Tag: quackery

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Naturopaths: Able to turn even Epsom salt potentially deadly

Like the Earth, normally mostly harmless. In the hands of a naturopath, not so much.

Epsom salt, like the Earth in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, is mostly harmless; that is, except in the hands of a naturopath.

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

If Rigvir is effective “virotherapy” for cancer, why are quack clinics selling it and quackery promoters like Ty Bollinger promoting it?

Rigvir virotherapy
This is how Rigvir kills cancer cells, according to its proponents. Unfortunately, the evidence to support this model is close to nonexistent in the peer-reviewed biomedical literature. Evidence that it actually works in humans is even more scarce, although the International Virotherapy Center claims it has it. Oddly enough, it hasn't published it and admits its evidence doesn't live up to current expected standards. Yet it sells Rigvir anyway.

Last week, I wrote about Rigvir, a “virotherapy” promoted by the International Virotherapy Center (IVC) in Latvia, which did not like what I had to say. When a representative called me to task for referring to the marketing of Rigvir using patient testimonials as irresponsbile, it prompted me to look at how Ty Bollinger’s The Truth About Cancer series promoted Rigvir through patient testimonials and how the IVC itself uses such testimonials. The word “irresponsible” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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

Antivaxers on Twitter: Fake news and Twitter bots

A new analysis reveals that there are antivaccine bots on Twitter. Why am I not surprised?

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Homeopathy at UC-Irvine: The administration can run but it can’t hide from its history of embracing quackery

Is this the vision of the future? Huge swaths of medical academia devoted to quackademic medicine.

Last week, UC-Irvine announced a $200 million gift from Susan and Henry Samueli to create a new integrative medicine center. Since then, UC-Irvine has tried to scrub any evidence of homeopathy use on its website. It didn’t work. Unfortunately, thanks to the Samuelis, homeopathy and other pseudoscience are deeply embedded in UC-Irvine, which has become the new epitome of quackademic medicine.

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Rigvir: A cancer "cure" imported from Latvia that cancer patients should avoid

No, this is not a cancer cure-all.

Recently, the Hope4Cancer Institute, a quack clinic in Mexico has added a treatment known as Rigvir to its other offerings. But what is Rigvir? It turns out that it’s an import from Latvia with a mysterious history. Its proponents claim that it targets cancer specifically. Unfortunately, there is a profound paucity of evidence for its efficacy. The story of Rigvir is the story of an unproven treatment that, because of its origin in a small country, has flown mostly under the radar. Until now, that is.