Quackery
oracknows | July 24, 2012At least half the time, it seems that when I take on a relatively new topic with every intention of just doing one post about it I somehow end up doing more than one post. I don't know why that is. It just seems to happen. Sometimes, I find something related to but sufficiently different that interests me, sometimes seemingly quite at random. Sometimes someone responds to my post in such a way that I feel obliged to answer. Sometimes, readers make me aware of variations on a theme, so to speak, either in the comments or by e-mailing me links. That's what happened this time.
Yesterday I posted…
oracknows | July 23, 2012Many are the forms of quackery to which autistic children are subjected to. It's amazing just how many dubious and dangerous treatments (dubbed "biomedical treatments" or "autism biomed") parents will try in an effort to "recover" their children. Perhaps the most shocking of this quackery that I've recently covered is something called "miracle mineral solution" (MMS), which is in reality nothing more than a powerful bleach. Parents make their autistic children drink diluted MMS, bathe in it, and even take bleach as an enema. They try to claim that what they are using is no more powerful than…
oracknows | July 20, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of fun with a rather clueless chiropractor by the name of J.C. Smith (JCS), who decided to take a swipe at an organization with which I'm associated, namely the Institute for Science in Medicine (ISM). It was such an inept attack, filled with misinformation, pseudoscience, and logical fallacies, that it was what I like to call a "teachable moment" when it comes to chiropractors and chiropractic. Even more amusingly, JCS promised at the end of his post lambasting ISM as a new "medical mafia" that he would be writing a followup post. I could hardly wait. The…
oracknows | July 17, 2012Things are getting back to normal here at Casa Orac. it's always a come down after going to TAM and being able to mingle, argue, and party with people who share my skeptical world view. Yesterday was back to reality, though, at least as much as jet lag and sleep deprivation allowed. Fortunately, Monday is a lab day, and I don't have an scheduled patient care responsibilities, and now I'm pretty much back to normal. Even so, I can't do epics like yesterday's post every day even under the best circumstances; so today I'll take a look at a little wafer thin mint to cleanse the palate.
I've…
oracknows | July 10, 2012About a week and a half ago, I took note of a rather unhinged rant by comedian Rob Schneider about vaccines in which he trotted out an antivaccine movement's greatest hits compendium of pseudoscience, misinformation, and logical fallacies, all in the service of opposing California Bill AB 2109. Antivaccine activists hate this piece of legislation in particular, the reason being that it would make it just a little more difficult for parents to obtain philosophical exemptions from school mandates. Right now in California, parents basically just have to sign a form, no questions asked, no other…
oracknows | July 6, 2012What would we do without the Internet?
It's become so necessary, so pervasive, so utterly all-enveloping that it's hard to imagine a world without it. Given how much it pervades everything these days, it's easy to forget that it wasn't that long ago that the Internet was primarily the domain of universities and large research groups. Indeed, the Internet hasn't really been widely and easily available to the average citizen for very long at all. Go back 20 years, and most people didn't have it. For example, Netscape Navigator, the popular browser that made the Internet accessible, wasn't…
oracknows | July 4, 2012It's rather odd that I'll be writing two posts in a row having to do with a chiropractor, given that chiropractic is at best an occasional topic on this blog. Certainly, I don't hesitate to take on chiropractic when the mood strikes me or, more importantly, when I come across some seriously burning stupid coming from a chiropractor, but other topics tend to dominate my blogging. Let's just put it this way. Two posts in a row on a cancer quack or about antivaccinationists would be nothing the least bit unusual here, but two posts in a row about chiropractors is.
As regular readers probably…
oracknows | July 2, 2012Every so often I come across a post by quacks or supporters of quackery that make me wish that we as skeptics and supporters of science-based medicine actually had the abilities and powers attributed to us. I mean, what's the good of being accused of running a conspiracy to crush any sort of "unconventional" or "alternative" medicine if we don't actually have the power to crush unconventional and alternative medicine? Then, sometimes, there are posts that make me really wish that my bloggy skeptic friends and the skeptic organizations to which I belong actually had the power to do the things…
oracknows | June 29, 2012Remember California Bill AB 2109? I've written about it at least a couple of times before. In fact, for some reason, the comment section of this post on AB 2109 suddenly come alive again a couple of days ago, with antivaccinationists infiltrating it, much to the annoyance of my regular commenters. It turns out that the reason was that a couple of days ago AB 2109 came up for discussion in the California Senate Health Committee (and passed to be sent out to the full Senate for a vote), after having passed the California House a couple of months ago. I also now know why antivaccinationists…
oracknows | June 27, 2012And now for something completely different.
Except that it isn't really. I say that it isn't really different because, although this post will seem to be about politics, in reality it will be about a common topic on this blog: Anti-science. And where is this anti-science? Sadly, it's in the platform of a major party of one of the largest states in the country. It also meshes with the anti-science inherent in a lot of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and all comes together in one place: The proposed 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas. It's all there, as you…
oracknows | June 26, 2012Remember Luc Montagnier? Sure, you do. He's the Nobel Laureate whose identification of the virus that causes AIDS garnered him plaudits, laurels, and, of course, the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Unfortunately, since winning the Nobel Prize, from a scientific standpoint, Montagnier's been on a downward spiral. Sadly, it didn't take long after his Nobel acceptance speech for disturbing signs of crankery and quackery to appear. For instance, Montagnier published a paper that implied that DNA could teleport, using this study, whose results were almost certainly the result of contaminants in…
oracknows | June 26, 2012No matter how you slice it, I've been at this blogging thing a long time. it's been over seven years now. It's been even longer than that, though, because before that cold gray Saturday afternoon in September when I started farting around with Blogger and ended giving birth to the first iteration of Respectful Insolence, I had been sparring with quacks, cranks, and various other promoters of pseudoscience for at least five years before. Even after all that time, however, it's humbling and amazing to contemplate that I haven't seen it all, no matter how much at times I might feel that I have.…
oracknows | June 21, 2012
The clip above says it all with respect to "miracle mineral solution" (a.k.a. MMS). Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in. And, as Yoda would probably put it, back in I am one more time. (How's that for mixing movie allusions?)
Let's recap. MMS is bleach. Specifically, it is a 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water that generates chlorine dioxide when diluted with citric acid-containing or other acid-containing foods, as instructed. This is a chemical used for water purification that a quack—yes, quack—named Jim Humble has touted as a miracle cure for just about everything…
oracknows | June 20, 2012I realize that this has been posted by a lot of people on Facebook and around the blogosphere, but I can't resist. Given my history of making fun of Deepak Chopra's inimitable type of woo and even coining the term "Choprawoo" for that combination of the pretentious and stupid that Deepak Chopra regularly lays down. Just search for "Choprawoo" on this blog, and you'll see what I mean. In any case, Chopra's nonsense has always been so hilariously predictable and vapid that I've always wondered if a computer could do just as good a job.
Now I know.
Yes, someone has thought the same thing that I…
oracknows | June 19, 2012A couple of months ago, a reader sent me an article that really disturbed me. In fact, I had originally been planning to write about it not long after I received it. However, as I've mentioned before, when it comes to blogging, I'm a bit like Dug the Talking Dog from the movie Up in that I'm easily distracted. Unlike Dug, what distracts me aren't squirrels, but rather bright, shiney pieces of pseudoscience, quackery, paranormal, or otherwise weird nonsense. Sometimes after I'm distracted I come back to the topic I had originally wanted to blog about. Sometimes I don't. Or, sometimes (like…
oracknows | June 17, 2012Here we go again.
Remember how last week I said I wouldn't write about the Miracle Mineral Solution (abbreviated MMS) again for a while? I lied.
Well, actually, I didn't. At the time I wrote that, I really did mean to give it a rest for a while, and for a while at least I was a good boy. I even managed to ignore Todd Drezner's excellent post on—of all places!—what is normally a wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, entitled The Curious Case of Autism and MMS. Then came this post by an MMS apologist that we've met before, a man named Adam Mr. Abraham who goes by the handle…
oracknows | June 12, 2012I know, I know, I've been writing about MMS a lot. Don't worry. Barring some unforeseen development, this will probably be the last one for a while. However, I just had to comment again because this is just too funny (not to mention that I didn't have a lot of time last night because, yes, I had to work on a grant application). Remember how I mentioned the pro-MMS petition in which Jim Humble, the man who had the revelation that you can bleach away whatever disease you're suffering from, demanded that Emily Willingham (who did a Change.org petition demanding that Kerri Rivera stop treating…
oracknows | June 12, 2012I have to hand it to Autismum. Remember the Open Letter to Kerri Rivera she wrote, the one criticizing her for using bleach (Miracle Mineral Solution, often referred to as MMS) to try to "cure" autism? I referred to it yesterday when I pointed out how the pro-MMS apologists were striking back at their critics. Well, it turns out that pro-MMS apologists have also swarmed like flying monkeys into the comments of Autismum's open letter. Autismum, however, seems quite capable of handling them. I'll show you what I mean. Here's a comment from someone named Autumn. It's basically a testimonial:
My…
oracknows | June 12, 2012If there's one thing shared in common among nearly all advocates of pseudoscience, it is the belief that they know The Truth. More importantly, they know The Truth, and The Powers That Be don't want you to know The Truth and will do almost anything to makes sure that The Truth stays secret. Think about it. This sort of thinking is common, be it among advocates of alternative medicine, cold fusion advocates, HIV/AIDS denialists, 9/11 "Truthers," birthers, creationists, moon hoax believers, or Holocaust deniers. For instance, Mike Adams and Joe Mercola will tell you that the government in the…
oracknows | June 10, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I was horrified to learn of a new "biomed" treatment that has been apparently gaining popularity in autism circles. Actually, it's not just autism circles in which this treatment is being promoted. Before the "autism biomed" movement discovered it, this particular variety of "miracle cure" has been touted as a treatment for cancer, AIDS, hepatitis A,B and C, malaria, herpes, TB, and who knows what else. I'm referring to something called MMS, which stands for "miracle mineral solution." As I pointed out when I discovered its promotion for various maladies and then later…