NCAHF Newsletter articles from September 2002

NCAHF Newsletter archives from September 2002

Web sites mislead re: "alternative" cancer cures.
September 1, 2002... An analysis of 13 Web sites that were listed among the first 30 hits on at least three of eight search engines using the search terms `complementary medicine' or `alternative medicine' or `complementary therapy' or `alternative therapy' and...

Spiritual healing ritual allegedly burns feet.
September 1, 2002... Junior Mitchell, a Baptist pastor in Brooklyn, NY, and his wife Desiree Mitchell were charged in June with first degree assault on Charlene Babb, 32, who came to them for spiritual healing. As reported in The New York Times, according to...

Flesh-mutilating cosmetic quacks arraigned.
September 1, 2002... Iris and Eliezer Fernandez were arraigned July 18th in New York City on charges of assault, performing medical treatments without a license, scheming to defraud, grand larceny, and possession of a weapon, a hypodermic needle. The couple used...

US News & World Report exposes hoaxes.
September 1, 2002... Professed surgical insertions of goat gonads into human gonads and breatharianism were among the scams and schemes described in the August 26/September 2 special issue of US News & World Report on "The Art of the Hoax." The goat gonad...

Koop and "CAM".
September 1, 2002... In an editorial on "The Future of Medicine" published in the January 11th issue of the journal Science, C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD, former Surgeon General of the United States criticized the "natural health products industry" for: ... ...

Raw milk promoter dies.
September 1, 2002... Edgar Stueve, who co-founded Alta Dena Dairy in California with his brother Harold in 1945 died on August 1st of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 86. [Los Angeles Times obituary, 8/7] During the...

Authoritative herbal guide published.
September 1, 2002... Pharmaceutical Press has published a second edition of Herbal Medicines, a 530-page guide with monographs on 148 herbs. Each monograph covers identifying features, constituents, food use, herbal use, dosage, pharmacologic action, adverse...

NCAHF annual membership meeting October 6.
September 1, 2002... NCAHF's annual membership meeting will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday October 6th at 23 Timothy Drive, Westerly, RI 02891--overlooking the Pawcatuck River which divides Rhode Island and Connecticut. The telephone number is 401-348-6463....

Oversight of "weight loss" supplements scrutinized.
September 1, 2002... On July 31st, in testimony about federal oversight of "weight loss" supplements before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia, Janet Heinrich, director--public health...

New NCAHF task force counters "Anti-Aging" nonsense.
September 1, 2002... Leonard Hayflick, PhD, a professor of anatomy at the University of California at San Francisco and a distinguished researcher on aging is the coordinator of a new NCAHF Task Force on the "Anti-Aging" Medicine Industry. Dr. Hayflick has often...

NIH awards $30 million for chelation study.
September 1, 2002... Although two clinical trials have already failed to show that EDTA chelation--a legitimate treatment for lead poisoning--is therapeutic in the treatment of peripheral vascular disease, and although a clinical trial has failed to show that EDTA...

Searchable database lists questionable doctors.
September 1, 2002... Data on physicians in 13 states who have been disciplined in the past ten years by state medical boards and federal agencies such as Medicare is available at www.questionabledoctors.com, a Web site set up by the consumer group Public Citizen....

Some suggested relabelings for "CAM".
September 1, 2002... CAM has become a popular acronym. It stands for complementary and alternative medicine, a term used by health hucksters and their apologists to glorify nonvalidated and invalidated healthcare methods. Some critics on the Internet-based...

How paranormal believers dodge testing.
September 1, 2002... In the October/November 2001 issue (Vol. 7, No. 4) of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT), in an article on "Paranormal Belief Syndromes and Confronting the Dodge," self-described "proselytizing...