Complementary medicines are useless and dangerous

Complementary medicine is anecdotally-based medicine, not supported by scientific fact.

From the Dayli Mail, I found this article:

A lot of complementary medicine is ineffective, and some positively dangerous. Meanwhile, alternative treatments that promise to cure cancer 'are downright irresponsible, if not criminal'.

These are the views not of an old-school doctor dismissive of alternative therapies, but of Professor Edzard Ernst, Britain's first professor of complementary medicine and, you would have assumed, its greatest champion.

There is a booming market for complementary medicine, and it's not only the public who are turning to alternative remedies. Last week it was revealed that 60 per cent of Scottish doctors prescribe their patients homeopathic or herbal remedies.

Read the rest here.

Quackery Exposed

Cancer is not caused by bacteria.

A little bit of common sense can help us see through the fraudulent claims of Hulda Clark.

Clairvoyant led Americans to Saddam

Article November 06 from News.com.au tels us it was a clairvoyant who led Americans to Saddam.......

DID a clairvoyant help US commandos ferret Saddam Hussein out of his hiding place in Iraq three years ago?

Israeli-born celebrity psychic Uri Geller, best known for his spoon-bending antics, says the power of the paranormal led US troops to the fugitive Iraqi ex-dictator.

"You remember when they found Saddam Hussein in Iraq? A soldier walked over to a rock, lifted it and then found a trap-door and found him in there," Geller said.

"Well, I know that that soldier walked over to that rock because he got information from a 'remote viewer' from the United States."

Geller, who says he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War, said his information came from a high-level source involved in US paranormal programs.

A US military spokesman in Iraq had no immediate comment.

At the time of his capture, US commanders said a source close to the fugitive had given him up under interrogation.

A Brazilian psychic tried last year to claim a $US25 million ($A32.53 million) bounty offered for Saddam's capture, saying he had described the hiding place in letters to the US Government.

Do you believe the incredible?

How does stress influence your health?

Barry Spencer wrote an interesting article The unbearable bunkness of stress.

Everybody says they have stress and everybody "knows" stress is bad for your health.

In the article it says:

Stress is a concept invented in the 1930s by Dr. Hans Selye. Dr. Selye died in 1983. Dr. Selye admitted that stress is an abstract concept, and he admitted that stress has never been adaquately defined. Dr. Selye's own definition of stress is the non-specific response of the body to any demand.

To most people, however, stress is not an abstract concept but is something you feel. The feeling that many people call stress boils down to anxiety and frustration. So the word stress refers to two different things: (1) an abstract concept ("The non-specific response of the body to any demand") and (2) anxiety and frustration.

The problem with the stress-theory is

First of all, it ignores everything we know about the causes of disease, such as dietary deficiencies, genetic abnormalities, and infectious agents. Second, it makes society — civilization itself — responsible for our personal ills, and it strongly implies that work — not anything in particular that happens at work but rather work in and of itself — causes disease. How then to explain illness in people who do not work? The stress of unemployment! Or maybe family stress: very unhealthy. No family? The stress of being alone! In short, according to the stress theory, stress is inescapable. We are all just laboratory rats trapped in the big electrified cage of life.

I have come to the conclusion that stress is an inescapable part of life.

But does that mean stress is bad for your health?

The 38th Skeptics' Circle is posted

It looks like some homeopathic remedy, but really it's called Skeptic Cola.

Try them over at Skepticrant and enjoy.

Skeptics' Circle is up at Autism Diva blog

The 37th Skeptics' Circle has been posted to Autism Diva blog and it looks great.

The road from foolishness too healthfraud

Penn and Teller are looking for "bullshit" and takes a look at chiropractic medicine, reflexology, magnet therapy and alternative medicine

Penn and Teller: Bullshit - Alternative Medicine (part 1)



Penn and Teller: Bullshit - Alternative Medicine (part 2)

Penn and Teller: Bullshit - Alternative Medicine (part 3)

The power of suggestion is wonderfull and expensive too...

Watch the video about Chiropractic neck manipulation

Dr. William Kinsinger's video presentation at Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City in April 2004 focuses on the real dangers of highest neck manipulation. Interviews with the parents, and survivors of this technique that has no therapeutic value tell the terrible tale of what can happen if your chiropactor performs this procedure

Deadly quacks: Neurologists have long protested the practice of 'highest neck manipulation,' which in some cases has resulted in lethal strokes

Dr. William Kinsinger is an American physician, and a member of a professional group monitoring government support for alternative medicine.

If it quacks like an alien ...

Interestingly an alien has now been found in the stomach of a duck.

The good thing is that we obviously have nothing to fear from an alien invasion.

Migraine suffers would be victims of health fraud

It seems that migraine (headache) sufferers would be likely victims of health fraud in that the cause is poorly understood, unpredictable and often triggered by unknown factors, and can be difficult to treat.

As with me, my doctor told me to visit a chiropractor to get relief. As I think massage and relaxation does wonders for headaches of all kinds, I would rather find a good PT or massage therapist.

I have discovered that several PT's have fallen for the latest new-age treatments: Cranio Sacral Therapy. An osteopath started CST and the method are used by many chiros.

CST is just another weird belief without any therapeutic value:

In 2002, two basic science professors at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine concluded:

Our own and previously published findings suggest that the proposed mechanism for cranial osteopathy is invalid and that interexaminer (and, therefore, diagnostic) reliability is approximately zero. Since no properly randomized, blinded, and placebo-controlled outcome studies have been published, we conclude that cranial osteopathy should be removed from curricula of colleges of osteopathic medicine and from osteopathic licensing examinations [10].

(Source: Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine Interexaminer Reliability And Cranial Osteopathy)

Migraine suffers have to be careful to find a clinic or an individual therapist who they can trust, a theraphist who does not fall for this so-called therapy.