Category: Traditional Chinese Medicine

NCCIH frameworks

NCCIH Strategic Plan 2021⁠–⁠2025: Meet the new plan, same as the old plan…?

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health recently released its latest 5 year strategic plan. It's basically the same as the last strategic plan, but with one new addition. It's not really a new addition, but it signals a resurrection of an old trope about "integrating" quackery with science-based medicine.

/ June 28, 2021
Homeopathy tablets

The risks associated with alternative medicine

In a new paper, the types and severity of harms from different types of alternative medicine are described.

/ June 24, 2021

Exploitation of Mammals for Traditional Remedies

A recent review hints at the extent to which endangered mammals are exploited for fake medicines.

/ December 9, 2020

Acupuncture and cupping for adult idiopathic scoliosis at the VA

A veteran's adult idiopathic scoliosis was treated at a VA health clinic with acupuncture and cupping in an attempt to correct his spinal curvature, an impossibility without surgery. The ideology of so-called integrative medicine is firmly entrenched at the VA, to the detriment of veterans and taxpayers.

/ October 8, 2020

An incomplete list of COVID-19 quackery

Possibly the only thing spreading faster than COVID-19 is the pseudoscience about COVID-19.

/ May 28, 2020

Chinese government recommends bear bile for COVID-19

The Chinese Government is relentlessly promoting TCM for COVID-19, including a remedy containing bear bile, which is cruelly extracted from the gall bladders of living wild or "farmed" bears.

/ May 7, 2020

TCM for COVID-19

Despite the many claims, there is no real evidence that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is effective for prevention or treatment of COVID-19

/ April 7, 2020
James Lyons-Weiler and Del Bigtree discussing coronavirus

No, James Lyons-Weiler did not “break the coronavirus code”

Last week, a new conspiracy theory about the coronavirus outbreak by James Lyons-Weiler went viral (if you'll excuse the term) after antivax conspiracy theorist Del Bigtree interviewed him. Lyons-Weiler strongly implies that the strain of coronavirus behind the outbreak (2019-nCoV) has a SARS-like sequence that came from a laboratory working on a SARS vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Gorski has the mad molecular biology...

/ February 10, 2020
coronavirus

Alternative Medicine Exploits Coronavirus Fears

Alternative medicine has been quick to capitalize on the public's fear of coronavirus. They offer an array of bogus treatments.

/ February 4, 2020

“Eliminating cancer” with Traditional Chinese Medicine and other state-sanctioned quackery

State-approved continuing education courses pump a steady stream of fresh pseudoscience into acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine practice. Courses include claims of "eliminating cancer" and "reversing pediatric asthma" as well as anti-vaccination tropes.

/ October 24, 2019