Ezekiel Stephan was a toddler who died tragically in 2012 because his parents did not treat his bacterial meningitis with medicine, but rather with quackery. His parents were convicted, then acquitted on appeal. A week ago, his father attacked the Canadian Medical Association for reporting on a petition doctors sent to the court urging that courts overturn the acquittal.
The Cleveland Clinic has, unfortunately, embraced the quackery known as “functional medicine.” Now it’s publishing dubious studies touting it.
Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is a main go-to rough and ready source of information for millions of people. Although I’ve had my problems with Wikipedia and used to ask whether it could provide reliable information on medicine and, in particular, alternative medicine and vaccines, given that anyone can edit it, I now conclude that Wikipedia must be doing OK, at least in these areas. After all, some of the highest profile promoters of alternative and “integrative” medicine hate Wikipedia, to the point of attacking it and concocting conspiracy theories about it.
Acupuncturists have been trying to explain why no anatomic structure corresponds to meridians. Enter the primo vascular system, which circulates electricity in DNA. Or stem cells. Or something.
The NIH HEAL Initiative is designed to study “nonpharmacologic treatments for pain.” What it will really study will include heaping helpings of “integrative medicine” pseudoscience.
