Regular readers—if I still have any, given how sporadic posting has been since my father passed away in December—know that there are at least two things that profoundly anger me. The first is practicing harmful quackery on children. (Remember Abubakar Tariq Nadama nearly 20 years ago?) The second is the existence of “alternative medicine” or “integrative medicine” clinics that practice this sort of quackery, largely unregulated, and get away with it. Combine the two, and this story in our local paper was, alas, just the sort of thing to prod me to get back to blogging after the prolonged absence after my father passed away in December. The reporting drives me a bit crazy, because it doesn’t address the elephant in the room other than obliquely, but the title tells the tale, Boy dies in explosion of hyperbaric chamber at Troy medical facility. It is a tale that led me both to cry and to rage against the quacks whose negligence killed a child, just as I did when a quack killed an autistic child named Abubakar Tariq Nadama with chelation therapy nearly 20 years ago.
First off, “medical facility” as a term to refer to The Oxford Center, which has two locations in southeast Michigan, one in Troy and one in Brighton, is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as it is an “integrative health center” that seems to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to treat basically everything, including autism, ADHD, and cancer. I’ll get to that in more detail momentarily. First, let’s return to the Detroit Free Press story to learn what happened:
A 5-year-old boy from Royal Oak died Friday during an explosion of a hyperbaric chamber at a Troy medical center, police said.
The explosion happened shortly before 8 a.m. at The Oxford Center at 165 Kirts Blvd. Police said the boy was found dead inside the chamber. His mother, who was injured, was with him at the facility at the time of the explosion, officials said.
The Oxford Center’s website says that it provides therapy for children with such health conditions as autism, cancer, ADHD, autoimmune diseases, and multiple others.
Troy Fire Lt. Keith Young said investigators do not yet know what caused the explosion, but concentrated oxygen and the pressure used inside hyperbaric chambers are fuel for fire.
In a statement from The Oxford Center, spokesman Andrew Kistner said the cause of the explosion is unknown and that Friday was an “exceptionally difficult day for all of us.
Naturally, The Oxford Center is trying to spin what happened:
“As law enforcement officials have shared, at our location in Troy, Michigan, this morning, a fire started inside of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber,” Kistner wrote in the emailed statement. “The child being treated in that chamber did not survive and the child’s mother was injured.
“The safety and wellbeing of the children we serve is our highest priority. Nothing like this has happened in our more than 15 years of providing this type of therapy. We do not know why or how this happened and will participate in all of the investigations that now need to take place.”
Imagine my relief.
Here’s a press conference given by the police and fire departments in Troy:
From the press conference above, according to Lt. Keith Young of the Troy Fire Department:
Shortly before 8:00 AM this morning Troy Fire and Police Department responded to a medical facility at 165 Kirts Boulevard for report of a hyperbaric chamber ber explosion with the child still inside the chamber. Upon arrival it was determined the child inside was deceased, and the victim has been identified as a 5-year-old boy from Royal Oak. A hyperic chamber contains 100% oxygen, which is up to five times the amount of oxygen in a normal room. The presence of such a high amount of oxygen in a pressurized environment can make it extremely combustible. Our initial research shows that this is not a common incident and the scene remains under active investigation. Social workers from the Oakland Community Health Network have made themselves available to work with emergency Personnel who responded to the scene and medical staff at the facility…
I can’t even imagine the horrific scene that the child’s mother saw and that the first responders encountered when they arrived. In fairness, tragic accidents like this involving HBOT chambers are rare, regardless of whether the chamber is being used at a hospital for science- and evidence-based indications (e.g., to counter the effects of decompression sickness in scuba divers, to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, to improve the “take” rate of skin grafts, or to speed up healing of diabetic foot ulcers) or at the many, many, “integrative” medical clinics that use HBOT for everything ranging from autism to cancer to stroke to dementia. Guess which one of these facilities The Oxford Center is? Here’s a screenshot from its website:

On the website, it looks like this clinic has a lot of HBOT chambers, suggesting that HBOT is its main treatment…for everything. Here’s a screenshot, and, I note, it looks as though it’s nearly all children in the HBOT chambers shown:

On a Google image on the website, I count at least eight HBOT chambers:

The website also features spiffy videos promoting HBOT:
Ugh. Oxygen is a “nutrient”? No…just no. It’s not. Oxygen is necessary for life. It’s necessary to generate energy from the food that we consume. It is not, however, a “nutrient,” as the medical definition of “nutrient” is limited to substances that we ingest; i.e., to food. It does not apply to chemicals that we breathe, like oxygen. Scientific illiteracy is not a good sign on a quack website.
