Last spring I wrote an article about a Dr. Al Plechner, who claims to have discovered a glandular imbalance, which he has named Plechner Syndrome and which he claims is responsible for a wide range of health problems. Dr. Plechner’s web site includes many of the classic warning signs of medical nonsense, including: grand claims that a lone individual has discovered, through trial and error rather than formal scientific research, a major breakthrough that the rest of the medical profession has missed; that there is one entity responsible for an enormous number of seemingly unrelated diseases; that one simple therapy can cure or improve many seemingly unrelated diseases; that mysterious “toxins” in the environment can be blamed for health problems without specific evidence for such a connection; that anecdotes and personal experience is sufficient to demonstrate these claims; and that scientists and veterinarians who disagree with Dr. Plechner are motivated by ignorance, greed, or other malign motives rather than a genuine interest in the truth and the welfare of patients.
Following my earlier criticism of Dr. Andrew Jones (here and here), his followers leaped to his defense through a combination of anecdotes and personal attacks on me. The same has now happened with Dr. Plechner’s followers, and this time it appears he has actively solicited people to come forward in his defense. Starting a couple of days ago, I began receiving a number of comments on my original post, most offering anecdotes suggesting Dr. Plechner had helped their pets, often after conventional veterinarians have failed or given up. I have, according to my usual policy, approved these comments and tried to offer reasonable and polite responses. I am always open to constructive debate and discussion focused on ideas and facts.
A fair number of the comments have also included personal attacks or abusive language. I do not generally approve such comments since they are both uncivil and not productive. In the past, I have collected anonymous examples of the sort of abusive or hysterical hate mail I get just so people can understand the kind of tone and thought processes so often marshaled in support of unconventional medical practices. In this instance, a supporter of Dr. Plechner has forwarded to me an email in which Dr. Plechner asks his supporters to set me straight. I think this provides some additional insight into Dr. Plechner’s approach and why pet owners should be highly skeptical of his claims.
His original request to his followers is as follows:
When you have time to waste, Google drplechner.com and go to Plechner’s Syndrome and the Art of Making Things Up
Now I know why my son said, “Pop do not look at the comments against you on the internet”!
WOW!
I think the time has come to have you comment on the statements that have been made about my faulty research!
What a shame that a person that is so “academically impaired”, has so little to do accept to show their “ignorance with an attitude”, by trying to discredit new research studies that have not been included in their education in schools of medical learning just yet.
Treating the cause of disease is just as important as treating the effects, if not even more important!
The fact that my profession does not know the cause of a disease at this time, does not mean that a cause does not still exist.
On line notifications like this only hurts the patients based upon this contributors ignorance!
I know how busy all of you are, but the time has come when venomous misconceptions like what this person is preaching, must end.
If you have time, I would really appreciate you sending your comments and experiences using Plechner’s Syndrome to the website information at the end of the article.
My only feeling is that this kind of article is only hurting people and animals with health problems and keeping them from getting proper treatment.
The time is coming, when my research findings will be accepted by the medical professions and make a huge difference for their patients.
Thank you for understanding and believing in me.
Sincerely,
AL
This message contains a number of clear examples of Dr. Plechner’s belief that he is a misunderstood visionary and that the reason the rest of the veterinary profession rejects his claims is because we are all ignorant. It is a remarkable display of arrogance to assume you are right and the vast majority of other medical professionals are wrong, so this somewhat contradicts the more sympathetic descriptions of Dr. Plechner by his supporters.
He also refers to “new research studies that have not been included in their education,” yet neither he nor any of his supporters ever produce any published research on his claims for us to evaluate.
And while I understand that no one likes to be criticized, it hardly supports Dr. Plechner’s case that he responds to this criticism not with evidence or substantive arguments but simply repeated assertions that he is right and the rest of us are wrong and with personal attacks on a critic he knows nothing about. Phrases like “academically impaired” and “ignorance with an attitude” are just vacuous, petty attempts to insult, not an argument against anything I have written. And “venomous misconceptions” is not only a silly attempt to imply some sinister motive for my lack of acceptance of his claim, but also a bit hypocritical given his personal attacks in this message to his supporters.
In a follow-up message thanking one of his supporters for defending him, Dr. Plechner goes further, revealing his conspiracy theory driven agenda and his underlying rejection of the scientific and medical profession generally.
One crucial pt to always keep in mind: “Follow the money trail”
“HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER, CALLS THE TUNE”
Much of so called ‘science’ operates on this basis.
And most of the medical/ big pharma colluded industry has a cozy little relationship with
government, msm and the educational institutes to boot.
We should class them as ‘Disease Care’ providers, and not Health Care!
Once again the pharma shill gambit and the blithe dismissal of all doctors who don’t agree with Dr. Plechner as greedy and more concerned about money than about the welfare of their patients. This sort of insulting nonsense deserves no respect or response other than to show it for what it is and let the public judge whether it is fair and reasonable or extreme and self-serving.
While some of Dr. Plechner’s supporters have, as I pointed out earlier, have been civil and even thoughtful in their defense of him, others have been even less reasonable and less substantive in their attacks on his critics than he has. Here are some samples from comments and messages posted to this site or sent directly to me. Such hysterical ranting and abuse belongs in the realm of debates about religious cults, not about the causes and treatments of disease in our animal companions.
“That Skep Vet is a jerk”
“Some scientist YOU are!!! With NO evidence or EXPERIENCE of using Dr. Plechner’s Protocol, you have MADE UP a MOST INCREDIBLE diatribe which amounts to character assassination. This article is outright libelous you should be sued for for an attempt to destroy the reputation of someone who has worked hard for fifty years and has saved countless lives. You have NO actual scientific experience with this protocol, yet you have judged it in the extreme. HOW can you do this and call yourself a scientist??? Talk about a personality disorder, this is cognitive dissonance.
The truth is geniuses are ahead of their times and the little minds always do what you are doing.”
“Well, the above diatribe from one self-proclaimed know-it-all,”skeptvet,” just goes to prove that any pompous ass with a computer and keyboard can make denouncements of Biblical proportions denigrating the findings of others, about which they neither have any direct knowledge or proof to the contrary.
Yes, Mr. or Mrs. Skeptvet, we who have first hand experience with Dr. Plechner and what’s possible when the mind is not a steel trap, encourage you to waste more of your time, attempting to deny and negate the life work of one man who has actually been in the thick of it for 5 decades. A man who has demonstrated his enormous heart and compassion and humanity countless times, while you’ve been at your keyboard, “working” hard at slicing and dicing someone’s reputation.
We absolutely encourage you to waste more of your value-less time, along with all the other flat-earthers. Opinions cannot sway those with FIRST-HAND knowledge of what works! I bet we could give a damn whether science agrees or not.
Personally, I’d rather have a live cat and pass (or piss) on the studies.”
It seems pretty clear from the information cited in my original post, and from the responses of Dr. Plechner and his supporters to that critique, that Dr. Plechner believes himself to be a visionary possessed on an insight not appreciated by the rest of the veterinary profession, and that his followers are willing to accept his claims based on anecdotes alone, without concern for whether there is any real scientific evidence to support them. That is, of course, their right. However, history is littered with the work of such iconoclastic visionaries who were wrong, and justly forgotten. And, unfortunately, history is also littered with people hurt and killed by mistaken beliefs about health and ineffective or dangerous medical therapies, and a greater understanding of the value of scientific assessment of these therapies could have saved many of them
As I’ve discussed before, the kind and brilliant pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, guided much of the childcare practices in the English-speaking world for decades with his incredibly popular book Baby and Child Care. Among his many insights, unfortunately, was a tragic mistake. Based on his own experience and reasoning, he decided the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) could be lowered by putting babies to sleep on their bellies, so they wouldn’t choke if they vomited. Most parents from the 50s to the 90s followed this advice. But from the 1970s, there was good scientific evidence Dr. Spock was wrong. A systematic reviews of the subject has concluded that:
Advice to put infants to sleep on the front for nearly a half century was contrary to evidence available from 1970 that this was likely to be harmful. Systematic review of preventable risk factors for SIDS from 1970 would have led to earlier recognition of the risks of sleeping on the front and might have prevented over 10 000 infant deaths in the UK and at least 50 000 in Europe, the USA, and Australasia.
When a campaign was instituted in the U.K. to reverse the practice Dr. Spock had recommended, the number of SIDS cases dropped dramatically. That is the danger or following the intuition or experience of one person, however smart or well-intentioned, and ignoring the need for real scientific evidence. I bear no personal ill will to Dr. Plechner, but I stand by my assessment that his claims are implausible, not supported by meaningful scientific evidence, and a dangerous assertion of the intuition of the individual over objective research as the measure of medical hypotheses.
Thanks for this post, Skeptvet. I appreciate and support your work. Dealing with the hysteria is unfortunately, as you know, part and parcel of applying critical thinking to a belief-based domain.
You have a double standard that you would publish such outrageous stuff about Dr. Plechner, then criticize those of us who rose to his defense. You are ignorant of the rules of science if you want to rule out the enormous body of empirical evidence that Dr. Plechner has developed. We are probably talking about half a million lab tests on a hundred thousand animals. Empirical evidence is completely valid in science. Science is the ability to produce repeatedable results, which Dr. Plechner certainly has demonstrated with his work.
I noted that when you quoted from me you did not quote thew fact that I told you that Dr. Plechner had a hospital which had a gold medal award from the American Veterinary Association. We are not taslking about some kind of fly-by-night vet here.
