A ruse by any other name smells just as fishy, and it seems RSI, OOS and OOI are good examples, if a UK surgeon is to be believed. According to Murray Matthewson, the condition, whatever you choose to call it, is not what it’s cracked up to be.
Continue readingTouch Therapy Critic Hits Nerve
EMILY ROSA of Loveland, Colorado, designed and carried out an experiment two years ago that challenges a leading treatment in alternative medicine. Her study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has thrown the field into tumult.
Continue readingSkepsis
Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but many experts in non-proven schemes fall on their own swords. For example, Hoxsey died of cancer, and recently a Lower Hutt clairvoyant went bankrupt (due to unforeseen circumstances). Dr Rajko Medenica, the Yugoslavian specialist whose unorthodox treatments created devoted patients and determined enemies, died at the early age of 58 (Bay Of Plenty Times December 3 1997). He practised in South Carolina and drew patients from around the world, including Muhammad Ali, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran and the late Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. He served 17 months in a Swiss prison two years ago for fraud, many saying that his unusual methods were not based on science, but that he preyed on those that had lost hope. He obviously didn’t do the three guys mentioned much good either.
Continue readingMay the Force be With You and Your Dead Rat
May the Force be With You and Your Dead Rat
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Another “I’ve seen the light” American quack whizzed through New Zealand recently, spreading his own magical brew of antioxidants, lacto-vegetarian diets, bioFlavonoid herbs, and, wait for it, Maharishi Ayurveda compounds. Hari Sharma, Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University, says that physicians are becoming pathogens, they are creating diseases. Like most saviours of the human race before him, he mixes scientific half truths and anecdotal stories to rubbish hundreds of years of painstakingly researched evidence-based medicine (GP Weekly, October 1997)
Continue readingCounselling Caution on a Cure-all
Some problems cannot be resolved by just “getting it all out of your system”, reports Nigel Hawkes.
Continue readingDirty Auras Done Dirt Cheap
Annette Taylor spends an afternoon checking out the alternatives.
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In the first of a new series, Tauranga GP Neil McKenzie comments on recent examples of pseudoscience relating to medicine.
Continue readingBeer and Skittles
John Riddell spends a lot of time in the pub. Ask his wife. Often, over a pint or two, some bloke or blokess spouts forth some new age dogma which naturally requires correction.. Now a seasoned debater, he this month begins a regular series sharing his collection of responses honed to the mental capabilities of your average bar-room intellectual.
Continue readingScience and Ink
Patterning
THE line which sharply demarks mainstream medicine from alternative medicine is the line of science. It is possible to cross that line, however. Any alternative treatment which is tested in a rigorous scientific manner and found to be safe and effective will be incorporated into mainstream medicine; it will have crossed the line.
Continue readingSometimes They’re Right
A crown-of-thorns starfish can cause severe pain if the spines penetrate your skin. Local remedies include placing the offending animal over the injury, presumably in the belief that the sucker feet will pull detached spines from the wound.
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