Quackery
oracknows | May 2, 2012Over the years that this blog has been in existence, beginning very early on, there has been one overarching theme. That theme is that the best medicine is science-based medicine. Sure, we could quibble about how that was originally defined, and I used to be more of a booster of evidence-based medicine until its blind spot with respect to "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM). That blind spot, as I've explained time and time again, both here and elsewhere at my not-so-super-secret other blogging location under my real name, that blind spot is prior…
oracknows | April 27, 2012Almost exactly a year ago, I came across a bit of woo so incredible, so spectacularly stupid and unbelievable, that I dedicated one of the last segments I've done in a long time of Your Friday Dose of Woo to it. Basically, it was about a movie called Eat the Sun, which described a bunch of people who believe that they can imbibe the energy they need to keep their bodies going by "sun gazing," which involves, as the name implies, staring directly into the sun. The idea is to stare directly into the sun for as long as possible at sunrise or sunset, so as not to burn out your retinas by staring…
oracknows | April 20, 2012It just occurred to me that, even though there was news about it, I never mentioned what's happened recently with respect to California bill AB2109. As you might recall, I wrote about this bill about four weeks ago. In brief, this bill, if passed into law, would require that California parents seeking a "personal belief" exemption for vaccines to meet with a physician and have a physician sign off on what is more or less an informed consent form stating that the parents had been informed of the risks and benefits of vaccines and, more importantly for purposes of the personal belief exemption…
oracknows | April 18, 2012I thought that a solid basic understanding of basic and clinical science was a prerequisite to be a bioethicist. AFter all, the prefix "bio" is in the word "bioethicist," which implies to me that bioethicists study the ethics of biology and medicine, which, of course, they do. Some bioethicists are even physicians. After all, to be able to study the ethics of a medical issue, it's rather necessary to understand just what the medical and scientific issues that cause the ethical issues and dilemmas being studied. Unfortunately, as I found out yesterday, it doesn't always work out that way.…
oracknows | April 16, 2012Periodically, I like to make fun of homeopathy and homeopaths. I realize that to some that might seem like the proverbial shooting of fish in a barrel, but it is amusing and educational. However, it's not always amusing. For instance, I am not amused when I see The One Quackery To Rule Them All (my favored term for homeopathy these days) being used either in areas where a lack of treatment can result in great harm (and, given that homeopathy is nothing more than water shaken up a bit with a magic spell, that's what homeopathy is, a lack of treatment) or when I see homeopaths promising what…
oracknows | April 15, 2012If there's one difference between so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and science-based medicine (SBM), it's the role of anecdotes in each. CAM and SBM each take a very different view of anecdotes. In SBM, anecdotes are relegated to a very low rung on the evidence ladder. They are a starting point in that, if well-documented enough and convincing enough, they can serve as the basis to suggest that clinical research or clinical trials might be indicated. Sometimes, in the case of rare diseases where numbers of patients are so small that randomized clinical trials are not…
oracknows | April 13, 2012You know, I really, really hate the way quacks abuse molecular biology. I know, I know. I've said it before, but certain quacks have a way of willfully misunderstanding the latest advances in genomics, molecular biology, and biology in general. Of course, this isn't limited to just medicine, unfortunately. After all, we have Deepak Chopra and his quantum woo, which abuses physics and quantum theory in the name of "proving" mind-body dualism, a bastardized version of "intelligent design" creationism that is based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christianity, and, of course, a "conscious…
oracknows | April 6, 2012April 11 is a mere five days away.
What's the significance of April 11? Easy. April 11 is the date when the hearing before the Texas Medical Board to determine whether Stanislaw Burzynski will lose his license to practice medicine in Texas. Dr. Burzynski, as you recall, is the Texas doctor who has somehow managed to continue to treat cancer patients with something he calls antineoplastons, which he claims to have originally discovered in urine. More recently, he had a fawning "documentary" made about him by Eric Merola, an advertiser who now mostly produces infomercials, which is entirely…
oracknows | April 3, 2012Note: Today's a travel day. I'm driving home from the AACR. As a result, I decided to post something that appeared elsewhere, doing a quick edit to make it a bit more "insolent." I realize that since the show I discuss aired an episode during which he featured a psychic medium in a segment called Medium Vs. Medicine: Char Margolis Shares Afterlife Secrets. I meant to blog it, but somehow I missed my window of opportunity. Oh, well, maybe I still will. Or maybe not. It's too painful, and the window has passed. In the meantime, there's this blast from the recent past.
It's not a secret that I…
oracknows | March 29, 2012Since when did Opposing Views become NaturalNews.com?
Anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that NaturalNews.com is one of the wretchedest hives of scum and quackery anywhere on the Internet, surpassing even The Huffington Post. Indeed, so full of misinformation, pseudoscience, quackery, and outright lies, all spiced up with a heapin' helpin' of pure New World Order, Alex Jones-style winguttery is NaturalNews.com that I'm hard-pressed to think of a website that is more of a black hole of utter nonsense. Whale.to, maybe.
So why do I compare Opposing Views to NaturalNews.com? Is that…
oracknows | March 27, 2012This week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that can only be described as historic. Any of you out there (in the U.S. anyway; I realize that my readership is international) who have paid even a passing attention to the news can't help but avoid reporting, debate, and polemics related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is often disparagingly referred to as "Obamacare." If the law is upheld, or even if most of the law is upheld, it will radically reshape health insurance in this country. Having spent 13 years in the trenches at cancer centers that see a high…
oracknows | March 20, 2012Sometimes you find good skepticism in strange places. One example of this has been Cracked.com. Normally, Cracked.com is a humor site based on the magazine that I used to read sometimes back in 1970s. Unfortunately, the magazine folded several years ago, but the website lives on. For example, Cracked.com once did a snarky article making fun of the "heroes" of the antivaccine movement and contrasting them to "villains" like (of course!) Paul Offit. It even featured for emphasis the infamous "baby eating" poster that Age of Autism ran a couple of years ago that featured Steve Novella, Paul…
oracknows | March 16, 2012The Autism File bills itself as a magazine dealing with all aspects of autism. In reality, it's basically a crank magazine dedicated to autism biomedical quackery plus a generous helping of antivaccine fear mongering. In fact, this passage should tell you all you need to know about the publication:
Autism File is a lifestyle guide to achieving better health. It is written with your needs in mind but is not a substitute for consulting with your physician or other health care providers. The publisher and authors are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences resulting from the use…
oracknows | March 15, 2012If there's one quack who both amuses and appalls me at the same time, it's Robert O. Young. You remember Robert O. Young, don't you? He's the guy who thinks that all disease is caused by excess acid. I've written about him quite a few times over the last several years. For instance, he amused me when he declared that cancers are all liquids, and this liquid is the "toxic acidic waste product of metabolism or energy consumption." In fact, he goes beyond that by saying that the tumor making up the cancer is the body's protective mechanism to encapsulate "spoiled" or "poisonous" cells. And what…
oracknows | March 13, 2012There are quite a few reasons why I blog. After all, to crank out between 500 and 3,000 words a day, with an average of somewhere around 1,500 by my reckoning) takes quite a commitment. One of the main reasons that I do this is to combat the irrationality that permeates the world, and, since I know medicine, I tend to concentrate mostly on medicine, although I certainly do not limit myself to medicine. Still, over the last seven years I've noticed myself writing less and less about other topics and more and more about medicine. It's been quite a while, for instance, since I've written about…
oracknows | March 6, 2012If there's one thing that practitioners of dubious cancer therapies rely upon, it's testimonials. If there's one such practitioner who really, really relies on testimonials, it's Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, founder of the Burzynski Clinic. Dr. Burzynski is known for what he refers to as "antineoplaston" therapy (which he massively oversells and is currently rebranding as sodium phenylbutyrate) and a highly dubious "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy." The results of these testimonials are patients from all over the world organizing fundraisers, or, as I put it, harnessing the generosity…
oracknows | March 4, 2012A fascination with quackery was one of the things that inspired me to start this blog. Some of it was disbelief that anyone could take some of the modalities that I write about seriously. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples of this reaction was when I first learned that there were people who are actually antivaccine. I'm sorry (well, no I'm not), antivaccine views are utter hogwash, and there's no good evidence that they they cause autism. There aren't fetal parts in vaccines, nor are there deadly toxins. What chemicals that are there are not dangerous. Moving on to the broader area of…
oracknows | March 2, 2012I was originally going to write about an amazing article that appeared in the NEJM today, but then, as happens all too often, something more compelling caught my eye. Unfortunately, it's compelling in exactly the wrong way. It's infuriating and saddening, all at the same time. It's also yet another example of how it's so very, very difficult to blog about these cases. Yes, unfortunately, it's Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski again in the news, and this time around he's managed to snare yet another unfortunate family into believing the hype about his "antineoplastons," his "personalized, gene-targeted…
oracknows | March 1, 2012I've always been reluctant to attribute antiscientific attitudes to one political persuasion or another--and justly so, or so I thought. While it's true that antiscience on the right is definitely more prominent these days, with the Republican candidates conducting virtual seminars on how to deny established science. Evolution? They don't believe in it because, apparently, Jesus told them not to. Anthropogenic global warming? they don't buy that, either, because to admit that human activity is resulting in significant climate change would be to be forced to concede that industry isn't an…
oracknows | February 28, 2012Yesterday was a rough day for me; so I'll be uncharacteristically brief today.
As I've pointed out time and time again, these days, advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) don't like it so much anymore when their preferred quackery is referred to as "CAM." Now the preferred term has--shall we say?--evolved to a happy term designed to paint their woo as being co-equal with real medicine: "integrative medicine" in a way that the term "CAM" does not. After all, CAM is "complementary," which implies that it's subsidiary, the icing on the cake so to speak, and it's "alternative…