Naturopathy
oracknows | July 26, 2016I’ve frequently referred to “integrative medicine” as the “integration” of quackery with conventional, science-based medicine for the very good reason that that’s what it really is. However, advocates of medicine not based in science are nothing if not masters of marketing, which is how, over the course of three decades or so, “alternative medicine” morphed into “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), which ultimately morphed into its most recent incarnation, “integrative medicine.” The term “integrative medicine” is fantastic from a marketing perspective because it implies (and is…
oracknows | July 11, 2016Welcome once again to Sh*t Naturopaths Say, my periodic look at what naturopaths say behind closed doors (metaphorically speaking). At least, it’s a look at what they say when they are discussing patient management with their peers. It is a series to which I can add new entires from time to time, thanks to Naturopathic Chat (NatChat, for short), a discussion forum with hundreds of naturopaths as members that also includes someone who goes by the ‘nym Naturowhat and occasionally leaks the content of the forum to a Pastbin. Also, it never hurts to remind my readers of the quackery that is…
oracknows | July 1, 2016There are so many ridiculous alternative medicine treatments being “integrated” via “integrative” medicine into medicine, no matter how ridiculous they are, that it’s not only hard to believe, but it’s hard to keep track. Homeopathy is, of course, the most ridiculous, although “energy medicine” definitely gives homeopathy a run for its money in the Department of Stupid. The depressing thing is that most physicians, even “integrative medicine” physicians, know that homeopathy is bunk (at least when they even know what homeopathy is—most think it’s just herbal medicine). However, those same…
oracknows | June 22, 2016Yesterday, I took note of a meeting of advocates and lawyers with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (OGR), which makes him a very powerful Congressman. The group that met with him included Del Bigtree, the producer of Andrew Wakefield’s antivaccine propagandafest of a “documentary” VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe; Levi Quackenboss, the pseudonymous blogger best known recently for getting into a fight over vaccine evidence with a 12-year-old and losing badly, leading her to try to dox the child and look even worse as a result;…
oracknows | June 20, 2016Living and practicing surgery in Michigan, it’s not surprising that I am very concerned about a bill being considered in the Michigan House of Representatives. The bill, HB 4531, would license naturopaths as health care providers. In fact, it would give them a very broad scope of practice, defined by a newly created board of naturopathic medicine. Basically, HB 4531 would give naturopaths a scope of practice almost as broad as that of primary care providers, like internists, family practitioners, and pediatricians. The only difference, if HB 4531 passes, would be that naturopaths would not be…
oracknows | June 19, 2016One of the most frequent complaints leveled at pro-science advocates who defend vaccines against antivaccine misinformation and pseudoscience is that we’re way too fast to label them as “antivaccine,” that we use the term as a convenient label to demonize their views. We’re not really antivaccine, they tell us. We’re vaccine safety advocates. Really. Now, I have no doubt that this is how most of these antivaccinationists masquerading as vaccine safety activists see themselves, to the point where sometimes I find it refreshing when I encounter an antivaccine activist who proudly labels herself…
oracknows | June 15, 2016We in Michigan are dealing with yet another effort on the part of NDs, which stands for “naturopathic doctors” but more appropriately should mean “not a doctor, to achieve licensure in the form of Michigan HB 4531. As I mentioned when I first learned that HB 4531 was passed by the House Committee on Health Policy and sent to the full House for consideration, it’s a scary, scary bill. Moreover, it’s supported by the Michigan Association of Naturopathic Physicians (MANP), who are taking money from the supplement industry to lobby for this bill’s passage. It’s a bill that would grant NDs a wide…
oracknows | June 8, 2016Those of us living in Michigan who support science-based medicine have been forced to deal with a bill that, if passed, would grant practitioners of unscientific “medicine” a wide scope of practice—almost as wide as that of primary care practitioners such as pediatricians, internists, and family practice doctors. I’m referring to HB 4531, a bill that would license naturopaths who graduated from “accredited” programs. If this bill were to pass, the only difference between the scope of practice of primary care physicians and naturopaths would be that naturopaths wouldn’t be allowed to prescribe…
oracknows | June 3, 2016After over 11 years at this blogging thing, I periodically start to fear that I’m becoming jaded. In particular, after following the infiltration of quackery in the form of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more commonly known as “integrative medicine,” because it integrates CAM with evidence-based medicine. Of course, in reality, what “integrative medicine” really does is to integrate prescientific, pseudoscientific, and antiscientific quackery with real medicine, and that’s what I mean. I thought I had seen it all in academic medical centers and medical schools: the faith…
oracknows | June 1, 2016With a bill to license naturopaths (HB 4531) wending its way through the Michigan legislature supported by supplement manufacturers, its current status being in consideration by the full House of Representatives, periodically I feel the need to provide ammunition to the bill’s opponents, because we need to protect the patients in the state of Michigan from the naturopathic quackery that would be unleashed if this bill were to be passed into law.
