Naturopathy: the choice of many thousands!

Naturopathy (aka "natural medicine") is Retarded

Exhibit B: Polarity



Dude looks like he knows his way around the herbs, lol.

I find the woman's confidence strangely charming. Baffling, yes. But also charming.

Naturopathy is Subjectivity Run Amok: Exhibit A

Mercola talks with someone pimping something called "Matrix Energentics."  Just from the title, you know "quantum" will get a shout out.


 
Why doesn't Mercola use The Force to imagine up himself a nice head of hair?  That shiny dome can't feel good in direct sunlight.

Naturopathy is a Joke

Everyone is groaning about Dr. Josephine Briggs, the Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) appearing on the speaker's list at the 25th Anniversary Convention of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) from August 11-15 in Portland, OR.

Dr. Kimball Atwood wrote her a letter.

Dr. David Gorski thinks it would be awesome if Dr. Briggs were to speak science to woo, but isn't getting his hopes up.

I wondered if Dr. Briggs might have once fallen in love with someone into naturopathy, maybe when she lived in Germany where naturopathy has a following. Love can make smart, sane people buy into the most unbelievable bullshit sometimes.

The pro-science bloggers I've chatted with seem generally disappointed in Dr. Briggs for her decision to party with the naturopaths next month.

I remember reading something on homeopathy about ten years ago, explaining that the volume of water needed to dilute one molecule of active ingredient would fill the entire solar system. I laughed out loud. I shared the article with my husband and he laughed out loud.

Before that moment I had only a vague awareness of homeopathy, which I imagined was a collection of olde timey herbal nostrums. I had no idea the basic tenets of "like cures like" was so profoundly idiotic.

Public awareness of the joke that is homeopathy has been growing in Europe and the US, thanks to skeptics.

Now, in my humble opinion, would be an excellent time to spot a similar light upon the lulzcow known as "naturopathy."

Naturopathy, being a confused set of varied practices, doesn't provide the same neat target as homeopathy. And naturopaths generally talk like sane people about things like diet, exercise, and stress management when faced with an audience of non-believers, so the crazy stuff isn't immediately apparent.

But the crazy is there. And more importantly, the lulz are there also.

Think of homeopathic "provings." The homeopath ingests some non-dilute thing, then waits... and waits... and waits... his attention turned inward upon bodily sensations, feeling states, and mental imagery. After comparing notes with other homeopaths, the substance is deemed a means to cause certain effects or symptoms, and so can be used in dilute form to stop those symptoms.

In short, a "proving" is subjectivity run amok with no awareness of its quirks and frequent misfires.

Same thing with naturopathy. Vis medicatrix naturae is an *inner* guide regarding "wellness" verses "dis-ease." The inner guide determines what is "natural" or "healthy." Facts, not so much.

Watch people on YouTube consulting the Force to correct their "polarity" or to decide which supplements to take. Lulz will ensue.

Once the public see naturopathy for what it is, maybe the US can get back to investing in reality-based medicine.

Would you like to know the 313 secrets of Tarvu?

I gotta say, these Tarvu videos are slick. High production values.

I wonder who's paying for the whole Tarvu thing. But I don't want the genius behind it outed if he or she might become one of Scientology's "fair game" targets.

Update: Oh, LOL, I shoulda Googled. Tarvu was created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz --the guys behind the British TV show, "Look Around You."

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

First Followers and Changing the World

Why won't they let me in their crappy club for jerks?

I read this line in a post at Pharyngula today. It's Woody Allen's, "I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member," except with more narcissism.

An apt summary of nearly every pro-alternative medicine argument I've ever heard.

Turtle is not angry

Its not Scientology. Its natural homeopathic medicine!

I was wondering if Scientology might re-brand itself as "natural medicine," and then I found an example of just that from some crazy person running for office in Nevada named Sharron Angle.

The same Post story claimed that as a legislator, Angle had supported “a prison rehabilitation program promoted by the Church of Scientology and involving massage and saunas.”

Seeking to “clear the record,” Angle told us “I am not even sure that the Church of Scientology fits into it at all. You have to make some quantum leaps here.”

She noted “the program itself is a multifaceted program, and it had two protocols: one in the area of withdrawals, and it was a natural withdrawal system. As s you know, that can have some severe physical side effects and the cramping that was involved there required that other people be taught how to relieve the cramping. So that is where it said that people were being massaged.”

“The second protocol was what they called the ‘disintoxification,’ which was actually sweating the drug out of one’s system so that there were no longer any cravings for the drug. This is a very intense potassium, calcium, vitamin, mineral regimen, with a hot rock sauna that sweats the toxins out. Those two protocols were developed by [the late Church of Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard, and they had to give him credit. But it is not Scientology, but rather natural homeopathic medicine.”

Old Spice Guy says, "Hello Anonymous"

LOL, major marketing firm Wieden and Kennedy tells Anons, "Ur doin it rite!"

Dr. Mercola hangin' with Scientologists

Some Scientology celebs and others recently held a three hour meeting at the Saddle Ranch restaurant on Sunset in West Hollywood.  Don't know what they talked about. Probably some movie project.

But here are the money shots:

From the Daily Mail.

NCCAM's Josephine Briggs joins Naturopath Convention in August

What happened to smart lady's brain?   Did she fall down some rabbit hole while working in Germany -- fatherland to all things Thule-ish?  (Was he a Hans oder Franz?)

If you clicked the link above and scrolled that list of speakers for the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, you can't have avoided the toothy grin of one Peter Bongiorno, ND.

 Uh oh.  I feel it coming...     RAEG!!!

RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEE111111!!!!!!!!

Listen up Bongiorno, you vanity-Googler you:

Your douchebaggery toward a medical student shall never be forgotten.  Ever.   It's just too precious a teaching moment in this, the science-under-siege operetta of our present era.

Men of science appeal to evidence when their claims are questioned.  But not so the deluded or dishonest.  They ring up their attorneys.  They hire investigators to dig for dirt.  They incite the thugs among their entourage to apply a little unfriendly pressure.

But for all the above, the science is unmoved.

SO LERN 2 EVIDENCE STOOPID DOUCHE IF YOU DOESNT WANT BEING CALLED A STOOPID DOUCHE!

Charlie St Cloud has Sailboats!

A movie with sailboats in it!  Woohoo!



IMMA GONNA SEE IT! 

The Amazing Meeting 8

TAM 8 is pretty cool. But the back-to-back talks don't leave much time for socializing.

I am pleased to put faces to a few names that I've come to know over at Science Based Medicine, in particular

Dr. Kimball Atwood

Dr. David Gorski

and Dr. Harriet Hall.

Tough as nails, every one of 'em.