Complementary and alternative medicine
Respectful Insolence
Category archives for Complementary and alternative medicine
We’ll take the money you can bring us, even if you’re antivaccine
Posted by Orac on January 31, 2013 I’m sure this is a case where someone thought it was a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s an astoundingly bad idea: The Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation is bringing McCarthy to town March 2 to headline its annual Bust a Move fundraiser as a guest fitness instructor. But the actress, author and…
Dr. Oz’s journey to the Dark Side is now more than complete: It’s Oz and homeopathy versus science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on January 30, 2013 On Monday of this week, Michael Specter published an article in The New Yorker entitled THE OPERATOR: Is the most trusted doctor in America doing more harm than good? In the article, Specter expended considerable verbiage that, as I explained yesterday, was beautiful in how it let Oz reveal through his own words that (1)…
An excellent explanation of how dubious Stanislaw Burzynski’s activities are
Posted by Orac on January 28, 2013 The weekend was busy, and I was working on grants, which meant that I could only come up with one post of Orac-style length and depth. Sadly, it wasn’t for this blog. Fortunately, C0nc0rdance came to the rescue with a must-watch video about our old friend Stanislaw Burzynski. He’s the guy who claims to treat…
The Cochrane Collaborative’s Tom Jefferson makes the huge mistake of appearing on Gary Null’s show
Posted by Orac on January 25, 2013 Three years ago, the influenza season was a really big deal. The reason, of course, is that the 2009-2010 flu season was dominated by fears of the H1N1 strain, so much so that it was a rare flu season that there were two recommended vaccines, one for the originally expected strains of flu and one…
Beauty and the antivaccine beast
Posted by Orac on January 24, 2013 The last couple of days have been very busy, as you might have guessed from my brief (for me) post on Tuesday and my—shall we say?—appropriation of a post to use for yesterday. Today’s going to be the same, but for more pleasant reasons than having had to go out to dinner with a visiting…
Does anyone “recover” from autism?
Posted by Orac on January 23, 2013 Way back in the day, when I was a newbie at countering the mass of hysterical pseudoscience that is the antivaccine movement, particularly the myth that vaccines cause autism, a blogger by the ‘nym of Prometheus taught me that autism and autism spectrum disorders (particularly by antivaccinationists and believers in the quackery known as “autism…
Another way to join the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients’ campaign, plus: It is noticed that Stanislaw Burzynski has thrown information about his “clinical trials” down the ol’ memory hole
Posted by Orac on January 22, 2013 While I’m using my blog as an announcement platform today, I would be remiss not to mention that tomorrow is Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s birthday, and the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients are still raising money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in order to try to get Dr. Burzynski to do something good for…
Quoth Joe Mercola: I love me some Burzynski antineoplastons
Posted by Orac on January 21, 2013 As I contemplated how I wanted to start the blogging week, I thought that I should probably again plug Bob Blaskiewicz’s campaign to provide Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who for the last 35 years has been treating patients diagnosed with advanced stage and terminal cancers with something he calls antineoplastons (ANPs), with a…
Subjecting children to enema “detoxification”
Posted by Orac on January 18, 2013 Even though I’ve been at this skeptical blogging thing, particularly about “alternative” medicine, so long (eight years now) that I think I’ve seen it all, that nothing the quacks do can shock me any more. It’s a foolish hubris, I admit, but, I hope, an understandable one after over eight years of blogging multiple times…
Quoth the Institute of Medicine: The current vaccine schedule is safe and effective. Quoth antivaccinationists: Gahhhh!
Posted by Orac on January 17, 2013 I sense another disturbance in the antivaccine Force. Yes, I realize that it was just a couple of days ago that I sensed a previous disturbance rippling through the antivaccine Force. That’s when antivaccinationists brought David Kirby out of mothballs from whatever journalistic slime pit he’s currently residing in to use every trick at his…
For shame, NPR, for falling for false “balance” about vaccines!
