I actually cited Pauling and Hoffer, both of whom have published in such journals many times.
Abram Hoffer publishes in his own journals. Medical Hypotheses and The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.
From the Medical Hypotheses website:
Medical Hypotheses takes a deliberately different approach to peer review. Most contemporary practice tends to discriminate against radical ideas that conflict with current theory and practice. Medical Hypotheses will publish radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed. Furthermore, traditional peer review can oblige authors to distort their true views to satisfy referees, and so diminish authorial responsibility and accountability. In Medical Hypotheses, the authors' responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work is paramount. The editor sees his role as a 'chooser', not a 'changer': choosing to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted.
Translation: Cranks, start your engines!
Dr. Sherry Rogers has a grand total of two (2!) papers on pubmed:
Lipoic acid as a potential first agent for protection from mycotoxins and treatment of mycotoxicosis.
Arch Environ Health. 2003 Aug;58(8):528-32.
Using organic acids to diagnose and manage recalcitrant patients.
Altern Ther Health Med. 2006 Jul-Aug;12(4):44-51
The second of these is another crank "journal", Alternative Therapy in Health and Medicine.
You seem to put a lot of faith in the authorities.
With good reason. I do primary research. I know what's involved.
Even that isn't acceptable now apparently, because the broader scientific community disagrees with them.
You bet your booties.
Any wingnut with an axe to grind can publish a "journal" or an "holistic medicine book".
Instead of looking at anything either of these people have written, you are using an appeal to authority -- "The experts disagree with them, so that should be proof enough for you too."
Lindalou, the very same could be said of your "appeal to (anecdotal) authority".
Look. I work side by side with brilliant men and women who do the sort of work discussed in this thread.
I have seen first hand the thorough vetting journal articles receive.
However, when I make a judgment call re: a paper's worth (or lack thereof), I'm not simply relying on the authority of the journal or the PI.
I know enough about issues that are being discussed to
judge for myself what has merit.
That's what I've been trained to do. That's what every scientist has been trained to do.
There is no harm in experimenting with them.
Oh. You are so very, very wrong.
From today's news.
insolence | ScienceBlogs
Naturopath guilty of malpractice
Because if you're going to make health claims and claim to treat patients, you should be held just as accountable as any physician:
A Carson City "anti-aging" doctor has pleaded guilty to malpractice for failing to diagnose an elderly patient with the cancer that ultimately killed him.
It is Dr. Frank Anthony Shallenberger's second discipline by the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners in 12 years.
Shallenberger's plea last week regarding patient David Horton's care came on the heels of the board's dismissal of another family's complaint related to Shallenberger's treatment of their sister, Ellen Gallagher, of Sacramento, who died on Labor Day 2006.
Get a load of the treatments used:
In February 2000, Horton complained to Shallenberger of rectal bleeding and abdominal pain -- symptoms of colon cancer. But the medical board complaint said Shallenberger told Horton, formerly of Carson City, that he suffered from hemorrhoids and advised him to use suppositories and take baths in witch hazel.
"At no time from the initial presentation of (Horton's) medical symptoms did he examine the patient, order a test or record in the medical records why those actions weren't taken," Cousineau said.
"If you ask a beginning medical school class what is at the top of your list for a 75-year-old man with rectal bleeding and abdominal pain, it's colon cancer," said Horton's daughter-in-law, Dr. Katherine Gundling, an internist who heads the allergy and immunology clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.
"You rule that out first and worry about the rest later," she said. "Shallenberger's treatment was unbelievable."
Here's an e mail that further illustrates my point:
Dear Health Freedom Fighters:
There is a developing story from California that involves a mother with a 17 year old child who HAD melanoma. The mother, chose to go against her allopathic (conventional) doctor's orders (to have surgery and chemotherapy) - and instead try advanced natural medicine first - since she understood that supporting the body's ability to heal is more effective than destroying it as chemotherapy does.
