A couple of years ago Chicago Tribune science reporter Trine Tsouderos published an excellent article titled "'Miracle drug' called junk science". Without going into details (read the article, it's excellent), it profiled a duo of "doctors" (Mark Geier and his son David), who went into business of treating autism with a very dangerous and unproven therapy. In a nutshell, it was an example of multi-million dollar businesses built around the "autism community", which feed on mis-information, rumors and unscientific notions about autism's causes and its treatments.
It's good to see when excellent science reporting pays off and helps bring down another source of bad medicine, this one having potential to cause real harm to children. As Chicago Tribune is reporting now, Dr. Mark Geier has had his medical license suspended.
We can only hope that this will send a clear message, not so much to the purveyors of such nonsense (they will always try to make a quick profit), but to the parents, who would be better off pursuing real and proven therapies, instead of wasting their precious resources on stuffing someone's pockets.
No comments:
Post a Comment