Tag: Amish

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.

/ July 5, 2017

Sarah Hershberger: “Health freedom” and parental rights vs. child welfare

One of the more depressing topics that I regularly write about on this blog includes of analyses of news stories of children with cancer whose parents decided to stop science-based treatment (usually the chemotherapy) and use quackery instead. There are, of course, variations on this theme, but these stories take form that generally resembles this outline: A child is diagnosed with a...

/ October 12, 2015

Ontario fails to protect the life of a First Nations girl with cancer

A few weeks ago, Steve Novella invited me on his podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, to discuss a cancer case that has been in the news for several months now. The case was about an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who is a member of Canada’s largest aboriginal community. Steve wrote about this case nearly a month ago. Basically, the girl’s...

/ November 17, 2014

Amish Home Burn Treatment: B&W Salve and Burdock Leaves

People in the Amish community have been using “The New Concept in Treating Burns” and their experience is recounted in a little booklet by that title. It is a compilation of articles, testimonials, and letters to the editor of a monthly newspaper Plain Interests, published in Millersburg PA. The treatment, involving B&W ointment and dressings of scalded burdock leaves, was developed by...

/ February 3, 2009