Sysiphus Speaks

When I Google the Haffkine Institute, I find a venerable infectious diseases organization in India.

Operating since 1899, it is a solid ID institution with a long history of research and wide ranging interests in the diagnosis and treatment of infections diseases. They have dabbled in herbs and ayurvedic therapies, but mostly in vitro studies. Nothing to support a diagnosis of Clevelandclinicatosis. Until now.

Take Complementary Therapies Can Boost Survival in Cancer Patients on Medscape .

I suspect that the lead author, Moshe Frenkel, and I do not have the same understanding of reality.

The reason that the ILADS approach to Lyme is not embraced by other organizations such as IDSA is that the ILADS recommendations are not based on the best understanding of the treatment and diagnosis of Lyme and ignore or rationalize away high quality evidence.

I must say I view with some skepticism Bastyr's announcement that it will begin a Masters of Public Health degree program this coming Fall. Naturopathic doctors in particular have a well-documented aversion to immunization and studies demonstrate that their patients suffer for this. It is thus ironic that a mainstay of naturopathic education would offer a program in public health, considering the universal support for immunization among public health officials and practitioners.

Naturopathic medicine” means the discipline that includes physiotherapy, natural healing processes, [and] minor surgery and primary care and has as its objective the maintaining of the body in, or of restoring it to, a state of normal health.

Today it was announced that they are altering their approach to increase the vaccination of Oregon children.

Rather than removing all the non-medical exemptions, a new proposal would

“…would allow parents to prove their child’s immunity from a vaccine-preventable disease and to use a vaccine catch-up schedule for those not in compliance with the state-mandated plan.”

Today there was a protest in Salem, Oregon against Senate Bill 442, which has an amendment that would eliminate non-medical vaccine exemptions from Oregon's school immunization law.

The International Chiropractors Association is once again girding itself for battle with its brethren in the American Chiropractic Association over chiropractic scope of practice.

Weasel words:

Xpress attempts to be balanced in covering both mainstream and alternative therapies. As journalists, our job is to inform readers about what healing modalities are being practiced locally, not to evaluate them. Since we are not scientists, we are not in a position to judge the scientific merit of healing modalities. And some healing modalities with anecdotal support that have not yet been scientifically studied may warrant sharing with readers.

There was a recent brouhaha recently out of New York over the fact that supplements did not contain what the label indicated they should contain.

There was no there there.

This is a recurrent issue with supplements.

I worry more about what they do contain, since some supplements can have toxic metals, such as ayurvedic herbal medicine products.