Basically, The Oxford Center seems to view HBOT as a magic therapy for almost everything. My first reaction upon reading this was utter horror at how the child died. My second reaction, after I got over my horror thinking about how the child died, was to ask: What condition was being treated with HBOT? Was it a condition for which use of HBOT is in any way science- or evidence-based? It is not reported what the child who died was being treated for, but, if you play the law of averages for these quack clinics knowing that it was a five-year-old boy who was being treated, it’s not unreasonable to guess that it was probably autism or ADHD. But who knows. In the press conference above, a reporter asked if the police or fire department knew what condition the child was undergoing “treatment” for; they did not. Again, playing the laws of averages, I would bet on autism or ADHD, and, if it’s autism, I’d further speculate that likely the autism was blamed on vaccines.
I also note that this is not the first time that HBOT quackery has claimed the life of a young child. In 2009, a boy named Francesco Martinizi suffered massive burns that ultimately claimed his life in an HBOT chamber being used by quacks at a Florida clinic, the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center, to treat his cerebral palsy, a tragedy that also claimed the life of his grandmother. Again, as is the case for ADHD and autism, there is no good scientific or clinical evidence to justify using HBOT to treat cerebral palsy. This latest victim might be considered fortunate compared to Francesco, as Francesco lingered with his injuries for a month and a half before dying. I did rotations in burn units during my general surgery residency. I know from observing patients first hand how painful being treated for large burns is and how disfiguring they can be. Moreover, news reports then described how the family had brought Francesco from Italy to the US for treatments supposedly not available there and had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing so.
As for the boy killed on Friday, it’s just my speculation based on past experience that he was likely being treated for autism or ADHD. I don’t know. I do, however, expect that eventually it will be revealed. Why do I expect that? Easy. The parents have called in the lawyers:
Citing concerns about the oversight and regulations of hyperbaric chambers, Fieger Law announced Saturday that it has been retained by the family of the 5-year-old boy who died in a hyperbaric chamber explosion in Troy on Friday.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy, and our hearts are with the family as they navigate this immeasurable loss,” said James Harrington, managing partner of Fieger Law in a statement.
The high-powered law firm is also representing the boy’s mother, who was also injured in the explosion.
The law firm’s founder Geoffrey Feiger retired in 2024 after a major stroke. I will admit that I’ve never been a fan of his and tend to view his law firm as among the worst of the worst when it comes to ambulance chasing attorneys, but in this case the firm that he founded might actually do some good. If there’s one thing I’ve often wondered, it’s why more victims and families of victims of clinics like The Oxford Center don’t sue quacks and quack clinics for malpractice after being harmed or having a loved one killed. Moreover, if you’re going to sue a clinic like this victimizing children and are in the Detroit area, Feiger Law or The Sam Bernstein Law Firm would be the ambulance chasers I’d recommend. Sometimes big sharks have their uses.
[NOTE ADDED SINCE PUBLICATION: The child and family have been identified in the press:
Thomas Cooper was killed on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, when the hyperbaric chamber he was receiving treatment in at the Oxford Center in Troy exploded. Cooper’s mother was also injured.
Fieger Law said the firm has been retained to represent the family of the child who was killed, and the child’s mother. A lawsuit has not been filed.
