[p2p-research] The Huffington Post: a clearing house of alt-med nonsense

[Ryan]

More vaccine and homeopathy mayhem...

Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: The Huffington Post: a clearing
house of alt-med nonsense via Skepticblog by Phil Plait on 9/29/09

I used to write for the Huffington Post, an online news and blog
collective. It was started by Arianna Huffington during the Bush Era as
a response to all the far-right online media. I didn’t agree with a lot
of what was on there — I am more centrist — but at the time I thought
it was necessary.

Then they started to promote far-left New Age nonsense, and when it
came to vaccinations, HuffPo started posting all kinds of opinions that
amounted to nothing more than out-and-out health threats. While they do
sometimes post a counter-argument, it’s still almost all alt-med, all
the time.

Here’s the latest: a doctor named Frank Lipman is telling people not to
get vaccinated against Swine Flu. Instead he says you should wash your
hands a lot, eat well, and take homeopathic medicine.

Yes, seriously. And he does it while spouting quite a few of the
standard antivax memes, like the flu won’t be that bad (maybe he should
consult with Dr. Joe Albietz, who I’m sure would disagree) and my
favorite, we don’t know how well the vaccine will work. In fact, the
vaccine for Swine Flu is based on many decades of research on how
vaccines are produced, and will certainly work better than Dr. Lipman’s
homeopathic "medicine" which we know is just plain old water, and
totally useless. I’ll note that on his own site he promotes acupuncture
and chiropractic, too.

It’s the peddling of antivax rhetoric like this that drove me from
HuffPo, and I’ve let them know why. I was a minor cog there, so I know
it made no difference… and the proof is that they still post articles
promoting procedures known to be useless. In fact, it’s worse than
that, since someone might try the homeopathic water rather than get
actual treatment.

So, as always, don’t listen to people like Lipman, or even to me when
it comes to this stuff. Instead, go to your doctor, a board-certified
and science-based doctor, and ask them about the H1N1 swine flu, and
see if they recommend getting the shot. And yes, as soon as it’s
available here I’ll get vaccinated, as will my wife and daughter. We
talked to a real doctor about it, and we understand the threat of H1N1,
and we understand what vaccines do.

Originally posted on the Bad Astronomy blog. Tip o’ the syringe to Dan
Gilbert and Richard Saunders. Note added after I wrote this: Mike’s
Weekly Skeptical Rant has also weighed in on Lipman, and Salon.com has
an article excoriating HuffPo as well.

Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Skepticblog using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your
favorite sites
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090930/ec207ed8/attachment.html>