Tag: integrative medicine
State medical boards vs. COVID-19 misinformation, an update
The disinformation epidemic about COVID-19 has pushed state medical boards to consider disciplining physicians who promote COVID-19 disinformation. How would that work? What are the obstacles? Is it even possible? It should be, but it will be messy and complicated.
American Academy of Family Physicians Supports Integrative Medicine
The American Academy of Family Physicians supports integrative medicine and makes recommendations based on less-than-rigorous evidence.
NCCIH Strategic Plan 2021–2025: Meet the new plan, same as the old plan…?
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health recently released its latest 5 year strategic plan. It's basically the same as the last strategic plan, but with one new addition. It's not really a new addition, but it signals a resurrection of an old trope about "integrating" quackery with science-based medicine.
Evenity for Osteoporosis
Hip and wrist fractures are a common result of osteoporosis. A new drug, Evenity, reduces the risk of vertebral fractures, but it doesn't significantly reduce the risk of non-vertebral fractures. Other drugs do.
The Questionable Ethics of Medical Grade Nonsense: Chinese Herbal Medicine and Kawasaki Disease
A toddler in China with Kawasaki disease was treated with herbs and potions rather than science, and is extremely lucky to have survived without serious complications.
Quackademic medicine update: UC Irvine reneges on promise of scientific rigor
In 2017, UC Irvine promised that the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute would be "rigorously evidence-based". A recent review discovers plenty of pseudoscience.
A world-renowned placebo researcher asks, “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”
Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks,...
Two integrative oncologists delude themselves that their specialty is science-based
Integrative oncology "integrates" quackery with oncology. Its practitioners, however, frequently delude themselves that their specialty is science-based. A recent review article by two integrative oncologists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center expresses that delusion perfectly.
The Integrative Oncology Scholars Program: Indoctrinating the next generation of “integrative oncology” believers
"Integrative oncology" involves "integrating" pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery with science-based oncology and co-opting science-based lifestyle modalities as "alternative" in order to provide cover for the quackery. Unfortunately, my alma mater, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is running a course to indoctrinate 100 health care professionals in the ways of "integrative oncology." The Trojan horse of "lifestyle interventions" and "nonpharmacologic treatments for...
Integrative Neurology – More Bait and Switch
Integrative medicine is a marketing concept still rife with pseudoscience.