complementary and alternative medicine
Sharyl Attkisson and CBS News: Lying by omission about the murder of autistic teen Alex Spourdalakis
oracknows | September 1, 2013The damaged done by the antivaccine movement is primarily in how it frightens parents out of vaccinating using classic denialist tactics of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Indeed, as has been pointed out many times before, antivaccinationists are often proud of their success in discouraging parents from vaccinating, with one leader of the antivaccine movement even going to far as to characterize his antivaccine "community, held together with duct tape and bailing wire," as being in the "early to middle stages of bringing the U.S. vaccine program to its knees." Meanwhile, just…
oracknows | August 30, 2013I was depressed yesterday. I've been on vacation this week (staycation, actually, as I stayed at home and didn't go on any trips); so you would think it would take a lot to depress me. It did. Scott Gavura over at Science-Based Medicine wrote about how another once-proud academic medical center, the University of Toronto, is letting the Trojan horse that is "integrative medicine" into the halls of its medical school and school of pharmacy. As I frequently say, much to the annoyance of advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine," what "integrative…
oracknows | August 27, 2013If there's one thing antivaccinationists hate having pointed out to them, it's that they are antivaccine. If you really want to drive an antivaccinationist up the wall, point out that they are antivaccine. Sure, there are a few antivaccinationists who openly self-identify as antivaccine and are even proud of it, but most of them realize that society frowns upon them—as well it should given how antivaccinationists are responsible for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. Moreover, most antivaccine activists really believe that vaccines are harmful. They're wrong, of course, but that doesn'…
oracknows | August 26, 2013About ten or twelve years ago, back when I was in essence, a newly minted skeptic and public supporter of science-based medicine, I was so naive. There I was, having just discovered the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and confronting the original wretched hive of scum, quackery, and pseudoscience, and I thought I had seen everything. Yes, I realize these days that, even a decade on I haven't seen everything and will never see everything, but back then I couldn't believe that, having learned for the first time about coffee enemas, various forms of cancer quackery, each seemingly more…
oracknows | August 23, 2013About a week and a half ago, I wrote about a local oncologist who was arrested by the FBI for massive Medicare fraud in which physician involved diagnosed cancers that weren't there, gave chemotherapy to patients who either didn't have cancer or were in remission and thus didn't need it, and had developed a self-referral system to his own imaging facility. The story of this oncologist, Dr. Farid Fata, founder of a very large multi-location oncology practice (Michigan Hematology Oncology), made international news, which is exactly not the sort of coverage Detroit needs right now, given all the…
oracknows | August 21, 2013Chiropractic is supposed to be the "respectable" face of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM). At least, that's what chiropractors want you to think. After all, chiropractors are licensed in all 50 states and thus their specialty has the imprimatur of the state to make it appear legitimate. Unfortunately, chiropractors are, as I have said so many times before, physical therapists with delusions of grandeur—and poorly trained as physical therapists at that. They just can't restrict themselves to the musculoskeletal system and can't resist pontificating about and treating systemic…
oracknows | August 20, 2013To say that I haven't been much of a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) throughout the years is a gross understatement. If you want to see the depths of my—shall we say?—lack of enthusiasm for NCCAM, feel free to type "NCCAM" in the search box of this blog and in particular look for posts that have "NCCAM" somewhere in their titles. It won't take you long to find posts by yours truly with titles as awesome as NCCAM: I say we take off and nuke the entire center from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure and NCCAM in the news: Why does it still exist?…
oracknows | August 20, 2013Recently, I got an e-mail from someone who had just discovered my blog that made me think a bit, which is usually a good thing. At least, in this case it was. Basically, this reader asked me a question I hadn't been asked in a very long time and hadn't thought about in a very long time, specifically: If I had to pick just one and only one, what is the single most characteristic difference between alternative medicine quackery and science-based medicine? True, there are several key differences, and I'm sure many of you could tick off a list of five to ten characteristic differences without…
oracknows | August 15, 2013Yet another zombie antivaccine meme rises from the grave to join its fellows
Oh, no, not again!
It was just two days ago that I decided to take on a zombie antivaccine meme that just keeps rising from the dead over and over and over again. I'm referring to the claim that Andrew Wakefield has been exonerated by legal rulings compensating children for alleged MMR-induced vaccine injury. As I pointed out, this particular claim is a steaming, stinking turd with no science (or even facts) behind it. As I further explained, even if a court rules that vaccines cause autism, that is not scientific…
oracknows | August 14, 2013As you've probably figured out, I like testimonials. Well, maybe "like' is the wrong world. I'm interested in them, something that goes way, way back into the deepest, darkest mists of blog time, as my earliest "epic" post was about alternative cancer cure testimonials. With that post as a start, I've come back to the topic from time to time. But it's not just cancer. There are testimonials for all manner of cures for all manner of diseases. Rare has it been that I've encountered a testimonial that was really convincing evidence of an anti-tumor effect (or anti-disease) effect due to an…
oracknows | August 13, 2013No mas! No mas!
