complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | January 22, 2013While I'm using my blog as an announcement platform today, I would be remiss not to mention that tomorrow is Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's birthday, and the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients are still raising money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital in order to try to get Dr. Burzynski to do something good for cancer patients for a change. The beauty of it is that, even if Burzynski declines, as is likely, there'll still be a nice big donation to a real cancer center that does real good for children with cancer, which is in marked contrast to Burzynski. Harriet Hall has joined in the…
oracknows | January 20, 2013As I contemplated how I wanted to start the blogging week, I thought that I should probably again plug Bob Blaskiewicz's campaign to provide Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who for the last 35 years has been treating patients diagnosed with advanced stage and terminal cancers with something he calls antineoplastons (ANPs), with a most excellent "gift" for his 70th birthday. This he does despite the astounding lack of compelling evidence that ANPs are actually effective against cancer, none of which stops him from charging patients exorbitant amounts of money, sometimes upwards of…
oracknows | January 17, 2013Even though I've been at this skeptical blogging thing, particularly about "alternative" medicine, so long (eight years now) that I think I've seen it all, that nothing the quacks do can shock me any more. It's a foolish hubris, I admit, but, I hope, an understandable one after over eight years of blogging multiple times a week about science, skepticism, and quackery that can and has made my head spin. It is true that encountering something that gets my attention and truly knocks me on my posterior is getting rarer and rarer. It's not so rare that it doesn't still happen every now and then:…
oracknows | January 17, 2013I sense another disturbance in the antivaccine Force.
Yes, I realize that it was just a couple of days ago that I sensed a previous disturbance rippling through the antivaccine Force. That's when antivaccinationists brought David Kirby out of mothballs from whatever journalistic slime pit he's currently residing in to use every trick at his disposal to convince you that somehow the government has compensated two families of children for vaccine-induced autism when in fact he's playing the same game he's always played: Claiming that if any child who's ever been compensated by the National…
oracknows | January 16, 2013This is going to be uncharacteristically short, for me that is. I sometimes listen to NPR as I drive home from work, and I happened to be doing just that yesterday evening when I heard a story about the new Institute of Medicine report on vaccines and the vaccine schedule. (Stay tuned for my post on that in a few hours.) The report was crisp and summarized the findings of the report quite well. Then, at around what I know to be the three minute mark (now that the audio is up) I heard something most dismaying. Yes, believe it or not, for the "other side" of an issue for which there is no other…
oracknows | January 15, 2013Now that Trine Tsouderos no longer works for the Chicago Tribune, there aren't that many reliable generalist medical/science reporters around any more. For example, here in the U.S. there's Marilyn Marchionne at the AP, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, and then there's Sharon Begley, who used to be at Newsweek but is now at Reuters I'm having trouble thinking of others with national prominence, other than Nancy Snyderman, who has recently profoundly disappointed me with a fawning report on "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that made it seem to be the greatest thing since sliced…
oracknows | January 14, 2013I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine Force, which is, of course, by definition the Dark Side.
Whenever I sense such a disturbance, there are a number of possible reactions that it provokes in me. One such reaction is alarm, as when antivaccine activists say something that is just clever enough to sound plausible enough that it might cause trouble. It never is, of course, but it often takes a close reading and some research to figure out what the game is and deconstruct the nonsense. Sometimes, my reaction is amusement, as when an antivaccine activist says something that is so hilariously…
oracknows | January 13, 2013Eric Merola doesn't much like me.
Actually, no one who is an apologist for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a.k.a. "Stan the Man," who over 30 years ago unleashed antineoplastons on unsuspecting cancer patients, much likes me. It's not surprising. As you might recall, antineoplastons are chemicals that Burzynski found in the urine of cancer patients and that (or so he claims). Claiming that antineoplastons were endogenous inhibitors of tumor growth made by the body and of which cancer patients are deficient, thus allowing cancer to grow, he embarked on a campaign to treat cancer patients with them.…
oracknows | January 13, 2013...you've received some well-deserved recognition!
