received.” Snyder, at 45.

And on whom did then rely for this diagnosis and treatment? Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet, who is still practicing at his clinic in Melborne. It is most unfortunate that the state of Florida has not legislated a scientific standard by which Dr. Bradstreet must abide. For more information see “A Remedy for Unscientific Healthcare Practices.”

Catholic Bishops denounce Reiki

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently issued Guidelines calling Reiki unscientific and inappropriate for Catholic institutions.

According to a March 26th press release from the Conference, Reiki teaches that “illness is caused by some kind of disruption or imbalance in one’s ‘life energy.’ A Reiki practitioner effects healing by placing his or her hands in certain positions on the patient’s body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki, the ‘universal like energy,’ from the Reiki practitioner to the patient.” www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2009/09-067.shtml.

The Guidelines state that

• Reiki lacks scientific credibility.
• Reiki has not been accepted by the scientific and medical communities as an effective therapy.
• Reputable scientific studies attesting to the efficacy of Reiki are lacking.
• There is no plausible scientific explanation as to how Reiki could possibly be efficacious.

The Guidelines seem to question all unscientific practices with the statement, “In terms of caring for one’s physical health or the physical health of others, to employ a technique that has no scientific support (or even plausibility) is generally not prudent.” (Emphasis added.)

Catholics are warned that “to use Reiki one would have to accept at least in an implicit way central elements of the worldview that undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither to Christian faith nor to natural science. Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science.”