education
I am always delighted when I find authors who think in a similarly rational way as I. When it comes to the subject if INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE, this sadly is a rare occasion. I know that most medics would be critical of it, but only few are sufficiently insensed to publish a paper on their criticism. Here is the abstract of a recent article that is a rare exception:
The term integrative medicine claims to describe a third category in clinical practice, somewhere between conventional evidence-based medicine and alternative therapies. This article argues that this category is conceptually confused and often misleading. If an intervention is supported by good evidence, is safe in practice, clinically useful and cost-effective, it should simply become part of regular medicine. If an intervention does not have such evidence, it does not become stronger by being called integrative. The article examines how the language of integrative medicine works. It shows how one attractive label can bring together two very different things: evidence-based supportive care on the one hand, and weakly supported or unproven interventions on the other. This creates the impression that both have the same clinical status, even when they do not. The article also discusses the possible consequences for patients, including confusion about evidence, false confidence in unproven treatments, and reduced adherence to effective care. Drawing on more than a decade of experience evaluating complementary medical claims through foundation IOCOB (a foundation to study complementary medicine) , it argues for a simpler and more honest approach. Proven interventions should be called medicine. Unproven interventions should be called unproven. Disproven interventions should be called disproven. There are not two equal medicines waiting to be synthesised. There is only medicine that has earned its place, and medicine that has not.tive medic ine m
True words well expressed!
We have discussed interated medicine on this blog more often than I care to mention. The response of proponents usually is that INTEGRATED MEDICINE is so much more than just using alternative treatments. If we look at this claim, we quickly realise that the “so much more” are things stolen from conventional medicine (which proponents denounce by their claim of neglecting these things). If they feel that important bits of healthcare are being neglected, the proper reaction would be to reform medicine and rectify the situation. Instead the proponents put their money on INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE which undeniably is at least partly an attempt to smuggle unproven treatments into healthcare.
I wrote “at least partly” which is, in fact, generous to the extreme! If we look up what the clinics of INTEGRATED MEDICNE actually offer, we quickly realise that it is much more that “partly” – it is their main and lucrative business.
Sorry, but to me this is deeply dishonest!
I came across an interesting article about chiropractic. Let me try to summarise it for you:
Texas’s system for disciplining chiropractors has become much less transparent, making it harder for patients to know whether a provider has faced regulatory action or not. Disciplinary cases reported by the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners and the National Practitioner Data Bank have dropped sharply even as the number of licensed chiropractors has risen, which prompted patient advocates to ask whether the public is being misled.
A rule change adopted in 2019 that narrowed what the chiropractic board can publicly disclose seems at the heart of this. According to board executive director Boyd Bush, the result is that roughly 70 cases, mostly minor administrative matters such as late license renewals, are no longer appearing in the public-facing record. Bush argues the change was intended to prevent chiropractors from suffering disproportionate consequences, such as losing patients or paying higher insurance premiums, for technical violations that do not directly affect patient care.
That explanation contrasts with the view of patient advocate Ware Wendell of Texas Watch, who says the public needs clearer, more usable information when choosing care. His concern is that a chiropractor can have regulatory action behind the scenes while still appearing to have “no board action taken” in public-facing materials, leaving patients unaware of relevant history.
Moreover, not all chiropractor-related enforcement is handled by the chiropractic board. In some cases, the Texas Medical Board has issued cease-and-desist orders against chiropractors accused of practicing medicine without a license, including claims involving neurology expertise, stem cell therapy, diabetes treatment, thyroid disorders, and chronic degenerative diseases. That overlap between boards adds confusion and can make it even harder for the public to interpret what level of discipline or risk a practitioner has faced.
A broader policy debate sits behind the story. Lawmakers tried to reduce inter-board oversight last session through Senate Bill 268, but Governor Greg Abbott vetoed it, citing public health and safety concerns. The Texas Chiropractic Association, meanwhile, says complaints should be handled by the boards with direct oversight, while a 2017 Sunset Advisory Commission review had already criticized the chiropractic board for slow complaint resolution and weak enforcement.
The article closes by noting that the board says it has improved the backlog, but the transparency issue is likely to return in the next legislative session. Evidently, a tension exists between protecting chiropractors from over-penalization for minor offenses and ensuring patients can see meaningful disciplinary history before seeking treatment.
On this blog, we have discussed repeatedly that dishonesty and transgressions are by no means rare events in the realm of chiropractic. I think it is time that this profession gets its act together, puts more emphasis on ethics during education/training, and becomes transparent, even if it might not enhance their public image in the short-term.
This AI-verdict made me wonder: Who is for and who against the critical evaluation of so-called alternative medicine? And I asked a follow-up question:
Can you try to quantify this and give me % figures who is against a critical evaluation of alternative medicine, who is for it, and who is neutral. Can you do this for 1. the general population, 2. proponents of alternative medicine and 3. skeptics?
Here is the reply I got from Gemini:
To quantify these dynamics accurately, we have to look at large-scale sociological data on public attitudes toward science, peer-reviewed medical data (such as surveys by Pew Research, YouGov, and the European Commission), and the behavioral patterns of online discourse.
When it comes to a “critical evaluation” (meaning scientific testing to prove if a therapy works beyond a placebo), the groups break down along very distinct ideological lines. Here is how the percentages estimate across your three requested demographics:
Breakdown of Attitudes Toward Critical Evaluation
1. The General Population
The broader public is largely pragmatic, but a major chunk is passively open to alternative therapies without strictly demanding clinical trial proof.
- Against Critical Evaluation (~15% – 20%): These individuals hold a strong distrust of mainstream pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions. They believe alternative medicine operates on a different “energy” or “holistic paradigm” that standard science is fundamentally incapable of or biased against measuring.
- For Critical Evaluation (~35% – 45%): This group highly values evidence-based medicine, expects consumer safety protection, and agrees that if a therapy claims to cure an illness, it should prove it under a microscope or in a randomized controlled trial.
- Neutral / Passive Consumers (~40% – 50%): This is the massive middle. They don’t track clinical trials, but they will try acupuncture for back pain or take turmeric if a friend recommends it. They view alternative medicine through a lens of “well, it can’t hurt to try,” evaluating it based on personal anecdotes rather than scientific data.
2. Proponents of Alternative Medicine
This group includes dedicated practitioners, wellness influencers, and avid consumers of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
- Against Critical Evaluation (~70% – 80%): The vast majority actively resist standard scientific evaluation, often viewing figures like Edzard Ernst as hostile prosecutors rather than objective evaluators. They argue that randomized controlled trials are “too reductionist” to capture holistic healing or claim that clinical science is rigged by corporate interests.
- For Critical Evaluation (~5% – 10%): A small minority of CAM practitioners (often in fields like medical acupuncture or osteopathy) welcome rigorous trials, hoping to find a mechanism of action that will grant them mainstream medical legitimacy and insurance coverage.
- Neutral (~10% – 15%): These are individuals who focus strictly on the individual client experience. They don’t care about data or institutional pushback either way; their attitude is simply “if my client says they feel better, that is the only science I need.”
3. Skeptics & Pro-Science Advocates
This demographic comprises secular organizations, evidence-based medical professionals, and science communicators who actively follow work like Ernst’s.
- Against Critical Evaluation (<1%): Virtually non-existent in this group, as evaluation is their core tenet. The only micro-fraction here might be extreme fringe elements who feel certain alternative therapies are so fundamentally absurd (like breatharianism) that evaluating them is a waste of scientific funding.
- For Critical Evaluation (~90% – 95%): The overwhelming majority. They strongly defend the stance that there is no such thing as “alternative” medicine—there is only medicine that has been proven to work and medicine that hasn’t. They view critical evaluation as an ethical necessity for patient safety.
