Tag Archives: cyanide

Hazardous homeopathy: ‘ingredients’ that ought to make you think twice

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Would you take a medicine made with arsenic? Or deadly nightshade? Lead? Poison ivy?

You’d ask some serious questions first, at least, wouldn’t you? Is it definitely safe? Or, more accurately, are the odds better than even that it will make me better without causing horrible side-effects? Or, you know, killing me?

There ARE medicines that are legitimately made from highly toxic compounds. For example, the poison beloved of crime writers such as Agatha Christie, arsenic trioxide, is used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia in patients who haven’t responded to other treatments. Unsurprisingly, it’s not without risks. Side-effects are unpleasant and common, affecting about a third of patients who take it. On the other hand, acute promyelocytic leukemia is fatal if untreated. A good doctor would talk this through with a patient, explain both sides, and leave the final choice in his or her properly-informed hands. As always in medicine, it’s a question of balancing risks and benefits.

Would you trust something with no proven benefit and a lot of potential risk? There are, it turns out, a swathe of entirely unregulated mixtures currently being sold in shops and online which clearly feature the substances I listed at the beginning. And more. Because they are all, supposedly, the starting materials in certain homeopathic remedies.

Homeopaths like to use unfamiliar, usually Latin-based, names which somewhat disguise the true nature of their ingredients. Here’s a short, but by no means comprehensive, list. (You might find remedies labelled differently but these are, as far as I can tell, the most common names given to these substances.)

If you haven’t heard of some of these, I do urge you to follow the links above, which will largely take you pages detailing their toxicology. Spoiler: the words “poison”, “deadly” and “fatal” feature heavily. These are nasty substances.

There are some big ironies here, and I’m not referring to the metal. For example, a common cry of anti-vaccinationists is that vaccines contain animal tissues – anything and everything from monkey DNA to dog livers. But many also seem to be keen to recommend homeopaths and courses of homeoprophylaxis – so-called “homeopathic vaccines” – which use bodily fluids such as pus and blood as starting materials.

Now, at this point I’m sure some of you are thinking, hang on a minute: aren’t you always telling us that “the dose makes the poison“? And aren’t homeopathic remedies diluted so much that none of the original substance remains, so they’re just placebos?

Yes, I am, and yes, they are.

Does anyone test homeopathic remedies to make sure there’s nothing in them….?

In THEORY. But here’s the problem: who’s testing these mixtures to make sure that the dilutions are done properly? And how exactly are they doing that (if they are)?

One technique that chemists use to identify tiny quantities of substance is gas chromatography (GC). This is essentially a high-tech version of that experiment you did at school, where you put some dots of different coloured ink on a piece of filter paper and watched them spread up the paper when you put it in some water.

GC analysis is brilliant at identifying tiny quantities of stuff. 10 parts per million is no problem for most detectors, and the most sensitive equipment can detect substances in the parts per billion range. Homeopathy dilutions are many orders of magnitude higher than this (30c, for example, means a dilution factor of 1060), but this doesn’t matter – once you get past 12c (a factor of 1024) you pass the Avogadro limit.

This is because Avogadro’s number, which describes the number of molecules in what chemists call a “mole” of a substance, is 6×1023. For example, if you had 18 ml of water in a glass, you’d have 6×1023 molecules of H2O. So you can see, if you’ve diluted a small sample by a factor of 1024 – more than the total number of molecules of water you had in the first place – the chances are very good that all you have is water. There will be none of the original substance left. (This, by the way, is of no concern to most homeopaths, who believe that larger dilutions magically produce a stronger healing effect.)

What if the sample ISN’T pure water after it’s been diluted?

If you carried out GC analysis of such a sample, you should find just pure water. Indeed, if you DIDN’T find pure water, it should be cause for concern. Potassium cyanide, for example, is toxic at very low levels. The lethal dose is is only 0.2-0.3 grams, and you’d suffer unpleasant symptoms long before you were exposed to that much.

So what if the dilutions somehow go wrong? What if some sample gets stuck in the bottle? Or on the pipette? Or a few dilution steps get skipped for some reason?

Are these largely unregulated companies rigorously quality-checking their remedies?

Well, maybe. It’s possible some producers are testing their raw materials for purity (ah yes, another question: they CLAIM they’re starting with, say, arsenic, but can we be certain?), and perhaps testing the “stability” of their products after certain periods of time (i.e. checking for bacterial growth), but are they running tests on the final product and checking that, well, there’s nothing in it?

