Paleo Diet

It's been a rather...interesting...weekend. Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. "The Wellness Warrior," a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I've been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to avoid an amputation of her left arm at the shoulder, her tumor recurred, after which she chose not to undergo amputation and instead to embrace the quackery known as Gerson therapy, which she did for over two years. By the time she finished…
On Aardvarchaeology, Martin Rundkvist tells the story of a 14-year old Swedish Muslim girl who also happens to be very good at karate. Recently this young woman was disqualified from a tournament because she wears a veil and the rules state "that the umpire needs to be able to watch for damage to each contestant’s throat." She was also disqualified from solo performance, despite that lack of potential for neck damage. Martin writes, "Things are changing in the karate world. You couldn’t compete wearing any kind of veil until last year. When it became allowed, Iran’s women’s team immediately…
There are many fallacies that undergird alternative medicine, which evolved into "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), and for which the preferred term among its advocates is now "integrative medicine," meant to imply the "best of both worlds." If I had to pick one fallacy that rules above all among proponents of CAM/IM, it would have to be either the naturalistic fallacy (i.e., that if it's natural—whatever that means—it must be better) or the fallacy of antiquity (i.e., that if it's really old, it must be better). Of course, the two fallacies are not unrelated. In the minds of CAM…