While I have dedicated a portion of my life to the skeptic movement, I can understand how people might get swept up in some of the ideas. For instance, a person exposed to information on the okapi and the coelacanth, and also hearing cryptozoology presented as the expanse of scientific knowledge, might come to believe in the Loch Ness Monster. Or a person unfamiliar with cold reading, and excited by a few vague “hits” and the emotion of seeing a person hearing from a lost loved one, could be convinced that a medium is genuine. Or a darkened castle, a beeping electromagnetic device, and a seeming high-pitched voice could all equal a ghostly presence.

For all this accommodation, however, I cannot fathom sticking a burning candle in one’s ear and considering it beneficial. Yet that is the description of ear coning. During the process, a hollowed candle is stuck in the ear and lit, with this allegedly sucking out earwax and/or negative energy. The candle is run through a hole in a paper plate that is used to catch these melted monstrosities. While wax will appear on the plate, it comes from the candle. The hollow nature of the candle is advertised as a suction device, but no negative pressure is produced and no vacuum is created, so no earwax is sucked out.

Ear coning, also known as ear candling, is most frequently attributed to the Hopi, though the tribe eschews any connection. Others cited as originators include Tibetans, Mayans, Chinese, Indians, and Atlantians. No credible sources back up any of these claims. My suspicion is that it originated in 1978 in the mind of a California woman calling herself Sea Pixie.

The appeal to ancient authority is a logical fallacy and also inconsistently applied by adherents. Proponents of ear coning spread their beliefs on the Internet, not through smoke signals. They travel to ear coning seminars on an airplane, not aboard an ox.

They also claim that candling can alleviate an long list of symptoms, a common ploy in alternative medicine. So the burning wick will not just cure ear ailments, but also sinus trouble, stiffness, blurry vision, circulation problems, fever, and dirtied auric bodies. Hence, any positive trait can be tied back to making one’s self a personified birthday cake. And while the only wax comes from the candle, practitioners may call it dead skin, toxins, yeast infections, or bad juju.

Even if this method produced adequate pressure, the idea of benefits extending beyond the ear canal would be nonsensical from an anatomical viewpoint.  Discomfort in the middle ear during flight descent is due to change in atmospheric pressure. This would not happen if liquids or gas could pass through the ear drum, so no magic smoke is getting through either. If a patient has excess wax, there are noninvasive, non-inferno methods to remove it safely. If I had more business savvy, I would have had Murine sponsor this post.

Potential dangers from ear coning are a burned face, scorched hair, and the ear canal becoming obstructed by candle wax. There has even been one indirect fatality, an Alaska woman whose bed caught fire, leading to her death from an asthma attack.

Tests have been run and none has revealed any wax removal. As such, most ear coning clinicians have moved onto the untestable, crediting the practice with removing negative energy.

There may be no better indication of the all-encompassing nature of the Internet than there being a site called earcandling.com. After getting in the requisite alternative medicine use of “holistic,” the site continues down the New Age checklist by getting two logical fallacies into one sentence, using the appeal to ancient irrelevant authority and an ad populum: “This energy cleansing technique has been around for many thousands of years and has been found in nearly every culture since the beginning of civilization.”

As to the skeptics, “There are also those who do not understand the benefits of cleansing the body, spirit, and mind.” Earcandling.com stresses that ear coning has no healing power itself, but that it will “aid the body in its natural healing process.” But if it’s natural, not outside impetus is needed.

After insisting there’s no direct benefit, the authors seem to contradict that a few paragraphs later by writing, “Ear candles remove toxins and debris from your ears.” So to summarize, ear coning will fill one’s home with debris and toxic fumes.

When I started this blog, alternative medicine was about a fourth-tier topic for me, but has blossomed into my most frequent subject. This will probably always be the case because people will always get sick, and others will always seek to profit from this by offering supposed solutions that are cheap, quick, painless, and absolute. It also appeals to those who want to get one over on Big Pharma and the government for repressing these cures.

Next we learn that, “In traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s believed that when you’re having trouble sleeping, your spleen’s chi is off balance. In Chinese medicine, it is believed the spleen is a VERY important organ that every other organ relies on.” On one hand, no amount of belief makes anything true. On the other hand, her “very” was in all caps.

The Placebo Effect refers to someone receiving measured, observed, or perceived health improvement through means other than medicine. For the skeptic, it has two distinct manifestations. First is in controlled experiments, where some volunteers are given an inert substance with no active ingredients and others are given authentic medication. Neither the volunteers nor the researcher knows if the pill being popped is potent or a placebo.

If the tested product substantially outperforms the placebo, it is a good indication it has medical value, especially if this happens in repeated experiments. Even when the medication is valid, some receiving the counterfeit version are reported to have improved, owing to the Placebo Effect. These improvements could be due to the fluctuating nature of illness, spontaneous improvement, stress reduction, an original misdiagnosis, or Pavlovian conditioning.

The second manifestation of the Placebo Effect is it kicking in when an alternative medicine practitioner employs the likes of kinergetics, ionized jewelry, or lavender oil. For the practitioner, any seeming improvement is proof of the product’s efficiency. For the skeptic, it means the Placebo Effect may be coming into play.

The power of the effect has obvious limitations. No matter how convinced the clinician and patient are, a placebo will not cure ALS, restore sight, or regrow limbs. But it may work on pain, gastric ulcers, upset stomachs, or depression. Scientist and author Ben Goldacre found that placebos are seemingly more potent if they cost more, have shiny packaging, or require two large pills instead of one small one. Likewise, injections are considered preferable to pills and an intimate consultation is a better augmentation than just handing the patient a bottle of tablets.

The Placebo Effect is not just in the head. It also has a physiological component, and psychologist Martina Amanzio has shown people can be conditioned to release beneficial chemicals. This helps to explain why patients credit both acupuncture and pretend acupuncture with working. Neither are genuine medicine, but both stimulate the opioid system, accelerating pain relief.

Placebos can be especially effective on stress-related illnesses. A soothing massage, an attentive clinician, and a relaxing koi pond, along with a hopeful attitude, can affect the patient’s mood. This can in turn can spark physical changes, such as release of endorphins, cortisol, or adrenaline.

Lacking a series of properly-conducted tests, there is no way to determine if any improvements are attributable to the alleged medicine or the Placebo Effect. But even if magic hands or oil have no medicinal value, if it indirectly leads to the patient feeling better, isn’t that OK? Well, it may be innocuous in limited, specific instances. But the potential danger is the patient becoming dependent on nonscientific practitioners who employ placebo therapies and treat serious conditions with astrotherapy, bioharmonics, chiropractic, dolphins, or Joy Touch.

Alternative medicine practitioners point to patient testimonials as proof and seldom put their products to the double-blind test. Normally, they employ ad hoc reasoning for this refusal. Aromatherapists have said double blind testing is difficult because there is no way to mask the smell of the authentic oil. Homeopaths say their pills need to be tailored for each individual. Energy healers have said their magic powers might infuse the research laboratory and also impact those receiving the placebo.

These excuses vary in their level of ridiculousness, but the double blind study remains the standard for determining a medicine’s legitimacy. Any products that fail this test, or resist taking it, should never be touted as cures or treatment. And it is a supreme irony to take advantage of the Placebo Effect while zealously guarding against testing for it.

In an era of information overload, we are bombarded with unsubstantiated, sometimes contradictory claims, many of them health-related. There seem to be a lot of health options to sort through and health is only one aspect of our hectic lives.

Therefore, filtering through the quackery can be daunting. Sources like the Skeptic’s Dictionary, the Center for Inquiry, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry do a good job of staying on top of dubious claims, but no one can keep track of them all. So here’s how to arm yourself with the ability to detect bogus cures and treatments masquerading as medicine.

First, it helps to understand what medicine is. It is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, as well as the science that deals with maintaining health. Medicine is backed by the metadata of peer-reviewed, published double blind studies using the Scientific Method.

Beware the prefixes. There is no alternative medicine, integrative medicine, complementary medicine, supplemental medicine, eastern medicine, or functional medicine. There is just medicine, the stuff proven to prevent or treat illness, injury, or disease. The others are not forms of medicine, but rather marketing terms.

Identifying the nonsense has gotten much more challenging over the last decade. For quackery is no longer confined to pop-up ads, hot tips from a cousin’s friend, and the neighborhood Holistic Health Hut. It has infiltrated mainstream hospitals and medical schools, including some of the nation’s most prestigious universities.

I looked into this trend after learning a local hospital was offering Reiki, and the problem is much worse than I had realized. My greatest fear is that craoniosacral therapists and Reiki practitioners will move from their relatively segregated positions in hospital integrative care wings, and into ambulances and emergency rooms.

I am profoundly disappointed by hospitals and medical schools lowering their standards, rather than insisting that proponents of Gerson Therapy, magnet therapy, and reflexology raise theirs. But I have faced the harsh reality that since hospitals and medical schools are businesses, profits come before patients.

Since hospitals and medical schools are now part of the problem, the solution is up to you and your friendly blogger. Here are some signs to look for that something is not medicine. First, a couple of easy-to-remember ones: If it references “energy” or “quantum,” it’s best avoided. And “quantum energy,” oh my.

Two more huge clues are claiming that patients get the best of all worlds, and are treated as a whole person. For instance, we have this quackery from Stanford Health Care: “Integrative Medicine combines the best of alternative and complementary treatments with mainstream modern medicine and psychology to provide care for the whole person: mind and body.”

This glosses over the lack of double blind studies or use of the Scientific Method in the alternative world. As to “whole person claim,” mainstream medicine does more than treat the disease, though that is properly the primary focus. The patient’s genetics, heredity, lifestyle, and habits are also figured into a treatment plan. In limited instances, “integrative medicine” can be legitimate, as long as it is clearly delineated what is treating what. For instance, chemotherapy could be used to treat cancer, while meditation could be used to deal with the stress of having the disease. Linguistically-speaking, this could be called integrative care.

One of the most frequent pseudomedicine ploys is the emphasis on testimonials. This is successful because persons have a more emotional connection to someone explaining their illness and relief than they have to a study’s abstract. On the Duke Integrative Medicine website, we have these praises from anonymous sources:

“The word THANKS does not even begin to express how I feel.”

