Nicholas Gonzalez
Ever since late June, I've been intermittently taking note of a new conspiracy theory in the alternative medicine world. It began when notorious autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, one of the longest practicing, most prominent purveyors of the scientifically discredited notion that vaccines cause autism, was found dead in a North Carolina river on June 19. The police rapidly concluded that he had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. It was impossible not to note that the FDA had raided his clinic a few days before, and it later came out that it was due to his use of and unproven…
The conspiracy deepens.
What conspiracy? You ask. Haven't you heard? Big pharma is out killing alternative medicine doctors! Or at least that's what you'll be told if you venture towards the deep dark underbelly of quack websites. Up until now, the most prominent "victim" was autism quack, Jeff Bradstreet, who, according to police, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest in the woods of North Carolina but who, according to antivaccine advocates and "autism biomed" quacks, must have been assassinated by a big pharma black ops team. Or something. After all, as we know, the FDA had…
I've always known that FOX News has a tendency to go for the sensationalistic story. I've also known that, given Rupert Murdoch's political leanings, politically motivated pseudoscience like anthropogenic global warming denialism is the order of the day on FOX. I've even noticed a disturbing tendency on FOX to promote antivaccine views, for example, when a FOX interviewer tried to blame a case of dystonia on the flu vaccine or when the infotainment drones on Fox and Friends let The Donald (a.k.a. Donald Trump) blather ignorantly about vaccines and autism. I knew all that. However, I didn't…
I debated a while about whether I should take this particular post on. It's not because there isn't a lot of fodder there deserving of that special form of not-so-Respectful Insolence that only Orac, in his usual inimitable fashion, can provide. There most definitely is. The problem, as is sometimes the case when I get on a roll, is that it represents going back to a topic that I've already covered very recently. In fact, it's a topic I've already covered twice, namely Steve Jobs and the insulinoma that ultimately killed him. Last week, I reposted what I wrote about him back in 2009 after he…
Pity poor Nick Gonzalez.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. After having used the same line when discussing the hugely enjoyable humiliation of the Godfather of HIV/AIDS denialism, Peter Duesberg, I couldn't resist using the same line to introduce my response to Dr. Gonzalez's woo-ful whine in response to the publication of the disastrous (for him and any patient unfortunate enough to be in the arm receiving his protocol) clinical trial that demonstrated about as unequivocally as it is possible to demonstrate that his "protocol" to treat pancreatic cancer is nothing more than as steaming and stinking…