Note: in the 2005 broadcast, Dr. Polevoy directs listeners to healthwatcher.net, which was the primary site at the time. That content has since migrated to QuackeryWatch.com; HealthWatcher.net now serves as a pointer for readers looking for current URLs.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz — the McGill University chemist and science broadcaster known for the Dr. Joe Show — invited Terry Polevoy back onto CJAD/CFRB in the winter of 2005 to work through three unrelated but very connected quackery stories that were all in the news at once: a Vancouver teenager calling himself Adam “Dreamhealer” who claimed to have treated rock legend Ronnie Hawkins’ cancer from a distance; ABC’s glowing hour-long segment on the Brazilian “psychic surgeon” John of God; and the Synergy/EmpowerPlus (“Pig Pills”) saga out of Alberta. The show closes with Polevoy describing an early, ugly experience with anonymous defamation on a law-school-hosted blog — a preview of years of harassment still to come.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Introduces Terry Polevoy as a Kitchener-Waterloo physician, Wayne State-educated, who became disillusioned with alternative medicine early in his career and has built a reputation “busting the quacks.”
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Recounts how Ronnie Hawkins, told by a Toronto surgeon he had inoperable, unbiopsied pancreatic cancer, was connected through a family member’s daughter to a 15- or 16-year-old calling himself Adam Dreamhealer, who claimed to heal from a distance using a photograph. A CTV documentary aired in August 2004 (Discovery Health Canada aired a similar one) with no skeptics included, and the story ran in Maclean’s, Rolling Stone, and across the Canadian press. Polevoy describes trying, unsuccessfully, to identify Dreamhealer’s real identity.
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Notes that his full transcript of the Discovery Health Channel documentary is posted on HealthWatcher.net, including segments with a California PhD in Oriental medicine and an excerpt featuring Deepak Chopra.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Raises ABC’s hour-long segment on Brazilian healer John of God, who performs invasive “surgery” on patients, and notes James Randi was given only nineteen seconds of airtime despite hours of interview with ABC producers.
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Describes Randi’s twenty-five-page rebuttal published in the Swift newsletter at randi.org, and Randi’s account of being sidelined on the segment while a physician on camera (identified as Dr. Oz) offered no skepticism.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz & Dr. Terry Polevoy: Discuss reporter John Quiñones’ own on-air “treatment” for a shoulder problem — a bloodless “invisible surgery” requiring thirty days of abstinence from meat and sex — which failed, a failure Quiñones attributed on air to not having followed the instructions.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Introduces Polevoy’s e-book Pig Pills, Incorporated: The Anatomy of an Academic and Alternative Health Fraud.
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Traces the origin of EmpowerPlus to a group of Alberta laymen, a father who had lost his wife to suicide, and an unproven analogy drawn from pig-feed behavioural symptoms. Describes the University of Lethbridge and University of Calgary researchers who became involved, the inadequate studies, the complaints filed (including his own), the U.S. and Canadian governments halting the research, a raid on the company’s Alberta headquarters, and the resulting federal lawsuit.
Caller (Mike, Hamilton): Asks about “laser glasses” a friend uses for seasonal affective disorder.
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Distinguishes the caller’s device from Irlen (tinted) lenses, which he calls a long-running scam disproven for ADHD and dyslexia claims, and notes that a genuine full-spectrum light built into the glasses could plausibly help with seasonal affective disorder — while the tint alone would not.
Dr. Terry Polevoy: Describes a University of Cincinnati law-school-hosted blog used to anonymously impersonate and defame him in connection with his California defamation lawsuit, and the two days it took to get the material removed.
Full readable transcript (lightly edited for filler words and false starts) available on request. Source audio: CJAD Dr Joe - Dreamhealer Synergy - Feb 27, 2005.mp3.
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