Joseph Mercola
oracknows | August 2, 2016A characteristic of real doctors and real health care providers is that they usually don’t sell the drugs and remedies that they recommend. Indeed, physicians are generally not allowed to in most states, as it’s considered a conflict of interest. Also, the Stark Law forbids physician self-referral, which is the referral of a patient to a medical facility in which that physician has a financial interest, be it ownership, investment, or a structured compensation arrangement. The reason why it’s considered unethical for physicians to sell the drugs or treatments they recommend or to self-refer…
oracknows | February 10, 2013Epigenetics. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I realize I overuse that little joke, but I can't help but think that virtually every time I see advocates of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as it's known more commonly now, "integrative medicine" discussing epigenetics. All you have to do to view mass quantities of misinterpretation of the science of epigenetics is to type the word into the "search" box of a website like Mercola.com or NaturalNews.com, and you'll be treated to large numbers of articles touting the latest…
oracknows | January 1, 2013That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick used by all "psychic mediums" from time immemorial, long before the current crop of celebrity psychic mediums, such as John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and the "Long Island Medium" Theresa Caputo, discovered how much fame and fortune they could accrue by scamming the current generation of the credulous. Speaking of Theresa Caputo…
oracknows | August 3, 2012Let's travel back in time fifteen years.
It's a time that, for me, at times seems as though it were just yesterday while at other times it seems like truly ancient history. Back then, certainly, I wasn't the blogging powerhouse that I am today. I didn't even know what blogging was because it was so much in its infancy that few people knew what it was. In fact, it was only around 14 years ago that I first discovered Usenet, that vast, sprawling, brawling assortment of discussion groups where I cut my skeptical teeth, so to speak, discovering, as I did, alt.revisionism (often abbrievated a.r.…
oracknows | October 9, 2011I debated a while about whether I should take this particular post on. It's not because there isn't a lot of fodder there deserving of that special form of not-so-Respectful Insolence that only Orac, in his usual inimitable fashion, can provide. There most definitely is. The problem, as is sometimes the case when I get on a roll, is that it represents going back to a topic that I've already covered very recently. In fact, it's a topic I've already covered twice, namely Steve Jobs and the insulinoma that ultimately killed him. Last week, I reposted what I wrote about him back in 2009 after he…
oracknows | January 18, 2011Stick a fork in Dr. Oz. He's done.
I know I've been highly critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz, Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University and medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program (i.e., Columbia's quackademic medicine) program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Those are his academic titles. More important, in terms of his promotion of pseudoscience, is his role as daytime medical show host. Dr. Oz's television show, called, appropriately enough, The Dr. Oz Show, is a direct result of his having been featured on Oprah Winfrey's show on numerous occasions as one of…
oracknows | October 18, 2010Posting will probably be very light the next couple of days because I'm at the Lorne Trottier Symposium. Not only have the organizers have packed my day with skeptical and science goodness, but I only have Internet access when I'm back at the hotel, which isn't very much. This is somewhat distressing to me because several readers have sent me a truly bad study implying that (with the press out and out saying that) because investigators couldn't detect signs of cancer in Egyptian mummies there must not have been cancer in pre-industrial times, the further implication being that all cancer is "…
oracknows | April 11, 2010It has now been nearly two months since Andrew Wakefield was forced to resign from Thoughtful House in the wake of his being found guilty of research misconduct by the British General Medical Council (GMC), the withdrawal of Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper, and the withdrawal of Wakefield's last grab at scientific credibility, his infamous hepatitis B "monkey study." After a period of silence, over the last week, Wakefield has started to pop up in the public eye again, most recently last week in an interview for an independent filmmaker that is getting wide play in the anti-vaccine…
oracknows | March 1, 2010I've had it with Dr. Oz.
Although I haven't seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn't waste it watching Dr. Oz's show), readers have informed me that yesterday, on March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz threw away whatever shred of respectability that he had left. On March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz had Deepak Chopra on his show.
But that wasn't enough.
After all, Chopra is a never-ending font of woo in categories too numerous to recount here, a small subset of which includes evolution, neuroscience, and medicine, but most of his woo is is fairly "…
oracknows | January 23, 2010Oh, yes, my brothers and sisters, we have done it!
My pharma paymasters are very, very pleased indeed with me and all of their other blogging and Twittering minions. Very, very pleased indeed. In fact, they are cackling with glee over the discomfiture of one of their greatest enemies, Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger! This brave rebel's plan to attack the conspiracy by winning a Shorty Award in Health has been thwarted, thanks to the efforts of you and me, oh my brothers and sisters, and The Health Ranger has gone completely mental about it:
I was set to take the top prize, and Dr.…