There will be, though. I’m sure. From what I know now, I really do think that there should be. Still no word in the new news report about what condition Thomas was being treated for. I can’t stand reading about this tragedy.]
The Detroit Free Press notes:
The Oxford Center is among the alternative medical centers or medical spas that, in recent years, have offered hyperbaric oxygen therapy for conditions that are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, such as autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, sports injuries, COVID-19, depression, alopecia, HIV/AIDS, strokes, migraine headaches, and as an anti-aging treatment.
No kidding. I could tell just by perusing the clinic’s website some more. Besides the pictures of banks of HBOT chambers, we learn that the founder of the clinic is a true believer:
Our Founder and CEO, Tami Peterson, discovered hyperbarics after her daughter, JeAnnah, was diagnosed with viral encephalitis. JeAnnah went from a happy, functioning 9-year-old girl to functioning at the level of an 11-month-old infant in one day.
Tami did not give up hope for JeAnnah, and through countless hours of research and talking to parents of children around the world with similar conditions, Tami discovered Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.
She was able to convince a local hospital to treat JeAnnah, and within a few months, JeAnnah danced The Nutcracker ballet and was completely healed. Her recovery was a miracle. Tami knew that she was called to use her experience with JeAnnah to provide the healing and hope of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for others.
Tami founded The Oxford Center in 2008 in South Lyon, Michigan. Since then, she has worked to add multiple other therapies to our list of services, opened a second location in Troy, Michigan, moved our South Lyon location to Brighton, Michigan, and then expanded that location to the over 70,000 square foot facility that it is today.
This is the main form of evidence for HBOT success stories and “miracle cures,” namely anecdotes. The most likely explanation is that JeAnnah would have likely gotten better without the HBOT and that Peterson is confusing correlation with causation. However, without better evidence, it’s impossible to say. I did a PubMed search for hyperbaric oxygen and viral encephalitis, and all I could find were three articles, only one of which addressed the question of whether HBOT can treat viral encephalitis, and the paper was a mouse study.
As for The Oxford Center, although hyperbaric oxygen seems to be its raison d’être and the primary therapy that it uses for basically everything, it also offers a veritable cornucopia of the usual “integrative medicine” nonsense, in particular functional medicine, under the supervision of Anna Dobracki, MD, PhD. (It really disappoints me that an MD/PhD would embrace functional medicine, which I like to refer to as “reams of useless tests in one hand, a large invoice in the other.”
It’s rather interesting to look at some conditions The Oxford Center treats. For instance, if you go to the page on ADHD, the Center’s first choice of therapy is…HBOT! Its next choice, often done with HBOT, is a “quantitative EEG and neurofeedback therapy”:
A Quantitative EEG shows us electrical activity of the brain. We will be able to see if inflammation is present, if there are any areas of hyper- or hypoactivity, and any areas of disconnect. Using this information, we can focus on the area(s) of the brain most affected and bring those areas back into balance using Neurofeedback Therapy. Research has shown a reduction in hyperactivity, more focus and attention with Neurofeedback Therapy and ADHD.
NFT is very much a dubious therapy, with little evidence to support it and evidence that it does no better than placebo, with an article in Psychology Today noting that the “procedure is safe and non-invasive, but given that it can also be expensive, time-consuming, and less effective than proven treatments, patients should carefully consider their options” and a 2016 review article concluding that “current research does not support conclusive results about its efficacy.”
What about autism? The Oxford Center’s page on autism does recommend applied behavioral analysis (ABA); so I guess there’s that. However, The Oxford Center also recommends—you guessed it!—HBOT, justifying it thusly:
Research has shown decreased cerebral perfusion, increased neuroinflammation, inflammation throughout the GI system, and increased oxidative stress in individuals with autism. Decreased blood flow to the temporal region and areas that are specifically related to language comprehension and auditory processing. Decreased blood flow to these areas may contribute to many of the characteristics that are common with autism listed above. HBOT delivers 100% pure oxygen to the body through increased atmospheric pressure, saturating the plasma and oxygenating the entire body. Research has shown that HBOT reduces inflammation systemically, lowers oxidative stress, and increases circulating stem cells, up to 800% after twenty sessions, which leads to the possibility of regrowth of certain brain cells.
