Medicine
Respectful Insolence
Category archives for Medicine
A brief fable about a pharmaceutical company for the benefit of believers in “alternative” medicine
Posted by Orac on February 20, 2013 As Josh Duhamel shills for the Burzynski Clinic, Eric Merola prepares to carpet bomb the blogosphere with nonsense
Posted by Orac on February 18, 2013 About a week and a half ago, I noted that the FDA had apparently paid every skeptic’s favorite cancer doctor who is not an oncologist, Stanislaw Burzynski, a visit, while taking notice of a particularly credulous piece of puff journalism that portrayed Dr. Burzynski as a “brave maverick doctor” fighting The Man, who (of course)…
Keep calm and carry on, Insolently.
Posted by Orac on February 16, 2013 You might have noticed that I’ve been…preoccupied. I posted a “rerun” on Thursday, and yesterday I didn’t even post at all. That doesn’t mean that I don’t check in from time to time to see what you all are doing in my absence. That’s how I saw this comment from Dangerous Bacon (cool ‘nym, BTW—I’ve…
The “pharma shill” gambit
Posted by Orac on February 14, 2013 Over the last couple of days, I’ve been discussing How “They” See “Us,” which is basically that “they” see “us” as pure evil. Well, maybe not always sheer evil, but certainly not good, and even more certainly as having ulterior motives, the most common of which is filthy pharma lucre. So it seemed appropriate, as…
Epigenetics. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Posted by Orac on February 11, 2013 Epigenetics. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. I realize I overuse that little joke, but I can’t help but think that virtually every time I see advocates of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as it’s known more commonly now, “integrative medicine” discussing epigenetics.…
An antivaccine Frankenstein strikes back against the monster he created
Posted by Orac on February 7, 2013 On the one hand, I’m seriously tempted to get out the popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show that is the internecine conflict going on in the antivaccine movement right now. On the other hand, as bizarre as it sounds, I actually do feel a bit sorry for the main combatant, Jake Crosby. He’s the…
Gary Null and Sayer Ji love me! They really love me!
Posted by Orac on February 5, 2013 Gary Null loves me! He really loves me! Well, maybe not Gary Null, but Sayer Ji. You remember Sayer Ji, don’t you? He’s the guy who runs GreenMedInfo.com who showed up on my skeptical radar when he claimed that vaccines are “transhumanism” that subverts evolution. (Seriously, you can’t make stuff like this up.) On another…
We’ll take the money you can bring us, even if you’re antivaccine
Posted by Orac on January 31, 2013 I’m sure this is a case where someone thought it was a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s an astoundingly bad idea: The Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation is bringing McCarthy to town March 2 to headline its annual Bust a Move fundraiser as a guest fitness instructor. But the actress, author and…
Dr. Oz’s journey to the Dark Side is now more than complete: It’s Oz and homeopathy versus science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on January 30, 2013 On Monday of this week, Michael Specter published an article in The New Yorker entitled THE OPERATOR: Is the most trusted doctor in America doing more harm than good? In the article, Specter expended considerable verbiage that, as I explained yesterday, was beautiful in how it let Oz reveal through his own words that (1)…
The Great and Powerful (Dr.) Oz, dissected in The New Yorker
Posted by Orac on January 29, 2013 In the beginning, medicine was religion. Indeed, if you look at the history of medicine, you’ll see that the very first physicians were virtually always religious figures in addition to their roles as healers. Indeed, in ancient Egypt, for example, the professions of priest and healer were one, and most medicine involved incantations, invocations of…
Subjecting children to enema “detoxification”
Posted by Orac on January 18, 2013 Even though I’ve been at this skeptical blogging thing, particularly about “alternative” medicine, so long (eight years now) that I think I’ve seen it all, that nothing the quacks do can shock me any more. It’s a foolish hubris, I admit, but, I hope, an understandable one after over eight years of blogging multiple times…
David Kirby’s back, and this time his anti-vaccine fear mongering induces…ennui
Posted by Orac on January 15, 2013 I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine Force, which is, of course, by definition the Dark Side. Whenever I sense such a disturbance, there are a number of possible reactions that it provokes in me. One such reaction is alarm, as when antivaccine activists say something that is just clever enough to sound plausible enough…
The story of Seán Ó’Laighin, patient of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski
Posted by Orac on January 14, 2013 Eric Merola doesn’t much like me. Actually, no one who is an apologist for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a.k.a. “Stan the Man,” who over 30 years ago unleashed antineoplastons on unsuspecting cancer patients, much likes me. It’s not surprising. As you might recall, antineoplastons are chemicals that Burzynski found in the urine of cancer patients and…
