There have been some disturbing rumors circulating about Dr. Rolando Arafiles, the Texas doctor who enlisted a local sheriff to harass and ultimately prosecute local nurses. The nurses filed anonymous complaints with the state medical board about Arafiles' practices, and one of them is now in court facing felony charges for doing her job.
One of the complaints that nurse Anne Mitchell registered was regarding Dr. Arafiles alleged that he was hawking supplements to patients. While this is not necessarily illegal, it is ethically questionable, and if the patients were in the ER and not under his care, that would be a bad thing indeed.
Now, my initial stance on supplements is usually negative, but since further specifics weren't available, I withheld judgment, at least in writing. But now Arafiles' own words show us just how scary this guy is (and to thicken the plot further, court filings allege that the sheriff in this case is actually in the supplement business with Arafiles---a whopping conflict of interest).
Blogger Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority has done the legwork to uncover some of these disturbing connections. Among some of the most disturbing revelations:
Dr. Arafiles has appeared on infomercials on "God's Learning Channel" about so-called Morgellons syndrome, a form of delusions of parasitosis. Arafiles has aligned himself with Randy Wymore and Marc Neumann, two big boosters of this non-disease:
Arafiles appears from this video to be one of the doctors who tells patients what they want to hear, instead of the truth. But even more cynically, he tells patients they have this non-disease, and then sells them worthless "cures" such as colloidal silver.
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OT but I assume your podcast is defunct? I was a big fan, btw. I've linked to Orac's post about this hideous story on my FB page as well as to the TX Nurses association defense fund. I encourage all FBers to do the same.
The video doesn't work. It says it's private. I guess they didn't like the attention?
Dear PalMD,
I take great exception to the way you refer to Morgellons Disease as a "non-disease." This disease is currently being studied by the CDC and the results have not yet been publicly released. You may want to save yourself some embarassment by using a little less definitive language on a currently undefined condition as non-existant.
The study is easily found on the CDC's website under "unexplained dermopathy."
Thank you
Ola,
La maladie du morgellon est hélas bien réelle. Le silver colloidal et l'homéopathie donnent de bons résultats au niveau des symptômes. Ce docteur a bien raison d'en prescrire. Avec le morgellon la médecine traditionnelle est impuissante.
Peut etre, la "medecine" traditionnelle est impuissante parce que le morgellon n'existe pas.