Et tu, Cleveland Clinic?

In the rush to the intellectual bottom, it’s painful to see once respectable Cleveland Clinic is racing to the bottom. Frankly this article doesn’t just border on screed, it is one. Phenomenally stupid, but needs a quick amount of picking apart in areas that are empirically wrong.

We live in a toxic soup. There are over 80,000 chemicals used in various industries country-wide. There are over 2,000 new chemicals being introduced annually. We breathe in these chemicals through exhaust, eat them in our processed foods ( just look at the labels that have 20 or 30 ingredients and good luck pronouncing their names), textiles (clothing, bedding, furniture), and personal care products, including make-up, deodorant, shampoos, and soaps

Ok, a few things to note here. First “80,000” chemicals is a weird phrase. Is water a chemical in this sense? Also running around complaining about things you can’t pronounce is stupid as shit. “xanthan gum” looks scary but is a sugar produced by a bacteria. It’s, by all accounts, “NATURAL!” (TM). Sodium lauryl sulfate (AKA “Sodium Dodecyl sulfate or SDS) is also hard to say but has been around for literally generations now. And it’s so safe I’d use powdered SDS for cleaning in the lab without even bothering to put on gloves.

What I will stand up and scream is that newborns without intact immune systems and detoxification systems are being over-burdened with PRESERVATIVES AND ADJUVANTS IN THE VACCINES.

I’m noticing he doesn’t provide a single citation….

For those who want to dive in further, help me understand why we vaccinate newborns for hepatitis B – a sexually transmitted disease. Any exposure to this virus is unlikely to happen before our second decade of life, but we expose our precious newborns to toxic aluminum (an adjuvant in the vaccine) at one day of life.

I had to look to make sure this guy was an MD after reading this. Not only is he an MD per the article “Dr. Daniel Neides is the Medical Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute.” For someone with such education you’d think he’d know that Maternal to Child HepB transmission isn’t entirely uncommon. And since chronic HepB can be asymptomatic, merely asking the mother isn’t going to cut it. You can test for it, but that’d be pretty expensive in the long haul. (Admittedly the US rate of HepB is fairly low, especially compared to Asia, but some of that has to do with a 1990s push for vaccination, so we’re just now getting to the stage in the vaccine cycle where we could take that into account.)

And when they actually need the protection, many who have received this three-shot series in the first year of life will lack antibody protection–as immunity may not last.

This is going to shock you…but there’s no evidence for his claim here, there’s some evidence that anti-HepB antibodies go away, but that immune memory fills in the gap fine.

Backing up a bit he makes this wild claim:

As of 2010, the rate of autism in the U.S. escalated to 1 in 68 children. The deniers will simply state that we do a better job of diagnosing this “disorder”. Really? Something (s) are over-burdening our ability to detoxify, and that is when the problems begin.

Ohz? Perhaps you could tell us what that “something” is. Never mind that there are about 5 competing theories right now about the autism spike, it MUST bet what this guy says.

Honestly, this would be a shitshow for anyone not named Jenny McCarthy, for the Cleveland Clinic to put it out shows just how far medicine (and science) has fallen lately, and follows just on the heels of that horrendous PLoS post insisting that Trump voters were “morlocks.”

And people wonder why we don’t trust experts anymore.

 

UPDATE: The article linked above is now memory holed but the internet is forever. (Cached bing link.) Cleveland Clinic has released a statement denouncing their doctor that reads:

“Cleveland Clinic is fully committed to evidence-based medicine. Harmful myths and untruths about vaccinations have been scientifically debunked in rigorous ways. We completely support vaccinations to protect people, especially children who are particularly vulnerable. Our physician published his statement without authorization from Cleveland Clinic. His views do not reflect the position of Cleveland Clinic and appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.”

I’m sure he’ll be told not to publish without running it through “Marketing’s approval” first and is otherwise allowed to give his patients bad information every other day of the week.

3 comments to “Et tu, Cleveland Clinic?”
  1. I really hope that the Cleveland Clinic is separated from its “Wellness Institute” by tall fences and armed guards.

    That this physician is almost entirely ignorant of correlation and causation being different is an embarrassment.

  2. Gotta collect that sweet sweet Obamacare money. Since hipsters are now ensured under their parents plan, might as well market to them.

  3. As a resident of Cleveland, I’m frustrated that people like this are providing “care” in my area. The Cleveland Clinic and its rival, University Hospital, have sucked up all of the hospitals and most of the practices in Greater Cleveland. To live in an area the size of Greater Cleveland and have so little choice shows, iny opinion, how the quality of health care has not improved in the past eight yeats.

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