Quackery
oracknows | October 21, 2013I was doing my usual browsing of the web yesterday in search of topics for today's post when I came across an excellent article by a colleague and friend of mine, Dr. Rachael Dunlop, who nailed it in a post entitled Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media. In the article, Dr. Rachie nailed a point that I and other skeptics have been trying to make time and time again, namely how the press all too frequently inserts false balance in stories about medicine, particularly vaccines. As Dr. Rachie put it, we don't give equal time to flat earth believers. My favorite…
oracknows | October 17, 2013Over the years, I've not infrequently noted that there is a serious disconnect between what most people would think of as "natural" and what is considered "natural" in the world of "complementary and alternative medicine," or, as I like to call it, CAMworld. I started thinking about this again after yesterday's post about Jessica Ainscough's decision to treat her rare sarcoma with the quackery that is the Gerson therapy and how her mother's decision to use the same quackery, instead of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, resulted in her untimely demise. Reading over Jessica Ainscough's blog…
oracknows | October 16, 2013This being Breast Cancer Awareness Month and all, stories about breast cancer are frequently sent my way. This one is depressing and sad, mainly because it's the story of death from breast cancer. From what I can gather, it is the story of a death from quackery, a death that didn't have to occur. Even worse than that, it appears to be a death facilitated by the daughter of the deceased, a woman named Jessica Ainscough, who bills herself as the "Wellness Warrior." It's a horrifying story, the story of a woman who followed her daughter's lead and put her faith in the quackery known as the…
oracknows | October 14, 2013I like to think that one of the more important public services I provide is my deconstructions of alternative cancer cure testimonials. After all, one of the most powerful marketing tools cancer quacks have in their arsenal is a collection of stories of "real patients" with cancer who used their nostrums and are still alive and well. These sorts of analyses of alternative cancer cure testimonials began right near the very beginning, way back in 2004 and have continued intermittently to this very day, most recently with a bevy of posts showing why the testimonials of Stanislaw Burzynski's…
oracknows | October 13, 2013If there's one thing that the antivaccine fringe wants above all else, it's legitimacy. They crave it almost above all else. They want to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint you really need to demonstrate that you actually understand science. At the very least you can't be spouting pseudoscience, but that's what antivaccinationists do constantly. Virtually every argument they make trying to demonstrate that vaccines are the root of all evil (or at least cause autism, autoimmune…
oracknows | October 11, 2013One type of story that I've fairly frequently commented upon since the very beginning of this blog is the story of children or teens with cancer whose parents decide to pursue quackery instead of effective therapy or children with other serious diseases whose parents reject effective therapy for them. Think way, way back to Katie Wernecke and Abraham Cherrix back in 2006. (Cherrix is still battling his lymphoma seven years later, having blown his best chance at cure back in 2006; I do not know how much longer he can continue.) More recently, there was Chad Jessop and Daniel Hauser. Just in…
oracknows | October 9, 2013Here we go with another one.
Three weeks ago, I mentioned in a post that the week of October 7 to 14 was declared by our very own United States Senate to be Naturopathic Medicine Week, which I declared unilaterally through my power as managing editor of Science-Based Medicine (for what that's worth) to be Quackery Week. One wonders where the Senate found the time to consider and vote for S.Res.221, which reads:
S.Res.221 – A resolution designating the week of October 7 through October 13, 2013, as “Naturopathic Medicine Week” to recognize the value of naturopathic medicine in providing safe…
oracknows | October 8, 2013I realize I've been remiss. After all, three or four weeks ago, I pointed out that the week of October 7 to 14, this very week, was going to be Quackery Week. Well, it wasn't actually I who first declared this week quackery week. It was actually our very own U.s. Senate, which, as I pointed out, passed S.Res.221, which declared:
A resolution designating the week of October 7 through October 13, 2013, as “Naturopathic Medicine Week” to recognize the value of naturopathic medicine in providing safe, effective, and affordable health care.
Given that the vast majority of naturopathy is quackery…
oracknows | October 7, 2013When it comes to Twitter, I run hot and cold. I'll frequently go weeks when I barely touch my Twitter account, and nothing gets posted there except automatic Tweets linking to my new posts. Then something will happen, and suddenly I'll post 20 Tweets in a day. Rinse, lather, repeat. I guess I'm just too verbose for Twitter or I just don't grok it the way I do blogging. Either that, or I do enough social media that adding Twitter is just one bit of social media too far. That's why I tell people that Twitter is not a good way to get my attention if that is your goal. It might be days, if not…
oracknows | October 3, 2013Ever since I first started writing about antivaccine conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself) back in 2005, it's always been assumed by many who combat this particularly pernicious and dangerous form of quackery that antivaccine views tend to be more predominant on the political left compared to the political right. I used to believe that as well, but over the last few of years have questioned this bit of "conventional wisdom." At the time, I based my questioning of the thesis that antivaccine views are more common among those whose politics lean left than among those whose politics lean…
oracknows | October 2, 2013Things have been a bit too serious around here lately. After all, yesterday I wrote about obesity and chemotherapy, while the day before that I did an even lengthier than usual deconstruction of some claims by anti-Obamacare activists, which seemed particularly appropriate to me given that a group of wingnuts has just succeeded in mostly shutting down our government because they are opposed to Obamacare. Come to think of it, given the nastiness that's going on in Washington right now, I could use something light, an easy target even. And who better to serve that role than everyone's favorite…
oracknows | September 27, 2013One of the major differences between science-based medicine (SBM) and alternative medicine—or, as they call it these days, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine"—is that SBM is always questioning itself, always reevaluating its practices. Related to this difference is that SBM does change its practice, discarding treatments that don't work and incorporating those that do work (or at least work better than older practices). As I've said many times before, the process by which this happens is messy and slower than we might like, and that provides ammunition to…
oracknows | September 25, 2013It's rare that my readers send me something that makes me laugh out loud, but this post did. I'll give you a bit of background first, though. Lacking the science to back up their dangerous pseudoscience, antivaccine warriors tend to resort very early to ad hominem attacks. Apparently they figure that if they can discredit the messenger who promotes the message that vaccines are safe and effective (and don't cause autism). One of their favorite techniques to accomplish this is something for which I originally coined a phrase way back in 2005: The Pharma Shill Gambit. You see it whenever…
oracknows | September 24, 2013Does anybody remember the Canary Party? As I described two and a half years ago when I first became aware of it, the Canary Party is a weird mutant hybrid of antivaccinationists convinced that there are "toxins" in vaccines that are making all our children autistic, "health freedom" activists, and, more recently, Tea Party activists. The name of the party was chosen based on the old story about how miners would keep canaries in the mine because they were more sensitive to toxic gases. The idea was that, if the miners saw their canary collapse, they knew they'd better get out of that shaft…
oracknows | September 23, 2013Antivaccine warriors hate science because it does not support their fear and loathing of vaccines. At the same time, they want to use it to justify that very same fear and loathing of vaccines. However, as much as antivaccinationists hate scientific studies that fail to find a link between vaccines and autism or vaccine additives like the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal and autism, there's a certain set of studies that they hate more than any other, and these are the so-called "Danish studies." Indeed, I learned of this hatred a long time ago, when Kristjan Wager wrote a guest post…
oracknows | September 22, 2013I'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…
oracknows | September 18, 2013If there's one thing I've learned about antivaccinationists, it's that they're all about the double standards. For instance, to them if Paul Offit makes money off of his rotavirus vaccine, he's a pharma shill, a hopelessly compromised "biostitute" (as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called him) or "Dr. Proffit", and therefore to be dismissed on that basis alone regardless of his knowledge of science. If I happen to get a small grant from a pharmaceutical company, even though it isn't even enough to pay the full salary of a postdoctoral fellow, or receive a small amount of money for my blogging from a…
oracknows | September 17, 2013I love this video. There's really little else to say other than the tagline: "Vaccines: And now my kids don't die." Vaccines truly are a wonder drug. You know it's good if Orac can't construct a 3,000 word post around it and decides just to let the video speak for itself:
oracknows | September 16, 2013One of the fun things about blogging is that I can often follow how various issues develop and, more importantly, insert my opinion into the issue. As bizarre as it seems to me even almost nine years after starting this blog that anyone keeps reading what I have to lay down (and it still does seem bizarre that anyone cares much what I have to say every day, but several thousand of you apparently do), that's what I continue to be here for. Last month, I wrote about an editorial by the director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in which she called for a "…
oracknows | September 13, 2013Naturopathy is quackery. There, I said it. Actually, I've said it many times before, because it is. The problem with naturopathy, of course, is that it is so diffuse and encompasses so many different forms of quackery that it's hard to categorize. Basically, it's anything that can be portrayed as "natural," be it traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy (which is an integral component of naturopathy, something that should tell you all you need to know about naturopathy), herbalism, energy healing, Ayurvedic medicine, the four humors, or whatever. Seemingly, there is no quackery that…