A Lot of Fuss about Absolutely Nothing

This is a rant, not my usual photoblog and it won't even include any photos. It's about a subject very close to my heart. 

Pseudoscience. Woo. Quackery. Or as proponents like to call it: CAM or Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Let's start by getting one thing clear. CAM is NOT medicine (alternative medicine that works is simply called medicine) and it is NOT complementary, it adds absolutely zilch to conventional treatment. It is, in fact, anti-medicine.

Now I completely understand that some choose to believe that it works. Either by being misinformed, by being ignorant of the facts, or because of grasping at straws. I truly understand that. But it is unforgivable when those that know better pretend that it works. 

I belong to a small and privileged profession. We are generally well respected and trusted. This puts us into a position of power. Clients trust us. This give us the power to do great good.

I get incredibly angry when members of my profession abuse that trust. There are only a small number of us who do this, but they do exist and they know who they are. 

Three years ago I started to fight this in a small way. I have only now reached some kind of closure.

There are a number of vets that use CAM. Most use homeopathy, one of the most transparent and ridiculous attempts to con people ever invented. I won't bore you with the full details here, but it is just water. Simply water. Water and nothing else but water. If you are prepared to believe that small amounts of pure water will cure you of all kinds of ailments, then that is your choice. As described above, I understand. But heavens above, it is just bloody water! It will however decrease the weight of your wallet.

Fine to use on yourself, good luck to you, but please don't use it on those that depend on you. That includes both your family and your pets. Giving plain water to your pets instead of evidence based medication may assuage your guilt, may even make you think you're doing some good (the care-giver placebo effect), but all you do is increase the suffering of your loved one.

That is not a good thing.

So, three years ago I queried how a website such as natural healing solutions can exist in today's world. The profession remained quiet. The Advertising Standards Association were behind me, the Nightingale Collaboration were behind me, but our governing body (the RCVS) remained silent.

I wrote to the veterinary surgeon who owned the site, a Mr Roger Meacock, asking how he could brazenly advertise such things as a product called 'Aerobic Oxygen' and:

(a)       that Aerobic Oxygen has been found to have a wide range of health benefits;

(b)       that only 10 drops of Aerobic Oxygen will increase the oxygen content of a 8oz glass of water by 440%;

(c)       that Aerobic Oxygen will kill anaerobic bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites while boosting the immune system;

(d)       that Aerobic Oxygen will reduce the  load on the heart;

(e)       that Aerobic Oxygen will reduce degenerative diseases;

(f)        that Aerobic Oxygen will improve energy levels;

(g)       that Aerobic Oxygen can help normalise cellular function and allow the body to reverse degenerative diseases such as arthritis, adult onset diabetes;

(h)       that Aerobic Oxygen can support poor circulation and help the body fight blood disorders;

(i)         that Aerobic Oxygen can take the strain off the lungs for asthma and emphysema;

(j)         that Aerobic Oxygen supports brain and nerve function including memory, headaches, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia, Parkinson’s;

(k)       that Aerobic Oxygen can improve digestive function;

(l)         that Aerobic Oxygen improves candida;

(m)      that Aerobic Oxygen can reduce tooth decay;

(n)       that Aerobic Oxygen reduces altitude sickness.

This is just CRAZY!!! But there is more!!!

A product called Quinton Marine Plasma:-

(a)       that the innate ability of seawater to support the body through recovery to optimal health is once again being backed by science;

(b)       that Quinton Marine Plasma allows the body to recover from a wide range of medical diseases;

(c)       that Quinton Marine Plasma was successfully used primarily in France to treat Flu epidemics, cholera, TB, eczema, psoriasis and liver disease;

(d)       that Quinton Marine Plasma nasal sprays are excellent for allergies and sinusitis.

IT'S JUST SEA WATER FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!

And then...

