Quackery
oracknows | August 15, 2007Remember a couple of months ago, when I discussed testimony at the Autism Omnibus trial that showed how Andrew Wakefield had failed to do the controls when running PCR that would have revealed that the results that he interpreted as the presence of the measles virus from a vaccine strain in the guts of autistic children was nothing more than a bunch of false positives due to widespread contamination of the laboratory with plasmid containing measles sequences?
It turns out that it's not just autism pseudoscientists who forget to do the right controls when running PCR. Mike the Mad Biologist…
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 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 | July 26, 2007...or was it?
I'm pretty sure it was.
The dream needed a little bit more of a zingy ending, though, like waking up and finding Bobby Ewing still alive or finding out that everything that happened at the hospital was the fantasy of an autistic boy.
Or something like that
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 15, 2007I'm afraid I must reluctantly take fellow SB'er Mark Hoofnagle to task here, because he appears to have allowed himself to get a bit carried away when it comes to throwing around the label of "denialist."
In an otherwise excellent takedown of some really bad propaganda in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he did something below the usual high standards of his blog. He casually and offhandedly lumped Paul Offit in with the other "denialists" that he was castigating, based on this editorial about Michael Moore's new movie Sicko. It's something that most people probably wouldn't have…
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 11, 2007About a month and a half ago, I posted an update to the story of the plight of a group of medical professionals who have come to be known as the "Tripoli 6" or the "Benghazi 6." These are six foreign medical workers who were falsely accused by Libyan authorities intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV in a Libyan hospital and then unjustly imprisoned under horrific conditions, where they have remained for nearly eight years. Thanks to the need of the Libyan government to find scapegoats for unhygienic conditions in the hospital, leading to an ignorant bloodlust whipped up against…
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…