None of this has been shown in anything resembling rigorous to affect positivel the clinical course in autism and autism spectrum disorders. Not that that stopped the quacks at The Oxford Center from publishing a retrospective analysis of 65 of the clinic’s patients who were treated for autism in a dodgy journal (Cureus) comparing those who received ABA to those who received ABA+HBOT, which claimed to show better verbal behaviors in children with autism who received the combined treatment with hyperbaric oxygen. From my perusal of the study, my immediate question was whether confounders were adequately considered. (Surprise! I don’t think they were!) Perhaps I’ll look at the study in more detail at another time, but I’ll just mention that a Cochran Review concluded that “there is no evidence that hyperbaric oxygen therapy improves core symptoms and associated symptoms of ASD” and cautioned that “is important to note that adverse effects (minor-grade ear barotrauma events) can occur.”
Oh, and the only treatment that The Oxford Center offers for cancer is…HBOT. Because of course. Basically, the mainstay of treatment for every condition treated by The Oxford Center is HBOT, regardless of what else is also offered. It seems to me that it’s more appropriate to call The Oxford Center an HBOT clinic rather than any sort of “integrative medicine” clinic. It’s a one-trick pony.
And, as is typical for clinics like this:
The Oxford Center, which has locations in Brighton and Troy, has generated controversy. In August, the facility’s former director Kimberly Coden pleaded guilty to nine charges after officials with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Office said she used false credentials to treat children with autism.
She falsely presented herself as a board-certified behavioral analyst without being licensed and without the proper education and used an actual analyst’s certification to get jobs within the health sector, officials said. And she’d also used professional business cards, verbal statements, written documents and presented university degrees she allegedly didn’t earn.
Coden also tried to intimidate a witness through text messages to keep them from testifying against her, officials said.
When Coden pleaded guilty, her lawyer said her client was “really, truly remorseful.”
Lovely.
Meanwhile, I came across another story, Man books 10 hyperbaric oxygen treatments prior to learning of boy’s death in chamber explosion. Infuriatingly, the story seems to want to put a positive spin on HBOT even after a five year old boy burned to death in an HBOT chamber:
As the Troy fire and police departments continue their investigations into what caused an explosion at The Oxford Center that killed a 5-year-old boy on Friday, we’re hearing from those who have had positive experiences receiving hyperbaric oxygen treatment.
“After a few weeks, I was able to start being able to think clearly, which I hadn’t been able to do in months,” Michael Krausman said.
Krausman says he spent the better part of a decade receiving dozens of hyperbaric oxygen treatments to deal with the effects of a traumatic brain injury. He had just booked 10 more sessions at The Oxford Center when he learned the 5-year-old boy died there when a chamber exploded while receiving that same treatment.
“My heart hurts for that poor, poor family. It’s terrible,” Krausman said.
Whenever I hear an anecdote like this, I wonder: Why do you think the treatment is working if you’ve had to undergo “dozens of treatments” over “”the better part of a decade? Indeed, the story concludes with Mr. Krausman saying:
We asked Krausman if he plans to go back for hyperbaric treatment.
“I will. I will because it works for me,” Krausman said.
Such is the power of confusing correlation with causation. One wonders how much money this poor man has spent over “the better part of a decade” on this therapy. (I did find a GoFundMe page for him from 2017.)
No doubt defenders of HBOT will point out that accidents such as the one that claimed the life of this unfortunately 5-year-old boy are very uncommon. That is true. However, when there is no evidence that a therapy like HBOT works for the condition being treated, then even that tiny risk is unacceptable, particularly given the high prices charged ($250-$600 per session).
The most important question, though, is: Why do clinics like The Oxford Center persist? News reports indicate that HBOT is largely unregulated, withthe Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services telling the Free Press that the “agencies don’t license, regulate or oversee hyperbaric oxygen chambers or the people who operate them.” Why not?
