Orac discovers the Luminas Pain Relief Patch. He is amused at how how quacks confuse the words "quantum" and "energy" with magic.
Tag: healing touch
Charlie Goldsmith: A new celebrity quack arises, enabled by TLC
Two years ago, I took note of an "energy healer" named Charlie Goldsmith and an incredibly poor "clinical trial" being touted as evidence of his healing abilities. It now turns out that Goldsmith is following a trail blazed by celebrity psychic Tyler Henry and has his own TV show on TLC. His claims are no more plausible or supported by evidence now than they were then.
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.
Mouse magic, or How lab mice learned to stop worrying and trust the healing energy
I frequently call homeopathy The One Quackery to Rule Them All, but there are times when I am not so sure that that’s the case. You see, there is…another. I’m referring, of course, to what is referred to as “energy medicine.” What energy medicine modalities have in common is that they postulate that there is some sort “energy field” around humans that can be manipulated for therapeutic intent or that somehow practitioners can channel “healing energy” from elsewhere. For example, as I’ve discussed many times before, reiki is based on the concept that reiki masters can channel this fantastical healing …
Old wine in a new skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology issues guidelines for breast cancer
It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m not exactly a fan of “integrative oncology”—or integrative medicine, or “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or whatever its proponents want to call it these days. After all, I’ve spent nearly ten years writing this blog and nearly seven years running another blog dedicated to promoting the scientific basis of medicine, and just this year managed to publish a lengthy commentary in a high impact journal criticizing the very concept of integrative oncology. Unfortunately, it seems to be the equivalent of the proverbial pissing in the ocean, as the flood …