Unguent Fever

Buy the revolutionary GcMaf immunotherapy that is taking the wellness industry by storm!

Wait, what?

If you are like the intrepid Riddled staff, you will have read that sentence and are wondering "What in the name of Odin's Ampullang is the 'Wellness industry'?" You may suspect, by analogy with the 'fitness industry', that the 'wellness' traded in this sector of the economy is not a physical condition (on a par with health or illth), and more an aspirational life-style, marked by commitment and investment and the purchase of accessories. You may be looking around nervously in case some earnest young person is about to accost you with explanations that 'health' is derived from 'hale', which is itself an old form of 'whole' (we all know that conversation). How large is the Wellness Industry, and at what point will Alt-Med hipsters adopt "Big Wellness" as a term of opprobrium?

[Big Wellness -- stolen from Oglaf]

But I should explain. Please to recall that "GcMAFplus" is a new supplier of skin-creams laced with a purportedly-beneficial "Vitamin-D Binding Protein". It showed up earlier this year to fill the ecological niche left vacant when the producer of "MAFactive" ran into legal entanglements. In US markets it is branded as "GlycoPlus" (to assuage the purists who insist that GcMAF ≠ VDBP) and purveyed through webstores with titles like "reactivatedwellness" and "purelivinghealthandwellness". Right now, though, we are going to review the Australian distributors of the stuff.

The webshop at 'gcmafproducts.com' was sometimes bandied about as a reliable GcMAF supplier. This was odd and inexplicable, for that pop-up outlet belongs to Darren Fleming of North Melbourne (also calling himself the Baron of Merlona), who is conceivably the world's worst con-man... his sundry grifting FAILs create the impression that he acquired a book on "How to Make $$$ with Fraudulent Qualifications and Mendacious Merchandise" (along with a handful of magic beans), only to find that the unscrupulous vendor had ripped him off and all the pages were blank. Thus his website is a fantasy list of the scammy but yet-to-materialise GcMAF knock-off products that he aspires to palm off on customers. The makers of MAFactive creams put their trust in Darren as the first Australian outlet for their products (before these vanished down the memory hole), reflecting the depth of their due diligence, or in recognition of a kindred spirit.

Anni Diamond -- Cancer Guide, Transformational Success Coach, erstwhile beauty-salonist and organiser of Cancer Scamborees -- is more successful at monetising her fantasy life, demonstrating that characters can escape into the world from a Tom Sharpe novel and still make a success of their new existence. Her webstore is wellnessproducts.com.au because what else would it be called?

Then a challenger appears! -- as they are wont to do! -- in the form of wellnessevolution.com.au. The shill for Big Wellness in this case turns out to be Tasmania Woman, Lucy Corrigan (backed by the BL & L Corrigan Family Trust). This inspired the following Sloka Lymerick, which, as you have not heard it, I will proceed to relate:

If brain-fade is driving you manic

While ticks send you into a panic

Improve your emotions

With special skin lotions

You buy from a lady Tasmanic.

An alternative couplet was rejected on grounds of good taste, tempting though it was to rhyme "chrism" and "jizm". 400 quatloos to the first reader to suggest a decent rhyme for 'unguent'!

Since GcMAF is involved, the whole Wounded-Healer Shamanism hairball of thought is never far away [most conspicuously in the case of Amanda Mary Jane and her pig-colon xenotransplant]. Here with Tasmania Lady, the path which led her to her Healing Vocation was the rabbit-hole of Chronic Lyme Disease. We do not judge, for this is a fate that can happen to anyone afflicted with an as-yet-uncharactererised physical malaise, or even some psychological source of distress.

Joining the Lymerati takes special dedication in Australia, for the continent is lacking in Lyme Disease, Acute or otherwise. Though it can boast of a diaspora of shonky clinics where doctors people in lab-coats will happily provide the diagnosis of choice, performing PCR-DNA analysis on a urine sample, or alternatively through dowsing.

