Mental Illness Denial
This is really hard, and we have limited knowledge, but we have accumulated enough knowledge about mental health and illness to take a practical approach to many patients and to help them improve their lives. This should include the full range of options available, including medication and counseling. To deny the role of medication can do great harm to those who may...
Fake News About Margarine
An alarmist email is circulating with misinformation about margarine. A little fact-checking shows that both margarine and butter can be part of a healthy diet.
“Integrative medicine” advocates: Co-opting the opioid crisis to promote funding for acupuncture by Medicaid
The opioid epidemic is a serious public health crisis in the U.S., and new tools and treatments to deal with chronic pain are urgently needed. Unfortunately, where public health officials see a crisis, advocates of "integrating" quackery with science-based medicine see an opportunity. In this case, promoters of pseudomedicine are taking advantage of the opioid crisis to persuade state Medicaid systems to...
Legislative Alchemy 2017: Acupuncture
Acupuncture is nothing more than a theatrical placebo. Yet acupuncturists, defined as primary care practitioners in some states, are succeeding in licensing and practice expansion efforts in state legislatures.
Cancer quack Colleen Huber sues Britt Hermes over criticism
Naturopathic cancer quack Colleen Huber is attempting to silence criticism of her practices by suing Britt Hermes. Help Britt fight back with a donation to help defray legal expenses.
The Elephant in the Compounding Pharmacy
Contaminated products from compounding pharmacies have harmed and even killed patients. Quality control measures are being implemented, but there is a bigger problem: the injudicious use of untested and potentially dangerous treatments.
The final push to pass a federal version of the cruel sham of “right-to-try” is under way
Right-to-try laws are a cruel sham that claim to help terminally ill patients by providing them with earlier access to experimental therapeutics, even though they do very little in this regard. Promoted primarily by the libertarian think tank the Goldwater Institute, in reality they are a strategy to weaken the FDA's regulatory power to assure that marketed drugs are safe and effective....
Legionnaires’ Disease: The Other Disneyland Outbreak
As 2017 came to a close, Disneyland again played a role in the outbreak of an infectious disease, this one much more deadly than measles.
Infiltrative Pseudoscience
If you don't think that CAM is the enemy of science in medicine, then you don't understand CAM and its proponents. Don't be fooled by their marketing. They want a return to the pre-scientific days when health gurus could sell any snake oil they want at exorbitant prices, with any hyped claims that they want, without going through all that tedious science.