#2663: Jaclyn Chasse

Naturopathy is worthless bullshit, and may of the medical claims naturopaths make are based, at best(?), on pseudoscience. But there are other ways of gaining a sheen of legitimacy than through science and evidence, and – given that they can’t gain validation through science and evidence – a favored naturopathic tactic to achieve such a sheen of legitimacy is legislative alchemy: try to persuade sympathetic (or non-knowledgeable) legislators to introduce bills to license naturopaths and give the woo a legislative stamp of approval; and if naturopathic organizations fail once, they can of course just try again and again. And they have allies: altmed pracititioners tend to rely heavy on worthless supplements, and producers of such supplements are accordingly very much interested in naturopaths being successful in their political efforts (and gain access Medicare refunds).

Accordingly, supplement producers are putting a lot of money and resources into such efforts, and the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) receives extensive funding from supplement makers to help them achieve their political goals: Emerson Ecologics, for instance, a New Hampshire-based company that produces medically mostly worthless nutritional supplements, have long opened their wallets wide for the AANP. Indeed, the ties between the AANP and Emerson run deep: the company would for instance employ Jaclyn Chasse as an executive overseeing scientific and regulatory affairs while she was also serving as the New Hampshire chapter of the AANP. Nominally, the AANP trains its board members about conflicts of interest, but given the weight they put on accountability when it comes to medical claims, you wouldn’t really expect them to care. And they don’t. It’s somewhat ironic: Given that they have no positive evidence for their claims, a common tactic among naturopaths is to accuse their critics of being shills for Big Pharma. Such ties are of course at least as strong for naturopaths, and as opposed to real medical doctors, the claims naturopaths make aren’t independently constrained by evidence or professional standards: naturopaths have no incentive not to make whatever medical claims would best serve their own interests, insofar as the health outcomes for their victims patients aren’t affected by such concerns anyways.

 

But yes, Jaclyn Chasse is former president of both the New Hampshire AANP and the (general) AANP, as well as the NH Association of Naturopathic Doctors, and she is corrupt to the core. She has long been a champion for licensure, and even for such efforts taking it one step further: she wants herself and fellow quacks and frauds to be recognized as physicians, and for having laws mandating that health insurance plans pay for their services. Chasse is, of course, a graduate of the pseudo-educational institution Bastyr University, and her practice, Perfect Fertility, is dedicated to fertility, sexual health and family wellness, as well as, of course, to supplements.

 

Diagnosis: A thoroughly corrupt grifter – rotten to the core – something she is probably completely oblivious of (she does seem nice). And she is winning.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence