Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The Texas Medical Board finally gets off its tuchas and acts against Dr. Rolando Arafiles, Jr.

There’s one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that this blog exists only to “bash ‘alternative’ medicine,” and that’s that it doesn’t. This blog exists, besides to champion science and critical thinking (and, of course, to feed my ravenous ego), in order to champion medicine based on science against all manner of […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Cancer Treatment Centers of America, naturopathy, and “naturopathic oncology”

Note: Parts of this post have appeared elsewhere, but not in this form. If there’s one aspect of so-called “alternative medicine” and “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) is that its practitioners tout as being a huge advantage over what they often refer to sneeringly as “conventional” or “scientific” medicine is that — or so its […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine infiltrates the New England Journal of Medicine

One of the things that disturbs me the most about where medicine is going is the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. So prevalent is this unfortunate phenomenon that Doctor RW even coined a truly apt term for it: Quackademic medicine. In essence, pseudoscientific and even prescientific ideas are rapidly being “integrated” with science-based medicine, […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Germ theory denialism explained

Here’s some sheer awesomeness in the form of an explanation of germ theory denialism: The only thing I would disagree with is the conclusion at the end that germ theory denialists are not much of a threat. In fact, germ theory denialism, usually softer germ theory denialism, such as the kind that says a healthy […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy

Yes, there really are people who don’t accept the germ theory of disease

The longer I’m in this whole skepticism thing, the more I realize that no form of science is immune to woo. For example, even though I lament just how many people do not accept evolution, for example, I can somewhat understand it. Although the basics of the science and evidence supporting the theory of evolution […]