Britt Marie Hermes



Britt Marie Hermes (née Deegan) is a former-naturopathic doctor who rejected naturopathy and now speaks out against alternative medicine. Hermes earned her ND from Bastyr University in 2011. In 2014, Hermes reported her supervisor, Michael Uzick, to the Arizona naturopathic medicine board and the state attorney general for injecting ukrain, a drug without FDA approval, into cancer patients. As of 2017, Hermes is Ph.D. candidate in evolutionary biology at the University of Kiel in Germany.

While Hermes practiced naturopathy in Arizona, she claims to have "witnessed illegal, and other dangerous, inept, and unethical practices by licensed naturopaths." She also claims to have been counseled by a colleague to ignore wrongdoing by other colleagues.

Some of Hermes' specific criticisms of naturopathy are:
 * Naturopaths should not be allowed to call themselves "doctor" or "physician" because they do not have medical training that is comparable to medical doctors.
 * Naturopaths should be prohibited from treating children.
 * Naturopaths should not be granted medical licenses.

In July 2017, Hermes received a notice of cease and desist for alleged defamation from the lawyers of Bastyr University. The lawyers claimed that Hermes made several false statements regarding the quality of education at Bastyr University on her own blog, on Forbes and on three other websites (www.science20.com, www.kevinmd.com, and www.sciencebasedmedicine.org).

In August 2017, Hermes also received a notice of cease and desist for alleged defamation from the lawyer of naturopathic doctor Colleen Huber. Huber runs the cancer clinic "Nature Works Best Cancer Clinic" in Tempe, Arizona. Huber also is president of the non-profit charity Naturopathic Cancer Society, which according to Hermes raises donations for patients at Huber's own clinic, though Huber's lawyer has disputed this. In 2019, Hermes prevailed against Huber in the defamation lawsuit.

BrittMarieHermesFactCheck.com
In 2016, Hermes started an online petition to oppose the naturopathy lobby. Within the same year, a site simply called "Britt Marie Hermes Fact Check" popped up, purporting to "fact check" Hermes's statements. Naturally, it's in actuality a shoddy attempt to deflect her criticisms of naturopathy, based on less than stellar logic and faulty arguments.

There's not a lot of draw from, but take for example the blog's attempt to "fact check" Hermes advice to students looking to study naturopathy (spoiler alert: she thinks it's a bad idea.) In one section, the author attempts to counter the claim that naturopathy school is overpriced. They make all sorts of claims, like how supposedly most naturopaths make six figures, but most of these aren't back up by even basic citations, and naturally, some of them are flat out wrong. For example, according to O*NET, the median salary for naturopaths and their other alternative medicine ilk was $82,420, i.e. 50% of them earn $82,420 or less. Most notably, at no point does the author actually bring up the price of tuition at naturopathic schools.