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Quotes about Quackery from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Placebo giving is quackery.64 It might have been quackery in the eyes of Cabot, but most physicians still felt it was a form of quackery too useful to give up. Moreover, the late-nineteenth-century narrative about "the power of suggestion" provided a new rationale for continuing to practice this "humble humbug."65 What if it were possible to think about the placebo less as a form of quackery and more as a form of suggestive psychotherapy? This was the defense of the practice offered in 1945 by Oliver Hazard Perry Pepper, a prominent Philadelphia-based physician in the interwar period." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"This is all quackery. It's ironic that the conventional medical industry designates alternative medicine as quackery when, in fact, it is these drugs, doctors and medical procedures that are all based on the quackery of transpersonation. And it's all gone beyond sanity. Today, we have hundreds of convicted rapists and sex offenders in prison being given free prescriptions for Viagra, paid for by taxpayer dollars. It's all part of the great pharmaceutical con, in which drug companies will apparently sell anything to anybody, as long as it makes them a buck." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"One panelist, a prominent historian from Emory University, who had written widely on quackery, disagreed. Moertel cannot be a quack, he asserted, because he is using the scientific method in an attempt to advance medicine. In other words, MD medicine cannot by this particular definition be considered illegitimate. Well, perhaps. In the years that have passed, we have stopped using the term "quack," except in cases of obvious fraud. Other terms, ones which do not prejudge, better describe those who practice outside the generally approved boundaries of contemporary medicine." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"All sciences have to pass through an ordeal by quackery," wrote the psychologist Hans Eysenck. "Chemistry had to slough off the fetters of alchemy. The brain sciences had to disengage themselves from the tenets of phrenology . . . Psychology and psychiatry too will have to abandon the pseudo-science of psychoanalysis . . . and undertake the arduous task of transforming their disciplines into a genuine science."57 "Psychology itself is dead," writes Michael Gaz-zaniga, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth, in The Minds Past. " - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"For example, at least one of the scientists cited in the article about the quantum nature of biological water thinks that the evidence leads scientists back to homeopathy, which has been dismissed as quackery by much of modern, Western science but has helped millions of ill people the world over. He suggests that homeopathy might be correct in its claim that water can be imprinted with information, that water has a memory.31 Homeopathic remedies are made from substances, such as minerals or plants, that are placed in a solution, usually mostly water, which is then succussed (vigorously shaken)." - Peter h. Fraser and Harry Massey, Decoding the Human Body-Field: The New Science of Information as Medicine (Get the book.)

