Shawn Centers, DO, is an anti-vaccine activist and integrative doctor who believes he can heal autism with woo. Centers is primarily known through being considered an expert when featured in the anti-vaccine propaganda film Truth about Vaccines (yes, Badger’s Law applies).
Centers is
not a nobody, though. He founded and treats his victims patients at the
Children’s Hope Center in San Diego, California, and has also appointments as clinical
professor of Pediatrics at e.g. Touro University, Lake Eire College of
Osteopathic Medicine – for most purposes, osteopaths and MDs are equivalent in
the US, but the core belief of osteopathic medicine is still woo, and Centers is one of those who
stil take that nonsense vore (such as cranial osteopathy) seriously. You should evidently
avoid Touro University if what you aim for is a real education. Centers
also considers himself a master herbalist, a master trainer of
neurolinguistic programming and Time Line Therapy (a branch of the pseudoscience
that is NLP, created by one Tad James, where focus is on charging one’s “life-energy” and preparing one for the “incredibly
powerful magic” of Huna), and an expert on essential oils and aromatic medicine. He is also a silva ultramind trainer (yes: he’s a basic psychic), founding president of the
American Academy of Pediatric Osteopathy, and a Defeat Autism Now! doctor (even Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue considers those to be quacks). He
also practices Ayurvedic medicine, for good measure.
In his practice, Centers combines these types of dubious (well: utterly ridiculous) woo with restrictive diets and use of light and sound, which he claims represent the latest innovation in neuroscience and psychoacoustic technology. This is, needless to say, incorrect, but according to Centers opens up for the possibility of billing you for woo targeted at “difficult to treat, developmental and neurological disorders including children with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, learning disorders, attention deficit disorder, asthma, autism, traumatic brain injury, and rare diseases.”
Diagnosis: Well, he’s got command of some jargon, but a closer look makes parodies of 19th century snake oil hawkers look medically sophisticated in comparison. Utter crackpottery and nonsense, given a sheen of legitimacy by shiny toys and diplomas and affiliations with dubious educational institutions (dubious insofar as they affiliate themselves with Shawn Centers).
Hat-tip: Aviva Seigler & fierceautiecom
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