After it ended I rushed up to the front of the hall to take my place in the queue with his admirers to ask some questions.

I asked him what he was up to between graduating in 1979 and setting up the ION in 1984. He told me that Abram Hoffer had come over to lecture in Britain before the ION was set up. As we know in the early 80’s he began seeing patients. He said to me the ION was established because he had a three month waiting list in 1983. People were keen to learn what he knew hence the need for a training establishment.

I suppose clues are probably in PH’s earlier books, if one could get hold of them and read them without losing the will to live.

Talking of his correspondent “Betty”, I rather suspect she would have had traditional breast cancer treatment, so probably surgery plus maybe other things. Like many another patient she probably then attributes to the “marvellous diet advised by this brilliant nutritionist” the recovery caused by (i) the treatment arresting the disease; and (ii) stopping chemo or radiation on completion of therapy. Even with just surgery you would doubtless feel pretty rotten afterwards.

John Diamond wrote in Snake Oil about how people he talked to about cancer commonly made this same misattribution. An obvious inference would be that they often do this because successful real cancer therapies (which are based on killing cells, after all) almost always make people feel lousy before they feel better.

Having read the testimonials, the most depressing to me was the one from “Janette M” mentioning that she had her mercury amalgam fillings yanked out.

*sigh*

Of course, it is perfectly possible that some of these people, and others who have bought PH’s books, are now eating a healthier diet because they have followed the more mainstream / less daft bits of advice like – wait for it – eat more fresh fruit and veg, and more complex carbohydrates, less red meat and more lean protein.

The two problems are that:

(i) they also get a whole load of idiocy, Un-science and bamboozlement about supplements, antioxidants, homocysteine etc etc

(ii) they are quite likely to have gotten the same basic diet advice from the GP but to have ignored it because it wasn’t dressed up in the cloak of bogus authority and ringed with hocus-pocus.

http://www.patrickholford.com/content.asp?id_Content=1364

My favourite is the one from Betty L – an interesting bit of information about what he was up to in the 1980s. Not sure if Betty is telling us that he cured her breast cancer

Unfortunately, you are right. I am not interested in your soul longer, Dr. Aust!
Now I am interested in childish pure naive soul of old Professor.
And only one thing confuses me…

Please take this tedious obsession with David Colquhoun somewhere else.