Some Magic Boxes - #3 Bioresonance Therapy

The 30 Second Skinny BRT is a treatment invented by Scientologist Franz Morell. It is based on the idea that all matter has a vibration, and that the BRT box is capable of recreating this vibration and as a result have the same effect on the human body as whatever generated the vibration. In other words, one could create the vibration of insulin, and it would have an insulin-like effect on the body. It is most commonly used today as a treatment for nicotine dependence, despite no clinical evidence or plausible theory behind it.

Bioresonance Therapy is a treatment currently still available which has received some media coverage of late in relation to its purported ability to assist people giving up cigarettes. This included a rather irresponsible news report by the BBC in which it was stated that there was no clinical proof that it worked "yet", but it did work. Evidence came in the form of a draw full of cigarette cartons, rather than a one- or five-year follow up of past clients.

The Theory

The theory of Bioresonance Therapy has it that all matter resonates at various frequencies, including toxins that are held in the body between cells. This resonance is a waveform and as such can be cancelled out by inverting it and sending it back to the resonant matter. BRT claims to be able to isolate the waveforms of toxins and cancel them out which, in a way that is not explained, neutralises the toxins themselves, allowing them to be passed out of the body, partly through the pores. Thus in the context of giving up smoking, the toxins of the cigarettes can be removed from the body giving an addict a fresh physical start to quitting tobacco so all she need focus on is the psychological aspect of the addiction.

The Process

Here it is as described at the website offering the service as a means of kicking the smokes.

First you will be asked to smoke two thirds of a cigarette & put the ash into a beaker. You will then stub out the remaining third also in to the beaker & spit into it. The beaker contains all the information needed for the computer to work out the energy pattern of your nicotine addiction. Your hands will be rested on copper plates & these are then connected to the Bicom computer before switching on. Although no electricity is passed through your body, you may or may not experience a mild tingling sensation as the energy pathways open. The beaker will then be connected & the computer will work out the electromagnetic pattern of the nicotine. It will then invert the energy pattern of your addiction & that pattern will be sent through your body via the sensors to cancel out the nicotine energy. The resonance of your body then becomes that of a non-smoker and cravings will disappear - you will suffer little or no withdrawal symptoms.

The treatment takes 20 minutes after that you will now be a non-smoker! Bioresonance treatment is completely harmless. The body is stimulated into healing itself and the process of detoxification is initiated. Nicotine is eliminated within approximately 24 hours after detoxification. However all other detoxification processes are also stimulated and patients may feel fatigue, headaches, nausea and dizziness for a few days after the treatment. If all instructions are followed, these symptoms will be kept to a minimum or not occur at all. On the day, it is advisable to rest following the treatment.

The device itself was created in 1977 by Franz Morell and his son-in-law Erich Rasche, who formed the MORA company that produced and marketed the "biobox". If the idea of someone gripping two large electrodes and being purified by toxins emerge from the skin suggests Scientology to you, it is no accident. Morell was very likely a Scientologist at some point, having apparently completed a False Purpose Rundown in 1986, and although the theory behind BRT seems different to that of the homecure ethos behind the Purification Rundown, there is much of the e-meter and Narconon to the look and feel of the process. What is more, Morell's MORA treatment is cited in Rheumatoid Diseases Cured At Last by Anthony di Fabio, pen-name of not doctor Perry A Chapdelaine, scientologist and Executive Director of Arthritis Trust0, who also pays a fair amount of lip service to the "detoxification" technologies of L. Ron Hubbard (along with scientific proofs supplied by director of research for the Scientology affiliated Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education, David W. Schnare; former Senior Science Advisor for FASE, Max Ben; and scientologist and chief Narconon researcher, Megan G. Shields). But I digress.

Whether or not the process involves passing electricity through the body depends very much on who you talk to. It is doubtful that whatever "energy" is being sent through the copper plates isn't electric. Why else would one need to complete a circuit? Note also that the description informs us that "all other detoxification processes are also stimulated". This falls completely outside the theory as it has been presented - if the waveform of the tobacco is being cancelled out, how can this relate to other toxins present in the body? Then the list of possible side-effects of this "completely safe" procedure - these are linked to the notion that the body is reacting to the toxins as they leave the body. Not only does this negate the idea that those toxins have been neutralised, but serves to disassociate the process itself from its side effects, in much the same way that Scientology's purification rundown assigns its own side effects to fleeing toxins rather than the exercise, sauna and dangerous levels of vitamin B intake.

The Theory Unpicked

BRT was first intended to be used as a means of replicating the waveforms of drugs in the body. The device would be able to record the resonant wave patterns of, say, penicilin, and then replay the penicilin waveform in the body of someone in need of it. This would be able to replace the need for a physical drug. This far-fetched (and therefore harder to sell) use seems to have been abandoned, and instead the device is now used to try and neutralise the waveforms of molecules already present in the body.

The theory is terribly patchy. If these waves exist, they do not consitute what the matter resonating actually is. If one took a pebble, recorded its waveform, reversed the waveform and fed it back to the pebble, the pebble would still be a pebble. The same is true on the microscopic level. It is no doubt this theoretical stumbling block that has led to the move away from drug synthesis to the slightly greyer notion of cancelling out toxins' waveforms.

If we for a moment go with the idea that the machine can actually isolate the wave-form of nicotine and reverse it and feed it back, you aren't just feeding it back to the nicotine itself but the subject as a whole. Whereas a reversed waveform would knock out the waveform of the nicotine, it will still have an effect on the rest of the subject. You're still adding two wave patterns together, and who knows to what end, considering the alleged effect of total neutralisation. What if two interfering waveforms happen to create the same waveform as depleted uranium, or arsenic?

It remains unclear as to how the device is capable of singling out indivual toxins waveforms from the tumultuous waveforms of a complex organism. A comparable example here is the much sought for noise reduction box that would work on a similar principle. A microphone picks up sound and a speaker kicks out the inverted soundwaves, but it can't do it quickly or accurately enough to have much of an effect, and certainly can't isolate, say, the pneumatic drill in the street outside, but leave alone the conversation one is trying to hear. Yet this is what BRT claims to be able to do. We are taking a hugely complex waveform and going through and isolating an element within it that we want to inverse. The level of information processing that that would entail is massive. What such suggested therapies seem to do with regularity is quite inadvertently make colossal claims of technological advancement that taken alone would be jaw-dropping. Yet such technologies are never seen to transfer elsewhere. The information processing allegedly at work here will not be put to other waveforms and attendant purposes.

Claim reduction

As explained, the device was initially designed to replace the use of medicine. Clearly if we tried doing this to replace someone's insulin a lawsuit would be arriving pretty quickly. So over time, much like the claims associated with de la Ware's device, the claims have bceom scaled down. Suddenly the therapy was said to be effective on less substantial conditions, such as allergies. The use of the device to quit smoking is a perfect claim for advocates in that being an addict is itself a vague notion, and the sting in the tail of bringing in introspection which, although no better than the "willpower required" caveat on nicotine replacement therapy1, means that the blame for failure will always rest with the subject, and not the treatment. This is particularly useful because it not only puts the blame on the subject's willpower, but exerts pressure on the individual not to complain or even report back to notify the practitioner of the failure.

Again, much like the de la Ware radionics devices, the BRT devices are sold for research purposes only, which makes one wonder on what grounds, legal or otherwise, the treatments are offered to the paying public. This blogger was tickled by the fact that one company offering BRT provided a second session should customers not be satisfied with the results of the first. What is twice nothing?

0 Digging away at CAM is a fruitful business because so much of it seems to connect up. Expect further posts about the Arthritis Trust, messrs Chapdelaine, Dr Max Curtis MD, and the wonders of the Oxford Educational Network and not Cherokee Professor Reverend Doctor Chief Swift Eagle.

1 Having quit smoking without resorting to nicotine replacement therapy, I nevertheless feel duty bound to point out that nicotine replacement therapy is based on the notion of finding a non-carcinogenic way of getting the nicotine in. Its science is rather more obvious and less exciting than the magical theory of BRT but it at least lives up to its scientific claims in a way that inverted wave mechanics cannot.

Dr Ben Goldacre on BRT