Results for: homeopathy
Here we go again: A bill licensing naturopaths rears its ugly head in Michigan
The goal of organized naturopathy is to achieve licensure for naturopaths in all 50 states. Unfortunately, that means they have to come through Michigan, which is my state. This means the naturopaths, having failed to pass a licensure bill last year, are back to try again. They're a lot like the Terminator that way. They never, ever give up.
Are You Ready For the Oz Manifesto
“Medicine is a very religious experience. I have my religion and you have yours. It becomes difficult for us to agree on what we think works, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Data is rarely clean. You find the arguments that support your data, and it’s my fact versus your fact.” – Mehmet Oz The above...
Congress will soon lose its foremost supporter of quackery, but will it matter?
I don’t much like Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), and, I daresay, neither do any of my fellow bloggers here. The reason should be painfully obvious. Arguably, no single elected official currently serving today (or ever) has done more over a longer period of time to promote quackery in the United States. I make this harsh assessment because Senator Harkin was the legislator...
The DC as PCP? The battle continues
Chiropractors are trying to rebrand themselves as primary care physicians, a topic both Harriet Hall and I have addressed (here and here) on SBM. Toward this end, they are seeking the expansion of their scope of practice, via the magic of legislative alchemy, to include the prescription and administration of drugs. Not drugs that any self-respecting M.D. would use, but drugs nonetheless. That...
dōTERRA: Multilevel Marketing of Essential Oils
A stay-at-home mom recently e-mailed me. She is a former CAM user who once treated her infant’s colic with homeopathy but has since seen the light and is now thinking skeptically. She asked that I look into the dōTERRA company, seller of essential oils: concentrated extracts distilled from plants, containing the “essence” or distinctive odor of the plant. She said: …moms, well...
The antivaccine movement and “autism biomed” versus “outgrowing” autism
A commonly misunderstood aspect of autism and autism spectrum disorders (particularly by antivaccinationists and believers in the quackery known as “autism biomed”) is that autism is not a condition of developmental stasis. It is a condition of developmental delay. Autistic children can and do exhibit improvement in their symptoms simply through growth and development. However, parents who subject their children to “autism...
Naturopaths push for licensing in Massachusetts (again)
I have some good news and some bad news about a Massachusetts naturopathy practitioner licensing bill. First the bad news: the bill passed both the Massachusetts House and Senate in December of last year. Now, I am certainly no expert in the arcane workings of the Massachusetts legislature, but after doing a bit of research I’ve come to wonder if the way the...
SCAMlandia. CAM in Oregon.
I quite like Portlandia. I find it funny and it captures a part of Portland. I recognize large swaths of the city’s culture in the show. Other representations of the city I recognize less. Sunset publishes beautiful photographs of the NW, but when I look at the photos I think, that section of the city never looks that good. It is quite...
Closing out 2012 with a bit of fun: Do you want some quantum with that pseudoscience?
today is the last day of 2012. As I contemplated what I’d write for my last post of 2012, I wondered what to do. Should I do a “year in review” sort of post? Naahh. Too trite and too much work. Should I just do what I normally do? There are, after all, many topics that are out there, some of them...
780.6. What is a fever?
You can tell what a doctor does for a living by the ICD-9 codes they have memorized. There is an ICD-9 code for nearly every medical condition. Weightlessness is 994.9. Must be there for NASA, I have yet to see a weightless patient. Decapitation by guillotine is E978. There, I suppose, in case Marat returns from the dead. There is an ICD-9...