"A statement of fact cannot be insolent." The miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine,
quackery, science, pseudoscience, history, and pseudohistory (and anything else that interests him)
Orac is the nom de blog of a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. (Continued here, along with a DISCLAIMER that you should read before reading any medical discussions here.)
Orac's old Blog is archived at Archived Insolence.
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December 31, 2006
Category: Skepticism/critical thinking
The host of next week's Skeptics' Circle asks: What's the worst argument you can think of? I think it's as good a question to close 2006 up with as any, and certainly there have been a lot of really bad...
Posted by Orac at 2:01 PM • 22 Comments
Category: Entertainment/culture • Music
One of the great things about blogging is that I can do things that I always wanted to do but would never get hired in a million years to do, for example, to be a rock critic. Prior to blogging,...
Posted by Orac at 10:46 AM • 2 Comments
December 30, 2006
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking
It's a tragedy any time a child dies of AIDS or any other disease, but this case would not have garnered any press attention had it not been for the fact that Eliza Jane's mother, Christine Maggiore, happens to be a very high profile member of a movement that professes "skepticism" (more like outright denial, actually) that HIV causes AIDS, despite the overwhelming scientific, epidemiologic, and clinical evidence to the contrary. Based on her belief, she had refused to take antiretroviral drugs or to have Eliza Jane tested for HIV.
Posted by Orac at 6:01 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Quackery
Dean Esmay, who likes to present himself to his readers as a hard-nosed "skeptic," but is in actuality a rather credulous fellow, at least when it comes to HIV "dissidents" and seemingly not understanding why it's such a bad idea to teach "intelligent design" creationism in the science classroom in public schools, is not happy with me, not happy with me at all. On Saturday, as I was about to sit down to watch the Michigan-Ohio State game, I noticed an influx of referrals here from his blog. Given that I hadn't recalled seeing referrals here from Dean before, I checked it out his blog and, amidst a self-congratulatory tirade against bloggers who considered the Eliza Jane Scovill case a tragic example of what can happen to a child when her parents believe won't accept the science showing that HIV causes AIDS, found this comment regarding the case of Eliza Jane, the daughter of HIV denialist Christine Maggiore, who died in May and whose autopsy showed that she had AIDS-associated pneumonia:
Posted by Orac at 2:01 PM • 1 Comments
Category: Announcements • Blog housekeeping
Yes, after a week off, both from work and (mostly) from blogging, I'm back. I know I promised the occasional new material, but I found that not blogging for a week was actually a good thing and thus didn't post...
Posted by Orac at 11:16 AM • 1 Comments
While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old...
Posted by Orac at 9:01 AM • 0 Comments
December 29, 2006
Category: Announcements • Blog carnivals • Skeptics' Circle
New Years Day is almost upon us, and soon 2006 will be history. It's been a great year for the Skeptics' Circle, with some truly creative and entertaining takes on what, nearing the end of its second year of existence,...
Posted by Orac at 4:06 PM • 0 Comments
Over the weekend, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My wife and I were interested primarily in two exhibits: Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings and The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt. As you might expect, my wife was more interested in the Van Gogh exhibit, and I was more interested in the Egyptian exhibit.
Posted by Orac at 1:01 PM • 1 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Friday Woo • Medicine
While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old...
Posted by Orac at 9:16 AM • 12 Comments
December 28, 2006
Category: Alternative medicine • Autism • Medicine • Quackery
In my article, I pointed out that the vast majority of the clinical evidence indicates that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism; that there is no convincing (or even suggestive) scientific or clinical evidence that chelation therapy does anything to improve the symptoms of autism; and that giving IV EDTA was dangerous. A certain commenter infested the comments section of these two posts with impassioned defenses of a certain chelationist by the name of Dr. Rashid Buttar, a man who uses a "transdermal" form of chelation therapy to "treat" autism, posting long (and lame) justifications for why Dr. Buttar can't seem to be bothered to do some very basic tests to demonstrate that his transdermal DMPS (TD-DMPS) actually gets absorbed through the skin into the blood, much less chelates any mercury (as he claims it does), much less "cures" autism.
Posted by Orac at 6:01 PM • 4 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Holocaust denial • Medicine • Quackery
I came across something that caught my attention and made me change my mind. Fear not, however. One good thing about blogging is that I can always revisit them tomorrow or next week. And, truth be told, what caught my attention earlier today is an article that combines two of the major themes of this blog in a way I hadn't thought about before:
Posted by Orac at 12:27 PM • 5 Comments
Category: Personal
I wrote on Tuesday that this is turning into a memorable Christmas, but not for good reasons. I was intentionally vague, mainly because I didn't yet know how things would turn out and I wasn't quite ready to write about it. Now I know. I'm not sure if I'm actually ready yet, but here goes anyway. I was informed yesterday that my uncle had died the night before. It was not unexpected. In actuality, what was unexpected (to me, at least) was that he had held on so many days. That doesn't make it any less hard to take, although in a way it was a bit of a relief when the news finally came.
Posted by Orac at 8:12 AM • 3 Comments
December 27, 2006
Category: Pareidolia • Skepticism/critical thinking
Checking out pictures of the supposed apparition, I have a hard time seeing that much of a resemblance. Certainly, not having ever heard of it before or seen it before, I probably wouldn't have looked at that stain and said to myself, "Gee, that looks like the Virgin Mary." (Other things come to mind, unfortunately, which probably says more about me than I'd like to admit.) However, now that the suggestion has been planted by all the stories on the "apparition," I can see a resemblance.
Posted by Orac at 8:41 PM • 6 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking
hate spammers. On the scale of Internet scumbags, spammers rank just one notch above pedophiles (barely). When they're not busy flooding your e-mail In Box with ads for "herbal Viagra" or various pyramid schemes, they're cluttering up my blog with comment spam. Unfortunately, some spammers seem to have found a way to get around Blogger's Word Recognition feature. Normally, I just delete such spams without comment as soon as I see the e-mail notification that they have arrived. Also, if the posts to which the spam comments were added are over a month old, I usually shut down comments for them. Rarely have I considered it worth devoting precious blog space to slapping down a spammer.
Posted by Orac at 6:24 PM • 3 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Clinical trials • Medicine • Quackery
I was made aware of a most interesting study today appearing in the journal Cancer, which is the official journal of the American Cancer Society. However, I wasn't made aware of it through the journal itself, but rather through a very deceptive misrepresentation of the article. The title alone got my attention: 'Miracle' cures shown to work.
Posted by Orac at 3:21 PM • 8 Comments
Category: Medicine • Religion • Surgery
"Doctor?" I paused. I had been on my way out the door of the examining room, having completed the visit. I turned around again. "Yes." I said. Maybe I had turned around too soon after having asked if she had any more questions. "Do you believe in God?"
Posted by Orac at 12:06 PM • 3 Comments
