One of the most common myths promulgated by die-hard antivaxers is the idea that if you have a healthy immune system you don’t need vaccines because your immune system will protect you against infectious diseases. It’s an idea that’s based on a germ of a legitimate idea, namely that if you are unhealthy or your immune system is suppressed you can certainly be more susceptible to infection. However, antivaxers take that observation to a huge extreme by claiming that a healthy immune system renders vaccines unnecessary. A corollary to this idea is that you can “strengthen” your immune system by using whatever woo the quack believes in, be it supplements, dietary interventions, coffee enemas, or whatever. It’s magical thinking, of course, but it’s magical thinking that permeates much of alternative medicine and antivaccine ideology.
I saw a doozy of an example of this the other day promoted by a naturopathic quack of whom I’d never heard before, Henele E’aley. It’s not at all surprising that it’s a naturopath, given how antivaccine the vast majority of naturopaths are. This particular “ND” (which to me stands for “not a doctor” or “not doctor”) is associated with something called the Energetic Health Institute and the BodyMind Institute. He’s also featured a lot in videos on the antivaccine website StopMandatoryVaccination.com, and it’s there that I saw him in Go Vaccine Free Without Fear Of Death From Infectious Disease:
Here’s how the video starts out:
I’m not afraid of my child dying from infectious disease, because my child has a healthy immune system.
Hi, my name is Doctor H, I’m the executive community director for the Energetic Health Institute and I’m also a very concerned father. One of the things we have to do parents is kind of free ourselves from the fear of our child dying.
There are actually cases where a healthy fear is a good thing. 100 or 150 years ago and before, every parent was terrified of her child dying because of infectious disease. It’s the reason why there are so many gravestones from that era for children who died at a young age. They died of polio, smallpox, diphtheria, influenza, pertussis, and, yes, the measles, among many other diseases. The reason privileged fools like Not-a-Doctor H have the luxury of not fearing that his child will die of infectious disease is because of vaccines and because of the herd immunity that he sponges off of while contributing nothing.
Not that Not-a-Doctor H sees it that way:
I’m not afraid of my child dying from a infectious disease, because my child has that healthy immune system. Because when we were first going through the process and he was in the womb and everybody is bombarding you with all this information there is all this fear, of you have to do everything right. And part of that doing things right includes getting your child vaccinated. And I didn’t buy into that. And I didn’t buy into that because I looked up some prospectuses from some of these drug manufacturers. And you see that they talk about robust sales and how proud they are of the growth of their vaccine departments. They’re not proud of them because they’re helping children be healthier. They’re proud of them because they’re helping those companies make money.
Can you say “non sequitur”? Sure, I knew you could. Let’s put it this way. Pharmaceutical companies making profits do not mean that their products don’t work, that vaccines don’t protect against infectious disease, and it certainly doesn’t mean that having a healthy immune system means that you don’t have to fear infectious disease. I like to point out the example of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Guess where it’s thought to have gotten its start? In army barracks! Among strapping, healthy, strong young men, many of whom it could and did kill.
Other infectious diseases can infect perfectly healthy children. Measles is one example. It’s one of the most easily transmissible diseases in existence, happily jumping from child to child, regardless of how “healthy” their immune systems are. It’s what the microorganisms have evolved to do. Indeed, if the microbes that cause these diseases only infected the “weak,” they would have been much less feared than they were before vaccines. I would remind our Dunning-Kruger possessed naturopath that it was only 25 years ago that hemophilia influenza type B (HiB) was still killing significant numbers of “healthy” children. What stopped it? Not “boosting children’s immune systems” with whatever woo E’ale prefers. It was a vaccine.
Even more ridiculously, Not-a-Doctor H thinks his son’s case is evidence that you don’t need vaccines:
Now, let me tell you a story. My child is about to be 11 in a couple of days. He’s top of his class, he’s straight-A student, he’s missed a grand total, in six years, he’s missed a grand total of four days of school due to illness. And the reason he’s only missed four days in six years, isn’t because he was vaccinated. He wasn’t vaccinated. It’s because we gave him the foods, we gave him the nutrients that his immune system needs to live a healthy and happy life.
No, the reason Not-a-Doctor H’s son is healthy is due to a combination of sponging off the herd immunity of a highly vaccinated population and a bit of luck, nothing more. It’s all well and good that his father apparently fed him well (although one has to wonder whether that “good nutrition” included a bunch of unnecessary supplements), but nutrition alone will not “strengthen” or “boost” the immune system in a way that vaccines are not necessary.
He also falls for the fallacy that “natural” immunity is better:
Are kids going to get sick? Yes, that’s what we want. You want your kid to get sick, but the key is that you don’t want them to be sick for long. You want them and their immune system to effectively fight the infection, and that’s what a healthy immune system will do. So how do you know if your kid’s immune system is healthy? Because I think that should really be the next question. And it’s very simple, did your kid get sick? Yes. Did he recover very quickly? Yes. Your kid has a healthy immune system. That’s the simplicity of it all. If your kid is out for a week, if he’s sick for a week, two weeks, not a healthy immune system. We gotta get some nutrients in there. We gotta get that little baby healthy, okay. But if the baby fights off the infection as a healthy immune system should, you don’t have to worry about infectious diseases.
I do love the “just so” nature of Not-a-Doctor H’s story. If you stay sick your immune system must not be healthy, and if you get better right away it is. What’s lacking is any evidence that whatever woo it is that Not-a-Doctor H recommends does anything to convert an “unhealthy” to a “healthy” immune system. Of course, the whole point of vaccination is to obtain immunity to the disease vaccinated against without having to suffer through the symptoms of the disease or face the risk of its complications. Contrary to what our naturoquack seems to think, these childhood illnesses are not harmless. There is a small, but real mortality rate due to measles, and measles can also cause encephalopathy. Influenza, as mentioned before, can kill. The list goes on and on.
Oddly enough, I didn’t recall ever having heard Henele E’aley before; so I wandered over to his Facebook page and two websites, the Energetic Health Institute and BodyMind Institute. There, I found abundant evidence that not only is Not-a-Doctor H is a quack, but that he’s teacher of quackery. For instance, the Energetic Health Institute offers all manner of classes, including Holistic Lifestyle Specialist, Holistic Practice Specialist, and Cleansing+Fasting Specialist, which proclaims:
A body that has difficulty pooping, peeing, sweating, and/or breathing is a body that will bio-accumulate disease precursors. A body that has a few extra pounds and a difficult time losing them is a body that will bio-accumulate disease precursors. A body that is constantly tired and depressed is a body that will bio-accumulate disease precursors. And if the person living in a body like this, has a difficult time letting go of painful experiences, then they will certainly bio-accumulate Emotional Charge throughout their body too. Ultimately, disease precursors like Chronic Nutrient Deficiencies, GMOs, Pesticides, Mercury & Hundreds of Other Environmental Pollutants, Refined Sugar, Excessive Meat Consumption, Excessive Use of Pharmaceuticals (like Antibiotics, Proton Pump Inhibitors & Statins), Underlying Infections, and Embedded Emotional Charge can and will wreak havoc on the body’s ability to produce the energy essential for eliminating the disease precursors in the first place. Thus, the stresses of life help create a cycle of disease we will teach you how to break.
Ah yes. He recommends bogus “detoxification.” Perhaps the scariest course he offers is to train you as a Vaccine Education Specialist. Here’s a preview:
There’s a lot of antivaccine fallacies there, including the toxins gambit, the claim that vaccines contain cells from aborted fetuses, mercury fear mongering, mischaracterization of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and, of course, misrepresentation of the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database that neglects to mention that just because a reaction is reported to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused it, particularly given how litigation by antivaxers trying to sue for “vaccine injuries” that aren’t has distorted VAERS. Regular readers here can probably refute all these tropes, bits of misinformation, and lies because I’ve discussed every one of them at one time or another, some many times.
Not-a-Doctor Henele E’aley is a classic example of what’s wrong with naturopaths and antivaxers (which are often the same thing, given how antivaccine most naturopaths are). There’s serious magical thinking at the heart of his “specialty,” and that magical thinking is completely compatible with the magical thinking of antivaxers who think that the reason their unvaccinated children are doing so well is because their immune systems are so superior and not because of luck and herd immunity.
153 replies on “Henele E’ale: A new antivaccine naturopathic quack (but I repeat myself)”
Ah yes. I was sick with flu for three weeks once. Was I unhealthy? No. I’d been going to the gym regularly and eating nutritious foods. The flu still clobbered me. It victim blaming pure and simple.
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: catching a disease to get immunity to it is like burning something to fireproof it.
We are taught right now in immunology that the body needs at least 100 hours to develop a specific immune response to a new germ, and then follows clonal expansion for about 4 days, so it seems rational to be sick at least a week.
Especially with influenza, since it changes continuously. Being immune to the last flu does not make you immune to the next one.
My family is fully immunized for the flu shot yearly, and yes one of us had the flu last year. But, if it were not for having it, I am certain that the effects would have been much, much worse. We were able to identify that in fact, the family member had the flu. Our household was given a prescription to take. We all were grateful that we had taken the precautions beforehand. It could have been a disaster for our family,
Good for you and your family, Helen.
I used to be a bit lackadaisical about the flu vaccine because of the way it was promoted.
“Seniors and medical people can get it now. The rest of you should wait till later when it’s convenient.”
I got serious about it when the H1N1 hit and I was working in schools and worried about spreading it to the kids.
And it looks like this season is continuing to get worse.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-16-more-children-dead-from-flu-peak-still-to-come/ar-BBICn4s?li=BBnb7Kz
I happened to visit a place that was not allowing visitors till the flu season was over. It was an assisted living facility for seniors and they were very serious about protecting them. I only got to talk to one of the caregivers at the front door.
I used to blow off flu vaccination, but working at a university, I managed to get sick with it repeatedly several years in a row –big schools are sickness magnets. I know it isn’t perfect, but I haven’t had a brush with flu again since I started to be diligent about getting vaccinated for it. Such a small thing to ward off such huge suffering.
My university employer didn’t exactly go out of its way to encourage flu shots, so I only got started about five years ago after a late-season bout (I’m guessing influenza B). In other news, I managed to scam a second Tdap, rather than Td, a couple of days ago. Oh, and Augmentin. Hooray, cat rescue.
The stable, long standing cultures and civilizations such as in the Pacific, Americas and Australasia, had populations that were well nourished and physically fit ( pre European invasions) yet their immune systems did not defend them sufficiently against European-transmitted microorganisms to prevent millions of deaths. Histories that have been much written about. ‘Natural health’ is not always sufficient to prevent infectious disease hence our control of ‘nature’ with vaccinations. I know I am speaking to the converted, so apologies.
One of the most striking historical exhibits I’ve ever seen was the 1992 exhibition at the Smithsonian, which explicitly addressed the effect of European diseases on indigenous people in the western hemisphere. Experts for that exhibit expressed opinions based on multiple sources and from many disciplinary perspectives that up to ninety percent of the native populations may have died from exposure to Europeans. Ninety percent. These were healthy, vigorous, active people who typically lived to a ripe old age–that is, until the colonizers came along and destroyed their cultures and killed most of them.
This person is a dangerous fool.
Yes but his name is way cooler than yours.
Conceded.
On the other hand, WTF is it with that random apostrophe in the middle of his last name?
My best guess is that it’s Hawaiian, so it would be an ‘okina, the glottal stop, rather than an apostrophe. Whether WordPress is going to render the correct symbol is something I’ll find out after hitting submit.
Oh, and the contact number for the Energetic Health Institute has “Say Aloha!” next to it, FWIW, although he was a member of the National Society of Black Engineers during his five years as a UCLA undergrad.
I disagree with Narad. To me this guy looks like another white dude who thought it would be cool to adopt a foreign-sounding name, like the “raw water” guy Orac posted about a couple of weeks ago. Admittedly, I don’t recognize the ethnic origin this dude is trying to simulate (he might be part Polynesian, for all I know), but ISTM that the most likely explanation is that his original surname was Eale (or something similar) and he added the apostrophe to make it sound/look cool, much the way that Stephen Colbert adopted the French pronunciation of his surname when he left South Carolina to attend university.
My question would be, is the self-styled “Doctor H” a rapper with a sideline in naturopathy, or a naturopath who fancies himself a rapper? Not that the answer to this question would have any effect on whether I would consult him about a medical problem (I wouldn’t).
Stephen Colbert adopted the French pronunciation of his surname ??
There is another way to pronounce it?
@ Eric Lund:
My first guess would be some sort of African / white mix – not necessarily European white. Syrian- Egyptian?
Who knows?
-btw- re Hawaiian : My friend is – as far as she knows- Italian/ Sicilian but has been asked frequently if she’s Hawaiian, Tahitian, Egyptian or similar.ethnicities, The Middle East is feasible because of Sicily’s history.
I also am supposed to be quite standard European white but I suspect something Mediterranean happened long ago – several people in my father’s family has interesting hair textures. Mine is halfway,
Sorry but growing up on James Island, SC with a Porter Gaude education is bit too 1%’er to qualify as representative of South Carolina. As a native of the Palmetto State I do not accept Colbert as one of “us”.
I suggest that you first consult with your Samoan attorney.
I’ve heard (that is ‘no citation available’) the ‘original’ pronunciation is ‘COLE-bert’.
“Henele” is a perfectly cromulant Hawai’ian first name, being what “Henry” looks like when you fit it into the Polynesian system of CV syllables only.
And the Goofle tells me that “E’ale” is not unknown as a Hawai’an family name.
I recently encountered the useful term “homeopaddy”, which is where having a great-great-great-mother who once flirted with an Irish dude is enough to qualify you as Irish, at least for purposes of drinking Guinness on St Patrick’s Day.
What exactly does bio- accumulation mean? I know that simple accumulation means the amassing of a certain object or a substance. I really have a problem what the prefix ”bio” means in this context. Does actually have a meaning and I am way to stupid to wrap my head around the meaning or is it simply the not- a- doctor quack version of technobabble?
I call it “woo-babble.” ?
So it’s not the sign that I need a refresher course in english vocabulary and grammar?
Bioaccumulation is a real thing, and the term has been in use since way back in the days when “website” meant only an arachnid’s domicile.
In general, it means that some substance tends to build up in tissues of a living organism because the substance is excreted at a rate lower than it is taken in. This is an issue for things like mercury and some pesticides. The concept used to be applied commonly to “food chain” situations: Plankton get contaminated. Small fish eat plankton. Bigger fish eat small fish. Biggest fish eats big fish, and gets the “benefit” of the accumulated toxicants first picked up by the plankton. This is why major predator species such as swordfish and some species of tuna should not be consumed with any regularity.
c.f. plumbum & Flint, Michigan for more direct source-to-consumer example
Wouldn’t be accumulation as term be sufficient?
Something like “bio-concentration” might have been clearer to describe the phenomenon by which top predators have ended up with lots of, for instance, DDT or mercury in their tissues. However, “bio-accumulation” was what wildlife biologists started using decades ago; for that specific phenomenon, we’re sort of stuck with the term now.
I don’t think just “accumulation” would be a good substitute for that usage. It wouldn’t get at the increase in concentration as the substance works its way up the food chain.
Thank you for the explanation.
Another question: which tuissue would “emotional charge” accumulate in?
Thank you for the explanation or education.
Next question: which tissue would “emotional charge” accumulate in?
And if he talks about disease precursors is he talking about aggregation of amyloid like in Alzheimer’s or is he simply nuts?
Excuse me, my autocorrect seems illiterate in english.
Immensity which tissues get emotionally charged?
Excuse me, illiterate autocorrecting function. I meant tissue, not tuissue.
Because it is my wont to be a pedant, I must point out that some folks here appear to be conflating bioaccumulation with biomagnification. The former refers to the intake of a chemical and its concentration in a living organism by any means (e.g. ingestion, absorption, inhilation, etc.), while the latter refers specifically to increasing concentration of such a chemical as it passes up the food chain to higher trophic levels.
