Best Misleading Headline Ever: "Doctors eager to try 'mystical mumbo jumbo'"

[LostAngeles]

Best Misleading Headline Ever: "Doctors eager to try 'mystical mumbo jumbo'"

I think I love Bob Carr.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31083316/

BALTIMORE - At one of the nation's top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.

They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it "mystical mumbo jumbo." Still, he's a fan.

"It's self-hypnosis" that can help patients relax, he said. "If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain."
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Alternative medicine has become mainstream. It is finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more "care" in their health care. They distrust drug companies and the government. They want natural, safer remedies.

But often, that is not what they get. Government actions and powerful interest groups have left consumers vulnerable to flawed products and misleading marketing.

...

Mainstream medicine and prescription drugs have problems, too. Popular drugs such as the painkillers Vioxx and Bextra were pulled from the market after serious side effects emerged once they were widely used by consumers. But at least there are regulatory systems, guideline-setting groups and watchdog agencies helping to keep traditional medicine in line.

The safety net for alternative medicine is far flimsier.

...

I'm bolding my favorite part. I love that the reporter acknowledged that arguement and then throat-punched it. Then continued on kicking the ass out of sCAM.

This is a seriously quality article and I'm extremely happy with the AP for doing it and MSNBC for putting it at the top of their front page.

 

[Travis]

Agreed it was a nice change of pace. So often, anymore, the media simply refuses to apply any intellectual criticism to things that are woo.