- Neutral (~5%): A tiny sliver who may agree with the premise of science but feel indifferent about fighting the cultural battle against wellness trends, preferring to let people believe what they want as long as it isn’t directly killing them.
The Reality of the “Viral Sharing Power”
The Disparity: While alternative health advocates outnumber skeptics in raw volume and content creation—churning out high-yield, emotionally comforting narratives—the pro-science corrections achieve highly concentrated “viral bursts.”
When a prominent alternative health claim is cleanly and definitively debunked by data, it provides a highly shareable, “gotcha” piece of content for the large, silent neutral majority and the highly active skeptic network. A data-driven correction acts as a high-utility intellectual tool, allowing regular people to cut through multi-million dollar wellness marketing, which is why a single well-structured critique can match or outpace the reach of thousands of individual wellness posts.
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I know, there are good reasons for being cautious about such AI analyses. Yet, unless someone can point me to more reliable data, I will go with this one – not least because it coincides with my own experience and also because I quite like its findings.
Yesterday, I received a comment that ended stating: “… this site, and quite possibly Edzard, has well and truly lost the plot.” The author has made many comments before that led me to ignore him; so, I did not think twice about what he had to express. Yet, later it started me wondering what people feel about my blog and my work in general. I have to admit that I know very little about these questions. What is more, I have no idea how to find out.
What does one do in such a situation?
Yes, you guessed it, one asks AI. Specifically, I asked AI (Gemini) what people state about me and my work on social media.
Here is the response:
Edzard Ernst, Emeritus Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter and the world’s first professor in this field, occupies a highly polarized space in public and academic discourse. Because he evaluates alternative therapies strictly through the lens of evidence-based medicine, opinions of him are cleanly split based on how the observer views the relationship between science and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
1. The Pro-Evidence & Skeptical Community
Within mainstream medicine, scientific research, and skeptical organizations, Ernst is widely praised as a heroic, objective defender of public health.
- Rigorous Science First: Proponents point out that Ernst is uniquely qualified to critique CAM because he is formally trained in multiple modalities and practiced them early in his career. Online advocates frequently rally around his blunt philosophy on medicine. As Ernst famously co-wrote in his book Trick or Treatment:
“There is either medicine that is effective or not, medicine that is safe or not. So-called alternative therapies need to be assessed and then classified as good medicines or bogus medicines.”
- The Defender of Patient Safety: On social media, users routinely share his warnings regarding the “indirect harm” of alternative medicine, arguing that unscientific advice can be fatal. Ernst summarized this stance sharply in a peer-reviewed paper: “Alternative practitioner’s claims about ‘root causes’ and holistic care are usually pure nonsense; their pampering may be agreeable, but it can undoubtedly cost lives.”
- A “Whistleblower” Against Pseudo-Science: Proponents view him as a courageous figure who faced severe institutional backlash—including losing his department’s funding after publicly criticizing King Charles III (then the Prince of Wales) for promoting homeopathy. On platforms like Reddit, supporters echo the sentiment that Ernst “stands up for clinical truth when institutions bow to royal influence and political correctness.”
2. The CAM Practitioner & Advocate Community
Among alternative healthcare providers, natural health advocates, and some “integrated medicine” proponents, Ernst is viewed with deep hostility and suspicion.
- “The Scourge of Alternative Medicine”: Detractors frequently use social media to label him as a close-minded dogmatist who is fundamentally biased. A common refrain in CAM forums and X replies accuses him of severe bias: “Ernst does not investigate alternative medicine to see if it works; he designs reviews with the explicit purpose of proving it doesn’t.”
- Accusations of Scientific Flaws: Specific professional groups have actively challenged his data. For example, within the chiropractic community, critics point to his reviews on the dangers of spinal manipulation and claim he misattributed injuries caused by untrained practitioners to qualified chiropractors. In a formal response published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, chiropractic researchers directly attacked his methodology, stating:
“Ernst, by incorrectly labelling care providers as chiropractors… has added to the over-reporting of deaths… the fact that the care providers were not chiropractors is easily confirmed.”