It’s laughable when he says “One of the things we have to do parents is kind of free ourselves from the fear of our child dying.” Great grammar from a not-a-doctor that instills even less confidence in his unscientific abilities when he says “kind of”. I remember stopping that annoyance as a sophomore in high school.
Nice tat on Henele’s arm. Wonder if he got his Hep B vaccine prior to receiving it.
I notice he has a online article on the “stop mandatory vaccination” page on what to do when your unvaccinated child becomes sick (https://tinyurl.com/yd5yoqek) This seems to be an emerging quack theme among his type, including the recent publication of a book titled “The Unvaccinated Child: A Treatment Guide for Parents and Caregivers” published by two other NDs. I’m fairly certain these NDs have absolutely no training or ability in recognizing when an unvaccinated child has contracted measles, meningitis or whooping cough, so they have not qualifications to be claiming expertise in these areas.
Somehow, when non-doctor H say going vaccine-free, it reminds me of acquaintances that preach about going diaper free…
I thought vaccinating works with your immune system, to teach it to fight off a germ, and works better with a healthy immune system. Silly me.
I do want to remind people that while a minority, there is an NDs for vaccines group trying to educate other NDs and their clients on this. Their blog is very good.
Sadly, they are a tiny minority of naturopaths.
You could always reduce their number, shake them around for a bit and hope start believing in vaccines. Just another experiment on the effectiveness of homeopathy. (;
Yes.
“It’s laughable when he says “One of the things we have to do parents is kind of free ourselves from the fear of our child dying.””
Sounds like the advice of one of Dr. Hickie’s fellow pediatricians, Paul Thomas (author of the hilariously named “The Vaccine-Friendly Book”). In it, Thomas chides parents who are “Nervous Nellies” about infectious disease and suggests “As you do what you can to shore up your child’s immune system, you can let go of the fear of illness and embrace the fun.”
Yes, there’s a great time to be had watching your child battle high fever, struggle to breathe or experience severe diarrhea that could have been prevented by vaccination. It’s fun!
Unfortunately, my mother is no longer alive, so cannot regale me with tales of all the fun she embraced while she thought I was dying with whooping cough (the doctor thought the same thing).
I lived through the last 2 polio epidemics in Canada though I was too young to notice but I remember the suppressed terror my parents showed the day I got a minor fever.
I was one of the first in line when the polio vaccine came out, dragged there by some relieved parents. Now, if only the chickenpox vaccine had come out earlier.
I also remember a great prof who we thought used to doze off for 1-2 secs at times during seminars. It later it turned out that he was passing out from lack of oxygen because of as a result of polio. He needed to keep moving to breath well. Made him a fiendish tennis player but he was damn lucky. He could easily ended up in an iron lung.
Oh, as a follow-up to Orac’s comment: “There is a small, but real mortality rate due to measles”. Very true, it seems, in the developed world with good nutrition, high vaccination rates and good health care.
However WHO reports
As long as Dr H keeps his son within the bounds of the USA he can free-load fairly confidently. Travel to exotic places may not be a good idea.
Lord, he’s a idiot.
Anti-vax Thomas should be stripped of his license given his threat to public health from his anti-vax book and public “don’t vaccinate your child” proclamations. It’s despicable he can call himself a pediatrician given how incompetent his understand of medicine and science is. He is no fellow of mine.
Anyone who’s been a parent should know how ridiculous this is. Kids get several colds a year because they haven’t been exposed to the many and varied rhinoviruses in the community. I’ll bet this wanker sends his son to school sniffing and sneezing and spreading viruses to his classmates.
I had a contentious encounter just today with an apparently teenage mother who brought her obviously sick toddler into a store where he sneezed several times close enough to other people that the vapor could have exposed others in the checkout line. By sheer coincidence I had bought some masks and offered her one. She looked at me as though I had just dropped in from Pluto. Yeah, it was intrusive on my part, but I am not going to do nothing when people selfishly and stupidly expose other people. Another time without a box of disposable masks…I don’t know what I could have done. I tried to be polite about it, but that got nowhere.
In the US, selfishness and ignorance are constants of life, so now I’m wondering how many people might get sick now because of this girl’s cluelessness. I hope the little boy will be OK, but we can’t legislate against dumbness.
I don’t see much from the public health community to address this here. There’s a leadership vacuum in this community.
I hate when parents drag their sick kids around. Feel sorry for the kids who should be at home getting better and away from the public.
There are so many very simple things we can do to protect ourselves and other very vulnerable people. This current flu outbreak may really blow up in the US in the next few weeks. Every state on the mainland is now infected. One of the variants is the H1N1 which has been around for a while.
It’s always a gamble when they formulate vaccines because there is no way to know how effective they will be and whether some mutation in the virus might wreck the overall immunization plan.
If you have children or elderly parents, I’m not an expert but hope you have a way to keep them in a safe environment for now because of the irresponsible behavior of other people. This girl really made me mad (insert angry emoticon here). I wish we had a way to penalize people who expose other people to diseases, but the libertarians would have a conniption fit.
It’s not the public health community’s fault that people can’t afford to take time off work and cannot afford childcare. “My son is sick, but I can’t afford to lose my job – one day could be the last. Send him to school then.”
Now, those people who can afford the ‘luxury’ of confining a sick child to home where they belong, but fail to so do – scum of the earth.
Just a side note, but this is why drive-through pharmacies are the most brilliant thing in a long time. Keep the sick person (child or adult) in the car away from everyone else (including the pharmacist!) and get them their medication promptly.
There’s nothing quite like walking up to the pharmacy in a grocery store with a plastic bag asking to have a prescription for an anti-emetic filled. Gosh they’re quick when you ask where you can sit to wait!
Yes. Agree. Funny/not funny. I commented elsewhere about this. Drive-in is a great solution for pharmacies. I wish they had done this a long time ago. It may have prevented a lot of problems, but this is a consequence of really dumb and ill-considered decisions in not doing anything rational towards protecting our nation’s health. The US could have legislated this a long time ago, but in the US we are desperately trying to cope with a very dumb, corrupt, and totally dysfunctional “health care system” (translation: complete joke of a health care system for an advanced nation).
I lived in France and have seen what a functional health care system looks like. This not it. It is totally ridiculous in the US. I am getting out of here soon.
I am just one little person and can’t fix this. What you suggest could be a logical and simple fix for a lot of problems. It would not fix the big ones but could help.
Way back when, I had to literally run to a pharmacy for ipecac (the opposite direction) because of a… situation. They didn’t ask questions, and I don’t know what cash, if anything, I left on the counter. It’s long been considered a bad idea, but I didn’t know any better, and I have no idea whether Walgreens carried activated charcoal in the first place.
Four days? Sickly child. My daughter’s now thirteen and has missed half a day of school, ever, when she was sent home with headlice!
Alpha-1 runs in my family. Given that our own immune systems can cause damage to our lungs, I’ll take the vaccine over a “healthy” immune system any day.
Using “Dr.” and your degree…always a sign of a crank. Yet again, why is death the only endpoint these quacks and their followers think is important?
Well, in this case, I’’d consider it truth in advertising – “I call my self ‘Doctor’, but it’d not a real degree”.
I suppose that’s a way to look at it.
I had an eagle scout in my troop that was honored at high school graduation for having missed no days of school ever. No idea if he went to school sick, probably did. I’m sure he was vaccinated as the local school system required it.
I camped with him on numerous occasions and while he was as fit as any teenager could be, his eating habits were terrible. Almost vegetable phobic.
My son almost always got perfect attendance awards. He was sick a few times once my oldest started preschool and a few times when he was in preschool and then was hardly ever sick. He is fully vaccinated and was my pickiest eater.
Wow! It took me a while to find it, but he’s in Calgary, Alberta–and they also have a very lenghty disclaimer for the “Institute”. I couldn’t get the first link to load. There’s another guy at the school called David AVOCADO Wolfe– You can’t make this stuff up.
