Category: Homeopathy

Clinical trials of integrative medicine: testing whether magic works?

  I just thought that I’d take the editor’s (and, speaking for Steve, the founder’s) prerogative to promote our own efforts. Regular readers of SBM are familiar with our message with respect to randomized clinical trials of highly implausible “complementary and alternative medicine” treatments, such as homeopathy or reiki. Well, believe it or not, Steve and I managed to get a commentary...

/ August 21, 2014

Yet another plague panic

Case #3 from the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Zaire; picture by Dr. Lyle Conrad, Centers for Disease Control – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #7042. This image is in the public domain and thus free of any copyright restrictions. As a matter of courtesy the CDC requests that the content provider be credited...

/ August 8, 2014

Chiropractic scope of practice includes . . . well, you won’t believe it

Ladies, how would you like a chiropractor to deliver your baby? How about perform your annual well-woman exams, such as breast exam, bi-manual pelvic exam, speculum exam, recto-vaginal exam and Pap smear? Sound out of their league? I thought so too. Way out. But, in some parts of the U.S., the law allows chiropractors to do all of these things and a...

/ August 7, 2014

Ebola outbreaks: Science versus fear mongering and quackery

“Ebola virus particles” by Thomas W. Geisbert, Boston University School of Medicine – PLoS Pathogens, November 2008 doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000225. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. Without a doubt the big medical story of the last week or so has been the ongoing outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa, the most deadly in history thus far. Indeed, as of this...

/ August 4, 2014

Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine research conference disappoints even NCCAM

In May, the International Research Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health (IRCIMH) conference was held in Miami. In the words of its website, the conference was “convened by” the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine (CAHCIM), “in association with” the International Society for Complementary Medicine Research. As CAHCIM chirped in this tweet: “Three days, 22 countries, 100 academic medical institutions,...

/ July 10, 2014

Reiki: Fraudulent Misrepresentation

The Center for Integrative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic sells reiki treatments (also here) to patients with cancer, fertility issues, Parkinson’s Disease and digestive problems, as well as other diseases and conditions. The Center’s website ad describes reiki as a form of hands-on, natural healing that uses universal life force energy . . . [a] vital life force energy that flows through...

/ June 12, 2014

Beware the Integrative Pharmacy

Imagine a retail pharmacy where some of the medicines on the shelves have been replaced with similar-looking packages that contain no active ingredients at all. There is no easy way to distinguish between the real and the fake. Another section of the store offers a number of remedies with fantastic claims, such as “boosting” the immune system, “detoxifying” the body, or “cleansing”...

/ May 22, 2014

Legislative Alchemy 2014 (so far)

Legislative Alchemy is the process by which credulous state legislators turn practitioners of pseudoscience into state-licensed health care professionals. In addition to unleashing quackery such as homeopathy, colonic irrigation, moxibustion, reiki, cranial sacral therapy and the detection and correction of subluxations on the public, these practice acts typically give chiropractors, naturopaths and acupuncturists the freedom of being governed by their own regulatory...

/ May 15, 2014

Telemedicine: Click and the doctor will see you now

Think you need to see a doctor? How about seeing him (or her) on your computer (or tablet or smart phone) screen instead of in the doctor’s office? The technology of telemedicine, or telehealth, is here. So far, there is no single definition of what it does, and does not, encompass. For example, in some definitions, one of which we discuss today,...

/ May 1, 2014

What Whole Foods Markets Doesn’t Tell You

Whole Foods Market is a relentlessly hip American supermarket chain which prides itself on organic fruits and vegetables, gluten-free just-about-everything, and high-end touches like wine bars and exotic take out items (roasted yucca, anyone?). The health products aisle is stocked with Bach Flower and homeopathic remedies. For example, in-house brand Flu Ease: “an established homeopathic formula that should be taken at the...

/ April 17, 2014