So at right is Lucy from a few months ago, announcing her intention to turn professional. The venue was a 'GcMAF Products Australia' FaceBonk group she admins, so the announcement was well-lampshaded and no-one was surprised. Things have changed since GcMAF first arrived on the scene three years ago -- when

I am just surprised that Lyme Disease and Morgellons were omitted from the lists of conditions responding to GcMAF.

The FaceBukkake also hosts the "Vector-borne Illness Community Action Network" site, established at the same time -- 

a newly established networking group whose aim is to connect and empower individuals, activities, events, organisations, advocacy and political campaigns within our Australian vector-borne illness community.

Ticks: Much maligned

In a grudging nod to the official reality-based failure to find B. burgdorferi anywhere in the West Island, the title pays lip-service to a broad umbrella coverage of Rickettsia and Ross River Virus and "Lyme-like-diseases"... but you're right, the group is really about Chronic Lyme. The general wish-list is as follows:

1. Vindication & Recognition of Chronic Lyme self-diagnoses.
2. Mainstream medicine is evil, and corrupt, and has failed to develop a cure, and the portions are so small.
3. There should be a vaccine for Lyme Disease, and vaccines are evil.
4. Long-term IV antibiotics have horrible side-effects -- thanks, Mainstream Medicine! -- and the Lyme-Literate quacks who prescribe them are martyrs to the cause.
5. Holistic / complementary / functional modalities of healing are the way forward, but our state of incurable disability must be recognised.

Every second post seems to be a heart-warming tale of celebrities who underwent the Road-to-Damascus conversion event and now espouse the Chronic Lyme Cause --

Hadid, who was diagnosed in 2012, underwent the TVAM ( Transvascular Autonomic Modulation) procedure, in which a catheter is inserted into the jugular vein. A balloon is inflated so it stretch the vein, in doing so transferring energy to the nerve fibers along the outside of the vein. The treatment aims to relieve patients of Lyme disease symptoms, including fatigue, cognitive function, energy levels, bladder and bowel function.
The surgery came a few days after Hadid revealed she had consulted with Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, lead clinician at the Sophia Health Institute in Woodinville, Wash., and the founder and chairman of the Institute for Neurobiology in Germany and Switzerland.
“Homebound with a grateful heart,” Hadid wrote on Instagram Friday. “Thank you Dr. Klinghardt for bringing me to and shining light on the finishing line of my health journey.”

...or else it's an advertisement for some scamfest / trades-fair. With occasional advertisements for the wonderful GcMAFplus products from wellnessevolution. Imagine my surprise to find Lucy Corrigan as the admin of the site.

For bonus ensuing hilarity, here's Lucy defending GcMAF from the attempts by Drs Marco Ruggiero and Dietrich Klinghardt to traduce it. The former was instrumental in pushing GfMAF into its current central place in the Alt-Med scammocopoeia, before he renounced it -- realising that anyone could claim to be selling the stuff -- and shifted his enthusiasm to a new product Rerum, assembled from cheap ingredients and under his exclusive control.

The gist is roughly as follows:

-- Rerum is a total rip-off, lacking immunomodulatory properties, and without the Ruggiero-penned scholarly articles in parasitic journals that support GcMAF. GcMAF works, so there is simply no point (other than personal enrichment) in mixing chondroitin with Vitamin D. Anyway those reliable and reputable gentlemen who supply the GcMAFplus also provide a camel-cased but otherwise- identical knockoff product ReViVe®, as advertised at my webstore.*
-- Klinghardt is a corrupt untrustworthy sell-out who is only disparaging GcMAF because it competes with his own quackery scams as advertised on my VICAN FB site.

Evidently Chronic Lyme Disease increases one's tolerance of cognitive dissonance.

[Thx Dora]

-------------------------------------------------

* Not to be confused with Omnia®, a different otherwise-identical knock-off of Rerum!

BONUS WELLNESS (and Oglaf-stealing)!!