It’s all just a big marketing tool for their products. When will my local medical clinic put a cart icon on their website, I ask myself? After all, why can’t I just select some lab tests and a couple of surgeries, and a few opioids when I have the urge to shop?
Is his name Hawaiian? Or just made up?
Oh yes, at the website of the “Insitute”, he calls himself a Natural Medical Doctor? Whaaaaat? So, ummmm, the MD’s are…UN-natural?
I can’t find any ref to him in Calgary. Got an address? I could drop by and blow raspberries at him from the sidewalk
He isn’t in Calgary. He is faculty at the “virtual” institute, which probably is a home-base business or has some small office over a convenience store somewhere.
I had a look at the disclaimer page. “To the maximum extent permitted in law” I suspect is vastly beyond what they would like it to be.
Perhaps he was born with a doctors degree. He didn’t have to study for it, it just was there, like a gift of nature.
Pretty funny he complains about vaccine manufactorers bragging about their succes.
In the Netherlands it is always quacks, that advertise and brag about their guestbooks on inthernet.
I’m now wondering about the legal implications of naming your kid Dr. FirstName LastName, MD. I mean, it’s not actually the craziest name I’ve ever run across.
@Terrie – https://xkcd.com/327/
forgot to mention: Wolfe has received a few doses of Insolence – have a look through the archives. As I recall, he got quite miffed with our host on at least one occasion.
We’ve come across David Avocado Wolfe before. There’s got to be a joke here somehow.
Hawaiian? My first guess was that it was supposed to be from an African dialect.
But he is ( somewhat) good looking and can make videos so I suppose he’ll have a career and maybe present at the various anti-vax and natural health conventions
But in CALGARY? I mean it’s not Boulder or No Cal? Who knew?
-btw- I refer to NDs as ” No Doctors”
Green and mushy?.
Yes, the prerequisites for selling your services as a Not-A-Doctor seem to be these (my casual opinion here because I try not to pay too much attention to these people): 1) exotic look, preferably not a boring-looking Western white person; 2) exotic name with uncertain cultural origins, adding to the Appeal to Antiquity so favored by devotees of woo (thanks to Orac for that term); 3) somewhat careless and colloquial use of language (ridiculous overuse of capitalization, for example) to create a brand impression of being “informal” and “accessible”; 4) carefully disguised endorsement and salesmanship of supplements through partnerships and subtle sales tactics on one’s own pseudo-medical web site; 5) most importantly, subterfuge involving front groups and crafty means of disguising participation in those front groups.
Not to go on and on, but I have been investigating how these shysters exploit the law to create seemingly legit fronts for themselves in order to baffle and confuse the public–and of course, to sell lots of questionable junk before they do appear on the radar.
This is the next legal frontier for this, I think. These fake groups are well below the FDA’s and other federal agencies’ radar right now. My personal goal is to put teeth into the feds’ means of shutting this stuff down,
Formerly based in Tempe (SCNM), now in the “Greater Los Angeles Area,” if his LinkedIn profile is to be believed.
Which school did he go to?
aka Witch doctor
Thought of this one:
There are others who are competent to explain the legalities of this but it seems dodgy for him to refer to himself as a medical doctor when he isn’t.
Ryan Lovette is dead and his mother is in prison because of the BS that quacks like this guy promote and slop all over the internet.
Ezekiel Stephan is dead because of the BS that quacks like this guy promote and slop all over the internet (whether his parents will go to jail depends on a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in May).
Children get sick. Sometimes when they are sick they need the attentions of real physicians. Both those kids would almost certainly have been saved and suffered no long-term consequences had their parents taken them to real docs who could have administered common cheap antibiotics in time. But no, they both got useless herbal concoctions.
I have one simple test for whether I’m reading garbage: inappropriate capitalization of generic nouns. This works for me, and my own little validation/reliability system keeps affirming it. People who capitalize words that are not proper nouns almost invariably turn out to be some kind of crank, conspiracy theorist struggling for legitimacy, or ignorant ideologue incapable of disciplined reasoning. This person’s attempt to appropriate clinical language with silly linguistic and grammar distortions is a giveaway. The first time I see a common term capitalized, I discount, stop reading, and move on. Great saver of reading time.
@Sara:
A very useful tip. The “creative” use of ellipses IMO serves as another marker of crackpottery, although the two are often found together.
Sara, that’s very good!
I have other signs-
woo-meisters like to use BIG words or words that sound technical/ scientific inappropriately
so they might throw in terms from physics or another unrelated field to sound like they know something, Words about energy or information are frequent.
Mispronouncing words from bio, anatomy or physio are another sign.
One of the idiots I survey attaches multiple suffixes to words so Iatrogenic becomes iatrogenesis or iatrogeneticism.
He also likes to throw in random references to philosophers often mispronouncing European names, neatly illustrating his lack of study in several of the most popular ones.
I mean SRSLY if you have a doctorate shouldn’t you know how to pronounce names that are French, Spanish or German?
Don’t forget spelling “disease” as “dis-ease.” That’s a dead giveaway that the person whose article or blog post you’re reading is a quack, with at least 99% sensitivity and 95% specificity. At least. (I’m being generous in assuming a few clueless wonders will use this spelling without being a quack, but I’m probably being too generous.)
I do not consider anyone coming from Bastyr or its counterparts with this kind of putative “doctoral” bogusness to be worthy of any serious debate at any level. Yeah, I’m a snob.
I see this whole situation as fundamentally a legal problem (not to derail the great discussion here). We have to do three things as I see it:
1) There needs to be a coherent, focused strategy across life science disciplines to counter the marketing crap that these crooks have invoked so successfully to dupe the public via the internet. This needs to be consistent and endorsed within basic medical education and training so that young docs acknowledge the threat that these shysters pose and will actively educate people about how dangerous this stuff can be.
2) I am really tired of dealing with the gutless FDA and its useless attempts to deal with preventable deaths caused by these CRIMINALS after the fact. Apologies to anyone who is ensconced in that fed system.
3) This states’ rights nonsense for regulating quacks has to stop. Now. The PHS and the NIH need nationally mandated regulatory authority to stop these people from insinuating themselves into med schools and bribing state officials–hello, Orrin Hatch and your supplement manufacturer buddies in Utah!–to thwart meaningful regulation of these dangerous opportunists. They don’t care if they are killing people. They are completely corrupt. There has to be a national legislative apparatus to stop this ridiculousness.
OK. Rant over. This is one of the few places where I can really express myself, so thank you if you read this.
Usually there is a therapeutic “Protocol” somewhere on the webstore, as one of the white-coat cosplay Worship Words.
Iatrogenesis imperfecta?
Triggers: Allopathic (you all know this); quantum (a leftover from 80s nonsense popular publications); iatrogenic (almost universally misdefined and misunderstood); anything referencing “energy fields” (who would not understand that this is a quackery appeal to the ignorant?); any variation of the old faithful “detox” (obvious to anyone who understands how the human body actually works); and vague references to gobs of colon sludge that has been sitting in your body for weeks (no, it hasn’t).
I am an old fart who now edits grant proposals and papers in several areas of neuroscience and basic cancer biology. I’ve had a lot of conflicts with people over misuse of language and tolerance of dumb language. I don’t put up with it. Nor should you. Attack this beast whenever you can.
@Orac, either a quack, or a teenager who thinks they’re giving a really clever explanation of why school makes them sick. I’ve lost count of the number of kids who have made jokes about how homework gives them “dis-eases.”
While I agree that Dr. Henele E’aley’s thinking seems to be magical in this case, there are a few points getting missed here:
1) ND does NOT stand for “Not a Doctor” as you indicated. I have no idea of what Dr. Henele E’aley’s training consists of or whether he actually earned a degree in naturopathic medicine, but the NDs I know went through rigorous pre-med preparation and years of naturopathic doctor training and residency consisting of many of the same topics covered in allopathic and osteopathic medical schools. In my state, they treat on par with MDs, except for doing surgeries, and prescribe drugs, injections, nutrients, and botanicals, and are preferred providers on many insurance plans.
