Absurd medical claims
palmd | May 11, 2010Last week I gave you a refresher course on the invalid arguments used by altmed boosters. The Turf Battle Fallacy and Pharma Shill Gambit are classics for a number of reasons. The most amusing thing about these gambits is their hypocrisy. The alternative medicine movement is essentially a collection of businesses selling unproven supplements and interventions (not "therapies", as Steven Novella aptly observes).
Of course, that's an incomplete analysis. Altmed is also a religion, with zealous adherents. The arguments made by these adherents are never about the data, but about beliefs…
palmd | May 3, 2010I've been a bit busy lately and haven't been able to update you on some important developments in the field of imaginary diseases.
Update 1: Chronic Lyme Disease
So-called "chronic Lyme disease" (CLD) is a diverse constellation of symptoms which are often attributed to Lyme disease, but without objective evidence of infection with the organism that causes Lyme disease. Patient advocacy have been very active in insisting that reality conform to their beliefs, going so far as convincing the Connecticut Attorney General to investigate the Infectious Disease Society of America. As part of an…
palmd | April 30, 2010Dana Ullman is an idiot. Or maybe insane. I'm not sure which, but his latest article at the Huffington Post reveals such a severe defect in rational thought that it must be one or the other (charitably speaking). He calls it "Lies, Damn Lies (sic), and Medical Research," and the point of it is quite clear: Ullman calls himself an "expert in homeopathic medicine" (which is akin to being a unicorn veterinarian) and since he has never been able to show that his particular health religion has any validity, he lashes out futilely at reality.
His entire argument boils down to a profound…
palmd | April 29, 2010I've never liked Gary Null. Early in my blogging "career" I wasted thousands of words expressing my incredulity at his horrible health advice, his paranoid rants, and his shameless hucksterism. Then I saw something shiny and forgot about him for a while. But now blog bud Orac has ruined my reverie. He informs me that Gary Null took a dose of his own medicine---and nearly died.
As a compassionate human being, I can only hope he recovers quickly with no serious sequelae. As a physician, educator, and writer, I hope we can use this as an object lesson in the dangers of idiotic medical…
palmd | April 3, 2010Some crazy, currently unbloggable crap is going down around Casa Pal this week, so I'm going to have to open up a bloggy doggy bag for you. I have a nice piece in the works for Sunday or Monday which is brand, spanking new. This was originally published on 5/6/2009. --PalMD
Some bad ideas refuse to die. Others die and then come back to eat your brains. Of course, zombies don't just rise from the grave for no reason. They need some sort of animating principle, like meteors, puffer fish toxin, a voodoo priestess, or all three.
Brain-eating, measles-promoting zombies. Not pictured:…
palmd | March 31, 2010The recent arrests of the Hutaree cult here in Michigan are part of a tradition of militant separatism in this part of the country, beginning with the militia movements in the late 20th century and climaxing (hopefully) in the terrorist acts of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. This latest incident is interesting in that it appears to share some qualities of the militia movement, the Christian Identity movement, and the Tea Party movement (although what sorts of ideologic connections there really are will take some time to figure out.)
Cults in general scare me. They scare me not just…
palmd | March 24, 2010It has been alleged by Great Minds such as Jenny McCarthy (D.Goog.) that the US recommends far more vaccinations than other countries. Her precise statement was, "How come many other countries give their kids one-third as many shots as we do?" She put this into the context of wondering if our current vaccine schedule should be less rigid. The entire piece was filled with what could charitably called less-than-truthful assertions, but I'm not feeling that charitable: they are lies (or the rantings of an idiot, or the delusions of lunatic. There are probably other possibilities that I haven'…
palmd | March 17, 2010(This piece appears today at Science-Based Medicine and is re-posted here today because I like it and I'm lazy. --PalMD)
A couple of years ago, a number of us raised concerns about an "investigative reporter" at a Detroit television station. Â At the time I noted that investigative reporters serve an important role in a democracy, but that they can also do great harm, as when Channel 7's Steve Wilson parroted the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement. Â Wilson has since been canned but apparently, not much has changed. Â While performing my evening ablutions, I stumbled upon the latest…
palmd | February 13, 2010What constitutes quackery depends very much on how quackery is defined. If part of that definition is making false or unsubstantiated claims about a medical product you are selling, then Dr. Rolando Arifiles is a quack.
Dr Arafiles and his cronies in the Winkler County government may not realize is that this "internet" thing works both ways. It may increase your ability to sell fake cures, but it also opens you up to being discovered. Of course, increasing your profile by abusing the legal system to quiet critics doesn't help.
