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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

“Aversive” therapy for autism and developmental disorders?

Ever since I started paying attention to quackery, in particular quackery used on autistic children, I’ve come across some bizarre articles. Of course, the vast majority of autism quackery is related to antivaccine beliefs and the need to “detoxify” autistic children from whatever toxins or mercury antivaccinationists think caused their children’s autism. If only it […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

No, JAMA does not now recommend chiropractic care first for low back pain

Of all the alternative medical systems out there, chiropractic is one of the oddest. Unlike many of the others, it has a modicum of plausibility, at least for back problems due to musculoskeletal strains. After all, the science-based specialty of physical therapy uses spinal manipulation to treat back problems. Of course, the big difference between […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Andrew Wakefield is still at it blaming vaccines for autism

Ever since I first became aware of the antivaccine movement more than ten years ago, I’ve had little choice but to periodically pay attention to one of the godfathers of the antivaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield is the quack whose dubious case series that The Lancet foolishly published in 1998 launched a million antivaccine quacks. […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

The Texas Medical Board vs. Stanislaw Burzynski, Round Infinity

There’s a point I feel that I have have to make briefly as I begin this post. Basically, this might look familiar, but given that I was at TAM Wednesday through Sunday, I didn’t have time to produce two separate posts, and this is important enough to be distributed as widely as possible. In any […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

A Scottish doctor endorses Robert O. Young’s “pH Miracle Living”

I didn’t think I’d be revisiting this topic so quickly. However, given that I’m at TAM and I don’t have a lot of time to do one of my usual 2,000 word epics for a change, I thought that this story, which popped up the other day while I was traveling was at least worth […]