And actually, isn’t this a bit of a conflict? If the water somehow “remembers” the chemical that was added and acquires some sort of “vibrational energy”, shouldn’t that show up somehow in GC analysis or other tests? If your tests prove it’s pure water, indistinguishable from any other sample of pure water, then… (at this point homeopaths will fall back on arguments such as “you can’t test homeopathy” and “it doesn’t work like that”. The name for this is special pleading.)

A warning was issued in the U.S. after several children became ill.

Am I scaremongering? Not really. There’s at least one published case study describing patients who suffered from arsenic poisoning after using homeopathic preparations. In January this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about elevated levels of belladonna (aka deadly nightshade) in some homeopathic teething products. Yes, teething products. For babies. This warning was issued following several reports of children becoming ill after using the products. The FDA said that its “laboratory analysis found inconsistent amounts of belladonna, a toxic substance, in certain homeopathic teething tablets, sometimes far exceeding the amount claimed on the label.”

Now, admittedly, I’m based in the U.K. and these particular teething remedies were never readily available here. But let’s just type “homeopathy” into the Boots.com (the British high-street pharmacy) website and see what pops up… ah yes. Aconite Pillules, 30c, £6.25 for 84.

What happens if you search for “homeopathy” on the Boots.com website?

Have you been paying attention lovely readers? Aconite is…. yes! Monkshood! One of the most poisonous plants in the garden. Large doses cause instant death. Smaller doses cause nausea and diarrhea, followed by a burning and tingling sensation in the mouth and abdomen, possibly muscle weakness, low blood pressure and irregular heartbeat.

I must stress at this point that there is no suggestion, absolutely none whatsoever, that any of the products for sale at Boots.com has ever caused such symptoms. I’m sure the manufacturers check their preparations extremely carefully to ensure that there’s absolutely NO aconite left and that they really are just very small, very expensive, sugar pills.

Well, fairly sure.

In summary, we seem to be in a situation where people who proclaim that rigorously-tested and quality-controlled pharmaceuticals are “toxic” also seem to be happy to use unregulated homeopathic remedies made with ACTUALLY toxic starting materials.

I wonder if the new “documentary” about homeopathy, Just One Drop, which is being screened in London on the 6th of April will clarify this awkward little issue? Somehow, I doubt it. Having watched the trailer, I think it’s quite clear which way this particular piece of film is going to lean.

One last thing. Some homeopathic mixtures include large quantities of alcohol. For example, the Bach Original Flower Remedies are diluted with brandy and contain approximately 27% alcohol (in the interests of fairness, they do also make alcohol-free versions of some of their products and, as I’ve recently learned, they may not be technically homeopathic). Alcohol is a proven carcinogen. Yes, I know, lots of adults drink moderate quantities of alcohol regularly and are perfectly healthy, and the dose from a flower remedy is minuscule, but still, toxins and hypocrisy and all that.

There are cheaper ways to buy brandy than Bach Flower Remedies.

Amusingly, the alcohol in these remedies is described an “inactive” ingredient. It’s more likely to be the only ACTIVE ingredient. And since Flower Remedies retail for about £7 for 20 ml (a mighty £350 a litre, and they’re not even pure brandy) may I suggest that if you’re looking for that particular “medicine” you might more wisely spend your money on a decent bottle of Rémy Martin?

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10 Chemicals You Really SHOULD Be Scared Of

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Some chemicals really ARE scary...

Some chemicals really ARE scary…

People are increasingly worried about chemicals these days (even if they don’t quite know what the word means), but most of that fear is unfounded. The ingredients in cosmetics and foods are actually pretty harmless on the whole, certainly in the quantities you usually meet them.

This is because we’ve had decades of extensive testing and health and safety regulations – the truly nasty stuff simply isn’t allowed anymore. Even, sometimes, in fairly-obviously dangerous things like rat poison.

But the nasty stuff exists. Oh yes it does. You might be unlikely to come across it, but it’s still out there. Locked away. (Or not.)

So, come with me as I take you on a tour of 10 chemicals you really SHOULD be scared of…

Click to continue reading this article at WhatCulture Science

Please don’t eat apricot kernels

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Apricot kernels do not cure cancer.

