Anti-Science

Naturopath “Doctor” Gives Boy Rabies Because He’s a Werewolf

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Transcript:

Oh look, it’s that time again: time for me to remind you what a load of bullshit homeopathy is, because a “naturopath” has just told the world that she gave a child rabies.

I mean, luckily it’s homeopathic rabies, which means there are no rabies, but still. Rabies! Dr. Jen Gunter reported last week that “Doctor” Anke Zimmermann posted the following on Facebook: “Why are some kids so aggressive? Maybe they were bitten by a dog! This 4-year-old boy with sleep and behavioural problems, including aggression and violence towards school mates as well as hiding under tables and growling, improved dramatically with a remedy made from a rabid dog’s saliva.”

Let’s take this step by step. Step 1 is to verify that Dr. Anke Zimmermann is a real doctor. Spoiler alert: she’s not. She literally starts off the education section of her resume with “Dr. Zimmerman holds a yoga teacher’s diploma.” She may as well say she holds a Red Robin rewards card and is only two burgers away from free curly fries.

She apparently thinks it’s okay to call herself a doctor because she went to a the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine where they gave her a “Naturopathic Doctor’s degree,” which is something that Futurama addressed quite well.

Despite this, the province of Ontario for some reason decided that an “ND” should be able to prescribe medicine and call themselves a doctor, even though instead of learning about, oh, the effect of real drugs on the human body, they learn some made-up delusions about the magical properties of sugar water.

Real doctors would also learn that you don’t see a 4-year old who likes to hide under a table growling and decide they have a disease that needs medication. Secondly, a real doctor wouldn’t then diagnose that disease as, essentially, “werewolf disease.” Zimmermann seriously saw a 4-year old growling and being “aggressive” and decided he was doing it because he had been bitten by a dog. Not a rabid dog, mind you, but a dog that had previously been vaccinated against rabies, because in homeopathy down is up and up is down and being a dog is transmitted through saliva.

This checks out, actually, since when I was four years old I was bitten by a cat and ever since then I can only shit in boxes of sand.

I’m not taking Zimmermann out of context or misrepresenting her, here, either, and I encourage you to go read her “case study” of this kid. She literally writes, “Jonah was obviously in a dog state, a slightly rabies-flavoured dog state to be more precise.” Because he’s 4 and he enjoys acting like a dog. She then suggests that not only was this caused by a dog biting the kid when he was 2 but also there’s an epigenetic component because his father and grandfather were bitten by dogs often. That’s…that’s not how epigenetics work you guys. Maybe that family should just stay the fuck away from dogs.

So yeah, she “prescribed” rabies water (which, being homeopathic, means it was just water with a label on it that says there’s rabies in it). Amazingly, the “treatment” of rabies water didn’t actually work for the kid. After many months of taking rabies water he was still weird, probably because he’s a little kid and maybe because he should see an actual therapist who can work on helping him control his aggression and pay better attention in preschool. Instead, Zimmermann has just guaranteed that this kid is going to grow up to be a furry, and his mother probably paid a lot of money for that.

There’s so much stupidity in Zimmermann’s “case study” that I can’t even encompass it all here, so feel free to go enjoy it in its entirety. And I hope that Ontario pays attention to this case and uses it as a good excuse to maybe take another look at those laws they enacted that gave people who literally believe in werewolves the right to call themselves “doctor.”

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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