Tag: homeopathy
Society for Science-Based Medicine: Comment to FDA on homeopathic drug regulation
The Society for Science-Based Medicine has commented on the FDA's reconsideration of how to regulate homeopathic products.
Is Homeopathy Unethical?
“A gentle ethical defence of homeopathy” by Levy et al. was recently published in an ethics journal. A full-text preprint is available online. They say: Utilitarian critiques of homeopathy that are founded on unsophisticated notions of evidence, that adopt narrow perspectives on healthcare assessment, and that overstate the personal, social and ontological harms of homeopathy, add little to our understanding of the...
Bastions of quackademic medicine: Georgetown University
We frequently discuss a disturbing phenomenon known as quackademic medicine. Basically, quackademic medicine is a phenomenon that has taken hold over the last two decades in medical academia in which once ostensibly science-based medical schools and academic medical centers embrace quackery. This embrace was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) but among quackademics the preferred term is now “integrative medicine.” Of...
Should physicians and managed care organizations offer homeopathy?
Anyone who reads Science-Based Medicine on even a semi-regular basis will know our collective opinion of homeopathy. Basically, at its core, homeopathy is pure quackery. I don’t care if it’s repetitive to say this yet again because it can’t be emphasized enough times that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. OK, there are others that compete for that title,...
It’s time for pharmacies to stop selling sugar pills
Why are pharmacies selling sugar pills to consumers that are packaged like medicine? And what will it take for pharmacies to stop?
NCCIH and the true evolution of integrative medicine
There can be no doubt that, when it comes to medicine, The Atlantic has an enormous blind spot. Under the guise of being seemingly “skeptical,” the magazine has, over the last few years, published some truly atrocious articles about medicine. I first noticed this during the H1N1 pandemic, when The Atlantic published an article lionizing flu vaccine “skeptic” Tom Jefferson, who, unfortunately,...
David Tredinnick – Quack Candidate for Health Select Committee Chair
Today the UK Parliament will have a vote for the chair of the Health Select Committee. The two choices could not be more starkly different, so much so that this vote might be seen as a referendum on two world views, one that respects science and another that confuses pseudoscience and spirituality for medicine. On one side we have Sarah Wollaston, the...
Integrative medicine, naturopathy, and David Katz’s “more fluid concept of evidence”
Dr. David Katz is undoubtedly a heavy hitter in the brave new world of “integrative medicine,” a specialty that seeks to “integrate” pseudoscience with science, nonsense, with sense, and quackery with real medicine. In fairness, that’s not the way physicians like Dr. Katz see it. Rather, they see it as “integrating” the “best of both worlds” to the benefit of patients. However,...
FDA and Homeopathy: Part Two.
Friends, FDA, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Homeopathy, not to praise it. The evil that homeopaths do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Homeopathy. The noble Ullman Hath told you homeopathy was effective: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Homeopathy answer’d it....
Should the FDA crack down on homeopathic “remedies”?
In the category of potentially dangerous complementary or alternative medicine, I can think of few products worse than ones claimed to relieve asthma, yet don’t actually contain any medicine. Yet these products exist and are widely sold. Just over a year ago I described what might be the most irresponsible homeopathic treatment ever: A homeopathic asthma spray. If there was ever a...