I’ll admit, I’m no huge fan of ‘alternative medicine’, particularly the ones which have been thoroughly tested and shown over and over again to be entirely ineffective (yes homoeopathy, I’m looking at you).

At best these treatments don’t work, and at worst they delay or even stop people getting the effective treatment they need. In fact, there’s an even worse possibility: they stop people from people from giving their children the treatments they need.

Ok, if you’re old enough to make decisions for yourself, and you’ve tried conventional medicine and it hasn’t worked terribly well for your particular problem, and you’ve found that, say, acupuncture somehow does make your chronic back pain a bit better, even if it is just placebo effect, then hey, it’s your money (just please don’t recommend it to anyone else who hasn’t checked out all their other options first, ok?) Also, please, please read this fantastic article which explains clearly what cancer is and what, crucially, it isn’t.

But there has surely has to be a special corner of hell reserved for people who peddle so called ‘cancer-cures’.

Medicine has moved on a lot in the last few decades. Advanced screening techniques and treatments mean that many cancers are no longer the death sentence they once were. 50% of people (in England and Wales) now survive cancer for ten years or more, which is double the figure 40 years ago. But it’s easy for a well person to say ‘cancer treatments’. They are not always quite so easy to get through. Cancer treatments – namely surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy – can be brutal and frequently come with a raft of unpleasant side-effects, particularly chemotherapy.

There are some people who decide that the cure is worse than the disease and personally, I think that’s their choice to make. They should have the right to make that choice, so long as it’s well-informed.

So long as it’s well-informed.

But there are people out there who are making money from desperate cancer sufferers. They sell them ineffective treatments, discourage them (directly or indirectly) from seeking or accepting the treatment they really need, and sometimes even encourage those people to use toxic substances that are likely to actually cause even more harm.

People like Roger Shelley, owner and director of The Vitamin Service Ltd. Who has just been given a six-month suspended prison sentence and his company fined £10,000 for selling potentially toxic ‘vitamins’ he claimed could cure and prevent cancer.

512px-Amygdalin_structure.svg

Amygdalin. It’s not a vitamin.

In particular, he was selling apricot kernels, which he claimed contained a ‘vitamin’ called B17. There is no such vitamin. The chemical in question is something called amygdalin (sometimes also referred to as laetrile, although they are not quite the same thing). See the picture of it? See that CN group down at the bottom? That’s a nitrile group. Potassium cyanide, the poison so beloved of crime writers, has the formula KCN, which is a compound made up of K+ and CN– ions. It’s the cyanide ions, CN–, that do the damage, by interfering catastrophically with the way the body uses oxygen. Now, nitriles (like amygdalin) don’t usually give up their cyanide ions easily and so aren’t, generally, anywhere near as toxic as compounds like potassium cyanide.

Unfortunately one of the enzymes in your small intestine helps to speed up the breakdown of amygdalin. Eating apricot kernels can cause severe toxicity and death due to cyanide poisoning. Yes, severe toxicity and death. Eating apricot kernels can kill you.

Before I cause mass panic I should probably point out that if you accidentally swallow one on a summer picnic, do not fear. It takes more than one to do any damage. The Food Standards Agency says it’s safe to eat one apricot kernel a day (they’re not saying you should, mind you).

The Vitamin Service was recommending that adults take 35 kernels every day. That IS enough to do damage. In fact, it’s above the dose that the FSA highlights as causing severe symptoms. In this statement, they site a case (point 15) of a woman who ate 30 apricot kernels and was later found comatose.

Worse, The Vitamin Service were also recommending that children take 10 kernels a day, “to ward off cancer”. For children, who have a smaller body mass than adults, even this smaller dose could be extremely dangerous.

Patients following The Vitamin Service’s regime reported symptoms of dizziness and cogitative problems. Classic symptoms of cyanide poisoning. When they reported these symptoms they were advised to reduce the amount for a few days before increasing it again, because the symptoms were due to ‘toxins’. Indeed they were, a toxic substance in the very products The Vitamin Service were selling.

To add insult to injury, they were charging in the region of £600 for these kernels along with a raft of other supplements they were recommending.

Shelly admitted to misleading customers and failing to warn them of the risks of B17. He has been given a six month suspended prison sentence, and his company is no longer selling apricot kernels as a cancer treatment. Which you’d think would be a good thing. Problem solved, no?

