alternative medicine

Posted at NaturalNews.com, Mon April 4 2011 (NaturalNews) Alternative health practitioners in North Carolina (NC) and their patients need your help to defeat a stealth bill that flew under the radar of most everyone in the natural health community. Senate Bill 31, which clarifies the penalties...

I seem to remember a study being published showing that within the same bottle of a herbal remedy the dosage varied from pill to pill greatly. If somebody could post a link I'd be very grateful :D

Out of all the "alternative" treatments out there, Acupuncture is the one treatment modality I find I have a hard time dismissing out of hand. Reiki, homeopathy? No problem, obvious junk. For acupuncture there seems to be a fair body of evidence that shows effectiveness for some conditions...

A review of the book here: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=7621#more-7621 Acupuncture is marked as green. Homeopathy as yellow. :boggled: Going by the selected quotes, I agree. If the purpose is... Then what purpose does it serve to give acupuncture a green light and homeopathy...

The CBC has a bit on "Unorthodox Cures" at http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/technology/3743/ The usual silly stuff, but doesn't include homeopathy. The most amusing bit is the boy who caught a stone that fell from the sky after a lightning strike- the stone is obviously magical (rather than...

The Chiropractor's rooms up the road from us have a new sign advertising all the wonderful types of 'treatments' available there. (Sorry for the blurriness) I guess these Chiropractors haven't heard that Chiropracty was trying to distance itself from blatant woo. Vibrational Kinesiology...

I was scouring New Zealand news for something interesting to do with alternative medicine and I found this video from the Breakfast morning show down here. It's not very long, but it features a professor - from one of New Zealand's universities - talking about a book he wrote on complementary...

Does anyone have any special scoop on this? http://jimhumble.com/ I ask because, first, I haven't the stomach to explore it and, second, I know a man whose wife has pancreatic cancer and he's looking into Jim Humble and his supposed panacea. Supposedly Master Humble (did he give himself that...

I am reading Laurence Gardner's book `The Magdalene Legacy' and he waxes lyrical over what he describes as ancient knowledge of a special state of matter called `ormus'. The net is full of crazy stuff about it, and I have been unable to find any objective information. What I want to know is, is...

Recently at another forum we were discussing Gary Null's lawsuit against the company producing his product (JREF thread here) and a skeptic said: "This is why there should be some regulation in the supplement market. To ensure that the products that are produced have in them what is on the...

Oh, sweet mother of pearl. I live in this town, too. http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=12426238

Alice Shortcake emailed me about this guy to give me fodder for Skepocalypse. Fodder, indeed! Though not as prominent as many of the quacks discussed here, due to his upcoming events in the US, I had to seize the opportunity to take some action. So I tracked down the location and sent an...

This speech just made my day: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/13/specter.denying.science/ Generally, it's about the benefits of Science, what Science has done for us, and what it needs to be doing. It covers denialism of vaccines, irrational fears about GM foods, and the futility of...

Harriet Hall, MD, The SkepDoc, discusses her column in O, The Oprah Magazine that focuses on debunking medical myths. She contrasts science-based medicine and “complementary and alternative medicine,” and tells why she objects to the latter term. She details why homeopathy elicits more moral...

I’ve gathered two books that promote homeopathy as an alternative to conventional medicine. Homeopathy Made Simple, by Dr. R. Donald Papon and Rage-Free Kids: Homeopathic Medicine for Defiant, Aggressive and Violent Children, by Judyth and Reichenberg-Ulman and Robert Ulman. In Homeopathy...

My mother, bless her, has recently been suggesting I try extract of African Potato Tuber (Hypoxis Hemerocallidea, sold under the trade name Simba), to help with various medical problems I've had (including eczema and what is currently being described as chronic fatigue syndrome), and I was...

I've just completed the Open University "Perspectives on CAM" course. If anyone is interested in my final conclusions I have posted a rather lengthy essay here - http://aillas.blogspot.com/. The course has been criticised by David Colquhoun as the Open University "teaching quackery" which it...

It's been claimed that Ginkgo improves cognition and may delay or prevent dementia. It doesn't. The full text is online at the JAMA site Dec 23, 30 issue.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3067 They claim to treat the "whole person" holistically, but fail to identify real causes. They end up "treating" symptoms, which they accuse science based practitioners of doing. Isn't that called hypocrisy? They are taught a bunch of hooey...

Story here Dr. Novella is one of the Skeptics of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, BTW. It's one thing for fools to waste their own money on quackery, but I can't support public money going to this. If opponents of abortion can demand that public money never pay for abortion, it...

A refreshingly well-written article on "natural cures" and such by an AP medical writer: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MED_UNPROVEN_REMEDIES_PLACEBO?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=DJSP_COMPLETE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-11-10-15-16-11 Though I think it overstated the placebo effect. (For...

Well, Suzanne Somers strikes again. The bouncy blonde from Three's Company, back in the 70s, has now become a cancer expert. I caught her last night on TV for a few minutes, where she complained that when she was diagnosed with cancer, all they offered her was surgery, chemo, and radiation. No...

Reading the "Natural" News usually leaves a taste of bile in my mouth, but this "article" really made me sick. http://www.naturalnews.com/027030_cancer_chemotherapy_Patrick_Swayze.html I nominate this writer for the Douchebag of the Year award.

OK, so my town's newspaper has a food site, which in turn has several food blogs. The most recent article is about how margarine is bad for you. Now, it might well be, I wouldn't know, but the author seemed to use as her main arguments that margarine was 'industry-produced' and a 'surrogate', as...

Hey all, I've been lurking at the jref forums but this is my first post. I was recently having an argument with a friend about alternative medicine and homeopathic therapy, and they sent me this documentary called, "We Become Silent". Brief description of it: "International award-winning...

ABC News poses the question "Why do we spend $34 Billion on Alternative Medicine"? According to the article, "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Thursday that Americans spent $34 billion on complementary and alternative medicine in 2007". Their coverage is fairly objective with...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8129447.stm Great presentation of some of the more ...er... unusual cures that have been offered over the years. My favourite are "Perkin's tractors" - could see them being sold on-line today!

The following is a letter published in our local paper this morning: At first I though nut case, now I see not just any nut case. Author of: "Dr. Max Gerson: Healing The Hopeless" by Howard Straus (the grandson of Max Gerson). Second Letter down...

Ok, so an article that was posted on SWIFT today prompted a rather heated discussion between myself and a friend. And I'm wondering what's the best way to respond. This is the article: $2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found Basically, he has a few main points: CAM isn't all bad...

I don't what's gotten into the Associated Press lately, but I approve! :D Today they ran 5 articles on the dangers of using alternative medicine to treat cancer. http://phoenix.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D98MLRR01&_action=validatearticle...