Quackery
oracknows | August 20, 2017Alternative medicine, by definition, consists of medicine that either has not been shown to work or has been shown not to work. To paraphrase an old adage yet again, medicine that has been shown to work with an acceptable risk-benefit ceases to be "alternative" and becomes simply "medicine."
Unlike the case for many conditions commonly treated with alternative medicine, whether or not a treatment works against cancer is determined by its impact on the hardest of "hard" endpoints: Survival. A patient either survives his cancer or he does not. Even the "softer" endpoints used to assess the…
oracknows | August 17, 2017Before I get into the topic at hand, I want to explain why there was no post yesterday. Some of you on Facebook might have seen my post about why, but basically, we lost power last night. We're still without power. In fact, the only reason I can write this is because I'm staying at my parents' house tonight. No, it wasn't weather. Rather, basically a nearby substation caught fire. Michigan infrastructure is great, and I really need to get a generator.
It also reminds me how much I wouldn't mind living in California. For one thing, it's a beautiful state. Even better, California was willing to…
oracknows | August 14, 2017Someone yesterday was not very happy with my attitude towards naturopaths, as evidenced in my post yesterday about the death of a young woman named Jade Erick due to intravenous infusion of curcumin by—you guessed it—a naturopath. Amusingly, that someone going by the 'nym of JR said that he or she didn't "like the tone of this article and it’s complete disregard for naturopaths." Well, JR, you're right. I do have a complete disregard for naturopaths because they are quacks who mix a small amount of good advice about diet and exercise with a whole lot of pure quackery (like homeopathy) and…
oracknows | August 13, 2017 Kim Kelly, ND (Not A Doctor). He prescribed the dose of intravenous turmeric that killed Jade Erick.
Finally, a mystery has been solved.
Nearly five months ago, a 30 year old woman named Jade Erick suffered a cardiac arrest, most likely due to anaphylactic shock, during the infusion of intravenous curcumin ordered by a California naturopath named Kim Kelly, ND (for Not-a-Doctor). Because Erick's death was so sudden and dramatic, the story briefly made national news. I viewed the tragic incident as yet another example of why "licensed" naturopaths, such as those in California or other…
oracknows | August 6, 2017One of the gratifying things about having been blogging so long—nearly 13 years now!—is that you start to see stories that you wrote about a long time ago resurface, allowing you to see the resolution. For instance, I've not infrequently written about people who, mistakenly believing the blandishments of alternative medicine practitioners that they could forego all that nasty chemotherapy and radiation and survive their cancer to live a happy, normal life, made the disastrous decision to eschew conventional medical therapy and pursue alternative medicine. My interest in this topic comes from…
oracknows | August 2, 2017I wasn't sure if I should do this post, mainly because I could find so little information to elaborate on a bit of information that I discovered. Then I thought about it a bit more. Perhaps my not being able to find out will illustrate my point better than a detailed progress report on a woman whom I blogged about once nearly 16 months ago. Also, it's a hopeful story. At least I think it is, because it looks as though the young woman at the center of it has abandoned quackery.
Basically, this was the story of a young woman with a bad cancer who had eschewed conventional therapy, particularly…
oracknows | July 31, 2017Everything old is new again, or so it always seems with alternative medicine.
Before I explain what I'm talking about a bit more, let me just preface my remarks with an explanation for why there was no post tomorrow. I realize that most people probably don't care that much if I miss a day or two, but I care. Basically, I was in Chicago from Thursday through Sunday taking a rather grueling review course in general surgery offered by the American College of Surgeons. The reason is that I have to take my board recertification examination in general surgery in December. It was an amazing course,…
oracknows | July 27, 2017It's been over a month now since I started paying real attention to that wretched celebrity hive of scum and quackery founded by Gwyneth Paltrow known as Goop. It was a long time coming, and I feel a bit guilty for not really paying much attention to the "wellness," "lifestyle," and, of course, expensive quackery being sold by Paltrow and her minions through Goop. It began when Goop caught flack for selling pricey magic energy healing stickers. Well, it wasn't so much for that as much as for the amusing intervention of NASA, which slapped down Goop's claims that these stickers were made with…
oracknows | July 24, 2017As a skeptic, I can't help but taking an interest in conspiracy theories. The reason, of course, is because behind virtually every commonly accepted pseudoscientific and antiscience ideas there is conspiracy theory. For instance, in the case of the antivaccine movement, the conspiracy theory is that some combination of the CDC, big pharma, and the FDA is conspiring to hide the truth—excuse me, The Truth—that vaccines cause autism, brain damage, autimmune disease, diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, shaken baby syndrome, and whatever other disease, injury, or condition that antivaxers like…
oracknows | July 20, 2017One of the problems we as skeptics and advocates for science-based medicine face is that quackery and pseudoscience are legion. They are everywhere. Worse, in many cases, they can be a good business model. For example, back when Oprah Winfrey was peddling The Secret, the magical mystical belief that if you only want something badly enough, the universe will somehow provide it, and promoting Jenny McCarthy's antivaccine beliefs, skeptics were all over her. Many were the refutations of the nonsense that she promoted published in a wide variety of blogs, websites, and magazines; yet her brand…
