The Pathological Optimist: More hagiography than documentary about Andrew Wakefield – Science-Based Medicine

The Pathological Optimist is a recently released documentary by Miranda Bailey about Andrew Wakefield that I got a chance to see. In interviews and in the film’s promotional materials, Bailey takes great pains to emphasize that she “doesn’t take a side” about Wakefield. Unfortunately, her film demonstrates that, when it comes to pseudoscience, “not taking a side” is taking a side, and that a film’s bias is often more evident in... The Pathological Optimist: More hagiography than documentary about Andrew Wakefield – Science-Based Medicine

Naturopathic Cancer Quackery – Science-Based Medicine

Britt Marie Hermes is a former naturopath who had the requisite intellectual and moral integrity to realize and admit to herself that her chosen profession was a pseudoscientific fraud. Further, rather than just sulk away and go on with her life, she decided to share what she learned with the world, in the hopes of mitigating the damage caused by her former profession.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. For her trouble she has been harassed and legally threatened. She was recently sent another cease and desist letter from Colleen Huber, for a post in which she explains why she thinks Huber is cybersquatting on domains with Hermes’ name..

Read more: Naturopathic Cancer Quackery – Science-Based Medicine

Alternative medicine kills cancer patients – Science-Based Medicine

Alternative medicine, by definition, consists medicine that either has not been shown to work or has been shown not to work. To paraphrase an old adage yet again, medicine that has been shown to work with an acceptable risk-benefit ceases to be “alternative” and becomes simply “medicine.”

Unlike the case for many conditions commonly treated with alternative medicine, whether or not a treatment works against cancer is determined by its impact on the hardest of “hard” endpoints: Survival...

Read more: Alternative medicine kills cancer patients – Science-Based Medicine

Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop: Another triumph of celebrity pseudoscience and quackery – Science-Based Medicine

Earlier this month, the hostilities between Gwyneth Paltrow’s den of celebrity pseudoscience and quackery, her “lifestyle” website and store Goop, and skeptics erupted into open warfare, as Goop attacked Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN, blogger, and frequent critic of the pseudoscience published and sold by Goop. This leads to the question: Who are the physicians facilitating Paltrow and Goop? And does debunking nonsense as ridiculous as that peddled by Paltrow and her minions do any good?

Full post by Dr David Gorski at Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop: Another triumph of celebrity pseudoscience and quackery – Science-Based Medicine

Another antivaccine zombie meme: polio vaccine and SV40 and cancer, oh, my! - Science-Based Medicine

This post dates from 2013, but the same vicious lies are still being repeated by antivaccine fanatics.

Now that the World Wide Web (at least as we know it, in its graphically browsable form) is approaching its twentieth birthday, we now have enough perspective to see these things. Steve Novella pointed out one zombie meme just the other day about the MMR, as did a certain person well known to this blog. Just yesterday I noticed another of these zombie memes arising from the dead yet again to feast on the brains of the living and thus make them cranks too. (At least, that is the goal of their continual resurrection.) This one popped up at that online repository of all things quackery, NaturalNews.com, in a post by Mike Adams himself entitled Merck vaccine developer admits vaccines routinely contain hidden cancer viruses derived from diseased monkeys. Other versions of this meme pop up from time to time with titles like CDC Admits 98 Million Americans Received Polio Vaccine In An 8-Year Span When It Was Contaminated With Cancer Virus.

Read the full post: Another antivaccine zombie meme: polio vaccine and SV40 and cancer, oh, my! - Science-Based Medicine

Vaccine Whistleblower: An antivaccine “exposé” full of sound and fury, signifying nothing | Science-Based Medicine

I don’t review books that often (...) Today, I’m making an exception for a book hot off the presses. The main reason is curiosity, because the book is about a topic that I’ve blogged about three times here and several times more for my not-so-super-secret other blog, and I really wanted to find out more about what was going on. I didn’t expect to find out what really happened, because I knew from the beginning that the book, Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Research Fraud at the CDC by an antivaccine lawyer named Kevin Barry, would be highly biased. However, as I found out a few weeks ago, the book promised four complete transcripts of telephone conversations between the “CDC whistleblower,” a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) psychologist named William W. Thompson who has been a co-investigator on important CDC studies since the late 1990s...

Read the rest here: Vaccine Whistleblower: An antivaccine “exposé” full of sound and fury, signifying nothing | Science-Based Medicine

Learning quackery for Continuing Medical Education credit � Science-Based Medicine

The Integrative Addiction Conference 2015 (“A New Era in Natural Treatment”) starts tomorrow in Myrtle Beach, SC. Medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, naturopaths and other health care providers will hear lectures on such subjects as “IV Therapies and Addiction Solutions,” given by Kenneth Proefrock, a naturopath whose Arizona Stem Cell Center specializes in autologous stem cell transplants derived from adipose tissue. Proefrock, who was disciplined for using prolotherapy in the cervical spine without proper credentialing in 2008, claims that stem cells treatments are an “incredibly versatile therapy” and uses them for variety of conditions, such as MS and viral diseases. At the same time, he admits that they are not FDA approved and he is not claiming they are effective for anything (and he’s right), which leads one to wonder why he employs them....

The rest of the exposé of this jaw-dropping WTF is here: Learning quackery for Continuing Medical Education credit � Science-Based Medicine

Truly horrendous

Another Lawsuit To Suppress Legitimate Criticism – This Time SBM | Science-Based Medicine

I suppose it was inevitable. In fact, I’m a bit surprised it took this long. SGU Productions, the Society for Science-based medicine, and I are being sued for an article that I wrote in May of 2013 on Science-Based Medicine. My SBM piece, which was inspired by an article in the LA Times, gave this summary:

The story revolves around Dr. Edward Tobinick and his practice of perispinal etanercept (Enbrel) for a long and apparently growing list of conditions. Enbrel is an FDA-approved drug for the treatment of severe rheumatoid arthritis. It works by inhibiting tumor necrosis factor (TNF), which is a group of cytokines that are part of the immune system and cause cell death. Enbrel, therefore, can be a powerful anti-inflammatory drug. Tobinick is using Enbrel for many off-label indications, one of which is Alzheimer’s disease (the focus of the LA Times story).

The claims and practice of Dr. Tobinick have many of the red flags of a dubious medical practice, of the sort that we discuss regularly on SBM. It seems that Dr. Tobinick does not appreciate public criticism of his claims and practice, and he wants me to remove the post from SBM. In my opinion he is using legal thuggery in an attempt to intimidate me and silence my free speech because he finds its content inconvenient.

Read the full post by Steven Novella at: Another Lawsuit To Suppress Legitimate Criticism – This Time SBM | Science-Based Medicine

Acupuncture for Menopausal Symptoms | Science-Based Medicine

SBM is a major site, so I normally wouldn't repost  from it here. However; as this particular misrepresented study is going the rounds on Internet, I felt it best to include a magistral debunking by no less than Steven Novella here.

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A newly published meta-analysis of studies looking at acupuncture for symptoms resulting from natural menopause (not drug or surgically induced) by Chiu et. al. is entirely negative. That is not what the authors or the press release conclude, however.

This disconnect between the study results and the interpretation of those results is a persistent problem in medicine generally to some degree, but is endemic and profound within the CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) culture. Acupuncture in particular is promoted almost entirely based on this type of misinterpretations – the kind that can magically turn negative studies into positive studies....

REad the rest here: Acupuncture - Science-Based Medicine