Ben Goldacre
Saturday November 12, 2005
The Guardian
I know you’re all looking forward to my fifth consecutive week writing about the tabloid’s favourite MRSA “laboratory”, but my Deep Throat keeps teasing me, so the latest explosion will have to wait. Now. It is a well-recognised phenomenon that swearing is only really funny when very old or very posh people do it: and likewise, bad science is only truly funny when it appears in the context of someone being jolly serious.
I give you BBC News. In fact, since it has unwisely put its TV news archive online, I can actually give you the video of the story here, but for those who are nowhere near a computer, I’ll transcribe. This is a story, in all the authoritative regalia of television news, about the excellently bonkers “bioresonance” treatment to help smokers kick the habit. “The bioresonance treatment is analysing the energy wave patterns in Jean’s body,” they begin. “It finds the frequency pattern of the nicotine and reverses it. That in theory neutralises the nicotine’s energy pattern, so her body won’t crave what’s been wiped out.” Now, apart from the observation that you can find Star Trek fans in every walk of life, notice there what is presented as fact, and what is caveat.
So what would it mean, if what the BBC said was true? Reader John Agapiou, who sent this in, sums up the flaws so well it’s quite wrong that I should get paid for stealing his jokes: “You’d really need to extract the nicotine signal very carefully,” he points out. “You wouldn’t want to have any traces of ‘dopamine’ or ‘haemoglobin’ in the recording, and nullify those molecules, or you’d be in real trouble.”
I’m not sure that anyone has ever calculated how many different kinds of molecules there are in the human body, but I’d have to guess that there are at least a million. So this machine, which looks just like a piece of modern hospital equipment, records something through funny little pads attached to the skin, and it can filter out precisely the molecule it’s looking for? “Why they aren’t making a huge amount of money from this amazing signal processing equipment is beyond me.”
the BBC goes on. “That principle has been used to treat illnesses and allergies. Trying to help smokers quit is a new development. There’s still no clinical proof that this works, but the clinic says it treats hundred of smokers every week. And of all those who left their cigarettes here over just the last few days, 70% of them will never go back to smoking.”
Not only is that last figure a “fact”: it is, I think, and I know this literature pretty well, a better success rate for smoking cessation than any other intervention that has ever been studied, including Zyban, hypnosis, patches, and group interventions.
But surely there must be some balance in this BBC story? Indeed there is: enter Simon Martin from Complementary and Alternative Therapy magazine, a publication I shall now definitely be subscribing to. “If you get a really good machine, with a well-educated, good, ethical practitioner, the sky is the limit really, but there’s an awful lot of people out there I think, not very well trained, using inferior equipment, and the sort of results they’re getting really shouldn’t be trusted.” This is a news story, repeated several times, on BBC television. The world has gone mad.
· Please send your bad science to bad.science@guardian.co.uk
Bad Science - Bioresonance and smoking - Consumer Health Forums said,
January 24, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[…] Science – Bioresonance and smoking Bad Science Who’s holding the smoking gun on Bioresonance? __________________ We do not give medical advice. You should always consult a qualified […]
Apathy Sketchpad » Blog Archive » A Pyramid Scheme said,
August 26, 2008 at 3:55 am
[…] The whole thing looks like ‘cargo-cult science’ to me, right down to the extensive list of references — of which there are fifty-four, although quite a lot of them come from the same couple of books, and at least one is a Geocities page which apparently no longer exists (presumably due to being stored in an insufficiently-pyramidal server room). This latter is cited to support the sentence “Pyramid exposure is believed to put the mind into an alpha state”. This comes hot on the tails of the even better sentence “Research has shown that the energy field within the pyramid can act as antistressor and thus protect the hippocampal neurons from stress-induced atrophy (10)”, in which the promising-sounding Reference 10 is a PhD thesis (not apparently available online) from the same university that ran this study. Probably one of the authors’ luckless students. Another few references discuss “bioresonance”, apparently as something reasonable, to ground the pyramid theory in something people will accept, which would work if bioresonance wasn’t also a load of made-up shit. […]
normalfornorfolk said,
January 15, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I really, really wish I’d seen this site before I forked out £1400, yes, that’s FOURTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS for bioresonance or Bio reduction treatment at New Ways clinic for an unhealthy evening wine drinking habit that they make wild claims about being able to cure. Oh how foolish am I!! They claimed I would feel ‘indifferent’ to alcohol as a result of 4 hours connected to their computer! Needless to say, it was a total con and I have a feeling there are lots of people out there who have also handed over this cash. Funnily they refuse to do refunds if it doesn’t work!!!!!!!
