The Frauds of Alternative Medicine and The Corruption of Natural News

Written by Thomas Corriher Saturday, 08 August 2009 01:14

We respect Mike Adams (.a.k.a. "The Health Ranger").  He founded the Natural News website.  We have quoted him several times in the past, and feel that he has earned for himself a permanent place of honor in the world of naturopathic medicine.  Years ago, Natural News was easily one of the flagship sites in the health information war.  Mike was one of the good guys crusading on duel missions of spreading health truth, and saving lives from the legalized drug cartel.  We have little doubt that he is still the same good guy, and we have never had anything except admiration for what he has done.

Unfortunately, Mike recently made some serious mistakes, which are already marginalizing all that he accomplished in the past 5 years.  One of the great flagships for truthful health information, Natural News, is taking on water fast.  It is a great tragedy for which we mourn.  Mike made a fatal mistake that many great leaders of the past have.  He allowed himself to be surrounded by fools.

Take for instance the recent article, Oil Pulling is a Simple, Inexpensive Method to Improve Your Health. This ranks with magnet therapy and urine therapy.  If you do not know about the latter one, then be advised that you really do not want to know.

Anyway, the following quote should speak for itself.

"How do we break the inflammation cycle and encourage the body to operate at a heightened level of efficiency? Ayurvedic practitioners employ oil pulling as a simple, but powerful means to encourage the body in this process. By swishing sesame oil in one's mouth, first thing in the morning, one stimulates the digestive system as well as the blood to cleanse and feed cells of the various organs. In this way, the stress that inflammation places on these organs decreases."

Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that holding oil in one's mouth, in order to be absorbed directly into the bloodstream, has any positive effects.  We do know with certainty that excessive amounts of fatty acids are not only harmful, but ultimately deadly in the long term.  Talk about cholesterol!  The recommendation goes well beyond fraudulent.  It is recklessly irresponsible, and potentially has fatal results in select individuals.  Transdermal oil absorption through the mouth tissues is just one step away from them being directly injected into the bloodstream, where they are already well-known to have disastrous effects.

The evidence?  They cited that it was a practice used by ancient Indian doctors.  The same ones who practiced "medicine" with urine therapy and sun gazing ― you know ― since these things improve health so much.  If you are one of the few people foolish enough to believe in their practices, then an ice cold glass of urine is just what the doctor ordered.

I feel so tempted to rant more about Ayurvedic "medicine", but perhaps I should not even go there.  The quote was from one of the new experts who is writing for Natural News, and it actually appeared in one of their official public articles.  These new writers look really, really bad for the reputation of Natural News, and ultimately for Mike Adams himself, through his unfortunate association.  There is surely a moral lesson here about the need to carefully discriminate in who we associate ourselves with.

Alternative medicine has such powerful enemies that its only hope is that there be sources of information that are credible, verifiable, reputable, and reliable.  Natural News was the only other site that we could recommend to people in good faith, and now we can longer do that.  It looks like we're 'it', although we would love to learn of other sites like ours.  Meanwhile, we will do our best to take up the slack.