I can't think of a more deserving up-and-coming antivaccine activist to be inducted into this most "prestigious" of groups of American Loons! I've written about Stagliano's science- and logic-challenged posts many times over the last few years, but it's good to see that others have noticed as well. From the citation:
Diagnosis: Ignorant, ardent loon who are on the verge of taking the anti-vaxx movement well into TimeCube territory. The fact that she is unable to avoid a fallacy in every other sentence she writes should not be taken to…
oracknows | January 9, 2013About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the "triumph" of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" is quackery (which it most certainly is), it doesn't matter because allegedly it's making patients better because its practitioners take the time to talk to them in a way that most doctors do not. In brief, the article was…
oracknows | January 8, 2013If there's one thing about "alternative" medicine, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), or "integrative medicine" that's always puzzled me, it's just how gullible some practitioners must think their clients are. In some cases, they might know their customers every bit as well as a car salesman knows his clients or an author knows his readers, but in actuality most people who fall for alt-med are no more gullible than average. However, some words seem to impress more than ever, as promoters of alt-med scramble to appropriate impressive-sounding science terms into their woo. I've…
oracknows | January 6, 2013Today's post will be relatively brief (for an Orac post, that is). The reason is that it's some very sad news that depresses me greatly. It's also because I don't want to distract too much from the announcement I'd like to highlight. About a month and a half ago, around the same time that Stanislaw Burzynski managed to get off on a technicality, with the Texas Medical Board agreeing to dismiss its case against Burzynski because it apparently couldn't go after him for treatment decisions made by doctors he hired, I met an unfortunate girl named Amelia Saunders. Amelia had been diagnosed with a…
oracknows | January 3, 2013It is an indisputable axiom that everything tastes better with bacon. Well, almost everything. As much as I love bacon, whenever I watch one of those cooking competition shows on the Food Network, like Iron Chef America, in which the secret ingredient is bacon, I can't figure out how putting bacon in ice cream works. OK, so maybe it's almost an axiom. There are a few exceptions. But the fact remains that the vast majority of foods do taste better with some bacon.
Of course, the problem with bacon is that it's widely accepted that it's not particularly good for you. Because it is a processed…
oracknows | January 2, 2013If there's one claim that practitioners of "holistic" medicine frequently make, it's that "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" or whatever the term du jour for the combining of quackery with science-based medicine is these days is allegedly so much better than "conventional" or "allopathic" medicine (or whatever disparaging term "holistic practitioners" prefer) at preventing disease and keeping people healthy. The claim is a load of fetid nonsense, of course, but it sounds convincing on the surface. After all, CAM practitioners have been disturbingly…
oracknows | January 1, 2013That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick used by all "psychic mediums" from time immemorial, long before the current crop of celebrity psychic mediums, such as John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and the "Long Island Medium" Theresa Caputo, discovered how much fame and fortune they could accrue by scamming the current generation of the credulous. Speaking of Theresa Caputo…
oracknows | December 30, 2012Homeopathy amuses me. Homeopaths amuse me as well, which is why I'm resurrecting this post. It was originally published elsewhere a few years ago and somehow never crossposted here. So if it seems a bit dated, fear not; Orac hasn't fired up his Tarial cells and managed to go back in time. Now, I realize that lately, due to my work schedule, I've had a tendency to crosspost too much between this blog and my other less "insolent" blogging locale. I know that and plan to try to do much less of it in 2013.
But it's not 2013, and I'm still sort of on vacation.
Besides, I have a very good reason to…
oracknows | December 28, 2012Regular readers have probably noticed that I'm taking it easy this week, at least compared to my usual ridiculous level of output. It is, after all, the holidays, and last night I even went to see my cousin's son play basketball and then hung out at the local Knights of Columbus hall. (No, it didn't spontaneously explode upon my entering it.) I'll get back to regular blogging after the 1st of the year. Between now and then I'll be uncharacteristically mellow and brief, because even a clear Plexiglass box of blinking lights needs a break now and then to recharge the ol' Tarial cells. Not that…
oracknows | December 26, 2012I hope that you and yours are having a fantastic holiday season thus far. Yesterday, we had a great family gathering, after which I settled down to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special; all in all, a most excellent Christmas Day. Unfortunately, towards the later part of the day, someone out there sent me an e-mail and, fool that I was, I actually read it. (Who is sending e-mails about bad science to random bloggers on Christmas evening, I ask?) So when I woke up this morning, fool again that I am, I actually read the danged thing.
Of course, I should have known that this was going to be…
oracknows | December 24, 2012I certainly don't even try to keep secret my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the measles back to the UK, thanks to his bad science, for which he was well-paid by trial lawyers and his falsification of data and scientific fraud. Since 1998, when Wakefield first published his fraudulent (and now retracted) little case series in The Lancet, his work and his personality have dominated the antivaccine movement in the UK. After he moved to Texas to ply his antivaccine quackery here in the US, he soon became a…
oracknows | December 21, 2012Quacks despise science-based medicine in general, but there are certain specialties that they detest more than others. Arguably, the specialty most attacked by quacks is psychiatry. Many are the reasons, some legitimate, many not. In particular, Scientologists despise psychiatry, even going so far as to maintain a "museum" dedicated to psychiatry that they charmingly call Psychiatry: Industry of Death. It's so ridiculously over-the-top, a virtual self-parody, that it almost inadvertently undermines attacks on psychiatry frequently leveled by Scientologists and quacks.
Let's face it,…