Hulda Clarks dokumentation
Her bringer jeg endnu en historie om den alternative behandling der bygger på Hulda Clarks teorier. Denne gang handler det om hvordan dokumentationen for Hulda Clarks egen behandling er. Og den er - ikke uventet - håbløs. Jeg håber Michael Kastberg kan give en bedre dokumentation end denne, ellers er det da spild af min tid.
Jeg citerer fra artiklen "The Bizarre Claims of Hulda Clark".
Heri kan man bla læse at Huldas patienter diagnostiseres vha nogle ikke-anerkendte og tvivlsomme metoder - dvs. at de inden for det normale sygevæsen måske ikke ville opfattes som HIV- eller kræftpatienter.... det gør dem jo også lettere at kurere igen!
Desuden erklærer hun dem for kurerede også ved en meget tvivlsom metode og følger tilsyneladende ikke kræftpatienterne efter behandlingen (og kan altså faktisk ikke vide om behandlingen har virket).
Case Histories
Pages 119-372 of The Cure for All Cancers (en af Hulda Clarks bøger) contain "case histories" of 138 cancer patients, of whom 103 were "cured" and 35 who "did not carry out instructions or could not be followed." The standard way to determine whether a treatment is effective is to carefully record the nature of the patient's disease before treatment and to determine the patient's condition indefinitely. Clark's reports contain little information about the patient's history and no indication that Clark performed any physical examinations. The only follow-up reports are for a few patients who returned for further treatment -- usually a few weeks later. Cancer treatment results are normally expressed in terms of cancer-free status or survival over periods of years. Five-year survival rates are a common measure. Clark claims she can tell that patients are cured as soon as their ortho-phospho-tyrosine test is negative -- within days or even a few hours after her treatment is begun. This claim is preposterous.
Thirty-eight of the 103 reports indicate that the patient had been medically diagnosed with cancer, and most of these 38 had received standard treatment. In 59 other cases, however, there was no indication that the patient had undergone any medical test or treatment that would indicate the presence of a cancer. (In 10 other cases, which Clark diagnosed as HIV infection, there was no history suggestive of AIDS. In the rest, it was not clear whether the patient had been medically diagnosed with cancer.) (Det er jo også nemmere at kurere folk for slemme sygdomme hvis de faktisk slet ikke er syge, men bare er hypokondere - red.)
Judging from the reports, Clark's judgments were based entirely on the results of her own peculiar diagnostic tests. If "ortho-phospho-tyrosine" was found in the blood, the patient had cancer. If a "protein 24 antigen" was found in the blood, the patient had AIDS. And, anywhere from a few hours to several weeks later, if these tests became negative, Clark considered the patient cured. The book describes how some of the patients who had consulted Clark for other problems were startled to hear they had cancer or AIDS.
None of the reports provides any basis for concluding that Clark's treatment has the slightest value. The majority of the people described in the 103 case reports did not have cancer. Of those that did, most had received standard medical treatment or their tumors were in their early stages. In these cases, Clark pronounced them cured but did not follow what happened after they left her clinic -- so she could not possibly know how they did afterward. In some cases, she counted patients as cured even though she noted that they died within a few weeks after she treated them.
Two people who seem knowledgeable have informed me that Clark's brother, Henry Regehr, died of cancer despite treatment by her."
Legal Trouble
In September 1999, Clark was arrested in San Diego, California, based on a fugitive warrant from Indiana, where she faced charges of practicing medicine without a license. In November, a former patient filed suit accusing her of negligence and fraud.
