Category: Politics and Regulation
A cure for chiropractic
Almost 10 years ago, a thoughtful article, entitled “Chiropractic as spine care: a model for the profession”, appeared in the journal Chiropractic & Osteopathy. The authors were a group of both academic and practicing chiropractors, as well as representatives from a health insurer specializing in coverage of CAM provider services. Another article, under different authorship, appeared the same year deploring some aspects...
Twenty days in primary care practice, or “naturopathic residency”
The metastasis of alternative medicine throughout the health care system comes, in no small part, at the hands of the federal and state governments, mostly the latter and most particularly the state legislatures. Under their jurisdiction rests the decision of who can, and cannot, become a licensed health care practitioner, and what they can, and cannot, do. This is the gateway through...
Washington State’s Unconscionable, Unconstitutional Child Protection Law
I recently wrote about the conflict between child protection and the religious freedom of believers in faith healing. That issue has reared its ugly head again in the state of Washington. Washington law currently denies the children of Christian Scientists equal protection under the law governing child abuse and neglect, and it grants a special exemption from criminal prosecution for abuse and...
pH Miracle Living “Dr.” Robert O. Young is finally arrested, but will it stop him?
Being a cancer surgeon and researcher, naturally I tend to write about cancer a lot more than other areas of medicine and science. It’s what I know best. Also, cancer is a very common area for unscientific practices to insinuate themselves, something that’s been true for a very long time. The ideas don’t change very rapidly, either. Drop a cancer quack from...
Stanislaw Burzynski: Using 1990s techniques to battle the FDA today
In the 1990s, cancer quack Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and his lawyer Richard Jaffe perfected a PR strategy in which patients who believed that Burzynski had saved their lives would protest and, often aided by friendly legislators, beg the FDA (or whatever regulatory body was trying to stop Burzynski's abuses at the time) not to let them die. It was very effective political...
2013 Legislative Review: placenta take out
It’s official in Oregon now. You can take your placenta, along with your new baby, home from the hospital. This was already a practice among the CAM set but apparently new mothers were running afoul of laws designed to protect us from bio-hazards. New legislation exempts “the removal from a health care facility . . . of a placenta by a postpartum...
Expanding the scope of practice of advanced practice nurses will not endanger patients
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2014 for the blog, besides looking for talented bloggers to add to our pool of awesome bloggers, was to try to look at areas of science-based medicine that we don’t often cover (or haven’t covered before), such as the delivery of health care. Fear not, I’ll certainly do enough posts on the usual topics, but...
The Exciting Conclusion
On the slim chance that you’ve been perched on the edge of your seat wondering how the New Mexico appellate court ruled on chiropractic prescription privileges, whether the Council on Chiropractic Education got approved for another three years as an accrediting agency, if NCCAM ever came clean about spinal manipulation, and the fate of Brandon Babcock, DC, at the hands of the...
An experiment in paying through the nose for “unnecessary care”
Rats. Harriet stole what was going to be the title of this post! This is going to be something completely different than what I usually write about. Well, maybe not completely different, but different from the vast majority of my posts. As Dr. Snyder noted on Friday, it’s easy to find new woo-filled claims or dangerous, evidence-lacking trends to write about. Heck,...
The Council on Chiropractic Education Straightens Up?
Three years ago, we reported that the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) was deeply embroiled in a heated dispute among various chiropractic factions over its new accreditation standards for chiropractic colleges. In a June, 2012 update of that post, we found the CCE still deeply embroiled in a heated dispute among various chiropractic factions over new accreditation standards for chiropractic colleges. Current...