After Awhile It Just Becomes Obvious That Insolence Doesn't Really Require Respect

Poor Orac. The guy's a fucking cancer surgeon and he has to deal with the kookiest NewAge shit imaginable being rubbed in his face for shits and giggles. Seriously, if you ever thought adulthood isn't all you thought it was cracked up to be, put yourself in his shoes:

Years and years of training, study, and life-and-death experience, but more people would still rather listen to Jenny McCarthy - fucking brutal.

Hell, in relative terms, The Macho Response - a blog run by a crackhead artist with an anti-cult fetish - has more cache' than Respectful Insolence does, and RI's run by someone who can literally pull a life back from the abyss.

It shouldn't be that way. Orac should be able to speak and know the entire world is cupping it's ear to catch every word but, instead, it's TMR that's trying to advise Respectful Insolence on how to stop looking like a laughing stock every time some NewAger pops up and starts spouting off about some cult nonsense that any 5 year-old should be able to see through.

The worst though, from where we sit, is that dumb fuck, Orac, is too damned arrogant to accept the help when we offer it to him - and that arrogance is the same reason NewAgers have his type targeted for destruction to begin with. Does any of this sound familiar?

"You doctors think you know everything."

"You think you're God."

"You never listen to anyone else."

Well, if it doesn't, then you're not a doctor because even the nurses are saying it now - and many of the nurses are NewAgers, or do you think "wellness" has made it into hospitals because doctors thought it was "all that"? The NewAge has got the docs surrounded and, doing it Orac's way, there's absolutely no way out for the poor bastards:

They've got you pegged, boy-o.

Orac's latest humiliation comes courtesy of a fellow surgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's popular talking head doctor who was also almost chosen by our Cultist-In-Chief to be the country's Surgeon General.

(Dodged a bullet on that one.)

Anyway, Gupta was on television talking to Susan Casey, editor-in-chief of O Magazine - that would be the editor-in-chief of Oprah Winfrey Magazine - about a faith healer who goes by the name of John of God:



Now, rightfully, Orac got upset at all the usual stuff a typical skeptic doctor would be upset about, starting with the fact that Gupta refers to "Western" medicine, as though what Orac does is part of some separate form of science than what's practiced elsewhere in the world. Lame.

What Orac should've said was "What in the fuck is Gupta doing talking to some plant from Oprah Magazine?!?"

See, it was just last month that Orac was screaming "about how Oprah Winfrey produced a despicably credulous shill job for faith healer John of God." And it was at the beginning of this month he reminded us of how little Oprah cares about the lives of her fans. It's not like he don't know what the bitch is about. But, like so many others, he ignores what Oprah is, and what her influence means, in favor of acting like Dr. Jeff Rediger, in the Gupta clip above, professional, competent-sounding, and useless.

And by the way, what were they recently honoring Oprah for, at the Kennedy Center Honors Gala, again? Her racism? Her weight-loss tips that didn't even work on her? Spreading quackery? Promoting The Secret? Promoting NewAge "beliefs" at all? Promoting the worst president in American history? For doing all that, for so long, on American television? Well oh goody.

As The Church Lady used to say on Saturday Night Live, "Isn't that special?"

Anyway, back to Orac. He ends his Gupta post with this:

I won't be alive 100 years from now, but I'd be willing to bet that "energy healing" will not be at the forefront of medicine in 100 years. I'd even be willing to bet that it won't be at the forefront of medicine in 20 or 30 years (when I should still be alive, accident or serious illness aside). Of course, Casey threw a nice bit of misdirection in there, didn't she? After all, what John of God does is not "energy" medicine; it's faith healing. I also can't help but notice that Dr. Rediger claims that he tried to verify some of the anecdotes of people who claimed to have found healing through John of God by looking at medical records and scans, but, strangely enough, he either can't or won't produce a single example of real healing by John of God. The best he can come up with is the lame observation that this sort of research is "complicated," which implies to me that he hasn't really found a convincing case. If he had, no doubt he would have trumpeted it to anyone who would listen.

Finally, I expect people like Susan Casey and Dr. Rediger to lay down a barrage of credulous excuses for John of God. It doesn't surprise me. What I don't expect is to see someone like Dr. Gupta wrapping up his report by saying that he is "honestly not sure what to make of this" and that this is something he should see for himself. This worries me. It sounds as though Dr. Gupta is planning on taking a trip to Brazil sometime soon to visit John of God. If he exercises the same lack of skepticism that he just exercised in this interview, I expect that his report, should he do it, will be no better than the segment on John of God that Oprah Winfrey aired last month. At the very least, if Dr. Gupta plans on going through with this, I hope he talks to someone like James Randi or Joe Nickell first. He desperately needs an education.

Seriously. That's what you expect from this guy?

A doctor - in need of an education? Imagine that. There seems to be a lot of that going around.

Doctors, scientists, professors - why the entire "credentialed but not educated" class seems to be in need of being taken back to school by somebody - but who could it be?

Orac sounds as credulous about Gupta as Gupta is to the claims of John of God:

"What I don't expect is to see someone like Dr. Gupta wrapping up his report by saying that he is 'honestly not sure what to make of this' and that this is something he should see for himself."

