Accordingly,
supplement producers are putting a lot of money and resources into such efforts, and the American Association of
Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) receives extensive funding from supplement
makers to help them achieve their political goals: Emerson Ecologics, for instance, a New Hampshire-based company
that produces medically mostly worthlessnutritional supplements, have long opened their wallets
wide for the AANP. Indeed, the ties between the AANP and Emerson run deep: the
company would for instance employ Jaclyn Chasse as an executive
overseeing scientific and regulatory affairswhile she was also serving as the New Hampshire chapter
of the AANP.Nominally,
the AANP trains its board members about conflicts of interest, but given the weight they put on accountability
when it comes to medical claims, you wouldn’t really expect them to care. And
they don’t. It’s somewhat ironic: Given that they have no positive evidence for
their claims, a common tactic among naturopaths is to accuse their critics of
being shills for Big Pharma. Such ties are of course at least
as strong for naturopaths, and as opposed to real medical doctors, the claims
naturopaths make aren’t independently constrained by evidence or professional
standards: naturopaths have no incentive not to make whatever medical
claims would best serve their own interests, insofar as the health outcomes for
their victims patients aren’t affected by such concerns anyways.
But yes, Jaclyn Chasse is former president of both the New Hampshire AANP and the (general) AANP, as well as the NH Association of Naturopathic Doctors, and she is corrupt to the core. She has long been a champion for licensure, and even for such efforts taking it one step further: she wants herself and fellow quacks and frauds to be recognized as physicians, and for having laws mandating that health insurance plans pay for their services. Chasse is, of course, a graduate of the pseudo-educational institutionBastyr University, and her practice, Perfect Fertility, is dedicated to fertility, sexual health and family wellness, as well as, of course, to supplements.
Diagnosis: A thoroughly corrupt grifter – rotten to the core – something she is probably completely oblivious of (she does seem nice). And she is winning.
Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence