complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | August 16, 2007It's here, and it's on Google Video. I watched it last night, and it was a blistering attack on the irrationality that is so common in our society:
Part I begins with Richard Dawkins sitting in on some sort of New Age chanting ceremony (the discomfited look on his face is priceless to watch), after which he goes to a New Age fair, and concludes with an attack on the crappy science that lead to the MMR vaccine scare over autism in the U.K. In between, Dawkins takes on astrology, dowsers, spiritualists, and mediums, no holds barred.
Next Monday: Richard Dawkins versus alternative medicine.…
oracknows | August 14, 2007It's that time of year again! Time for the one Center of the NIH dedicated to studying "remedies," regardless of how scientifically implausible or lacking in evidence to support them, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to put forth its budget request for FY 2008. What's the bill for government-funded studies of woo?
$121,699,000.
Depressing. Let's see what the possible justification is for sending $121 million on studying things such as homeopathy:
Large numbers of American health care consumers are using CAM modalities in an effort to preempt disease and…
oracknows | August 11, 2007This is disturbing.
Yesterday, I did a rather light-hearted edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo about "ionic foot detoxification." A reader pointed out that in a story in which Randi had also discussed this woo, there was a comment along the lines of "I think autistic children should really do this."
How prophetic! Sadly, it turns out that autistic children are already being subjected to this woo. For example, I found this particular video on YouTube that has to be seen to be believed:
It's a woman named Ashley discussing "ion cleanse" foot detox for her 4 year old autistic son Braden. Her…
oracknows | August 10, 2007After over a year of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo, I can't believe I've never come across this one before. Sometimes there's a bit of woo that comes my way that's so off the wall, so unexpected, the claims for which are so unrelated to reality that it startles even me. Moreover, unlike truly over-the-top woo like quantum homeopathy, DNA activation, or the SCIO, this one is utterly brilliant in the simplicity of its concept. It also makes me wonder about whether certain alties have a thing about feet. We know they have a thing about "detoxification" (without, of course, ever being able to…
oracknows | August 9, 2007Somehow, I don't know how, I managed to wind up on the mailing list of über-woomeister Dr. Joseph Mercola, who's almost as bad as Mike Adams, only less blatantly crazy in pushing conspiracy theories.
Yesterday, I received this pitch by e-mail:
I've got a quick question for you:
How does your energy compare to the salmon swimming and jumping upstream for hundreds of miles?
Facing tremendous obstacles -- fish ladders, rapids, predators -- they swim and jump for hundreds of miles to complete their incredible journey (without eating along the way).
Could it be that their ocean diet gives them…
oracknows | August 9, 2007I'm a bit cranky right now.
Long time readers are familiar with the logorrhea that usually characterizes this blog. Fans love it; detractors hate it, Some may have noticed a bit of paucity of blogging, at least relatively speaking. There's a good reason for this. Not only was I out of town last weekend, but I got to come back to be on call (i.e. on service) for the group while at the same time trying to finish a grant application that my institution had "honored" with a nomination to fill out--only two weeks before it was due. Yes, now is not a great time to be around Orac; his crankiness is…
oracknows | August 8, 2007Check out the Carnival of Healing (which should be called the Carnival of Woo, if this recent edition is any example).
They're looking for hosts, you know. Perhaps I should volunteer. Or maybe one of my favorite skeptical bloggers would volunteer.
I know, it's an evil thought.
oracknows | August 7, 2007The third season of Doctor Who is over. There's nothing on the horizon for many months (such as the return of Doctor Who or Torchwood) that's interesting enough to me coming out of the U.K. that I'd go to the trouble of firing up BitTorrent to check it out, rather than wait until it somehow finds its way to these shores.
Until now.
Yes, it's Richard Dawkins' long-promised investigation of alternative medicine and New Age practitioners, entitled The Enemies of Reason:
Prof Dawkins launches his attack in The Enemies of Reason, to be shown on Channel 4 this month. The professor, the author of…
oracknows | August 2, 2007While I'm back on the topic of vaccines again (and that topic seems to me less and less rancorous these days, not because antivaccination "activists" have gotten any less loony but because the smoking cranks, at least the ones showing up on my blog these days, threaten to make antivaccinationists seem low key by comparison), it turns out that one of the premiere journals of medical research, Nature Medicine, has weighed in on the topic. If you want any more evidence that the antivaccination movement is becoming more and more like the radical animal rights movement in its willingness to try to…
oracknows | July 25, 2007Yesterday, when I wrote about a death in Arizona caused by a homeopath doing liposuction, what amazed me the most was that homeopaths are licensed in Arizona. Although I alluded to it only briefly in yesterday's post, I was truly astounded at what homeopaths are allowed to do in Arizona. It piqued my curiosity--and horror. Consequently, I decided to delve a bit more deeply into the website of the Arizona Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners.
