conspiracy
“Crusade Against Naturopathy” (Kreuzzug gegen Naturheilkunde) is the title of a recent article (in German – so, I translated for you) published in ‘MULTIPOLAR‘. It is a defence of – no, not naturopathy – quackery. The authors first defend the indefencible Heilpraktiker. Subsequently, they address what they call ‘The Homeopathy Controversy‘. This is particularly ridiculous because homeopathy is not a form of naturopathy. Yes, it uses some natural materials, but it also employs any synthetic substance that you can think of.
The section on homeopathy contains many more amusing surprises; therefore, I have translated it for you [and added a few numers in square brackets that refer to my brief comments below]:
According to a representative survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research in 2023, 35 per cent of homeopathy users are fully convinced of its effectiveness, while 55 per cent rate it as partially effective. Only nine per cent of respondents described homeopathic medicines as completely ineffective. [1]
Nevertheless, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced at the beginning of 2024 that he wanted to abolish homeopathy as a health insurance benefit. Stefan Schmidt-Troschke, paediatrician and managing director of the ‘Gesundheit Aktiv Association’, then launched a petition for the preservation of homeopathic medicines as statutory benefits in statutory health insurance. The petition was signed by more than 200,000 people. In March 2024, the cancellation of homeopathy and anthroposophic medicines as additional statutory benefits was revoked. [2]
Shortly afterwards, in May 2024, the ‘German Medical Assembly’ passed a motion against homeopathy to bring about a total ban for doctors. Dr Marc Hanefeld, official supporter of the ‘Informationsnetzwerk Homöopathie’, was behind the motion. Doctors should be banned from practising homeopathy in future, as well as billing via statutory and private health insurance. [3]
The case of the Charité University Hospital in Berlin shows just how much influence opponents of homeopathy have: for years, the hospital’s website stated ‘that homeopathic medicine can cure or improve even the most serious conditions’. After fierce protests – including from the health journalism portal MedWatch – the statement was removed. [4]
My comments:
- Effectiveness is not something to be quantified by popular votes. Responsible healthcare professionals employ rigorous clinical trials for that purpose.
- Lauterbach caved in because of the pressure from the Green Party and insists that his plans are merely postponed.
- The ‘German Medical Assembly’ decided that the use of homoeopathy in diagnostics and therapy does not constitute rational medicine. German doctors continue to be free to practice homeopathy, if they so wish.
- The notion that ‘homeopathic medicine can cure or improve even the most serious conditions’ is so obviously and dangerously wrong that it had to be corrected. This has little to do with the influence of opponents but is due to the influence of the evidence.
I feel that, if proponents of homeopathy want to save their beloved quackery from the face of the earth, they could at least get their facts right and think of some agruments that are a little less ridiculous.
It has been reported that Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI. Patel seems to be a scary man. During 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon‘s “War Room” podcast, Patel agreed that Trump is “dead serious” about his intent to seek revenge against his political enemies should he be elected in 2024. Patel stated:
“We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media … we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections … We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators … Because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
Meanwhile, Patel has been flogging a range of very odd products aimed at the MAGA crowd, making hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trump-aligned businesses. In particular, Patel promoted pills that claim to reverse the effects of the Covid-19 vaccine. Marketed under the trademark “Nocovidium,” the pills from a company called ‘Warrior Essentials’ contain a range of ‘natural ingredients none of which has been shown to do anything significant in relation to Covid-19 or vaccines:
“Spike the Vax, order this homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax,” Patel said in a Truth Social post promoting the SCAM remedy. Another advert stated: “You were immune to the propaganda, but are you immune to the shedders.”
The website explains:
“The ingredients are listed above, but they break down into a few distinct categories. Polyamines are the driving force that helps to push the body into autophagy. These are found in many foods and are also in all living organisms. Our formula is designed to give a boost of externally supplied polyamines, while also working to turn your body into a polyamine producing gigafactory. This is done by providing the body the precursors, activators, and synthesizers to ramp up production. The third goal is to inhibit pathogens, including the spike protein, from interfering with the process. It’s a 1-2-3 patent-pending punch. Every ingredient was specifically chosen and balanced for its ability to promote autophagy, polyamine production, the inhibition of factors that can stop the process, or a combination of all three.”
The website even explains how the supplement works: “With regards to the spike protein, the body identifies this as a foreign object, and the autophagy process is designed to help protect your body by completely eliminating items like the spike. Many indicators show that the spike’s ability to block this process may be why the spikes are lasting far longer in the body than anybody ever expected. Our formula was developed to counter these measures allowing the process to complete and the objects, including the spike, identified by the body for removal, to be eliminated.”
Is there any evidence?
One should not ask such probing questions!
Why not?
The answer is as simple as it is scary: “We’re going to come after you!”
Being a dedicated crook and a liar himself, Donald Trump has long had an inclination to surround himself with crooks and liars. As discussed repeatedly, this preferance naturally extends into the realm of healthcare, Some time ago, he sought the advice of Andrew Wakefield, the man who published the fraudulent research that started the myth about a causal link between MMR-vaccinations and autism.
Early November this year, Trump stated that, if he wins the election, he’ll “make a decision” about whether to outlaw some vaccines based on the recommendation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a notorious vaccine critic without any medical training. The president doesn’t have authority to ban vaccines but he can influence public health with appointments to federal agencies that can change recommendations or potentially revoke approvals.
Now that he did win the election, Trump suggested that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to run Health and Human Services, will investigate supposed links between autism and childhood vaccines, a discredited connection that has eroded trust in the lifesaving inoculations.
“I think somebody has to find out,” Trump said in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness.
Trump, too stupid to know the difference between correlation and causation, replied: “If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism. Now you have it.” “Something is going on,” Trump added. “I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.” It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water.
Kennedy, the onetime independent presidential candidate who backed Trump after leaving the race, generated a large following through his widespread skepticism of the American health care and food system. A major component of that has been his false claims linking autism to childhood vaccinations. Kennedy is the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine activist group, Children’s Health Defense. The agency Trump has tasked him with running supports and funds research into autism, as well as possible new vaccines.
The debunked link between autism and childhood vaccines, particularly the inoculation against mumps, measles and rubella, was first claimed in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield who was later banned from practicing medicine in the UK. His research was found to be fraudulent and was subsequently retracted. Hundreds of studies have found childhood vaccines to be safe.
Autism diagnoses have risen from about 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 36 today. This rise has been shown to be due to increased screening and changing definitions of the condition. Strong genetic links exist to autism, and many risk factors occurring before birth or during delivery have been identified.
If Trump does, in fact, ‘outlaw’ certain vaccinations, he would endanger the health of the US as well as the rest of the world. Will he really be that stupid?
The alleged harm of Covid-vaccinations is a topic that still leads to misunderstandings, perhaps nowhere more than in the realm of so-called alternative medicine. Therefore, this paper seems relevant.
The first dose of COVID-19 vaccines led to an overall reduction in cardiovascular events, and in rare cases, cardiovascular complications. There is less information about the effect of second and booster doses on cardiovascular diseases. Using longitudinal health records from 45.7 million adults in England between December 2020 and January 2022, this study compared the incidence of thrombotic and cardiovascular complications up to 26 weeks after first, second and booster doses of brands and combinations of COVID-19 vaccines used during the UK vaccination program with the incidence before or without the corresponding vaccination.
The incidence of common arterial thrombotic events (mainly acute myocardial infarction and ischaemic stroke) was generally lower after each vaccine dose, brand and combination. Similarly, the incidence of common venous thrombotic events, (mainly pulmonary embolism and lower limb deep venous thrombosis) was lower after vaccination. There was a higher incidence of previously reported rare harms after vaccination: vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia after first ChAdOx1 vaccination, and myocarditis and pericarditis after first, second and transiently after booster mRNA vaccination (BNT-162b2 and mRNA-1273).
The authors concluded that these findings support the wide uptake of future COVID-19 vaccination programs.
The authors stress that their study has several limitations.
- First, residual confounding, including that linked to delayed vaccination in high-risk individuals, may persist despite extensive adjustments for available covariates. We were able to identify some, but not all people who were clinically vulnerable (and hence might have been eligible for earlier vaccination): for example, younger adults in long-stay settings could not be reliably identified.
- Second, we did not adjust for potential confounding by time-varying post-baseline factors that may have influenced receipt of vaccination and the outcomes of interest: for example, development of respiratory symptoms or being admitted into hospital leading to postponement of vaccination. Such confounding may explain estimated lower hazard ratios soon after vaccination.
