Sunday, January 11, 2015

#1257: David Williams


David Williams is a chiropractor who runs the Alternatives newsletter (not atrustworthy source for medical information, to put things diplomatically). According to himself he has “developed a reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on natural healing,” and “has personally identified 27 major medical breakthroughs that he’s used to formulate health remedies, therapies and supplements that address the root cause of illness.” Needless to say, these breakthroughs are characterized by a dearth of evidence supporting them, but I suppose real doctors are close-minded when they fail to take Williams’s claims at face value (insofar as the claims seem obvious to Williams himself). For instance, according to his bio, “he was the first to announce the now-famous method of using shark cartilage to reverse the effects of terminal tumorous cancer.” The method is famous, of course, since it has led to the endangerment of several shark species. It has absolutely no effect on cancer.

According to his bio, Williams is not only “America’s #1 expert in natural healing;” he’s “the ‘Indiana Jones’ of natural medicine,” meaning, apparently, that he travels around the world to locate new strains of unsubstantiated woo. And there is hardly a branch of woo that is too ridiculous for Alternatives, at least as long as it involves something that is natural (the classification of a cure as natural or not is apparently based on Williams’s intuitions) and can be connected to a product that Williams is marketing. Said products are marketed the way products are marketed by spammers (it’s secret, it’s revolutionary, and big pharma doesn’t want you to know about it).

Diagnosis: The pseudoscience is strong with this one, and it gives him a certain power over the weak of mind. A good reason to maintain a healthy distance.

1 comment: