Live blood analysis

Live blood analysis, sometimes called nutritional microscopy, live cell analysis or hemaview is a medically invalid diagnostic technique using dark field microscopy to observe live blood cells in vitro.

By a curious coincidence, every person having live blood analysis somehow appears to be seriously ill and in need of whatever woo the practitioner happens to be peddling.

Practitioners claim that live blood analysis provides information about the immune system, vitamin deficiencies, "toxicity", high blood pressure, pH and mineral imbalance, fungus, yeast, cancer, degenerative diseases (including Alzheimer's), low trace minerals and so on. All this with a tiny drop of capillary blood taken from the fingertip. It makes you wonder why phlebotomists bother with all that sticking needles in veins and taking multiple samples for different analyses business.

According to Edzard Ernst, "no credible scientific studies have demonstrated the reliability of LBA for detecting any of the above conditions." Ernst describes live blood analysis as a "fraudulent" means of convincing patients to buy supplements and Quackwatch describe the dishonesty of proponents. Even woo-meister Andrew Weil dismisses live blood analysis as "completely bogus", writing: "Dark-field microscopy combined with live blood analysis may sound like cutting-edge science, but it's old-fashioned hokum. Don't buy into it."

Dark field microscopy is a mainstream technique used to enhance contrast in unstained samples, but that is about the only claim for live blood analysis that comes close to standing up. Even articles published in the alternative medical literature have found that dark field microscopy is unable to detect cancer, and that live blood analysis lacked reliability, reproducibility, sensitivity and specificity.

Quackdowns
In 1996, the Pennsylvania Department of Laboratories informed three Pennsylvania chiropractors that Infinity2's "Nutritional Blood Analysis" could not be used for diagnostic purposes unless they maintain a laboratory that has both state and federal certification for complex testing.

In 2001, the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General issued a report on regulation of "unestablished laboratory tests" that focused on live blood cell analysis and the difficulty of regulating unestablished tests and laboratories.

In 2002, an Australian naturopath was convicted and fined for falsely claiming that he could diagnose illness using live blood analysis.

In 2005, the Rhode Island Department of Health ordered a chiropractor to stop performing live blood analysis. An attorney for the State Board of Examiners in Chiropractic Medicine described the test as "useless" and a "money-making scheme… The point of it all is apparently to sell nutritional supplements." A state medical board official said that live blood analysis has no discernible value, and that the public "should be very suspicious of any practitioner who offers this test."