"What if it were possible to think about the placebo less as a form of quackery and more as a form of suggestive psychotherapy? This was the defense of the practice offered in 1945 by Oliver Hazard Perry Pepper, a prominent Philadelphia-based physician in the interwar period.66 Pepper noted that so far as he knew, his was the first article on placebo use ever to appear in the published medical literature. Sometimes, he then went on, a doctor had nothing to offer except the force of his authority and the comforting rituals of his trade." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"It's ironic that the conventional medical industry designates alternative medicine as quackery when, in fact, it is these drugs, doctors and medical procedures that are all based on the quackery of transpersonation. And it's all gone beyond sanity. Today, we have hundreds of convicted rapists and sex offenders in prison being given free prescriptions for Viagra, paid for by taxpayer dollars. It's all part of the great pharmaceutical con, in which drug companies will apparently sell anything to anybody, as long as it makes them a buck." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"Then I explain how alternative medicine can slide down into quackery. The book ends with a careful look at cutting-edge research aimed to better understand debilitating symptoms and some promising treatments that are already on the horizon. My approach to illness has been shaped by my interaction with patients. So I often use patient stories to make points in the book. Rest assured that I have changed all patient names to ensure confidentiality." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"The AMA's fight to make chiropractic disre-spectable and brand it "quackery" was similarly reprehensible. "For over 12 years and with the full knowledge and support of their executive officers, the AMA paid the salaries and expenses for a team of more than a dozen medical doctors, lawyers, and support staff for the expressed purpose of conspiring [overtly and covertly] with others in medicine to first contain, and eventually, destroy the profession of chiropractic in the United States and elsewhere," writes journalist Kenny Ausubel in When Healing Becomes A Crime." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"For most practicing physicians, the material that follows is viewed with suspicion at best, quackery at worst. For healing happens despite the physician, independently of an elaborate and expensive system of treatment. Physicians want no part of the placebo effect, for it messes up their experimental designs, and worse, it undercuts their authority. The very idea of mind-body medicine lies outside the medical model. For it to be taken seriously would require a considerable reconceptualization of what is meant by the notions of health and illness. BELIEVE IT OR NOT!" - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "Use was higher among those with college incomes and higher incomes, perhaps a surprising finding, considering the labels "unscientific" or "quackery" that are often attached to these practices. The most commonly treatments were herbal medicines,7 massage, megavitamins, self-help groups, folk remedies, energy healing, and homeopathy. Alternative medicine was most often used to treat chronic conditions such as back problems, anxiety, and headaches. The authors suggest that some of the above are "more alternative," some "less." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Tom Perls: A good start to adding more good years to your life would be to get rid of the anti-aging quackery. Some people provide this very pernicious, ugly view of old people that's completely false in order to get you worried about getting older. They say they can stop—and even reverse—aging, claims which are absolutely false. You've got a bunch of people who are professing to be physicians or scientists, who are saying that they can stop or reverse the aging process. I will tell you that real scientists cannot do such a thing, so what makes the public think that these people can?" - Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest (Get the book.)

"In response to "heroic medicine" and all the quackery, the nineteenth century birthed a religious backlash that included Christian Science and the Pentecostal movement. Metaphysics was a match for heroic medicine. By the way, Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, arguing that worry could make one sick and faith could heal. Please believe me that in choosing the title of this book, I mean no obeisance to this bit of history. Homeopathy and other therapeutic movements that challenge the tenets of mainstream medicine from within or without are termed "sectarian" by the mainstream membership. " - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"There is also a considerable amount of quackery in sports nutrition, and large numbers of nutrition supplements are on the market that claim to improve performance and recovery. This chapter reviews the nutritional demands of exercise in relation to the physiological demands. It then examines strategies to improve exercise performance. Where possible, practical implications and detailed guidelines have been provided. II. ENERGY REQUIREMENTS FOR ATHLETES During exercise, the energy expenditure increases several-fold mostly as a result of skeletal muscle contraction." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"As in the US, their efforts, beginning with organization (the British Medical Association was founded in 1832, and was intended, like its US counterpart, to fight orthodox corruption and quackery alike), self-regulation and the raising of educational standards, and building on the successes of the emerging 'germ theory' did meet with considerable and growing success." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.) "Professional bodies and their individual members aggressively attacked the technique as quackery and its remaining supporters as sleazy charlatans or gullible fools. This high-handed approach sometimes backfired." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.) "Although keen to explain the mechanism of acupuncture along the most 'modern' and 'scientific' lines, and thus to protect it from the tarnish of quackery, exponents of acupuncture were even more eager to spread the practice. They took to the rapidly expanding medical press, producing both case studies of its therapeutic successes and (even more copiously) experimental reports. Both types of account circulated widely, aided by the then-common practice in European and American medical journals of reprinting 'digests' of each other's more prominent articles." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

"It's ironic that the conventional medical industry designates alternative medicine as quackery when, in fact, it is these drugs, doctors and medical procedures that are all based on the quackery of transpersonation. And it's all gone beyond sanity. Today, we have hundreds of convicted rapists and sex offenders in prison being given free prescriptions for Viagra, paid for by taxpayer dollars. It's all part of the great pharmaceutical con, in which drug companies will apparently sell anything to anybody, as long as it makes them a buck." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"On a positive note, many doctors and other health professionals are fighting back when the drug cartel hits them with accusations of quackery. The ongoing struggle between the "health freedom movement" and the "quackbusters" is covered by a newsletter entitled "Millions of Health Freedom-Fighters Newsletter." Those who are persecuted for using nondrug treatments are now fighting for the right to treat patients as they see fit!" - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"It is a form of quackery that masquerades as science. It usually operates as follows. Given the belief that there must be a disease underlying every illness, it is seductive to assume that any demonstrable coincident abnormality, or difference, is the likely culprit. The twentieth century has witnessed the extirpation of countless tonsils to protect children from pharyngitis and of many a retroverted uterus for backache before prescient judgment and then the appropriate epidemiological studies took hold." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) "By midcentury the American Medical Association held the chiropractic to be quackery and declared interactions with chiropractors on a professional level to be unethical. The chiropractic thrived nonetheless and now number around 60,000, mainly in the United States. Furthermore, the chiropractic took my guild to task in the courts, so that by 1975 the chiropractic was licensed in all states, and in 1979 the formalized prejudice of the ama was found to be illegal. "Straights" and "mixers" are licensed to perform manipulative therapies and imaging studies but not to prescribe pharmaceuticals." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"But the medical establishment deliberately chooses not to test alternative therapies in this way—thus condemning all seven components with the "quackery" label. So the only way you hear about effective alternatives is by word of mouth or anecdotal evidence. Fortunately, the effectiveness of some of these programs is so strong, that it is impossible to suppress their success. And that is why mote and more people are turning away from the failing programs of the medical community and turning to effective alternatives." - Jon Barron, Lessons from The Miracle Doctors: A Step-by-Step Guide to Optimum Health and Relief from Catastrophic Illness (Get the book.)

"It was said that washing your hands before surgery was quackery; it was said that NOT doing bloodletting was quackery Think of all the things we've done over the years that were accepted medical practices—putting leeches on people's bodies, bloodletting, taking mercury (which we now know kills you)—all common and accepted medical practices. Think of all the drugs that were commonly used that are now off the market because they have been proven to be ineffective and dangerous." - Kevin Trudeau, More Natural Cures Revealed: Previously Censored Brand Name Products That Cure Disease (Get the book.)

"A few doctors have heard about healing on raw food but have been trained by their instructors to think of it as quackery. They ask if there is any research to prove that the raw diet promotes such radical healing. This is really a catch-22 situation because no one wants to fund the expensive research that would irrefutably prove the advantages of a raw diet. Even organic farming is not a highly profitable industry unless done in high volume. No one profits from this diet except the person who employs it." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.) "To propose otherwise was tantamount to medical "quackery." In short, I discovered that an extremely crucial connection did exist and that conventional nutritional information and education were almost as flawed and unscientific as was medicine itself. Its literature has been developed primarily from questionable "research," research very often conducted as the consequence of funding from the major food processing industrial giants." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"LO From Complementary Medicine to quackery t's useful to draw lines between treatments that are beneficial, those that are not beneficial but are essentially harmless, and those that are not only useless but potentially harmful. You already know that allopathic (or Western) medicine is beneficial, even though the treatments doctors prescribe often come with the bite of unwanted and potentially dangerous side effects. Despite this cost, traditional medicine's evidence-based progress over the decades has led to fantastic results." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"Most people will scoff at the idea of the raw diet's role in healing, even relegate it to quackery rather than give up their potatoes, hamburgers, steaks, pasta, convenience foods, popcorn and the rest. Finally, the idea that one can heal oneself with natural food sounds rather simplistic. Most people think life is cruel. We are meant to suffer and fall ill. Scientists believe they must create the elixir of health in a chemical lab, and the public think they must pay huge sums of money for health care. In her book on her own raw food recovery from cancer, Dr." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"In the midst of his tirade, the author singled out 'for its bare-faced impudence' the 'Chinese pills', as exemplifying all the frauds from which the Government should be protecting its citizens: No sooner had the news of peace having been made in China reached us, then a 'most important discovery' was announced, and 'Chinese Pills' were placarded throughout the kingdom, recommended as a 'Universal remedy,' their virtues transcendently soaring above those of all other universal remedies hitherto known..." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

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