Results for: chiropractic
Perpetual Motion: More on the Bravewell Report
I’m not here to convince people that we are right, although it would be nice if it turned out that way. I’m here to tell the truth and let readers decide for themselves.” — Kimball Atwood, Science Based Medicine, Bravewell Bimbo Eruptions I had been too inarticulate to formulate what is essentially my approach to this blog: to tell the truth. That...
Informed Consent and CAM: Truth Not Optional
In three recent posts, Drs. Novella, Gorski and Atwood took the Bravewell Collaborative to task over a report on its recent survey of U.S. “integrative medicine” centers. As Dr. Novella noted, So what is integrative medicine? When you strip away the rebranding and co-opting of features and treatments of mainstream medicine, you are left with the usual list of pseudoscientific practices that...
Bravewell Bimbo Eruptions
This is yet another response to the recent “Integrative Medicine in America” report published by the Bravewell Collaborative. Drs. Novella and Gorski have already given that report its due, so I won’t repeat the background information. Inevitably, I’ll cover some of the same points, but I’ll also try to emphasize a few that stand out to me. Most of these have been...
Killer Tomatoes and Poisonous Potatoes?
Remember the movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”? That was fiction, but some alarmists would have us believe that the tomatoes and potatoes on our plates are really out to get us. I recently got an e-mail inquiry from an MD who said he had read that solanine in tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants could be responsible for essential hypertension and a number...
Applied Kinesiology: Nonsense on Full Automatic
I start these entries about a week before their due date, and when I saw Dr Hall’s Applied Kinesiology (AK) post from Tuesday, I thought the heck, there goes my post for Friday. After reading Harriet’s post, I think mine will be both complementary and alternative, and perhaps even integrative, to her entry. I do have one quibble with her post. She...
Antipodean CAM
It is one of the pleasures of travel to read the local newspapers of places I visit. I wholly agree with In a Sunburned Country author Bill Bryson, who observed, It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers. Personally I can think of nothing more exciting – certainly nothing you could do in a public place with a cup...
Applied Kinesiology by Any Other Name…
Arm wrestling is not a good way to confirm a diagnosis. But it is a great way to elicit confirmation bias.
Legislative Alchemy: The New Year
A new year brings new opportunities for practicing the magic of legislative alchemy, the process by which state legislatures transform implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into perfectly legal health care practices, such as naturopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture. Different states have different legislative calendars, but many begin a new session soon after the first of the year. This gives “complementary and...
Strains, sprains and pains
What do you think would happen if you gave a bunch of “complementary and alternative medicine” practitioners access to a big pot of money — say, up to $10,000 per patient — and let them treat patients virtually without restriction, hampered only by a fee schedule. No utilization review, no refusal based on a treatment being “experimental” — none of the usual...