A product called the Russian Healing Blanket:-

(a)       that the specific properties of the localised environment created by the  Russian Healing Blanket around the patient’s body provide the desired activation of the body’s self-regulatory and self-recovery mechanisms;

(b)       that through balancing the meridians etc the Russian Healing Blanket enables the body to correct the overall homeostasis of the organism;

(c)       that recent research has discovered that the timing of treatment during the day can be critical to maximising the success of the treatment;

(d)       that there are now much more successful regimes for using the Multilayer Healing Blanket to treat stress and other psychological issues, weight loss and performance optimisation.

 

Seriously?

And then...

A machine called e-Lybra Bio-Resonance Technology:-

(a)       that, in achieving the energetically balanced individual from a general holistic perspective or more specifically addressing individual or combinations of symptoms, the e-Lybra9 remedies better enable the individual to eliminate and resist disease of all types;

(b)       that e-Lybra9 reveals weaknesses in the immune system and strengthens it to increase resistance to disease;

(c)       that e-Lybra9 enables the creation of bacterial, viral, fungal, enzyme, protein/peptide and pharmaceutical drug remedies.

This little miracle can diagnose over 100,000 illnesses, none of which in reality exist, and then prescribe the 'correct' homeopathic remedy, e.g. water...

COMPLETE BLOODY INSANITY!!!'

And yet there was much more like this. 

He didn't respond to me. 

After complaining to the RCVS, and waiting a little while. Then a little while longer.... After twelve months, the RCVS finally (lost emails, lost will to live) got into motion and sent my queries to this charlatan, and he finally responded to me!

He unfortunately did not answer even one query, but set out on a four page diatribe slinging personal insults at me. After concluding that I was both an extremist zealot and a dinosaur, he finished with a counter claim against me, stating that I was bullying him and could have caused him to kill himself.

Give me strength.

And so the slow process of the Preliminary Investigation Committee of the RCVS was unleashed upon him.

Yawn.

Eighteem months later they finally realised that they weren't going to get anywhere with this guy, and he was sent to the Disciplinary Comittee. Essentially a court.

That was last week. I spent a couple of days in London to watch this spectacle, which, after three years, was something of an anticlimax. The first day was spent out of court with the various solicitors doing their thing, then the next day they appeared in court to state that Mr Meacock had been persuaded to come clean, and remove all the offending material etc etc.

I await with baited breath.

So did I achieve anything? Well, apart from testing my patience to the extreme, I think we can now say that the RCVS will not put up with pseudoscience and quackery. I think. We now need to test this to see if similar websites are removed. 

Have I got what I wanted?

No.

All I want, all I really really want, is for the RCVS to man-up, and stand up to say that pseudoscience and quackery including homeopathy DOES NOT WORK. 

Simple.

You would think...

The Most Powerful of the Big Cats

Leopards are immensely strong. Stronger than any other big cat, weight for weight. 

They are seriouly stunning creatures.

 

They are also the most elusive and secretive. And yet Ian, our guide, managed to get us close up and personal to several of them.

 

Just look up and see what we saw!

 

And then there was this guy, catching the last rays of the sinking sun.

 

We came across a leopard that was on the hunt. He came right up to our truck and successfully changed the colour of Annick's underwear! Her iPhone was ready for the perfect close-up, but she had frozen with fear...

 

Remember marsupilami?

 

This safari was ticking all the right boxes!

For all my favourite photos of my favourite cats, click here.

Next I'm going to move on to the Mara. Two blogs, one about the crossing in general, then a special about one particular gnu and his struggle to survive.

Or not.

The King of Beasts

The Serengeti can appear tranquil and peaceful.

 

It ain't. Everywhere that there is potential prey, there are predators. The king of them all is out there. Anywhere. Right next to your home...

 

No, not the King of the Jungle, they're not too keen on jungles, simply the King of all predators.

 

They hunt, kill, sleep and 'socially intermingle' on the savanna.

and when they start 'socially intermingling', they don't stop for three days at twenty minute intervals.