NDs helped me beat stage 3 cancer, much to my conventional oncogist’s surprise. Now, with my current serious and complex illness, after a dozen MDs couldn’t competently read my labs or diagnose or treat me, a ND got to the root of my issues, doing proper labs, prescribing drugs, nutrients, and hormones. A top specialist at Stanford confirmed my ND’s excellent work and dug a little further, and I’m finally improving with the treatments they’ve prescribed, no thanks to the many MDs who were absolutely useless and a waste of time and money.
2) NDs do not categorically dismiss vaccines. They are aware, though, of the pitfalls, and that for certain patients, vaccines can be damaging. This is also recognized by the US Government, where there’s a national fund for paying for patients damaged by vaccines, which regularly pays out once damage is proven, by MDs providing the evidence.
Genetic flaws, like those for immune system defects and mitochondrial disease and many others as well as toxic exposures and metabolic flaws in ridding the body of damaging substances, make vaccines a hazard for some. Not everyone, of course, and there is value to herd immunity, but it is recognized that some patients should not get vaccines.
3) Calling out one bad apple is just that. But painting an entire profession as bad because of that one apple, and using erroneous information to do so is wrong. Dr. E’aley doesn’t sound like any ND I’ve met, and I’ve met quite a few.
I am a patient who has been tremendously helped by naturopathic medicine, as has my family. And according to a top MD PhD specialist, who supports what our NDs have done, our genetics and immune systems are so dysfunctional that vaccines can damage us, so we should avoid them, and hope that everyone around us gets vaccines.
https://www.naturopathicdiaries.com/
3) This is not a case of “one bad apple”. A great many Naturopaths are antivaccination. Orac has written about many. In fact, the Naturopathic curriculum is based on nonscientific ideas.
2) You are making a straw man argument. The problem with Henele E’ale and many other Naturopaths is that they:
• exaggerate the harms of vaccination by insisting vaccines cause injuries they have never been shown to cause;
• use dogwhistle words like “chemicals” to make vaccines sound dangerous;
• claim a higher rate of injury from vaccination than happens;
• downplay the effectiveness of vaccination as a disease prevention measure, and;
• downplay the harms of getting the diseases.
Every single disease we vaccinate against can kill. Even if the patient survives, negative sequelae like blindness, deafness, paralysis, organ damage and organ failure can result. By claiming that patients should forego vaccines “Dr.” E’ale is putting people at risk of getting these diseases with all the possible dangers they entail.
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blockquote>1) ND does NOT stand for “Not a Doctor” as you indicated. I have no idea of what Dr. Henele E’aley’s training consists of or whether he actually earned a degree in naturopathic medicine, but the NDs I know went through rigorous pre-med preparation and years of naturopathic doctor training and residency consisting of many of the same topics covered in allopathic and osteopathic medical schools.
Um no. You don’t even need a degree in the sciences to get into naturopathy school. Maybe a small handful did go through a pre-med programme, fail to get into med school and went on to naturopathy but the vast majority were/are mediocre students (in relation to those who go on to med, professional or grad school). No they don’t get the same or even close to the same training as DOs and MDs. Their medical coursework is decelerated and they learn such twaddle as homeopathy, kineisiology, herbology and of course business/marketing. They do not have the rigorous residencies that MDs do and they are taught by other naturopaths, not experts in a field.
Then they aren’t on par with MDs now are they? Just because some insurance providers allow coverage, that doesn’t mean it’s valid nor preferred. Some also provide coverage for acupuncture and chiropractors and there’s no justification for that.
Heard all this before yet none of these miracle cures ever makes it into medical journals for us to read. If you want to post your medical history, sans identification then we’ll be the judge but colour me sceptical of your glowing account, naturally validated by some nameless top physician at a prestigious medical school. Do you people have instruction manuals for your quack testimonials?
Most naturopaths are anti-vaccine, having a handful who aren’t isn’t something that’s going to give the profession a patina of legitimacy. Most naturopaths can’t/won’t even administer vaccines so they don’t even know what they are talking about. Of course we know about the NVICP and vaccine injury is rare and the evidence to “prove” them is not onerous.
E’aley is par for the course and your anecdotes=/=data.
The ‘bad apple’ meme is another example of how most people confuse skeptical inquiry, a search for knowledge, with tribal discourse, intended to delegitimize certain groups.
Doesn’t matter how smart they are. Doesn’t matter how sincere they are. Doesn’t matter how nice they are. The evidence is that every single practice of naturopathy is ineffective, the only exceptions being ones that do not essentially depend on naturopathy.
It’s not MD’s vs. ND’s, it’s knowledge (uncertain and often tentative) vs. illusory knowledge (works by self-deception). This is not an attack on ND’s qua ND’s, though there’s plenty of criticism of particular ND’s. No, this is information and reason against nonsense.
Based on a recent report it seems that Naturopaths (at least in Australia.) hold marketing & entrepreneurial skills in much higher regard than scientific literacy, which certainly seems to fit the individual discussed, and also fits with many of the things Britt Hermes has revealed.
https://www.skeptics.com.au/2018/02/02/scientific-literacy-low-priority-for-cam-practitioners/
Thank you for your response, I have never seen such a one sided group of people,
My life was saved by an “ND,” after being diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease, Churg Strauss syndrome/ vasculitis. My lower legs paralyzed, sudden foot drop in both feet.
The MDs gave me a death sentence in 2007,a life of DMARDS(chemo, prednisone) gabapentin, oxycodone, Percocet and other drugs. I was told by two specialists, MDs, to get my affairs in order.
I was able get off all drugs, I walk, drive, ride my bicycle, and I can even run again. Foot drop is barely noticeable, I would not be alive if it wasn’t for naturopathic medicine and my ND. They have just as much training as a medical doctor, or an MD. However my ND was also a nutritionist which most MDs know little to nothing about. Also, an herbalist. Yes! Herbs. They work if you understand them. Most of the drugs people take are synthetic herbs.
My mother never had the flu, she also never had a flu shot. She also took no medications as she didn’t need them she ate healthy, utilized wholistic and naturopathic medicine and even as a child overcame diabetes because my grandmother took her to a naturopathic doctor. She lived to be 98 years old. She has a twin brother who has also never had the flu shot, or his wife, they are both still living, take no drugs for anything,
Oy. The logical fail here. It hurts.
That your relatives have never had a flu shot and apparently never had the flu (hard to judge unless you have a negative flu swab for every sniffle) says nothing about the efficacy of vaccines. It says they’ve just been damn lucky.
You say you “got off all drugs.” That implies you took the recommended therapy for awhile. That tells me it is much more likely than not you went into remission due to the drugs. Your disease can flare up again. If you try to treat it with herbs, I am not hopeful for the outcome for you. Orac has detailed many, many stories like yours here that have had that same tragic conclusion.
Digoxin is not a “synthesized herb.” It is a synthesized form of the active ingredient of a substance found in the foxglove plant. Ditto with aspirin (willow bark tea). The difference is, the purity of the ingredient and its chemical structure are well understood. The safe doses are well understood. Efficacy is well proven one way or another. The purity and consistency of the doses in the medications are well regulated.
The “supplement” industry is almost completely unregulated. We don’t always know the active ingredient, the safe doses are not always well understood, the evidence of efficacy is dubious at best, and the purity and consistency of the dose is a mystery because of said lack of regulation.
Calling yourself a doctor, does not make you one. In no reality is a naturopath equal to an MD or a DO. They’re not equal to a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician’s Assistant. They’re not equal to a Registered Nurse, or a Licensed Practical Nurse. I’m not sure they’re equal to a Medical Assistant or a Certified Nursing Assistant. At least MAs and CNAs actually know something useful. A good CNA is worth their weight in gold to me. A naturopath isn’t worth used tissue because they don’t know jack or shit.
I don’t believe for a minute a naturopath cured stage three cancer in you. Yes, you could think I’m calling you a liar, and you might be. Or you might be simply deluded. Occaam’s Razor says the latter, so that’s what I’ll go with.