- Institutional Deafness: On wellness blogs and natural health spaces, critics state that his clinical, data-first approach misses the point of holistic healing entirely. As one practitioner noted in an online debate: “He treats patients like spreadsheets. He completely disregards the mind-body connection, individual patient testimony, and the cold reality that conventional medicine fails millions of people every day, forcing them to look elsewhere.”
While Edzard Ernst is swimming against a massive volume of alternative health advocates who view him as their “nemesis reserving his most poisonous venom for their professions,” his data-driven, pro-science corrections achieve significantly higher viral sharing power among the public.
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Nothing truly new, of course, but quite interesting nevertheless, I thought.
Chronic non-specific low back pain (CNSLBP) is a major cause of disability worldwide. Conventional pharmacological treatments offer limited benefits and carry potential risks, prompting interest in alternative approaches, including homeopathy. The objective of this study was to evaluate the short-term efficacy and safety of a standardised homeopathic biotherapic (Lumbar Vertebra, LM2 potency) for CNSLBP.
A randomised, double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled clinical trial was conducted with 120 participants diagnosed with CNSLBP. Participants received both the biotherapic and placebo in two treatment phases separated by a washout period. The primary outcome was pain intensity (numeric rating scale); secondary outcomes included functional disability (Oswestry Disability Index), adverse events and use of pain medications. Data were analysed using random effects generalised linear models.
Both the biotherapic and placebo interventions led to significant within-group reductions in pain and disability (p = 0.001 and p < 0.001 respectively). However, no statistically significant differences were observed between the two interventions for either outcome (pain: p = 0.435; disability: p = 0.840). The magnitude of change in pain intensity did not reach the pre-defined minimal clinically important difference (MCID), and mean pain scores at the study endpoint remained above the inclusion threshold. Adverse events were mild and comparable across groups.
The authors concluded that no specific effect of the Lumbar Vertebra LM2 biotherapic was demonstrated. Improvements are likely due to non-specific effects such as the therapeutic environment, patient expectations and placebo response. Clinicians should consider the substantial role of non-specific responses in CNSLBP and avoid medications with unfavourable risk–benefit profiles.
One the one hand, the authors from the Department of Medicine, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Sao Paulo, the School Health Unit, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Sao Paulo, and the epartment of Social Medicine, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil should be congratulated for publishing a squarely negative result in the journal ‘Homeopathy’ that is known for publishing even the most implausible positive findings.
On the other hand, one might criticise them: why on earth did they ever conceive the hypothesis that homeopathy in general or “Lumbar Vertebra LM2 biotherapic” in particular might be effective for CNSLBP (the study did not receive any funding or financial support, apart from the study medications donated by HN-Cristiano Pharmacy (Santana, São Paulo, Brazil), which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation or discussion of the results)? I have never met a homeopaths who would make such a claim, and one could easily argue that such a trial is an unethical waste of resources.
Donald Trump’s rhetoric is systematically racialized and frequently functions as a “dog whistle” to mobilize his racist followers. Here are but a few examples:
- July 1989 (On the Central Park Five): “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” (From a full-page newspaper advertisement Trump took out regarding five Black and Latino teenagers accused of assault; the men were later fully exonerated by DNA evidence, but Trump repeatedly refused to apologize or rescind the sentiment).
- October 1993 (House Subcommittee Hearing on Native American Casinos): “They don’t look like Indians to me… and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.” (Questioning the authenticity of Connecticut tribal members operating competing casinos).
- June 2015 (Presidential Announcement Speech): “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
- January 2018 (Oval Office Meeting on Immigration): “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” (Referring to immigrants from Haiti and African nations during a bipartisan meeting, as corroborated by attending senators).
- July 2019 (On Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings): “Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place… No human being would want to live there.”
- July 2019 (Twitter Statements on Democratic Congresswomen): “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.” (Directed at four minority Democratic congresswomen, three of whom were born in the United States).
- December 2019 (Speech to the Israeli American Council): “A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me—you have no choice… You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.” (Invoking the anti-Semitic trope that Jewish people are solely motivated by money and financial self-interest).
- December 2023 (Campaign Rally in New Hampshire): “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
- April 2026 (televised national address from the White House, marking Trump’s first formal address to the nation since the outbreak of the military conflict with Iran) “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks… We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.”
An analysis of his public statements and Truth Social posts revealed a abhorrent pattern: approximately 80% of the individuals he labels as “low IQ” are people of colour, specifically Black or Hispanic public figures. The term could theoretically be used as a neutral insult; however, Trump’s skewed application clearly evokes a long history of racist pseudo-science once upon a time used to justify claims of intellectual inferiority among non-white populations. Trump often reserves his most vitriolic attacks on intelligence for non-white targets. He often compounds these insults with additional degrading language, such as:
- Ketanji Brown Jackson: Described as “that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench”.
- Maxine Waters: Repeatedly labelled “extraordinarily low IQ” and “the face of the Democrat party”.
- Don Lemon: Referred to as “the dumbest man on television”.
When targeting white opponents, Trump tends to use labels like “crooked,” “weak,” or “disgraceful.” In contrast, his attacks on Black and Brown figures – including his description of congress women of colour as “mentally deranged” or “sick” – focus on cognitive or mental fitness, echoing historical tropes used to exclude marginalised groups from public life.
Research into the 2016 and 2020 elections suggests that support for Trump was more strongly tied to racial resentment and xenophobia than to “economic anxiety.” Exposure to such rhetoric can measurably increase the public expression of prejudice. Trump’s rhetoric often aligns with his administration’s policy priorities, which were frequently criticized as racially discriminatory:
- The “Muslim Ban”: An executive order targeting several Muslim-majority nations.
- Immigration Enforcement: Hardline policies, such as “zero tolerance” at the border, which disproportionately affected Latinx communities.
- Overt Commentary: Infamous descriptions of African nations as “shithole countries” and the use of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory to describe immigration.
Beyond specific insults, Trump’s broader narrative frequently utilizes dehumanizing imagery. He has, for instance, frequently amplified or “retweeted” supporters who use racist caricatures – such as those depicting the Obamas in a derogatory manner. Recent comments labelling nations like India and China as “hellholes” further underscore a worldview defined by national/ racial hierarchies.
Taken together, the combination of targeted slurs, racially skewed insults, and discriminatory policies provides a substantial evidentiary base for arguing that Trump’s rhetoric is not merely accidental, but a strategic effort to appeal to xenophobic and white-nationalist segments of the electorate.
Does that make him a racist?
Or are his comments merely an expression of his profound stupidity?
I let you decide.
I came across an interesting paper entitled “The Ethics of Tawas and Other Rituals in Medical Practices“. Here is its abstract:
Rituals in medical practice have either been seen as an anthropological aspect of current biomedical processes or as a pre-scientific aspect of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In either tendency, the literature has since failed to account for these rituals as rituals—conveyors of meaning, expressions of identity, and even as a rite of passage from illness to wellness. As an alternative to current discussions, this paper presents the case study of tawas, a diagnostic ritual from Philippine traditional medicine that determines personalistic and mystical causes of illnesses. As a non-intrusive procedure, tawas involves incantations and some ritual objects, e.g., rice, candle, axe, etc., that do not pose any direct harm nor benefit to the patient. While complete reliance on tawas at the expense of proper medical procedures could harm patients, the very ritual of tawas itself occupies a limbo within non-beneficence and non-maleficence. Following a Wittgensteinian perspective of treating rituals as meaning-laden human activities, this paper argues that rituals like tawas, much like other rituals embedded in biomedical practices, should be understood as rituals and not as empirical cures, thereby allowing their tolerance in medical practice in general.
