Trine Tsouderos

Thanks to a $374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn't do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could...

A scientific paper embraced by many chronic fatigue syndrome patients as a ray of hope has been retracted after a tumultuous year that included allegations of data manipulation and felony charges involving stolen property against the study's lead...

On Sunday and Monday of this week, we published a series examining 12 years of spending at one of the centers at the National Institutes of Health -- the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, also known as NCCAM. Sen. Tom Harkin...

Dr. Anjum Usman, of Naperville, has been a star in the world of alternative treatments for autism for years, but now she's facing professional discipline for her approach to the frustrating disorder. In prescribing chelation, a hormone modulator and...

More than a dozen physicians involved with the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy have run into trouble with federal regulators, state medical boards and even, in some cases, the law: •Dr. L. Terry Chappell, testified at Rep. Dan Burton's 1999...

With $30 million of taxpayer money, researchers set out to conduct one of the largest studies ever of an alternative medical treatment, a controversial therapy for coronary artery disease. The project was marred with problems from beginning to end....

Clusters of children without their required vaccinations in about 200 Illinois schools are raising the chances of school-based outbreaks of serious preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough, a Tribune analysis of state data has found. The...

The journal that published a high-profile paper linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus is now investigating allegations that a figure in that report was manipulated. The appearance in Science of the 2009 paper caused an immediate sensation...

A Naperville physician featured in a 2009 Tribune investigation into alternative treatments for autism has been charged by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation with “unprofessional, unethical and/or dishonorable conduct.&...

When Dr. Jeffrey Piccirillo moved to the small college town of Grinnell, Iowa, the Joliet surgeon had been sued multiple times over allegations of malpractice, personal injury and negligence. In 2003, less than a year earlier, he had filed for bankruptcy....

REPOSTED FROM 2010: The subject presents a uniquely 21st century scenario, in which a single scientific paper drops and researchers and the disease community react in very different ways. Scientists see the paper as an invitation to question –...

Our March 17, 2011, story about XMRV, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and how they likely aren't linked in the way many CFS sufferers had hoped, offers a cautionary tale about putting too much stake in a single scientific paper. Every week, many medical...