Anti-vax doctors represent a microscopic percent of their profession, but when they highlight their medical training, it may cause some with doubts to sway the wrong way. Today we will examine the claims of one of them, Dr. Jim Meehan, as well as counterarguments from the Skeptical Raptor blogger, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss.

While Meehan uses phrases like “informed choice” and “parental rights,” he is not merely an advocate for education and options, he is explicitly anti-vaccine and encourages parents to leave their children vulnerable to miserable, dangerous, and possibly deadly diseases, rather than inoculate their offspring against them.

He claims these diseases are no big deal, might even be beneficial, and are treatable with a holistic, integrative, homeopathic, or other alt-med buzzword approach. With regard to wonderful whooping cough, magnificent measles, and sensational smallpox, the deluded doc insists there are benefits of children encountering these and other diseases. But Reiss notes that Meehan leaves it unclear exactly what a child gains from contracting the likes of diphtheria, polio, tetanus, and pertussis. Such a mindset would have been unimaginable in the days of the iron lung and is only entertained today only because vaccines’ success have made these misfortunes ones that most of us were never exposed to.

Reiss writes that measles kills one victim in a thousand, while diphtheria and tetanus have a 10 percent mortality rate. So unless Meehan is presuming an everlasting paradise after death, it’s uncertain what benefits he is referring to. Polio paralyzes and kills its victims and many of the other diseases Meehan gushes over can lead to weeks of suffering followed by lifelong afflictions. Here is a modern account of measles, which Meehan considers a mild irritant that leads to a positive outcome.

Meehan also trots out the toxin gambit, which plays to anti-vaxxers’ chemophobia. He sounds the sensationalist alarm thusly: “I have seen the evidence of neurotoxicity from ingredients like aluminum, Polysorbate 80, human DNA and cellular residues from the human cells lines, upon which many of the live viruses are grown.”

Reiss notes that in about one case in a million, a person may have a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine, usually because of gelatin. So it could be argued that vaccines are only 99.9999 percent safe, but that leaves them much safer than smallpox, diphtheria, and polio.

Also, always remember that the dose and form of the ingredient is what matters. Vaccines never contain elemental aluminum, as Meehan implies. Rather, they contain tiny amounts of aluminum salts in order to prompt a stronger immune response, and these infinitesimal doses are handled by the body’s natural processes. Moreover, there is no evidence that the minuscule amounts of polysorbate 80 in vaccines poses a risk. As to the small amount of DNA that may be in a vaccine, Reiss notes that if it was that easy for fragments of DNA to impact our body, gene therapy would be much easier than it is.

The main plank in Meehan’s rambling rants is that vaccine science is fraudulent and purchased by Big Pharma. But vaccines prevent millions of hospitalizations and their accompanying medications each year, which deprives pharmaceutical companies of a fortune.

Further, there are tens of thousands of safety studies about vaccines. This research is done worldwide and is funded by multiple sources, such as businesses, universities, and governments, including governments that run a national health insurance system, and thus have a strong incentive to find preventive and curative measures.

To believe all this is part of a plot to enrich pharmaceutical company coffers and poison our children is to assume a conspiracy on an unimagined and untenable scale. It also ignores what happens when there is an issue with vaccine efficiency or safety.

Reiss cites four examples where certain strains of a vaccine were shown to be ineffective or contain a significant side effect. Each time it made for major news and the vaccines were pulled or retested. These responses are inconsistent with a secretive cover-up aimed at making pharmaceutical executives even richer with no concern for children suffering and dying.

In fact, for all his accusations, Meehan has been unable to identify an instance where a pharmaceutical company knowingly let a dangerous vaccine onto the market. And for all his dire warnings and writings, Meehan has yet to appear in peer-reviewed journal.

There are any number of delicious, nutritious fruit drinks available, the most ubiquitous being a breakfast staple squeezed from oranges. There is also grape juice, apple juice, and similar citrus choices.

But what marketers call super-fruit juices claim their products are loaded with antioxidants, which fight the free radicals that cause aging. Briefly, free radicals are molecules with an unpaired electron, a distinction allows them to cling to a good molecule and oxidize it. This equates to an attack on a cell and leads to age-related diseases.

Antioxidants, then, are touted as allies in our battle for better health. However, the oxidation caused by free radicals also comes with benefits, such as converting fat into energy and attacking harmful bacteria.

Sketoid’s Brian Dunning noted that since disease-fighting is one of the keystone features of medicine, there have been decades of rigorous research into antioxidants. If we condensed what could literally be a mountain of papers into one sentence, we would arrive at this: A certain level of antioxidants is good, but too much is bad; more significantly, the source of the antioxidant is more important than the amount.

Dunning wrote that the “primary phytochemicals that deliver antioxidants to the body are vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene. For the super-fruit juices to fulfill their claims, they would have to contain large amounts of these vitamins.”

We have long known that regular consumption of fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers. But as to whether supplementing fruits and veggies with antioxidants is of added benefit, the research so far shows a negligible impact at best and a detriment at worst.

Dunning noted that the American Heart Association evaluated five studies of putative super-fruit juices for their ability to combat cardiovascular disease. Of the five studies, two showed the antioxidant increase yielded no difference, and three revealed a negative impact. But even if the antioxidant overload were beneficial, the amount their products contain is exaggerated by super-fruit aficionados.

The Australian Consumers Association publication Choice studied every super-fruit juice it could find. Researchers tested them for total antioxidant capacity, a step conspicuously missed by those who sell the products and attach grand claims to them.

As a baseline, Choice measured the total antioxidant capacity of a Delicious apple. Juices from alleged super-fruits such as goji, mangosteen, noni, and açai all had from between nine to 34 percent of the antioxidant content that an apple did.

Fruits that are common – and therefore less exciting to the alternative medicine crowd – like oranges, strawberries, and blueberries contained more antioxidants than the apple.

Yet super-fruit marketers assert that a goji has 10 times the antioxidant capacity as an apple, an açai six times as much, and so on. And this is true, as it relates to the fruit. But most of those antioxidants are in the rind. Once a goji is converted to a juice, it goes from having about 10 times as many antioxidants as an apple to about one-tenth as much. So if wanting antioxidants, go with the fruit, not the juice. But also remember that an anti-oxidant overdose will create more health issues than it eliminates.

An apple a day won’t necessarily keep the doctor away. But chomping a Granny Smith or Honeycrisp is better for your physical and fiscal health than chugging a liquefied gumbo of gogi, noni, and açai berries.

I have a great fondness for schlocky black-and-white monster movies and have seen hundreds of them, but have yet to come across a flick called Dracula Meets Ponce de Leon. But that plot is playing out in real life, as some merchants are offering young-blood plasma transfusions that supposedly reverse or slow aging.

The FDA cautions against trying this, and if that’s inadequate incentive, your accountant advises the same. The treatment comes at $8,000 per intravenous session. The FDA states there is “no proven clinical benefit of the infusion of plasma from young donors in the prevention of conditions” that companies offering the transfusions claim to treat.

Some studies indicate that plasma transfusions may be beneficial – though that’s far from certain – but even if real, those advantages do not include arresting the aging process. Angela Chen of The Verge interviewed Michael and Irina Conboy, whose studies revealed possible benefits, but their research dealt with neither  humans nor transfusions. Meanwhile, the biotech company Alkahest is testing a plasma product on Alzheimer’s patients, but the results are still unknown and the goal is not to be eternally young. By contrast, those hawking the Fountain of Youth in plasma form transfuse patients with donations from the young and purport that the donor’s vim and vigor comes with it. But again, there has been no adequate plasma screen, so to speak.

Most research on young blood transfusions has been conducted in mice and the results are mixed. But even when the data seems promising, researchers are still unsure of the long-term results. Moreover, many times developing products look good in lab but fail to translate into human use. Along those lines, Nicole Westman wrote in Popular Science that research on rats has shown that the older ones benefit from a supply of younger blood, but most of those studies use a technique which surgically joins the circulatory systems of the animals. This means when the younger blood flows into the older animals, the rodent recipients also benefit from accessing the younger rats’ organs and systems.

Jesse Karamzin, founder of the transfusion company Ambrosia asked Inverse’s Sara Sloat, “If it works so much in mice, could it work in people as well?” However, much of the research that Karamzin is basing his optimism on was conducted by Tony Wyss-Coray, who has not endorsed the practice of trying it on people. Wyss-Coray injected mice with plasma from other mice and from people, but doesn’t see the benefits extending to human-to-human transfusions. He cites the lack of evidence it would work and he thinks it unethically raises a false hope.

By contrast, he founded Alkahest in hopes of developing drugs from plasma transfusion research instead of selling the plasma itself. The goal is to improve the quality of life as opposed to the quantity. He seeks not a Fountain of Youth but a way to conquer debilitating diseases that accompany aging.

There are two things wrong with Tomi Lahren’s claim that she represents the silent majority. Likewise, her assertion that pickle brine is loaded with health benefits is likewise fact-challenged. Lahren says she learned this through a Google search, which is the one part of her claim I can believe.

For that matter, I Googled “Nazis escaped to Mars” and got validation of that idea. But we know better than to focus solely on the source when determining a claim’s validity – no genetic fallacies on this blog – so let’s look at the evidence for the pickle brine claims that a Google search will unearth.

Some of the liquid’s supposed powers are the ability to relieve heartburn, control blood sugar, soothe Restless Leg Syndrome, and ease sunburn discomfort. But the most frequent claim is that it vanquishes cramps. However, most of these declarations are in the form of anecdotes, making them subject to post hoc reasoning. With one quasi-exception we’ll examine, none of the claims attesting to the healing propensity of pickle brine are backed by a double blind study.

When looking into this issue, one almost invariably ends up at Central Michigan University professor Kevin Miller, who has probably authored every study meant to determine if pickle brine will reduce muscle cramping. For these tests, Miller recruited fit and active college students to exercise and then drink 80 milliliters of pickle brine. He consistently finds there is never a measurable uptick in key nutrients or electrolytes one might get if chugging a sports drink.

There is one study that at first glance might seem like an outlier. This was overseen by Miller at BYU in 2010. In a hot room, 10 men bicycled for 30 minutes using one leg. They lost three percent of their body weight in sweat, enough to be considered mild hydration.

The subjects then had the big toe of their other leg electrically stimulated in order to cause cramping. Next they drank either nothing, pickle brine or deionized water, which serves as a close approximation of the dull green liquid when it comes to taste. Among those quaffing Vlasic Juice, cramps vanished in 85 seconds, which was 45 percent faster than for those who drank nothing and 37 percent faster than for those who drank the pickle placebo.

While this seems to suggest some pickle power, it really doesn’t. First, 10 persons constitutes a microscopic sample size that would tell us nothing substantial. Beyond that, Miller said it would take 25 minutes for a liquid to enter the bloodstream and quash any cramping if it had that ability. He suspects the toe pain was balanced by the unpleasant sensation in the mouth. In the Daily Beast, Tanya Basu quoted him as saying, “The vinegar or combination of vinegar and salt affected a reflex in the mouth and acted as a counterirritant.”

Even if one still clung to the BYU study as proof, many other results show the opposite. Skeptoid’s Alison Hudson found seven studies, which in totality suggest little promise for pickle brine as an elixir. She wrote, “One study concluded that drinking pickle juice after exercise did a poor job of replenishing electrolytes; another study determined that pickle juice ‘does not relieve cramps via a metabolic mechanism’; a third study suggested that swallowing the pickle juice might in some way relieve an electrically-induced cramp, but that, again, there was nothing metabolic going on.”

Since pickle brine is about 70 percent water, it would be of some rehydrating value. And if consumed in enough quantities, it might replace some lost carbohydrates and electrolytes. But this would be true of many beverages, most of which taste better than a heavy salt-and-vinegar solution that once housed hamburger condiments. In any case, there is zero evidence it assuages the litany of conditions listed in the third paragraph, regardless of what Larhen’s physician Dr. Google has to say.

Detoxing, boosting immunity, and decreasing inflammation are the trifecta of ill-defined alternative medicine gimmicks.

Only the liver and kidneys detox and if those are failing, you need the ER, not a Gwyneth Paltrow organic bean falafel.

And except in extreme cases, such as HIV positivity or late-stage cancer, immune boosting is neither possible nor desirable. In fact, it is the defining feature of autoimmune disorders such as arthritis and lupus.

Meanwhile, inflammation is blamed by some alternative medics as the cause of many diseases. This assertion comes with an accompanying claim that certain foods will prevent inflammation from ever occurring. There are a myriad of putative anti-inflammatory diets, none of them backed by empirical evidence that disease is caused by inflammation, that inflammation should necessarily be avoided, or that dietary choice would impact this.

Inflammation is unpleasant and its trademarks include redness and swelling. But in the same way that our nervous system lets us know if we’ve back into a hot pipe – giving us a temporary discomfort in exchange for avoiding long-term serious damage – inflammation promotes overall health. It is often the result of the body fending off an infection or healing an injury. Trying to halt it in such cases would likely be futile, and if one could somehow succeed, doing so would be detrimental.

Not that inflammation is always beneficial. It sometimes aggravates rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and asthma. Then there’s chronic inflammation, which accompanies a lingering illness or other long-lasting condition. But it’s crucial to understand the relationship between disease and inflammation. Inflammation does not cause a disease; Rather the disease can lead to inflammation. Inflammation can be good or bad, depending on the situation, and trying to halt it in all cases is a poor idea.  

If one is determined to try, ibuprofen is the way to go, as no foods have proven effective at decreasing inflammation. However, one can experience increased inflammation through overeating, especially after gorging on vittles high in saturated fat. After such gluttonous behavior, the body churns into overdrive as it struggles to metabolize all the munchies you’ve crammed into your pie hole while stretched on the recliner. Any such inflammation disappears after digestion. So the relationship between food and inflammation is that eating moderate portions will prevent it, other than the times where it’s the result of disease or injury, in which case it has curative properties you wouldn’t want extinguished. The key is the size of the meal, not its contents.

Some proponents of allegedly anti-inflammatory diets will blame processed foods, but this is another ill-defined term. Any change is a process, so a list of such foods would include any that are cooked, sliced, juiced, peeled, frozen, pickled, dried, sugared, fermented, dehydrated, canned, or pasteurized. As Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning put, “An uncut, unpeeled fruit or vegetable is about the only unprocessed food that it’s possible to get.”

So unless one is prepared for a diet of orange rinds and the like, the intake will include processed foods. And again, from an inflammation standpoint, as long as the portions are reasonable, a diet of cucumbers, beans, and salmon will produce the same results as one of pizza, French fries, and maple long johns. Now that’s an anti-inflammatory diet I could get into, and it would work as well as the rest.  

Most traditions this time of year are pleasant enough: Gift exchanges, The Nutcracker, eggnog. Alas, the late fall and winter months also bring an annual uptick in the common cold, although the weather only indirectly causes this. Lower temperatures don’t cause persons to catch cold, but it does prompt them to stay indoors, where they inhale stale air and spend more time next to family members, co-workers, and friends who may be housing a virus.

Meanwhile, a tradition that operates regardless of season is otherwise reputable media outlets pushing pseudoscience. The latest pitiful, predictable instance is Time boasting about Echinacea’s ability to tame the common cold. Like tales that push an even more implausible scenario of secret cancer cures, the story a herbaceous flowering plant’s cold-conquering powers confuses a multi-faceted concept with a single entity.

There are hundreds of cancer types and just as many viruses that are labeled the common cold.  It is not one illness, but scores of indistinguishable ones, each caused by a separate virus. They all impact the upper respiratory system and bring familiar maladies so they seem the same. But they are merely similar, meaning the idea of a catch-all cure is unrealistic.

In a tepid defense of the Time author, I should point out that he quoted self-described experts. This means he was accurately reporting what they said as opposed to just making up stuff himself and flinging it. Still, Time bears the ultimate responsibility for any medical misinformation appearing on its pages or website.

They should have done what Dr. Steven Novella did, which was to delve into published research on the matter. In so doing, Novella found a trio of studies, including two systemic reviews, that showed Echinacea to be of no value in speeding recovery from cold symptoms.

First, there was a 2010 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine which found cold-suffering subjects had the same results whether they received Echinacea, a placebo, or nothing. Then a 2014 review concluded that Echinacea users had no statistically significant benefit beyond what placebo poppers were experiencing. That same year, a Cochrane systemic review likewise showed that Echinacea was without benefit to cold treatment.

Despite these consistent underwhelming performances, Echinacea endures in part because proponents cherry pick and misrepresent lines in the reviews that suggest there may be some benefit. For example, the exhaustive Cochrane study contains the this sentence: “The results of individual prophylaxis trials consistently show positive (if non-significant) trends, although potential effects are of questionable clinical relevance.” Proponents pass this off as “consistent positivity,” even though the review as a whole made it clear that Echinacea has not shown to be effective at reducing cold effects. There are insignificant differences to some aspects and the review makes it clear that even that minor plus likely has no clinical relevance and is likely the result of statistical noise.

This refers to unexplained variation or randomness within a data sample. This noise is usually the result of error and this deviating data is unlikely to be replicated under the same, controlled conditions. In other words, Echinacea won’t take away your scratchy throat, make your eyes less watery, or reduce your cough’s intensity.

Proponents sometimes lean on the Appeals to Tradition and Nature Fallacies since the flowering plant was used as a sort of panacea by some 19^th Century Native American tribes. Favoring anecdotes in lieu of data is another tactic. Or they cite a poorly-documented article in a media giant that should know better.