Results for: homeopathy
What Does ND Mean?
Chronic Lyme disease almost certainly does not exist, but a growing number of doctors are diagnosing and treating it with long-term antibiotics and other remedies. They are known as LLMDs (“Lyme Literate” medical doctors). This subject has been covered repeatedly on Science-Based Medicine, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. I have a correspondent who joined a Yahoo group for Lyme disease (Northern...
Comprehending the Incomprehensible
Medicine is impossible. Really. The amount of information that flows out the interwebs is amazing and the time to absorb it is comparatively tiny. If you work, sleep and have a family, once those responsibilities are complete there is remarkably little time to keep up with the primary literature. I have made two of my hobbies (blogging and podcasting) dovetail with my...
Smoking: The Good News and the Bad News
The principles we espouse on Science-Based Medicine are vitally important, but some of the subjects we address are not so important in the big scheme of things. Homeopathy and electrodermal diagnostic devices don’t actually harm very many people. For today’s post, I’m going to follow the Willie Sutton rule and go where the money is, so to speak. Smoking is the leading preventable...
Acupuncture and Allergic Rhinitis: Another Opportunity for Intellectual Sterility
You need to keep an open mind. A common suggestion offered to naysayers of nonsense. The usual retort concerns not letting one’s brain fall out. Evaluating SCAM’s is less about having an open mind and more about having standards, a conceptual framework that is used to interpret and analyze new information. One of the benefits of writing and reading topics covered by...
Blame and magical thinking: The consequences of the autism “biomed” movement
That the myth that vaccines cause autism is indeed nothing more than a myth, a phantom, a delusion unsupported by science is no longer in doubt. In fact, it’s been many years now since it was last taken seriously by real scientists and physicians, as opposed to crank scientists and physicians, who are still selling the myth. Thanks to them, and a...
Legislative Alchemy: Chiropractic 2013
Via the magic of legislative alchemy, chiropractors are already licensed health care providers in all 50 states. Thus their legislative efforts tend to focus on expanding their scope of practice and forcing public and private insurers to cover their services, in some cases at the same rate as medical doctors. Those efforts continue in 2013 with 65 bills impacting chiropractors introduced so...
SBM e-Books
[NEW POSTS JUST BELOW THIS POST] I am happy to announce that Science-Based Medicine has published three e-Books: Science-Based Medicine’s Guide to Naturopathy Kindle | iBooks | Nook Science-Based Medicine’s Guide to Miscellaneous CAM Kindle | iBooks | Nook Science-Based Medicine’s Guide to Homeopathy Kindle | iBooks | Nook
An open letter to Penn & Teller about their appearance on The Dr. Oz Show
Dear Penn & Teller, I really don’t want to say this, but I feel obligated to. I’m afraid you screwed up. Big time. (Of course, if this weren’t a generally family-friendly blog, where we rarely go beyond PG-13 language, I’d use a term more like one that Penn would use to describe a massive fail, which, as you might guess, also...
Legislative Alchemy: Naturopathy 2013
A fresh season of state legislative sessions is upon us and with it comes the ubiquitous attempts by purveyors of so called “complementary and alternative medicine” (or “CAM”) to join the health care provider fraternity. Via the magic of legislative alchemy, state legislatures transform pseudoscientific diagnoses (e.g., “chronic yeast overgrowth”) and treatments (e.g., homeopathy) into faux, but legal, health care. Once the...
Here we go again: A bill licensing naturopaths rears its ugly head in Michigan
The goal of organized naturopathy is to achieve licensure for naturopaths in all 50 states. Unfortunately, that means they have to come through Michigan, which is my state. This means the naturopaths, having failed to pass a licensure bill last year, are back to try again. They're a lot like the Terminator that way. They never, ever give up.