Sunday, November 21, 2010

Truth in Labelling

Here is the story of a monster:
TWO dozen cancer patients, including a six-year-old Sydney girl, died after treatment ordered by a doctor who is a convicted fraud.
What is his name?
Hellfried Sartori is the Austrian at the centre of an inquest into the deaths of five people in Perth in 2005.
And the treatment?
Mr Sartori replied that 50 per cent of the cure for cancer was positive thinking by the patient. He conceded he had exaggerated about the efficacy of his treatments, insisted he could cure cancer and admitted lying to Australian authorities. ''If any treatment has proved benefits, it is this treatment,'' he told the court. ''And I have not violated my Hippocratic oath.''

...

In other evidence yesterday, Mr Sartori admitted lying when he applied, unsuccessfully, to register as a doctor in Australia. He also conceded that academic articles about caesium chloride treatment, which he published in 1984 and which had been peer-reviewed, did not include crucial material that about 10 of 50 patients he treated with caesium in 1981-982 had it administered intravenously. Of the 50, 25 died within a year.

His evidence has contained sweeping references to statistics available on the internet, the laws of physics, and his claims that 10,000 people were alive because of his caesium chloride remedies.
Unkind people might want to note here that Australia sanctions all kinds of bullshit in accredited health education.

10 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Didn't this guy appear on Battlestar Galactica?
~

Smut Clyde said...

Searching for Dr Sartori's prescription brings up about 63,500 Ghits for cancer-fraud pages. Looks like Satori or people like him hire full-time employees to spend all day setting up websites full of made-up testimonials.

You will be glad to know that he has not devoted all his time for the last two decades to ripping off and killing sick people. His name also appears on spam e-mails, with multiple versions of the Nigerian / Lottery / bequest scam.

For extra WTFness, Sartori claimed to have converted to islam when he was based in Thailand, and sometimes calls himself Abdul-Haqq Sartori.

mikey said...

Yes please. I'd like the Bacon, Lettuce and Eternal Damnation Sammich please.

Oh, and can I get a large order of Hellfries with that?

ckc (not kc) said...

"And I have not violated my Hippocratic oath."

First, take no plastic.

Smut Clyde said...

I think I commented earlier with some scurrilous words about non-doctor Sartori but the comment's gone into the Spam filter...

Substance McGravitas said...

I'll be damned. Comment released. Haven't had any in there since the initial hiccups.

Smut Clyde said...

I suppose that mentioning N1ger1an and L0tt3ry and a couple of hyperlinks might have waved too many red flags.

fish said...

It is because he forgot to centrifuge the patients after adding the CsCl.

tigris said...

Oh, and can I get a large order of Hellfries with that?

Great, now I want fries.

It is because he forgot to centrifuge the patients after adding the CsCl.

And soup. Darn you all to Heck!

Smut Clyde said...

he forgot to centrifuge the patients after adding the CsCl

Apparently cancer cells are especially vulnerable to a density gradient.
So Sartori's treatment consists of intravenous CsCl (supposed to change cell pH, but only within cancer cells), coffee enemas, almond-pit extract, ozone therapy and "homeopathic cleansing". Unless the homeopathic cleansing is the same as the coffee enemas (enematas?). Precisely how this combination of toxins works in homeopathic terms escapes me but I'm sure he's not just throwing in the term 'homeopathic' to appeal to magical thinking on the part of his clients.

At least he has learned from his 1984 license revocation and no longer practices "chelation therapy".