And credulous newspapers are helping that quack. The latest case is a little girl in Ireland with a disfiguring and deadly rhabdomyosarcoma who is trying to raise money to get the useless and totally fraudulent Burzynski antineoplaston treatment … and this article makes the good point that newspapers are helping to defraud sick people. Both …
Category Archive: Quackery
Jun 29 2012
1 + 0 = 10
It’s homeopathic math, and it really works! Biodork analyzes some personal lubricants, and discovers that all you have to do is add some homeopathic dilutions of boring stuff like salt water to the functional ingredients, and you can write florid ad copy for it and charge twice as much. Homeopathy really is magic that way …
Jun 26 2012
Bravo, Germany!
I think this is an excellent decision. In a decision that has caused outrage among Jewish and Muslim groups, the court said that a child’s right to physical integrity trumps religious and parental rights. The case involved a doctor who carried out a circumcision on a four year-old that led to medical complications. Thousands of …
Jun 21 2012
I must be suffering from withdrawal
I’ve actually got this lovely two-month long block of time with no conferences scheduled, where I get to stay home. And what do I do? I sign up for another one, simply because it’s right here in my own backyard. I shall be attending <duh-duh-duuuuh>the Canary Party National Convention, in Minneapolis MN, July 20 – …
Jun 13 2012
Chiroquackery in Morris, Minnesota
Well, that caught my eye, all bright pink with a bold title touting “The Cancer Cure”, and posted on the bulletin board of the local coffee shop. I read it aghast: it’s a chiropractor trading on tragedy. Do you see a cancer cure anywhere in there? Chiropractic is not only incapable of curing cancer, it …
May 17 2012
No more NCCAM
Orac and Paul Offit agree: get rid of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Harkin’s Folly has had opportunity enough to show it is a waste of time, so let’s stop tossing money into that sinkhole.
Apr 01 2012
I get email
Seriously, people, I am so sick of the April Fool’s jokes. I just got this in my email. Dear Dr. Myers: I’m writing to you in your capacity as a biology faculty member at University of Minnesota Morris. I’m originally from Minnesota— I’m from just south of Mankato, and I’m a St. Olaf alum. Currently, …
Mar 18 2012
The Reason Rally ought to have some standards
Oh, joy. Senator Tom Harkin will appear in a video message at the Reason Rally. While he may be a lifelong Catholic, as he declares in the announcement, and while he is one of the biggest supporters of acupuncture, chiropracty, herbal and homeopathic ‘healing’, and all the alt med bullshit he can fling millions of …
Feb 27 2012
Jesus heals cancer in New Zealand
There is a church in New Zealand that has a genuinely repulsive billboard: it boldly claims that “JESUS HEALS CANCER“. It’s a lie, of course: they have no evidence of such a power. In an interview with the smiling, cheerful, blithely fuckwitted pastor, he openly admits that the congregants who were “healed” were receiving modern …
Jan 23 2012
Quantum is just a metaphor
Could Chopra be any more muddled? First he claims that “quantum” is just a metaphor, and then he accuses all those fundamentalist physicists of hijacking his word and using it wrongly. Quantum physics is a very specific discipline that currently has no direct applicability to medicine — every time Chopra opens his mouth and uses …
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