oracknows | July 13, 2017You know how you know when you've been effective deconstructing quackery or antivaccine pseudoscience? It's when quacks and pseudoscientists strike back. It's when they attack you. As much as Mike Adams' near daily tirades against me last year caused problems and poisoned my Google reputation (which was, obviously, the goal), I could reassure myself with the knowledge that his attacks meant that I had gotten to him. When Steve Novella was sued by a quack, as much as I didn't want to be sued by anyone, I knew that the fact that someone would sue him was testament to his effectiveness.…
oracknows | July 12, 2017I had a bit of a rough day yesterday. By the time I was done with work, I was just too tired to write my usual length Insolence. I was, however, fortunate enough to see something that reinforces something I wrote last week. Last friday I discussed the politicization of vaccine policy that has been occurring over the last few years and that has accelerated since the battle over SB 277, the law in California that eliminated nonmedical (i.e., personal belief) exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Specifically, antivaxers, particularly at the state level, have co-opted the rhetoric of…
oracknows | July 10, 2017I've been writing about antivaccine loons for a long time, and during that time I've seen them propose some crazy ideas. The other day, I came across one proposing what might well be the craziest, most irresponsible idea I've ever seen from an antivaccine activist. It comes from our old friend Kent Heckenlively. Heckenlively, as you might recall, started out over at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism but, for whatever reason, left the blog to write somewhere else. Amazingly, that "somewhere else" turned out to be the website of one Patrick "Tim" Bolen, whom I just mentioned yesterday…
oracknows | July 9, 2017I have to start this post with a mea culpa, perhaps even a mea maxima culpa. I've been going on and on, in essence gloating about how the antivaccine movement was once again betrayed by Donald Trump. After the betrayal that was the appointment of the ultimate pro-vaccine pharma shill as FDA Commissioner, the second betrayal was the appointment of Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, yes, on the surface, Dr. Fitzgerald doesn't appear to be that bad a pick for CDC director. She has a history of being very pro-vaccine during her…
oracknows | July 7, 2017As I sat down to lay down my daily (or at least week-daily) dose of Insolence last night, my thoughts kept coming back to vaccines. Sure, as I pointed out in yesterday's post, we seemed to have dodged a bullet in that President Trump appears on the verge of appointing someone who is actually competent and pro-vaccine as director of the CDC. Of course, none of that changes the issue that Donald Trump's proposed budget takes a meat axe to public health programs, including vaccines, and that if Republicans succeed in dismantling the Affordable Care Act a large chunk of money going to vaccine…
oracknows | July 5, 2017As I mentioned yesterday, at NECSS I gave a talk, Whither the antivaccine movement in the Age of Trump? At the time, I only knew the identity of one of the most important public health figures appointed by President Donald Trump, and that's Scott Gottleib, the man appointed to be FDA Commissioner. As I noted when his name first came up as a candidate for this position, antivaxers weren't going to like it. Why? One reason is because Gottlieb is the ultimate pharma shill, if such a thing exists. Another reason is that he is very pro-vaccine. This amuses me when I consider the high hopes…
oracknows | July 3, 2017One of the most persistent narratives latched on to by advocates of "integrative medicine" is that the "mind" can somehow "heal" the body. Sometimes, the claim is that such interventions work through "powerful placebo" effects. Sometimes it involves the abuse of emerging science, such overblown claims about what can be accomplished through epigenetic modifications of DNA and gene expression. While my wife and I were away on vacation last month, there was another example of this claim popping up in the media under headlines like these:
Mindfulness and meditation dampen down inflammation genes…
oracknows | June 28, 2017Before I delve into the next topic, I can't help but congratulate John Oliver yet again for his excellent deconstruction of the antivaccine movement on Sunday night. As I noted on Tuesday, it clearly hit the mark, given how angry one antivax blogger got over it. As of yesterday, over at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, that antivaccine crank blog known as Age of Autism, resident "Media Editor" Anne Dachel was still sputtering over Oliver's segment, labeling it Oliver's vulgar treatment of vaccine-injured and their families and posting a line about how allegedly "mocking and berating…
oracknows | June 27, 2017I know that a lot of you like John Oliver and watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver , and I do too. In particular, I love how he devotes 20 minute segments of his show to intelligent long form comedy about all sorts of issues, including scientific and medical issues, including issues that I never would have thought I was interested in. Indeed, there are lots of times when he covers news stories better than the news media. So when he did a segment on vaccines last night—and a segment that was longer than his usual major segments—you know I would be incredibly interested. Here's a video of…
oracknows | June 26, 2017Orac gets fan mail. Yes, as hard as it is to believe, my blog sometimes ticks certain people off, and sometimes I even hear from them. For instance, last week a reader wrote me. The subject header read, "Why do you hate naturopathic physicians so much?" and the letter went something like this (OK, exactly like this other than the name of the reader, which I've withheld, and to whom I will refer as "T"):
Having stumbled across one of your diatribes against licensed naturopathic doctors, I can't help but wonder what that profession has done to hurt you? If you have examined the evidence,…