Well, the Cleveland Clinic’s foray into “integrative medicine” has come back to bite it in a big way.
The director of the Clinic’s “Wellness Institute”, Dr. Daniel Neides, is being roundly castigated for an incredibly stupid antivaccine article he wrote for the news site cleveland.com.
Excerpt:
*"Does the vaccine burden — as has been debated for years — cause autism? I don’t know and will not debate that here. What I will stand up and scream is that newborns without intact immune systems and detoxification systems are being over-burdened with PRESERVATIVES AND ADJUVANTS IN THE VACCINES”…
“Some of the vaccines have helped reduce the incidence of childhood communicable diseases, like meningitis and pneumonia. That is great news. But not at the expense of neurologic diseases like autism and ADHD increasing at alarming rates.”*
Under heavy criticism, Neides did a backflip and proclaimed his (apparently newfound) support for vaccination, and the Clinic disavowed his remarks, saying that appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.
In a classic example of crank magnetism, Neides has also said people need to “detoxify” from environmental chemicals and the dread GMOs. In another blitheringly stupid article he corrected an earlier claim he’d made that people are eating GMO wheat but noted that wheat in the food supply is “genetically modified” so it’s just a “semantic” difference. (well yes, differences between conventionally bred and genetically modified crops can be described as “semantic”, but apparently the good doctor is very confused about what both conventional plant breeding and genetic modification entail).
He also thinks that glyphosate (Roundup) causes a big laundry list of diseases including obesity, depression and Parkinson’s disease.
What a maroon.
But this is what happens when medical institutions embrace medical woo and quackery. Cleveland Clinic is in the news for all the wrong reasons.