Presented by : Professor Keith Scott-Mumby MD, MB ChB, PhD
Genre : Radio Talk Show , essentially concentrating on alternative medicine , health plans , wellness , wellbeing , allergies, cancer, anti-aging, vaccinations, nutrition, hormones, energy healing, love and good sex, financial health, matters of the heart, matters of the soul, looking after the body, humour and, as they say, much much more...
Website Address : http://www.alternative-doctor-radio.com
About Prof Keith Scott-Mumby MB ChB, MD, PhD, FRCP (MA): In his very own words
"I scored good marks in my secondary education and was awarded a State Scholarship to university. I did exceptionally well at medical school and was awarded a top anatomy prize as “prosector”. I also represented the Manchester Medical School in a nationwide pathology competition (came second in the nation).
At this time (1967) I won a major international poetry competition, run by The Guardian newspaper (one of Britain’s finest). The first prize was a trip round the world and early literary recognition. My poetry began being published internationally and especially in Japan.
I qualified in 1970, double degrees, Batchelor of Medicine and Batchelor of Surgery (MB ChB), which is the British equivalent of the American MD. I did the mandatory internships and a further year of vocational training in general practise (family medicine or primary care) in the Manchester area.
However I soon departed into alternative healing interests and did not further my promising mainstream academic career. There were too many unanswered questions in the science of the day. This was little more than a decade into the drug revolution in medicine but it was already apparent that drugs would not deliver the promise inherent in the marketing hype surrounding them.
For several years I studied alternative psychology and nutrition. The big paradigm shift in my life came with explorations into the phenomenon of food allergy. We had been taught academically that food allergy is exceptionally rare (fish, nuts and so on). The least investigation into the facts shows that it is actually very common indeed. It’s just that the diversity of symptoms was not being recognized by doctors at large. Suddenly patients began recovering from chronic afflictions, like eczema, asthma, migraine, arthritis. I was gripped.
I opened one of the world’s first alternative allergy clinics in Manchester The Food and Environmental Allergy Clinic. We called the specialty “clinical ecology”, since it dealt with many aspects of human health in interactions with the environment. Within years we had branches in Harley St, Dublin, Glasgow and occasionally caravans to Stockholm in Sweden, when the demand was sufficient.
I was one of the founding members of a society in Britain then known as the Society for Clinical Ecology. Membership was confined to fully trained medical doctors, although nurses and nutritionists, etc, were admitted as associates. In time so many unqualified people used the term “clinical ecologist” that the society name was altered to the British Society for Allergy, Environmental and Nutritional Medicine. (BSAENM). This has always been closely affiliated with the sister body The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (www.aaem.com).
For 20 years been a member of the prestigious Royal Society of Medicine in London (elected-only membership).
Publication of my first book, The Food Allergy Plan, led to many media interviews. I did radio broadcasts all round the world, including many to the USA, via phone. There were phone-ins etc. At peak periods we were handling over a thousand enquiries a week and my nurses were exhausted! The book became a on-fiction best-seller in the UK for a time. A version was published by CRCS publishers in Nevada.
I became something of a media event when newspapers , radio and television discovered the wealth of fascinating human stories coming out of my clinic. People were healed of all kinds of diseases once thought to be “for life” (like arthritis). One woman escaped from her wheelchair, after discovering she was allergic to a common food she ate every day, and was photographed by the press on top of a mountain she had climbed (not only that but she was first up there, apparently!). Another woman was allergic to her husband’s semen. A young girl who became drunk (like alcohol) led to me being interviewed on television by Alan Titchmarsh (later of Ground Force fame here in the USA).
After the publication of my second book (ALLERGIES: WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW) I was interviewed by Nancy Wise for the BBC World Service and she did not believe my point that allergies were very common indeed. She sent a roving microphone out onto the streets of London and was astonished when 18 out of 20 people randomly stopped admitted they had some kind of food intolerance. You only have to ask the right questions.
These early years were controversial. That always happens with new advances in thinking and science. In the early 1980s, I was called a quack by certain hard-core orthodox doctors in my home town. Food allergy was called “Mumby-Jumbo” at the local city hospital. Yet by the end of the 80s, physicians were beginning to sneak either themselves or their wives into my clinic as patients. By the end of the 90s even the senior specialists were turning up as patients too. Eventually the tide turned and my former critics were being interviewed and admitting that what I had said over a decade before was true. It was gratifying that in 1994 the UK Government Health Officer released an official communiqué, stating that chemicals in traffic fumes could sensitize individuals to allergens; I had been saying it for years and been scoffed at. By the end of the 1990s, matters had moved on to the point where the National Health Service (the UK government social medicine system) were buying my anti-allergy prescription formulas for patients. To have gone from quack to “official” in less than 20 years is fast progress in medical science!