Posted by Orac on January 17, 2013 This is going to be uncharacteristically short, for me that is. I sometimes listen to NPR as I drive home from work, and I happened to be doing just that yesterday evening when I heard a story about the new Institute of Medicine report on vaccines and the vaccine schedule. (Stay tuned for my post…
More credulous reporting on placebo effects
Posted by Orac on January 16, 2013 Now that Trine Tsouderos no longer works for the Chicago Tribune, there aren’t that many reliable generalist medical/science reporters around any more. For example, here in the U.S. there’s Marilyn Marchionne at the AP, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, and then there’s Sharon Begley, who used to be at Newsweek but is now…
David Kirby’s back, and this time his anti-vaccine fear mongering induces…ennui
Posted by Orac on January 15, 2013 I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine Force, which is, of course, by definition the Dark Side. Whenever I sense such a disturbance, there are a number of possible reactions that it provokes in me. One such reaction is alarm, as when antivaccine activists say something that is just clever enough to sound plausible enough…
The story of Seán Ó’Laighin, patient of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski
Posted by Orac on January 14, 2013 Eric Merola doesn’t much like me. Actually, no one who is an apologist for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a.k.a. “Stan the Man,” who over 30 years ago unleashed antineoplastons on unsuspecting cancer patients, much likes me. It’s not surprising. As you might recall, antineoplastons are chemicals that Burzynski found in the urine of cancer patients and…
Congratulations to Kim Stagliano of Age of Autism…
Posted by Orac on January 13, 2013 …you’ve received some well-deserved recognition! I can’t think of a more deserving up-and-coming antivaccine activist to be inducted into this most “prestigious” of groups of American Loons! I’ve written about Stagliano’s science- and logic-challenged posts many times over the last few years, but it’s good to see that others have noticed as well. From the…
In which David Freedman criticizes health journalism and simultaneously destroys my irony meter
Posted by Orac on January 10, 2013 About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the “triumph” of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of “complementary and alternative medicine”…
A bit of QuantumMAN™ quackery at the International Consumer Electronics Show 2013
Posted by Orac on January 8, 2013 If there’s one thing about “alternative” medicine, “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or “integrative medicine” that’s always puzzled me, it’s just how gullible some practitioners must think their clients are. In some cases, they might know their customers every bit as well as a car salesman knows his clients or an author knows his readers,…
Let’s make Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski do something good for cancer patients for a change
Posted by Orac on January 7, 2013 Today’s post will be relatively brief (for an Orac post, that is). The reason is that it’s some very sad news that depresses me greatly. It’s also because I don’t want to distract too much from the announcement I’d like to highlight. About a month and a half ago, around the same time that Stanislaw…
Unexpected praise of the virtues of bacon by Joe Mercola
Posted by Orac on January 4, 2013 It is an indisputable axiom that everything tastes better with bacon. Well, almost everything. As much as I love bacon, whenever I watch one of those cooking competition shows on the Food Network, like Iron Chef America, in which the secret ingredient is bacon, I can’t figure out how putting bacon in ice cream works.…
CAM practitioners versus preventive medicine
Posted by Orac on January 3, 2013 If there’s one claim that practitioners of “holistic” medicine frequently make, it’s that “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” or whatever the term du jour for the combining of quackery with science-based medicine is these days is allegedly so much better than “conventional” or “allopathic” medicine (or whatever disparaging term “holistic practitioners” prefer)…
Dr. Oz versus science—again
Posted by Orac on January 2, 2013 That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick…
Homeopaths swing and miss yet again…
Posted by Orac on December 31, 2012 Homeopathy amuses me. Homeopaths amuse me as well, which is why I’m resurrecting this post. It was originally published elsewhere a few years ago and somehow never crossposted here. So if it seems a bit dated, fear not; Orac hasn’t fired up his Tarial cells and managed to go back in time. Now, I realize…
Dr. Oz descends further into psychic quackery
Posted by Orac on December 28, 2012 Regular readers have probably noticed that I’m taking it easy this week, at least compared to my usual ridiculous level of output. It is, after all, the holidays, and last night I even went to see my cousin’s son play basketball and then hung out at the local Knights of Columbus hall. (No, it didn’t…
Some post-holiday antivaccine “science”
Posted by Orac on December 26, 2012 I hope that you and yours are having a fantastic holiday season thus far. Yesterday, we had a great family gathering, after which I settled down to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special; all in all, a most excellent Christmas Day. Unfortunately, towards the later part of the day, someone out there sent me an…
Andrew Wakefield wins an award just as he jumps on the anti-psychiatry bandwagon
Posted by Orac on December 24, 2012 I certainly don’t even try to keep secret my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the measles back to the UK, thanks to his bad science, for which he was well-paid by trial lawyers and his falsification of data and scientific fraud. Since 1998, when Wakefield first…