complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | September 24, 2009Yesterday, I wrote about Jake Crosby, the token college kid on the spectrum over at the happy home for wandering anti-vaccine zealots, Age of Autism. Specifically, I felt sorry for him because of his rather tortured bit of conspiracy mongering that postulated deep, dark connections between Adam Bly, the founder of Seed Media Group, the company he founded, ScienceBlogs, and multiple big pharma countries, all tied together with a breathtakingly tenuous connections all wrapped up into a big fat ball of nonsense.
Ooops. He did it again, with part 2 of Part II Seed Media's "Science"Blogs: A 180…
oracknows | September 23, 2009Jake's hit pieces against Seed and me reminded me of something. They reminded me of just what it is that the anti-vaccine movement promotes, and the damage that I wish Jake would wake up and realize that the organization he has associated himself with causes a great deal of harm. Part of that harm derives from its antivaccine activities, which are custom-designed to discourage parents from vaccinating with unfounded fears of vaccines causing autism. However, there is another harm that the "vaccines cause autism" movement causes that is not related to the promotion of infectious disease that…
oracknows | September 23, 2009That Jake Crosby, he's a crazy mixed-up kid, but I kind of like him.
He seems like a nice enough and smart enough kid, but, sadly, he's fallen in with a bad crowd over at the anti-vaccine crank propaganda blog, Age of Autism, so much so that he's even blogging there, helping, whether he realizes it or not, to promote the message that vaccines cause autism and that various forms of biomedical quackery can somehow "cure" autism. I say "whether he realizes it or not" because he seems to have settled into the role of AoA's token young adult on the spectrum who promotes the party line. Indeed, he'…
oracknows | September 22, 2009I've often discussed how potentially misleading anecdotal evidence and experience can be. Indeed, I've managed to get into quite a few--shall we say?--heated discussions with a certain woo-friendly pediatrician, who, so confident in his own clinical judgment, just can't accept that his own personal clinical observations could be wrong or even horribly mislead him. Sadly, I've never managed to persuade him just how easy it is for us humans to be deceived or even to deceive ourselves.
However, just because anecdotal evidence can deceive us does not mean that it is worthless. Contrary to the…
oracknows | September 21, 2009I've asked at least three times on this blog, "Is Bill Maher that ignorant?"
The first time was four and a half years ago, when, in a fit of germ theory denialism, Maher proclaimed erroneously that Louis Pasteur had "recanted" on his deathbed, while spewing nonsense hither and yon about how disease isn't primarily caused by microbes but by "aggregate toxicity," whatever that means in woo-speak. The second time I asked the question occurred in 2008, when Maher lectured David Letterman about "toxins" and and suggested that he consider giving up his heart drugs and pursue "natural" therapies.…
oracknows | September 19, 2009The other day, I ripped a certain woo-meister whom regular readers all know and most, if not all, regular readers mostly despise, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. As you may recall, a few days ago he slimed Patrick Swayze the day he died from pancreatic cancer, posting an article saying that Swayze was killed by chemotherapy and that he'd still be alive and Dirty Dancing today if he had only eschewed that horrible, evil Devil's brew of chemotherapy and gone with all "natural" cures. It was simply a followup of an article he wrote back in January saying in essence the same thing, although Adams…
oracknows | September 18, 2009I just found out via one of the mailing lists I'm on of a very disturbing case in Kermit, Texas. Two nurses who were dismayed and disturbed by a physician peddling all manner of herbal supplements reported him to the authorities. Now, they are facing jail:
In a stunning display of good ol' boy idiocy and abuse of prosecutorial discretion, two West Texas nurses have been fired from their jobs and indicted with a third-degree felony carrying potential penalties of two-to-ten years' imprisonment and a maximum fine of $10,000. Why? Because they exercised a basic tenet of the nurse's Code of…
oracknows | September 17, 2009Pity poor Nick Gonzalez.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. After having used the same line when discussing the hugely enjoyable humiliation of the Godfather of HIV/AIDS denialism, Peter Duesberg, I couldn't resist using the same line to introduce my response to Dr. Gonzalez's woo-ful whine in response to the publication of the disastrous (for him and any patient unfortunate enough to be in the arm receiving his protocol) clinical trial that demonstrated about as unequivocally as it is possible to demonstrate that his "protocol" to treat pancreatic cancer is nothing more than as steaming and stinking…
oracknows | September 16, 2009It looks like my prediction about Patrick Swayze came true. Not that it was a stretch to foresee that the Woo-meister Supreme Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com would waste no time in violating the corpse of Patrick Swayze before he was even cold by using Swayze's death as an excuse to repeat once again his oft-repeated misinformation and lies about chemotherapy and "natural" therapies. After all, he did it before for Tony Snow, so why not Patrick Swayze? In fact, I strongly suspect that Adams had this rant written months ago, ready and waiting for Patrick Swayze's death. All he had to do then was…
oracknows | September 15, 2009Pity poor Peter Duesberg.
Back in the 1980s, he was on the top of the world, scientifically speaking. A brilliant virologist with an impressive record of accomplishment, publication, and funding, he seemed to be on a short track to an eventual Nobel Prize. Then something happened. The AIDS epidemic happened. Something about the AIDS epidemic led this excellent scientist in the late 1980s to fall directly into pseudoscience and crankery by latching onto and promoting the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. Of course, at the time scientists didn't yet know a lot about the virus and how it slowly…
oracknows | September 14, 2009The silence is deafening.