There are more horrors in there than I thought. Those of you who live in Arizona should be afraid--very afraid!--about what these quacks are permitted…
oracknows | July 24, 2007Normally, when I hear such a term as "homeopathic surgery" or of homeopaths doing surgery, I get the irresistable urge to make jokes about it, such as wondering if homeopathic surgery is surgery diluted down to the point where not a single cell in the body is injured or whether homeopathic surgeons make ultra-tiny incisions. Actually, that second quip risks confusing homeopathic surgeons with laparoscopic surgeons, and I'd never do that. I respect laparoscopic surgeons. Laparoscopic surgery is very difficult, and I have the utmost respect for my colleagues who can do complex operations…
oracknows | July 20, 2007It sure took the FDA long enough, nearly five months, but it finally acted. It finally shut Jim Tassano down, as this notice on TheDCASite.com states:
Two agents from the FDA visited us on Tuesday,July 17, 2007 and ordered that we stop making and selling DCA. Unfortunately, the site www.buydca.com will be shut down immediately.
It is against US government law to sell substances with the suggestion that they are cancer treatments unless they are approved by the FDA.
DCA can still be obtained from pharmacies with a prescription and from chemical companies.
To keep you informed and abreast of…
oracknows | July 20, 2007Here's a rather interesting wrinkle in the regulation of chiropractors. This time, it's New Jersey:
A recent state court decision has hundreds of chiropractors across the state bent out of shape because it sharply limits what they can legally do.
And while the decision is being appealed to the state Supreme Court and state legislators have proposed amending state law to return the field to where it was, changes are not expected for months.
In the meantime, the decision "definitely wiped out a source of income, because we were able to bill for the extremity adjustment before and now we can't…
oracknows | July 20, 2007After over a year of delving into the world of woo, I had been starting to think that my ability to be surprised had disappeared. I mean, just think about it. After dealing with things like DNA activation, quantum homeopathy, the Healing Broom, Healing Sounds, and, of course, colon cleansing and liver flushing, I thought I had seen it all. However, another thing I've learned is that the most amusing woo is not necessarily the battiest. Sure the DNA activation guy and Lionel Milgrom can put out some woo that is so unbelievably out there, so bizarre, so amazing over the top that rational,…
oracknows | July 17, 2007After Mark and I took apart Mike Adams' misinformation- and logical fallacy-filled rant of idiocy against conventional medicine, it appeared that there was still some left to take on.
Fortunately, Dr. RW took up the slack.
Because when the woo-meister is as idiotic as Mike Adams, too much debunking is never enough.
oracknows | July 16, 2007I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I just don't understand it.
I just don't understand how anyone can take the charlatan Andrew Wakefield seriously anymore.
If anyone had any doubt that there is a cult of personality around this discredited vaccine fear-monger, whose shoddy science and undisclosed conflicts of interest managed to ignite a false hysteria over the MMR vaccine, wonder no more. Observe the support that he still commands from parents as he is finally called to account for his misdeeds:
Waving placards and chanting support for Dr Andrew Wakefield, parents from across the…
oracknows | July 13, 2007Cool cool water.
Yes, that's what I really needed earlier this week, as the temperature almost hit 100° F in my neck of the woods. There's nothing like it after walking through the sauna-like conditions and losing my precious bodily fluids in the form of sweat. After all, I wouldn't want to get dehydrated, would I? And, heck, it's quite possible to die of dehydration. If you believe those nasty "conventional" medical authorities, it takes a healthy person with healthy kidneys a few days, give or take, to become sufficiently dehydrated to endanger his life, and medical science tells us that…
oracknows | July 12, 2007Mike Adams is an idiot.
There, I said it.
Adams runs the NewsTarget website, a repository for all things "alternative" medicine. In it, he rails against "conventional" medicine as utterly useless and touts all manner of woo as the "cure" for a variety of diseases. I generally ignore his website these days because I fear that reading it regularly will cause me to lose too many neurons, and, as I get older, I want to hold on to my what neurons I have remaining for as long as possible, or, if I must lose them, to do so in a pleasurable way, perhaps as a result of a fine bottle of wine. But,…
oracknows | July 10, 2007Actions have consequences, as do beliefs. For example, the widespread erroneous belief among many parents of autistic children that the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that was used in most childhood vaccines until 2002 somehow caused autism in their children have led some pseudoscientists and parents who have fallen under their sway to subject their children to all manners of "biomedical" interventions to "extract" the mercury and supposedly cure their children of autism. In extreme form, this belief has led to highly dubious "treatments" such as those served up by Mark and David…
oracknows | July 9, 2007I just don't understand it.
I just don't understand how anyone can take discredited antivaccination loon Andrew Wakefield seriously anymore. In particular, I don't understand how any reputable newspaper can actually take him seriously anymore, given how thoroughly he and his "work" have been discredited. First came the news in late December that at the time he did his "research" that purported to show a link between the MMR triple vaccination and autism and bowel problems, Dr. Wakefield was in the pay of lawyers looking to sue for "vaccination injury" and failed to disclose his clear conflict…