PaulineJ said,
February 21, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I would disagree with normalnorfolk above I had the treatment to stop drinking and stop smoking and both work and continual to work exceptionally well. I dont remember reading anything about a ‘cure’ on the website, its an aid to help an individual achieve their goals which i did. I dont see how you can say its a con, it works and I am the proof along with many others.
PaulineJ said,
February 21, 2009 at 12:37 pm
This whole page was created 4 years ago by Ben Goldacre saying Bioresonance couldn’t possible work and how outraged he was blah, blah, blah. Well four years later Mr Goldacre you are proven to be wrong and your’re not so smart afterall. Bioresonance continues to stop people smoking and is THE most successful stop smoking treatment available today, I know i have tried them all. 4 years later the treatment is still available and continues to stop people smoking. Shame you didn’t see it coming, but you look like an idiot now.
quaid said,
March 17, 2009 at 3:17 am
PaulineJ do you work for the clinic?
PaulineJ said,
March 18, 2009 at 12:59 pm
No, just a client who is more than happy with the treatment I have received.
Shokat said,
July 14, 2009 at 11:05 am
Hi Quaid, Pauline,
I suppose ignorance is truly blissful. If you don’t understand something then knock it – this is exactly how this thread got started. For people who operate in this mode I suggest they read the book called ‘Pho Beyond, Yes or no’ by Edward De Bono. This book teaches people about lateral or abstract thinking. It empowers people not be dismissive of everything (pho-phoning anything they don’t understand) and also not to become too dogmatic (I am right and you are wrong).
I have been running a hypnotherapy clinic since 2002. Three years ago I noticed that laser therapy and Bioresonance therapy where taking a place alongside hypnotherapy. As an open minded individual I know that about 5-10% of my clients were difficult to hypnotise so I purchased my first laser system in 2006. About 10 people failed to quit smoking with hypnotherapy alone so I offered them their money back or a chance to stay on the programme and try the laser instead. To my surprise they all quit smoking with the laser system. Most commented that if it was not for the laser they would not have been able to quit smoking.
In 2006 we bought our first Bioresonance system. This turned out to be a godsend for rapid healing but utterly useless for addictions. Then in 2007 we purchased our second Bioresonance system. On paper this was great for addictions but in practice it turned out to be a real disappointment. We were getting failures form clinics around the UK using this equipment and turning them around with our laser system combined with hypnotherapy. So in July of 2008 we purchased yet again our third Bioresonance system. This turned out to be a true godsend as it managed to turn around our biggest disaster into a resounding success.
During 2008 we managed to get John to quit smoking as shown below:
“I was a chain-smoker, averaging around 80-100 cigarettes-a-day. Though the desire to stop smoking was there, sadly the willpower was lacking. Even when I developed metastatic throat cancer, this did not deter me from continuing the habit of a lifetime. I spent years searching for someone – or something – which would stop me from smoking, without suffering withdrawal symptoms. Patches, gum, Zyban, Champix, hypnotherapy, all failed.”
“Despite my cynicism, I stopped smoking with Shokat after just two sessions. That was 9 months ago. I haven’t touched a cigarette since, nor have I craved for one. I still can’t believe how easy it was.”
“Since then, my daughter Angela (pictured, middle left) has quit smoking, binge-drinking and surmounted her panic attacks. And, my wife – Georgina (pictured, bottom left)) – has finally managed to overcome her addiction to chocolate with your help.”
John Karatzas [manager], Great Barr, Birmingham
When John told his doctor that he had finally quit smoking with my help, his doctor retorted “I don’t believe in hypnotherapy”. This got me so annoyed that for the next three months I started to write a book on addictions. A 50 page subset of this book has been published on the internet and is available to anyone free of charge. It’s called “Addictions, The Addictive Truth.” This book can be downloaded from the front page of our website at Life Principles in PDF form.
