Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EMS) is a fake diagnosis, and that assessment is not controversial among those who have actually studied, measured or bothered to investigate the issue: evidence “robustly” dispels the connection between WiFi and symptoms of ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity’. As an illustration, patients in provocation studies remains unable to tell when they are being exposed to radiofrequency emissions, and they report the same symptoms regardless of whether the electromagnetic frequency-emitting devices are turned on or off; there is also the infamous Northern Ireland case where protesters demanded the removal of an iBurst tower citing health impacts, unaware that the tower had been switched off during the period when they claimed it was causing symptoms.
Nevertheless, a lot of people continue to believe and claim that they suffer from EMS, and there are plenty of grifters and deluded professionals out there to affirm these people and their stories; and they do of course, have access to pseudoscientific pseudostudies claiming to find connections through flagrant methodological flaws and/or deliberately shoddy study designs. Entirely predictably, there is noise, and there are court cases. For instance, in 2013, parents of 12-year-old boy filed a lawsuit against the Fay School in Massachusetts, alleging that the school violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to make accommodations to protect the boy from “extremely high levels of radiofrequency/microwave radiations”; the boy, according to the parents, suffered from EMS.
That case was of course dismissed but in their efforts, the parents recruited the help of Jeanne Hubbuch, MD, who ‘confirmed’ the boy’s alleged diagnosis, wrote letters to the school, and submitted a declaration in support of the suit. Of course, Hubbuch’s testimony was ultimately excluded by the court because she arrived at the fake diagnosis without bothering to consider other environmental factors that might have been in play, but Hubbuch is a typical specimen of the kinds of deluded professionals we mentioned above: the kind of pseudoscience- and conspiracy-oriented crackpots with real credentials but whose misguided efforts, though probably well-meaning, contribute to making the world a worse place to be. Hubbuch claims to be “board-certified in family practice and environmental medicine,” but the “certification in environmental medicine” is from the American Board of Environmental Medicine, which is not a recognized specialty board. She also practices “integrative”, “functional”, “biologic”, as well as orthomolecular medicine, and she “deals with the underlying causes instead of symptoms of a disease”. And if that last claim comes with certain connotations, then yes: Hubbuch does indeed practice homeopathy – the treatments listed on her website include “complex homeopathy” for cancer support in addition, for good measure, to chelation therapy. She also recommends alkaline diets, and her diagnostic tools include live cell analysis. Really, if there is a treatment that smacks of hokum, quackery or pseudoscience, Hubbuch will employ it.
In addition to being a member of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, Hubbuch is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), an aggressive organization dedicated to popularizing the fake diagnosis of “chronic Lyme”, which we have also had several opportunities to cover before (yes, fake diagnoses seems to be a bit of a specialty for Hubbuch).
Diagnosis: There are many of these, and we tend to catch them first when their antics are starting to have easily noticeable consequences. But even we struggle to find many of examples of genuine MDs with fewer scruples with regard to the employment of quackery and pseudoscience than Jeanne Hubbuch. She has no limits, and no standards, and she has long since moved beyond the point where stupidity turns into malice. A horrible person causing real harm to her surroundings.