This depressing and tragic story is yet another example of what I’ve characterized as the toothlessness of state departments of health when it comes to regulating “integrative medicine” clinics that offer quackery like HBOT for autism alongside accepted modalities like ABA and cracking down on licensed doctors and health care professionals who administer treatments that are not science- or evidence-based and can even sometimes be dangerous. The results can be deadly, as this heart-rending story demonstrates.
ADDENDUM 2/2/2025: There is a GoFundMe page to help with expenses. In the GoFundMe, there is no indication of what condition Thomas was receiving HBOT for. I’m not going to quote it, but reading it made me tear up. The family has my condolences, and I hope that this clinic can be shut down and its owners made to pay dearly for taking the life of a child.
31 replies on “Hyperbaric oxygen treatment can kill”
An explosion in an HBOT Chamber? That sounded familiar. Back in 2009, LB/RB posted about Francesco Martinizi and his grandmother who died in an explosion in an HBOT Chamber at the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Florida. He had Cerebral Palsy, but Rashid Buttar was involved with the Center.
https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2009/06/14/2-fatality-hbot-fire/
In quackery, everything old is new again, I guess.
I had forgotten about this case. I think I’ll add a brief sentence about it to the post.
Cranks have seized on HBOT as a treatment for “vaccine injury”.
Here’s an outfit that does it.
https://desmoineshyperbarics.com/vaccine-injury
More, involving the Usual Suspects.
hbotnews.org/category/news/vaccine-injury-news/
You may not be shocked to learn that Clarity Hyperbarics’ “team” is led by two chiropractors, one of whom boasts special experience with infants, toddlers and pregnant women.
I am familiar with pressurized oxygen and I use liquid and compressed oxygen in my business.
Oxygen, the gas of life, can be extremely dangerous in high concentrations, in liquid form or under pressure. Some of the things that can happen are not even obvious. For example, if you spill liquid oxygen on crumbled asphalt, it will explode like a grenade if ignited. Some things spontaneously ignite in pure oxygen, for example oil and oily rags. Possibly, the clothing the child wore was contaminated with oil of some kind. And then he was trapped in a confined HP oxygen space. A terrifying death.
This all oxygen regulators say USE NO OIL – oil can suddenly explode.
The clinic violated some oxygen safety rules, no doubt about that.
What a horrific tragedy in the name of quackery.
And….of course….there’s an anti-vaxxer on staff there (from Episode 25 of their grifty podcast “TOC Talks” titled (what else?): “TOC Talks Episode 25: “Your Kids, Your Choice!” ”
….Wherein from Medical Free-Dumb quacks we here:
Join Andrew Kistner in welcoming Shelby Treib, a dynamic pediatric nurse practitioner from The Oxford Center, for an engaging conversation on ‘TOC Talks.’ In this episode, we uncover Shelby’s remarkable journey, from her experiences at Seattle Children’s Hospital to her impactful tenure at the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital. Delve into her profound insights on the subjects of medical freedom and vaccine choice. Shelby is a passionate advocate for comprehensive, individualized care, prioritizing the holistic well-being of every child. Join us to discover the depth of passion and expertise that Shelby brings to the world of pediatric care.
It’s the vaccines. It’s always the vaccines for every flippin’ thing they can think of.
I might have to look into the clinic some more, assuming they don’t scrub their webpages. There does seem to be a fair amount of quackery, but they seem (mostly) to limit it mainly to HBOT for conditions for which HBOT is not indicated, some functional medicine, and neurofeedback, an unproven modality for ADHD, autism, etc.
Two things: Why are some of the conditions in blue and some in black. Is it just a link thing?
🤦♀️Fieger🤦♀️
Orac will always have regular readers
One can only hope…
This article was the first one that I have read. I think that these types of centers should be shut down. and the people who made them deserve at least 10 years of prison time.