It was Dr. Plechner who designed the first hypoallergenic pet food, and who with it, created the well-accepted in the mainstream, trend of special curative diets for animals. Dr. Plechner IS a landmark genius in veterinary medicine, his protocol produces amazing results, and if you were giving a fair evaluation to his work, you would learn that. I evaluated his work by trying his protocol, and I have seen it save many animals. The proof is in the pudding. the Plechner Protocol produces results. that guy with the inflamed intestine who is blaming Primal Defense for his body’s extreme reaction, can do a 24 hour urine test for 17 Keto steroids and a Total IGA, and a Total Estrogen, and he will see the cause for his inflamed gut. Some of the regulating hormones from the adrenals will be low, his total IGA will be low as a result and his mucous membranes in the gut will be consequently inflamed. If he were a cat, Dr. Plechner would put him on injected Depo medrol for several cycles, at the physiologic dose–the dose his body lacks–Dr. Plechner would add to his system the dose of the immune regulating hormone which his body is not making for itself, and he would use the injected form in order to be sure it gets absorbed despite the inflamed gut. When the gut is no longer inflamed, he would measure the adrenal hyper-stimulation of the patient’s own pituitary in order to accurately titrate the dose of cortisone that the patient’s body is not making, and he would give him that dose plus enough thyroid hormone to insure that the cortisone dose gets properly metabolized and does not build up in the patient’s system to become a pharmacologic rather than a physiologic dose. Dr. Plechner would also take all the allergens out of that patient’s diet , so as to not provoke further inflammation of his intestine. If you look at it fairly and reasonably, what Dr. Plechner is doing is absolutely rational and reasonable, and there are somewhere a hundred thousand animals and at least a half a million lab tests 0ver a fifty year period which say that it works. This is science. Science, even when there are double blind trials, often makes mistakes. What about all the estrogen that conventional medicine gave to women for years and the cancers they created by doing it? Conventional medicine does not have some special shield which guarantees it as safe, either. Quite the opposite has been historically demonstrated.
“…there is one entity responsible for an enormous number of seemingly unrelated diseases” – how similar is this refrain to the one put out by many chiropractors who claim that spinal subluxations are the cause of ALL disease.
It seems quite ironic that you accuse me of not understanding science and then you claim that Dr. Plechner’s methods are “proven” based entirely on his own arguments and unpublished case records. Science involves validating hypotheses through systematic and repeated testing at multiple levels, from in vitro and animal model studies through clinical trials. No such evidence has been published to support Plechner Syndrome or its treatment. The fact that Dr. Plechner has treated patients and that he and some of his clients believe his treatment has worked is not scientific evidence, merely testimonials.
You seem to think that the strength of his and your belief is in itself proof of something, but that isn’t how science works; that’s how religion works. Likewise, it makes no difference if Dr. Plechner has won some kind of award. Linus Pauling won two Nobel prizes and was a brilliant scientis. He was still wrong about Vitamin C and the common cold. Ideas stand and fall on their own merits and on the basis of the evidence, not on the reputation of the person promoting them.
If Dr. Plechner wants his theories to be accpeted by the scientific community, he needs to do the hard work of rigorous, controlled scientific tetsing. If he doesn’t care what the scientific community says or thinks, then he will have to learn to live with criticism. Urging his followers to defend him with anecdotes isn’t going to convince anyone of anything.
[On behalf of sandymere by request]
Is there no end to the Woo! I think you have covered the 10 signs of quackery so just to add a link to why people believe in such nonsense which demonstrates you will not change the believers.
https://sites.google.com/site/maartenboudry/teksten-1/how-convenient
Having said that I do think that you will sway those not yet indoctrinated and sites like yours and the likes of
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/
, http://edzardernst.com/2012/10/a-new-blog-on-alternative-medicine-why/
etc are great places for people to get a little sense in an often nonsensical world.
Remember
“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation, but the history of science shows that this power does not long endure” Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 6th edition
Regards Sandymere.
It is obvious that some individuals want to create their own reality regardless of what science and nature shows is true. The worst part is to see how this people take advantage of the “believers” that have no critical thinking skills, but that is the price they have to pay.
One thing that is interesting: that as long as Plechner regularly prescribes depo-medrol or prednisone along with the other nonsense, clients readily accept the treatment. Yet, when a conventional vet prescribes prednisone, the conventional vet is the devil incarnate.
Patricia, surely you’re not suggesting that cats can suffer from a depo-medrol deficiency.
Dear PP: what is a physiologic dose of methylprednisolone for a 3.65 kg feline species with FIV…um, er, I mean…Plechners syndrome? You seem to have Plechner’s nostrum done; please advise.
So, I couldn’t resist and had to research the Google University database for information on Dr. Plechner and his alleged accomplishments. Of course, I wasn’t disappointed; turns out, the web is chock full of references to Plechner. And, come to find out, he and a previous commenter on this website, Dr. Bob Berger, (Mr. appeal to civility — “by the way, that Al is a nice guy”) are two peas in a sordid pod from that quasi-legitimate vine of the naturalistic fallacy plant. Both are members of a cult that foregoes the established facts of life and advocates the make-believe. Both authors churn out articles in a magazine entitled Nutracula, The Science of Longevity Journal, which appeals to readers of a similar ilk and gullible mindset. Case in point, one of the articles is entitled: Effects of GMO’s for You and Your Pet (although I’m pretty sure an effect is either “on” you or “upon”, not necessarily “for” you – although something may be effective for you…but I digress), where they go on to explain the dangers of GMO products (without any references, of course, but replete with hyperbole and scare tactics akin to an anti-vaccine screed on AoA) and how we’ll all die painfully unnatural deaths as a result of our consumption of these evil, man-made chemical (hint: chemicals = bad!).
But, going further back, I found Plechner’s first printed proposal of the theory on which he bases his life (http://pubget.com/paper/15050110/cortisol-abnormality-as-a-cause-of-elevated-estrogen-and-immune-destabilization-insights-for-human-medicine-from-a-veterinary-perspective), pertaining to estrogen excess (due to cortisol deficiency) and the deleterious effects on (not “for”) thyroid hormones, IgA and B and T cell regulation. Unfortunately, while potentially feasible, the entire theory is unsubstantiated and at odds with just about everything science knows about the body and regulation. Anybody wonder why Big Pharma hasn’t jumped on the Plechner bandwagon, in light of its alleged application to all forms living? Nonetheless, Plechner’s theory of “estrogen dominance” — his basis for methylprednisolone abuse in the feline species — has become quite popular since his 2004 theory hit the blogosphere. And, fortunately for him (unfortunately for us), it’s a topic du jour on every quack and crank naturalistic fallacy publication out there, second only to “adrenal fatigue” and “boosting one’s immunity”. Actually, coincidentally, adrenal fatigue is a term spouted by Plechner and his minions because it explains EVERYTHING that’s wrong with you and your pet! SBM has already spoken on the fallacy of adrenal fatigue http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/fatigued-by-a-fake-disease/ and has readily deconstructed the advocate’s support.
Finally, Plechner claims that SARDS is an extension of the Plechner syndrome and that he can heal those suffering from the effects. Of course, his answer: use and overuse of steroids – it’s cutting edge science, folks! STEP RIGHT UP and join the revolution! His website is loaded with testimonials of naïve individuals whose animal companions were diagnosed by board certified doctors of veterinary ophthalmology with SARDS and then given little hope for recovery. That is, until doc Plechner loaded ol’ Fluffy up on steroids and, voila, Fluffy now…well, um…gets around better. Strangely enough, not one of the miraculous testimonies ever includes a reassessment by a board certified doctor of veterinary ophthalmology as to whether or not the patient can see. NOT ONE — just anecdotal testimony from his equally blinded followers.
So, as V.T. so succinctly surmised: Plechner’s ploy is to run a bevy of tests; diagnose Plechner’s syndrome; apply Plechner’s nostrum (steroid loading) and revel in the naiveté of Plechner’s minions. Conversely, find yourself a dedicated “old school” practitioner, doling out steroids for his patients with chronic atopy – for which his clients insists — and the same tree-hugging myopics will hang the old man behind the barn at midnight.
@Patricia Pepper
“Science, even when there are double blind trials, often makes mistakes. What about all the estrogen that conventional medicine gave to women for years…”
The thing is, Ms. Pepper, the very reason that we know the truth about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is that we did the long term studies needed to find out. If we had simply accepted the early work, we would still be on our merry way with higher rates of breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
One of the beautiful things about science is that it is self-correcting. Science knows that it doesn’t know everything–yet–and it also knows to discard the older ideas as new evidence adds to the body of knowledge.
Your description of science and the way it works is very incomplete and explains why you might so readily accept the ideas of Dr. P. I encourage you to learn about real science and how it works.
Skept Vet aka Brennen McKenzie
You have been a relief vet for all of 12 years compared to 50+ years that Dr. Plechner has been practicing?? Wow. You’re credible – not. You are very wet behind the ears my friend. You have many years of your own trials and errors and when you stumble upon something amazing in your research, you’ll too have a “Skeptvet” waiting to discredit you. Until then, since your Bachelors and Masters of Art in Literature didn’t pan out for you as a profession, you can put it to use and write up these blogs and others you have like it. I’m glad I was able to find some info on you through my scavenger hunt. What a waste of time…
I’m out.
I wish to point out – vehemently – that I am NOT Rita K. There aren’t so many Ritas around, but we obviously cover a wide spectrum of thought.
If nothing else, the idea that a university education should have anything to do with earning one’s living is one to which I strongly object: it is a way of furnishing one’s mind and polishing one’s mental equipment to deal with life and enrich society. Professional studies are quite another thing.
Wow, you can’t even read a resume. I’ve been in full-time clinical practice AND relief work for over a decade, and you call that “wet behind the ears?” In addition to my veterinary degree, I have a Master’s in Physiology and Animal Behavior (not Literature, which was one of my two undergraduate degrees) and and am completing a second Master’s in Epidemiology. Does a correct understanding of my resume make me seem more credible to you? Of course not, since you wouldn’t change your mind if I had a Nobel prize in medicine because you’re fanatically devoted to supporting an idea you don’t understand but have simply “seen for yourself” (exactly the same evidence provided by people claiming to have been abducted by aliens). Brilliant!
Oh my. Skeptvet, I don’t know how on earth you persevere in the face of all the hysterical, hostile, personal attacks. I very much appreciate that you do, but honestly, I don’t know how you manage it.
Diane,
You say “Skeptvet, I don’t know how on earth you persevere in the face of all the hysterical, hostile, personal attacks. I very much appreciate that you do, but honestly, I don’t know how you manage it.” Yet it is ok for him to do the same to Dr. Plechner? Such hypocrisy. Dr. Plechner has endured the same from people like Skeptvet for far longer than Skeptvet has been in practice (12 years relief vet and 9 years as a vet as he pointed out I should make that correction). So correction, Skeptvet has been practicing for 9 years as a “full time” vet…noted.
You’re alien comment is silly, Skeptvet, but just out of curiosity for someone such as yourself who backs up science so much, are you saying they do exist or don’t? Or is that just a matter of opinion?
Still not reading the resume correctly, but it’s all irrelevant anyway. If I find you a vet who has been practicing longer than Dr. Plechner and still thinks he’s wrong, will that change your mind? Of course not! The issue is irrelevant since how long someone is in practice is not evidence or proff of the truth of their ideas.
The point of the comment was that you claim Dr. Plechner is right and the rest of the veterinary profession is wrong, and the only evidence you offer is the testimonials of a few people who believe their pets are better because of what he has done. The same exact kind of evidence has supported every crazy idea from bloodletting to alien abduction, which illustrates why it is not a reliable kind of evidence. If you can find a testimonial for every idea ever suggested, then either every idea ever suggested is true, or testimonials aren’t worth much as proof. My opinion on alien abduction is that it is extremely unlikely and there is noo reliable evidence to support it, which is exactly the same situation for Plechner Syndrome.
Someone needs to stand up to faith masquerading as science, and people who would try to twist evidence to support their own agenda. Someone needs to hold the high ground when such people start flinging ad hominem abuse and sarcastic crap in defence of their idealism. But it’s so hard, and most of the time it’s a thankless task. I feel for you.
To fluid therapy: The book, “Pets at Risk” by Dr. Alfred Plechner has complete tables of instructions on how to find the physiologic doses of cortisone needed to suppress viral diseases such as FIP by re-regulating the animal’s immune system through funding the cortisol deficit created by malfunctioning adrenals.
To Antro: Take a look at De Bono’s thinking Course which the BBC ran some years ago. In one segment he describes how science regularly has OVERTURNED its previous findings. Unfortunately, science as it is applied in medicine has been warped. “We” is mostly pharmaceutical company money. The Plechner protocol has one serious defect, which is that it accomplishes too much for too little money, thus there is no financial incentive to pay for formal studies. However, Dr. Plechner did, himself, fund extensive lab testing by an extremely reputable lab when he first started trying to discover what was wrong in patients who were seriously ill in ways that had not been described during his education at the University of California at Davis Veterinary School. In the ensuing fifty years he has treated around a hundred thousand patients and those patients have been treated using lab tests to find and adjust their physiologic doses of cortisone and thyroid hormone. There have been literally hundreds of thousands of tests run on his patients which demonstrate his syndrome’s existence and that his protocol for correcting it works.
To say that it is quackery that his protocol works for so many illnesses is a presumption. What Dr. Plechner did is truly brilliant, it is the stuff of true genius. He found a fundamental hormonal imbalance which has wide reaching effects in the body because it is an imbalance in a fundamental control system of the body which also governs certain important aspects of the immune system. He found the Endocrine/Immune link. He demonstrated this with lab tests. He then proceeded to do something entirely logical, which was to put back the missing hormones, and to lean how to titrate the dose to “fund the deficit”–to put back into the system the amount of hormone which the body is not making for itself. In doing so he obtained normal endocrine and immune function. Since these are truly major systems with wide reaching effects in the body, they are both responsible for creating a wide range of diseases and are responsible therefore for curing a wide range of disease when they are put back into a state of normal function.
If for instance, I have a house with damage to the foundation, it can generate a lot of of other damage in the house. If I fix that foundation, the other damage stops occurring. This is what Dr. Plechner did.
In my opinion Dr. Linus Pauling was not wrong. I personally have seen viruses stopped in their tracks using a combination of the Plechner Protocol, antioxidants and oxygen therapies. I personally was able to put into remission a chronic hepatitis B for which my fancy liver specialist at Stanford University said “There’s nothing you can do.” One of the first things I did was talked to Dr. Cameron at the Linus Pauling Institute. He taught me how to use vitamin c– to titrate the dose to bowel tolerance.
I was able to restore normal liver function in months despite having had chronic hepatitis for at least a year and a half. I used more than vitamin c, I used other supplements and a diet which I designed myself after reading many of the what I call the “lone wolf” geniuses in medicine who are out ahead of the pack in their thinking like Dr. Plechner is. My liver enzymes came right down and my prothrombin time came down some months later. On DNA tests the viral antigen is still there, but if does not reproduce. I still take the antioxidants and other supplements and follow sensible dietary guidelines. I have done challenges spending many thousands of dollars to see what my program does for me. Obviously this is not double blind, but ten immune functions become abnormal when I go off the supplement program and they come back to normal when I resume it. If I am doing that with just my mind, then I say, God Bless the placebo effect, for it is a powerful healer!
Yes, I am saying that cats with feline retro viruses have abnormal adrenal function which is causing them to either not produce adequate cortisol, or they are not metabolizing that cortisol properly, in some cases probably are not hydroxylating the cortisol. That is what Dr. Plechner discovered. The reason injected methyl prednisolone is used by Dr. Plechner in cases with low IGA, or evidence of gut inflammation is to insure that it is properly absorbed. Yes, he is “funding a deficit” of cortisone in the body. Cortisone is the only hormone which is essential for life according to Dr. William Jeffries who was a medical school professor at two U.S. universities and who published a book called “The Safe Use of Cortisol”.
It seems strange the conventional opinion that the adrenals either work or they don’t–that only normal adrenals, Cushing’s Disease, and Addison’s disease exist.
And anyone with the funds to do so could blast that presumption right out of the water by running 24 hour urine 17 Keto steroid tests on a large sample of people with various kinds of health problems including chronic hepatitis, and other chronic viral infections. Unfortunately the pharmaceutical companies aren’t stepping up to the plate on this one as there is not much money to be made on methyl prednislolone or on hydrocortisone which is usually used for the long term therapy. Obviously, they have to pay for the testing with what they can potentially earn. Most major U.S. Universities now have offices for determining which of the discoveries made by their professors they are going to back by patenting them. The money is usually divided between the funder of the research which is often a pharmaceutical company and the professor whose research it is, and the university itself. There is little interest in researching things which clearly have no potential profit in them like hydrocortisone. Dr. Plechner paid for the initial research out of his own pocket. A vast body of evidence was built by laboratory tests run on his patients over the last fifty years.
I say that whoever truly is curious and is interested in the advancement of the healing arts, which are distinct from pure science, will examine the evidence for the Plechner Protocol by reading the book, Pets at Risk, by Dr. Plechner. I think it is truly wrong to try to shoot down his work without at least examining it to that degree. If you read that book you will see that he is a very careful and methodical researcher who indeed uses scientific methods in his work. I know that I and many others have repeatedly seen results from his protocol. He virtually resurrected the first cat he worked on for me which had feline leukemia (FELV) it was emaciated with swollen lymph nodes and a fungal infection was ulcerating its nose. Dr. Plechner turned it into a beautiful healthy animal again by cleverly re-registering its immune system to fight the leukemia virus effectively. Since then, his protocol induced remissions to feline leukemia in two other cats of mine. One was nearly dead and about half of its white cells were leukemia cells under the microscope. It was so nearly dead that we used an I.V. hydrogen peroxide therapy followed by an I.V. antioxidant therapy together with the Plechner Protocol. In five weeks we had induced a remission and had a normal cat. Dr. Plechner is doing things that the establishment can’t do. The argument that he can’t be doing what he IS doing–just because–is far from a science- based examination of Dr. Plechner’s work. If you look at the history of medicine there have been MANY discoveries made by people working alone which flew in the face of the current understanding in their fields. Galileo is was one. Pasteur was another, and Pasteur was ridiculed. Just like your are subjecting Dr. Plechner to ridicule.
You can dismiss a lifetime of brilliant work and claim that advances in medicine are only happening in the universities and major research institutions all you want, but it is terribly un scientific to simply dismiss as quackery a large body of evidence such as Dr. Plechner has created with his life’s work. A true scientist would not make a judgement without actual hard evidence, and a body of evidence such as that which Dr. Plechner has created would certainly pique a true scientist’s curiosity rather than arouse his ire. and a snap judgement. I, and many others, know that what Dr. Plechner discovered has resurrected a lot of animals who were conventionally given up for dead. Dr. Plechner would be the first one to be happy for his protocol to be further studied, but the funds to do this kind of large study are certainly beyond his means, and there are none of us who have witnessed how powerfully this protocol works would want our animals to risk be killed by being in the group given the placebo as a part of a double blind trial. Dr. Plechner is a healer–a doctor, and he, knowing what his protocol is capable of doing, would certainly never in cold blood submit a group of animals to being the “control group”.
While I am not usually one for suppressing opinion, I feel this propaganda piece deserves full deletion – if for nothing else, to prevent an innocent pet owner from even hinting at giving this ineffective and harmful crap (and Patricia Pepper) any credibility.
