But no.

Do you have anything specific to say about Salon's criticisms of Dr. Amen, or Dr. Amen's response?

Elephantman never has anything pertinent or serious to say about anything. He's a troll living in his own little fantasy world, that's why I call him Heffalump.

Your first supporter here turns out to be our own brain-damaged half-wit, Elephantman. If he is supporting you, then I know you must be a quack.

Sorry.

But whether your views on Alzheimer's are accurate or not -- and certainly many steps you suggest are good for general health -- a disturbing amount of your defense resembles those you see in pseudoscientists. You cite your credentials without responding to the specific criticism that you are not regular faculty; you refer to your book, but anyone can publish a book saying whatever they want about the references while few can publish rigorously peer-reviewed articles; you provide a blanket defense of "natural supplements" that is misleading, to say the least. You say:

Natural supplements have fewer side effects than most medications and they are significantly less expensive.

Most medications are just as "natural" as supplements; so are most poisons (Arsenic is an element -- hard to get more natural than that!). One advantage of most medications is that they are refined and delivered with considerably more precision than many natural supplements, meaning you know exactly how much you are getting. FDA studies of many herbal supplements have found frightening ranges on herbs that are potentially dangerous, that is, if you are not using homeopathic medicines, which are basically water, which means they tend to be quite astonishingly expensive for their content.

And, of course, you criticize the critics. Quackwatch may not be perfect, but it is right far more often than wrong, and is willing to examine the data. It does you no good to criticize an institution that is trying to save lives from quacks and frauds, whether you are an honest researcher or not. Challenging the data is fine. The two websites you list take a very clear view that they are persecuted by the evil -- yes, that word is used -- conspiracy of big pharma. Again, they are not convincing.

I'm not a medical doctor, and I'm no expert on Alzheimer's; but I am a scientist and a skeptic, and your response does not encourage me to believe you are an unbiased researcher. If your views are legitimate, and they may well be, then you should be doing more studies of your own and generating data that all can share and see for themselves, not marketing yourself.

I'm not calling you a quack, so don't speed-dial your lawyer. I'm just sayin'if Elephantman rushes to your side, you'd be wise to rush the other way.

This creep is essentially just running a couple diagnostic tests with vague and inconclusive results (97% of people show an "abnormality"?), appealling to the general public's ignorance of Alzheimer's, playing up their fears of falling into dementia, misleadingly stating Alzheimer is preventable, then simply prescribing a bunch of vitamin supplements.

According to its Web site, Amen Clinics charges $3,250 for a "comprehensive evaluation," which includes the patient's history, two SPECT scans, a physician consultation, and a 30-minute treatment follow-up appointment. Follow-up scans after treatment are $795 each.

You can slap a modern, well-polished scientific label on a bottle of snake oil, but it doesn't change what's in the bottle.

I'd also rather suffer a debilitating death in infirmity, than go to a graduate of the Oral Roberts School of Medicine for treatment.

At least I'll still have my dignity...

Are you kidding me? Are we talking about the "I will call you home" guy?

Science and religion don't mix, although apparently sometimes "science" and religion do. The day I find out my family doctor got his degree at ORU I'll stop by MacDonald's for weight-loss advice.

Oral Roberts? An evangelist's college? Heaven forbid.

Never mind that Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown were all founded with specific religious affiliations. Pay no attention to Boston University and Notre Dame, as well. Or Baylor for that matter. (See if your cardiologist trained at Baylor or trained under someone who was in turn trained at Baylor.)

If religion isn't Eastern, liberal and mostly elitist, it just won't play at Salon.

It was courteous of Salon to allow him Dr. Amen a response, but he acquits himself very poorly. I too have been appalled to see his infomercials tainting PBS and will contact my local stations to ask them to stop airing it. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Bush administration's stacking of the CPB board.

Which of course leads -- where else? -- to the doorstep of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The text of his address to the Detroit Branch NAACP dinner is here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/28/wright.transcript/index.html

And that speech included this assertion:

And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale's research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early '70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style. Let me help you with fifty cent words.

The rejoinder, from Dr. Janice Hale of Wayne State University in Detroit, is here:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080508/COL10/805080417/1081/COL

(Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley is an African-American, a liberal voice on a liberal newspaper, and is an ardent supporter of Obama.)

Can I hear an "Amen," brothers and sisters? Can I PLEEEEAASE hear an "Amen"?

Mr. Burton's one-line rebuttal sums it up.

It was courteous of Salon to allow him Dr. Amen a response, but he acquits himself very poorly. I too have been appalled to see his infomercials tainting PBS and will contact my local stations to ask them to stop airing it. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Bush administration's stacking of the CPB board.

-- nkennedy

Bill Moyers pollutes my local PBS affiliate much more often than Dr. Amen. Can I write to my local station manager and get them to stop airing Moyers?