Naturopaths absolutely dismiss vaccines, as you just did with your blather about vaccines being “damaging.” While all medications have some risk, to categorize all vaccines as being damaging is a flat out falsehood. Vaccines are only hazardous to people with an allergy to an ingredient, or whose immune systems are compromised (for live vaccines). The only other reason not to get a vaccine is if you are too young (usually because it will not be effective until you reach a certain age).
However given the considerable body of evidence that naturopaths 1) know nothing, 2) won’t admit the fact they know nothing, 3) purport to be able to cure anything in spite of the fact they know nothing, 4) take money from people knowing they know nothing, and 5) cause harm up to and including the deaths of their patients, I am quite justified in dismissing them out of hand.
Real medical providers will acknowledge the limits of their knowledge and training. They actually know real things. They do charge for their services, and there isn’t a guarantee but they tell you that. They explain the risks and benefits of what they do. When harm happens, it’s rarely because the provider didn’t know what they were doing, there is a legal mechanism to get compensation in such cases, and the profession will use the experience as a learning opportunity to improve their health care practices. Real medicine grows.
NDs are nowhere near “on par” with MDs and DOs. Sorry. Ask an ND how many sick babies and children they’ve cared for in the NICU and PICU and regular hospital wards and if they are honest, their answer will be zero. MDs and DOs are required in their residencies to do this. We know sick and how to treat it a lot better than NDs ever will.
Embedded Emotional Charge…..
I see my inner child, coiled up like a cobra, ready to strike out at any virus in a moment’s notice. But wait, a can of butthurt just opened up. Shoot, I’m not gonna make it.
Minions, I must go ski. I’m using my latex whiskey flask, too. My Embed might recover. I’ll post updates on my snow enema.
I truly hate the claim that one can “boost their immune system.” Especially after mine has tried to kill a couple of times. The worst was when I was in Arizona in the spring, and it was warm enough to turn on the swamp cooler. That released so much mold that my allergies went into overload. I had to hang up with the doctor who was on-call to call 911 because I could barely breathe.
I want to see an evidence-based examination of this universal claim among these not-doctors and their supporting infrastructure and industries that it’s possible to “boost the immune system.” What is the evidence? Show me the research. Show me the research across populations and across multigenerational periods of history. Good stuff with solid methodology.
This seems to be the primary marketing ploy for not-doctors selling their stuff to the gullible and uneducated (yes, I am a nerdy snob). Show. Me. Solidly Researched. Evidence. I reject any anecdotal nonsense. Give me evidence–good stuff.
The boosting-the-immune-system gambit seems to be the most successful sales tactic of the last decade. I did a quick search of sales figures for the supplement industry just now–including marginally acceptable types such as now-wealthy Andrew Weil, who somewhat created and has made a flipping fortune from his particular take on this “integrative” stuff but who is obese and obviously unhealthy–and the numbers are distressing. A lot of companies are making a ton of money from CAM and from obfuscations of its risks and the utter absence of meaningful regulation. That should worry and concern everyone
Thank you to Orac for providing a voice for these kinds of concerns (btw, we have a postdoc doing basic cancer biology in your institution).
I think I’ve mouthed off enough about this for today. Thank you to the commenters for your feedback and to Orac for providing this forum.
I like how Dr. Crislip puts it: vaccines make the immune system smarter.
There are many examples of stimulating the immune system. Most of the ones I know of involve giving interleukins to melanoma patients. The patients universally feel terrible. That is the take home message, any immune system “booster” should make you feel horrible. And if it doesn’t, it is not boosting your immune system.
Tom, does that include asthma? Seriously, I inherited a screwed up immune system from my dad. Along with mold, I also have terrible reactions to alder pollen. Don’t even get me started on my nickel allergy (which is apparently common among those who do sewing, since many pins and needles are coated with nickel).
My dad almost died from an allergic reaction to penicillin. I am seriously not in favor to an immune system so boosted it almost kills you.
“…according to a top MD PhD specialist, who supports what our NDs have done, our genetics and immune systems are so dysfunctional that vaccines can damage us, so we should avoid them”
Specifics for this claim, as well as the one about NDs helping the commenter “beat stage 3 cancer” would be welcome.
Lists of courses that supposedly confirm that ND (or chiropractor) training is as good as that of “allopathic” physicians are unconvincing, given that the great majority of these alt practitioners are simultaneously learning (and using in later practice) theories and treatments that are incompatible with what fact-based training they do receive. One wonders if the point of all those basic science courses is window dressing to impress patients, legislators and insurers, rather than to provide a foundation for evidence-based practice.
Trigger word: allopathic. When I see that, I tune out. These us-v-them types have to be in opposition to the System, Big Pharma, Conventional Medicine, etc. Their mentality and ideology can’t survive without some way to play a role as a beleaguered martyr and victim for The True Way. The shrinks might call this pathological–some kind of oppositional personality disorder or something like that. It’s a common element with these extremist people. I see it all the time.
I was a liaison briefly between a big research university and what used to be called the US House Science Committee. That has now been subsumed into some kind of all-encompassing science/space/technology committee. I’ll have to look that up…
I was absolutely astonished at the ignorance of congressional reps and their staff. I’m a bit of a privileged snob, yeah, but I never in a million years expected to have to give crash courses in what these people should have learned in ninth-grade biology. It was horrifying. Truly scary. We had to deal with people who were committed creationists and who had real trouble understanding concepts such as stem cells. When you presented them with facts, they countered with the most rigid ideological nonsense you can imagine.
This was in the second Clinton administration, when we had competent career congressional staffers who could run interference between us and these crazies. I’m not sure that’s true now.
I don’t like to deal in insults, but never underestimate the stupidity and total ignorance of the people in Congress who are making public health and medical policy decisions. Some blame needs to go to the total breakdown of public education, but in those days I also attributed it to poor staffing decisions and that committee being considered a low-priority backwater.
I have talked to current legislators and their knowledge has not improved.
And if you received any education in 9th grade regarding immunization then your education exceeded mine. I do not recall any mention there of.
I think the US House Science Committee still exists. It is headed by Lamar Smith, the finest representative the fossil fuel industry ever bought.
If you were absolutely astonished than, be prepared to be absolutely horrified now.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/lamar-smith-unbound-lays-out-political-strategy-climate-doubters-conference
This is what ace reporter Sy Hersh said in the now innocent-seeming days of George Bush’s befuddlement over embryos: “Do these people even understand what science is?” It’s whatever your fantasy du jour is, I guess. Or whichever self-serving insanity you can get away with. What gets me is how brazen they all are now. I think the quacks are also being emboldened by the new political unreality. It’s as though Trump and company have given everyone permission to liberate their lurking inner idiot. Anything goes now. I see evidence of it everywhere. There’s no pretense of civility or restraint. It’s anarchy.
Yes. Sorry, I misplaced my comment. I saw this working on the Hill decades ago. It is absolutely window dressing, and the insurance companies don’t care as long as they escape blanket liability in class actions–in which they always have the advantage–and still get their money. It’s all cosmetic in my opinion. The public lacks the background to understand how they are being duped, primary care providers can’t realistically educate people, and our medical education and training apparatus needs serious reform to keep these hazardous people out.
I’m ranting again. Apologies to all.These charlatans have almost no legal barriers to doing whatever they want. That’s what needs to change, and it needs to be systematic, not case by case or state by state. It has to be at the federal level.
No, they’re good rants. You should do it more often.
There are well documented risks involved with use of vaccines;jnown risks discussed in peer reviewed scientific and medical journals. Parents are not informed of these risks and do not give informed consent when their children are vaccinated. US compared with other modern countries mandates more vaccine doses than any other country thereby increasing/compounding these risks, Many more vaccines are given to US children now than were given to children of previous generations. US also happens to have one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed countries, although I am not stating there is causality or even an association. US Infant mortality is increasing. So is autism and autoimmune disease. The role of vaccines in these trends needs to be evaluated.
That’s OK, as even invoking this canard gives up the game.
“There are well documented risks involved with use of vaccines;jnown risks discussed in peer reviewed scientific and medical journals.”
Okay, list them. Make sure that they include the comparison with the risks of the actual diseases. Please make sure that they are from qualified reputable researchers.