Really? We are talking about the same Dr. Sanjay Gupta, aren't we? The goofball surgeon who believed what the Raelian U.F.O. cult was putting down? When Gupta was picked to be Surgeon General, Orac said:

Do I think Dr. Gupta is sympathetic to antivaccine views? Not at all. But he clearly does not recognize them when he sees them, and he seems tainted by the journalistic tendency to 'tell both sides' even when there is no scientific support at all to one side.

In other words, not only is Sanjay Gupta potentially anti-vaccine but he (like so many others today) is not a man but a fool - and Orac knows it. Gupta's hospital, The University of Arizona, is even on Orac's Academic Woo Aggregator, so the idea that Orac would be surprised about any position this loon holds is,...well, surprising. Well, actually, not really.

Because, of course, what Orac's missing (or more accurately, has been rejecting now for years, because we show more "humanity" than he does) is the big picture regarding The NewAge Movement. Things like how it was, nonsensically, NewAgers Oprah "John of God" Winfrey and Arianna "John-Roger" Huffington (who Orac said runs a "wretched hive of scum and quackery") that provided busses to The Daily Show's "Rally To Restore Sanity". Because we don't treat NewAge in a piecemeal fashion, people in the anti-cult business don't miss ass-backwards things like that - while, we're positive, good ol' Orac wrong-headedly approved with all his heart, merely because the rally had "sanity" in the title. Duh. Brilliant cover, right? Yea, if you're simple and checked your skepticism at the door.

So Orac's missing NewAge. Hell, Orac's even missing what he's written about it - and Sanjay Gupta - so what can one expect? He'll keep on writing about Gupta, or Oprah, or whoever, and, each time, act surprised like it's the first time he ever discovered their pushing NewAge quackery - because it probably will be the first time - all over again. Like we said:

They've got him pegged - Big Time.

The Almost Surgeon General: Now We Know Which Class He Slept Through

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta filled in as host on Larry King Live on Wednesday, six days after ending his bid to be Obama's surgeon general. Despite his medical training, he did not see fit to correct former President Bill Clinton after he repeatedly referred to human embryos as not being fertilized.

During his initial question to Clinton, Gupta referred to Clinton as “someone who studied this,” but after Clinton made his erroneous assertion the first time, Gupta only asked him if the former president had “any reservations” to stem cell research that would destroy human embryos. Clinton would go on to make this false characterization five more times in his answer to Gupta’s lone follow-up.

Gupta's interview with the former president was devoted mainly to health care reform. The brain surgeon brought up the issue of embryonic stem cell research after he observed that Clinton’s finger sometimes shook when he pointed it. When Clinton clarified that he had consulted with a doctor, who told him in wasn’t Parkinson’s Disease, Gupta asked the former president about President Obama’s decision to remove the limitations on federal funding for the embryo-killing research: “There was a federal -- an order today providing federal money for embryonic stem cell research. First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation, or are people going to come around?

--NewsBusters

We can't help but ask, when you see or hear the name Sanjay Gupta, do you at first think it’s a reference to an American Idol contestant?

Just wondering.

And Lipstick,...Being Seen As A Man, Today, Requires Lots Of Ass-Kissing With Lipstick

"You seem to be very sincere and you have courage to boldly speak a warning against true dangers of cults lurking around to devour' the undefended minds of people. I also realise that you are trying to be a protector by raising public awareness. Please do also remember that people will accept or reject your teaching by how they percieve your acceptance of them. Dr Gupta's sin, you tell me, has been to listen to and discuss the latest newly-recycled occultist Lie from people he has interviewed. His style of not immediately pouncing on their BS is not your style. But you would reach more listeners yourself if you try some of his style and not reject your listeners so quickly."

-- Traditional Guy, in a discussion with TMR's Crack Emcee, on the merits - and cultish connections - of Barack Obama's Surgeon General choice, Sanjay Gupta, in the Althouse.

"All warm and fuzzy?...it ain't gonna happen."

-- Dick Cheney, on how he'll approach discussing the merits of the Bush Administration in a final interview, with The Weekly Standard.

Now, We Wouldn't Want To Embarrass Anybody

"Appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way."

-- Paul Krugman, who seems to think Barack Obama's having a Surgeon General who opposes (what Krugman knows is) the wrong-headed and economy-breaking idea of Universal Healthcare - not one who agrees with the ideas of Raelians, wacky "alternative" medicine, or anti-vaccination nonsense - is to "get things wrong in a socially acceptable way," because everybody knows the belief in kookiness thrives on The Hill.

Here Comes The Cultism!!!! (Part II)

"In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a 'Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public.' This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

President-elect Barack Obama and former Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services) understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery."

-- The Wall Street Journal, with a pseudoscientific group quack column (wow!) written by - drumroll please:

Tupac Okra (Deepak Chopra - and yes, that's a real photo) who doesn't think TMR is aware he was a cult follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or that the Maharishi sold "natural medicines" with lead in them, or that - together - they tried to scam The Journal of American Medicine.

Can anybody say "quack"?

Andrew Weil, who doesn't think TMR is aware he "has advocated the increased use of “uncontrolled clinical observations” (a euphemism for anecdotal evidence) in evaluating non-traditional medical methods," or that he pushes pseudoscientific remedies, and used to believe in the fakery of Uri Geller.

Can anybody say "fruitloop"?

Next up is Rustum Roy - he's a homeopath. TMR will say no more. No, the truth is more like TMR can say no more - without swearing and screaming. Seriously, this clown claims "that for the first time, there have been identified some key elements of water structure that can be tested and are directly related to its effectiveness as having healthful qualities." Got that?

Turn on the tap, people.

And, finally, there's Dean Ornish (and yes, that's a real photo) who thinks TMR doesn't know "Dr. Ornish began as a devotee of an Indian guru, Sri Swami Satchidananda. He became involved with the Swami after dropping out of Rice University in 1972 in a state of suicidal depression."

Nor does he think TMR knows that Dr. Timothy N. Gorski, Associate Editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine said:

"Ornish's recommendations are not suitable for most people. The few small studies claimed to prove the worth of his work have also been questioned on scientific grounds. Dr. Richard Pasternak, director of preventive cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has said that 'There's virtually no science' in them. Dr. Robert Eckel, Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver and chairman of the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association also expressed serious doubts, as did Dr. Frank Sacks, a nutrition professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Sacks, in trying to replicate Dr. Ornish's results with a grant from the NIH, found that it was difficult to recruit patients and few could stick with the program. Fortunately, Ornish's program has been superseded by more effective forms of managing elevated blood cholesterol and the discovery of other treatable risk factors."

And don't forget there's Obama's U.F.O. guy, Sanjay Gupta, as Surgeon General. He agreed with the child molester, "Rael," below:

But not to worry.

There's absolutely no cult infiltration of the government going on with the election of Barack Obama. It's just a coincidence all these people are, specifically, Indian (where cults and cultism are rampant) or suck up to Indian ideas of health. It's just a coincidence all these people are, somehow, affiliated with wild-eyed cult ideas that go against what we know of reality. It's just a coincidence all of this is exactly the con job TMR has been warning against.

Everyone's assured TMR of that, for months now, so it must be true - it's gotta be. Sure. Let me remind you of two things. First are the words of Michael D. Coleman, Ph. D.:

"In the early 1960's [The Maharishi] claimed we would have enlightenment within 5 years if we simply meditated 20 minutes twice a day and didn't change anything else. Then in the late 60s we needed to do 'rounding', then become teachers of meditation, then become celibate, then follow a special diet, then put special oils on our bodies, take special supplements, get special massages, learn 'siddhis', practice siddhis regularly in groups, pay thousands of dollars for some pundits to perform 'yagyas,' then live in special architecture, then get 40,000 people together doing the siddhis, then pay $1,000,000 to have a 30 day course with Maharishi and get a little personal attention."

All very cost-effective.

Remember: Mr. Coleman ended up no better off for all those years of effort, and you can be sure that - once they really start this nonsense here - you won't be doing it right.

That's how it works.

In regards to all this cult foolishness, you can find TMR's second tip here, and it's probably the best advice you'll get today.

Have a good one.

Orac: Get Away From Me, Kid, You Bother Me

"I either did not see or hear about Dr. Gupta's credulous report on the Raelians. It was truly a low point for medical journalism in the last decade, and he was at the center of it.

...However, what concerns me more is that, when it comes to one of the most important threats to public health of our time, the antivaccine movement, specifically the movement that claims that vaccines cause autism, Dr. Gupta has shown a maddening tendency to straddle the fence and play both sides.

Do I think Dr. Gupta is sympathetic to antivaccine views? Not at all. But he clearly does not recognize them when he sees them, and he seems tainted by the journalistic tendency to 'tell both sides' even when there is no scientific support at all to one side. Such a tendency may have served him well as a journalist, but it would not serve the nation well in a Surgeon General, who must persuade the nation with clear, science-based arguments. Again, the Surgeon General's influence depends on his gravitas and ability to persuade, both of which he can undermine by even being perceived to give credence to cranks and quacks."

-- Orac, coming down on Sanjay Gupta (right where TMR said he would - and also revealing just how pervasive, and how much credibility, the crazy, lying, Raelian cult of U.F.O. creeps can get in America) with Respectful Insolence.

Obama's Surgeon General: Sanjay Gupta (Doh!)

O.K., Docs, here's your moment to circle the wagons:

The University of Arizona, hospital of CNN's "sexy" Sanjay Gupta, Obama's choice for Surgeon General (his crendentials are in this post's title) was found on Orac's Academic Woo Aggregator - and the web's second most anti-woo doctor** (who voted for Obama) has recently been making noises about what he's hearing, health-wise, from the president-elect - so it's clearly time to move:

I don't know what it is, but figure out what you're doing and stop this guy. It's a defense of your calling, common sense - and my black ass - so, check it, it's now or never.

**Panda Bear, M.D. is still #1 in TMR's book.