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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. RL0919 (talk) 19:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lipid therapy

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Lipid therapy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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This seems to be a hoax. While there are various medical techniques referred to as lipid therapy (e.g. lipid rescue, drug therapy for cholesterol management, and some quack cancer treatment), there is no such thing as a controversial medical technique that entails the injection and expulsion of fats and lipids, which proponents claim can improve cognitive and memory function. The article claims that it is popular with celebrities and has drawn scrutiny from the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, but no sources are provided to support these assertions, nor can they be found.

The medical claims in the article are nonsensical, e.g., lipid therapy can be easily discerned by the painful pressure in the thoracic cavity engendered by the sudden dip in plasma viscosity. Globules of lipid polymers also produce a significant shear strain on capillaries, causing the skin to pale and the tongue to swell. Content like Since most toxins in the body are fat soluble (according to practitioners), this causes the patient to defecate a translucent slime seems like childish potty humour.

The cited sources don't contain any references to this technique according to Google books previews: [1], [2], [3]; the last source is about lipid rescue. There are no results for "therapeutic lipovenous injection" outside of Wikipedia mirrors and no relevant results for searches like "lipid therapy" +celebrity, "lipid therapy" +pseudoscience, etc. I found 2 references to it on blog sites: [4], [5], but the wording of these posts makes it clear that they're just cribbing from the Wikipedia article. I was tempted to tag this for G3, but since the article has been around since 2008 and the title is hard to search for I decided to bring it here. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 16:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 16:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per analysis from nom. While there are a number of medical practices or treatments referred to as "lipid therapy" or something similar, none of them appear to have anything to do with the claimed procedures in this article. Either this is indeed a hoax, or something so minor that nothing was written about it. Either way, it can be deleted. Rorshacma (talk) 17:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I'm not quite sure this is a hoax per se. I think this is quackery, taking the legitimate use of lipid emulsion as a treatment for fat-soluble drug overdoses, and wrapping that up in the "purge the toxins" fetish. But in any case, there aren't really any sources evident, and even if we happen to dredge up a couple, this would certainly run afoul of WP:FRINGE besides. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:15, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Does not appear to exist, not even as a quackery treatment. I find it a bit odd that these two blogs put so much work into paraphrasing this, but they do indeed seem to just be paraphrasing this article. The fake bibliography is sneaky. If confirmed, this would be the 11th longest living hoax here. – Thjarkur (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was going to say that the half-life of quackery websites is generally quite short, so there's a real reason to suspect that the web presence of one fringe treatment or another might have evaporated since the 2008 article creation. But on the other hand, the article creator's editing pattern (ten trivial edits to innocuous topics, then this article creation, a couple userboxes, and out) is one not unusual for people sneaking in wholly fabricated content. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I suppose. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:39, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The other thing that makes me suspect it's a hoax is that the article doesn't seem to be promoting the quackery. Its talk of "slimy discharge" and "questionable documentation on their acquisition of the animal fat" is rather offputting. It really reads like someone making up something gross as a joke. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 17:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, that was my impression, too — it reads a bit like someone inventing a gross "treatment" that celebrities would faddishly go in for. I wonder if fabricated bibliographies (books that sound like they're relevant, etc.) are common for long-lived hoaxes. Anecdotally, I can recall a couple instances, but I'm not sure if anyone has looked into that tactic systematically. XOR'easter (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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