The Man Who Loves To Bust Quacks

No one was less surprised by the news about St. John's wort than Stephen Barrett, 67, a retired Allentown, Pa., psychiatrist who for nearly 30 years has made it his business to sniff out health-related frauds, fads, myths and fallacies. Through newsletters, books and now the World Wide Web, he has become one of America's premier debunkers of what he likes to call quackery.

Barrett long ago wrote off St. John's wort as a treatment for severe depression, posting a dispassionate analysis of the evidence for and against it on his website, www.quackwatch.com alongside similar dismissals of such nostrums...

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