The FDA and FTC aren't too happy about the proliferation of…
palmd | February 10, 2010I get a lot of email asking me about various alternative therapies and supplements. A recurring theme on this blog has been the hyperbolic claims of alternative practitioners and supplement makers, and while I can't answer every email, I can at least address some of them in the blog. Supplements are often marketed using unsupported health claims to which is appended the Quack Miranda Warning, essentially allowing the makers to say that the pill will have such and such a benefit, while simultaneously denying any responsibility for the claim. Since the FDA isn't examining these claims, it's…
palmd | February 10, 2010There 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…
palmd | January 24, 2010Tragedy can bring out the best and the worst in humanity. The Haitian earthquake has seen an outpouring money (the most needed type of aid) and other emergency aid. A few days ago I pondered what sort of quackery would emerge to fill a need that doesn't exist.
Homeopaths responded, of course, and while clean water is always needed, clean water that comes with a fairy tale is not.
Every person that lands in Haiti to provide "aid" also brings a mouth to feed and a cloaca to empty, so every body who goes better have a lot of value to deliver. That's why the arrival of Scientology…
palmd | January 11, 2010The shamans of stupidity over at Huffington Post recently wrote a completely insane article whining about how unfair it is that science keeps winning. Orac did his usual best to illustrate how bizarre these folks are (and how wrong). But I also love the comments to the piece. They were an interesting mix of jaws hitting the floor in shock at the inanity, and "crank magnetism", as other idiots piled on science, which despite its successes must somehow bow to an alternative magical belief system. This comment was the best (broken down for your convenience):
Having been trained in the…
palmd | January 10, 2010An interesting discussion has been going on over at TerraSig. Abel used his expertise in pharmacology to help explain some of the nearly-inexplicable events that led to the injury of dozens and deaths of several participants in a sweat lodge ceremony. The investigation led to a Michigan physician who runs a "men's health" practice and pharmacy. The leader of the sweat lodge ceremony was apparently found to have prescription medications prescribed by and purchased from this doctor.
The medications were putatively for "anti-aging" and "low testosterone" treatments. It would clearly be…
palmd | January 7, 2010As we mentioned earlier, Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the infectious disease promotion group NVIC, is suing a bunch of people for "defaming" her.
Today she posted a piece at Age of Autism entitled, "2010 Needs A Fearless Conversation About Vaccination." She is suing a nationally-known vaccine expert, the reporter who interviewed him, and the magazine which ran the story about vaccination.
So much for fearless conversation.
palmd | December 30, 2009The fake doctors at HuffPo are at it again. This time, Patricia Fitzgerald is writing about the "Top 10 Healing Foods of the Decade." The article has just enough correct information in it to be exceptionally wrong.
One of the more ironic aspects to this is her quoting Michael Pollan. I have problems with some of Pollan's ideas, but I like his little saying, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." When he first wrote this in a New York Times piece, he was arguing against "nutritionism", the idea that you can break foods down into their components and then consume the component…
palmd | December 30, 2009Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is reportedly a doctor, although according to her website, she no longer practices medicine in any recognizable way. Perhaps that's why she utters completely idiotic statements such as this one pointed out to me by Brother Orac:
Study these numbers. We've had SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu. On average, approx. 190 children/year die from the flu. Considering there are about 62M kids under the 14 years of age in the US, this is NOT "statistically signficant" and should not even make the radar screen. See how they manipulate parents into vaccinations?
Next year, PLEASE do not…
palmd | December 28, 2009I've never understood food fads. Michael Pollan's maxim, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," has always seemed like reasonable, practical advice. Maybe it's a disease of plenty---we have so much food, we have to find new ways to conceptualize it. Unless you live in an inner city, you can go to any market and find large quantities of foodstuffs, both healthy and unhealthy. Food in this country is cheap and plentiful and, for the most part, safe. Self-"regulated" industrialized production has contributed to problems with bacterial contamination of meats and produce, but food- and…
palmd | December 23, 2009Wouldn't it be cool if after we died we didn't...die? Just like in the fairy tales, we could go to some place where we play harps on clouds and eat marshmallows for breakfast; we could play with our dead dogs, and somehow manage to live in harmony with all of our dead lovers. Unless we go to a place of flames and unending agony. Or maybe we become squid-like creatures in the oceans of Titan--all are equally (un)likely.
Except to those so mired in thanatophobia and fantasy that they can no longer reason properly. It's not like this is a new problem, but my eyes were bleeding after…
palmd | December 14, 2009After reading the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Physician's idiotic flu handout I decided to see what our American naturopaths had to say about flu. It's not good. The most effective way to prevent influenza is through vaccination. Good hand hygiene probably helps. Nothing else really does, but that has never stopped quacks from making wildly bogus claims.
The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians has a page on "preparing for flu season naturally" which of course fails to mention the most effective prophylactic treatment, presumably because it's "unnatural". I'm not…