Tag: John McCain

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010: A long overdue correction to the DSHEA of 1994?

BACKGROUND: A BAD, BAD LAW One of the themes of this blog has been how, over the last couple of decades, the law has been coopted by forces supporting “complementary and alternative” medicine (CAM) in order to lend legitimacy to unscientific and even pseudoscientific medical nonsense. Whether it be $120 million a year being spent for the National Center for Complementary and...

/ February 8, 2010

Energy Healing In Maryland

I had an interesting conversation with a reporter today. She called me to get a “medical/skeptical” counterpoint for an article she is preparing on energy healing. Although I don’t know if she’ll faithfully represent what I had to say, we had an entertaining exchange and so I decided to capture the essence of it here. I’m curious to see which parts of...

/ February 4, 2010

How Is Alternative Medicine Like Earmark Spending?

I recently watched a special news report about John McCain leading the charge towards making legislative earmarks illegal. The Economist defines earmarks this way: Earmarks, for the uninitiated, are spending projects that are directly requested by individual members of Congress and are not subject to competitive bidding. Most Americans are rightly upset about the practice of slipping pet projects into larger, well-vetted,...

/ January 15, 2009