Thursday, April 7, 2022

#2528: Amy Beard

Amy Beard is an MD specializing in family medicine, as well as a delusional functional medicine quack who spews antivaccine misinformation on social media. According to Beard, conventional medicine focuses on treating symptoms rather than the “root cause” of disease – one wonders seriously how and where she got through medical school, since apparently she learnt nothing about conventional medicine – and those root causes are, it seems, poor dietary choices and “high toxin burdens. According to Beard, diet and toxins are “major contributors to chronic disease”, which is false.

 

Apparently she turned to the quackery that is functional medicine as a result of her own health problems; she is now “cured, after recognizing that the “root cause of my problems was a very unhappy microbiome – major dysbiosis and ‘leaky gut’” – leaky gut being an infamous fake diagnosis, and precisely the kind of thing medical crackpots can magically make disappear with expensive nonsense and quackery, since it wasn’t there in the first place.

 

Given how hard it is to get the medical licenses of quacks and frauds revoked, Beard remains licensed in Arkansas (despite some serious complaints to the Medical Board), where she has presently become one of the most aggressive and outspoken anti-COVID-19 vaccine conspiray theorists and promoters of ivermectin (but of course). “HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] and Ivermectin have helped many [according to evidence, they haven’t, but this is not about evidence], but your LIFESTYLE choices can have the greatest beneficial impact on your immune response to encounters with viruses,” says Beard, because pointing to lifestyle choices means that you can blame the people who get ill for getting so ill instead of blaming her own worthless advice. According to Beard, COVID vaccines are “mutant factories” (yes, she blames them for the emergence of new variants – that would be Geert Van den Bossche’s bullshit rants) and arguing for just getting ill and dying natural” immunity. “Before Covid, natural immunity was the BEST immunity. And it still is.” It isn’t. But even if it were, the fact that the whole point is to achieve protection without fucking dying from disease first is a detail that people like Beard tends to miss.

 

Diagnosis: Confused and self-centered conspiracy theorist. Formally, she’s qualified to give medical advice, but she demonstrates again and again that she didn’t understand anything of medschool. Utter garbage, all of it.

13 comments:

  1. Re "natural" immunity:

    I Am Not An Expert on this, but it's my understanding that the best available evidence on protection provided by infection-induced immunity vs. vaccine-induced immunity actually isn't very clear, probably differs between variants, and that for at least some variants, infection-induced ("natural") immunity probably actually is superior to vaccine-induced immunity.

    But, as you correctly point out, getting that "natural" immunity involves a significant risk of severe consequences, including hospitalization, "long Covid" syndrome, and *death*, while getting vaccine-induced immunity has very little risk.

    And, of course, you can have *both*. If you've already been infected and then get a vaccine, you get even better protection than either alone. It's not either-or, which is a very common anti-vaxx fallacy.

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    1. "infection-induced ("natural") immunity probably actually is superior to vaccine-induced immunity."

      Based on what evidence?
      Conventional medicine (ie real medicine/immunology experts) actually says otherwise.

      Delete
    2. You've neatly snipped out a fragment of a much longer sentence which had a number of qualifiers:

      "I Am Not An Expert on this, but it's my understanding that the best available evidence on protection provided by infection-induced immunity vs. vaccine-induced immunity actually isn't very clear, probably differs between variants, and that for at least some variants, infection-induced ("natural") immunity probably actually is superior to vaccine-induced immunity."

      Again, I Am Not An Expert. But, the Respectful Insolence blog post linked in the in-line link the last paragraph - "natural" immunity - discusses some of the issues, including the fact that at the time of that writing, there was legitimate debate between "real medicine/immunology experts" as to the strength and duration of infection-induced immunity vs. vaccine-induced immunity. And, again, that protection probably varies between strains.

      Just for example, this study indicates that prior infection provides stronger protection against the Delta variant than vaccination alone:

      https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_e&ACSTrackingID=USCDC_921-DM73434&ACSTrackingLabel=MMWR%20Early%20Release%20-%20Vol.%2071%2C%20January%2019%2C%202022&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM73434

      Now, of course, that's only a single study, and any single study can be suggestive but is not definitive. And it only looked at one variant. And, just to re-emphasize, vaccine + prior infection is still better than "natural" immunity alone.

      There does now seem to be a growing consensus that vaccine-induced immunity is probably generally superior to infection-induced immunity, but I don't think it's entirely clear-cut that that is the case for every variant.

      Honestly, it seems like you're trying to pick a fight with me over something I didn't actually write and don't actually believe.

      Delete
  2. Don't you hate it when legitimate medical trained people wake up and defy the criminal pharmaceutical companies? Screws things up doesn't it? At least she ought to be forced to give back the kickbacks!!

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    1. Don't you hate it when legitimate medically trained people, throw out all the science based evidence and resort to "woo" and rip off the public with their fake cures.
      They fight big pharma usually by starting their own line of garbage at 3X the price.

      Delete
  3. I didn't hear Biden accuse the Amy Beard types for price gouging during his SOTU message, but WHO? Wait for it.... It's coming....the pharmaceutical jackasses!! And that's not a conspiracy theory!

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    1. I don't argue with people like you for the same reason doctors don't give medicine to corpses.

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    2. Yes, the pharmaceutical industry is bad. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Amy Beard's deranged nonsense remains deranged nonsense regardless of issues with the pharmaceutical industry.

      Problems with the pharmaceutical industry doesn't mean that magic beans will cure you.

      At least, pharmaceutical products undergo testing for safety and efficacy in order to be approved, and the industry tend to get in trouble and lose money when they cut corners on that. Woo-meisters like Amy Beard are not accountable to anyone.

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  4. "The industry gets in trouble when they cut corners"? I'm glad to see you admit who the real problem is here!

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    1. The real problem is gullible wackos like you who believe the crap spouted by the Amy Beards of this world.

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  5. I would believe Amy before I would believe the Sackler family. Big difference in the death count!!

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    1. You don't get out much, do you?

      Delete
    2. What exactly is the reasoning here? "The Sacklers are bad, therefore I trust Amy Beard on something completely unrelated"? "Some group of people is bad; therefore I believe the random spouting of a different loon"?

      You don't really understand how reasoning works, do you?

      Delete