Not surprisingly this approach worked! This young man is now CANCER FREE!! However, the allopathic doctor is insisting that the child must have chemotheray as well as surgery, which the mother refuses to have her child undergo. Interestingly, doctor, the allopathic doctor's unnecessary treatments will be compensated by the insurer or state, while the holistic strategies that actually worked are not eligible for coverage.
The Department of Child Services was called and her son was taken away from her and put in foster care. The DCS claimed she failed to properly care for her child. Note here: the advanced methods which worked are being defined as "child abuse" while the doctor's assault (which is what we call touching someone against their will) is supported by the power of the state. Is this Health Freedom?
Next, the mother was put in jail for 5 days in maximum security and suffered injuries in the neck and arm from jailers. Her child is still in foster care, where he was forcibly vaccinated.
Here is the newspaper report of the boy in question:
FLOYD, Va. -- A 17-year-old who won a court battle against state officials who tried to force him to undergo chemotherapy for his lymphatic cancer is in remission following radiation treatments over the past year, the teen and his doctor said.
Starchild Abraham Cherrix's case spurred debate on whether the government should get involved in family medical decisions. It also led to a state law named after him that gives Virginia teenagers and their parents the right to refuse doctor-recommended treatments for life-threatening ailments.
Tests show that the sole remaining tumor in Cherrix's body -- a nickel-sized mass in his right lung -- appears to be gone, radiation oncologist Dr. Arnold Smith told The Associated Press by telephone from his clinic in Greenwood, Miss.
Cherrix is not cured, but "he is N.E.D., our abbreviation for 'no evidence of disease.' He's in a total remission," Smith said Thursday.
"There may be some microscopic tumor somewhere still there, but everything we see is gone," Smith said.
Cherrix said he understands that he is not cured. But he's full of energy and optimistic.
"I've been cancer-free four times now, but this time it looks much, much better," he told The AP on Wednesday in an interview in Floyd, the southwest Virginia mountain town where he lives with his mother and four younger siblings. They moved there in May from Chincoteague, an island across the state.
You'll note that he had chemo and radiation.
Yet, it was the quackery that cured him!
Here's what Orac has to say:
As you may recall, Abraham Cherrix is a now 17-year-old adolescent who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in late 2005. In February 2006, after a round of chemotherapy, there was still residual tumor left, after which his oncologists made a very standard recommendation in cases like this: More chemotherapy plus radiation. It was then that Abraham, then 15, in concert with his parents, decided that he wanted to pursue quackery rather than evidence-based medicine. And, showing a lot of evidence of magical thinking, he chose a doozy of a bit of quackery as well. Specifically, he chose to go to Tijuana to undergo the Hoxsey therapy, a treatment involving an herbal concoction developed by a man named Harry Hoxsey. This is a therapy supported by no good evidence and, indeed, for which there is good evidence that it doesn't work.
How likely, though, is it that this new remission that Abraham has reportedly achieved will be durable or permanent? Sadly, not very. It's possible, and I certainly hope that this is one area where I turn out to be wrong, with Abraham being one of the lucky few for whom radiation alone can take care of relapsed Hodgkin's disease, but in reality treating these new tumors as they pop up is a lot like the game of Whac-A-Mole.
Contrary to the triumphant trumpeting of this announcement by certain bloggers, no doubt to be followed by Mike Adams (who has already published articles erroneously claiming that the Cherrix case is evidence that the Hoxsey therapy "works") and other defenders of quackery weighing in today, if they haven't already ... Expect a lot of crowing about how well "alternative medicine" works (never mind that it was almost certainly the radiation that shrank Abraham's tumors to an undetectable size) and in favor of "health freedom" (in reality the "freedom" from having to listen to regulatory bodies that try to make sure, however imperfectly, that ineffective or unproven treatments are not touted as miracle cures).
Unfortunately, I could find many other equally tragic cases. Should you wish me to research others (where diet and vitamin treatments for life threatening diseases were used and resulted in death or injury) I would be more than happy to do so.
™ Version 4.2