We drink elixirs that we refine From the juices of the dying (#2)

Call me old-fashioned but I do not rate for holothurians as a culinary ingredient, not after the lamentable white-sauce episode... it was a mistake anyone could have made, with 'bêche-de-mer' and 'béchamel' being adjacent in the index, but the Frau Doktorin was not well-pleased. Also 'trepang' is covered by Rule #7, "Never eat anything that belongs in a Batman sound-effect bubble".

So it was with some trepidation that I approached the latest wonder-drug in the cancer-cure scammocopeia -- TBL-12 -- which apparently consists of sea-cucumber squeezins. But it turns out to be the placebo of choice for a dying cricketer, and the website is bejazzled with tropical-blue-sea imagery,

and it has a nice Origin story in which the producer's father -- dying of cancer in 1962 -- was taught the secret traditional recipe for echinoderm smoothies by a benevolent Chinese fisherman; so it's all above-board after all. Which is a relief, given the price-tag.

The Google Machine led to a crowd-funding webpage inviting assistance to help a dying victim of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia pay for the TBL-12 and Iscador prescribed by one Dr Ulrich Doering. Further inquiry revealed more crowd-funding to help pay for the TBL-12, Iscador and GcMAF prescribed by Doering for cancer patient "Franny", and led to a patient with breast cancer, offered TBL-12 at $500 a month while the GcMAF would cost $4000-$5000 per week.*

"What in the name of fuck is Iscador?" asks the avid reader, in a pitch-shifted, format-shaped voice that is hardly recognisable as mine. "Apart from a character in a LotR knock-off?" Thereby providing me with an opportunity to mention Rudolf Steiner, 1920s Übercrank who contributed substantially to the gaiety of nations once he slipped the surly bonds of rational thought and just let the crazy fall out of his head.

We have already met Steiner's notions of mystic astronomy with the great migrations of spirits from planet to planet, in the manner of Scientology (though with less Xenu and fewer volcano-and-H-bomb-related activities); and his scheme for esoteric pest control through magickal burning of gonads. The latter is of course a foundational concept of Biodynamic Farming. Here at Riddled we try to support the Biodynamic farmers by offering them such innovations as Rainbow Aquaculture and the EasyMilk SideNipple Deer.

...but do they thank us? DO THEY BOGROLL.

At some point the leprechauns in Steiner's Teutonic underwear informed him that cancers are really a kind of parasite, and therefore a distillate of parasite would cure cancer, and then he revolutionised oncology by introducing tapeworm extracts. No, wait, he didn't; the cure had to be a plant parasite, and specifically mistletoe. You might think that fully parasitical plants like dodder or Rafflesia or the NZ Woodrose Dactylanthus taylorii would be twice as potent as as the merely hemi-parasitical mistletoe, but they do not provide the pharmacist with an excuse to go climbing trees with a golden sickle. At Riddled we support any conceit that allows us to illustrate posts about Steinerian medicine using images of Getafix. The recipe calls for fermentation of an aqueous extract, i.e. MISTLETOE BEER, totally not an ingredient in the Riddled Christmas Ale.

Baldr and Höðr: Mistletoe
injection goes horribly wrong

By now the reader is thinking "Why, yes, I would totally put my life in the hands of someone who has trained in this egregious scholium of thought, and believes that blood pumps itself around the body (with the heart merely there to modulate its flow), and that the skull is an inside-out femur." Then come to New Zealand! For here we have Anthroposophic GPs, accepted as members in good standing of the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners. In particular, one Dr Ulrich-Bero Doering.

"So much for Iscador," says the reader. "But what is GcMAF with the $4000-$5000 / week price-tag?" HA HA not really for we have already covered this Wonder Drug that Doctors Don't Tell You About, on many occasions.

Intensive research The gazoogle reveals a loose network of NZ doctors who have been importing GcMAF for a while... presumably in the ampoule form (extracted from human immunoglobulin) rather than as Ruggiero's magic yogurt. Already in 2011, a breast-cancer cancer patient was "paying $1500 per month for an alternative treatment [...] an alternative medicine from Europe known as GcMaf" [see also depressing coda to the story]. The network was coordinated around St Benedicts Health Care -- a clinic so over-the-top in its cheerfully syncretic promotion of mutually-contradictory modalities (as the young people call them) that one could easily believe it to be Californian.**

The latest development is Immuno Biotech Ltd! This is located at the same premises as St Benedict Health Care and is owned by Doering, along with Michael Kelly,*** previously the St-Benedict-based source of GcMAF guidance. However, the clinic has the appearance of a subsidiary or a local franchise of Immuno Centre / First Immune / GcMAF.se. It shares its name with David Noakes' Guernsey company for GcMAF production.  The services it offers overlap with the specialties of Noakes' colleague Marco Ruggiero... sonoporation, "the Swiss Protocol", "Advanced In-House Imaging [...] i.e. Cortical Abnormalities in Children with Autism".

The cost of a first medical appointment at Immuno Biotech is NZ$460. "Follow up appointments can take up to 30 minutes and cost $230".

This is not nearly as funny as when GcMAF was an overseas phenomenon. I must distract myself now by arranging the transport of another shipment of freshly-harvested squaculture rainbows.

Thx to (et alia) Grant Jacobs, Mark Hanna

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* "Dr Doering has a friend that can get the drug down to around $450 a day as his friends wife is receiving this treatment and is doing great living with stage 4 cancer."

At Riddled we advise against drugs which the doctor is offering at a discount because another patient no longer needs the entire course of treatment.

** If the happy healthy sun-time banner at the St Benedicts site is any guide, it is the favourite provider of holistic solutions among Russian stock-photograph models.

*** Kelly is a Dielectric Resonance Management Practitioner and Biological Terrain Management Practitioner. He also owns "Vibronics Health" which offers Electronic Gem Therapy from the same address. His CV explains that having cured his own lymphoma with life-style changes,

In 2004 Michael trained under instruction from Dr Jon Whale of Whale Medical, on "Dynamic Radiometric Thermal Diagnostics" and "Dielectric Resonance Management Procedures" (Electronic Gem Therapy). He used this technology to further help repair and strengthen his body
In 2005 Michael trained under an associate of Dr Timothy Ray in his "Biological Terrain Managment", utilizing analysis of Saliva and Urine for health assessment and intervention recommendations.
In 2009 Michael completed four years training in Western Biomedicine and three years training in Acupuncture, at the Auckland College of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In 1992 Michael was initiated into the Sufi tradition and studied Psychology, Philosophy and Mysticism.

Coincidentally enough, the palatial Riddled offices happen to share premises with Mikey Hemlock's No-buzz vibrator-repair service, Œstrus. The shop has that name in the hope that people will ask how it is pronounced. This is our opportunity to explain that “The O is silent”.