Results for: naturopath
Traditional Chinese herbalism at the Cleveland Clinic? What happened to science-based medicine?
Quackademic medicine has taken a bold step forward at The Cleveland Clinic, which has opened a traditional Chinese medicine herbal practice.
What Whole Foods Markets Doesn’t Tell You
Whole Foods Market is a relentlessly hip American supermarket chain which prides itself on organic fruits and vegetables, gluten-free just-about-everything, and high-end touches like wine bars and exotic take out items (roasted yucca, anyone?). The health products aisle is stocked with Bach Flower and homeopathic remedies. For example, in-house brand Flu Ease: “an established homeopathic formula that should be taken at the...
Bill and Hillary Clinton go woo with Dr. Mark Hyman and “functional medicine”
Mark Hyman is a "pioneer" (if you can call it that) in a new form of quackery known as functional medicine, which combines a lot of the worst features of conventional medicine with a large dollop of "make it up as you go along" quackery. Unfortunately, it appears that the Clintons find his narrative compelling.
Agnotology: The Study of Ignorance
A comment from the blog: Every single time – bar none – I have had a conversation with someone about CAM and its modalities, they are absolutely astonished when I explain to them what the modality really is. One story I love telling comes from my friend in the year behind me. His parents are professional chemists and he came home one...
Medical Conspiracies
Anyone publicly writing about issues of science and medicine from a pro-science perspective likely gets many e-mails similar to the ones I see every week. Here’s just one recent example: Im sorry the medical community has become decadent and lazy as most that follow your stance could care less to study the real truth. I have also seen it much more deviant...
When healing turns into killing: religious and philosophical exemptions from parental accountability
Parents have a fundamental right to guide the upbringing of their children protected under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This includes the choice of medical care for the child. They also have a First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, including the right to care for their children in accordance with the tenets of their...
Has science-based medicine already lost to pseudoscience?
After writing Saturday’s 5,000-word magnum opus about misguided “right to try” bills that are proliferating in state legislatures like so much kudzu, I thought I’d try something a bit different—and more concise. Fear not. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to become Harriet Hall as a writer, because no one does concise and insightful as well as she does, but I do...
The illusions of “right to try” laws
[Ed. Note: For additional commentary on why “right-to-try” laws are such a bad idea, see “Right to try” laws and Dallas Buyers’ Club: Great movie, terrible for patients and terrible policy and The false hope of “right-to-try” metastasizes to Michigan.] There is nothing like a touching anecdote to spur a politician into action. And those who want to try investigational drugs outside...
The return of the revenge of high dose vitamin C for cancer
Vitamin C is back in the news as a cancer cure. Is it? No, no it is not.
pH Miracle Living “Dr.” Robert O. Young is finally arrested, but will it stop him?
Being a cancer surgeon and researcher, naturally I tend to write about cancer a lot more than other areas of medicine and science. It’s what I know best. Also, cancer is a very common area for unscientific practices to insinuate themselves, something that’s been true for a very long time. The ideas don’t change very rapidly, either. Drop a cancer quack from...