” US also happens to have one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed countries, …”
The reason for that, especially in Texas, is old white men are making laws that prevent many vulnerable women from basic medical care. Especially pre-natal care, plus religious bound rules that restrict contraception. If you truly cared about infants, then you would tell your local legislators to support Planned Parenthood. Better yet: send Planned Parenthood a donation.
Then you have evidence for the opposite proposition. USA vaccinates less than other countries, more disease. No universal healthcare, more disease. Infant mortality rising along with poverty. Much lower in other countries, even among the poor – more vaccines.
Please, we don’t give the big vaccines here. No yellow fever, no BCG, no oral polio. Also, citation needed on number of vaccines, number of doses of each vaccine and the number of shots (a single shot that contains vaccines against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus counts as one, not three shots) and please compare against relevant countries (say, 3 European countries and Japan).
Which shots would you skip for yourself? Which shots would you chose to get? Any?
The “higher US infant mortality rate” is a trope that I wish would get more attention. My contention is that many countries the US is compared with do not count infants born before 28 weeks EGA (estimated gestational age) in their mortality statistics. The US counts all viable births (even down to 22 weeks EGA). These are not fair comparisons. A 27 weeker in the US is a “slam dunk”. We feel terrible if those kids have a less than normal outcome.
Please compare apples to apples or provide references to the statistics which you claim support your talking points.
Allen Farber- You claim in the U.S. we are given more vaccines than in previous generations. YUP! Lucky us. Good. When I was young we all experienced measles instead of being vaccinated, and we couldn’t go swimming because of polio. Whooping cough was very common, and I grew up in sight of the Empire State building, not in some backwater swamp.Our infant mortality rates are unfortunate, but unremarkable and we place at 170 out of 245 countries without adjusting for volume of births. Putting these sentence out here is just your effort at increasing the frequency with which they occur on the internet. “The role needs to be evaluated” is the antivaxxers’ favorite false flag claim. “I just want to get at the truth” and then when they are shown the proof, they say, “No,show me the real truth”. One of these days, some judge is going to rule that offering this anti-vax advice constitutes practicing medicine without a license and these frauds are going to have to shut up their shops in a hurry. No more nostrums and no more medium-chain- triglycerides… no more goop.
Our infant mortality rates are unfortunate, but unremarkable and we place at 170 out of 245
But there are only about 185-195countries (depending on how you count them) on Earth. I think you have a typo there.
You are so very right! My apologies. It is not a good idea for someone with limited motor control to copy/paste/sort without checking. In another very nice list we come out at 38 out of 175. Probably good enough for government work. Seems more reasonable. Thanks for catching it.
My view is that the only solution to this is legal. There have to be legal repercussions when these people actively campaign against what’s known to benefit public health, and they have to face a real risk of ending up in the slammer. This has to be taken out of the realm of state law in the US and ineffective wrist-slapping medical boards. If you defy public health recommendations, there’s got to be a solid mechanism for making you face the music. Don’t get me started on this whole thing about fraudulently obtained medical waivers for anti-vax parents. Any doc who knowingly signs off on letting a child evade vaccination requirements also needs to face the music under federal law..
I just read something about quality control for a supplement manufacturer that sells through Wal-Mart. The overwhelming majority of tested supplements contained either a tiny fraction of claimed ingredients or almost nothing at all. Again, this is essentially a political problem from legislation passed decades ago that exempted that industry from real oversight.
The law curtailing this crappola needs better teeth, and it needs to be consistent and enforceable across all jurisdictions–i.e., federal. People who “practice” fake medicine and the industries that support them need to face criminal penalties.
Somewhat good looking? I thought the picture was doctored (not-doctored?) because his eyes look suspiciously far apart.
That was my thought as well. The picture reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of people with some genetic disorder that resulted in wide-spaced eyes and broad, flat bridges. Williams? Waardenberg?
Finding myself really disappointed in some of the content in this particular discussion.
Really people!! Are we not beyond the need to comment on the provence of someones surname or on their appearance….genetic disorder? What has all that got to do with the substance of his idiocy?
This sort of commenting would be quickly rounded upon if the situation were reversed.
And there is absolutely no need, his opinions provide ample material for hours of fun.
I know, I know:
making an issue of someone’s name or appearance is irrelevant to our mission here – which is to ridicu… er… explain NDs’ lack of reality based material
BUT
it’s so much fun
AND we need as much levity as possible because watching how woo endangers life and produces loads of money for irresponsible charlatans can be rather depressing
And who wants that?
Yeah, you’re right.
“a body that will bio-accumulate disease precursors.”
What in the name of Azathoth are “Disease Precursors”? Little sparkly elements of toxic pixy-dust that eventually merge to form bacteria?
This is the sort of meaningless word-wibble that a child might say, when trying to sound scientific. I think this man is suffering from a Yin/Yang imbalance. Or possibly too much white bile.
Haha!
Amen
This is a typical sheeple article and most comments are dismissing that anything but mass produced pharmaceuticals and real “M.D.s are able to tell us what is good for our bodies. You all are brainwashed to believe the CDC and some want to be childish and nitpicking his grammar. Others even threatening violence. That sounds good for the world you go ahead and rant away. You all seem to have a whole lot of time on your hands to agree with each other. Poke fun at only one person who happens to be a naturopath. This is exactly the reason why the world is doomed. Each person is in charge of their own body and mind. if you are so sure of these higher regulated drugs and vaccinations , go ahead and say you know it all. I am sure you believe you do know it all. Delusions are normal for sheeple.
I guess that’s why the NIH published a notice this morning to recruit healthy adults for investigational studies of two flu vaccines? Because herd immunity doesn’t exist, viruses never mutate, and healthy people can fight off anything? I don’t recall any comment here that threatens anything remotely resembling violence, either.
Thank you for your comment, you are so spot on, . Exactly how I feel. A bunch of typical sheeples and angry anal retentive people….I think I’ve never seen so many on one post. Not ever.
I love my Naturopath. I would have been gone long ago had I not found him ?
You have no evidence that you would have been gone without a naturopath or that whatever that person did had a measurable effect. If so, perhaps you could share that evidence.
Many of the regular posters here are practicing physicians or medical researchers–real ones who had to do residencies and lengthy training in places where they had to be credentialed, have admitting privileges to actual hospitals, pass real licensing exams, receive continuing training, and undergo a lot of other easy tasks. Hardly sheeple.
Highly opinionated at times, yes. That’s the funny thing about having a real background, not a phony, exaggerated one preying on credulous or desperate people: you earn the right to have often strong opinions and can back them up with real, evolving science.
I’m not a sheeple!
I’ve had my DNA tested. 100% human.
Well, the humans wiped my people out, and and all that’s left is a few scattered echoes of my ancestors.
2.8% Neanderthal, 97.2% human.
“Do your own research” invariably means “bore a tap in the intertoobz, collect a bucket of effluent and process it through filters of confirmation bias and Dunning-Kruger (arrogance of ignorance) effect.”
I mentioned upthread the case of Ryan Lovett. Ryan was 7 when he died of a bacterial infection. His mother believed in doing her own research. Instead of taking him to a physician, she looked up his symptoms on the internet and gave him useless “immunity boosting” and “detox” nostrums. The fact that the harmful nonsense advising this sort of thing is plastered all over the internet by the likes of E’ale made it easy for her to find things that fit her biases. The fact the the nostrums could be obtained off the shelf at local stores made it easy for her to procure them. (It wasn’t really easy for her – in the hours before Ryan died she took bottles to a depot for refund, lost the money, went to her father to ask for money and then to the store to buy the stuff.) She was poor. But they lived in Calgary and were eligible for medical care at the expense of the public purse – like every other citizen here. She had never obtained an Alberta Health Care card for Ryan, but even without it he would have been treated either at the Sheldon Chumir Centre, which was closer to her home than the store where she bought the useless junk, or at the Alberta Children’s Hospital (“we treat kids without AHC cards all the time (or words close thereto) – that’s the way we do it in this country,” as one of the docs from ACH testified at Tamara’s trial). If Ryan had been taken to a real physician in time, ordinary inexpensive penicillin would have almost certainly cured him completely. But Ryan died and made the short trip down the hill from ACH to the medical examiner’s building.
