Tag: quackery
“Functional medicine” in practice
"Functional medicine" is a form of quackery that combines the worst aspects of conventional medicine and alternative medicine. Specifically, it combines massive over-testing with a lack of science and a "make it up as you go along" ethic, all purportedly in the service of the "biochemical individuality" of each patient. Don't believe the hype. It's mostly quackery.
Cancer quackery from Germany to Australia
Sadly, cancer quackery is a worldwide phenomenon. Here, we examine its reach from Germany to Australia.
The stem cell hard sell
There are, unfortunately, a lot of clinics in the US that offer stem cell therapies for indications ranging from heart disease to anti-aging to even autism without good evidence that these therapies are actually efficacious. Real stem cell scientist Paul Knoepfler attended an informational seminar on stem cell therapies offered by a major clinic. Not surprisingly, it was more marketing than informational....
Deconstructing Homeopathy Propaganda
The definition of “propaganda,” like so many things, is a bit fuzzy. The dictionary definition is: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” There is no sharp demarcation line, however. Speech occurs on a spectrum from obsessively objective, fair, balanced, and scholarly at one end, to deliberately deceptive...
Quackery: The 20 Million Dollar Duck
The publisher recently sent me a review copy of Quackery: The 20 Million Dollar Duck, by Tony Robertson. My first thought was “Do we really need another book on this subject? Don’t I know all this stuff already?” I was very pleasantly surprised. Robertson has ferreted out an impressive array of facts and details that I wasn’t aware of; and yes, we...
Parabiosis – The Next Snakeoil
The pattern has repeated so many times that it is truly predictable. Scientists turn their eyes to one type of treatment that has theoretical potential. However, proper research from theory to proven treatment can take 10-20 years, if all goes well. Most such treatments will not work out – they will fail somewhere along the way from the petri dish to the...
Separating Fact from Fiction in Pediatric Medicine: Facial Nerve Palsy
There are numerous medical conditions that are seemingly designed to allow proponents of “irregular medicine” to proclaim their treatments to be effective. These conditions tend to be chronic and subjective in nature, or to have waxing and waning courses such that a parent or patient might easily be fooled into assigning a causal relationship between a bogus intervention and a clinical improvement....
Nobody licenses quacks in my state! HB 4531 and the licensing of naturopaths in Michigan
Over the years, I’ve taken care of women with locally advanced breast cancer so advanced that it’s eroded through the skin, forming huge, nasty ulcers filled with stinky dead cancer tissue that’s outgrown its blood supply, leaving the patient in chronic pain. If the patient is fortunate, her cancer has not metastasized beyond her axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under her...
“Integrative” medicine versus “alternative” medicine
I’ve written a lot about the language issue with respect to alternative medicine. As I like to put it (at least in shortened form), first there was quackery. Quacks did not like that name at all, and thus was born alternative medicine. And the quacks did think it good—for a while. There was a problem, however. “Alternative” medicine implied (correctly, of course)...
Functional medicine: The ultimate misnomer in the world of integrative medicine
Functional medicine. It sounds so...scientific and reasonable. It's anything but. In fact, functional medicine combines the worst features of conventional medicine with a heapin' helpin' of quackery.