Note: The child has been identified as Thomas Cooper. The new reporting does not name the condition for which he was being treated with HBOT.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2025/02/01/family-of-boy-killed-in-hyperbaric-chamber-explosion-retains-attorney/
There is a GoFundMe:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-thomas-cooper-family-support
I did see this story in my local paper (The Windsor Star).
It was just a short blurb, only about 3 sentences. Unfortunately, it did not provide any details about the clinic.
Thank you for providing some context.
It’s probably too much to expect that anyone involved will take a lesson from this, as awful as it is.
[…] speaking of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), in my neck of the woods, a five-year-old boy was recently killed at a quack clinic when an HBOT chamber he was in exploded. No information was provided about what it was that he was […]
There was a recent Jeopardy Champion that said that HBOT recovered his brain function after a traumatic injury.
“HBOT recovered his brain function”
So, HBOT is now a 5-time Jeopardy champion?
I saw this news story over here and I immediately started wondering whether the clinic was legitimate and whether the poor kid was undergoing HBOT for legitimate reasons. Thanks for answering at least part of it.
Thank you for this article, and for the good information you provide here and on the Science Based Medicine website.
It’s probably my own ignorance, but when I click on the icon on my ipad for Respectful Insolence, I get a blank page with:
string(14) “Unknown target” string(12) “matched_vars” array(0) { }
This is the same link I’ve used for many months to find this website. Searching for Respectful Insolence, I get a link, but instead of the attractive website I found recently, I end up on a Home page, which does have a list of articles and comments. For a month or so I thought you’d deserted your webpage in favor of Substack, which isn’t very user-friendly. I’ve also subscribed, but that doesn’t seem to help with access.
If anyone who is computer literate can tell me what I’m doing wrong and how to fix it, I’d appreciate it.
I’ve seen this problem pop up occasionally. It’s probably my fault. You’ll notice that, until now, I hadn’t posted new material that wasn’t recycled from SBM since before the holidays. The reason has been family health issues, specifically the prolonged hospitalization of my father in November and December that culminated in his passing. Then my mother promptly was hospitalized right after New Years; she’s now in hospice, and unfortunately that means blogging here is unlikely to pick up all that much for a while.
If dealing with this has left me too distracted and busy to blog much, imagine how much more it’s kept me from trying to deal with website issues that I don’t understand. I just haven’t had the time or mental energy to try to chase down what’s going on, particularly given my scant knowledge of HTML and WordPress. I’m actually thinking more and more that I should move to Substack, but what I worry about is losing all that Google juice from my old articles.
I think care for your parents should have perhaps a priority over this blog. I like to read it, but at this moment I think there are more important things to care about. I wish you all the strenght you need, especially now your mother is in a hospice (in the Netherlands it’s mostly is a place were people come in the last stage of their life). Not sure if it’s the same in the US, but still I think you are going through rough times and I wish you the best.
Thank you,. Basically, Mom is in memory care because of her dementia after her stroke, with a hospice service providing palliative care. However, since this could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, I feel as though I need to get at least partially back into life, if only to try to try to get back on top of work that has been neglected the last few months.
Having gone through very stressful health problems and eventual deaths of both my parents I strongly sympathize with you. The last thing I want is for you to be bothered with what is a minor issue. I realized a long time ago that you regularly moved postings from SBM over to RI, but I still enjoy reading both sites, along with the comments.
I wanted to support a former Washington Post columnist who is now on Substack, signed up because I wanted to support them but was unexpectedly thrust into a melange that wanted me to write, get followers and make money. Repulsed, I unsubscribed and got a refund, but I now dislike Substack intensely. I’ll try to follow you there if you go, because I really enjoy your columns, but please find some other way to solicit funds from your readers.
Whatever you do, don’t concern yourself with minor issues. I hope you can find some peace in the middle of what is certainly a difficult situation.
This is confusing.
A lot of Substacks offer the opportunity to subscribe for free. Or you can just read the articles indefinitely without subscribing. The platform doesn’t compel writers to solicit funds or readers to morph into writers.
