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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Religion

What’s the harm? A child dies a preventable death from an ear infection

A common question, rhetorical or otherwise, that skeptics are asked about alternative medicine is, “What’s the harm?” It’s seemingly an effective ploy for some modalities, so much so that years ago Tim Farley felt obligated to try to answer the question on a website (whatstheharm.net) that catalogues examples of the harm alternative medicine, supernatural and […]

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

Twitter as an amplifier of antivaccine messages

Before 2005, I did pay attention to the antivaccine movement, but it wasn’t one of my biggest priorities when it comes to promoting science-based medicine. That all changed when Robert F. Kennedy published his incredibly conspiracy-packed black whole of antivaccine pseudoscience entitled Deadly Immunity. Sadly, almost exactly ten years later, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hasn’t […]

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

The exaggeration that is “food as medicine”

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – attributed to Hippocrates Who said anything about medicine? Let’s eat! – attributed to one of Hippocrates forgotten (and skeptical) students   Who hasn’t seen or heard Hippocrates’ famous quote about letting food be your medicine and your medicine your food? If you have Facebook […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which pro-vaccine advocates are inappropriately portrayed as frenzied, self-righteous “zealots”

One of the odd things about having been a blogger as long as I have been is that, occasionally, posts that I wrote years ago rise up to bite me long after I’ve forgotten that I even wrote them. Actually, that’s usually not the right way to put it. Blogging is a very short term […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A victory in the long war against autism quackery

As depressing as the litany of quackery and patient harm that I follow nearly every day can become, occasionally I am heartened to learn of a victory for science-based medicine and, more importantly, for the patients being victimized by pseudoscientific treatments. One of the most simultaneously ridiculous and vile of these treatments is a solution […]