The book is the culmination of seven years of experience dealing with everything from Unhealthy eating, to gambling, to cigarettes, to cannabis, to alcohol, to cocaine, to crack, to heroin (that is smoked) and every other addiction and emotional challenge imaginable. The book goes into great length describing both process and substance addictions, their component parts and how they come about. It goes onto describe every treatment option from dangerous drugs to safe and effective alternatives such as Allan Carr, IQS, laser, Bioresonance and Hypnotherapy.
The book was written to give people the knowledge and resources they needed in an unbiased way so they can overcome their problems in the safest and most effective way possible. Let your criticism be based on knowledge rather than ignorance. Ignorance serves no one especially you, the most important person in this rotten game of greed.
The clinic in question has developed incredibility safe and effective methods of dealing with Heroin and Opiate addictions. We deal with everything up to the point when someone starts to inject heroin or starts taking methadone. In a domestic environment we don’t feel safe in dealing with these kinds of addictions so they are referred to Newways with our complements. Their success rate with these entrenched addictions puts the NHS and the government to shame. Yet just like us they get no recognition or help from any of the government institutions who seem to be living in a world of their own which is totally divorced from reality.
As for you Quaid, don’t worry my friend you have not failed at all. You have just suffered one setback. If Pauline can quit so could you. I am sure if you give Newways the benefit of doubt they would turn things around for you instead of this open warfare. If you feel you can’t go back to them then as a gesture of goodwill you can come to me free of charge and I will get you off your addiction with my compliments. Either way, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Call me free on 0800 071 1991 and let’s get you back on track. A happy, healthy lifestyle is only a phone call away. So call me now!
Wishing you success,
Shokat Ali BA (Hons), Post Grad Dip (OU).
www.lifeprinciples.com
Shokat said,
July 21, 2009 at 8:17 am
In this thread a lot of people claim that Bioresonance is nothing but a pseudoscience (pretence science). I like to address this with an example.
When our Bicom 2000 was delivered we needed a client as a ‘guinea-pig’ to test the system. Steve was our first paying client who volunteered for this experiment.
“My Name is Steve and I came to see Shokat on Fri. 18th July 2008. Shokat asked me if I would be willing to act as his ‘guinea pig’ to test his new third-generation bioresonance machine which was being delivered on that day.”
“Most of the work was done by Martin who was there to train Shokat in the use of this machine for addictions. I was asked to drink lots of water before coming and also to bring a couple of cigarettes with me. As I was feeling apprehensive, Martin told me I could go outside, relax, and have a cigarette. I had a cigarette and I felt better straight away. When I came in, Martin explained to me how the bioresonance system works and what I was expected to do after the treatment to assist the process of quitting. Then I smoked my last cigarette and put the ash together with the stub into the beaker which was placed into the machine. An hour later, when I got up, I no longer had an urge to smoke.”
“I came back to see Shokat on Mon 9th Aug 2008 for a check-up and I still had no desire to smoke. I am now looking forward to my next check-up in three months time. A week ago, if anyone had told me that if was that easy to quit smoking with a simple machine, I would have thought they were crazy. Now I find myself telling my friends all about this wonderful invention.”
During the early part of 2009 Steve went on holiday and saw everyone around him smoke and he thought to himself I am sure I have now beaten the habit so one won’t hurt. Well as he discovered one will hurt and very soon Steve was back to smoking the full amount. A few months later he could hardly breathe and after many tests it turns out that almost half of his lung has stopped working. Steve rang me in utter desperation and wanted me to get him to quit smoking. I decided to use nothing but the bioresonance machine to get him to quit smoking again.
This time I setup the Bicom machine but I forgot to put the mat behind his body. After the therapy he went home all smiles that if it has worked before it should work again. I wanted him to come back a week later for a check-up. When he came back he was still smoking. He told me that he had struggled so much after coming to see me and was angry with his family and finally lit-up and felt an instant relief. Even though he was suffering terrible medical trauma he still could not help himself but to smoke – not good. He went to on to say that quitting with the bioresonance device, this time, felt like he had quit smoking cold turkey. I said don’t worry I am going to do this properly this time and will put the mat behind your back. After that I repeated the therapy and got him back-in a week later.
This time he told me that the first four days were as easy as pie, just like the last time. But after four days the ‘monkey’ climbed his back and said ‘go on smoke’. So he lit up, but this time he derived no satisfaction from the cigarette. When he came back he was only smoking 5 cigarettes instead of his normal 20 per day. His medical practitioner told him that he may as well continue to smoke 5 per day from now on, go enjoy his forthcoming holiday then come back and be put onto Champix. Wow here her someone who should be looking after Steve and all he is saying is that it’s okay to smoke then we are going to put you on an incredibly dangerous anti-psychotic drug which will alter your brain chemistry in order to get you to quit smoking – and by the way it’s killed thousands of people since it was launched. I told Steve that the effect of this dangerous drug was the same as he had managed to achieve with in 1 hour with our bioresonance machine. The difference this time was that he was also suffering from an underling depression about his health and that was responsible for the ‘monkey on his back’. The only way forward is to undertake deep hypnosis and not only get him to quit smoking but also to deal with his depression.
Steve is booked in today 21/07/2009 so we will see him next week and see how well the therapy has gone / not gone. However, from the story so far you can understand that the therapy is not a placebo effect, if it was then Steve would definitely have quit because of his ‘need to quit’. No one I know has ever quit because they ‘need to quit’, they only quit when ‘they want to quit’. Steve just needs the ‘monkey’ removing from his back and he also needs his motivation to be increased. The three parts of an addiction, physical, psychological and the habit will be address with both the hypnotherapy and the bioresonance. One more session of our ‘luggage of life’ programme will also remove ‘all unresolved negative emotions’ this combination of techniques will finally get Steve to take control of his life without his ‘crutch’, or cigarettes.
So there is a difference between ‘pretence science’, ‘real science’ and ‘self-evident truth’. Here are a few examples:
Pretence science:
All psychotropic drugs or anti-depressants are based on this science. Look at the website www.cchr.org at the scandalous way in which money is put before human lives. Statins (the corporate killers) and Anti-Hypertensive together with a lot of other so called modern day miracles are based purely on pretence science in order to make money from the unsuspecting public.
Real Science:
The wings of most modern aeroplanes have been shortened by rolling them upwards. In experiments it was found that the wing tip adds no lift but tends to drag down the plane, so it was better to change the aero-dynamics of the wing by rolling it upwards or by putting a vertical section at the tip of the wing. Because of this realisation the biggest aeroplane ever made by the European Union, the A480 Airbus could have it’s wings within the Civil Aviation Guidelines. Now, this is real science.
Self evident truth:
“My name is Pete. I am 39 years old. I am director of my own business…a very busy and hectic business. I have been suffering from depression for the last two years. I tried to commit suicide two years ago…and been on very strong anti-depressants for the last two years. Before I called Shokat I was trying to come off my tables for six to seven months. Tried every angle I could; dropping the dosage; different dosages; taking it down but I would hit a real low so I couldn’t do it. I was recommended to come and see Shokat by a friend (Sofia). I came to see him and he assured me that I wouldn’t need to take my anti-depressants tablets again after one session which I didn’t believe. And sure enough after one session I stopped my anti-depressants, I never took another tablet and for two to three weeks afterwards I had the most massive high, feeling exhilarated and excited every day. I had this weird feeling that I had my whole life in front of me…I levelled off and It felt very normal now for the last three months. I had no problems at all, not even thinking I wanted to go back to my anti-depressants. I can’t thank you enough; I think you have done such an amazing job.” Peter, Birmingham.
Now, this is self-evident truth. Here is a guy who was put onto psychotropic drugs unnecessarily when his problem was not a physical one but an emotional one. For emotional problems you do not put people on anti-depressants because it just stifles the healing process. What you do instead is to help the individual through his/her problems by accelerating the healing process. This exactly what we did with hypnotherapy in the above example. This is not an isolated example as most people can have their lives back in one or two sessions of deep hypnosis. Yet the GPs and the governments turn a blind eye to all this self evident truth.
