Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

From the ridiculous to the sublime: A journalist takes down Suzanne Somers over “bio-identicals”

Suzanne Somers annoys me. She annoys me because, despite the fact that her statements and activities over the last 25 years reveal her to be probably no more intelligent than the character that she played on Three’s Company, she still feels the need to spread misinformation about diet and medicine in several books that she […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A little too much credulity from a Chicago Tribune reporter towards alternative medicine

I had been planning on finally getting around to writing that review of Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion that I’ve been meaning to write since I finally finished the book two weeks ago. Then a Google Alert hit my mailbox last night for a preset search that I keep active on “Abraham Cherrix,” and the […]

Categories
Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Justice for Abubakar Tariq Nadama at last?

A little more than a year ago, an autistic boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama died of a cardiac arrest due to hypocalcemia at the hands of an “alternative medicine” practitioner named Dr. Roy Kerry while chelation therapy was being administered to him intravenously. Dr. Kerry, who trained as an ENT doctor, now bills himself as […]

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine

Institutional review boards overreaching?

Institutional review boards (IRBs) are the cornerstone of the protection of human subjects in modern biomedical research. Mandated by the federal government in the 1970’s in the wake of research abuses of the 20th century, in particular the the horrors of the infamous Nazi biomedical experiments during World War II that were documented in during […]

Categories
Politics Religion Science fiction/fantasy

Wingnuts against Harry Potter–again

It seems to be the time of the year for this sort of thing. Yes, I realize that the Harry Potter novels have come under attack from various fundamentalist Christians, who view them as somehow indoctrinating children into witchcraft, Wicca, demon worship, or whatever. I also realize that I may be a bit behind the […]