The naturopath whistleblower: ‘It is surprisingly easy to sell snake oil’
Britt Maria Hermes was a committed practitioner in America’s multi-billion-dollar complementary medicine industry. Then she found her clinic’s herbal treatment for cancer was potentially illegal – and overnight became a highly vocal sceptic
Sometimes disillusionment creeps in one small letdown at a time. But for Britt Marie Hermes, the transition from alternative medicine practitioner to sceptic occurred over the course of a weekend.
Our main lecturer for biomedicine & pathophysiology was a naturopath, but primarily trained in conventional medicine. We heard some interesting stuff. & learned to be very critical with regard to all disciplines. However I was sceptical when a herbalist friend spoke convincingly about the type of American clinic mentioned in the article that claims to cure cancers. It's sad when people get desperate & will try anything regardless of the efficacy & cost. Over the years, I've been through I don't know how many bottles of likely useless stuff in an effort to feel better, as well as some that did help. I'd never have discovered acupuncture had my GP not failed me completely, & thank heavens for the snake oil & ducks I learned about on here!
In the US I wonder if the desperation is more about money. If you can get these probably bogus treatments for a 4 figure sum, you might be tempted to try it when the conventional treatment is 5 or 6 figures.
I've actually been surprised how reasonable the cost of self medicating is, in comparison to US price tags for private medicine.
Really strange narrative! This is a person who did a PhD in the subject. In the US I believe that is 6 years of full-time study, at least half of that independent research. She then doesn't realise a medicine she's injecting into people is not FDA approved. When she finds out, she's so shocked she spends a weekend googling and realises her whole life was a lie!
Then the final word is that she thinks eating a healthy diet and taking fish oil is the start of a slippery slope! She doesn't think anyone should do even those things.
If it gets results, it's a good deal. If not, it's rubbish. It's still Illegal, I believe, to say that something cures cancer, whether it is true or not. Much of medicine is "Quackery": statins, radiation therapy, long term PPI treatment, SSRIs - but even those things seem to work for some people some of the time.
You could tell almost exactly the same story, but substituting a person who trained in conventional medicine, then realised the toll their cancer treatments were taking on patients.
And how did we survive to the era of modern medicine - some natural medicine must have helped the human race for several million years along the way! Are not most drugs originally derived from plants or fungi that our ancestors could have had knowledge of? I know without modern medicine it would have been curtains for some of us here but surely there is some good and bad in all types of medicine conventional or otherwise. I agree cheating people with cancer out of money whilst giving them false hope with illegal treatments is reprehensible but I don’t then conclude every naturopath is a charlatan and all their medicaments are totally without value.
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Update to is it in my head
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