So when you have someone who has failed with the NHS over and over again and he quits smoking as easy as pie with bioresonance or hypnotherapy or laser then that is called self-evident truth. Do you know what his ignorant doctor said to him when he told him that he has finally thrown away his ‘pills’ with our help? “I don’t believe in hypnotherapy.” Which is kind of strange because:
Since the British Medical Association approved the use of clinical hypnosis and hypnotherapy as a legitimate therapeutic agent in the 1950s, and the American Medical Society in 1958, thousands of people have found hypnosis and hypnotherapy to be an effective way to improve the quality of their lives.
Yet you have an ignorant doctor saying that he does not believe in hypnotherapy. He is willing to buy into a lot of pretence science but ignores self-evident truth. If you want to read about this stupid behaviour and the unfair playing field created by the drug industry then read my free online book ‘Addictions, the Addictive Truth’. Some of the information contained in this book may even save your life or the life of a loved one:
www.lifeprinciples.com/downloads/AddictionsDemystified.pdf
Wishing you success,
Shokat
Roark said,
October 29, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Hey
Stumbled across all this after an expensive and wasteful visit to New Ways Clinc in Manchester.
There’s been a few other people trying to complain on the Net but usually it seems that a person ends up posting under an alias and ranting and making abusive comments. Most of these comments have the same tone – calling people names and suggesting that they are ignorant and being bullied on the internet and via email in to keeping quiet.
I’m not clever enough to argue against the science – or claims made but just finding a bit more about the men who run the clinic should be enough for people. If I’d known more about them I wouldn’t have shelled out hard cash.
The people who run the clinic call themselves Andy Wilk and Tony Wilk. Googling these names won’t throw up much. But looking under Andrei and Antoni Wilk is more useful. It showed me that in 2006 the Wilk brothers were disqualified from being Directors of Companies after their company, Drivertime Recruitment Ltd was wound up by a court order. www.berr.gov.uk/files/file34501.pdf
The Autumn 2004 edition of Corporate Recovery And Insolvency Bulletin reported on the Court Case which led to the winding up of the company. It highlighted the measures that the Wilks went to conceal their interest in the business, and said “They presented prospective franchisees with false marketing material which claimed that they had regional networks and established blue chip
clients both of which proved not to be true. They provided none of the promised support or advertising to
franchisees and the sample sales and gross profit figures were fabricated by the brothers for the
sole reason of selling these franchises.”
nt4992.vs.netbenefit.com/resources/pdf/CorporateRecoveryInsolvencyBulletin.pdf
After the closure of the Drivertime business, the Wilks appear to have bought a bioresonance machine and set up their website. I will leave it for others, better qualified than me, to debunk the science behind their equipment. I hope that a better understanding of the men who operate the machine will save some people making the same mistake I did.
Roark.
Shokat said,
November 4, 2009 at 4:59 am
The science of bioresonance is pretty sound. I have inadvertently undertaken quit a few experiments on our Bicom 2000 machine and know how well it works if you put the mat behind the person and how badly it works if you don’t. Every time I have forgotten to put this mat behind the person I had to get the client back-in for a free backup session. Only when I undertook the procedure correctly did the cravings for the cigarettes disappear. However, every form of therapy generates failures. This is a section I have cut and pasted from our website:
——————————————————–
Here are just some of our clients sharing their experiences of failing to quit smoking with the NHS (NRT, Zyban & Champix), Allan Carr, Laser and Bioresonance only clinics – note that they have not put on weight with our combined system:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWXG7gGm8DY
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvH-NfuNctE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Ci9FLjZmw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY1LZXZf3iI
We succeed where others fail because we do not abandon our clients at the first sign of trouble and we always find a method of turning things around for them. We normally don’t give up on our clients unless they give up on themselves first. And if our clients stay committed then we can always find a way to help them succeed. Also, our ethical business model prevents us cheating people – in the extremely rare cases where we have not been able to help our clients, we have offered a full or a partial refund – hanging on to a clients money when they have not benefited from the treatment would only add insult to injury! Most people come to us as a last resort – they are very vulnerable and the last thing we want to do is to cause even more misery by holding on to all of their money if they have not received any redeeming value in return.
———————————————————
So the problem is not the science but business ethics. Normally as a general rule of thumb there are no guarantees of success with any kind of therapy. Most associations are pretty annoyed if you advertise guaranteed success. However, we must keep things in perspective.