Tamara knew Ryan was sick, and though she tried to deny realizing how sick he was, text messages recovered from her cell phone showed that he had been very ill for some time and she knew it. Forensic examination of her computer showed the sites she had visited to get «information» (those are contempt quotes). If that disinformation hadn’t been so readily available, I think it much more likely that she would have taken Ryan to a doctor.
Tamara is by no means stupid. I would describe her as intelligent and articulate. But she harbored bullshit notions that were bolstered by more layers of BS on the internet.
I had long known about all the nonsense on the net and the availability of the quack nostrums at the nearest grocery store or pharmacy. I knew those things were potentially harmful. But sitting through Tamara’s trial hardened my attitude against them by a huge amount. This crap is not benign. This crap kill kids.
Tamara was convicted of failure to provide the necessaries of life and criminal negligence causing death. (Only the conviction for the latter was entered into the formal record because of the Kienapple principle [Kienapple v R, Supreme Court of Canada, 1975]). She was sentenced to three years in prison. She had one of the top defense lawyers in Calgary.
The case of Ezekiel Stephan has been written about by Orac. Ezekiel died for quite similar reasons. His family actually a promotes and sells quack “natural” garbage.
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Read what Sara has written. It’s good stuff.
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my favorite apostrophated name is De’ath
Evidence that a “healthy immune system” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (from an AMA bulletin that turned up in my e-mail this morning):
“In “Science Now,” the Los Angeles Times (1/24, Kaplan) reports that research suggests “the first week or so of a flu infection appears to make” people “much more susceptible to a heart attack.” The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Reuters (1/24, Emery) reports that researchers “used confirmed cases of flu, analyzing 364 heart attacks from mid-2008 through mid-2015 among Ontario residents age 35 or older who were registered with the province’s publicly funded health insurance program.” The investigators found that “the heart attack rate was 20.0 admissions per week during the seven days after diagnosis of the flu, versus 3.3 per week during the 52 weeks before and 51 weeks after that seven-day window.”On its website, NBC News (1/24, Fox) reports that the data indicated that people who had the flu “had a six-fold higher risk of suffering a heart attack in the seven days after they were diagnosed.”
The AP (1/24, Stobbe) reports that the study indicated that “flu wasn’t the only viral infection that fell into the same week pattern.” The investigators found that “the risk of heart attack was...higher with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and” also “higher for a grab bag collection of germs that include the common cold.”
But I suppose all those people who got heart attacks had inferior immune systems that could’ve been juiced up by the appropriate naturopathic treatment*, or maybe a timely chiropractic neck cracking.
*if only they’d “gotten some nutrients in there”. 🙁
I am sorry, but how is that new? If you listen to Mark Crislip’s Puscast you would know that viral infections are related to cardiac issues. People have had heart transplants because viral infections, sometimes influenza, have destroyed their cardiac function.
When my oldest was diagnosed with a genetic heart disorder he got to be first line for an influenza vaccine over a decade ago when they were rationed (older folks, folks with heart issues and vulnerable populations before us regular folk… I had to wait a couple months after taking in for the vaccine, then in 2009 the H1N1 arrived to kill healthy kids and pregnant women).
Perhaps it is only now when there is plenty of vaccines to go around and it is a nasty season that someone decided to take an actual count.
I guess my aunt has a super immune system. UW-Madison has been studying her blood. It is the reason she was pretty unscathed even though grandma had German measels when pregnant with her. It is also the reason why her Rheumatoid arthritis has not responded to meds. She thinks also why she had so many miscarriages.
Yah, I once ran across an opportunity to pull something like $1500 a month for my serum, but I would have had to travel to Indianapolis weekly. Oh, and it was a company that produced tests for autoimmune diseases. For better or for worse, my anti-Ro and anti-La titers had returned to zippo-bang at my last rheumatology appointment.
Looks like Henele E’ale might indeed be a made up name under which this guy is practicing, and I mention this out of actual concern. I searched California’s registry (since he claims to be based in that state now), and the only name that came up under this search was “Henry Lee Ealy”. https://search.dca.ca.gov/
I can’t confirm that this is his real identity, but anyone who knows more about licensing and titles in California could potentially check into the regulations about this. I know it’s not permitted for practitioners in my region to practice under an alias without a clear indication of their actual legal name and associated titles. Here, it’s a potentially serious and reportable problem. Not sure if this might be a thing in California, too? (Or maybe not.)
He does have an NPI number from the Arizona days.
Thanks, I wasn’t familiar with the NPI system.
Looks like he has a second NPI number matching both the “Ealy” name and his old business. https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/registry/provider-view/1689822215
Still not sure whether it would have any practice implications at all, but I guess the E’ale alias probably was invented later, after all.
Although I believe in Naturopathic medicine over allopathic there are some people who make it bad for everyone, including medical doctors,
Maybe someone could help me with this one, I saw a supposedly board certified naturopathic doctor and it turns out there is no such thing according to naturopathic association in CA. And the guy I found out has moved all over and named himself after a Tolkien character. Earendil Spindilius. I also found out he isn’t even licensed in California. He told me I had lymes and said he was closing my files because I was too insistent on getting the results of my test after going through the trouble to buy the expensive test, his fees and then tells me he won’t help me? Does anyone know what I can do,
Why it’s alwags best to check out anyone with any license. Real ND’s do have to complete a lengthy training curriculum before they can practice. My Naturopathic doctor was also a nutritionist, an herbalist and acupuncturist.
In order to be a licensed Doctor of Naturopathy (ND) or Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (NMD), students must complete a 4-year, graduate-level program accredited by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education. The first two years of a naturopathic medical degree are the same as for traditional medical students.
Well, that’s interesting. Note that he’s “Henele E’ale III” here and there, although there’s not “Sr.” or “Jr.” to be found (nor a “II,” but that’s rarely used correctly, viz., for nephews).
Ah, a glance suggests that there’s indeed a “Junior” for “Henry Lee Ealy.”
Well, something’s up.
From “Dr. Henele’s alma mater, this time “III.”
Ding!
One more. It’s a fake name.
Yes, I found many names, but why is this guy still allowed to practice here. He is popular too. I gave him a one star rating and he took his Facebook page down, I was just trying to expose the guy.
He does rescue wolves but is sure an odd one, and shouldn’t be doing lab tests in his office if he isn’t licensed properly,
The neologism that serves as an antonym to the neologism “allopathic” is “homeopathic,” full stop.
Good luck with that, Narad.
I once pointed out to someone who favored herbalism over “allopathic medicine”, that the vast majority of herbalism qualified as allopathic.
The anger in her response was in far greater than homeopathic quantity.
DB,
Did she meet code white (https://sunnybrook.ca/content/?page=patient-emergprep-codes) criteria?
Al
Would any of you care to hear what Dr. Daniel Niedes (former Director and CFO of Cleveland Clinic has to say about his personal experience with the “preservative free” flu vaccine?
https://youtu.be/vMJ6AaugP5w
I’ll read a transcript if you post it in the correct thread.
Haha. I know this guy. I took a nutrition class at the Southwest Institute for Healing Arts in Tempe, AZ (Basically, south Scottsdale) about 10 years ago back before I realized the intellectually dishonest nature of “holistic healing” modalities. As I recall, the class contained just enough chemistry-speak to convince the class that he knew what he was talking about. The rest of the class was the usual BS backed by an implicit argument by appeal to authority. But he(is) was pretty damn good looking, so who cares. LOL.
Oh David, you’re too funny. Have you ever bothered to read ANY of the information available to you from the FDA, CDC, EPA, vaccine manufacturers, or the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for yourself? I’m guessing you’re too busy with this silly blog, or else you’d know there are no ‘claims’ of anything. The information is all there for you in black and white.
Lovely bunch of non sequitors you have there. Would you mind telling us clearly and concisely what you disagree with in Orac’s post? That is, if you’re not yet another post and dash troll.