Andrew Weil

Weil in 2015

Against allopathy Alternative medicine

Clinically unproven

Fasting Candida Tetrasil Wilk vs. AMA The BMJ National Council Against Health Fraud

Woo-meisters

American Holistic Medical Association National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Fereydoon Batmanghelidj Ralph W. Moss Saidit Joe Rogan v - t - e

Not to be confused with mathematician Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat's last theorem. Or the mathematician responsible for the Weil conjectures, André Weil.

Dr. Andrew Weil (1942–) is a promoter of complementary alternative medicine and other such woo, though he is also a certified medical doctor (and a Brave Maverick Doctor) based in Tucson, Arizona. Most notably, he founded and directs the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, an institution promoting proven medicinal treatments alongside homeopathic and other New Age remedies.^[1] His institute, and thus he himself, was at the forefront of making the New Age movement and alternative medicine popular in the latter part of the 20^th century.^[2]

Probably the best thing that Weil ever did in his academic or professional career was as an undergraduate student. Writing for The Harvard Crimson, he exposed the misbehavior of professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, leading Harvard to fire them. Leary and Alpert had given hallucinogens to Harvard undergraduates without supervision and used the drugs to seduce the students. Alpert also piloted a small plane while he and a student were on LSD.^{[3]:232-233[4]}

Weil also has written numerous books promoting, among other things, crank dietary beliefs and so-called self-healing, and has, recently, promoted changing the scientific method for alternative medicine, in favor of so-called "uncontrolled clinical observations" over double-blind, randomized trials.^[5]

He has been the foremost advocate for establishing an American Board of Integrative Medicine, which (as an alternative medicine counterpart to the American Medical Association) would serve as an official system of board certification for people pushing alternative medicine.^[6] This is pointless because any medical provider practicing medicine proven to work is just called a doctor. Why create a board to certify people to practice things that work, and a separate board to "certify" people to practice things that don't work? What's the point in "certifying" the latter group?

Books[edit]

Weil has written forewords to a lot of books. There are the books that Weil has written as the primary author:

External links[edit]

• A Trip to Stonesville: Some Notes on Andrew Weil, M.D. (1988) by Arnold S. Relman (March 10, 2002) Quackwatch
• Andrew Weil/AAFP Article Rejected by Slate by Harriet Hall (October 30, 2012) Science-Based Medicine

References[edit]