When you go to see your GP 99% of the time he/she fails to help you with pharmaceutical drugs. In fact most of the time these drugs such as anti-depressants (which have no science behind them) make matters worse.
www.lifeprinciples.com/depression-anxiety-treatment-help-forum-test-uk.html
www.lifeprinciples.com/depression-anxiety-treatment-help-forum-test-uk2.html
However, your GP earns on average £105 per hour but you don’t see people going over and banging on their GPs door demanding their money back. The reason they don’t do that is because the service is perceived to be free. The Priory charges people from about £6,000 to £20,000 for alcohol rehab yet enjoys an abysmal success rate – do you see people queuing up on the street demanding their money back? So why is it that we are willing to overlook the excesses committed by the NHS, the governments and the big Pharma or the really large rehab centres but are willing to jump on the ‘little’ people who are in the business of helping people? If Newways were ‘crap’ I am sure they would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. The fact is most people do benefit from their therapy but the few who get their hands burnt are more vocal in their comments.
As for skeletons in closets I am sure most of us have some of these. As Jesus said to the people ‘let the person without sin cast the first stone’ – this simple intervention saved a person’s life. So my question is this – would you let the NHS and the big Pharma put you on a dangerous and ineffective drugs like Champix with a pathetic success rate of 20% on paper (actual success rates are closer to 10% if that), costs some £300 per 12-week course and kills people (lots of people have killed themselves after taking this drug) or would you go to a laser, bioresonance or hypnotherapy clinic, pay £300 for your bad habits and enjoy well over a 50% success rate without the dangerous side effects associated with drugs like NRT, Zyban and Champix? By the way, Pfizer made a billion dollars from the sale of this drug in the first year of it’s release. It is estimated that about 64,000 lost their lives in the first year alone after taking this drug. The FAA has banned it’s pilots taking this drug – do they know something the GPs are keeping from us? I personally would pay for my own treatment and take a chance on a safe and effective method then the dangerous and ineffective method offered by the NHS any day of the week.
Whatever method works for you has to be the best method. Just don’t give up trying to get your life back without the self-destructive habits and behaviours whatever they happen to be.
Wishing you success,
Shokat @ www.LifePrinciples.com
New Ways Clinic said,
November 4, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Reply in response to malicious comments posted by Roark which have been referred to the police.
Firstly I doubt Roark is even a client of ours or even been to our clinic however we are unable to clarify this due to posting these comments anonymously.
As with all malicious comments they are incorrect. The business referred to was a franchise business which in 2004 suffered a franchisee revolt to stop paying their franchise royalties. Some businesses were trading up to £1million turnover per annum and paying royalties of £80,000 per annum. When a group of franchisees band together and have a vested interest to trade independently it is very difficult to stop them leaving, as one ex-franchise says on their website: –
‘Our business was originally formed as part of a network franchise…In 2003 we parted company with the Network Franchise and continued trading with the new name. Our loyal customer base were fully supportive of this move and have remained loyal ever since’.
The sole aim of the franchisee revolt was to trade independently and stop paying their franchise fees once their businesses were established.
We tried to stop franchisees leaving and hence took court action however after representing ourselves in court and in the face of mounting accusations from franchisees who wanted to trade independently we lost the case and subsequently the business was wound up by the courts.
However this has no bearing on the business New Ways Clinic which is not related to franchising in any whatsoever and has traded successfully for the last 5 years.
The comments posted by Roark as malicious and anonymous and are a smear campaign designed to damage a business which is totally unrelated. It is an offence to post malicious comments on a website designed to attack a person or business and we will be seeking legal advice to address this situation. We have also referred this matter to the police.
Past and future clients continue their support for this treatment and we would ask potential clients to base their decision on seeking treatment based upon the results obtained by the treatment process and our client testimonials and not on ‘malicious anonymous postings’ on the internet.
rossam80 said,
November 5, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Victoria White from Superdetox or superdetox.co.uk came to see me to stop smoking, what a complete waste of time, this woman talk’s utter rubbish.
She tried to sell me £50 worth of supplements on top of the £250 she charged to come to my house. I couldn’t get rid of her she’s like a dodgy double glazzing rep, going on about balancing my chakras, yeah right.