Why is a further explanation of Dr. Plechner’s treatment protocol so irritating t0 v.t. if v.t. is interested in using an evidence based approach to medicine? Is v.t straying into the province of prejudice here? My detailed explanation of Dr. Plechner’s treatment protocol is aimed at making it clear that Dr. Plechner’s work IS soundly and firmly evidence based and backed up by fifty years of results in animals which have been evidence backed by laboratory testing.
Further, why is something so simple and logical as what Dr. Plechner has done so irritating and incendiary to all of you who actually have no evidence that it does not work? Why are all of the people writing in saying that it worked in their animals dismissed as “anecdotes”, as you go on to ignore the evidence and to refuse to examine it? This sounds more like religion than science. This sounds like blind prejudice.
Speaking of blind, again I challenge that all of science has to be subjected to the double blind method or be ignored. After all, was Darwin’s work double blind? Or was it based on empirical observation like Dr. Plechner’s?
Is the proof the earth is not flat from a double blind study?
What Dr. Plechner did was find that a major regulating hormone–cortisol, which according to the world expert for cortisone, medical school professor, William Jeffries is the ONLY hormone ESSENTIAL for life– is deficient or bound in many animals and that this situation sets up further hormonal imbalances, specifically the binding of thyroid hormone often by the creation of reverse t-3, the generation of excess TOTAL estrogens in the system due to pituitary hyper-stimulation which occurs to the lack of functioning active cortisol, and that these hormonal imbalances deregulate the immune surveillance. He found that by putting back the amount of cortisone which replaces the missing active cortisol and by replacing bound thyroid hormone the immune surveillance can be regained. This is why the Plechner treatment protocol has been found to be so effective against feline retroviruses.
What Dr. Plechner did, in order to do this is so logical that it surprises me that it would arouse this kind of hatred and ire. Because, in fact, aren’t we talking about medicine which exists, as Dr. Plechner puts it to defend “the struggle for life”? How Dr. Plechner determines the amount of cortisone to put back into the system is brilliant. In effect he asks the gland which regulates cortisol production in the body, the pituitary, how much functioning cortisol is missing in the system. He does this by checking for excess TOTAL estrogen which occurs under hyper stimulation of the adrenals by the pituitary, when there is not enough ACTIVE, unbound cortisone in the system. By doing lots of lab testing–originally out of his own pocket, Dr. Plechner noted the relationship between the endocrine system and the immune system–that when the missing hormones were supplied in the dose that satisfied the pituitary by stopping the pituitary hyper stimulation of the adrenals, the B cell and T cell populations that he followed in his laboratory testing, normalized.
Now after fifty years and a hundred thousand animals and hundreds of thousands of lab tests, it is seems that this entirely logical therapy which rebalances a major command system in the biochemistry–which insures the adequate supply of the only hormone which is absolutely essential for life, and which also insures an adequate supply of a hormone–thyroid hormone–which is essential for optimal oxygen metabolism, which is the sine e qua non of the mammalian biochemistry–has been thoroughly demonstrated to be of enormous value in the art of Medicine. In fact, it is the establishment which has been remiss in not making further studies of what Dr. Plechner has discovered.
About those “mysterious toxins” Skept vet should do a little research and here his training in epidemiology would stand him in good stead. He should look at studies on the effects of small particle air pollution which is like taking an I.V. hit of the toxins in the air as it has been demonstrated that they directly enter the blood stream. He should also take a look at the famous Mt. Sinai School of Medicine study of the average total body burden of exogenous chemicals, which was found to be total body burden of between 100 and 200 exogenous chemicals, which included such known to be extremely dangerous toxins such as PCBs. He should also look at the studies of immune system problems in Eskimo children and in an distemper like out break in sea lions, and the studies of the relationship of these episodes to toxic exposure. In the early 90’s there were two excellent articles on toxic exposure and the immune system in animals and in humans in the Los Angeles Times which cite the pertinent research. Further, Skept vet should look at research which indicates that the adrenals are a target organ which is easily damaged by various kinds of toxic.
exposure.
It does take some understanding of the role that the body’s all important electron biochemistry plays, and an understanding of exactly what is involved in oxygen metabolism–the enzymes needed, etc., to start to connect the dots and realize that the damage Plechner saw in animals in Los Angeles which has had a severe air pollution problem which was noted back to the times that even the smoke from Indian Campfires was noted to be caught and to collect under inversion layers in the
air in the Los Angeles basin, to understand that the epidemic of disease which he saw was not his imagination and indeed has a cause. We will not even mention the damage of poor quality pet foo to these animals, because that would arouse too much
ire, and I want to stay on firm grond here where the evidence is absolutely irrefutable. TAKE A LOOK AT THE RATES FOR THE KIND OF PROBLEMS DR. PLECHNER SAW IN THE ANIMALS FOR CHILDREN IN LOS ANGELES. I happen to have seen some of these statistics for new York–the rate for asthma in children in New York is astronomical, and has been rising rapidly in recent years. If Skept vet is skeptical about the relationship between inhaled toxins and illness, even the US Center for Disease control estimated ten years after the fact that that a quarter of a million New Yorkers were made ill by the toxicity which entered the air after the Twin Towers burned on 9/11 in New York.
Skept vet’s education in epidemiology could be put to demonstrate the sort of damage that Dr. Plechner saw in animals in Los Angeles.
We have to ask why do heart attack rates correlate with levels of air pollution in cities like Rome? Could it be that not so “mysterious toxins” are playing a role?
Dr. Pauling was an early proponent of “molecular medicine” he is the one who coined the term. He was the first one to make the connection between what goes on in thwe body’s electron biochemistry and cancer and viruses. He was not wrong to see this connection, he was early on the scene and now these issues are beginning to become more clear. The model of heart disease as being an issue of free radical damage to the arteries is increasingly being conventionally accepted and the drug companies are researching such substances as resveratrol in searching for their next generation of drugs. The French co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, Dr. Luc Mointagnier has spoken about the importance of using not just AIDS drugs and vaccines, but also of using other weapons such as anitoxidants in the fight against AIDS. I encourage anyone who is truly curious and open-minded to read these sources.
The shape of medicine is changing, people like Dr. Plechner are the pioneers showing us the way into a deeper understanding which will provide powerful tools for the medicine of the 21 st century.
Why are all of the people writing in saying that it worked in their animals dismissed as “anecdotes”,>>>> the plural of anecdote is not data.
Art Malernee Dvm
Pages and pages of opinion and belief and anecdote but zero evidence. If Dr. Plechner did all this research, where are the journal articles he published on it? Why is it only referred to but never made public? Revolutionary genius that has solved so many serious problems, and yet only a handful of people know about it and no effort has been made to make the medical community aware of it? Nonsense.
Pages and pages of opinion and belief and anecdote but zero evidence. >>>>
Another problem is these veterinarians selling bogus testing and treatments are the ones running for office and want to be on the state board regulatory boards. Our local palm beach veterinary society Avma rep advertised her acupuncture practice for years in our local PBC newsletter. When the Florida veterinary board first required mandatory CE credits the governor had appointed a vet who was then the head of the Florida veterinary board, a fla vet who sells bogus “immune stimulators” that he still promotes good for about everything but cancer. The past president of the board made the claim required by law Ce was needed because the same faces were seen at the Ce meetings. I attended some required by law Ce last month where homeopathic drugs were listed on the speakers notes as possible therapy options. No one in the audience even quacked like a duck when the homeopathic promotion came up on the screen.
A guy like me who is neither a Good republican or a yellow dog democrat does not have a snowballs chance in hell getting put on the state board by a govenor unless the govenor is a independent. The vet school in Florida now teaches acupuncture to students and the state of Florida keeps funding the animal abusive practice of sticking needles in barn yard animals by students at the Florida vet school.
Art Malernee Dvm
Fla lic 1820
Dear Skept vet, Thanks for bringing up Darwin, a little research on Darwin points out that he is the perfect case with which to defend Dr. Plechner’s work.
Darwin’s theory caused an enormous negative reaction at the time, and was considered completely outrageous, because Darwin’s work, like Plechner’s work, flew in the face of the current establishment thinking. And just as is happening here, when the vicious attacks on Darwin occurred, Darwin’s supporters rallied to his defense.
Darwin’s scientific method was exactly the same as Dr. Plechner’s scientific method, it was empirical observation. Science is only the ability to produce repeatable results. While the double-blind trial is currently held up as the gold standard in medical research, there are enough double blind trials being overturned by other double blind trials, to make one wonder just how accurate these double blind trials really are in producing repeatable results. In fact, as anyone who is not entirely naive knows, there are many ways to skew results in double-blind trials either intentionally or inadvertently. In not so recent history, even the editor of the New England Journal of medicine, which holds a very high position in the regard of conventional forces in medicine, complained of foul play by the pharmaceutical companies with regard to the way many of their studies were being conducted and reported. Perhaps when the head of a major establishment journal complains that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, it is time to sit up and listen.
Medicine as it is practiced, is shaped by what gets researched, and what gets researched is ever more being chosen, and dominated by, commercial forces in medicine. The question in deciding what to research is not whether a therapy shows promise of potentially being effective, but is more often than not judged by whether there is enough money in it to warrant researching it, and whether a patentable drug or device, or whether a revenue producing surgery, such as bypass surgery, can result from it. Unfortunately we have set up a system where, until recently, even many of the doctors employed by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA made more money from consulting for the pharmaceutical companies than they made from their salaries at the NIH. “What was that about who pays the piper calls the tune?”
