Placentophagy and the Risk of Invasive Neonatal GBS Disease
A young infant has suffered an invasive and potentially deadly bacterial infection...twice! Now the CDC is warning that maternal placentophagy may have played a role.
Australian review: Get homeopathy out of pharmacies
An independent review of Australian pharmacy practice has recommended that homeopathic products be kept out of pharmacies.
Brain Wave Pseudoscience
iSynchrony has put together a plausible-sounding bit of bafflegab to justify what it sells. The reality of neurology is against their claims.
What the Health: A Movie with an Agenda
The documentary "What the Health" espouses the fairy tale that all major diseases (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many others) can be prevented and cured by eliminating meat and dairy from the diet. It is a blatant polemic for veganism, biased and misleading, and is not a reliable source of scientific information.
Trump’s new CDC Director is very pro-vaccine, but was she also at one time a quack?
On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Tom Price announced the appointment of Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald to head the CDC. Reassuringly, her record as Georgia Public Health Commissioner was pro-vaccine and relatively non-ideological. Not so reassuringly, a news report yesterday found that before entering public service she was peddling anti-aging quackery at her private practice. Where will her balance fall now...
Chiropractic and Spinal Manipulation Red Flags: A Comprehensive Review
Many people visit chiropractors’ offices seeking relief from back pain. Appropriate use of spinal manipulation provided by a chiropractor can be helpful in treating mechanical-type back pain, but there are good reasons to avoid chiropractic manipulation based on correction of “vertebral subluxations,” and there are red flags to look for before undergoing any kind of manipulative treatment for neck or back pain.
Chiropractic clinical training with pediatric patients or complicated cases: slim to none
Chiropractors may never have seen a pediatric patient or a complicated medical case in clinical training, yet they are allowed to go into practice with no age limits on who they see and few on the conditions they treat.
Amish Farmer Jailed for Selling Snakeoil
An Amish farmer is convicted of selling a caustic poison as patent medicine (and of witness tampering) and yet is defended by "alternative medicine" proponents who apparently want the freedom to be defrauded and harmed.
Fun for the Fourth
Is it OK to laugh when we encounter a ridiculous claim in alternative medicine? This video lecture highlights some hilarious claims and encourages both laughter and appreciation of the human creativity involved.
Emergency acupuncture!
For whatever reason, acupuncturists and acupuncture believers think that acupuncture can be useful in emergency situations, be they in the field ("battlefield acupuncture," anyone?) or in the ER. They even do studies purporting to show that. This is yet another of such a clinical trial, albeit larger than usual. Guess what? It doesn't really show what it's advertised to show. I explain...