January 2010

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Fraser Health Authority Experiments With Modern Medicine

January 20, 2010 in Health & Medicine, Religion by askeptic | No comments

New strategy leads to the firing of 12 witch doctors

Naturally the Calgary Herald and its sister paper The Vancouver Sun are outraged. Imagine, the publicly funded Fraser Health Authority actually committing itself to modern medicine and tossing out its staff of witch doctors or spiritual care directors.

Vancouver Sun writer Douglass Todd is leading the charge against this outrage. His biography on the Vancouver Sun website states: Although he was raised in a family of staunch atheists, Douglas Todd has gone on to become one of the most decorated spirituality and ethics writers in North America. (Whew, that was close!)

His piece entitled, Spiritual care directors help keep Canada healthy, was published in the Sunday, January 17 edition of the Calgary Herald.  This seemed to be a follow up piece to Fraser Health’s firing of spiritual-care directors a step backwards, published in the Vancouver Sun on December 21. Read the rest of this entry »

Made it Through the Holidays

January 16, 2010 in Religion, Uncategorized by askeptic | 3 comments

I feel great now that I am praying for Haiti

Thanks to all who wrote wondering where I was.  I have been here, but taking a break over the holidays.

Outside of a piece concerning the Canadian Cancer Society’s recent endorsement and promotion of medical quackery, I haven’t written anything since mid December, despite having plenty to write about, courtesy of the Calgary Herald (Canada’s Largest Christian Daily).  Fortunately, most of what the Calgary Herald had to say over the holidays of concern to skeptics came in the form of trivial remarks or minor pieces. Read the rest of this entry »

How much of Canadian Cancer Society’s research budget is wasted on the terminally flaky?

January 5, 2010 in Health & Medicine by askeptic | No comments

New advertising effort promotes complimentary and alternative therapies.

The Canadian Cancer Society has undertaken a major new fund-raising campaign called Join the Fight complete with a new, very nice website at fightback.ca. The campaign was introduced through a full page ad in the  December 8, 2009 edition of the Calgary Herald. Roughly a third of the ad was dedicated to the work that is being done in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. 

Highlighting research funded by the Canadian Cancer Society, the headline read: Research team explores impact of complementary cancer treatments. The story describes the research of Dr. Marja Verhoef who readers of ASkepticRTN will recall has been involved in all sorts of CAM nonsense including the laughable Integrative Health Institute (now part of Mount Royal University).  Read the rest of this entry »