Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Religion

Quackery and faith healing in Motown

I’ve complained quite a bit about the news media in my hometown. Indeed, about a year ago, I was stunned at how utterly credulous one TV reporter was about–of all things–orbs. I mean, orbs! Even dedicated ghosthunters don’t push orbs much anymore, realizing that they are nothing more than reflections or specks of dust reflecting […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Another acupuncture study misinterpreted

I have to hand it to acupuncture mavens. They are persistent. Despite numerous studies failing to find any evidence that acupuncture is anything more than an elaborate placebo whose effects, such as they are, derive from nonspecifice mechanisms having nothing to do with meridians, qi, or “unblocking” qi. Moreover, consistent with the contention that acupuncture […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Quackery

Milk: It’ll do a body good! For cancer?

Here’s one of the stranger “alternative cancer cure” cases I’ve seen in a while. Basically, a man seems to think that a daily helping of his daughter’s breast milk will cure his metastatic colon cancer: When Tim Browne sits down to a bowl of corn flakes in the morning, he slurps up one unusual, and […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Oh, no! Orac the “Scientific Fundamentalist” has been too insolent!

Last week, I wrote about how Senator Tom Harkin is up to his old shenanigans again, trying at ever turn to do for the actual practice of quackery what he did for the research of quackery by creating the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and what he still does to promote quackery […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

M.D. Anderson enters the blogosphere–and goes woo

Did you know that acupuncture is very much related to astrology? No, it’s not just because both of woo. Rather, it’s likely true that the whole concept of “meridians,” those invisible “channels” through which our life energy (a.k.a. qi) allegedly flow were indirectly based on astrological signs, which had been used to guide points used […]