Balance it with a little bit o' background on Quackwatch

1. Quackwatch founder Barrett is a fraud himself, proven in court.


http://www.canlyme.com/quackwatch.html


"Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch Exposed In Court Cases

At trial, under a heated cross-examination by Negrete, Barrett conceded that he was not a Medical Board Certified psychiatrist because he had failed the certification exam.

This was a major revelation since Barrett had provided supposed expert testimony as a psychiatrist and had testified in numerous court cases. Barrett also had said that he was a legal expert even though he had no formal legal training.

The most damning testimony before the jury, under the intense cross-examination by Negrete, was that Barrett had filed similar defamation lawsuits against almost 40 people across the country within the past few years and had not won one single one at trial.

During the course of his examination, Barrett also had to concede his ties to the AMA, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Food & Drug Administration (FDA). "

2. Quackwatch is a shadow group for the AMA created to disseminate anti-allopathic propoganda.


http://www.whale.to/a/quackwatch.html


"Quackwatch (originally Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud, Inc.) is an AMA shill that took over from the Coordinating Conference on Health Information (CCHI) and the AMA's propaganda department called the Committee on Quackery when it had to disband ref: Lisa."

More history here:http://www.quackpotwatch.org/

"The "Quackbuster Conspiracy" was started shortly after the American Medical Association (AMA) lost the court battle to the Chiropractors in a case begun in Federal court in 1976. The Federal judge ordered the AMA's covert operation shut down - and leave the Chiropractors alone. The AMA files, library, etc., ended up in Stephen Barrett's 1,800 square foot basement in Allentown, PA. "

3. Quackwatch is known to publish information without properly vetting it. One example here.


http://www.geocities.com/dragpayne/shadyside.html


"So why didn’t Dr. Barret bother to contact Dr. Steenblock concerning the technical details that underlie what is posted on
http://www.strokedoctor.com
-- as well as supportive documentation and citations from the scientific record that validates what he (Steenblock) asserts? Again, this does not reflect a very high standard of journalistic thoroughness."



Scaring people can be a power trip. Barrett has been publicly exposed as an unscrupulous person; many of the pages on the site are mishmashes of outright falsehoods and half-truths with some decent information here and there -- the overall effect is to frighten people away from therapies that they themselves control and to prop up the authority and power of MDs and pharmaceutical companies.

The bloodroot page is a great example. Those photos are horrifying and of course one would feel alarm to look at them. But if you take a step back and read the accompanying descriptions it's possible to piece together a completely different story than the one the page attempts to convey. To put it succinctly: in the wrong hands, and administered in the wrong way, the stuff can obviously be dangerous. So what's the lesson -- avoid it completely? Or find someone who knows how to use it properly as a guide?

The other point is that if you go to a surgeon to remove a melanoma, you're going to lose more than the mole -- my mother had one the diameter of a pencil eraser removed from her arm and the incision alone was five inches long -- and it had not spread at all to surrounding tissue. Remove one from the nose surgically and you'd lose at least as much as that kid in the last picture (the one with the hole in the side of his nose).

Quackwatch is also answerable to nobody. On this site, for instance, claims can be challenged. Quackwatch permits no challenges on its site. Unchecked power is extremely vulnerable to corruption. Consider how Barrett gets stroked by powerful special interest groups like the AMA, not to mention the media. Is that really a source you can trust? I sure don't.




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