The author seems to advocate for the cultural integration of traditional practices like tawas into a broader medical framework. They categorize tawas not as a physiological intervention, but define it as a conveyor of meaning. By addressing the “meaning-laden” aspect of illness, the ritual may address the psychological and social dimensions of a patient’s health, even if it has no effect on their physical pathology.
It is claimed that, since tawas involves non-intrusive objects (candles, rice), it is physically benign. At the same time it is acknowledged that “complete reliance” on tawas could harm patients. From a clinical safety standpoint, the “limbo” is only maintained if the ritual is strictly adjunctive rather than alternative.
The text uses a Wittgensteinian perspective, focusing on rituals as expressions rather than theories. Modern neuroscience suggests that the “ritual” of care—the white coat, the focused attention, the diagnostic process—triggers real neurobiological changes (e.g., dopamine and endorphin release). Aacknowledging the symbolic healing power that rituals have on patient anxiety and the “meaning response,” which can objectively improve health outcomes by reducing cortisol and stress.
The author identifies tawas as a diagnostic ritual which might well be the most contentious point. In science, a “diagnosis” must be reliable and valid. Tawas clearly fails the scientific criteria for validity. The author’s defence is that tawas shouldn’t be judged by those criteria at all. While this might be philosophically sound, in a clinical setting, a “mystical diagnosis” must conflict with a biological one, potentially leading to patient non-compliance with life-saving treatments.
I remember it well: when I was a kid, I went every day in the evening to a nearby farm to fetch a litre of luke warm raw milk. I was lucky; I never caught tuberculosis or any other infection that is transmitted in this way.
Today, raw milk has become the centrepiece of a heated debate. Once only on rural homesteads, unpasteurized milk is now being championed by a powerful coalition of political figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., promoters of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), and “trad wife” influencers. This movement frames raw milk as a “magical health secret” suppressed by a corrupt establishment. However, beneath the veneer of “food freedom” and nostalgic aesthetics lies a complex interplay of populism, nutritional misinformation, outright BS, and significant public health risks.
The issue is largely fuelled by RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) idiocy. For him, raw milk is less of a dietary preference and more of a symbol of resistance against federal overreach. He frequently characterizes the FDA’s restrictions on raw milk as a “war on farmers” and an example of “regulatory capture.” In his worm-eaten mind, federal agencies are not protecting the public from pathogens but are instead protecting the profits of “Big Dairy” by criminalising traditional foodways. By pushing for the legalisation of raw milk, Kennedy taps into a deep-seated distrust of institutions that has intensified in the post-pandemic US. He frames the choice to drink unpasteurized milk as a fundamental civil liberty, positioning himself as a defender of the individual against a nasty “nanny state.”
Simultaneously, the “trad wife” and SCAM movements are providing the lifestyle framework for raw milk promotion. On social media, influencers portray a return to traditional domesticity, featuring sourdough starters, hand-churned butter, and glass jars of creamy, raw milk. In this context, raw milk provides a “moral signal” for those who have little else to worry about. What counts is the willingness to go to great lengths to bypass industrial food systems and provide “pure” and “natural” nourishment for the whole family – because pasteurisation “kills” the milk, destroying vital enzymes and probiotics that could cure everything from asthma to lactose intolerance.
As soon as these claims are held up to scientific scrutiny, the “magic” begins to dissipate. The core argument – namely that raw milk is nutritionally superior – is largely unsupported by sound evidence. Modern pasteurisation is as non-invasive as possible. While heat slightly reduces levels of Vitamin C, milk is not a primary source of that vitamin anyway. Moreover, the levels of protein, calcium, and essential minerals remain virtually identical to the raw product. Furthermore, the valuable “enzymes” touted by advocates are enzymes that the human stomach acid neutralizes before they can be absorbed.
On top of all this, there is potential for serious harm. The most dangerous aspect of the raw milk nonsense is the dismissal of microbial risk. Before pasteurisation became standard in the early 20th century, milk was a leading cause of tuberculosis, typhoid, and scarlet fever. Today, even on the most meticulously managed farms, cows can naturally shed E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria and contamination can occur in a split second during the milking process. The rise of the H5N1 (Bird Flu) virus in dairy cattle in recent years has added a lethal new variable; while pasteurisation effectively inactivates the virus, raw milk remains a potential vector for human infection. A recent study showed, for instance, that unpasteurized milk, consumed by only 3.2% of the population, and cheese, consumed by only 1.6% of the population, caused 96% of illnesses caused by contaminated dairy products.
So, the current raw milk frenzy puts a spotlight on the ignorance of those who support it. While raw milk is marketed as a health-conscious return to nature, it is primarily a brainless and unnecessary revival of long-forgotten risks. Pasteurization is – after immunisation (that is also rejected by these clowns) – one the most successful public health interventions in history. Advocates are not just embracing “food freedom”; they are embracing a level of risk that modern medicine spent a century eliminating.
I just published another book. It is almost entirely unrelated to medicine; it’s about my mother, her past, and her relationship to (and at times entanglement with) Nazi ideologies. For a long time, I avoided this undertaking – perhaps because it compels me to link personal memories with historical abysses, or perhaps because it raises questions to which no simple answers exist. The title, “A Young Woman from a Good Family: In the Shadow of the Third Reich) already indicates that this is not a light or untroubled narrative, but rather an attempt to interweave an individual life history with a broader collective destiny. As my book is in German, allow me to give you a very brief description.
My mother was born 1911 in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) and had an eventful, often dangerous life during and after the Third Reich. In the memoir that she left us children, she articulated a question frequently heard in Germany: “What could we possibly have done to oppose the Nazi crimes? Moral indignation was of no avail.” This assessment contains an element of truth, of course. Within a totalitarian system, the scope for individual resistance is severely constrained. At the same time, however, such a stance points to a significant problem: if resistance is only recognized as necessary once a system has already been transformed into a fascist regime, it is generally too late.
Injustice does not begin with its most extreme manifestations. Fascism, racism, and ultranationalism are not sudden events but gradual processes. They evolve incrementally – through exclusion, dehumanization, and the progressive normalization of violence against those defined as “other.” The extermination camps represent the most radical culmination of this process, not its point of origin.
For this very reason, the deliberate remembrance of the German past appears to me of particular importance today. The story of the “young woman from a good family” has been replicated in similar forms countless times – not only in Germany, but also in other countries and historical contexts. It should serve as a cautionary reminder to remain vigilant about ideologies that offer simplistic answers while eroding fundamental human values.
The book is therefore intended not merely as an account of my family’s past, but foremost as a warning. It opposes the temptation to relativize or consign historical atrocities to oblivion and advocates resolutely for resisting their earliest manifestations. Yes, the book centers on my mother, but only in the sense that it employs her story as a lens through which to examine events in the Third Reich and how her generation of Germans responded to them.
The US “Health Freedom Movement” (HFM) is a coalition of activists, alternative practitioners, supplement and device manufacturers, and libertarian or populist politicians who oppose strong government regulation of healthcare. They claim to defend the individual’s right to choose any treatment or product they consider beneficial, especially so-called alternative medicine (SCAM).
Its roots lie in resistance to medical licensing and in movements around homeopathy, naturopathy, and chiropractic, which often portrayed organized medicine as a cartel limiting patient choice. The John Birch Society and other conservative groups use the term to oppose fluoridation, vaccination mandates, and federal health programs. During 1990s–2000s, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, backed by a coalition of supplement companies and “health freedom” advocates, limited the FDA’s pre‑market control over supplements; libertarian politicians like Ron Paul and figures such as Prince/King Charles support aspects of this agenda. More recently, anti‑vaccination activism, opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and then COVID‑19 mandates and vaccines gave the HFM a major boost and re-grouped as “medical freedom” or “health freedom” across partisan lines, but with a strong right‑wing infrastructure.