As the exponential rise in the rates of certain types of diseases such as asthma, autism, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and some forms of brain cancer indicates–and this is by no means a complete list, we have to recognize that somehow more disease is being created. As the appearance worldwide of major viral epidemics, and new drug resistant forms of old foes such as the– once thought of as vanquished, tuberculosis indicates, something is rapidly shifting which is affecting the health of a broad range of species on the planet. One can only suspect man-made causes to have generated such major changes so rapidly. There are ever larger scientific debates on such suspects as the chemicals which mimic hormones, and on levels of toxicity in humans and animals.
As the history of science shows us, science is not built as an ever-growing pyramid, but is often revolutionized by new ideas. The greatest revolutions often come, and necessarily so, from OUTSIDE the establishment. Usually those new insights are the source of bitter battles as they are overturn establishment ideas.
Historically, revolutionary ideas have played a major role in how science has developed. The road has never been smooth for the likes of Galileo, Copernicus, and neither was it for Darwin. There is an excellent short biography of Darwin in the book, “Discover Your Genius” by Michael J. Gelb, which says that when summing up his thought processes in his autobiography, Darwin wrote of himself that his most important characteristics were “the love of science, unbounded patience in long reflecting over my subject, industry in observing and collecting facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense.” According to Gelb, “It almost didn’t happen: Darwin was nearly rejected for the naturalist post by Robert Fitzroy, captain of the HMS Beagle. A classic representative of the closed mind , the kind of mind that would resist the very changes that his own ship’s voyage would ultimately set in motion, Fitzroy was convinced he could judge a man’s character by the shape of his face. Astonishingly, he doubted whether anyone with Darwin’s nose could have enough “energy and determination” for the five-year voyage that lay ahead! ” This is strikingly similar to the way that Dr. Plechner has been judged here by Skept vet, who has constructed a thoroughly circumstantial case against Dr. Plechner based on conjecture and innuendo, without benefit of the facts. When those of us who have risen to Dr. Plechner’s defense reply, the fact that there is quite a large body of actual data and other evidence to support Dr. Plechner’s findings, is summarily dismissed. Dr. Plechner is being judged, and harshly, but his judges have not bothered to look at the evidence, and it is clear from their comments that none of them have actually read his book, “Pets at Risk”, or any of the journal articles in which Dr. Plechner has written about his work.
Dr. Plechner has been, for nearly fifty years, a major player in veterinary medicine in the Los Angeles area of California. Far more than a “handful” of people know about him and his work. There is a long list of intelligent, and illustrious, clients who gravitated to his clinic because of the exceptional quality of veterinary medicine which was practiced there. The choice of Dr. Plechner as a vet has been made by most clients on the results he produces. As I mentioned before, Dr. Plechner’s clinic was awarded the gold medal award by the American Veterinary Association during the years in which he was actually using his protocol to treat tens of thousands of patients there. He got outstanding results, and his clinic became famous for producing outstanding results. Dismissing this fact by writing something about Linus Pauling does not seem appropriate, though I believe that the basic insight of Linus Pauling is also being exonerated by recent developments in medicine. Further, to dismiss the work of Dr. Plechner because of some mistake Dr. Spock made, hardly seems to be an “evidence-based” evaluation of Dr. Plechner! To write that such mistakes occur in medicine does not mean that Dr. Plechner made them, yet it is Dr. Plechner, who Skept vet has taken it upon himself to judge. In fact, the dizzy logic of comparing Dr. Spock’s error to the way in which Dr. Plechner works on animals makes the head spin, and seems more related, if it is actually related to anything, to Fitzroy’s spurious condemnation of Darwin. Dr. Plechner has ALWAYS worked in a very scientific way, using lab test results to evaluate his patients, and the efeect of his protocol on them. Anyone who has carefully read his book, “Pets at Risk”, would know this. But is seems that someone who would seek to destroy Dr. Plechner’s reputation wholesale, would not bother to actually do his homework.
Those who confuse what Dr. Plechner does with the old era of veterinary medicine which threw cortisone at everything until they discovered that overdoses of cortisone are dangerous, are COMPLETELY ignorant of what it ACTUALLY IS that Dr. Plechner is doing. Dr. Plechner is “funding the DEFICIT” of FUNCTIONING cortisone and thyroid hormone where it is deficient. These hormones govern MANY biochemical reactions in the body, so the idea that the effects of a deficit of functioning thyroid hormone and cortisol, are wide-reaching in the system, and the fact that when the deficit of these hormones is funded, the effects in the system are wide-reaching, should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been to veterinary school, or medical school, or who has even a rudimentary knowledge of mammalian biochemistry, for that matter. Yet Skept vet has used the fact that proper execution of the Plechner Protocol has wide reaching effects on a wide range of diseases, to excoriate Dr. Plechner. In drug-based medicine, a single drug does not cure a wide range of diseases because the action of the drug is narrowly targeted. But in the case of the Plechner Protocol, the opposite is true. The hormones in question have wide reaching effects in the fundamental biochemistry of the subjects. Thus, to denigrate the Plechner Protocol, and claim that it is invalid because of its wide-reaching effects, involves a basic error in thinking, and an ignorance of what the Plechner protocol is actually designed to do.
Michael Gelb writing about Darwin says that, “whenever he was criticized by his opponents, he took comfort in repeating the following mantra to himself: “I have worked as hard and well as I could, and no man can do more than this.”
Dr. Plechner has spent his life as a treating veterinarian, both at his Los Angeles clinic, and he also founded a treatment facility called Stonewood Meadows for the treatment of injured wild life for which he obtained federal and state licensing, and which he funded himself. He has been a major driver of the improvements which have been made in the pet food industry, and was the originator of the idea for, and was the formula designer of the first hypoallergenic pet foods. His expertise was vital to the California Big Horn Sheep breeding project which was used to strengthen the genetic stock in order to increase the population of big horn sheep and save them from extinction. He worked for many years with the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Wildlife Service where he established treatment and care guidelines for rescued wildlife. He has a large and enthusiastic following of clients who have first hand witnessed the miracles that flow forth from his brilliant mind and caring hands. His work represents a valuable and underused resource in veterinary medicine, and it is absolutely a discredit to conventional veterinary medicine, not to Dr. Al Plechner, that no formal studies have been conducted using his methods. For years he has openly solicited such interest in his work, and I would suggest that is is the closed mentality which nearly kept Darwin off the voyage of the HMS Beagle, and initially condemned Copernicus, Galileo, Pasteur, and nearly every other revolutionary thinker in the history of science, together with the rise of profit driven research, instead of interest in pure science, which has resulted in this sad state of affairs. It appears to be the same mentality that drives Skept vet and his website.
This is clear not only from the vicious attack on Dr. Plechner and his work–for Dr. Plechner was attacked both professionally and personally, but is also clear from the fact that Skept vet was in the beginning, and still remains poorly informed about the work of his target. He does not even know that Dr. Plechner has published articles in scientific journals, nor does he appear to have read the major book he published about his treatment protocol, called, Pets at Risk. He seems blissfully unaware that he has chosen to pick a fight with an important figure in veterinary medicine.
What is Skept vet’s problem? Why does he seem to also wish to rule out virtually the whole human history of empirical observation in medicine?
After all, what is medicine about if not healing? Nobody has an absolute corner on the truth in medicine. The lines drawn, while they are presumed to be clear, by the likes of Skept vet, in reality and on examination by any student of the past and recent history of medicine, are smudged, and grey. This is illustrated by the fact that it is not only Dr. Spock who made mistakes but the conventional scientific medical establishment at large, which has made enormous, glaring mistakes which have killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. Conventional medicine often extrapolates out from a small base of scientific evidence to design treatment modalities which are only very loosely based on scientific information derived from research. This is what happened in the treatment of women with estrogen, and this is what happened in the presumption of the value of early diagnosis using mammography and biposies, and PSA tests and biopsies in prostate cancer. Despite the creation of a huge industry, the maiming and crippling of an untold number of people, there was actually has no solid scientific evidence backing these treatments and diagnostic techniques, as approaches which produce superior out comes. In fact, now a major study is showing that this approach to diagnosis was a presumption and that it produces inferior outcomes. The same was seen in the use of estrogen in treating women in menopause which went on for– how many years–before it was found that the presumptions which had been made were incorrect, and harmful? Just how many women were harmed or died? It strikes me that Skept vet needs to also turn his skepticism upon conventional medicine which he seems to accept unconditionally, which is more fitting of religion, than a “science based” evalution of what is valid in medicine. Further, to damn alternative medicine, as opposed to conventional medicine appears to be outright naive, and ignorant thinking. Again, the gross miss-use of science occurs continually in conventional medicine, whereas many alternative therapies actually have been subjected to scientific study. Again, a crude level of black and white thinking seems to have been applied to a subject which is very grey at best.
There never has been, and never will be, a purely scientific medicine. While the existence of such a medicine has been much presumed to be the state of affairs in conventional medicine, the above examples show that this is far from the truth. I seriously doubt that there are double blind studies to support all of the basic procedures, including emergency procedures, and many basic procedures used in conventional medicine to day. If Skept vet wishes to practice using only proceedures for which there have been double blind studies, he will have to pause frequently with his hands in mid-air as he works on veterinary emergencies. Further the laws of statistics tell us that statistics are not valid to predict the out come of any given case. So where are you there Skept vet–blocked with your hands in the air as to whether you should exactly put that stitch here–or there, because you lack a double blind study for everything you do as a treating vet? There are major areas of disagreement and contention even in conventional medicine.
What are a half a million blood tests if not data? Why is it presumed that Dr. Plechner should, as a treating physician, have to run formal double blind trials of his protocol– that his use of empiricaal observation is inadequate? Is it ethical to run a double blind trial on your patients, if you are a treating physician?
What is this attempt to silence this most successful veterinarian about? Why is this disgruntled vet’s site about, if your methods are so effective? Why shouldn’t “fluid therapy” ask for Skept vet’s therapy for an FIP cat? Or for his therapy for a SARDS case? (“Fluid therapy” what kind of ‘fluid therapy” are you referring to here, and why hide behind a pseudonym?) If you have a dog who is going blind, and someone has a reasonable answer such as Dr. Plechner’s, why not offer the client the option of trying it, instead of negating that therapy untried? When you are considered to have a nearly 100 percent risk of going blind what is the higher risk–the Plechner zProtocol or SARDS? What is medicine about–some kind of religion, or trying to evaluate what is best for the patient? But again read Plechner’s book–you have to execute the whole therapy properly. You have to reduce all the sources of excessive free radical stress, such as food allergens., if you are going to re-balance the system using the Plechner Protocol.
For Skept vet to go ballistic at the idea of using a mineral clay, when such substances have been used successfully for hundreds if not thousands of years in traditional medicine of many cultures, means a shallow knowledge of the importance of minerals in the enzymatic reactions of the biochemistry which he is trying (or not trying) to manipulate. Ditto for his hysterical reaction to the water which offers an antioxidant effect on the body. Just how deep is Skept vet’s knowledge? Should he go back to school and study biochemistry, instead of epidemiology? Can Skept vet even eat an apple without a double blind trial showing that it is safe to eat apples, or is he relying on those horrid folk traditions when he goes to the dinner table each night?
The body is made up of an extremely complex matrix of complex overlapping systems which interact. More than one pattern is moving at one time. At times even the double blind studies prove to be an inadequate tool as they try in an overly simplistic way to isolate the effect of one factor when myriad factors are interacting. The risk of the myopic view is commonly evident, as is now becoming clear in the recent detour we have taken through blaming cholesterol as the CAUSE heart disease, a theory which is largely being discredited, and is being revealed to be utterly ridiculous, and so short-sighted as to be absurd. Yet how many years have we spent in that mental warp waiting for the patents on the stain drugs to wear off? Now that the patents are coming to an end, a deeper concept is being explored which starts to say that Linus Pauling was right when he looked at the causality of molecular processes and free radical stress in disease.
Many people arrive in “alternative medicine” the way I did. I had won two National Science Foundation study grants while still a high school student. My “conversion” to alternative medicine came about when conventional medicine wrote me off and told me that there was “nothing” I could do when I became ill. At that point the choice was to become and open minded pioneer, or die. If I had had Skept vet’s attitude, I probably would have died several decades ago. Fortunately, and thanks to what I learned from the famous field ecologist, Richard P. Beildeman, with whom I studied thanks to one of those National Science Foundation study grants, instead I viewed my body as a natural system which could be encouraged to return to homeostasis if given the right conditions. The way I arrived in conventional medicine is similar to the way in which many of Dr. Plechner’s clients bringing incurable cases to him arrive from all over the world. They hear about Dr. Plechner after conventional techniques have failed. You would think some curiosity about Dr. Plechner’s work would be generated in those who genuinely care about their patients. Instead a hostile and aggressive attitude– a sort os solipsism that if we don’t know about this, then this cannot be true, is aroused, despite the fact that there has been absolutely NO attempt to make a RATIONAL and fair evaluation based on the evidence about exactly what it is that the Plechner Protocol does. It is dismissed out of hand as “nonsense”. It doesn’t seem that the interest as getting to the truth, has managed to over-ride the force of ego in needing to be right in Skept vet.
Skept vet seems to be taking issue with the whole history of empirical observation in medicine. If he is going to do that, he certainly has to strike out Darwin, Copernicus, and Galileo, along with Dr. Plechner.
P.S.
To v.t. You don’t have an idea in the world what Plechner is actually DOING. If you are going to criticize him lets make it on the basis of what he is doing not on PRESUMPTIONS about what he is NOT doing. No, he is not simply” steroid loading” atopic animals, or committing steroid abuse of FELV, FIP and FIV cats. If he were he would not be able to maintain them for a long lifetime on his therapy. As a vet, you should know that long term steroid therapy in excess does not work. You cannot maintain an animal safely for 10 or 15 years on a steroid overdose. A steroid OVERDOSE would LOWER the B cell counts, whereas Plechner, himself is RAISING the B cell counts with his physiologic doses. The idea that you cannot seem to wrap your head around is that cortisone is a REGULATING hormone which is not only dangerous in EXCESS, but dangerous in DEFICIENCY, and what Plechner proved in countless cases, and I have seen repeatedly with my own eyes in both animal and human cases, it that when the FUNCTIONAL cortisone and thyroid levels are normalized, the B cells are UP regulated.
Dr.Plechner, himself despite all the mud slung at him here, is generous enough and confident enough that would walk you through the protocol as a consultant on your FIP ca,t and you can see this protocol in action. He would do it in order to save the cat, which conventionally your will not save. with Plechner the cat has 70 percent odds of gaining a remission. If you have a SARDS dog, ditto. Dr. Plechner is real, I would love to see a reality T.V. show with any one of you disgruntled vets pitted against Dr. Plechner’s skills, except that it would not be fair to all the animals you would lose that he saves.
Would you like to see lab test results? Do you personally want to see the B cells come UP rather than go DOWN with the cortisone doses Plechner gives? Would it ever be possible for facts break through the wall of prejudice here? I would send you the book on his protocol if I had an address to send it to, and if I thought that you would actually read it carefully.
Plechner is legendary in his skills with this protocol, and I would not be wasting my time fighting with the hard-headed prejudice here, if I were not aware of the lives that could be saved.
Patricia, you raise some intriguing points and obviously are intelligent and have given this subject considerable thought, and you also obviously are very passionate about it. In your shoes I would also be a huge believer–before I came across skeptvet’s blog. The challenging, fascinating thing about this blog is the mind-altering premise that what you personally know without a doubt from your own experience to be true…may not be true after all. To appreciate how that could be possible you have to check out some of the posts outlining the thought process behind the more specific topical posts. If you are interested, this is a good one to start: http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2013/07/the-three-most-dangerous-words-in-medicine-2/
This post also outlines the main sources of potential errors: http://www.skeptvet.com/index.php?p=1_13_Why-We-re-Often-Wrong
When Plechner publishes his findings and results in peer-reviewed publications, and are able to be reproduced by others, then we’d be having an entirely different conversation.
To suggest that Plechner has cured or even put FIP+ cats into remission is ridiculous. If he is such a caring and decent vet, he would share his miraculous cure with the rest of the world. Why hasn’t he, Patricia? The excuse of no money to research and perform clinical trials is an excuse and the oldest one in the book for hucksters. If there were a breakthrough, many would come forward with research funds and if a cure were to be had, Plechner could make millions and truly have earned that so-called gold medal award.
Why would I want to deny not just one but all of the three remissions I saw with my own eyes? Why would I want to deny the B-cells I saw come UP on the protocol in three different species, if I have any interest in “evidence based” medicine? Why I could begin doubting the remission of my own chronic hepatic B. Can one really trust those DNA tests even if they have been done at three or four different labs? Not if we start denying what we are observing.
Just what evidence does v.t. have for stating that it is “ridiculous” to suggest that Plechner can put about 70 percent of the cats with FIP he has seen over the last 30 years into remission? Most of the establishment thought that what Pasteur and Darwin, Galileo and Copernicus had discovered was ridiculous too. In that word “ridiculous” there si nothing backing it except presumption. Hardly and enquiring mind. Just how is Plechner to make a fortune on a therapy which costs mere cents per day, to execute and involves unpatentable substances. You want to give the kiss of death to an academic career as a researcher–successfully research the Plechner protocol. You pay for it then any reasonably intelligent fool can execute it. Well that is any reasonably intelligent open-minded fool. Meanwhile you are proving the financially worthless Plechner protocol, your fellow researchers pull down the valuable patents, and pull budget from the pharmaceutical companies into your employer–the university. Tell me how the universities work, I lectured in one and my husband was a senior full professor. Almost all major universities now have offices for managing the decisions on what to patent from their research departments. Patents and outside research grants are now an important source of revenue in university research departments. Try going around from researcher to researcher trying to find a taker on a therapy which can yield no patentable drugs or devices.
Dr. Plechner is a clinician, not a research department at a university. Does v.t. have any idea of the heavy duty costs of serious research these days? It is absurd to expect Dr. Plechner to fund such research. And just how is he going to make his money back on it, and earn all that “gold” when there are no substances to be patented for his protocol? Again, you pay for it, and the whole world profits from it, and to a degree he has done that already with the research he has paid for out of pocket. He has tried actively for many years to generate interest in research to move it into mainstream medicine because of the lives which could be saved, not out of interest for financial gain. He has written four books, and quite a few journal articles. If any of you ever do bother to actually examine the protocol which is carefully laid out in “Pets at Risk”, you will see that he is a careful and scientific worker in his approach.
I have seen test results on three species of anima, including humans. I have seen the total estrogens go down as the B cells come up with the physiologic doses of cortisone in all three species. I have seen a friend with an aggressive breast cancer have a total estrogen of 198 when 20 is considered desirable in menopause. I have seen that level moved down to 18 in ten days flat when the physiologic doses of hydrocortisone and thyroid were applied, thus stopping the adrenal hyper-stimulation which was generating that adrenal source estrogen overload . Just how many women are getting breast cancer and dying– because nobody in the world can be bothered to examine what Plechner found in a lifetime of caring and trying? Nope there is only interest in bullying him on the internet– no intellectual curiosity, no interest in looking at test results. so just what is he supposed to do go around with his hat in his hand seeking donations to try to ante up a clinical trial, either that or suffer awful harassment for his hard work? I can tell you that what Dr. Plechner has discovered is real. I can tell you that it is of enormous clinical value. I can tell you that I am not entirely stupid, but this man is truly brilliant. I can tell you that there are some smart, open-minded vets, and M.D.s catching on. I can tell you that the theory involved is perfectly logical and utterly understandable, if you would actually examine the evidence and get beyond your blind prejudice. My Italian vet was dragged yelling and insisting that we were going to create a Cushing’s disease in the first FELV cat Plechner consulted on for me, Silvano. Silvano had a less usual endocrine pattern, he had HIGH cortisol on his tests and Plechner said to give him cortisone. When the vet screamed that Plechner was going to create Cushing’s, Plechner said, “Your vet is stooo-pid. You see that HIGH eosinophil level? If all that excess cortisol were active, functioning cortisol, your cat would not have such a high eosinophil level.” In short, Plechner turned an emaciated, dying cat with swollen lymph nodes back into a shiny healthy-looking creature. Thyroid hormone, cortisone, hypoallergenic diet, hypoallergenic digestive enzymes, mineral clay, and I gave him hypoallergenic vitamins and antioxidants. My Italian vet ended up flying to Los Angeles to meet Dr. Plechner. Disease has causes and in this case the virus is the opportunist which is sent packing when the endocrine system is re -regulated, because it brings the immune surveillance back. You can watch it as it happens on the lab tests. You can watch it in the cat. It is not fast, it takes a little while, but it happens. How many cats is v.t. gonna kill with his religious belief in double blind studies as the only source of scientific information, when the main source of scientific information has always been and still is empirical observation? Would v.t kill HIMSELFthat way? If he had been in my shoes 26 years ago and had been told, “there’s nothing you can do” would he just have put his affairs in order, folded his hands and waited to die?
Yes I care passionately about this because the kind of medical thinking you are advocating would have turned me into just another cold, dead statistic. And I care whether others of all species become just cold dead statistics. And I care when those of you, while rejecting the available facts, and there is plenty of evidence in what Dr. Plechner published in “Pets at Risk”, and there are hundreds of thousands of blood tests backing him, get into a nasty extreme sport of bullying a serious hardworking doctor of the best kind, and trying to destroy his reputation based on nothing more than innuendo and hyperbole. This is NOT what anyone could call by the farthest stretch of the imagination, evidence-based anything, much less science.
Oh, you mean those tests Plechner sends to his ultra private lab to convince you that all your animals have a cortisol imbalance and every animal need steroids and thyorid treatment and god knows what else to survive that imaginary disease?
Please, oh please tell me how he differentiates Plechner syndrome from FIP. It must be the special lab and unique markers that no other vet on the planet can access and interpret?
So, the foremost researchers in FIP are all wrong, those very same researchers who actually work in qualified labs and dedicate their lives to finding a cure, have been banging their heads against the walls because they didn’t think to check out Plechner’s miracle, or offer to fund his studies.
I fear the brave-maverick-doctor syndrome rearing it’s ugly head.
Patricia, OK, so you’re not interested in any information or analysis that contradicts your beliefs, and you interpret such information/analysis as a witch hunt against Dr. Plechner. But it’s not skeptvet’s fault that Dr. Plechner’s theories defy reality, or that there’s no evidence to support their effectiveness except personal anecdotes, or that anecdotes don’t mean as much as you think they do. Skeptvet is just reporting his findings; it’s just unfortunate that the news on Dr. Plechner is bad.
You can demonstrate the endocrine/immune imbalance in any laboratory you like. I have used Guidonia lab near Rome for the human total estrogen values, and the main Italian health service laboratories for the rest of the testing, when running tests on my husband, my mother and myself. I have also demonstrated the defect in my own, and my husband’s lab results at Romain Pais in Brussels, which is an excellent laboratory. There the 24 hr urinary test for 17 keto steroids and thyroid metabolites can be run on the same sample, giving yet clearer evidence of the adrenal/thyroid imbalances. The total estrogens are run by commercial labs using the ICN labs kit. ICN, far from a private company, does business world- wide with all sorts of laboratories. Unfortunately not many labs run Total Estrogens because the ICN kit can only be used by labs which are certified to use radioactive isotopes. Other than the U.S. lab Plechner uses, NationalVeterinary Diagnostic Services, I have found one other US lab which can do everything, but it was awkward getting the whole panel as the serum samples had to be divided and sent to three different labs, including a university lab before we covered the whole panel that National Veterinary Diagnostic Services does. It is important to keep the sample of serum chilled from the time it is taken until the time the test is run, to freeze it and pack it with heavy insulation if you do use the lab which Plechner uses in the USA (which he is not the owner of, by the way.) I use National Veterinary Diagnostic Services for the animals testing because it is awkward and far more expensive to get some of the panel run in Germany, some of it in Italy, etc.. Since I do not live in the USA. National Veterinary Diagnostic Services is the most reliable source I have found for the total estrogens on animals. To enter U.S. customs the veterinarian has to send a declaration which is needed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture–we always send 3 originals– that declare how many serum samples are enclosed and the species of animal from which the samples were drawn, which states that the samples are not infected with any disease of agricultural significance. The creation of a simple pro forma invoice is required , which needs to state the entire contents, including the ice packs, etc., and the value of the package. I send the samples frozen, well-packed in a styrofoam box with two blue ice blocks, and then boxed in a cardboard box to keep them further insulated. Over the years, I have had only one shipment go wrong. The payment to the lab of 120 dollars for the complete Endocrine Immune 1 panel can be made by Pay Pal. I use my local (Italian) Mail Boxes Etc. outlet to do the shipping by Fed Ex or DHL. I always advise the lab by email that the samples have been shipped and give them the tracking number.
Probably for anyone wanting to use the panel in greater volume, a lab could be found to do it in the U.K.. The lab would have to consult with ICN about how their kit is adapted for use in canine and feline species. Where I found the total estrogen test in the USA other than the lab Plechner uses, was in Kentucky. I think that this test may be being used for the breeding of race horses, however I believe it needs some adaptation for use on canine and feline serum samples. The problem with dividing the samples and letting different labs run different tests is that 2 ml of serum is sufficient when the work is done in one lab, but the requirement for serum becomes too large when the sample is divided. Also the work and the risk of something going wrong is increased. Ultimately, I have not found a better option than sending the samples to National Veterinary Diagnostic Services in Texas. If someone started to run this test on a volume of animals I am sure they could find a lab who would be willing to do the whole panel. I would like to be able to do the total estrogen for animals in Italy or continental Europe but have found no source.
The FIP researchers are looking for a pharmaceutical. Plechner is using hormones, diet, and minerals, sometimes also digestive enzymes, to re-register the body’s own immunity to fight the virus. These are two different things. Plechner’s Protocol cannot lead to large financial gain, but it can lead to an awful lot of successfully treated animals.
I am sure the FIP researchers are good at what they do, but so far they have not found an effective therapy. I suppose it depends on one’s philosophy of medicine whether one choses to use a perfectly logical, and in reality, basically natural, therapy to address the fundamental imbalances which can be clearly demonstrated with laboratory tests, which are rendering the cat vulnerable to the virus, or let it die because there is no officially sanctioned therapy. I made that choice for myself many years ago, and i have no regrets. I have made that choice for my animals (and we have induced remissions in 3 out of 4 cases of FELV, I did fail to induce remission in one elderly cat with a superimposed infection of hemobartonella) . I do think when the establishment is empty-handed in such cases as FIP and SARDS, it should be the owner’s choice. After all, what is this about, academic medicine or making the best attempt we can to save lives? Nobody has a corner on “the truth”. No medical system works with out committing error. “To err is human”, we are all responsible to do the best we can.
And P.S. I have spent many years now learning about the relationship between immunity, viruses, and the free radical biochemistry of oxygen homeostasis. My interest, was spurred by my own chronic viral hepatitis B, my brother’s death from AIDS, then my multi-cat household being infected with FELV. Like Plechner, my personal history spurred me on. This is not a sign of Quackery, this is the sign of someone with a genuine interest. I am sure that I too have made some insights which could be of value. So I suppose I too could be classed as having the “Galileo Complex”. Very well, then I fall on the knife, but I can tell you that my somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 hours spent reading over a 26 year period, and the work I have done to save my cats of various viruses including a problem with a Corona virus, has not been spent without result.
If you combine the Plechner Protocol–you need the hormonal commands which stabilize the biochemistry of the oxygen homeostasis–with knowing how to work on the electron biochemistry of the oxygen homeostasis itself, you will be controlling the sort of “electron star wars” which takes place in a battle between the immune system and the virus. If you work on viruses with clear symptoms, for instance– I have a cat with an eye infected by a virus, and others infected by a Corona virus which generates respiratory symptoms– you will see that you can play those viruses like the piano. Lower the dose, symptoms occur–put back the correct dose, no symptoms occur. Again the rules are take out all offending allergens, parasites, etc, You cannot have any excessive free radical generation going on in the system you are trying to balance.
And, I will risk taking abuse for telling you another mere anecdote to be dismissed. A friend who was urged to go on interferon for his chronic hepatitis B, well, guess what? Viral load which was doubling monthly, dropped like a rock, down 74 percent the first month then slowly down over a year or so to 3,000. Then he stopped–overconfident, Virus up seven fold to 21,000 in 3 months. Program put back in. Now waiting for test results, What is he using? Not even the Plechner Protocol. Couldn’t convince the doctor to help him try it, but I am sure he would have gotten faster results if he had been able to add it in. He is using antioxidants, essential fatty acids, minerals and B vitamins, etc. Nasal oxygen–two hours a day at first. Baths with hydrogen peroxide/ magnesium sulphate added. (Did you know that magnesium is involved in at least 300 enzymatic reactions?) Diet which improves body PH and nutrient status. You call it Quackery, we call it Common Sense. Give the imbalanced system the means to return to homeostasis, and you will find “the cure” for an awful lot of disease.
