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Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Functional medicine (FM) quackery dissected in the mainstream media

Functional medicine (FM) is “make it up as you go along” quackery that combines the “worst of both worlds,” namely the overtesting and overtreatment that can plague conventional medicine plus the quackery “integrated” into “integrative medicine.” It’s rare to see a mainstream outlet get it right about FM, but an Irish journalist pulls it off.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. Robin Berzin, functional medicine concierge practices, and the marketing of medical pseudoscience

Dr. Robin Berzin founded a concierge functional medicine practice, Parsley Health. Her practice is growing and has expanded to three major cities thus far, and she’s begun a foray into pediatrics? Are holistic concierge medical practices the future of “integrating” quackery into medicine, be it functional medicine or other models?

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Jeff Noble and Kerry Bentivolio host a “vaccine choice” (antivaccine) roundtable at a local Republican office

Kerry Bentivolio, Republican candidate for Congress in the 11th Congressional District in Michigan (Orac’s district), hosted an antivaccine roundtable with Orac’s state representative Jeff Noble, three antivaxers, and the antivaccine group Michigan for Vaccine Choice. Orac attended and now reports the craziness.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Homeopathy Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Stealth advertising for Dr. Mark Hyman and the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine

Over the weekend, I came across a local news story from Toledo about Chris Tedrow, a patient who was treated at Dr. Mark Hyman’s Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. Let’s just say that it was, in essence, free advertising for functional medicine nonsense. The Cleveland Clinic should have had to pay the Toledo ABC affiliate to air it.

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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 […]