“I was meant to come here. You have experiences in life that can alter your being, and that’s happened to me here.”

“I felt so relaxed and so at peace just knowing I had done something good for my body and good for my soul and good for my mind.”

“It is a place where mind, body and soul come together to be fed and nourished in perfect harmony in a sanctuary-like environment.”

“A really incredible experience. I am motivated to make changes.”

“I think there will be more joy in my life.”

These sound like people leaving a Tony Robbins seminar, not persons receiving medical care. The dozen testimonials on this site do not equate to one morsel of science-based evidence. Indeed, there is a conspicuous lack of double blind studies referenced on the site. There is just one, and it suggested integrative therapy had shown some ability to relieve chronic pain. Of course, this was because real medicine was used along with counterfeit methods. The mainstream chronic pain treatment could have been augmented with unicycle riding and gotten the same results.

Another frequent pseudomedicine claim is the war on toxins. A related one is touting the ability to help the body do something or other. The liver will take care of your toxins and if your body does something naturally, it doesn’t need any help.

One of the greater concentrations of quackery red flags comes from Shane Ellison, who dubs himself the “People’s Chemist.” We’ll let him serve as a handy microcosm for pseudomedical notions.

First, he trots out the toxin and body-healing assistance lines. Whatever your body was doing, it will continue to do so whether you pop this guy’s pills or not.

He also makes up terms like “nutrient logic” and “hormone intelligence.” On this one, the best advice I can give is to immerse yourself in the skeptic and medicine movements. I recognize at first glance when nonsense notions are passed off as medicine, an ability I lacked five years ago.

Ellison then throws in the usual testimonials, all leading up to his books or bottles for sell, another red flag. Along the way, he informs us, “My laboratory has integrated the latest advances in chemistry and biology to create natural products that confer positive, measurable results.” If it was created in a laboratory, it is not natural. That’s fine, I’ve addressed the appeal to nature fallacy before. But this lack of understanding calls his medical credentials into question. And his “positive, measurable results” are undefined and not submitted for peer review. Taking claims straight to potential consumers instead of peer review is the most vermilion of the red flags.

Another sign is the conspiracy angle, such as “doctors don’t want you to know,” or “What pharmaceutical companies hate.” Doctors are not cut from a monolithic swath, hunched over in their white coats to keep secret knowledge amongst their shadowy selves. Yet in one of his blog posts, Ellison interviews an anonymous school nurse who tells him, presumably in excited whispers, “There’s an ulterior motive behind the vaccine movement that is money-driven and evil.”

Also, Ellison describes pharmaceutical companies as being involved in a “plot designed to sabotage health and wealth while causing untold ecological damage.” There’s still more: “Big Pharma manipulates studies using checkbook science. This allows them to pay for the design and interpretation of clinical trials. There is also medical ghostwriting, the slimy practice of hiring PhD’s to crank out drug reports that hype benefits.” Yet Ellison is selling natural cures that promise to stop strokes, heart attacks, and diabetes. In other words, he’s cranking out drug reports that hype benefits.

Another red flag is trying to make the patient feel special. Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine lauds its “individualized approach,” while the tricky blue devils at Duke Integrative Medicine trumpet that patients “experience a new approach to medical care that brings you and your provider together in a dynamic partnership dedicated to optimizing YOUR health and healing. Our approach focuses on all of who you are, recognizing that the subtle interactions of mind, body, spirit and community have a direct impact on your vitality and well-being.

Not be outdone, Yale says, “Integrative Medicine is the practice of medicine that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient and focuses on the whole person.”

Keeping with Yale, the site also tell us, “Through open-minded exploration and rigorous scientific inquiry, we aim to improve awareness and access to the best in evidence-based, comprehensive medical care available worldwide, with the goal of optimizing health and healing.

Here, open-minded means just making up stuff and seeing if anything works. That’s not a strawman, either. Yale physician David Katz praised the lack of evidence required, saying, “With internal medicine, once I’ve tried everything the textbooks tell me, I’m done. But with integrative medicine, I always have something to try. I never run out of options.” Per the Yale site, these options include herbalism, acupuncture, Reiki, and thinking the tongue will reveal diseases in other parts of the body. These methods are used without research, clinical trials, peer review, or attempts to replicate and falsify.

Continuing the Ivy League capitulation to made-up medicine, we get this from Harvard: “Excellent care seeks to understand how the ailment affects a patient’s overall physical and mental well-being. Excellent care considers the interconnected systems of the body and mind. Excellent care enhances patients’ health by considering all the tools at our disposal, those from the technologically advanced hemisphere of Western medicine, as well as from the traditionally based hemisphere of Eastern medicine. Excellent care acknowledges the whole patient and diverse forms of treatment.”

This meandering description references no science, breakthrough, research, testing, or proof of efficiency yet is being peddled as medicine by Harvard. With standards this loose, it’s no wonder Harvard endorses chiropractic, even though its central tenet, vitalism, completely contradicts the Germ Theory that modern medicine is based on. Harvard is also fond of acupuncture, part of the university’s appeal to ancient wisdom. But a treatment’s validity is based on its efficacy, not its antiquity. The idea that demons cause illness is much older than Germ Theory, but that doesn’t make it much better.

Harvard even goes so far as to embrace craniosacral therapy. This is when a person, using no instruments or way to measure what they are doing, gives a gentle massage to the cranium and sacrum of a patient to cure any ailment. Yes, Harvard is championing the idea that tuberculosis could be cured by some guy giving a neck and scalp massage. I don’t think Harvard will get rid of tuberculosis this way, but they are doing a good job of eliminating what we know about anatomy and physiology.

These practices won’t make anybody healthy, but their use by our top medical facilities makes me sick.

Eugen Jonas has combined Babylonian texts and a subgenre of astrology to deduce that less frequent intercourse will reduce the chance of pregnancy.

I could find no challenge to this premise, so we’ll move onto some of his other assertions. While mainstream infertility specialists try to help couples conceive, Jonas goes beyond pedestrian procreation and enables clients to choose the gender prior to conception. Under the Jonas treatment, miscarriages are a misfortune of the past, as are physical and mental defects.

This Brave New World was discovered in 1956 when Jonas came across a fragmented ancient manuscript that read, “A woman is fertile according to the moon.” There was nothing in science to support this, but Jonas insisted there need be no conflict. Yes, women, you CAN have it all: Pregnancy through normal means and through the lunar channel.

He delved into cosmobiology, an offshoot of astrology which emphasizes points between heavenly bodies, rather than planets, satellites, and stars themselves. He emerged with a system that centered on the angles of the sun and moon at the time of a woman’s birth. There was “like affects like” connection; if a woman was born during a full moon, she would be fertile during future full moons. Additionally, the positon of the moon at the time of conception determines gender, while the planets’ positions determines miscarriages and birth defects.

For those seeking to avoid pregnancy, Jonas has designed a chart to follow, with a series of six- and 13-day windows within a month in which the woman should abstain, since she is fertile based on her lunar reading. Persons following this less-than-revolutionary method would likely succeed more often than not. There’s a 50-50 chance the gender request will by celestially granted, and most babies are healthy. These factors have enabled Jonas to accumulate 300 anecdotes from satisfied customers. There are no peer-reviewed studies or publications supporting this, but his website reports that the work of Dr. Jonas has been confirmed by Dr. Jonas.

Conversely, two European studies examined a total of 12,000 deliveries and found that the births were equally distributed throughout the lunar cycle.

In Jonas’ teachings, gender is determined not by a man’s sperm, but by whether the moon is in the male or female sign of the Zodiac. And there is no relationship between birth defects and genetics or chromosome imbalance. Rather, they are the result of “unfavorable distribution of gravitational forces of the near celestial bodies at the time of conception.”

Jonas offers no science to support any of this so I went to lunarium.co.uk, a Jonas-friendly website to see if it could offer any. One tab reads, “How the method works.” OK, here we go, time to lay out the methods, testing, research, hypotheses, predictions, replication, peer review, data sharing, and attempts to falsify.

Here it is: “If a woman was born at the time of a certain phase, each time the same phase will take place in the sky, that will be her moment of unusually high fertility, her potential Lunar Conception moment.” Later, we are told, “The gender of the conceived child will depend on the sign of the Zodiac in which the Moon was at the moment of Lunar Conception.”

This was a rehashing of what this is, not how it works. So there wasn’t much substance in the explanation, although they did throw in the word ‘algorithm’ once or twice. It also noted that, “Science cannot explain this,” which is the one thing science has in common with the portion of the Lunarium website dedicated to explaining it.

In addition to bathing in fertility-enriching moonlight, the website stresses the importance of a healthy, stress-free life in tune with nature. But the only natural way to be completely without stress is to be dead, and that’s not healthy.

Another piece of advice: “If the conception cosmogram for the child is not well-aspected, but the mother’s own cosmogram is favorable, the negative influences are overcome to a certain degree.” If you can’t understand that, it’s OK because they will sell you a consultation with an astrologer to figure out what they were trying to tell you.

While focusing mostly on cosmobiology’s impact on infertility, Jonas also cautions that undiagnosed celiac disease and toxic cosmetic products are to blame, so ditch the rye bread and shampoo as well.

When I started this blog, I knew I would address Bigfoot, Nostradamus, mediums, ghosts, and astrologers. I figured it would be a nice little hobby that would eventually run out of topics. But I was unaware then of how widespread this lunacy is. I’m continually exposed to new topics, much of it in alternative medicine.

Just this week I learned about Bradley Nelson, who peddles products called the Body Code and the Emotion Code. I went to his website and was greeted by Joe, a live person who wanted to exchange messages with me. He asked my name. Wayne seemed not near California or alternative medicine enough, so I reversed my name. There we go, Enyaw, quite the New Age moniker. Our chat went like this:

“What is the difference between the Body Code and the Emotion Code?’

“That is an often asked question, Enyaw. While the emotion code is a healing method which identifies and releases trapped emotions that cause both emotional and physical health issues, the body code utilizes six fundamental areas of imbalance and dysfunction that are blocking the healing process. Understanding these together will help you feel better.”

“What is a fundamental area of imbalance and dysfunction?”

“Hmm. It sounds like perhaps you have not seen the Body Code in action yet. It might be easiest for you to watch a video at this link and see what we’re talking about. Would that be helpful for you, Enyaw?”

“Sure, I will check those out a little later. What does it mean by blocking the healing process? What is the healing process and what is blocking it?”

“Those are good, advanced questions. You’d probably be best served by speaking to one of our Wellness Advisors. Could I please have your full name, phone number, and the best time for one of our Wellness Advisors to answer your questions, Enyaw?”

My next, unasked question was, “Why are you using these terms and promising they will improve my health if you don’t know what they are or how they work?”

I have found that even the most rudimentary question or slightest challenge to alternative medicine claims, terms, and methods will throw their advocates off. People come to them desperate for answers or healing. They might ask, “What will this do it for me?,” but not “How will this do it for me?” The clinicians are unprepared for even a basic probe of their tactics.

By throwing out terms that sound technical, complex, and medical, the clinician aims to impress the patients, or at least silence them into acquiescence. It’s the adage, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” And it’s an effective strategy, as evidenced by the clinicians being perplexed when the bullshit is thrown back in their face.

The website describes the Body Code as “a new breakthrough in natural healing.” If it’s natural, there’s no need to buy the product since it will just happen anyway. We are promised that putting the techniques into practice “will bring health, wealth, and meaningful relationships.” My health is OK, but I don’t really have time to develop meaningful relationships outside of my family. Maybe if this wealth thing works out, I can quit my job and build those relationships. So let’s check out more of the site.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to wake up feeling powerful and youthful, with total clarity, passion and excitement about your life?” Sure, but waking up takes me about 60 seconds, so I’m more interested in having those attributes during other 23 hours and 59 minutes.

The site notes that “We are aging every day.” After promises as grandiose as those we’ve seen so far, I thought maybe they were going to offer to reverse the aging process. Alas, this introduction was only to segue into the frequent alternative medicine trick of insisting the purchase needs to be made immediately. If that’s insufficient incentive, they add, “There are people in your life who need your help now!” I had been feeling OK, but a sense of guilt just came over me, I better purchase the Emotional Body package to fix it.

Nelson says his focus is on finding and removing imbalances in the body. “I believe that the symptoms that you are having are because of imbalances that are going on in your body. If we can find those imbalances and fix them, perhaps your symptoms will go away.” Translation: Abracadabra. Removing imbalance is a pseudoscientific notion with no medical legitimacy. No explanation is offered about what is imbalanced, why it is, or how it’s fixed. We are only told it is a panacea that leads to this: “The Body Code has been designed and created for YOU, so you can live the life you want, with ultimate health, wealth and happiness.”

Along with removing imbalances, Nelson assures us he will unblock emotional and prosperity blocks and unlock your subconsciousness, which he says is 90-95 percent of the mind. Here’s what the patients get out of it: “Removing these imbalances makes it possible for the body to return to a state of perfect balance and health. The result is a disappearance of pain, fatigue, disease, depression and all manner of other symptoms! The Body Code truly is The Ultimate Health, Wealth and Happiness Solution! You’ll be able to instantly unlock an infinite well of knowledge. Feel happier, relieve stress, form and nurture better relationships, increase your wealth, and even live longer.”

Since he has ascribed unlimited benefits to his products, any seeming fortune will be attributed to them. Indeed, patients on the site bought into this Magical Thinking and credited Nelson with everything from stopping knee pain to saving their marriage to curing infertility. Once the unconscious mind is untapped, Nelson assures, patients can ask it yes-or-no questions, and the mind will let you know what is wrong with your mental or physical health. It’s a Magic 8 Ball for the body and soul.

As to the physical body, Nelson writes that there is a literal energy surrounding the heart which screws with our emotions. This idea upends anatomy, physiology, physics, and neurology in one sentence.

The website describes the products as so amazing that it is altruistic to use them. For the person will be so transformed that it will rub off on those around them. In that case, I’ll pass on buying them since their infectious nature ensures their benefits will eventually reach me.

The appeal to nature is a frequent ploy of those promoting some cure, food, or cosmetic. The word “natural” is prominently displayed in the ads or on the product’s unnatural packaging. It is insinuated by the sellers that natural equals good, and they hope the consumer assumes this as well. They try to take advantage of the word’s positive connotations, such as seen in natural athlete, natural beauty, or naturally gifted. By contrast, artificial can be equated with phony, and unnatural can mean forced or awkward.

But occurring in or being produced by nature is neither a good nor bad quality. Sleep and water are natural and necessary for living. Clothing and insulin are unnatural, but our life would be much worse without the former and would be over for a diabetic without the latter. Earthquakes and box jellyfish venom are natural manifestations no one wants to get close to, while leaked Chernobyl radiation was a manmade disaster. And since the natural and unnatural worlds both have positive and negative contributions, it is overly optimistic to think nature can keep a person healthy and happy. Even an unending supply of such products will fail to arrest the natural fate of organisms, death.

One of the best examples of how spurious the appeal to nature is comes from an unintended source. American Spirit tobacco boasts of its products’ all-natural ingredients in an ad reminiscent of a satirical one published in National Lampoon.

Next, let’s consider a plant even worse than tobacco. Foxglove perennials contain toxins that would disrupt the heartbeat if ingested in sufficient quantity. However, the synthetic version of the plant’s cardiac glycosides can be beneficial for patients with heart arrhythmias. So the natural foxglove is harmful, but a synthetic drug developed by isolating, extracting, and purifying certain chemicals in it is helpful. Similarly, mosquito bites and any subsequent malaria are natural, while mosquito repellent and malaria pills are unnatural.

Given all this, why does the appeal to nature work on so many? For some people, it’s simply because they’ve never considered the above examples and they would be convinced once they realized nature is more than an antelope coming down a fern-covered mountain to drink from a flowing stream.

For the hard core nature advocates, however, it’s like any prejudice and is a great timesaver. They can decree natural to be good and unnatural to be bad, so there’s no need to worry about what’s healthy, beneficial, or safe. Like any prejudice, the accuracy in applying it will be sporadic at best. Depending on the type of mushroom one encounters, it may be a source of a little protein or a lot of poison.

“It’s good because it’s natural,” is circular reasoning since it assumes what one is claiming to prove and the conclusion is entailed in the premise. One example of this faulty logic centers on raspberry ketones. Both the ketones from the natural berry and a synthetic counterpart have a chemical structure of C10 H12 O2. Gleefully munching raspberries with these ketones while indignantly refusing a perfume containing the same ones is nonsensical.

Whether this thinking is dangerous depends on how far one takes it. If curmucin is swallowed in hopes of stopping a stomachache, it’s no big deal, it’s just pointless. The danger would come if the stomachache turns out to be stomach cancer and the natural treatment continues. The Skeptic’s Dictionary has catalogued alleged cancer treatments based on the likes of seeds, herbs, and teas. I call these fatal cures and the list is as long as it is disturbing. Meanwhile, the website for Healing Cancer Naturally promises to cure the disease by targeting charkas, chi, and meridians. In this case, it seems like a more honest claim would be “Healing Cancer Supernaturally.”

When the Food Babe went after Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, she wrote that it is “manmade in a lab with chemicals derived from petroleum, a crude oil product, which is also used in gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, and tar.” Yet crude oil occurs naturally, so go ahead and mix it with your organic kale smoothie, Babe.

She, Zen Honeycutt, and Kate Tieje are the result of an unusual combination of scientific advancement and scientific ignorance. The Internet makes it possible for anyone to market lies as truths and peddle them to an audience unaware of basic science. In the crude oil example, the Food Babe ignores that the same chemicals can be used safely for many purposes. Its properties change depending on what it’s mixed with. She gets away with this because the people she’s addressing don’t know what a chemical reaction is.

Some natural advocates point out that diseases were less frequent in a supposedly more natural era. When true, this is because longer life spans means there are more persons susceptible to diseases that primarily hit seniors, such as cancer and heart conditions. If we ever end up with an average life expectancy of 125 years, nearly 100 percent of men will get prostate cancer and it won’t be from a lack of organic blueberries.

Besides this misuse of numbers, there are outright falsehoods, such as sharks being immune to cancer, or the adoption of absurd ideas. Harvey Diamond, for instance, seems to suggest people should live like bears and boars. He writes that, “Animals in nature are magnificently healthy in comparison to the health that we humans experience,” and that zoo animals suffer “many of the problems of humans.”

Zoo animals probably have more diseases, but that’s because their vaccinations and safety from predators allow them to live long enough to get them. While the animals we see in the woods or on the plains are usually spry and healthy, we are only seeing them because of those distinctions. Aging and diseased animals are killed by predators and finished off by scavengers, usually out of human sight. Even if we limit Diamond’s comparison to healthy animals in the wild, humans still have one of the longest life spans. I think I’m seeing a market for the Giant Tortoise in a Redwood Diet.

In an article for Huffington Post, Suzy Cohen warned readers they were in danger of Chronic Lyme Disease if they had been in a Lyme-prone area, owned a dog or cat, had lain in the grass, or traipsed through the woods. This conservatively puts 95 percent of the population at risk.

To tell if one has it, Cohen advises to be on the lookout for these symptoms: fatigue, stiffness, headaches, tinnitus, anemia, dizziness, confusion, tingling, numbness, forgetfulness, sleeplessness, chest pain, palpitations, anxiety, depression, light and sound sensitivity, and joint and muscle pain. Persons will also have shortness of breath after reciting that list. It probably applies to 100 percent of us, as anyone qualifies if they’ve had one night of insomnia, one instance of forgetfulness, or one backache.

This large symptom umbrella has allowed Dr. Richard Horowitz to diagnose 12,000 patients with the disease. Consider how loose a definition this requires. If just one-quarter of one percent of the country’s doctors diagnosed the same number of patients as Horowitz did, everyone in the country would be said to be afflicted with Chronic Lyme Disease.

Horowitz claims his treatment can detoxify, boost the immune system, and remove heavy metals. One cannot detoxify, except by having a working liver and kidneys. Boosting the immune system is impossible except in extreme cases involving conditions much more serious than Lyme disease, such as late-stage cancer or HIV positivity. As to heavy metals, if a person needs arsenic, iron, or lead removed, these are life-threatening conditions. The patient should be in the emergency room, not thumbing through People at the holistic health clinic.

Most CLD treatment practitioners will usually say that continual antibiotic therapy is the only way to attack it. But they won’t claim to cure it, because that would be the end of it. Treatment, by contrast, can continue until the patient dies or the money runs out.

Those offering CLD treatment create the condition, stoke the fears, and then offer the solution in exchange for a lifetime of loyalty and money. So it’s pretty much like a religion, except you go to a clinic, not a temple.

Still, patients with unexplained symptoms welcome the diagnosis since it offers an answer and a path to resolution. One of the main causes of stress is lack of information. In the case of unexplained illnesses, this vacuum can be filled with a diagnosis of Chromic Lyme Disease, so the patient feels relieved. It also offers an alternative medicine trifecta by being immediate, absolute, and cheap. It’s appealing for the practitioner as well. Like chiropractic, essential oils, and energy healing, it promises a quick fix, but also keeps the patient coming back, since any symptom is a sign that follow-up work is need. Unlike the others, however, CLD treatment can be dangerous or even deadly, since the treatment program is a continual influx of antibiotics. The Centers For Disease Control warns that this prolonged use can spur the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The most obvious sign of Lyme disease is an increasing rash that is red and circular, not unlike a bull’s-eye. It is likely accompanied by extreme fatigue, fever, chills, sweat, and nausea. A two-step protocol using a single blood sample will determine if the patient has the disease. If so, a brief course of antibiotics will take care of it, as it is well-established that Lyme disease is a bacterial illness transmitted by ticks.

By contrast, CLD has no science-based evidence and features an unending antibiotic treatment, augmented by several alternative medicine methods. These can be labeled holistic, integrative, complementary, or spiritual. This treatment is given by persons often calling themselves consultants. It’s unclear who they are consulting, but it’s not researchers conducting double blind studies. Two randomized trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that long-term antibiotic treatment performed no better than placebos for healing symptoms blamed on CLD.

The alternative medicine methods appeal to the afflicted because one can continually ride the CLD carousel, regardless of how unproven or unlikely a treatment is. There are ointments, oils, and Reiki, creating a potpourri of potions, lotions, and motions to choose from.

In his investigation of CLD, Dr. Mark Crislip found more than 30 treatments offered, a dead giveaway that the field is bogus. The same patient with allegedly the same disease could get six vastly different treatments from six different clinicians. These include healings based on oxygen, radiation, nutrition, chelation, homeopathy, and stem cell transplants. The reason this net is so wide is because the disease is made-up, so there’s no standard way to deal with it. In treating real diseases, authentic doctors can use various methods, but they’re in the same ballpark. By contrast, those treating Chronic Lyme Disease aren’t even playing the same sport.

The unethical act of treating a nonexistent illness is exacerbated because it keeps the patient from being properly diagnosed. The patient will never truly get better since illnesses will always come creeping back, with any symptom being labeled another CLD flare-up. As for me, I have Chronic Chronic Lyme Disease Fatigue.

A few chiropractors are distancing themselves from the field’s metaphysical roots. They are downplaying “Innate Intelligence” and other innately unintelligent notions. Innate Intelligence purports that living organisms possess a vitalism force that enables them to organize, maintain, and heal the body. The other key plank of chiropractic is that vertebral sublaxation causes pain and disease in all areas of the body. Those who still embrace the ideas of chiropractic founder Daniel Palmer are informally called straight chiropractors. Those who, to varying degrees, focus less on the Palmer aspects, are called mixed chiropractors.

While I welcome the jettisoning of unscientific ideas, this seems to be being done by a tiny minority of chiropractors, and I’m unsure if mixed chiropractors are replacing it with anything better. And there’s no evidence to suggest any of them are in Moline, which I suspect may be home to the country’s greatest per capita concentration of straight chiropractors. I know of at least 30 in a town of 43,000. I presume this is because Palmer started chiropractic across the river in Davenport, where it was expanded by his son, B.J. Palmer. Davenport is still home to the Palmer College of Chiropractic.

Before we go further, a key distinction must be made. A subluxation is a partial joint dislocation and is a genuine medical condition. However, Vertebral Subluxation Complex is the unfounded idea that spinal issues will cause disease and pain in other parts of the body. If a vertebra did slip out of place, that could theoretically be called a vertebral subluxation, but this condition would be obvious in an X-ray. Further, the howling victim would be concerned only with getting it back into place, not worried about it leading to a leg rash or heartburn.

Yet most chiropractors tell patients their spine is out of alignment, and that this is causing all manner of disease and pain. They insist a spinal adjustment is needed first to fix this, and then to maintain health. They X-ray the spine, or use some other method, and even if nothing abnormal is revealed, will attribute Vertebral Subluxation Complex to their patient’s tinnitus, asthma, or high blood pressure.