 

Resulting in many sleepless nights for us happy campers (their howls of ecstasy can be heard up to 8 Km away)

as well as these cutsy cuddly little kittens...

These guys are the epitome of ferocious.

For all the scary lion photos, click here.

Serengeti Cheetahs

Most will know that Cheetahs are the fastest animals on land. Speeds up to a stunning 120Km/h have been measured. 

Incredible but, in the real world, their normal speed is zero. 

 

What they do most frequently is yawn.

 

or closer up...

 

which then turns into a schlump....

 

Whereas their young seem more interested in eating

 

and generally being cute

 

Not the fastest animals on earth as far as I could tell. 

For more photos of Cheetahs not moving fast, click here.

Serengeti scenery

The Serengeti is vast. 15,000 square kilometres of vastness.

It's name means the endless plain. For good reason.

 

But there are a few lumpy bits. Take this one for instance:

 

That looks like a nice place for lunch doesn't it? Except maybe for the leopard sitting on top.

We arrived in the Serengeti by plane. Not exactly a city hopper, but perfectly functional none-the-less.

 

As we descended to the air strip, we flew low over the Mara where we could already see a few hundred wildebeest crossing. 

On landing, we proceeded to do the same, but we took he easy route.

 

If only the wildebeest had figured that out.

We had aimed at arriving at the end of the dry season, but the rains had beaten us to it. Thus the migration had nearly passed. Left behind however were a rich variation of wildlife that we would spend much of the next four days watching and photographing. 

The resultant panoply of photos will take some time to whittle down, so I'll reserve a blog for each of the main characters. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the view.

 

 

Here's the 'non-animal' photos of the Serengeti that I've sorted so far...

 

Next up, the Cheetah...

A giant hole in planet Earth

If grasping mentally the size of Africa is too difficult, think on this instead. Two to three million years ago, as the great Rift Valley splitting Africa was ponderously opening wider and wider, there were many active volcanoes. The greatest of these blew its top off, heaved ginormous amounts of larva and dust into the atmosphere, then gave up with an enormous sigh and 'schlumped' back down to earth, leaving a hole nearly twenty kilometres across, with a rim well over half a kilometre high.

It is still there. It is still enormous. But it is calm. Inactive. 

It is so phenomenal that surely any earthly name would be inadequate. Maybe this is why it is named after the noise a Massai cow-bell makes.

Ngorongoro.

So big they named it twice.

Thus we headed for this geographical monstrosity. It was on the bucket list, it had to be done. 

We reached the rim and, nearly an hour later, our very remote camp. It was dark. We had been advised to try this new camp as it promised great views over the crater's rim. 

Unfortunately, those who wrote the publicity prior to erecting the camp, new nothing about the local climate. The immense size and precipitous walls of the crater, although geographically stupendous, are also more than big enough to directly affect local weather patterns. Resulting in two constants. Wind and cloud.

It was evening which, near the equator as we were, is very dark. With no possibility of seeing the view, we gratefully ate our dinner.

Well, not so gratefully perhaps. The dinner was basically good fare, except that the chef appeared have a surfit of salt, and wished to share it liberally. A little too liberally for us. Thus, giving up on eating for the night, we fell exhausted into bed.

Try sleeping in a tent with a constant gale blowing.

Constant.

As in all the bleeding time.

Morning finally arrived and our guide awaited us. It was still dark. Good old Ian enjoyed dragging us out of bed at some unearthly hour. With good reason. 

There simply was no view. There was cloud, a.k.a. fog.

The roads down into the crater are few. One goes down only (no way of passing) one ascends only, and one other where both directions are possible. The sides are so steep that there are no giraffes in the crater as they cannot get down. Why they don't just take the roads I've no idea.

This photo shows the descent road, but was taken early evening when the cloud had lifted. Somewhat.

