People who have gallstones, or think they have gallstones, are invited to "flush" them out by swallowing a concoction of 1/2 cup of olive oil, a big grapefruit, 4 tablespoons of Epsom salts, and three cups of water.

It was a nice idea, and interesting things will appear in the toilet bowl soon after. But I'm afraid that they're not your gallstones. Here's why:

• Real gallstones are faceted polyhedra, like the ones in the picture on the links below, or else shaped like mulberries. What you'll get from the recipe are spheres. One of my correspondents describes a friend who saved the spheres and displayed them to his friends.
• Real gallstones hurt bad when they pass through the cystic and common bile ducts.
• Real gallstones sink in water. (As an autopsy pathologist, I'm very familiar with this.) The "gallstones" you'll produce from this recipe will float, as the "alternative thinkers" themselves point out. (They claim that real gallstones float, too. Liars.)

Hulda Regehr Clark, the author of "The Cure for all Cancers" and "The Cure For HIV/AIDS" promotes this. Since she claims to have both a doctorate in naturopathy and a Ph.D. in something (the latter implying having done substantial original lab research), one would think she would have made an experiment with a real gallstone and discovered that it sinks. There's a nice photo which she took from my friend, pathologist Ed Klatt. She calls them "such small stones" though they're obviously 7-10 mm across. She thinks the stones she displayed formed in the liver and "rolled" into the gallbladder, which is silly. You see many more stones in the gallbladder because that's where bile is concentrated and stored; if they all "rolled" there from the liver, we'd see much more biliary colic. She says gallstones "can be of any color" which is a hoot. She also claims that the major cause of gallstones is wearing shoes.

If you want to believe these people, that is your business. If you try the purge, please chew your grapefruit up thoroughly. Otherwise, you're asking for a gastic bezoar and a trip to the endoscopist to remove the obstruction.

Gallstone cleansing

Gallstone Flush from Hulda Regehr Clark. Much of the material on these sites is identical though it's not clear who has borrowed from who.

The world is full of crooks. It's your money.