I made important medico-legal history in 1997. By this time my recognition and status had risen to the level that I was called on by a British Crown Court in Ballymena to pronounce on food allergies in connection with a young Irish boy who had tried to murder his step-father by strangulation. The judge sent him to me for a report. I found that he was made indeed made violent by certain foods, notably potato, beef and strawberry. I was interviewed and filmed in a 25-minute slot on Channel 4’s news program. The defendant became known to the media world-wide as the “Irish Potato Boy”. He was given a conditional discharge by the judge, the condition being that he “stick to the Mumby diet recommendations”. My pioneer work was the first time that a court anywhere in the world came to recognize food allergy as a significant factor in behaviour.
By 1990 the media were calling me the “Number One Allergy Detective”, the name which finally stuck. This was in acknowledgement of the many extraordinary allergies I discovered on individuals. This resulted in frequent radio and TV appearances, to discuss such matters, which intrigued the public greatly. I wrote two further books on this theme: The Allergy Handbook and The Complete Guide to Food Allergy and Environmental Illness. I was interviewed and featured in major magazines, such as Marie-Claire (in the Cosmopolitan stable), Bella, Best and so forth. There were so many I’ve forgotten. I occasionally did media articles under my own by-line, such as for The Independent and the Sunday Mail.
In 1990 I came to write a very important book, concerning a major UK controversy not unlike the fictional film “Pelican Brief” (yes, there were real life murders too). I was hired by prestigious old-school publishers Sidgwick and Jackson to document the story, which I knew well, from involvement with the principal victim of government intrigue against him (I can say this because years later the truth I had first outlined came to light, he was exonerated and awarded substantial damages). It was called THE POISONED TREE, a legal term, which accurately describes the state of twisted police evidence at the time. So seriously was the matter of this book taken that it was serialized by The Sunday Times newspaper. They paid a record royalty for the rights, more than had ever been paid for a story which was not about a movie star or about the UK royal family. The book was subsequently released as a paperback by Pan publishers.
By the 1990s, as I recognized expert in alternative health matters, my name became attached to many medical breakthroughs. I wrote articles for Positive Health journal and was featured in the Sunday Times several times, such as with the Russian SCENAR device. My name was used by reporters to add substance to reports on machines like the Caduceus Lux (Country Living).
Academically, I began to lecture more, including at the Capital University for Integrated Medicine (Washington DC).
My sixth major book was VIRTUAL MEDICINE, a scientific exploration into the realm of alternative medicine so-called “energy” medicine practises. It tracks the development of many modern devices and shows how these are credible. Acupuncture meridians, for example, had been traced using radio-active technetium 99. Homeopathic medicines have been recorded giving off a frequency signal, showing they are potent in some way, despite the controversy over the dilution theory. Of course a lot of research breakthroughs have been carried out here in the US, which makes me very comfortable among colleagues in this environment. Professor William Tiller, emeritus professor at Stanford University, is notable in this respect.
In 2005 I was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Practitioners (not to be confused with the Royal College of Physicians, London). This august body was founded in commemoration of the ancient healing kings of Sri Lanka. Besides a number of medical discoveries that are only now being acknowledged by Western medicine, the ancient Sinhalese are perhaps responsible for introducing the concept of hospitals to the world. According to American historians Will and Ariel Durant, King Pandukabhaya (4th century B.C.) had lying-in-homes and hospitals built in various parts of the country. According to the Chulavansa, King Sena II (851-885 A.C.) built the oldest properly excavated hospital in the world, at Mihintale. King Dutugemunu is well reputed to have built many hospitals and put dispensaries in every village of size. King Aggabodhi VII (766-772 AD) studied the medical plants over the whole island of Lanka (to find out) whether they were wholesome or harmful for the sick. This is perhaps the first recorded instance of medical research anywhere is the world. My favourite character, King Buddadasa (C. 3rd AD) is credited with the saying "If you can't be the king, be a healer*." King Buddhadasa carried out great feats of surgery on humans and animals, including brain surgery. He constantly carried a set of surgical instruments with him on his journeys.
Hence the title “Royal” College. I am proud to be elected to this meritorious body in recognition of my contributions to healing and the teaching of alternative medicine techniques.
In 2005 I was elected as professor of energy medicine at the Capital University for Integrative Medicine in Washington. Sadly, it has closed down.
I am on the Senate for the Open International University for Complementary Medicines (both as a Professor of Nutrition and a Consultant Nutritional Advisor)
*Footnote: there is a tradition in my family that when asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said "I want to be the King! "
