naturopathic oncology
oracknows | September 7, 2017Regular readers know that, as a cancer surgeon, I become particularly worked up about stories of naturopaths taking care of cancer patients, which all too often end in disaster for the patient. I've lost count of how many naturopaths I've seen, either on their websites, in talks, or in published literature, claiming that they can cure cancer "naturally," using any of a number of unproven methods, an example being the Gerson protocol, a form of quackery involving 13 larges glasses of raw vegetable and fruit juice, around 150 supplements, and five coffee enemas a day, each and every day. Others…
oracknows | December 26, 2016With the Christmas holiday over, I thought it would be a good time to revisit a topic that I've discussed before from time to time over the last several years. Part of the reason is that I saw something that irritated me before the holidays. Another part of the reason is that Christmas was so busy that some of you might recognize parts of this post. Fear not, more original Insolence will be forthcoming, likely tomorrow.
In any event, given that I’m not a fan of naturopathy, it probably comes as no surprise to our readers that I’m even less of a fan of the emerging “specialty” of naturopathic…
oracknows | June 1, 2016With a bill to license naturopaths (HB 4531) wending its way through the Michigan legislature supported by supplement manufacturers, its current status being in consideration by the full House of Representatives, periodically I feel the need to provide ammunition to the bill’s opponents, because we need to protect the patients in the state of Michigan from the naturopathic quackery that would be unleashed if this bill were to be passed into law.
If there is one area that naturopaths have been invading with a vengeance and even gaining enough seeming legitimacy to propose what they risibly…
oracknows | February 25, 2016When last I visited this topic, I was highly tempted to start out out by making a simple observation, namely by quoting John Wooden's famous adage, "The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching." Since I didn't use it for the two posts I did on this particular topic, Sh*t naturopaths say and Sh*t naturopaths say, part 2, I just did it for this post. It's the perfect quote for this topic.
What I'm referring to is a private discussion forum for naturopaths known as Naturopathic Chat, or NatChat for short, and how a leak from the group had revealed the sort of pure…
oracknows | July 26, 2010Note: Parts of this post have appeared elsewhere, but not in this form.
If there's one aspect of so-called "alternative medicine" and "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) is that its practitioners tout as being a huge advantage over what they often refer to sneeringly as "conventional" or "scientific" medicine is that -- or so its practitioners claim -- alt-med treats the "whole patient," that it's "wholistic" in a way that the evil reductionist "Western" science-based medicine can't be. Supposedly, we reductionistic, unimaginative physicians only focus on disease and ignore the "…