In which David Freedman criticizes health journalism and simultaneously destroys my irony meter
Posted by Orac on January 10, 2013 About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the “triumph” of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of “complementary and alternative medicine”…
Dr. Sin Hang Lee is at it again with his usual Gardasil fearmongering
Posted by Orac on January 9, 2013 Remember Dr. Sin Hang Lee? If you don’t remember Lee, maybe you remember a while back, when the antivaccine group SaneVax touted findings that it claimed were devastating to Gardasil. Specifically, they claimed that there was vaccine-derived human papilloma virus DNA in Gardasi. Ring any bells yet? And it turns out that the guy who…
A bit of QuantumMAN™ quackery at the International Consumer Electronics Show 2013
Posted by Orac on January 8, 2013 If there’s one thing about “alternative” medicine, “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or “integrative medicine” that’s always puzzled me, it’s just how gullible some practitioners must think their clients are. In some cases, they might know their customers every bit as well as a car salesman knows his clients or an author knows his readers,…
Let’s make Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski do something good for cancer patients for a change
Posted by Orac on January 7, 2013 Today’s post will be relatively brief (for an Orac post, that is). The reason is that it’s some very sad news that depresses me greatly. It’s also because I don’t want to distract too much from the announcement I’d like to highlight. About a month and a half ago, around the same time that Stanislaw…
Homeopaths swing and miss yet again…
Posted by Orac on December 31, 2012 Homeopathy amuses me. Homeopaths amuse me as well, which is why I’m resurrecting this post. It was originally published elsewhere a few years ago and somehow never crossposted here. So if it seems a bit dated, fear not; Orac hasn’t fired up his Tarial cells and managed to go back in time. Now, I realize…
Stanislaw Burzynski: “Personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy” for dummies
Posted by Orac on December 13, 2012 Note: Orac is away somewhere warm recharging his Tarial cells for further science and skepticism. In the meantime, he is rerunning some of his favorite posts. Given that the blog seems to have been infiltrated with Burzynski trolls again and Eric Merola threatens to make a sequel to the execrable movie he made about Burzynski…
NIH funding: The dreaded issue of conformity rears its ugly head again
Posted by Orac on December 10, 2012 For all the worship of “translational” research that is currently in vogue, it needs to be remembered that a robust pipeline of basic science progress upon which to base translational research and clinical trials is absolutely essential if progress in medicine is to continue. Without it, progress in SBM will slow and even grind to…
Big pharma wins a battle on off-label prescribing
Posted by Orac on December 6, 2012 There’s a phenomenon known as off-label prescribing. Basically, to prescribe something off-label is to prescribe it for an indication that is not FDA-approved but that is supported by considerable evidence. For example, it could involve using an FDA-approved drug for an indication that is not within its approval, for an unapproved age range (such as…
Fundraising for antivaccine research
Posted by Orac on November 29, 2012 If there’s one thing that antivaccine cranks tell us that has a grain of truth in it, it’s to be wary of pharmaceutical companies and their influence. Their mission is, of course, to make profits, and sometimes the search for profits can lead them to do things that are less than savory. Of course, antivaccine…
H1N1 vaccine and miscarriages: More dumpster diving in the VAERS database
Posted by Orac on November 28, 2012 Antivaccinationists just love the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database. As in love it to death. As in “can’t get enough of it.” The reason, of course, is that VAERS is a lot like an unmoderated discussion forum or, at best, a minimally moderated forum. Anyone can say anything they like. The reason is that…
One last paean to naturopathy on—where else?—The Huffington Post
Posted by Orac on November 15, 2012 It wasn’t so long ago (less than a week, actually), that I noticed what I referred to as a paean to the quackery known as naturopathy. It appeared—where else?—on that wretched hive of scum and quackery known at The Huffington Post. It was even entitled My Love Affair with Naturopathy. Not unexpectedly, this very article…
“Moneyball,” politics, and science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on November 14, 2012 Regular readers probably know that I’m into more than just science, skepticism, and promoting science-based medicine (SBM). (If they’re regular readers of my other, not-so-super-secret other project, they might also realize that they’ve seen this post before elsewhere. I had to stay out late for a work-related event and decided to tart it up and…