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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Massachusetts passes legislation licensing naturopathic quackery. Only the governor can stop it now.

In a perverse way, one almost has to admire naturopaths. If there’s anything that characterizes naturopaths in their pursuit of legitimacy and licensure, it’s an amazing relentlessness. In this, they are not unlike The Terminator. As Kyle Reese described him in the first Terminator movie, the Terminator “can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Licensing naturopathic quackery in Mississippi: If at first you don’t succeed…

Here we go again. Naturopaths crave legitimacy for their brand of pseudoscientific medicine. Basically, they delude themselves into thinking that they are real doctors and can function as primary care providers, despite abundant evidence that they cannot. they One (of several) ways they seek to acquire that legitimacy for naturopathy and themselves is through promoting […]

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Biology Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Stemedica Cell Technologies: More stem cell hard sell, courtesy of the people who brought you Penta Water woo

I first became more interested in dubious stem cell clinics nearly two years ago, when I learned that hockey legend Gordie Howe was undergoing stem cell therapy in Mexico to treat his stroke. Being from Detroit, I imbibed the hockey madness of this town growing up, and know that Detroiters hold Gordie Howe in incredibly […]

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Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

Stem cell tourism: A problem right here in the good ol’ USA

Last week, I wrote about a man named Jim Gass, a former chief legal counsel for Sylvania, who had suffered a debilitating stroke in 2009 that left him without the use of his left arm, and weak left leg. He could still walk with a cane, but was understandably desperate to try anything to be […]

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Medicine

The dangers of stem cell tourism

It’s been over three weeks now since hockey legend Gordie Howe died at the age of 88. Detroit, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, is a serious hockey town, as hockey-crazy as any town in Canada (just look at the fancy new hockey arena being built downtown only a mile from where I work), and it […]