Extreme bias and total lack of objectivity

Stephen Barrett aka 'quackbuster' has an agenda against pretty much everything outside the established medical industry. His group has been backed by big drug companies, has launched malicious lawsuits (all of which they have lost by the way). His bias is so conspicuous and his opinions so lacking in fact and objectivity that nothing he writes is to be believed. To attack vitamins where the cost is low, substantial benefits have been proven in trials and toxicity is virtually non-existant is ludicrous. Especially when you consider that the conventional medical industry which Barrett and his gang represent is one of the leading causes of death in the USA (over 100,000 annual deaths caused by prescribed drugs alone), it is even more laughable.

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Raving Piffle

Dr Barrett could best be described as the red-neck, white supremacist of orthodox medicine. Don't understand it? Fear it? The knee jerk reaction is the same: incite hatred against it. I wouldn't mind if Dr Barrett could at least affect to do some actual research in these areas, but on many issues he appears to be woefully ignorant. Acupuncture meridians do exist and can be mapped by "awfully scientific" MRI scanners by his "awfully scientific" cronies - or are they also quacks? He states there is no such thing as food addiction - I suggest Dr Barrett familiarises himself with Medline out checks out the copious research on GABA receptors and the various foods that bind with them. He also claims "that there is no such thing as acidity or alkalinity of the body". Goodness gracious! Where did Dr Barrett attend medical school? I learned about acid-base balance in school biology. Why do his cronies run around the ER shouting "Metabolic acidosis! IV bicarbonate, stat."?
Dr Barrett has about as much balance as a drunk newt with Merieres disease. As I said, UTTER PIFFLE!

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Zero Stars

Here are Barrett's major points, (with my comments):1/the USDA Food Guide Pyramid is all you need. (Really, then why has the pyramid been changed so many times? Have our needs as a species changed?) 2/ Following the US Dietary Guidelines will prevent all deficiencies.(By it's -own- standards, yes. Should one organization decide both the requirements -and- judge the results? The only thing that could possibly make them wrong would be for them to admit it. Not likely. It's a self-monitoring agency..not a good thing. 3/All vitamin companies are liars. (Some are, some aren't, just like any group. You're a psychiatrist, how honest did Freud turn out to be?) 4/Stress causes the symptoms that are attributed to poor diet. (A psychiatrist would think that, of course. Aside from that, says who? A 25-year-long suppressed government paper states that nutritional deficencies are the #1 cause of health problems. ) 5/Milled out B vitamins are put back with enrichment.(Sounds like adding VITAMINS to me, I thought you were against that. And how do you replace nutrients that science hasn't discovered yet?) 6/Only a few vitamins are sensitive to heat.(Only a few? I guess too few to matter?)7/Minerals are not destroyed by cooking. (Correct, but they are -altered-, and that can't be a good thing, assuming they were in the correct form in the first place.) 8/Additives aren't proven to cause problems.(Very close to proven, Doc. I don't want to die to prove it. The agencies in charge of safety don't have the time,resources, inclination, or even the legal right to check -every- ingredient thoroughly, and the synergy of combined ingredients isn't even something they -attempt- to test. The -government- must prove an ingredient is -unsafe-; it's -not- the duty of the manufacturer to prove that it -is- safe. Is -that- really safe?) 9/Fluoride is good. (There is so much detailed evidence against fluoride that I accuse any proponent of collusion with the industry.) 10/Small doses of pesticides are no problem. (How small, and who's measuring? Even if this is possibly true for the few poisons that break down quickly, it is absolutely untrue for poisons that remain intact and accumulate over one's lifetime; small now is big later. This has been proven to be an especially -deadly- lie when synergy of poisons sometimes increase their toxicity a -thousand- times over). There's plenty more, of course. I believe Barrett knows where his bread is buttered. Corporate criminals need confederates in medicine to make the machine work...Doesn't psychiatry have a bad enough reputation already? This book would be joke if it weren't so dangerous./// For a truer look at the modern world's effect on our health, read _The Hundred Year Lie_, by Randall Fitzgerald. The author is not an advocate of the typical health food products, (which are often just as filled with unlabeled additives as the 'foods' Barrett defends), but convincingly, debunks Barrett's claims for the safety of government approved additives to , and manipulations of our food supply.///

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