Results for: naturopath
How to submit a guest post
The process Anyone is welcome to submit content to ScienceBasedMedicine.org, regardless of credentials. We’ll publish anything we think is interesting, relevant, scientifically sound, and, of course, well-written. (The less editing we need to do, the better.) The volunteer editorial staff looks at all promising submissions using an informal peer-review process that has two steps, a screening step by our managing editor and...
Redefining cancer
Blogging is a rather immediate endeavor. Over the last nine years (nearly), I’ve lost track of how many times I saw something that I wanted to blog about but by the time I got around to it, it was no longer topical. Usually what happens is that my Dug the Dog tendencies take over, as I’m distracted by yet another squirrel, although...
Integrative Medicine’s Collateral Damage
Integrative medicine combines the practice of medicine with alternative medicine. Proponents tend to take a paragraph or two to say this, but that is what remains when boiled down to its essence. By putting this more concise definition together with Tim Minchin’s often-quoted observation about alternative medicine, you get: integrative medicine is the practice of medicine combined with medicine that either has...
Yes, Chris beat cancer, but it wasn’t quackery that cured him
Chris Wark is a young man who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2003 at age 26. He underwent appropriate surgery for his cancer but declined adjuvant chemotherapy in favor of quackery. Now promotes his testimonial, in which he tries to convince people that it was the quackery, rather than the surgery, that cured him. He even claims that surgery...
Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Revisiting the epitome of “integrative” cancer care
Three weeks ago, I mentioned in a post that the week of October 7 to 14 was declared by our very own United States Senate to be Naturopathic Medicine Week, which I declared unilaterally through my power as managing editor of Science-Based Medicine (for what that’s worth) to be Quackery Week. One wonders where the Senate found the time to consider and...
Dietary supplement industry says “no” to more information for consumers (again)
Once again, the dietary supplement industry is fighting efforts to give consumers more information about the safety and effectiveness of dietary supplements. Big Supp is very clever. It sells consumers on the phony idea that they need dietary supplements for good health. Even as the evidence continues to mount that consumers don’t need supplements and shouldn’t take them, the industry continues to...
Answering Our Critics, Part 2 of 2: What’s the Harm?
Last week I posted a list of 30 rebuttals to many of the recurrent criticisms that are made by people who don’t like what we say on SBM. I thought #30 deserved its own post; this is it. At the end, I’ve added a few items to the original list. What’s the harm in people trying CAM? Science-based medicine has been criticized...
Obamacare, the Oregon Experiment, and Medicaid
Tomorrow, as mandated by the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act (PPACA, often called just the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, or “Obamacare”), the government-maintained health insurance exchanges will open for business (that is, assuming the likely government shutdown doesn’t stop them temporarily). We here at SBM have written about the ACA quite a few times, but I would like to...
A closer look at Dr. Oz’s 15 Superfoods
I’m sure I’m not the only health professional that bites their tongue whenever a patient starts a question with “I heard on Dr. Oz that…” More often than not, I have expectations to realign, and some assumptions to correct. I could easily devote all my posts to simply correcting information presented on the Dr. Oz show. But given I’m blogging here biweekly,...