- Third, ascertainment of some outcomes may have been influenced by public announcements from regulatory agencies, such as the European Medicines Agency Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee announcement or the CDC announcement on myocarditis. This was addressed in sensitivity analyses for myocarditis and pericarditis, censoring follow-up at the time of public announcements of these adverse effects of vaccination, although the shorter follow-up times and corresponding smaller numbers of events in the restricted analyses meant that aHRs were estimated with reduced precision.
- Fourth, outcomes may be underreported, particularly from people in nursing homes or among those with severe health conditions, due to diagnostic challenges; also, routine electronic health records, not intended for research, may under-ascertain less severe, non-hospitalised events. Both forms of potential underreporting, however, are expected to be uncommon for hospitalised thrombotic events.
- Fifth, we restricted follow-up to 26 weeks after vaccination to prevent an influence of subsequent vaccinations on estimated associations and limit the impact of delayed vaccination on our findings. Horne et al. demonstrated selection bias in estimated HRs for non-COVID-19 death arising from deferred next-dose vaccination in people with a recent confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis or in poor health.
- Sixth, we did not address long-term safety of vaccination, or the impact of subsequent booster doses.
Nonetheless, this study offers reassurance regarding the cardiovascular safety of COVID-19 vaccines, with lower incidence of common cardiovascular events outweighing the higher incidence of their known rare cardiovascular complications. No novel cardiovascular complications or new associations with subsequent doses were found. These findings support the wide uptake of future COVID-19 vaccination programs. The authors express their hope that this evidence addresses public concerns, supporting continued trust and participation in vaccination programs and adherence to public health guidelines.
Will the evidence convince the notorious anti-vaxers that regularly comment on my blog?
I very much doubt it – not because of the limitations of the study but because of the fact that anti-vaxers seem to be immune to any evidence that is out of line with their beliefs and conspiracy theories.
Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician known for his US television show, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Some 20 years ago, I had the pleasure to briefly meet Oz at a conference. I can honestly say that I rarely met anyone who was – in my view – oozing that much quackery as he was. Oz’s nomination has sparked (not just my but) widespread disbelief, mainly due to Oz’s long history of irresponsibly promoting even the worst forms of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) for his own fame and fortune.
After being nominated, Oz posted a comment on X: “I am honored to be nominated by @realDonaldTrump to lead CMS. I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary @RobertKennedyJr“
Personally, I am beginning to find Trump’s recent appointments too tiresome and ridiculous for further detailed comments. They seem to me like a deliberate provocation and an indication of the systematic destruction that Trump has in mind for his second term in office.
Instead of a comment, let me therefore show you some of the comments on the appointment that have appeared on X.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr Very excited that my friend @DrOz has agreed to run CMS. Thank you @realDonaldTrump for this outstanding nomination. Welcome Dr. Oz to The Avengers. Let’s Make America Healthy Again!
- Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren Running Medicare and Medicaid for over 100 million Americans isn’t like hosting a daytime talk show. Dr. Oz is another rich guy who doesn’t care if your health care costs go up or an insurance company denies you coverage. These decisions have life and death consequences.
- Billboard Chris @BillboardChris Dr. Oz has been appointed to head Medicare and Medicaid. He needs to come out and publicly disavow this abhorrent garbage he pushed on his show about ‘transgender children.
- Michael Steele @MichaelSteele Robert F. Kennedy at HHS; now Dr. Mehmet Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid. And Republicans want to cut the social safety net to pay for renewing Trump’s tax cuts. Reality TV personalities for a Reality TV administration. Unfortunately, we live in a world where diseases are real, people are poor and reality hits many of us hard every day
- The Resistor Sister @the_resistor More like The Apprentice Administration NONE of them are qualified.
- seanmack @seanmack1025 When does Dr Doolittle get a job. I bet doctor Phil feels left out.
- Peter Morley @morethanmySLE Donald Trump’s CMS pick Dr. Mehmet Oz suggested in 2020 Lupus patients were IMMUNE to COVID if we took Hydroxychloroquine. FACT: I have Lupus & have been on this since medication since 2014 & I had Covid 3x. This man should NOT be overseeing Medicare & Medicaid!
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The bon mot that describes the situation best: If you put a clown in a palace, the clown does not become a king, but the palace turns into a circus.
While medical experts across the world have expressed dismay at Trump’s appointment of Robert Kennedy, the ‘International chiropractors Association’ has just published this remarkable note:
Donald J. Trump made it official that he was nominating Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Secretary-designee Kennedy has spent his entire career championing the health of the nation through education, advocacy, research and when needed litigation.
Among his many accomplishments are protecting the environment with Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council His work at Riverkeeper succeeded in setting long-term environmental legal standards. Kennedy won legal battles against large corporate polluters. He became an adjunct professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law in 1986 and founded the Pace’s Environmental Litigation Clinic which he co-directed for a decade.
It would be in the Pace Law Review that the landmark paper, “Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury” (https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1681&context=pelr) would be published in 2011.
Kennedy became laser focused on the autism epidemic while giving lectures on the dangers of mercury in fish, he was repeatedly approached by the mothers of children born healthy who regressed into autism after suffering adverse reactions from childhood vaccines, including their concern about the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, being used in vaccines including the Hepatitis B vaccine given at birth. Kennedy’s approach to the issue was the same as it always, looking at the science. He assembled a team who gathered all the science and reviewed the issues with him. This resulted in the publication of the book, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak
The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury—a Known Neurotoxin—from Vaccines.
After establishing and leading the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, last year Kennedy stepped back from the organization to throw his hat in the ring to be President. Becoming the embodiment of his uncle John F. Kennedy’s famous quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!”, Kennedy reached out to President Trump to form an alliance to focus on the crisis of chronic disease in the United States, and suspended his campaign to focus on the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) Initiative.
ICA President, Dr. Selina Sigafoose Jackson, who is currently in Brazil promoting the protection of chiropractic as a separate and distinct profession stated, “Many ICA members have been supporters of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s philanthropic activities and are all in on the MAHA Initiative. The Mission, Vision, and Values of the ICA align with the stated goals of the MAHA Initiative. We stand ready to provide policy proposals and experts to serve as advisors to the incoming Administration and to Secretary Kennedy upon his swearing in.”
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Perhaps I am permitted to contrast this with some health-related truths about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (my apologies, if the list is incomplete – please add to it by posting further important issues):
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has, since about 20 years, been a leading figure of the anti-vaccine movement.
- During the epidemic, he pushed the conspiracy theory that “the quarantine” was used as cover to install 5G cell phone networks.
- He claimed that “one out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease.”
- He wrote that, “while people were dying at the rate of 10,000 patients a week, Dr. Fauci declared that hydroxychloroquine should only be used as part of a clinical trial. For the first time in American history, a government official was overruling the medical judgment of thousands of treating physicians, and ordering doctors to stop practicing medicine as they saw fit.”
- He pushed the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 had been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.”
- He claimed in a 2023 podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”.
- In a 2021 podcast, he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.
- He founded Children’s Health Defense’ that spreads fear and mistrust in science. One chiropractic group in California had donated $500,000 to this organisation.
- In 2019, he visited Samoa where he became partly responsible for an outbreak of measles, which made 5,700 people sick and killed 83 of them.
- He called mercury-containing vaccines aimed at children a holocaust. In 2015, he compared the horrors committed against Jews to the effects of vaccines on children. “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
- He repeatedly alleged that exposure to chemicals — “endocrine disruptors” — is causing gender dysphoria in children and contributing to a rise in LGBTQ-youth. According to him, endocrine disruptors are “chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones and are commonly found in pesticides and plastic.”
- He stated “Telling people to “trust the experts” is either naive or manipulative—or both.”
- He plans to stop water fluoridation.
- He slammed the FDA’s “suppression” of raw milk.
- He said that a worm ate part of his brain which led to long-lasting “brain fog.”
- He has a 14-year-long history of abusing heroin from the age of 15. The police once arrested him for possession; he then faced up to two years in jail for the felony but was sentenced to two years probation after pleading guilty.
- He stated: “WiFi radiation … does all kinds of bad things, including causing cancer…cell phone tumors behind the ear.”
- He claimed that rates of autism have increased even though “there has been no change in diagnosis and no change in screening either.” Yet, both have changed significantly.
- He wrote: (Fauci’s) “obsequious subservience to the Big Ag, Big Food, and pharmaceutical companies has left our children drowning in a toxic soup of pesticide residues, corn syrup, and processed foods, while also serving as pincushions for 69 mandated vaccine doses by age 18—none of them properly safety tested.”
- He stated that cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old – a statement that is evidently untrue.
- He authored a viral post on X: “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
- He has also aligned himself with special interests groups such as anti-vaccine chiropractors.
- He stated categorically: “You cannot trust medical advice from medical professionals.”
- He said he’s going to put a pause on infectious diseases research for 8 years.
- He promoted the unfounded theory that the CIA killed his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.
- He linked school shootings to the increased prescription of antidepressants.
- An evaluation of verified Twitter accounts from 2021, found Kennedy’s personal Twitter account to be the top “superspreader” of vaccine misinformation on Twitter, responsible for 13% of all reshares of misinformation, more than three times the second most-retweeted account.
PS
Let me finish with a true statement: The World Health Organization has estimated that global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years.
The BMJ just published an article entitled “Disinformation enabled Donald Trump’s second term and is a crisis for democracies everywhere“. Please allow me to show you a few excerpts from this paper:
Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election, but asserting that he did became a prerequisite for Republicans standing for nomination to Congress or the Senate to win their primaries. An entire party became a vehicle for disinformation. Trump did win the 2024 presidential election, and key to that victory was building on the success of that lie. If you control enough of the information ecosystem, truth no longer matters…
… Readers of The BMJ will recall the huge amounts of misinformation (wrong or misleading content that is unknowingly shared) and disinformation (false content that is deliberately spread) during the covid-19 pandemic, some generated or amplified by politicians. This reduced vaccine uptake, promoted ineffective treatments, and encouraged attacks on health workers. In the past, factually incorrect statements might have had only local consequences, but a lie can now circle the world in seconds. Yet the speed in which disinformation can spread is only part of the problem…
… Part of Musk’s reason for buying Twitter was to influence the social discourse. And influence he did—by using his enormous platform (203 million followers) to endorse Trump, spread disinformation about voter fraud and deep fakes of Kamala Harris, and amplify conspiracy theories about everything from vaccines to race replacement theory to misogyny. Musk’s platform is effective: his endorsement of Trump coincided with Republican leaning posts being algorithmically favoured over Democrat leaning posts. A more mundane example: after Musk published three non-evidence based posts on X that favoured one medication over another, sales of the former rose by 18% while the other fell by 11%. …
The warning signs are clear for democracies around the world. Firstly, governments must regulate social media companies more rigorously. Brazil’s victorious dispute with X shows what is possible, and a major battle between the European Commission and Musk is under way. Beyond that, we must grapple with how to hold the world’s richest people to account when they directly interfere with national and international politics.
Secondly, public health agencies must create robust surveillance systems for infodemics just as they have for epidemics. They must monitor the emergence of disinformation and counter it or, ideally, anticipate and counter (pre-bunk) it among vulnerable audiences (and build population resilience). Independent organisations that are countering disinformation are already being deliberately targeted (https://counterhate.com/). And we must accelerate research on “inoculating” people against the algorithms and content that attempt to radicalise them.
Finally, politicians and the public health community must not be afraid of calling out disinformation, and we must all support and applaud them in doing so. And moving beyond responding to false rhetoric, we must also get on the front foot and create compelling counter narratives of a better politics that can support a kinder, more inclusive, and socially just world.
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I’d like to thank the authors (Martin McKee, professor of European public health, Christina Pagel, professor of operational research, and Kent Buse, co-founder of ‘Global Health) for their courage to speak out and stand up for the truth. I am in full agreement with them and encourage all my readers to study their excellent paper in full.
During the past years, I have had multiple COVID vaccinations (5, if I remember correctly). Not once did I experience an adverse reation, and evidently, I did not die either!
This, however, if you remember, was vociferously predicted by many anti-vaxers many of them staunch advocates of so-called alternative medicine and several keen contributors to the comments section of my blog. Some anti-vaxers claimed that all vaccinated people would die within months; others said that not all but many or most of us would die. Therefore, they insisted, excess mortality would sky-rocket.
None of this happened!
Not only did excess mortality of the vaccinated population not increase, in the UK and US, it even fell slightly – as the graph below clearly shows.
So, the anti-vaxers were wrong!
Do they admit it?
No!
Do they apologise for scaring many and deterring thousands from getting vaccinated?
No!
Is it time they did?
Yes!
Nearly every time that I talk to proponents of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) I hear a lot about diet. Diet is a central theme to almost all of them, it seems. In such conversations, several issues often emerge and frequently take the form of accusations, e.g.:
- Conventional medicine neglects the importance of diet for our health.