So Diane, what actual “news” do you have? What “EVIDENCE” do you have that Dr. Plechner is a complete liar as Skept vet is insinuating by titling his article ” The Art of Making Things Up”? May I remind you that what you think of as “implausible” is very like what the arguments were like against Darwin? What you think is implausible is not the basis for judging someone’s life work without actually examining it. Skept vet was way over the line in his brutal attack on Plechner, which was an attack on him personally as well as professionally. When I say that I had THREE cases of FELV go into remission on this therapy. And I say that lab tests were done showing raised immunity and the animals returned to health, why am I told that this means nothing? The actual evidence means nothing. How can you do anything in veterinary medicine if you can make NO assessment of whether a therapy is succeeding or not, including with lab tests? What do those researchers do? They can’t make any assessments either if we apply your rule book. So we agree to disagree. If you get human equivalent of SARDS and I met one the other day–a German woman, you go right ahead and go blind, thereby exercising your blind faith in the establishment. As for me, I’ll risk the Plechner Protocol, and take a full network of antioxidants, including those which enter the eye, and keep searching for any way to encourage the return to homeostasis of the system.
The FIP researchers are looking for a pharmaceutical. Plechner is using hormones, diet, and minerals, sometimes also digestive enzymes, to re-register the body’s own immunity to fight the virus. These are two different things. Plechner’s Protocol cannot lead to large financial gain, but it can lead to an awful lot of successfully treated animals.
How do you know what researchers are looking for? You don’t think steroids are not pharmaceuticals? Are you so convinced in Plechner’s protocol that you fail to see there is little difference in his treatment compared to conventional treatment? Omit the thyroid medication and what you have left is prednisone, diet and supplements. Plechner also does not have a “corner” on diet or supplements, and certainly not prednisone but he sure likes to extrapolate from others’ findings and research in which to form his own treatment protocol and convince clients that his is somehow pioneering. That “physiological” special dose of steroids, yep, I’ve seen the testimonials, load high, decrease to lowest dose possible, absolutely no different from mainstream medicine. The difference is, conventional vets do not like, nor promote life-long therapy with steroids and thyroid medication unless there is a specific need to do so (cancer, immune disorders, thyroid disorders). It is always the rule to use cautiously and judiciously and if necessary, maintain on the lowest effective dose possible, nothing new here. If alternatives existed that carried much less risk, you can certainly bet vets would be jumping to use one. You might want to ask yourself why they aren’t jumping to Plechner’s protocol. Perhaps because not all disease is caused by cortisol imbalance.
Patricia, I have no personal attachment to whether Dr. Plechner is brilliant or not, as I don’t know any pets who would be (or would have been) candidates for his treatment. I have no affiliation with Skeptvet or the evidence-based medicine community. I have an emotional bias toward what this community often refers to as “woo”, but an intellectual bias toward science. My point being, I bring no agenda to the discussion except a desire to learn more about veterinary medicine and get better at evaluating what I hear and read.
I have read the beginning of Plechner’s book on Amazon. My personal conclusion is that Plechner either is disingenously trying to sell books with fear, or else he truly thinks in sweeping, melodramatic generalizations and lives in sort of his own private Idaho. Either way, he’s not someone I would take advice from or go to as a client.
I’ve also read a number of articles by Skeptvet and some of the other resources he has linked to. And my personal conclusion is that Skeptvet is extremely smart, skillful at articulating complexities, and seriously dedicated to ascertaining the truth about veterinary issues, rather than taking either conventional wisdom OR “alternative” medicine at face value. And he even responds in depth to readers’ comments and questions! That makes him the best source of veterinary information I’ve found anywhere.
Now, a wise former boss of mine once told me, “Never wrestle with a pig; you end up covered in mud, and the pig enjoys it.” And I’m all muddy so I’m going to stop wrestling now…
Diane, that’s not mud covering the contributors on this thread; no, that’s crap — fetid, putrid, mucoid, stinking fecal material. The origin of which appears to be an ass of monumental proportions. Might I suggest a physiologic dose of methylprednisolone (and tincture of levothyroxine) to address your adrenal fatigue and bolster your immunity to address the pending invasion of enteric pathogens that, indubitably, will rot your brain. Good luck.
ROTFL–I believe that is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read, fluidtherapy. But how did you know about my adrenal fatigue??? You must be one of those practitioners who can diagnose through the energy waves of the internet–How much do I owe you?
Warning alert installation would be nice for those of us drinking piping hot coffee whilst reading fluidtherapy’s posts 🙂
The Plechner story strikes me as the veterinary equivalent of Stanislaus Burzynski, a cancer quack and ruthless huckster from Texas who has been preying on terminally-ill patients and charging outrageous sums for his bogus antineoplaston therapy for decades. After all that time, he still has produced no credible research and yet he continues to make far-fetched claims about his allegedly miraculous treatments curing incurable diseases; and he continues to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from patients and their desperate families for his ineffective bogus treatments.
Like Plechner, Burzynski is unable counter the mountainous criticism that’s been levied against him, so instead he resorts to transparent conspiracy theory nonsense about how his brilliance is being suppressed by the powers that be (the medical establishment, big Pharma, the FDA, etc.), who secretly WANT people to have cancer (or so the story goes anyway). He has chosen to fight a public PR war instead of toughing it out in the trenches with real scientists, because he knows that there is no scientific legitimacy to what he is doing.
So instead of publishing research, Burzynski hires PR hacks to do damage control on the internet and try to burnish his horrible reputation as a ruthless con artist. The results have been calamitous – e.g., one of the PR hacks, who Burzynski hired in secret, cyberstalked a teenage boy in the UK (Rhys Morgan) because he had the nerve to challenge Burzynski’s quackery on his web page.
The first red flag I noticed in the longwinded comments posted by the troll that goes by the name of “Patricia Pepper” is that they are trying to drown this webpage in noise. It’s a commonly used tactic: if you can’t beat the argument; bury it is a sea of nonsensical text to make it harder to find. Aside from that, the flaws in Pepper’s logic would be apparent to a grade school science student. Ultimately what I see is a complete absence of scientific data – no wait – actually, it’s a complete absence of understanding as to why scientific data are even important; and this is rounded out with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory BS.
Anecdotes and conspiracy theories, no matter how loudly or longwindedly they are shouted, are NOT science. I’m livid thinking about how much money this crazy hack has probably extorted from pet owners, all the while bemoaning about how it’s everyone else who is greedy. And lastly, for ruthlessly attacking Skpetvet, simply for doing a public service (all the while being logical, scientific and polite), Plechner and his minion have earned my wrath. I’ll now make it a personal mission to get the word out about this quack and help bury this scam 6 feet under. Ciao bella.
Yep, as is common with hucksters and particularly those so bold to pretend to be internet celebrities, attack any argument (and the person) that does not conform to your beliefs. At least the FDA has put a hold on ANP’s presumably due to the death of a child, but that they continue to let Burzynski get away with treating any human being with his chemo cocktails is beyond belief. Would love to be a little bird at the FDA to figure that one out.
If only state veterinary boards had an ounce of courage to help put these alt vets out of practice and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
That warning alert idea is excellent. 🙂
>> a complete absence of scientific data – no wait – actually, it’s a complete absence of understanding as to why scientific data are even important; and this is rounded out with a healthy dose of conspiracy theory BS. << Nicely crystallized, Vogel.
Bravo, Vogel, bravo.
Yes, there are many similarities with Burzinsky. The pattern of these “misunderstood lone geniuses” is fairly consistent.
Note to Rita K.
I have deleted the content of this post because it was gratuitously abusive. I have permitted your rambling defenses of Dr. Plechner, but I will not allow vacuous personal abuse. If you cannot make your point politely, you will be banned from this site.
SkeptVet
SkeptVet,
Why have you ignored Diane when she pointed out the similarities between Darwin and Dr. Plechner? You were the one who brought it up by posting Sandy’s comment, so what happened? Was it a case of foot in mouth? Ooops. Did you make a mistake? Perhaps you should have edited that part out like you do with my comments when it doesn’t suit you or when I have facts about you that prove you are NOT all about science. Maybe your buddy “Sandy Mere” can chime in since you supposedly posted it on her behalf…It’s funny how you say Dr. Plechner has rallied troops yet you’ve rallied your own because all I see are the same people posting in your defense. Honestly getting tired of that v.t. person. YOU ARE JUST A VET TECH! YOU ARE NOT EVEN A VET! AGAIN, YOU ARE JUST A VET TECHNICIAN!!
Note to Vogel:
As I said to Rita K, I will not let the comment section of this blog become a venue for trading personal insults. I share your frustration, but the rules apply to everyone.
SkeptVet
Consistent with the “misunderstood genius” meme, Plechner’s website claims: “He retired after 40 years, disturbed by the lack of recognition for the validity of his published theories on the importance of hormones and diet on both animals and humans.”
http://www.centersinaianimalhospital.com/Bio_Dr_Al_Plechner_Center_Sinai_Animal_Hospital.htm
That is typical quack-speak – i.e., a paranoid sob story about raging against the “establishment” for failing to recognize the alleged profundity of his theories. The reality is that he’s saying this merely to create the illusion that he is a persecuted maverick bucking against the powers that be, when in reality he’s just a tired old inconsequential hack trying to portray himself as a martyr in the hopes of making a few extra bucks selling his worthless books.
That’s certainly consistent with what I was saying before about Burzynski. Every quack plays that same martyr card. Plechner hasn’t published any clinical research since 1979, so it’s no wonder that there’s been a lack of recognition. This scam artist surely knows that if he wants his work to be recognized as valid, he could simply publish data which could then be properly scrutinized. That’s the way science works. He knows better; he’s just paying people for suckers.