It wasn't long before we ducked under the clouds, and saw the crater as a whole. (Ahem, hole...).

From here, the crater looked empty. The perpective fooled us. Even an entire herd of elephants would be invisible at these distances.

On finally arriving at its bottom, the crater started to give up its wildlife to us.

We drank in our fill that day. Enough to give me well over a thousand photos. 

Ostriches aplenty, some dancing (yes, really) some simply regarding us with an air of derangement. Hippos sleeping, rolling and belching. Lions sleeping and occasionally deigning to move. Buffaloes with birds in both ears. Zebras, flamingoes, all manner of timorous beasties. Even Jackals and Hydes...

Click here for all the photos if you dare.

After a long and wonderful day, we returned for our salty evening meal and our windy night. The champagne came in very handy.

We had returned a little earlier than normal, to allow us to catch the view.

The next morning we were smuggled out in yet another pea-souper. A short trip to a local airport, (technically an air-strip) where we caught a small plane to take us to the Serengeti, the ultimate wildlife paradise.

Things just get better and better....

Into Africa

 

Africa is a truly huge and varied continent. We all know that it is enormous, but we are often fooled by the traditional maps of the world into thinking that other continents are as big. In truth, Africa is as big as all of Europe PLUS all of India PLUS all of the United States. 
That is big.
It is Africa's size and varied climate that has led to it being the cradle of evolution on land, most notably human evolution. That and the effects of tectonic plate movement.
Tectonic plate movement has ripped Africa appart, leaving the incredible Rift Valley as supreme evidence. This valley runs the entire length of Africa and smack in the middle of it is Tanzania.
In itself huge (four times the area of France) Tanzania hosts huge numbers of wildlife, varied in the extreme.
We were to spend 10 days there, heading first to the crazily huge volcanic crater on the edge of the Rift Valley called the Ngorongoro Crater, through the plains of the Serengeti, passing the Mara River, then finally traveling the entire width of the country to the extremely remote Mahale National Park on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.
Phew. What a trip. Way too large and varied a trip for one blog.
So I'll try starting at the beginning...

Getting to deepest darkest Africa is somewhat easier than it was a hundred years ago. A couple of years of travel has been squished into less than one day. We flew from Toulouse, via Amsterdam, straight into the heart of the continent near Kilimanjaro.

Slightly worryingly, there was no one there to meet us. 

In many African airports this would fill me with fear. Here in a small airport in the middle of everywhere, it was just a minor inconvenience. The locals were amazing and helped us organise a taxi to our overnight stop. The company organising our trip have since fallen over themselves to try to compensate us, including expensive champagne and bumping up the accommodation during our stay.
All forgiven, although I must admit to a few paranoid thoughts as an unknown taxi driver took us to a remote destination in the pitch black, over a road that should not have acquired the title 'road' but would have been better called 'off-road'.
Were we heading to to our certain doom? Had the hotel been better organised than our reception?
Thoughts of...

'Relax' said the night man
'We are programmed to receive
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave!'

...ran through my head.

Instead, the accommodation sufficed...

 
However, there was only one bath... How we suffered...

We found ourselves in the Arusha Coffee Plantation Lodge

 

Thus refreshed after a night's sleep, we awoke to break fast and to meet our guide for the next few days, the incomparable Ian, a guide we had used on our previous trip to Tanzania.

Loading ourselves into his truck, we set off on our safari,

 

heading for the Ngorongoro Crater. 

Passing out of Arusha gave us chance to see the local colour

 

and the local transport system

 

As this was a few hours drive, we broke the trip with a stop at the Lake Manyara National Park to check out the local wildlife. 

Here's a link to the pictures I took there..

Tanzanian Safari - Day 1 (This link takes you to a photo album on the website Flickr. No membership required!)

Arriving late at the rim of the giant crater, we awaited the promised stunning views of the giant crater.

All will be described in the next exciting episode...

(Spoiler, the views were rubbish...)