- Medical students learn next to nothing about the subject.
- In conventional medicine, hardly any research is focussed on diet.
- By contrast, practitioners of SCAM know a lot about diet.
- Many are experts in the subject.
- Patients are well-advised to consult SCAM practitioners if they want to learn how to eat healthily.
- SCAM practitioners have developed a wide range of diets that keep their patients fit and healthy.
I usually try to object to some of these points. The truth is that medical students do learn about diet, that doctors are aware of its importance, and that research into diets is highly active.
Particularly about the last point, I can get rather irritated. Sadly, this impresses the SCAM fans very little. They have their opinion and rarely budge.
After one such conversation, I decided to go on Medline and produce some figures. Here they are:
- As of 6 October, there are 1 453 clinical trials listed on Medline as published in 2024.*
- Between 1957 and today, around 57 000 such trials have been published.
- Their number shows an almost exponential growth during this period.
- The diets tested range widely and include, for instance, the Mediteranean diet, the ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, vegetarian diet, energy restricted diet, gluten-free diet.
- There are as good as no trials on any of the SCAM diets.
- The researchers doing the diet trials are almost exclusively conventional medics or nutritionist.
- I did not find any SCAM practitioners in the list of authors.
So, the next time a SCAM proponent bullshits you about diet, you can tell him or her to get lost!
*Not all are, in fact, clinical trials
It has been reported that the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has revoked the certifications for two prominent US physicians. They are both (in)famous for leading an organization that promotes ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.
- Pierre Kory, MD, is no longer certified in critical care medicine, pulmonary disease, and internal medicine, according to the ABIM website.
- Paul Ellis Marik, MD, is no longer certified in critical care medicine or internal medicine.
Marik is the chief scientific officer and Kory is president emeritus of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, a group they founded in March 2020. The FLCCC gained notoriety during the height of the pandemic for advocating ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. It now espouses regimens of supplements to treat “vaccine injury” and also offers treatments for Lyme disease.
Kory and Marik stated, “we believe this decision represents a dangerous shift away from the foundation principles of medical discourse and scientific debate that have historically been the bedrock of medical education associations.” The FLCCC said in the statement that it, along with Kory and Marik, are “evaluating options to challenge these decisions.” Kory and Marik said they were notified in May 2022 that they were facing a potential ABIM disciplinary action. An ABIM committee recommended the revocation in July 2023, saying the two men were spreading “false or inaccurate medical information,” according to FLCCC. Kory and Marik lost an appeal. In a 2023 statement, Kory and Marik called the ABIM action an “attack on freedom of speech.”
To this, Wikipedia adds that, Marik is the inventor of the “Marik protocol”, also known as the “HAT” protocol, which proposes intravenous administration of hydrocortisone, ascorbic acid, and thiamine as a treatment for preventing sepsis for people in intensive care. Marik’s own initial research, published with four other authors in Chest in 2017, showed a dramatic evidence of benefit. The single-center, observational study compared outcomes of 47 consecutive sepsis patients who were treated with HAT during a 7-month period to 47 consecutive control patients during the preceding 7-month period. The study reported 19 deaths in the control group and 4 deaths in the treatment group. Marik’s findings received attention on social media and National Public Radio, but drew criticism from the wider medical community for being science by press conference. ER doctor Jeremy Faust was one of a number of skeptics of the results, noting the low reliability of the study design and potential for bias. The controversy prompted other groups to conduct studies of the HAT protocol. A systematic review of six randomized and five non-randomized controlled trials in 2021 eventually concluded that the claimed benefits of the protocol could not be confirmed.
In November 2022, Pierre Kory and the FLCCC began marketing a cocktail of supplements and drugs (e.g. ivermectin and nitazoxanide) for other viruses, influenza and Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Like the FLCCC-advocated COVID treatments, the recommendations lacked credible supporting scientific evidence. The cocktail could cost over $500.
Wikipedia also mentions that, in March 2024, Kory and Marik published an op-ed in The Hill claiming that long COVID was caused by COVID-19 vaccination instead of COVID-19 infection. The op-ed was republished by the German disinformation outlet Disclose.tv. The fact-checking website Health Feedback found that the op-ed relied on anecdotes that did not provide evidence to support the claim.
