My unusual experiment-a few months on

In September I came home to New Zealand to give my Town Hall lecture. While at home I took another intravenous vitamin C treatment (IVC) and recorded as much on my blog. On my return to Cambridge I received a telephone call from a Dominion Post reporter who said she was writing a story on my IVC treatment as a result of what she had read on my blog. I pointed out that the blog was intended for family and friends, but she argued that anything on the internet was public domain and that they would do the story whether I liked it or not.

I gave her a brief, noncommittal statement, and the following story resulted as a front page piece on the Dominion Post. I have been deluged with mail from alternative medicine supporters and have even received strange bottles of liquid through the mail from well-meaning enthusiasts.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/5664298/Sir-Paul-Callaghans-unusual-experiment

I have since been asked for further media interviews but declined the Television freak shows and have waited to clarify the matters raised in a suitable radio interview, which I will do with Kim Hill this coming Saturday, when we discuss my leave, my new book project, and my latest cancer developments.

So, that brings me to my unusual experiment. The latest CEA data is in. I have had a small rise, at a lower rate than expected. As I informed blog readers, my CEA is the indicator "dial" and my experimental "knobs" are IVC and Chinese medicine. Over the last few months, largely due to circumstance, I have managed to separate the effects of these. The one factor which correlates with lowering the CEA level or its rate of rise, is not it seems the IVC, but the Chinese Herbal medicine. I had this medicine consistently for a period of two weeks before I left for the UK, completing the liquid prescription I had brought back from Singapore. I then had to wait for a new powdered prescription to be sent, with import licences and "medsafe" clearance to be arranged. The package of powdered Chinese medicine arrived in New Zealand after my departure on sabbatical in July. I brought this back with me to the UK after my September visit home, and hence was able to take the Singapore Chinese medicine over my last four weeks in the UK, though I did so at half the dosage recommended.

All this correlates remarkably with the response on the dial. But a correlation is not proof of causality. It may all be coincidence. But I will certainly take the Chinese medicine a little more seriously as my experiment progresses.