Any way after 2.5 hours of her so called treatment ‘bioresonance’ and listening to her bang on about how great she is, she left with £250 of my hard earned cash, what a fool I am, within 30 minutes I was gasping for a cigarette, and smoked straight away however she promised me I would be cured!
Phoned her right back but she said she couldn’t come back right away as she was busy doing up her house, she said she would put me on a remote session and treatment me through the airwaves, she is obviously crazy and making it up as she goes along she did me for £250.00.
I have called her a few times and either she cuts me off or say’s she will call me back but never does.
Did some checking all 8 people she claims to have trained in Sweden and Scotland have all gone bust as her treatment is a scam.
Don’t fall for her flannel she talks for Britain but don’t be duped by her, go to somewhere else I wish I did!
Shokat said,
November 6, 2009 at 7:01 am
I suppose we have gone through our own learning curve when dealing with people.
Even with two of the best bioresonance machines (Bicom 2000 and e-Lybra 9) and a laser system I know full well that some people just do not respond well to the ‘information medicine’ in the form of a laser and bioresonance system and if we cannot get the hypnotherapy to work then we have to give people most of their money back. Only yesterday I refunded £300 I charged someone for a combined ‘Luggage of Life Programme’ and the smoking cessation programme. She lives in Leeds and did not want to stay on the one year long programme after she failed to quit smoking during her first two sessions. If she was local I would not have let her off the hook and would have persevered until she quit but because of the distance I decided to let her go. Even though I spend half of Saturday and Sunday with this lady I did not let money become more important then this persons mental well being. When people come to you in utter desperation then they are very vulnerable and the last thing you want to do is to make matters worse by hanging on to their money when they have not received any redeeming value in return.
The email below says it all:
———————————————————
Thank you Shokat for your kind understanding. I wish you all the best.
take care bev.
—– Original Message —–
From: Shokat Ali
To: ‘b brealey’
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 10:28 PM
Subject: Credit
Hi Bev,
I got all the paperwork etc from your partner (a very nice man). And as promised I have put £300 back into your account.
I suggest you get some hypnotherapist near you to deal with your anxiety. Once you have done this then seek help to deal with your smoking cessation. With hindsight I think I should have just concentrated last weekend with the anxiety programme and then got you back in some time in the future and dealt with the addiction part. The problem the hypnotherapist will have is that he/she will find it very hard to get you to relax to a state where he/she can make the changes. If you were local to me I would not have let you off the hook and would have persevered until you got your life back.
You take care,
Shokat
———————————————————
Shokat Ali at www.LifePrinciples.com
Roark said,
November 6, 2009 at 7:45 pm
It’s so strange:
I posted my comments about how Antoni and Andrei Wilk of New Ways Clinic (Andy and Antoni Wilk) had ripped me off and had a history of ripping people off and they launch a venomous attack on another vendor of similar treatments. The comment from Rossam80 is from the Wilks posting under a fake name; they have posted a fake question on Yahoo Answers under the name Mandy doing the same thing. They seem to think that these comments are from a competitor not a real customer. I wonder how they can be so certain that I am not a real customer UNLESS they have had no customers recently!
This behaviour is not really a big shock. Despite the reasonable tone of Tony Wilk’s message above where he says “look at the ‘men’ we have become…” they are really still the same. They threaten people who complain with police, courts or worse. They post comments making offensive comments about people who question them. They’re like something off Shameless.
When their case went to court, the court reports said
“The individuals in charge of the companies, Antoni and Andrei Wilk (“the Wilks”), were neither registered as directors or employees of either company. They described themselves as “consultants” and went to great lengths to conceal their control over the companies by having as shareholders and/or directors of both companies, their other and one of their wives (using their maiden names).
All of the franchisees who gave evidence had serious criticisms of the Wilks and their methods. Some had invested and lost their life savings and many have disputes with the companies and were seeking damages for
misrepresentation. The franchisees were led to believe that they were buying into a very successful franchise business, which was not the case. Whilst they were under
investigation the Wilks lied to the investigator in the hope that the very high failure rate of its franchisees
would not be discovered.”
nt4992.vs.netbenefit.com/resources/pdf/CorporateRecoveryInsolvencyBulletin.pdf
Only difference now seems to be that they are taking money from drug users to pay for their lifestyles, rather than franchisees.
quaid80 said,
November 7, 2009 at 4:04 am
Well I read the above stories, does look a little dodgy how this women gets treated, then starts her own treatments.
I’ve been on both sites, and read most the text and I am satisfied that this treatment must do something after reading all them testimonials on this new ways clinic site. Plug me in please!!!
johngalt said,
November 7, 2009 at 11:02 am
Hi
So let’s see how this plays. Roark writes a piece which highlights that Andrei and Antoni Wilk of New Ways Clinic (aka Andy and Antoni Wilk) had their previous franchise business closed down by the courts, and were held by the court to have been dishonest.
Tony Wilk writes a heartfelt piece which says “all we ask is that you look at the ‘men’ we have become and judge us on what we are doing now…”
They go on to suggest a competitor – perhaps a Victoria White – posted the comments about New Ways Clinic.
And then – by weird coincidence, a rash of messages slating Victoria White/Superdetox appear. So on this site at 10.47pm, Rossam posts a story about Victoria White/Superdetox. The same day a Mandy T opens a new account on Yahoo Answers and posts a question which is mostly suggesting that Victoria White is operating a scam service.
It’s probably useful to understand how New Ways Clinic promotes their ‘clinic.’ In order to increase Google ratings and to get as many hits as possible, the Wilks routinely post questions to forums, and post reviews. And whenever Bioresonance is negatively discussed, one of the Wilk brothers posts under a pseuodonym (or sometimes as themselves) to challenge, correct or abuse the poster.
So for example when Normal Norfolk made her submission, on this forum and then shortly afterwards “Pauline J” writes in claiming the treatment worked for her and then starts to get a bit tetchy with Ben Goldacre.
Someone called Quaid then wrote in to prolong the debate, and Pauline claims she is just a happy customer. It doesn’t take a genius to spot the hand of one of the Wilks posting both as Quaid and Pauline J. And to reinforce this, on November 7 2009 at 4.04am Quaid80 (presumably no relation to Quaid who posted 17/3/2009 to support New Ways at 3.17am) posts a message supporting New Ways and dismissing the competitors.
Looking back to when the Wilks’ company went to court to be wound up. Tony Wilk offers a sad story where as a successful businessman he was undermined by unscrupulous franchisees. The courts view seems to be different and was reported as follows:
“The individuals in charge of the companies, Antoni and Andrei Wilk (“the Wilks”), were neither registered as directors or employees of either company. They described themselves as “consultants” and went to great lengths to conceal their control over the companies by having as
shareholders and/or directors of both companies, their mother and one of their wives (using their maiden names).”
The reporting goes on to note:
“All of the franchisees who gave evidence had serious criticisms of the Wilks and their methods. Some had invested and lost their life savings and many have disputes with the companies and were seeking damages for
misrepresentation. The franchisees were led to believe that they were buying into a very successful franchise business, which was not the case. Whilst they were under
investigation the Wilks lied to the investigator in the hope that the very high failure rate of its franchisees would not be discovered.”
nt4992.vs.netbenefit.com/resources/pdf/CorporateRecoveryInsolvencyBulletin.pdf
Despite the protestations of Tony Wilk, his modus operandi still seems to be to make false claims for the product that he promotes, to use made up user comments and testimonials and to post comments about themselves and competitors under assumed names to try and promote their products. The “men they have become” and the men they were then seem rather similar. The only thing that has changed seems to be when another person using the same sort of machine to provide the same sort of quack treatment appears, her treatment is considered a ‘scam’ by the Wilks, and theirs is kosher. They’re both scams and the scrapping between them suggests the old adage about their being no honour amongst a certain group of people.
John Galt
Ben Goldacre said,
November 7, 2009 at 11:28 am
i have also received lengthy threats of involving the police, accusations that i am torturing him, etc from wilks.
having said that i’m not sure i find their business practises very interesting, i’m only really interested in the (frankly, ridiculous) device, so it’d be good if you cld take this squabble elsewhere, feel free to post a link to it. cheers, ben
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