Just Google “B17 cancer” or “apricot kernels”. There are dozens of sites out there promoting it as a cancer treatment, and many still selling products. I won’t link to them here, I don’t want to give them the traffic. But it’s frightening. Please don’t believe these people. Please listen to your doctors, the real ones, the ones who have studied for years to learn everything they can about medicines and illnesses, and who have sworn an oath to “do no harm”.

There isn’t an easy, painless, magical cure for the cancer that the pharmaceutical industry is hiding from us for some reason. We all wish there was, but there isn’t. Cancer is horrible, but a lot of the time these days it’s beatable with the right treatments. And for those, you need a qualified doctor.

This story was covered in detail on The One Show on BBC One, on Monday 4th February 2015. You can watch the clip here: start at about 4:30 minutes.

There is also an excellent, very easy to follow, summary of the use of laetrile on the charity Cancer Research UK’s website. Read it here.

Finally, once again, if you’re in the unfortunate position of having been diagnosed with cancer, please, please read this excellent article. It really does help to understand the importance of targeted treatment.

Update 8th June 2015

When I wrote this post I focused on the eating of actual apricot kernels, and Roger Shelley’s conviction for selling them. It is worth pointing out that although apricot kernels definitely contain amygdalin, it’s impossible to be certain exactly how much any one kernel contains. This is always a risk with any natural product like this.

This means there is a big, huge, difference between eating apricot kernels – even a known number of them – and being exposed to a small amount of amygdalin in a controlled manner, say as part of a cancer treatment trial. In the first situation you have no idea how much of the chemical you’re being exposed to, and no one is monitoring you to check for ill effects (which you might, or might not, be aware of). It is true that otherwise toxic compounds are utilised in chemotherapy. Arsenic trioxide is used to treat a particular kind of leukaemia for example, but this doesn’t mean swallowing a teaspoon of it every day ‘just in case’ would be in any way sensible or safe.

In 2010 there was a Cochrane review of all the work previously done on amygdalin and laetrile. It reported that there was no clinical data to support the use of these substances to treat cancer, that the risk benefit of using these substances was unanimously negative (the risk of severe poisoning far outweighed any possible benefit), and recommended that no further clinical research into laetrile or amygdalin be conducted on ethical grounds.

However, since I wrote this post I have been made aware that some research is still ongoing. Well, science is about finding answers after all. For example, both of the following papers have been published since the Cochrane review:

Notice that these papers are about the specific chemical amygdalin, rather than apricot kernels. Note also that the second paper contains the words in vitro, which means outside of living organisms. In a test tube in a lab basically. This might be an interesting starting point, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the same effect can be reproduced in living organisms which have inconvenient things like a digestive system to work around. Also, bear in mind that effective cancer treatments are highly targeted. Tossing unknown amounts of a substance into the general vicinity of a tumour and hoping it’ll have the effect you want is like throwing a bucket of paint at a piece of fine china and expecting to see pretty decorations appear.

Digestion is a particularly thorny problem with this substance: in the first paper I mentioned above (which is a review of the work done to date, rather than new research) the authors specifically point out that amygdalin is a lot more toxic when it’s taken orally than when it’s given intravenously (injected). The reason is that, as I mentioned in my original post, it’s broken down by enzymes in your small intestine. You’re going to have a hard time injecting apricot kernels; you pretty much have to eat them. Which is risky.

Also, while the authors do provide a lot of examples of the therapeutic benefits of amygdalin, they also point out that the (apparent) “antitumor mechanism of amygdalin is not completely clear”, that “clinical trials and large retrospective studies showed that [it] had no stable antitumor effect” and that adverse reactions have been reported, particularly following large doses.

So, while this compound might be a subject for further research, I stand by my original point. Don’t eat apricot kernels.

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Further update, 20th August 2015

I’ve recently been made aware of a someone called Dr Philip Binzel and, what appears to be, a rather famous book called “Alive and Well“. In this book, Dr Binzel describes his treatment of cancer patients using dietary changes and supplements, including laetrile. I can find remarkably little information about Dr Binzel and his credentials beyond what’s described in this book. However, it is a matter of public record that he died on June 6, 2003. So take any source discussing his work in the present tense with a large pinch of salt.

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Another recent post on this blog which may be of interest addresses this common complaint, “no one wants to research that; they can’t make any money from it!”

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