quackery
oracknows | March 18, 2009It's probably an understatement to say that I've been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers' money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of highly implausible (one might even say magical) modalities gives these modalities a patina of scientific respectability that they do not deserve, especially given that, even under the most favorable conditions possible, they routinely fail to demonstrate any efficacy above and beyond that of a…
oracknows | March 9, 2009
Regular readers of this blog know pretty much what I think of Jenny McCarthy. In brief, she's an opportunistic, scientifically ignorant but media-savvy twit whose hubris leads her to believe that her Google University education, coupled with her personal anecdotal experience, render her proclamations that vaccines cause autism and that "biomedical" quackery can cure it more convincing than all that boring science, epidemiology, and clinical trials. Indeed, her critical thinking skills are so poor that she was once a huge booster of the "Indigo Child" movement, but had to try to purge the…
oracknows | March 9, 2009
PZ's muscling in on my territory. Apparently, ruling the Darwinian, creationist-destroying atheist cephalopod blogging world isn't enough, and he has to start moving in on medicine. No problem, given that this time around he brought some rather interesting woo to my attention, suggesting it as perhaps a suitable topic for Your Friday Dose of Woo called God's Answer to Cancer. Besides, it's PZ's birthday; so as a birthday present, instead of reposting the same silly picture that I have for the last two years, I'll simply link to him now and add, oh, perhaps 1% to his traffic total for today…
oracknows | March 1, 2009Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) owes me a new irony meter.
I'll explain in a minute, but first you have to know why I even give a rodent's posterior about Harkin. As you may recall, no single legislator in the U.S. has done more to damage the cause of science- and evidence-based medicine than Tom Harkin. It was through his efforts that the National Institutes of Health, despite the fact that its scientists were not agitating for it, had the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) rammed down its throat, first as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) and then, when…
oracknows | February 26, 2009Busted!
All right, I give up. Since I've been sucked into the whole vaccine thing again after only one day away, I might as well highlight this simultaneously amusing and depressing tidbit. Earlier today, I wrote about a coordinated attack by the antivaccine movement on the Autism Omnibus decision two weeks ago. Given that it involved Generation Rescue, Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Deirdre Imus and her eirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology, the Huffington Post, Age of Autism, and various other antivaccine activists, I thought it pretty obvious that…
oracknows | February 25, 2009Over the last few days, it seems to me, I've been blogging so much about antivaccine lunacy that I was beginning to wonder whether I should rename the blog "Respectfully Insolent Antivaccine Slapdowns." As good as it's been to dwell on seeing the antivaccine movement suffer two major setbacks in 2009 even before we've reached the end of February, it's time to move on for a while; that is, unless the antivaccine movement does or writes something stupid enough to tempt my attention back. In the meantime, as I get back into the swing of blogging again, I haven't yet gone through my pile of…
oracknows | February 24, 2009Alright, I know that, after yesterday's epic post (which was long even by Orac-ian standards), I said that I was going to try to get away from vaccine blogging for a while. I lied. Well, not really. At that time I really did mean it. But then I came across something that I just couldn't leave alone.
Regular readers of this blog know my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, namely that he is a fraud, a quack, a charlatan, and a danger to the health of autistic children and public health in general. There is, as documented in my post and elsewhere, abundant evidence to support my opinion. But apparently…
denialism | February 23, 2009It's almost like a bad Yakov Smirnoff joke, "In America you test therapies in animals before giving them to humans, in Russia..." All I can do is wonder, what were they thinking? Injecting stem cells into a kid's spinal fluid to correct a genetic disorder? Are they insane?
Stem cells, in particular embryonic and fetal stem cells, are useful because they represent cells that are less differentiated than the cells that are working at specific functions throughout your body. Another result of being stem cells is that they are able to divide and proliferate without differentiating or…
oracknows | February 23, 2009One thing that's become apparent to me so far in 2009 is that, while 2008 was the year of the antivaccinationist, 2009 is already shaping up to be a very bad year for antivaccinationists. A very bad year indeed, and this is a very, very good thing--if it can be sustained.
But first, let's take a look at last year. In 2008, Jenny McCarthy was the new and fresh celebrity face of the movement that believes that autism and all manner of other neurodevelopmental disorders are caused by vaccines and that the government and big pharma are suppressing The Truth. She had emerged in the fall of 2007…
terrasig | February 19, 2009The complicity of revered academic institutions in the promotion of pseudoscience today takes another step forward.
The University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (USP), known formerly as the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (PCP&S), will bestow an honorary Doctor(ate) of Science on John A Borneman, III, to celebrate their Founders' Day.
From the university press release:
Borneman has spent his lifetime committed to the development and regulation of homeopathic medicine within the United States. He is the third of four generations of "John Bornemans" to attend the Philadelphia…
terrasig | February 16, 2009I could write a post every other week, at minimum, on dietary supplements adulterated with prescription drugs - against federal law, but easy to do with bulk pharmaceuticals available from overseas and no independent product purity oversight.
But here's a new one from the Key West Citizen:
Acupuncturist arrestedAn acupuncturist who operates a business on Duck Avenue was arrested Thursday on three
felony charges. Ashley Hoyt, 45, was charged with fraud/impersonation and two counts of obtaining a controlled substance through forgery.
Hoyt operates her business Ashley Hoyt Inc. at 3420 Duck Ave…
oracknows | February 15, 2009What's an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I've pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned before, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. At the time, I thought that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to apply the scientific method to the…
oracknows | February 10, 2009I'm not as big a fan of Keith Olbermann as I used to be. Indeed, sometimes he strikes me as the liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, not to mention a blowhard. However, occasionally, he still has it, and when he's on, no one skewers the dishonest better than he does. For instance, after a media flack and the usual inclusion of Bill O'Reilly as runners up, meet Andrew Wakefield, the Worst Person in the World for February 10, 2009:
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
That about sums it up right now.
I wonder how long before the antivaccinationist loons…
oracknows | February 10, 2009Poor Jeni Barnett.
You remember Jeni Barnett, don't you? She's the U.K. radio host whose ill-informed rants against vaccines Ben Goldacre exposed so gloriously last week. Unfortunately, the price Ben paid consisted of threats of legal action for "copyright infringement" in the form of his having posted audio of the relevant segment of Barnett's show. Yes, LBC, the radio station on which Barnett's show runs, threatened to sue, forcing Ben to take down the audio. However, as almost always happens when a blogger is threatened in such a manner, the specter of legal action led to the audio files…
oracknows | January 30, 2009
Sometimes I come across something so bizarre, so utterly wrong, that my mind reels in confusion and amazement, not to mention horror, that anyone can actually think or write something something like it. In fact, for a moment I considered offering up this one bit of horrifically inspired craziness up as an installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo, but I decided against it. The reason, I'm afraid, is the same reason that I've considered some bits of woo previously for this "honor" but then ultimately declined and covered them as normal posts, dripping with my usual brand of Respectful and not-…
terrasig | January 28, 2009This article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal has led me to revisit and repost an old essay I had at the old place on 6 January 2006. The article addresses Oscillococcinum, an extract of the liver and heart of the Muscovy duck that is diluted so many times that, thankfully, it contains no duck organs but only water, and is then packaged into degradable beads. This product is sold by the French company, Boiron, to prevent colds and flu and you can find this stuff sold at Whole Foods and other "health" stores. There is even a children's product by the same name but I have no idea how one…
oracknows | January 12, 2009The seemingly never-ending quest of advocates of unscientific medicine, the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement is to convince policy makers, patients, and physicians that, really and truly, it no longer deserves the qualifier of "alternative," that it is in fact mainstream and even "scientific." That very search for respectability without accountability is the very reason why "alternative" medicine originally morphed into CAM in order to soften the "alternative" label a decade or two ago. Increasingly, however, advocates of such highly implausible medical…
oracknows | December 15, 2008Several months ago, I wrote a post about the experimentation with acupuncture by an Air Force physician, Col. Robert Niemtzow. In the post, I started with an admittedly exaggerated vignette--a story, if you will--of a soldier whose leg was shredded by a mortar in battle. When the medic came to treat his wounds and get him ready for transport, this soldier was in for a surprise, because after applying a tourniquet to his leg, this medic offered him not morphine for his pain but acupuncture. At the time, the military acupuncture program spearheaded by Col. Niemtzow was not proposing anything…
terrasig | August 20, 2008Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog.
Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers:
For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…
terrasig | June 18, 2008This link is just to quickly follow up on yesterday's post, "FDA Warns Individuals and Firms to Stop Selling Fake Cancer 'Cures'." The US FDA has specifically listed those companies and individuals as well as their specific products that were cited in yesterday's action:125 Fake Cancer "Cures" Consumers Should Avoid
And for more information to share with your family, friends, patients, colleagues, etc:Beware of Online Cancer Fraud
This latter post is of great general value for the lay public to detect red flags for fraudulent cancer treatment or prevention products as well as some general…