Quackery
oracknows | September 8, 2009Dr. Mark Hyman is famous as the "founder" of a form of woo known as "functional medicine." This new form of woo is...well, I'm not sure what it is, and neither are Wally Sampson (1, 2, 3, 4). Suffice it to say that it appears to be a serious grab bag of various forms of woo that, according to Dr. Hyman's website itself, involve environmental inputs, inflammation, hormones, gut & digestive health, detoxification, energy/mitochondria/oxidative stress, and, of course, "mind-body," whatever that means. No woo would be complete without mind-body, you know. Actually, no self-respecting woo…
oracknows | September 7, 2009Remember Daniel Hauser?
He's the the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who underwent one course of chemotherapy and then decided he wanted to pursue "alternative therapy" based on fear of chemotherapy and because of the influence of the faux Native American religion that his mother had taken up with. Ultimately, after a judge ordered Daniel's parents to make sure that Daniel received the chemotherapy and radiation therapy he needed, Daniel and his mother Colleen went on the lam, but ultimately Daniel's mother decided to turn herself in. As a result, Daniel began live-saving chemotherapy…
oracknows | September 7, 2009If there's been a theme running through this blog, it's been the importance of science and critical thinking. The main focus of this emphasis on skepticism, of course, has been medicine, which makes sense, given that I'm a doctor and a cancer researcher, but I don't limit myself to just medicine. However, as part of my emphasis on science-based medicine (SBM) as being the best methodology to provide the best patient care that we can, besides the random quackery deconstructions,
I've tended to harp on two topics over the years. First, there's the subject of what Dr. R. W. has called "…
oracknows | September 4, 2009So-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as it's now as frequently called, "integrative medicine" (IM) represents a hodge-podge of remedies that are mostly based on prescientific concepts about how the human body works and how disease attacks it. Homeopathy, through its concept of "like cures like" and law of contagion. The former in essence is a manifestation of the magical concept that "like produces like." Similarly, homeopathy's law of infinitesimals, in which serial dilutions to the point that there is unlikely to be a single molecule left of the substance thought to…
oracknows | August 31, 2009Last Thursday, I expressed dismay about an upcoming NBC news special, A Dose of Controversy, which is about a man who arguably caused more damage to public health than just about anyone in the last decade, namely Andrew Wakefield. Anyone who's a regular reader of this blog knows just what I think of Andrew Wakefield. I've made no secret of it; I have little but contempt for the man, whom I view as incompetent, dishonest, and a quack. Andrew Wakefield, as you may recall, is the British gastroenterologist who in 1998 published a study in The Lancet that claimed to find a link between the MMR…
oracknows | August 28, 2009It really and truly saddens me to have to do this.
The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto is one of the finest children's hospitals there is. Unfortunately, as I documented yesterday, the hospital has, either knowingly or unknowingly, lent its good name to the metastasis of the quackfest known as Autism One from its primary site in Chicago to a metastatic deposit sullying one of the finest cities in our fair neighbor to the north, Toronto. The metastasis is a secondary quackfest known as Autism One Canada, and, unfortunately, the SickKids Foundation and the Dalla Lana School of Public…
oracknows | August 26, 2009I realize that I've gotten into one of those runs where it seems that all I blog about is anti-vaccinationist loons, but, before trying once again to take a break from the madness, I had to go to the well one more time because this looks a bit frightening:
NBC News' Matt Lauer will take an unprecedented look at the emotional debate surrounding vaccines and the suggested link to autism on Sunday, August 30 at 7 p.m. ET with "Dose of Controversy." In the one-hour Dateline, Lauer speaks exclusively with Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 medical study was the first in the world to suggest a…
oracknows | August 25, 2009Geez, I wonder if Larry Moran knows about this. If he doesn't, I'm going to make sure that he does. I'm also guessing that he won't be pleased. He doesn't like pseudoscience at all. He detests "intelligent design" creationists. Based on that, I'm guessing that he won't like it at all to learn that the Canadian version of the autism "biomedical" antivaccine quackfest known as Autism One is metastasizing from its usual location in Chicago every Memorial Day to held at the University of Toronto in October, as this advertisement shows:
If you live in Canada, the Northeastern United States, the…
oracknows | August 24, 2009The anti-vaccine movement is nothing if not plastic. It "evolves" very rapidly in response to selective pressures applied to it in the form of science refuting its key beliefs. For instance, when multiple studies looking at the MMR vaccine and autism failed to confirm the myth that the MMR causes autism or "autistic enterocolitis," most recently late last year, it was not a problem to the anti-vaccine movement. Neither was it a major problem to the movement when multiple studies similarly failed to find a link between mercury in the preservative thimerosal that used to be in most childhood…
oracknows | August 23, 2009I must admit that I've never heard of Margerite Kelly. Apparently she's some sort of advice columnist for the Washington Post. Apparently she's also fairly clueless, if her column from last Friday is any indication. At least, she's clueless about autism. In her column Diagnosing Autism Is Never an Easy Process, she betrays a whole lot of ignorance about autism, autism treatments, and the quackery that is being sold to parents as a "cure" for autism.
A parent writes to Ms. Kelly about her two-year-old nephew, who is throwing tantrums and showing signs that concern her that he may be autistic.…
oracknows | August 22, 2009I know this one's been floating around the blogosphere for a while, but it finally made its way to me at a time when I needed something lighthearted and amusing:
Best quotes:
"Well, science doesn't know everything." Well, science knows it doesn't know anything, otherwise it would stop ... But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairytale most appeals to you."
..."nutritionist" isn't a protected term. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. "Dietitician" is the legally protected term. "Dietician" is like dentist, and "…
oracknows | August 21, 2009If there's one form of pseudoscientific health care (if you can call it that) that rests on the most risibly implausible tenets, I'd have to say that it's homeopathy. Either that, or homeopathy and various "energy medicine" modalities would have to fight it out in a no woo barred cage match to the death for the title of most scientifically ridiculous medical "therapy." Unfortunately, because of its history, where in the 1800s it was often actually as good or better than the "scientific" medicine of the time (mainly because homeopathy is nothing more than water--in essence doing nothing--and…
oracknows | August 19, 2009Time and time again, I've had requests from readers for good resources for countering the nonsense emanating from the anti-vaccine movement. Time and time again, I've pointed out sites like Every Child By Two and The Vaccine Education Center.
Now, thanks to the efforts of some friends of mine, especially Steve Novella, there is another handy dandy resource that was just announced today:
Vaccines and Autism on Science-Based Medicine
It includes a list of SBM posts about vaccines, an overview of the question, and a list of key studies. This page is a work in progress; so we appreciate any input…
oracknows | August 18, 2009Vacation or no vacation, something's bubbled up in the comments that I consider worth commenting about. If you remember (or even if you don't), about a week and a half ago I wrote about how Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, has let the mask drop. I entitled the post Dr. Bob Sears: Stealth anti-vaccinationist? This time around, I was half-tempted to remove the question mark, based on the comment of a commenter by the 'nym of Science Mom, who turned me on to this post by Dr. Bob in the forums of his website entitled Weekly Disclaimer about SM and…
oracknows | August 17, 2009Believe it or not, I happen to be on vacation this week. Fear not, it's a stay-at-home vacation (sometimes the best kind) and therefore my vacation doesn't mean I'll stop blogging. In fact, I consider blogging to be part of my recreation. What my vacation does mean is that I will probably slow down a bit and not do posts that force me to do a lot of background reading. It also means that, because I went to an actual rock concert last night (something I haven't done in years), not only did I sleep in a bit and therefore not have that post that usually goes up here by 8 or 9 AM, but I didn't…
oracknows | August 15, 2009It's amazing where anti-vaccine nuttery will metastasize to when you're not looking.
This time around, Tom Chick (who, I'm told but don't know for sure, is actually Jack Chick's son) warns us about a new Wii game by Ubisoft called Your Shape. It sounds as though it's nothing more than another of "personalized" exercise guides, but what it does have that other such exercise guides lack is a certifiably loony anti-vaccine wingnut as one of its "health experts." Indeed, as Tom points out, this is what Ubisoft says in its press release:
In addition to being the face of Your Shape featuring Jenny…
oracknows | August 13, 2009Let's face it, I've been at this "anti-antii-vax" thing for quite a while now. This December, this blog will have been in existence for five years. Even before that cold, gray Saturday afternoon nearly five years ago when, on a whim, I started up a blog on Blogspot that became the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence, I had been a regular presence on the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative for at least three years before that. There, besides quackery, I got my first taste of the lies of the anti-vaccine movement from the likes of denizens of the newsgroup like Jan Drew and Ilena…
oracknows | August 11, 2009While I've let myself get sucked into commenting on health care politics (well, not exactly "sucked in"; I was pissed off enough at the "Obama = Hitler" analogies that I enjoyed skewering some of the idiots making them), there's another issue that's popped up that I can't resist commenting on in my usual inimitable fashion. It comes from, of all places, this blog's favorite den of quackery propaganda, NaturalNews.com and from, of all places, one of our favorite wingnut politicians, a man who's been a tireless promoter of quackery in Congress for many years now.
That's right, Ron Paul's back,…
oracknows | August 7, 2009I'm soooo envious.
Why and of whom am I envious? I'll tell you. Phil Plait, a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer, attracts a more famous class of antivaccine loon. He's managed to attract Dr. Joe Mercola himself in the comments of a post about anti-vaccine zealots:
If you TRULY are interested in finding out the truth about this topic you are encouraged to attend the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccines in Washington DC in October.
http://www.nvic.org/Events/overview.aspx
The top experts in the world on this topic will be presenting and you can really understand the science rather than…
oracknows | August 7, 2009Dr. Bob Sears is the bane of science- and evidence-based pediatricians everywhere. As pediatrician Dr. John Snyder relates, whenever he hears a parent say "I was reading Dr. Sears" or sees a patient in his office holding a copy of Dr. Sears' The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, he knows what's coming next: Resistance to vaccination. It would be one thing if this resistance were based on evidence or science-based concerns about the safety of vaccination, but it's not. As Dr. Snyder explains, while playing the "open-minded" "tell both sides" gambit, Dr. Sears credulously…