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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Doctors are "pushing vaccines"? Gee, you say that as though that were a bad thing!

I frequently point out how antivaccine activists really, really don’t want to admit that they are, in fact, antivaccine, so frequently, in fact, that I have a series that I call The annals of “I’m not antivaccine.” It’s already up to part 21. It could easily be up to part 51, or 101, or even […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Sports

Thanks, Michael Phelps, for glamorizing cupping quackery!

So, in case you hadn’t noticed, I was taking a brief vacation, a long weekend if you will. As a result, I hadn’t planned on posting new completely original material until Wednesday or Thursday. (Monday’s post, some of you noticed, was a modified crosspost from my not-so-super-secret other blog.) Then something happened.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 21: Oh, wait, maybe I am antivaccine after all

This is yet another in the continuing saga of “I’m not antivaccine,” a continuing series of posts demonstrating how the oh-so-loud and vigorous denials of antivaccine activists that they are antivaccine are in reality either a lie or self-delusion. There have been so many previous installments, twenty, to be precise. There could easily have been […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Combatting the alt-med stereotype of oncologists anxious to administer toxic chemotherapy

It is an article of faith among believers in alternative cancer cures that conventional oncology consists mainly of a bunch of money-hungry surgeons and oncologists who want nothing more than to cut, poison, and burn patients with cancer and charge them enormous sums of money to do so for as long as they can until […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

Why does Dr. Mercola sell supplements? Cognitive dissonance at its finest

A characteristic of real doctors and real health care providers is that they usually don’t sell the drugs and remedies that they recommend. Indeed, physicians are generally not allowed to in most states, as it’s considered a conflict of interest. Also, the Stark Law forbids physician self-referral, which is the referral of a patient to […]