The HFM’s main players include politicians (e.g. Ron Paul, Tom Harkin, Orrin Hatch, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and media personalities (e.g. Gary Null, Kevin Trudeau, and many supplement‑selling influencers as well as SCAM doctors). Many of them have strong financial ties to supplement, wellness, or SCAM industry.
The HFM’s stated aims sound liberal: individual autonomy, informed and access to SCAM. In practice, however, its core goals are sharper and consistently deregulatory:
- Limit or abolish pre‑market safety and efficacy requirements for supplements and many SCAMs.
- Oppose or roll back mandatory childhood vaccination, COVID‑19 vaccination and mask rules, school-entry requirements, and sometimes even basic disease‑reporting obligations.
- Resist overarching government health programs, including water fluoridation, electronic health records, and population‑level data sharing, which they portray as surveillance or tyranny.
- Create broad legal shields for all types of SCAM practitioners and restrict the enforcement powers of medical boards and public‑health authorities.
While the rhetoric centres on “freedom” and “choice”, the policy is liberating commercial interests from evidence‑based standards and oversight. For this, the HFM uses a mixture of advocacy and classic populist agitation:
- Legislative lobbying: Drafting model bills that redefine or exempt SCAM practitioners, weaken vaccination requirements, and restrict state health departments’ emergency powers.
- Litigation: Groups such as the “Health Freedom Defense Fund” use lawsuits against mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and school or airline rules both as legal tools and as high‑visibility fundraising and mobilization devices.
- Electoral politics: Endorsing and funding candidates who promise to “reign in” public‑health agencies, defund WHO, or defy CDC guidance; in some places, anti‑vaccine activists have captured local hospital or school boards.
- Media ecosystems: Conferences, podcasts, Substack newsletters, and “documentaries” circulate narratives of regulatory capture, big‑pharma malfeasance, and heroic mavericks, often entwined with sales of supplements or courses.
These activities reinforce distrust of science and conventional medicine and thus create a host of issues and problems:
- Selective use of autonomy: Autonomy is invoked vigorously when opposing vaccines, fluoridation, or regulation of supplements, but tend to disregard it when patients are misled by misinformation, coercive marketing, or opaque conflicts of interest in the alternative sector itself. Yet protection against deception and unsafe products is essential for meaningful autonomy; “choice” among misrepresented options is not genuine choice.
- Systematic downplaying of risk and evidence: The HFM treats lack of evidence of benefit as if it were evidence of safety and legitimacy and often dismisses adverse‑event data. Regulators and critics must meet impossibly high standards, while proponents of SCAM face essentially none.
- Commercial conflicts of interest: Many leading voices within the HFM derive substantial income from selling SCAM. The HFM criticizes “Big Pharma” conflicts of interest while largely ignoring or concealing its own.
- Wilful ignorance of collective harms: Opposition to vaccination, masking, and quarantine treats infections as purely individual matters, neglecting that infectious disease risk is shared and that one person’s “choice” can impose morbidity and mortality on others. Yet any rights framework that leaves no space for legitimate public‑health constraints on individual choice is incompatible with controlling epidemics.
- Alliance with broader conspiracist and extremist currents: Sections of the HFM have fused with anti‑globalist, anti‑UN/WHO, and sometimes far‑right political currents, amplifying conspiracy narratives and distrust that spill over into many domains beyond health. Thus they corrode trust in institutions that are necessary for coordinating large‑scale health responses.
In a nutshell, the HFM is a deregulatory, commercially entangled project that uses the language of liberty to erode evidence‑based medicine and to normalise quackery as well as anti‑vaccination politics. To put it bluntly: the HFM does not seem to operate in the best interest of either the individual patient or the collective public health.
