Complementary and alternative medicine
Respectful Insolence
Category archives for Complementary and alternative medicine
In which Orac gets even more “shrill and brutish” about chelation therapy and TACT
Posted by Orac on April 10, 2013 If there’s one thing that a certain subset of people who view themselves as reasonable and science-based don’t like, it’s harshness: Harshness in criticism, harshness in discussion, or—horror of horrors!—anything they view as “incivility.” That’s all well and good as far as it goes, but the problem is that sometimes there are things that demand…
The “I told you so” fantasy, or: The fallacy of future vindication
Posted by Orac on April 9, 2013 Last week, I noted a particularly loathsome trend (even for antivaccinationists) to invoke Holocaust analogies for what they view as the “vaccine-induced autism epidemic holocaust.” Now, loathsome analogies are not uncommon among antivaccinationists, who routinely refer to their children as “damaged” or “toxic” and view them as somehow not their “real” children, but this time…
Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already?
Posted by Orac on April 6, 2013 It’s very clear that many antivaccinationists hate autistic children. The language they use to describe them makes that very clear. Such children are “damaged” (by vaccines, of course); the parents’ real children were “stolen” from them (by vaccines); they are “toxic” (from vaccines); the “light left their eyes” (due to vaccines). Autism is an “epidemic,”…
Who can quack the loudest?
Posted by Orac on April 5, 2013 Over the years this blog’s been in existence, I’ve fallen into a habit in which I tend to like to finish off the week taking on a bit of science (well, usually pseudoscience) that is either really out there, really funny, or in general not as heavy as, for example, writing about someone like Stanislaw…
It works every time, doesn’t it?
Posted by Orac on April 4, 2013 Every so often I come across a news story relevant to the subject matter usually encompassed by this blog that makes me shake my head in disbelief at the sheer stupidity. OK, every day, if you count the antivaccine movement and its attacks on papers like the one I wrote about Monday and yesterday. True,…
Brian Hooker criticizes a vaccine safety study; hilarity ensues
Posted by Orac on April 3, 2013 Last week, the Journal of Pediatrics published a study that did a pretty good job of demolishing a favorite antivaccine trope used to frighten parents. In fact, it’s one of the most effective of antivaccine tropes, as evidenced by a large number of parents who are generally pro-vaccine expressing doubts when asked about this particular…
Finally, Stanislaw Burzynski wins an award that he richly deserves
Posted by Orac on April 2, 2013 I got a bit behind on my work yesterday, so I’ll be brief. Yesterday, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) announced its annual Pigasus Awards. Sadly, each and every year, there are far more “deserving” candidates than there are awards to give. However, this year marks something awesome, namely the first time the prize has…
The death of “Too many too soon”: Not a moment too soon
Posted by Orac on April 1, 2013 There are some days when I know what my topic will be—what it must be. These are times in which the universe gives the very appearance of handing to me my topic for the day on the proverbial silver platter with a giant hand descending from the clouds, pointing at it, and saying, “Blog about…
Apparently, according to Eric Merola, Orac is a white supremacist who eats puppies
Posted by Orac on April 1, 2013 It’s been less than a week since I wrote about Stanislaw Burzynski. In fact, as hard as it is to believe, I’ve been trying not to. Obviously, I’m failing, but what can I say? Things keep happening. In particular, there’s Eric Merola. You remember Eric Merola? He’s the producer of a propaganda film extolling the…
Funny how you never see Orac and this person in the same place at the same time…
Posted by Orac on March 30, 2013 Three weeks ago, a certain “friend” of mine gave a talk to the National Capital Area Skeptics at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA. The topic was one near and dear to my heart, namely quackademic medicine; so I couldn’t resist posting a link to the video. Amusingly, Jake Crosby makes an appearance in…
“Common sense” that isn’t
Posted by Orac on March 29, 2013 “Common sense” is not so common. Actually, that’s not exactly right. What I meant was that what most people think of as “common sense” has little or nothing to do with what science concludes. Evidence talks, “common sense” walks. I saw a fantastic example to illustrate this point on a certain blog that I’ve found…
Criticizing the Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) is defending science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on March 28, 2013 When I wrote about the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) trial last week, little did I suspect that I would be revisiting the topic again so soon. For those of you not familiar with TACT, it was a trial designed to test a favorite quack treatment for cardiovascular disease, chelation therapy. It is, as…
A founding father of quackademic medicine speaks
