The comment about Dr. Oz is excellent. From what I can gather he is not only still a professor of thoracic surgery, but reportedly a very good one. On the other hand his show is constantly handing out woo and/or poor medical advice. And as far as I know there has been no hue and cry to have him brought before the medical board.
Doctors have made huge medical advances by going against current practice. Dr. Semmelweis, Walter Reed and Louis Pasteur come to mind. I strongly feel that she should NOT be reported, but if her patient does not buy into her “treatment” they should not be obligated to pay for something that there is no experimental based evidence that it works.
Or the patient (or patient’s family) paying large sums of money for a treatment that does nothing, thus limiting their later ability to get real treatment.
Another vote for reporting her.
That was my first thought too. I find that just sleeping on my back tends to increase the occurrence of nightmares significantly, although whether it’s sleep apnea related (most likely) or due to different blood flow to the brain than when I sleep on my front or whatever, just sleeping in a different position can change how well you sleep.
I know. We went expecting neurofeeback and got crap. We were bait-and-switched.
I guess I wasn’t clear. The small boxes on her head were attached by cables to some sort of apparatus. Some of the wires relayed readouts to a computer, but I assume others were powering an electromagnet of some sort.
You examples made huge medical advances by doing science and researching their hypotheses. This quack isn’t doing research, just offering bogus treatment for whatever reason. Science does not benefit from dubbing such people potential Semmelweises and letting them continue making money from fraud.
I know what you mean. But I feel obligated to point out that a far greater number of practitioners have made fools of themselves challenging the standard of practice of their time. Ryke Hamer, Gerson, Linus Pauling, Johanna Budwig, William Reich, Royal Rife, Hulda Clark, Nicholas Gonzalez, William Kelley, Harry Hoxsey, Lorraine Day, Deepak Chopra (talk therapy for cancer), Bernie Siegel, Stan Burzynski and Matthias Rath are a few that come to mind.
Let’s not forget Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver and Heimlich Valve, who went on to promote the Heimlich Maneuver for drowning, and later malaria therapy for cancer, Lyme disease, and HIV, despite evidence that both are dangerous.
Even an successful doctor can fall prey to quackery, and even an effective treatment can be misused.
ETA: Another vote for reporting, and well wishes for your daughter.
Well Heimlich also invented the Heimlich valve which is amazingly simple and effective. They used to have to water seal a chest tube. Also, there is a large body of science showing that high fever is associated with spontaneous regression of cancer. I am sure that using malaria will occasionally result in a cure, but will likely kill way more people than it does cure.
If you’re suggesting that being a Nobel Prize winner insulates you from later descending into quackery or other forms of nonsense, I have sad news for you.
*my personal favorite is Kary Mullis and his cosmic raccoons.