Marc Swanepoel responds to your "observations"

The real world results are right there in South Africa and number several hundreds if not more.  If you choose to call that merely claims and propaganda, then you are in effect calling both myself and Marc Swanepoel, who I have know and trusted for over five years, liars.  I have a rather extensive track record here at CureZone and it assuredly is NOT one of dishonesty. 

Here is the response I just received:

Your correspondent keeps on talking about "Sutherlandia" in my study. I did not use Sutherlandia but a mixture of Sutherlandia and Oleander with Sutherlandia only 20% of the mixture. I trust this is not an indication of the care he/she took in reading the document.
 
As a B.Sc graduate with Mathematics and Physics as majors, I am well acquainted with statistical tests. The 2-sample t-test is used to check if two samples come form the same population. This test is fairly useless when it comes to very small samples, as in my study. The logic for this is simple. Imagine you want to check whether the intake of milk has an influence on the health of people between 10 and 80 years of age. If you want to set up two test groups and you choose a total of, say, 4 people on a random basis to check your hypothesis, there is a very good chance that 2 of the people in your control group can be under 20 and the other 2 over 50 years of age. If you have to apply the 2-sample t-test to these two samples (of say 14 and 16 with average 15 and 52 and 68 with average 60) then the t-test will tell you that it is very unlikely that these two samples come from the same population. If you increase the number of participants to, say, 10 or 20 you may still get the same anomalies. It is only when you have much larges samples that the use of the t-test can be used for the purpose it was designed for.

Somebody who does not understand this, can easily put a few figures in one of the Internet t-test calculators to come up with non-sensical statements that masquerade as knowledge. Recently, the Lotto in South Africa produced the numbers 2,4,6,8,10,13 or something very similar. In spite of the small number of weekly participants, 20 different people got that right. Statisticians will produce astronomical probabilities against that ever happening. It is only when you apply logic and realize that black people in Africa often have 5 or 6 children in close succession and that they put their ages in their lotto tickets, that is becomes a very high possibility that something like this will happen. Statistics can never trump logic.

As explained in the study, the participants and their specific regimens were chosen in a completely random manner. I only chose 20 people because that was what I was willing to fund. I would have liked to have a few hundred participants but funding for that would have been impossible. Maybe my results will convince somebody, maybe the person who posted the comments, to arrange that.
 
It is also obvious that the person who posted the comments has only limited or no experience in the reality of the AIDS problem in Africa. One cannot use the research in the USA, Europe or other overseas countries to compare with AIDS progression in Africa AND one cannot use research that does not take clinical symptoms of AIDS into account. A person with a CD4 count of 200 but with no clinical signs of AIDS will NOT deteriorate as quickly as a person with a CD4 count of 380 but with clinical signs of AIDS. If you read my study, you will see that I have qualified the participants as coming from a population with "relatively advance HIV/AIDS symptoms." As a group, they deteriorate much quicker than a group with similar CD4 count but with no clinical symptoms. I have personally observed many apparently healthy individuals who suddenly display clinical symptoms of AIDS and WITHIN SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS they are dead. How many of the people in the studies that your correspondent refers to showed clinical symptoms of AIDS at the start of the study?
 
I agree that increase in CD4 count, especially over a short period, is not a good enough indicator of long-term success. That is why I was careful to state in my findings that the study showed its effectiveness in increasing the CD4 count in a meaningful way OVER A 60-DAY PERIOD. I have taken the trouble to follow up the person with the lowest CD4 count (and who took the mixture) on a continuous basis. Although his CD4 count increased the least of all the participants, his CLINICAL SYMPTOMS improved dramatically. He is still 100% well and has stated in a recent testimonial "I have never felt better in my entire life."
 
Your correspondent also complains that my statement that the "null hypothesis" that is, that the mixture has no effect, has been disproved is a "statistical argument." As someone who used the t-test to show that my samples were somehow biased, this is an interesting statement. I'm afraid one cannot have it both ways. As a person who has done advanced courses in statistics, I understand the implications of using the null hypothesis. To choose an example where 56% of people taking something improved and 55% not taking it also improved and then to call my study where ALL the people taking the mixture improved and ALL the people on the placebo deteriorated, "silly" is simply ludicrous. It is the type of thing that a shill for the pharmaceutical companies would do AFTER they had just called an 6 months to 9 months survival improvement a 50% improvement.
 
My study was done as a requirement for obtaining my PhD in Natural Health. I decided to choose an experiment to confirm what I had already observed over the last 5 years. It was aimed at health care practitioners and not statisticians. I knew that if statisticians would care to check my null hypothesis, they would see that the difference in the results was statistically meaningful. I could have left out he reference to the null hypothesis and asked the readers to look at the graphs and make their own conclusions.
 
I would love to have somebody fund and do a proper study. I know from practical experience that the mixture sometimes has a real Lazarus effect and that the people who take it do get well to such an extent that they can live a productive life. I am also sure that there are many people who would NOT like to see a simple remedy like this be accepted on a global scale. If your correspondent is in the latter group because he/she is involved in the lucrative ARV market, then nothing can be done to change there minds. If, on the other hand he/she is just providing practical advice, in spite of the few ad hominem nuances, then the comments are appreciated.
 
Regards,
 
Marc Swanepoel

I hope you find this response satisfactory.  Frankly I am surprised that the very busy Mr. Swanepoel took such lengths to respond - but I can almost assure you that his response will be the last one, and I certainly will ask him for no more.  If you wish to debate this further, then by all means do so - but you will have to debate someone other than myself or Mr. Swanepoel.

I guess the bottom line is that you can sit back and be contrarian and ignore 100% success in many hundreds of people or more in real life over almost 5 years and try to pick apart the limited trial, or you can order some OPC and realize/test the benefits yourself.

Whatever you decide, I wish you good luck.

DQ (Tony Isaacs)