Posted by Orac on March 27, 2013 It’s been a while since I’ve written about Brian Berman. We first met him when he somehow managed to insinuate a “case report” of chronic low back pain into The New England Journal of Medicine in which he recommended acupuncture for this patient. Dr. Berman also happens to be a founder of quackademic medicine on…
Paleo and woo: Bad company until the day they die
Posted by Orac on March 25, 2013 There are many fallacies that undergird alternative medicine, which evolved into “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), and for which the preferred term among its advocates is now “integrative medicine,” meant to imply the “best of both worlds.” If I had to pick one fallacy that rules above all among proponents of CAM/IM, it would have…
Autism prevalence is reported to be 1 in 50, and the antivaccine movement goes wild…again
Posted by Orac on March 22, 2013 I don’t always blog about stories or studies that interest me right away. Part of the reason is something I’ve learned over the last eight years of blogging, namely that, while it’s great to be the firstest with the mostest, I’d rather be the blogger with the mostest than the firstest. I’ve learned this from…
The “myth” of placebo effects
Posted by Orac on March 21, 2013 Heidi Stevenson amuses me. The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the “basis of all knowledge”); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument…
R.I.P., Seán Ó’Laighin
Posted by Orac on March 20, 2013 This will be an uncharacteristically short (for Orac) post. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the sad story of a young man from Ireland named Seán Ó’Laighin diagnosed with an inoperable brainstem glioma at age 19. Even more sadly, this young man heard about the Burzynski Clinic in Houston and believed the claims…
Disease, “dis-ease,” what’s the difference?
Posted by Orac on March 19, 2013 I’ve had a rule of thumb for a while that helps me identify quacks with a high degree of accuracy. It’s not very sensitive, as a lot of quacks don’t exhibit this trait, but it’s very specific. A lot of quacks don’t use the term; so not hearing says nothing about a practitioner. If you…
The (Not-So-Thinking) Mom’s Revolution makes an amazingly silly analogy about vaccines
Posted by Orac on March 18, 2013 I know I dump on a website known as The Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR), but I do so with good reason. Given what a wretched hive of antivaccine scum and quackery that website is, rivaling or surpassing any antivaccine website I can think of, even the blog equivalent of the great granddaddies of wretched hives…
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Homeopathic gene therapy?
Posted by Orac on March 15, 2013 It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday’s post.…
Five things I learned (second hand) from the recent screening of Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part 2
Posted by Orac on March 14, 2013 Film producer Eric Merola seems to think that there is a conspiracy of skeptics (whom he calls The Skeptics) hell bent on harassing his hero, Brave Maverick Doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. According to his latest film Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as Burzynski II, to distinguish it from Merola’s first…
The results of the unethical and misbegotten Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) are finally revealed, part 2
Posted by Orac on March 12, 2013 With very limited exceptions, chelation therapy is, as I said before in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. The sole exception is for real, documented cases of acute heavy metal poisoning that are known to respond to chelation, such as iron overload due to transfusion, aluminum overload due to hemodialysis, copper toxicity due to…
Two Stanislaw Burzynski’s “success stories”
Posted by Orac on March 11, 2013 One of the strategies that Stanislaw Burzynski will undoubtedly use to “prove” in Eric Merola’s new Stanislaw Burzynski movie that antineoplastons work in cancer will be to highlight “success stories.” Last year, Burzynski apologists frequently pointed to a girl with an inoperable brain tumor named Amelia Saunders as a success story when the U.K. press…
The author of the acupuncture meta-analysis lambastes the “sceptics’ movement” in a “peer-reviewed” paper
Posted by Orac on March 8, 2013 So I finally made it to the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Symposium. Thanks to the snowstorm that apparently wasn’t (at least, I don’t see any snow around), my arrival was delayed by a day, as all flights to the Washington, DC area were canceled on Wednesday. But I did finally get here, and, although…
The Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Cherry picked patients and survival data used to sell “integrative” oncology to the masses
Posted by Orac on March 7, 2013 I’m not a big fan of Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). That I don’t much like CTCA should come as no surprise, given that this particular hospital chain distinguishes itself from other hospital chains by advertising its full body embrace of quackery, in particular “naturopathic oncology.” At the same time as it’s advertising its…