Tonight I'll be speaking at Conway Hall (tickets still available), but in the meantime I have a problem - I've contracted some sort of cold flu swine flu Ebola, and I need to get rid soon. I was contemplating heading to Boots and buying an armful of lovely drugs and pharmaceuticals, but the helpful advisors of @ofquack showed me a better way.

Yes, it's a homeopathic cure for Ebola:

Dr. Gail Derin studied the symptoms of Ebola Zaire, the most deadly of the three that can infect human beings. Dr. Vickie Menear, M.D. and homeopath, found that the remedy that most closely fit the symptoms of the 1914 "flu" virus, Crolatus horridus, also fits the Ebola virus nearly 95% symptom-wise! Thanks go to these doctors for coming up with the following remedies:

1. Crolatus horridus (rattlesnake venom) 2. Bothrops (yellow viper) 3. Lachesis (bushmaster snake) 4. Phosphorus 5. Merc. cor.

If you are not in the U.S., you must locate your closest homeopathic practitioner and ask him or her to order these remedies for you from Hahnemann Pharmacy, (510) 327-3003 (Albany, California, a suburb of Oakland). If your country's laws allow you to call a homeopathic pharmacy directly, do so. In any case be sure to find a homeopathic practitioner you can work with. Do not try to take care of yourself without the further education and experience that a homeopath can give you.

If you're not sure where to find your closest homeopath, call the National Center of Homeopathy, (703) 548-7790, Take this article with you and let a homeopath read it and instruct you on how to use the remedies.

Now, there's a lot of stuff contained in the above nugget of stupidity that I could pick up on, so let me just pick up on two points.

Firstly, Ebola can cause death (from systemic multi-organ failure) in as little as two days. That gives me enough time to attend the TAM fringe tonight, but finding my nearest homeopath, getting them to place an order for the remedy with a clinic in San Francisco, having the remedy shipped here and then getting treated in two days is a feat beyond the capabilities of even Jack Bauer.

I will be dead by the time it arrives, and they can bury me, clutching the vial, as mourners mutter "if only DHL got their act together."

The second point that amused me was the assertion that: "the remedy that most closely fit the symptoms of the 1914 "flu" virus, Crolatus horridus, also fits the Ebola virus nearly 95% symptom-wise!" So in other words, this quack believes that Spanish Flu and Ebola are 95% the same symptom wise. Let's just check this:

Flu Symptoms: Fever, nausea, aches, diarrhea, pneumonia, dark spots on cheeks, bleeding in lungs.

And now Ebola:

Ebola Symptoms: Fever, nausea, aches, diarrhea, severe headache, abdominal pain, severe weakness, exhaustion, sore throat, dizziness, internal and external bleeding, joint pain, dark or bloody faeces, vomiting blood, bleeding eyes, petechia (broken capillaries), maculopapular rash, purple discolorations of skin, low blood presure, tachycardia, hypovolemia (low blood volume), disruption of clotting, altered white blood cell count, bleeding from incompletely-healed injuries, external haemorrhae from orifices including nose and mouth.

So, yes, remarkably similar symptoms really, apart from the heart problems, massive internal bleeding, haemorrhages from every orifice and wotnot. Oh, and the fact that the two diseases are caused by completely different viruses.

I have no idea where Dr. Vickie Menear got her doctorate from, but the above article is probably the stupidest thing I've read on the internet today. And that's an achievement. Anyway, I'm off to the pharmacy for some proper drugs. See you tonight.