Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

“Disruptive” functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic: Disrupting medicine by mixing quackery with it

That the Cleveland Clinic has become one of the leading institutions, if not the leading institution, in embracing quackademic medicine is now indisputable. Indeed, 2017 greeted me with a reminder of just how low the Clinic has gone when the director of its Wellness Institute published a blatantly antivaccine article for a local publication, which […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

The scam of “detox”: Ritual purification by another name

“You need to detox.” How many times have you heard or read this? Maybe a friend of yours suggested it for the New Year. Maybe you saw it on a website, in a magazine, or as part of an ad. I like to say sometimes, “Toujours les toxines,” because in many branches of alternative medicine […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Quackery at the VA: Our veterans deserve real medicine, not fake medicine

A reader recounts his tale of being referred for fake medicine at a VA facility. Unfortunately, the VA seems to be papering over its lack of resources in the same way that Chairman Mao did in the 1950s, by “integrating” fake medicine with real medicine.

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Naturopathic quackery wins licensure in Massachusetts

I was busy last night doing something other than actually blogging. Perhaps I was recovering from the one-two punch of the antivaccine rant penned by the director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute followed by Donald Trump’s meeting with antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Whatever the case I crashed early. However, I can’t help […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Massachusetts passes legislation licensing naturopathic quackery. Only the governor can stop it now.

In a perverse way, one almost has to admire naturopaths. If there’s anything that characterizes naturopaths in their pursuit of legitimacy and licensure, it’s an amazing relentlessness. In this, they are not unlike The Terminator. As Kyle Reese described him in the first Terminator movie, the Terminator “can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned […]