“Functional medicine” preaches the “biochemical individuality” of each patient, which is why one of its key features is that its practitioners order reams of useless lab tests and then try to correct every abnormal level without considering (or even knowing) what these abnormalities mean, if anything. So they make up fake diagnoses and profit.
Tag: Chiropractic
The “Drs. Wolfson” attack the parents of Riley Hughes, who died of pertussis
Riley Hughes died of pertussis, and his father is trying to encourage vaccination against pertussis. The "Drs. Wolfson" object. They're antivaccine quacks, and they blame the victim.
Luminas Pain Relief Patches: Where the words “quantum” and “energy” really mean “magic”
Orac discovers the Luminas Pain Relief Patch. He is amused at how how quacks confuse the words "quantum" and "energy" with magic.
Tell the FDA not to embrace quackery: Write to oppose its proposal on acupuncture and chiropractic for chronic pain
Chiropractors and acupuncturists have lobbied for a greater role in treating pain. They might well have won it. Last week, the FDA released proposed changes Wednesday to its blueprint on educating health care providers about treating pain, which now recommend that doctors learn about chiropractic care and acupuncture as therapies that might help patients avoid opioids. There’s still time to stop this, but you have to write the FDA.
Antivaccinationists promote a bogus internet “survey.” Hilarity ensues as it’s retracted.
I don’t have many “rules” per se about blogging, but one informal rule that I do live by is that I never blog about a study if all I can access is the abstract. In general, I insist on having the complete study before I will blog it, because to me the abstract isn’t enough. Basically, if I’m going to blog a study, I generally want to do it right and be able to read the whole paper, because that’s the only way to properly analyze a paper. I find this rule particularly important when analyzing the latest bit of …
Mystery solved: Chiropractic manipulation of the neck did cause Katie May’s death from stroke
Eight months ago, I asked the question: Did chiropractic manipulation of her neck cause Katie May’s stroke? Now, it appears, I know the answer, and the answer is yes: Katie May, a model who posed for Playboy and gained a massive following on Snapchat, suffered a “catastrophic” stroke in early February and later died after being taken off life-support. Now, TMZ reports reports that a visit to the chiropractor left her with an injury that precipitated the stroke. TMZ obtained May’s death certificate, which says that she suffered a blunt force injury during a “neck manipulation by [a] chiropractor.” That …
The RAND Corporation: Supporting the “integration” of quackery with real medicine since 2008
As regular readers of this blog and related blogs know, over the last two or three decades there has been a successful effort to legitimize quackery in the form of what is now called “integrative medicine.” Three decades ago, modalities like homeopathy, acupuncture, much of traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, chiropractic, and many other modalities based on vitalism, prescientific mysticism, and pseudoscience were rightly referred to as quackery. Then in the 1990s came “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), a term that sought to sand the rough edges of quackery off of the, well, quackery. It wasn’t enough, though. After all the …
Did chiropractic manipulation of her neck cause Katie May’s stroke?
Katie May was a model, and by all accounts a very successful one, having appeared in Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines and websites. Self-proclaimed the “Queen of Snapchat,” she also had nearly two million Instagram followers and was a major social media force, having recently parlayed her modeling and social media career into becoming an entrepreneur. She also died unexpectedly on Thursday night at the too-young age of 34, leaving behind a seven-year-old daughter. What makes May’s tragic death an appropriate topic for this blog is not so much her young age but rather the circumstances surrounding her death, …
Health disparities research and the mainstreaming of "integrative medicine"
The overarching goal that proponents of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as is becoming the preferred term, “integrative” medicine is the mainstreaming of the “unconventional” treatments that fall under the rubric of these two terms. Indeed, that’s the very reason why they so insisted on the shift from calling it CAM to calling it “integrative medicine.” Not being content with the subsidiary status as not quite “real” medicine” that the words “complementary” and “alternative” imply, they want their woo to be seen as full co-equals with scientific medicine, hence the name change. There’s a common saying among skeptics, …
Adventures in bad veterinary medicine reported by the local media, year end edition
Ever since moving back to the Detroit area nearly seven years ago, one thing I’ve noticed is a propensity for our local news outlets to go full pseudoscience from time to time. I’m not sure why, other than perhaps that it attracts eyeballs to the screen, but, in reality, most of these plunges into pseudoscience and quackery are so poorly done that I find it hard to believe that even believers find them interesting. For example, back in 2008, I discussed a particularly dumb story aired by our local NBC affiliate WDIV entitled Orbs: Myth or Real?, which, not having …