Welcome to mylespower.co.uk

Aside

Latest video from Myles

youtubevid  DIY  

Hello and welcome to mylespower.co.uk. For those of you who are just tuning in, my name is Myles Power (aka powerm1985) from YouTube. My time here on the internet has been spent sharing my love of SCIENCE! through home experiments, visiting sites of scientific interest and angry rants at pseudoscience opponents. I made this website to link all my videos and pictures in one place. I have also posted the instructions and explanations of the home experiments in hope of encouraging the next generation of scientist to try them. You will also find videos from other YouTube scientists posted here which are worth a watch. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by.

Outright lies in the documentary House of Numbers

Posted on by
2

By: Myles Power Edited by: Hannah

In 2009 Brent Leung released the AIDS denial movie, House of Numbers. Brent claims the movie was an ‘objective examination of the idea that HIV causes AIDS’ but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I have previously discussed how the movie missed out vital information when it featured a woman talking about the benefits of not taking anti-HIV medication, but failed to mention that both herself and her daughter died of AIDS before the film was even released. It also failed to mention that both deaths could have been prevented by the drugs. The film is also guilty of telling barefaced lies. In this article I am going to discuss an example of this and where the film changes from misleading to simply dangerous.

Above is a short one-minute clip of the movie, where we see Liam Scheff and Nancy Padian talking about a ten-year study on heterosexual transmission of HIV. You might be wondering who these people are; Liam Scheff, according to the documentary, is an investigative journalist, but a quick Google search reveals that Liam prefers the title of ‘conspiracy realist’. The reason why Liam gives himself this title and not the title of ‘conspiracy theorist’ is that he believes the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ to be a conspiracy theory by the government to cast a shadow on people like him… ಠ_ಠ. I don’t think I could adequately explain just how bat shit crazy Liam is and I therefore suggest you check out his website and YouTube channel to see it for yourself. There you will find the ramblings of a mad man.

Continue reading →

Vital information missing in the documentary House of Numbers

Posted on by
3
By: Myles Power Edited by: Hannah & James Gurney
.
house of numbers
I recently watched a documentary film suggested by one of my subscribers called ‘House of Numbers’. The documentary consists of interviews with scientists and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) denialists, discussing the link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS, the severity of AIDS in South Africa and, unbelievably, whether or not HIV exists at all. The film was directed and produced by, and starred, Canadian-born Brent Leung (a psychology graduate from the University of British Columbia). The documentary is poor, even from a technical standpoint. It is poorly organised, unfocussed and repeatedly – and comedically – punctuated by clips of Brent in strange locations. Brent’s level of knowledge and understanding, and that of some of the people featured in the film, is comical bordering on the absurd. At one point Brent implied that the only proof we have for the existence of the HIV is pictures of the virus. In the future I am going to talk about some of the scientific inaccuracies of the documentary but first I would like to talk about a woman who featured in the film and how it shows Brent’s dishonesty.
.
house of numbers
The documentary stars a woman named Christine Maggiore who tested positive for HIV in 1992. In the movie, Christine talks about her experiences with HIV tests and HIV medication. She casts a shadow on the HIV test by saying, “How can we say that HIV is the cause of AIDS when we don’t know, based on current tests, whether or not any one diagnosed positive actually has HIV?” and later encourages other people who have tested positive for HIV to stop taking medication, as she believes it caused the death of eight of her coworkers.
.
“I remember in 1992 when I first tested positive, I became involved in an organisation woman at risk. There were eleven of us at the time on the board and involved in the group. All of us except three were on the medication. In the year and a half I was involved with women at risk, every single woman in that organisation on the drugs died. Every single one. Except the three of use who were not taking them.” – Christine Maggiore

Nine till five snake oil peddlers

Posted on by
4

By: Myles Power Edited by: Hannah

In October last year, I wrote an article about a 78-year-old man named Allan Taylor who apparently cured his incurable cancer with a new diet. Back in 2011, Allan was told that he had colon cancer and had around 22cm of his colon removed. He also underwent chemotherapy, but was later told that he would no longer benefit from the treatment and that there was nothing more they could do for him. Faced with his own mortality, Allan decided to investigate alternative treatments out of desperation – as most of us would do in his situation. After researching some theories online, Allan walked into his local health store to ask for further advice. He was sold a new diet and several products that he later believed cured his incurable cancer. His story was quickly picked up by The Sunday Mirror, who then irresponsibly published it, without it containing a medical/scientific rebuttal of Allan’s claims. The paper listed the products in Allan’s diet, along with explanations for how he believed they worked. In my article I discussed some of these products and how their anti-cancer properties are not backed up by evidence. I also talked about how one of the products sold to this critically ill man will have been metabolised within his body to produce the highly toxic hydrogen cyanide.

allan

The truth is that without having access to Allan’s medical records, we have to take his word on his treatment, his diagnosis and his health now. I want to make a point here to say that in no way am I calling Allan a liar, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and neither Allan or the writers of the newspaper article (Dominic Herbert and David Paul) have given any. What really got to me about this story was that Allan is from my home town (Middlesbrough) and so was the health store. I could not believe that a store under my nose was selling false hope to critically ill people by recommending quack medicines that not only have been shown to be ineffective, but are actually potentially harmful. This was the reason I decided to write my first article on the subject in the hope that people who read Allan’s newspaper article would find mine and not waste their time with this bullshit.

Continue reading →