If there is one area that naturopaths have been invading with a vengeance and even gaining enough seeming legitimacy to propose what they risibly…
oracknows | May 27, 2016To say that I, as a cancer surgeon, am not a fan of Ty Bollinger is a massive understatement. He’s not exactly one of my fans, either, but I view the hatred of a man like Bollinger directed at me as a badge of honor. Indeed, if a man like Bollinger didn’t detest me, I would view my efforts as a failure because I view him as a quack whose desperately deceptive film series The Truth About Cancer has been correctly dubbed untruthful about cancer by Harriet Hall and whose message has led cancer patients into rejecting conventional medicine in favor of treating deadly cancers with alternative…
oracknows | May 22, 2016Over the years, I’ve taken care of women with locally advanced breast cancer so advanced that it’s eroded through the skin, forming huge, nasty ulcers filled with stinky dead cancer tissue that’s outgrown its blood supply, leaving the patient in chronic pain. If the patient is fortunate, her cancer has not metastasized beyond her axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under her arm), and her life might still be saved by a combination of chemotherapy, radical surgery, and radiation. If the patient is not fortunate, either the cancer has metastasized and she is doomed or hasn’t metastasized yet…
oracknows | May 19, 2016After yesterday’s epic mid-week rant about a man who thinks he knows what skepticism is but clearly doesn’t, it’s time to get back to business. The best way to do that is to go back to an article that came out the other day and that I had meant to blog about but temporarily shelved in favor of yesterday’s rant. It’s a topic that’s very relevant to me right now given that the Michigan legislature is considering a bill (House Bill 4531) that would give naturopaths a broad scope of practice almost the equal of that of primary care physicians, the only difference being that naturopaths wouldn’t…
oracknows | May 4, 2016As regular readers of this blog and related blogs know, over the last two or three decades there has been a successful effort to legitimize quackery in the form of what is now called “integrative medicine.” Three decades ago, modalities like homeopathy, acupuncture, much of traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, chiropractic, and many other modalities based on vitalism, prescientific mysticism, and pseudoscience were rightly referred to as quackery. Then in the 1990s came “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), a term that sought to sand the rough edges of quackery off of the,…
oracknows | April 5, 2016If there's one thing that really animates me and angers me, it's the unnecessary death of a child due to quackery. Competent adults, of course, are perfectly free to choose any form of quackery they wish for themselves or even to refuse treatment at all (which is less harmful than quackery). Children, on the other hand, must trust that their parents or guardians will act in their best interests. When they betray that trust and their duty to act in the best interests of the child, I wonder how this can happen. When there the government sides with the parents, I become even more agitated.
So it…
oracknows | March 31, 2016Over the last week or so, I've noticed (or had brought to my attention) a series of articles discussing a phenomenon related to alternative medicine that I don't believe that I've addressed before, at least not directly anyway. I had filed some of these in my folder of topics for blogging, but somehow never got around to them because I let so much time and blog verbiage be dominated by a discussion of how Andrew Wakefield infiltrated the Tribeca Film Festival, only to see Robert De Niro reverse his decision a few days later and yank his film from the festival, after a brief attempt to defend…
oracknows | March 30, 2016And now for something completely different.
Yes, it's about time for that, isn't it? I've probably beat the Tribeca Film Festival story into the ground, even for me, having spent the last week blogging about it. Scratch that. There's no "probably" about it.
I frequently write at length about the quackery that is homeopathy. One reason I do this is because it is one of the most perfect forms fo quackery there is. There is about as close to no chance that it could work as there can be, and the only reason I don't call homeopathy completely impossible is because I have a hard time calling…
oracknows | March 16, 2016Last night was one of those nights where, for whatever reason, I ran out of steam. Whether it was residual effects from the change to daylight savings time this weekend or just a day in the operating room, I don't know, but I crashed on the couch hard, at least until lighting and thunder from the storms rolling through between 2 and 3 AM woke me up for a little while.
Fortunately, I do have a little tidbit to post, a very good one as well. Remember, the "pH Miracle Living" quack, Robert O. Young? He claims to be a naturopath, but even that claim, like pretty much everything he claims, seems…
oracknows | March 9, 2016Naturopathy is quackery, and, like many forms of quackery, it kills. People who trust naturopaths to treat actual serious diseases instead of using real doctors and real medicine dramatically decrease their odds of surviving a serious illness. While competent adults have every right to make that choice, to use fake medicine instead of real medicine, as foolish a choice as that is, making that choice for a child, who is unable to choose for himself, is medical neglect and child abuse. Unfortunately, due to an all-too-prevalent attitude that views children as more or less the property of the…
oracknows | March 2, 2016It's no secret that my odds of ever landing a job at the Cleveland Clinic are probably slim and none, at least if anyone there ever Googles my name, particularly if they Google it with the words "Cleveland Clinic" added. The reason, of course, is that I've been very critical of the Cleveland Clinic's wholesale embrace of what can only be described as pure quackery. I first noticed this a long time ago when I perused the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's (CCF) integrative medicine page, in particular its farcical acceptance of the magical mystical reiki master definition of reiki. It got worse…