I don’t doubt that they’d prefer that I monetize my Substack so that the platform gets a cut of whatever subscription money I’d make, but there’s been zero pressure on me to go to paying subscriptions.
From a writing and editing standpoint, Substack is easy and convenient to use.
The reason that over the last four years or so I have occasionally toyed with the idea of moving Respectful Insolence to Substack has not been for money (although when I retire I might consider trying to supplement my income with a monetized Substack or whatever, if monetized blogs/newsletters are even still a thing a 5-8 years from now), but simply to remove the burden and cost of maintaining this website from my shoulders, particularly given that I don’t have the technical expertise to chase down weird little errors and can’t afford to hire someone to do it for me. That’s all.
Again, as I’ve said before, one reason that I’ve been so reluctant to pull the trigger and make the move is because Substack is just so plain ugly in its interface, and customization options make it only slightly less ugly. Another reason is that trying to keep the Google juice of articles transferred over would be a nightmare. A third is that it’s always a risk to put everything into a platform owned by a company; if the company folds or somehow changes policies, everything could disappear. Having been through that once before when ScienceBlogs folded and forced me to scramble to move everything over to this WordPress blog (and losing thousands of old comments from around 2006-2009), I’m very leery of that.
In any case, after all this is over and I (presumably) get back to a blogging schedule more like what I used to do before around September/October last year, I might revisit the question of Substack or one of its emerging competitors.
Orac, hang in there. Situations like these take a long time to resolve. Regulars aren’t going anywhere.
Thanks. However, I know that blogs are ephemeral and people start to move on if they lay fallow for too long.
As fate would have it, Orac’s ( partial) absence from sceptical criticism these past months coincides with the collision of the alt med/ anti-vax universe with right wing/ libertarian/ tech bro utopia personified in Trump’s supremacy. I’ve watched as quacks and cranks I’ve followed for years, purveying nonsensical “science” and outlandish lies, have become mainstream: RFK Jr, Del Bigtree and other frauds are discussed on the nightly news. Loons I thought only our enlightened group recognised are being nominated for important positions in the government. Far right social policy is accepted by alt med/ anti-vax mis-informers: Natural News thinks it’s time for men to take over government because women are too “nurturing” to deal with reality and don’t pack the right guns ( Natural News today).PRN discusses the mis-information network supported by the Deep State/ USAID coalition ( yesterday) so don’t trust material from the NYT, Reuters, AP, NPR, Wikipedia- it’s all dis-information. It’s sometimes hard to even write this stuff because it’s reversing reality.
Low information voters relish low information.
Don’t think I don’t recognize the irony of the situation. Just when I feel as though I’m most needed and can do the most good, I have the least time and mental energy to do what I’ve been doing for over 20 years.
Seriously, since RFK Jr. was named as Trump’s nominee to head HHS I’ve had more reporters contacting me in a short period of time than I remember ever having experienced, and I haven’t been able to help them all. I’ve tried, but sometimes I just couldn’t.
My only consolation is that, unfortunately, this will be a long game. In a few months (at most) I should be back, sadly maybe a lot sooner. It’s just impossible to predict right now.
Interesting about Natural News. It might just be the algorithm, but I’ve seen more social media posts touting the joys of getting women back into the kitchen whilst the men stride around, flexing their pecs, carrying an axe.
RI has been an invaluable source of information. I was even able to use my RI acquired knowledge of Robert Malone recently. Admittedly, arguing with a semi literate on social media about whether you can sue vaccine manufacturers and how Robert Malone didn’t actually invent mRNA vaccines isn’t very productive. Not to mention, iT’s hArD tO reAd.
Thank you for the continued careful reporting on these issues. I worked at a hospital system in the NW and helped put together a Carbon Monoxide symposium years back as there were so many tragic stories of CO poisoning in vulnerable communities (misuse of heating and cooking equipment, etc). I’m happy as always to see that you listed out the actual accepted uses of the treatment in addition to the necessary debunking.