Yes, I know it's a cliche, but it's really true this time. Last month, a major study whose results had been anticipated by the alt-med community, as well as those of us who consider it to be highly unethical pseudoscience, were reported. However, they were reported without fanfare, without press releases, without any sort of publicity whatsoever. Only a handful of bloggers who have paid attention to the issue (myself included) even noticed, and even I wouldn't have noticed if someone hadn't forwarded the journal article to me and asked me what I thought of it. So…
oracknows | September 13, 2009We all know that Mike Adams, a.k.a. the "Health Ranger," is anti-vaccine to the core. He's known for NaturalNews.com, a repository of quackery, anti-vaccine craziness, and conspiracy theories that rivals Whale.to but in a much slicker fashion. Now, unfortunately, I learn that he's going multimedia. Worse, Mike Rangers, who is about as white bread and un-hip-hop a guy as I can imagine, thinks he can rap:
The song is called "Don't Inject Me (The Swine Flu Vaccine Song)."
The common lies about the swine flu are all there: The claim that flu vaccines don't work; the paranoid delusion that the "…
oracknows | September 12, 2009Three weeks ago or so, I expressed dismay at what I perceived as an autism quackfest being held at the University of Toronto. Worse, that quackfest had been partially funded by a grant from a very prestigious children's charity, The SickKids Foundation, which in response to complaints about its sponsoring the autism quackfest known as AutismOne/Autism Canada 2009 Conference, wrote a limp and pusillanimous form e-mail that it sent to everyone who complained. It was truly disappointing to see that an organization that should be supporting science-based research into the treatment of children's…
oracknows | September 10, 2009Dr. Robert Sears (a.k.a. "Dr. Bob), author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, is definitely antivaccine. His mouth may say, "No, I'm not antivaccine," but his actions say, "Yes, yes, yes!"
There, I finally said it. I've been flirting with saying it that bluntly for some time now, but have been tending to avoid it. I really didn't want to conclude this about "Dr. Bob," but, sadly, he's left me no choice. What else can I conclude from his actions over the last three months, when he's clearly solidly allied himself with the worst elements of the anti-vaccine movement…
oracknows | September 9, 2009What can one say about a woman who wrote books with titles such as The Cure For All Cancers, The Cure For All Advanced Cancers, The Cure for HIV and AIDS, The Cure For All Diseases, and, most recently, The Cure and Prevention of All Cancers (with bonus DVD)? A woman who stated that a liver fluke is the cause of all cancer and that she could cure all cancer by zapping the liver fluke with a device that looks as though it's constructed from spare parts purchased at Radio Shack? What can one say about a woman who can make a video like the one below?
In brief, what can one say about "Dr." Hulda…
oracknows | September 8, 2009I don't have much to add to this one, as it's a tragic tale. Shadowfax, a blogging ER doc, relates to us what happens when cancer patients rely on quackery like the Gerson protocol instead of scientific medicine:
This was a young woman, barely out of her teens, who presented with a tumor in her distal femur, by the knee. This was not a new diagnosis -- it had first been noted in January or so, and diagnosed as a Primary B-Cell Lymphoma. By now, the tumor was absolutely huge, and she came to the ER in agonizing pain. Her physical exam was just amazing. The poor thing's knee (or more…
oracknows | September 8, 2009Dr. Mark Hyman is famous as the "founder" of a form of woo known as "functional medicine." This new form of woo is...well, I'm not sure what it is, and neither are Wally Sampson (1, 2, 3, 4). Suffice it to say that it appears to be a serious grab bag of various forms of woo that, according to Dr. Hyman's website itself, involve environmental inputs, inflammation, hormones, gut & digestive health, detoxification, energy/mitochondria/oxidative stress, and, of course, "mind-body," whatever that means. No woo would be complete without mind-body, you know. Actually, no self-respecting woo…
oracknows | September 7, 2009Remember Daniel Hauser?
He's the the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who underwent one course of chemotherapy and then decided he wanted to pursue "alternative therapy" based on fear of chemotherapy and because of the influence of the faux Native American religion that his mother had taken up with. Ultimately, after a judge ordered Daniel's parents to make sure that Daniel received the chemotherapy and radiation therapy he needed, Daniel and his mother Colleen went on the lam, but ultimately Daniel's mother decided to turn herself in. As a result, Daniel began live-saving chemotherapy…
oracknows | September 7, 2009If there's been a theme running through this blog, it's been the importance of science and critical thinking. The main focus of this emphasis on skepticism, of course, has been medicine, which makes sense, given that I'm a doctor and a cancer researcher, but I don't limit myself to just medicine. However, as part of my emphasis on science-based medicine (SBM) as being the best methodology to provide the best patient care that we can, besides the random quackery deconstructions,
I've tended to harp on two topics over the years. First, there's the subject of what Dr. R. W. has called "…
oracknows | September 4, 2009So-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as it's now as frequently called, "integrative medicine" (IM) represents a hodge-podge of remedies that are mostly based on prescientific concepts about how the human body works and how disease attacks it. Homeopathy, through its concept of "like cures like" and law of contagion. The former in essence is a manifestation of the magical concept that "like produces like." Similarly, homeopathy's law of infinitesimals, in which serial dilutions to the point that there is unlikely to be a single molecule left of the substance thought to…