Stephen Barrett at Quackwatch wrote this about trying to pin down chiropractors on how they determine vertebral subluxation:

“Old chiropractic textbooks show before-and-after” X-rays that are supposed to demonstrate subluxations. I challenged the local chiropractic society to demonstrate ten such X-ray sets. They refused, suggesting instead that I ask the Palmer School to show me some from its teaching files. When I did, however, a school official replied: ‘Chiropractors do not make the claim to be able to read a specific subluxation from an X-ray film. They can read spinal distortion, which indicates the possible presence of a subluxation and can confirm the actual presence of a subluxation by other physical findings.’”

Barrett learned methods for determining spinal distortion included feeling the spine, measuring skin temperature, detecting nerve irritation, weighing the patient, studying shadows when light is shone on the back, and concluding that a patient’s leg is “functionally longer than the other.”

I looked at the claims made by Moline chiropractors on their websites. Avenue Chiropractic makes this assertion: “By protecting the nervous system, you are more likely to have uninterrupted nerve supply.” This is either pseudoscientific language or I’m missing out on this steady stream of fresh nerve deliveries that everyone else is getting.

Next, we learn, “There are many types of pain that can be eliminated by a good diet, regular exercise, and maintenance chiropractic care.” Proper diet and regular exercise will generally keep a person healthy, so a person could substitute archery or taxidermy for chiropractic and get the same result.

Uptown Chiropractic goes beyond the standard chiropractic claims and states that sublaxation repair will also heal mental issues. “Mood swings may be the result of a person’s body missing a natural and needed ingredient. Chiropractors take a natural approach to treating these symptoms through diet, supplements, and exercise.” You can’t just snap your fingers to chase a bad mood, but apparently snapping your back will do it.

Meanwhile, Real Health Chiropractic promises patients they will receive “Muscle testing to help determine neurological status and balance the physical, chemical, and emotional imbalances related to the vertebral subluxation complex.” The brain might reveal the reasons for muscular degeneration, but not the other way around. And checking a person’s quadriceps to determine if they are mentally stable seems like a true longshot.

Still, Real Health assures us their care will bring relief to “a spectrum of ailments such as headaches, certain types of migraines, menstrual cramps, allergies, asthma, emphysema, stomach disorders, spastic colon, and arm, hand, and leg pain.” In actuality, there is nothing in reputable scientific literature to success chiropractic can treat this medley of maladies.

The only point I found on any of these websites that I agreed with was from the Birdsell site, which quoted this from the New England Journal of Medicine: “Observational study found that low back pain patients receiving chiropractic care…are more satisfied than those receiving medical care.”

Indeed, there are a few types of musculoskeletal lower back pain that chiropractic is effective for. But Birdsell quickly ventures onto more grandiose terrain. “Chiropractic care addresses many common reasons why people experience pain and other health issues. If something is not right with your body’s foundation, then that needs to be addressed before true health can be achieved.” I’m unsure what the body’s foundation is supposed to be, but from context, I’m guessing the spine. I also have no idea how “true health” differs from “health.” But by diverting everything back to the spine, chiropractors can keep patients coming back no matter what unpleasantness they are suffering from.

Or not suffering from, in the case of chiropractic maintenance. “Once your body has fully healed, it is important to come in for periodic chiropractic adjustments to avoid further problems. This phase of chiropractic care requires a quick visit to the chiropractor one to four times per month.” Birdsell is suggesting up to 48 visits a year for someone who is completely healthy! Maybe on some of these visits, this specimen of ideal health can visit the Birdsell acupuncturist, who offers “qi-gong exercises to further help the patient achieve healing energy, or qi.”

QC Chiropractic suggests it can control ADHD. “Instead of treating the various symptoms of hyperactivity, we look for disturbances to the child’s nervous system. This link between the spine, brain stem dysfunction, and ADHD is common. We recommend a schedule of safe and natural chiropractic adjustments to help reduce the accompanying nervous system tension.”

If the ADHD child also has allergies, perhaps QC Chiropractic can offer a two-for-one special. Because it also claims, “We look for ways to restore your ability to adapt to allergens by locating and reducing disturbances to your nervous system.”

Meanwhile, Jack Chiropractic tells us, “Our office recognizes the hazard that Vertebral Subluxation causes in your quality of life. We believe everyone deserves a healthy life, free of vertebral subluxation.” And I believe everybody is leading such a life.

While there is some disagreement among chiropractors about how much to hold onto its metaphysical past, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners stated last year, “A subluxation affects the nervous system and may lead to reduced function, disability, or illness.”

Chiropractors are highly distinctive from other doctors. They cannot prescribe medication. Rather than attend medical school, they learn their trade in schools like Palmer and have no residencies after graduation. Palmer and other chiropractic schools are accredited by a private organization run by chiropractors. They are not part of the medical mainstream, nor are they competent to be. They are still following the ideas of B.J. Palmer, who wrote this of disease in general and smallpox in particular: “There is no contagious disease. There is no infection. There is a cause internal to man that makes his body a breeding ground for illness.” Smallpox was later eradicated through a means void of any subluxation correction.