ORMUS scam again

A week or so ago I posted on a newish scam where plain silica is being sold as ORME, the elixir of life. The synthetic process for this is quite simple. The modern day alchemist takes a quantity of Dead Sea salt, which is 20% silica. This is not soluble in water but can be dissolved in alakali. The alchemist dissolves his salt in Sodium Hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda. Neutralising the pH of this solution, by the addition of acid, will cause the silica to precipitate out as a white gel. This gel is what is sold as ORME, having magically acquired gold in the process, and in a "high spin state" too.
Now any GCSE chemistry student knows about titration. Ensuring that the amount of acid is exactly right to neutralise the alkali without leaving a surplus of either the acid or the alkali.
But lets remember that the people making this stuff are not exactly Nobel prize winning scientists. They're odd little gnomes who believe in transmutation and other pseudoscience, who've made the stuff in their kitchen, as if they were making fudge. The likelihood that these loons are going to be able even to understand, let alone perform, proper titration is pretty unlikely.
So if you buy ORME from one of these airheads bear in mind that it could well still be contaminated with Caustic Soda, or battery acid, neither of which you really want to be gambling with ingesting.

Humbug?

Happy Yuletide.

Nothing new

There's a line in the film "Blazing Saddles" from the superb, but sadly late Slim Pickens. The line is "What'll that asshole think of next"

The line sums up our less than illustrious health minister Jeremy Hunt. So what has he thought of as his next big idea?
Well apparently he has decided that every hospital patient should have a doctor who is ultimately responsible for all aspects of that patient's care. Someone with whom the buck stops. And that doctor's name would be displayed at the top of the patient's bed.
What a fab idea! Why has no-one thought of this before? Oh wait! Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't the NHS already been doing that since 1948? I think what he's talking about is known as a "Consultant"

What a completely utterly ignorant useless fucking twat!!!!!!

Happy Christmas

The perfect message for all those working in the beleaguered NHS.

Quote

"Marriage is like an earthquake. It starts with the earth moving, and it ends with you losing your house."

Anon

Tick boxes

If you look at the posts on this blog you will see that over the past year or so DZ has not paid as much attention to his blog as in the past. This is because he has been distracted. DZ has had yet another marriage fail and is beginning to think he is the common denominator.
From past experience he is not desperate to plunge again into the deep end. However he would make an exception in certain circumstances. Consider the following questions.

1. Are you female?
2. Are you between 40 & 55 with a bit of a thing for older men?
3. Are you size 10 to 16?
4. Do you consider yourself attractive?
5. Are you highly intelligent & well educated?
6. Are you a person of high integrity?
7. Are you vastly independently wealthy?
8. Do you have the sexual leanings of a bonobo?

If, and only if, you can answer yes to all these questions, then click on "view my complete profile" and you will find an email link. I will be glad to hear from you.

ORMUS scam

One characteristic feature of the scams I have featured here before is the sheer implausibility of the claims for the scam products being advertised. Weight loss products promising you will lose a stone a week for example. The sheer absurdity of the claims made should alert anyone.
On this basis the product known as ORME, Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements, or "white gold" stands out head & shoulders above all competitors for the magnitude, number, and utter absurdity of it's claims. If you follow the link read slowly to ensure your brain doesn't explode!
Like many CAM treatments it's proponents claim great antiquity for it, but in fact it was supposedly discovered only in 1975 by a poorly educated cotton farmer from Arizona.
Reading the claims for it's supposed physical, chemical and medicinal properties leaves one in a state of escalating astonishment and disbelief. That anyone should come out with such a catalogue of absurd pseudoscience makes one despair for humanity. For example. The creation of atoms of gold requires such mind blowing pressures and temperatures that it is believed that every atom of gold in the universe was created at the heart of a collapsing star in the last 15 minutes of it's life. Proponents of ORME, like modern day alchemists, will have you believe that it can be created in your kitchen with a few simple chemical reactions.

ORME can be bought either as a powder, or a gel. So if you were stupid enough to buy some of this what exactly would you be getting for your money? Firstly, unsurprisingly, there's not actually any gold in it. What you are buying is Silica, or silicon dioxide. The stuff inside those annoying little packets of dessicant so often encountered. It's also used as cat litter. And in disposable nappies.
So how come so many people out there are trying to sell this stuff pretty much as the elixir of life? Well, silica costs about £9 per kilo. Packaged as ORME it can sell for £5 per gram! A nice little earner. All you need to get rich is a few labels and a total lack of integrity.
Does it actually have any effects on your health? Well apparently the Arizona cotton farmer has now had six coronary artery bypass procedures, and is not at all well. Hasn't done him much good has it?

A miracle!!!!!!!!!!

With perfect timing a recent study from the states indicates that virgin birth is surprisingly common. Relying on self reporting 1 in 200 pregnant young American girls claims never to have had sex. According to the researchers these women "shared some common characteristics".

Yeah!.....Like they're all liars!

Infection control?

It has been reported that female muslim staff are to be allowed to opt out of the "bare below the elbows" rule in case the sight of their bare arms induces uncontrollable lust in us men.

 

Oh god! that's just toooooo sexy, ooooooooooh!

(and she's wearing a watch!!!!!!)

 It's a rule not well supported by evidence in the first place, like pretty much everything that comes out of the mouths of the infection control nazis. 
There is a precedent in that the rule was initially applied to paramedics and then they were allowed out of it because of the weather they have to contend with. Fair enough, not everyone works in a nice warm hospital. 
But to give an opt out on religious grounds is appalling.

The other side

Ever since the scandal at Stafford Hospital was revealed the media have presented us with a steady stream of reports about how supposedly awful the NHS is. The impression conveyed is that the whole of the NHS is in meltdown. We never get stories about the vast majority of happy punters, going through a system that, in my experience, functions pretty well most of the time, usually in spite of the best efforts of those in charge to fuck things up. In a setup as big as the NHS there are bound to be occasions when things go wrong, but politicians and the media refuse to accept the simple statistical fact that half of all hospitals, GP surgeries etc will be below average in anything you care to measure.

The NHS is constantly compared with health systems in other countries, and the comparison is invariably unfavorable. I have no doubt that you could take the health system of any developed nation at random and present it in as bad, if not worse light, if you simply cherry picked for the grim stuff as they do with the NHS. I've presented one or two stories here featuring quite unbelievably poor care from other countries, and here is another, where a dead patient lay undiscovered in a hospital for two weeks. I was once involved in a case where a stiff (member of staff) was discovered in an unexpected place in a hospital, but it had only been there a few hours. One wonders if, in the case from America, did anyone notice the smell?

It seems the grass is not always greener.