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Carl E. Bartecchi, MD

Founding Fellow

Pueblo, Colorado, USA

Carl E. Bartecchi, MD, MACP, is a Distinguished Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his internal medicine residency at Henry Ford Hospital. He practices internal medicine in Pueblo, Colorado, where he founded, and practices part time at, a migrant worker clinic. A major activity since 1997 has been as director of the Bach Mai Hospital Project in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Dr Bartecchi is the recipient of the Ralph O. Claypoole Memorial Award and Colorado Distinguished Internist Award from the American College of Physicians.

Dr Bartecchi’s first contact with the fallacies of unscientific medicine came through encountering Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) during the Vietnam War. Later, he was disturbed by American internists’ and medical centers’ deluded embrace of scientifically unsound practices, and the effects that such beliefs were having on people in his community. Dr Bartecchi writes a regular column on health for the Pueblo Chieftain.


Selected Books:

Living Healthier and Longer — What Works, What Doesn’t (with Robert W. Schrier) (2008-2010). Given free to everyone with updates every six months that can be downloaded from his website, this book, along with it’s updates, among other subjects, tracks the problems with popular, unscientific remedies, herbs and supplements.

The Alternative Medicine Hoax (Merit Publishing International, 2000). This is intended as an antidote to the blandishments of CAM practitioners for anyone contemplating using unproven or untested treatments. Dr Bartecchi’s concisely explores the data on herbal remedies, acupuncture, and food supplements, allowing the reader to decide for himself if he is comfortable using these purported approaches.


Selected Publications:

• “[Speakout:] State ignores naturopaths’ ‘quackery,’” (with KC Atwood), Special to The Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colorado, 2005 Sep 19.

Other Notable Books:

A Doctor’s Vietnam Journal (Merriam Press, 2007). Vietnam may be the only war America ever fought, or perhaps that was ever fought, in which the soldiers added to their heroism a humanitarianism unknown in the annals of warfare. The kinds and quality of our humanitarian work in Vietnam is documented in this book. Dr Bartecchi recounts his own journey through Vietnam from the time of the French, the Japanese, and the French again, through the war up to the present day.

Soc Trang: A Vietnamese Odyssey (Rocky Mountain Writers Guild, 1980, 1983). This is the story of the “other Vietnam war,” the “war within a war.” A war not publicized. A war America was winning.



The Online Dr. Bartecchi: