DRACO: Death to the Virus

In a paper published 27 July, researchers from MIT reported successful tests in mice with a new drug that holds the promise of being a cure to all viruses. The drug, DRACO (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer), works as a “broad-spectrum” antiviral, killing virus-hijacked cells by targeting double-stranded RNA produced in the viral replication process. DRACO proved successful against all 15 viruses tested “including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.”

We may expect results from cell trials against AIDS within the next 12 months.  ...Read More

Black Friday, the annual Moron March

Beginning with the “Black Friday” sales panic annually observed, the Holiday Season in the American tradition is generally recognized to run from the day after Thanksgiving till the anticlimactic sales moratorium of December 25th. Black Friday is the gunshot start of a month-long consumerist frenzy marked by broken bones, scattered bodies, and impoverishing excess. Christmas itself has become really nothing more than a cease-fire. The “true spirit” of the Holidays has long been best reflected in Black Friday. This is the day in which celebrants are free to abandon any individual sense of decency and responsibility to become a part of the larger shopping mob. Year by year the brutality grows more severe, earlier and earlier consumers mindlessly congeal into riotous hordes outside major retail outlets during the predawn hours preparing their disorganized assaults with savage mania.   ...Read more

Bessel van der Kolk & the Disappearing Coauthor

"Repressed memories" brought into consciousness by means of hypnotic regression or other recovered memory therapies have given rise to bizarre folkloric narratives of alien abduction and past lives. Defenders of the notion of recovered memory accuracy typically ignore questions regarding these particular types of "memories" while insisting that nothing like a false memory syndrome exists. Finding themselves in intellectually untenable territory when arguing for the legitimacy of recovered memory testimony, the believer is often fond of producing a laundry list of citations of recovered memory research. The quantity of citations is meant to cow the inquirer into conceding that there must indeed be quite a bit of science supporting their position. 

As it turns out, none of the research is very good -- relying heavily on poor retrospective surveys, misinterpreted data, and downright dishonesty. Doctors Harrison Pope (in His book Psychology Astray) and Richard McNally (in Remembering Trauma) have done excellent work in scrutinizing the many errors in recovered memory research, but I hope to highlight certain illustrative examples here on this blog. If you have a particular study you'd like me to look at, please let me know.
 
Bessel van der Kolk is something of a hero to recovered memory believers, but the deposition taken below (by Dr. Christopher Barden), as part of a trial in which van der Kolk was acting as an expert witness, reveals some grave questions regarding his scientific rigor.  Following this deposition, van der Kolk vanished from the expert witness roster.

The below was previously available online elsewhere. I have retained the original introduction by Dr. Barden:

Dr. Faye Snyder & the Empty-Headed Theory

Dr. Faye Snyder's "Causal Theory" is nothing new, and you really can't be blamed for not having heard of it --or her -- at all. Among the unlimited morass of unscientifically formulated Self Help get-well-quick schemes, Dr. Faye Snyder's 8-DVD 16-hour Miracle Child Parenting seminar series -- available for an "introductory price!" of $199.95 -- anonymously blends in the mire, unremarkable and largely unnoticed.

"Dr. Faye" (as she prefers to be called) promotes herself as "the originator of the Causal Theory", which she describes on her website as,

[...] a progressive, if controversial, theory based upon cause and effect.  It assumes that there are no genetic causes for behavior.  Rather, it assumes that personality and behavior, including and especially adult behavior, result from childhood experiences beginning from birth, and perhaps even before.  It includes attachment theory, lessons from trauma theory, family systems theory, and some behavioral and cognitive models.  I imagine it has a splash of Zen, as well.

Many people, I believe (even those unschooled in Psychology... or Zen), will recognize this "blank slate" mode of thinking as far from progressive. It is, in fact, clearly regressive... a crass and sophomoric articulation of early behaviorist thought. The idea that "experiences" from before one's birth may presumably be remembered and play some role in future behavioral adjustment reveals just how much Dr. Faye doesn't know about human development.

Dolphin Porn, Norwich University, and the Work of Jesus

"Another auxiliary project, one that brought in proceeds, was dolphin pornography. Dolphin porn was filmed in Malibu and in the dolphin tanks at Point Mugu. It was convenient because they had cages already built and so the dolphins could be housed there for use almost anytime. [Ronald] Reagan really loved the dolphin stuff. He watched a porn video of [my daughter] Kelly and I with a couple of dolphins. During the viewing he smiled, patted my leg and said, "I'll be with you later." He wasn't into sex with children and didn't have sex with my daughter. When the film was over he said, "Watching you do underwater ballet is beautiful, but seeing you with the dolphin is out of this world!" He laughed and looked up, like he was seeing a missile or shuttle launch. Lots of dolphin porn was filmed. I believe Bob [Hope] gave copies of it to Prince Charles, Prince Phillip and Margaret Thatcher, who is a lesbian."
                                              -- Brice Taylor, Thanks for The Memories

'Porno for Paranoids' is perhaps the only genre description worthy of Brice Taylor's prurient and demented Thanks for The Memories. In this perverse magnum opus, Taylor describes -- aside from her stint as an actress in dolphin porn -- how she was used as a sex slave by nearly all of the rich & famous of her time, from Henry Kissinger to Bob Hope (whom she described as her "owner").

So over-the-top is Brice Taylor's narrative that it is, of course, believed by certain advocates of Recovered Memory Therapies who, as a matter of commitment, simply must believe any and every tale that invokes Repressed Memories and their later re-surfacing. The opening pages of Thanks for The Memories are filled with endorsements, among which we find:

BOBBI GAGNE-May the love and compassion you have shown for countless survivors return to you multiplied. Thank you for educating many in the field of law enforcement so they may now help victims who are still suffering. Thank you for doing what Christ would do! I love you!

Among the Brainwashed & Abused

This post is a follow up to an earlier article detailing some of my encounters and conversations with people who believe they have been abducted by aliens. Some who have followed previous writings of mine may find some informational redundancies but, while continuing my narrative, I also like each article to be able to stand alone...

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The UFO conference takes a delirious and sour turn with a presentation titled Mind-Control & UFOs: Who’s Really in Charge Here?, presented by a former Indonesian translator for the US State Department, Fred Burks.


On his website, Burks claims to have “interpreted for Bush, Clinton, Gore, Cheney, and many other top officials of the US and other countries. Having participated in numerous secret meetings where the only people allowed were the principals and their interpreters.”  Consequently, “he has acquired important inside information and contacts.”  It is upon this shaky foundation of credibility -- the idea of the all-access functionary fully briefed upon the darkest, most subterranean state secrets -- that Burks justifies his espousal of a conspiracy theory regarding secret government programs of Ritual Abuse, Mind-Control, and UFO cover-up.

Not that the conference has proven restrained in speculative leaps till now, what with an early presentation by a woman named Ann Eller, who told of her “praying mantis” spirit guide, her visions of extraterrestrial hieroglyphs, and her ability to sense the shape of the UFOs above us with but the power of her intuitive mind alone.  Severely limiting her time as a prognosticator, but in keeping with the conference’s catastrophic millenarian subplot, Eller advised us that the end will likely come even before the much-publicized end of the Mayan calendar in 2012... though she finds credibility in the 2012 doomsday theory that states that a hidden planet, Planet X, “Niburu”, will bring upon The End when it collides with Earth.

Conspiracists Kill: Justice for Carol

 The disturbing story below details the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of one Carol Myers of London, whose Recovered Memory Therapy at the hand of deranged conspiracist therapists allegedly caused her to withdraw from the care of her family till her early death from "indeterminate" causes.  Below is a summary of facts presented by Carol's family (corroborating documents and recordings are embedded in their website hyperlinked immediately below).  Please visit the family's website.  If you have any advice or resources for Carol's family, still pursuing justice in the UK, contact them...

http://justiceforcarol.com/

Our beloved daughter and sister, Carol, a vulnerable and mentally ill adult, was found dead in her flat at 17a Swanage Road, Wandsworth, London, SW18 2DZ on the 29th June 2005 at about 3:30pm. The cause of death was indeterminable. Our family have been fighting for five years to get to the bottom of the extraordinary events surrounding her death. The facts are as follows: Carol died on 29 June 2005; our family were not notified of her death by the Coroner’s Office until the 14 July 2005. In the meantime, an eminent doctor, Dr Linda Fleur Fisher, had arranged Carol’s cremation and disposed of her personal possessions.

Historic Wisconsin Verdict Rules for 3rd Party False Memory Plaintiff

This morning, an email from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation reported:

"A jury in Madison, Wisconsin returned its verdict at approximately 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning January 23, 2011 in the case Charles and Karen Johnson brought against the the Rogers Memorial Hospital chain of psychiatric hospitals in Wisconsin. The jury found doctors negligent in two of the three counts and awarded Karen and Charles Johnson $1 million."  

The Johnsons had alleged "negligent treatment of their adult daughter, Charlotte, by various therapists and a hospital."

According to an earlier appeal in the case, "The court first determined that the Johnsons' claims of negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress against three therapists for implanting false memories of sexual and physical abuse in their child must be dismissed based on public policy concerns of confidentiality in the therapist-patient relationship."