I surrender. Even though what I'm about to blog about is over a week old (ancient history in blog time), the combined force of you, my readers, sending this link to me and my seeing it on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere compels me. Oh, I resisted. I read it and thought it so dumb, just a variation on the antivaccine nonsense I've deconstructed more times than I care to remember, and not even a particularly interesting variant, that I didn't really want to blog about it. But sometimes duty calls, and I have to dive into a cesspit that I'd rather avoid. So here we go. If you're…
oracknows | August 11, 2013Eric Merola alternates between offending me and making me laugh at his antics. Since it's been a couple weeks since I've written anything about the Houston doctor who claims to be able to do so much better against many forms of cancer than conventional medicine, I have to express a bit of gratitude to Mr. Merola for giving me today's topic for blogging. Mr. Merola, as you recall, produced two incredibly bad and deceptive movies lionizing that very same Houston cancer doctor as a brave maverick genius who's been kept down by The Man (i.e., the Texas Medical Board, the FDA, the National Cancer…
oracknows | August 8, 2013Whenever I take a day off from blogging, as I did yesterday because I was too busy going out with my wife on Wednesday night to celebrate my birthday, I not infrequently find an embarrassment of riches to blog about the next day. Sometimes it's downright difficult to decide what to write about. So it was as I sat down last night to do a bit of blogging. I briefly considered writing about Suzanne Somers leaping into the fray to defend Stanislaw Burzynski, and maybe I still will. On the other hand, it's standard boilerplate Burzynski apologetics, not even very interesting; so maybe I won't.…
oracknows | August 6, 2013As supporters of science-based medicine know, in the woo-sphere, there is only One True Cause of Autism, and that is vaccines. At least, so it would seem. The idea that vaccines cause autism is based largely on anecdotes tinged with confirmation bias and selective memory mixed with a massive confusing of correlation with causation whereby the increase in autism prevalence over the last twenty years appears to correlate with an expansion of the vaccine schedule. Of course, as skeptics know, correlation does not necessarily equal causation, and I've often asked the question why it has to be the…
oracknows | August 6, 2013In medical school, or so we're told, aspiring young doctors are taught the fundamentals of medicine. What we science-based physicians usually mean by "fundamentals" includes the basic science necessary to understand human health and disease, the mechanism by which human disease develops, and the basics of how to treat it. We also learn a way of thinking about diagnosis and treatment, a systematic approach to differential diagnosis and how to hone in on a diagnosis based on history, physical findings, and imaging and laboratory tests. Fundamentals are important in any profession. Being a…
oracknows | August 4, 2013Here we go again.
The "Holy Grail" (well, a "holy grail") of the antivaccine movement is to have a "vaccinated versus unvaccinated" study performed, or, as it's frequently abbreviated a "vaxed verus unvaxed" study. They believe that such a study will confirm their fixed belief that vaccines are the root of nearly all health issues children suffer today, particularly autism and autism spectrum disorders. In particular, they believe that a "vaxed versus unvaxed" study would demonstrate once and for all that vaccines are the cause of the "autism epidemic." Hilariously, a few years back, the…
oracknows | August 1, 2013After a brief foray yesterday into discussing atheism, tone deafness, and the Holocaust (how's that for an odd combination?), I'm ready to get back to more—shall we say?—conventional topics. One topic that's been popping up at that other wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (one of the ones other than Age of Autism) reveals something about the antivaccine movement that I find educational. Specifically, it has to do with how, once a parent has drunk deeply of the antivaccine Kool Aid, she behaves in a rather cult-like manner. I'll show you what I mean, and the post that best…
oracknows | July 29, 2013You might find this hard to believe, but sometimes I find the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to be useful. Obviously, I don't find it useful in the same way that its editors think it is useful. Those paragons of the arrogance of ignorance and fetishism of hatred of science-based medicine don't actually teach me anything about vaccines and autism. The torrents of pseudoscience, quackery, conspiracy mongering, and hostility do, however, serve their purpose. They keep my finger on the pulse of the "autism biomed" movement and what the latest "autism biomed" quackery du jour is. It looks…
oracknows | July 28, 2013One of the great things about this blog is the community that has built itself up over the last eight and a half years of this blog's existence. It's a truly amazing an humbling thing to me. I can't believe that such an incredibly smart and talented bunch of advocates, gadflies, and quackbusters. True, I've also had my share of trolls, most frequently of the antivaccine variety, but you guys all take care of them so well that I only seldom feel the need to intervene myself. That's why, from time to time, I like to try to intentionally (rather than unintentionally) spark a bit of conversation…
oracknows | July 26, 2013Like yesterday's post, this will be a post that references our favorite dubious cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski but is not primarily about him. However, given the nature of the subject matter, it is impossible not to think of Burzynski, as comparisons are inevitable. Whereas yesterday all we were dealing with was a rather amusing "award" that Stanislaw Burzynski was awarded by a quack who had somehow conned a prominent Cardinal to give the Church's imprimatur on a Catholic medical order he wanted to resurrect to get other quacks to join, this week we're dealing with a serious subject:…