A London Chiropractor Gets His Undeserved Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Clay Jones on Aug.10,2018 Scinece Based-Medicine
We deal with a lot of dangerous nonsense on SBM. And the individuals who promotesaid nonsense are, more often than not, as ignorant and obnoxious as the ideasthey espouse. Today’s brief post, in which I will discuss what is perhaps thepinnacle of obnoxious ignorance, will not be an exception.
100% medicine free,except for all the medicine
Startinglate last week, several news outlets in England featured a 61-year-oldchiropractor named Richard Lanigan who has apparently refused to ever give hischildren medications, including vaccinations, and that they are healthier forit. In fact, the words 100% medicine free are used. We’ve heard these sorts ofclaims before of course, but Lanigan’s version is particularly offensive. Andit isn’t even true, as he reveals that one of his children was given painmedication when she was brought to the emergency department after suffering ahead injury.
In an article in The Daily Mail, he also admits that his children receivedvaccines before going on a recent school trip. But this isn’t remotely close tothe worst of his hypocrisy. Lanigan claims in the recent articles to have beendiagnosed with terminal rectal cancer years ago, and that he was given only afew months to live. Undeterred, he refused conventional therapy and curedhimself with cannabis oil. Yet in a blog post in 2012, he wrote the following:
“About two months ago Iwas given the all clear, which means 12 months after surgery and havingfinished six months of chemotherapy I am still alive, no longer have acolostomy bag and there are no visible signs of cancer in my body. “
I realized that perhaps the information from the blog post in 2012 was referringto his initial diagnosis, and that maybe his cancer had returned. The postdidn’t mention anything about being given months to live or refusing medicalcare and I wanted to be charitable. So I kept digging and found this post onanother of Lanigan’s old blogs. As I suspected, his cancer had returned in 2013. But, also as I suspected, he did undergo conventional therapy.
“I started Chemo inOctober 2013,afterfour cycles, I was experiencing the peripheralneuropathy again and told the consultant I did not want to continue thetreatment, she was surprised, said I might only live 6 months if I stopped. “
He did stop the chemotherapy. But…
“The CT scan inDecember 2013, revealed the metastasis had not progressed so the chemo had donesomething…I was a good candidate for targeted radiation and again as in 2011,twenty sessions of radiation fried the tumours in the Lymph nodes around the Aorta. “
From that point on he has been cancer free and has continued to have yearly visitsto his oncologist for scans. He did end up refusing additional chemotherapyafter the radiation and he did start the cannabis oil. But it’s clear that hiscurrent statements about curing himself without conventional medical treatmentare deceptive.
Laniganalso claims to have ignored the concerns of medical professionals when one ofhis children was an infant sick with pertussis, also known as whooping cough.He says that he was told that she was likely going to die, but she avoided hospitalization and lived because of “natural nutrients in breast milk.”Pertussis in young infants is particularly nasty, with a case fatality rate ashigh as 2% during recent outbreaks in the United States. It’s hard to imaginethat his child was actually ill and just allowed to go home and die. She was likely just exposed to the disease and never actually got sick.
I don’t think you’reusing that correctly
The most absurd claims that Lanigan makes involve evolution. He doesn’t understandit…at all.
“If you look at howwe’ve evolved, humans became stronger by getting illnesses. The process ofnatural selection meant the strongest survived. If you rely on vaccinations andmedications for optimal health, you’re creating a weaker species. Naturalselection means survival of the fittest – it’s harsh but true. “
This isn’t evolution, it’s Lamarckism or the inheritance of acquiredcharacteristics. For one thing, your body doesn’t know the difference between natural immunity and immunity after vaccination. Protection is protection but the immunity that comes from vaccination doesn’t risk the morbidity andmortality of the disease. And immunity to measles, to just give one example,isn’t passed on to offspring. Lanigan appears to be willing to let thousands ofchildren die, apparently even his own, in part because of his ignorance ofscience, evolution, medicine, and parenting.
Thereis a lot more to unpack in these articles, such as how Lanigan believes thatthe pharmaceutical industry pushes drugs because they can’t make money sellingice. You can read the links and find these gems for yourself, however. I wantto finish up with an example of how this kind of antimedicine thinking, and aserious misunderstanding of evolutionary biology, can result in actual harm,even death.
Science denial getsreal
On August 8th, a Michigan couple was charged with felony murder and firstdegreechild abuse after apparently allowing their 10-month-old daughter starve todeath. The child’s parents, particularly the father, were known to speak against the medical system. He also explained during a video posted to Facebook that“doctors would have to believe in creationism to be able to successfully treatpatients.”
Sentimentslike that don’t seem to jibe with others attributed to the father:
“It didn’t seem smartto me that you would be saving people who weren’t the fittest. If evolutionbelieves in survival of the fittest, well then why are we vaccinatingeverybody? Shouldn’t we just let the weak die offand let the strong survive? “
So which is it?
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