j7uy5
Posts by this author
November 18, 2009
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A meme making the
rounds in some circles is this: Prayer for Obama, Psalm
109:8. This is what is known as an imprecatory prayer,
that is, a prayer that expresses ill will toward another.
This particular bit of verse is one of the less appealing and less…
November 17, 2009
The title of this article is a little bit misleading, although not
deliberately so. The study examined the question of whether
telephonic CBT - added to pharmacotherapy - was beneficial, in a
primary care population. Note that the primary care population is
NOT the population that psychiatrists…
November 14, 2009
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">Actually, this is only good news
for coffee drinkers who also have
late-stage hepatitis C. A recent study in Hepatology showed a
possible benefit…
November 9, 2009
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">The article I am discussing in
this post is the 2008 Heinz Lehmann Award paper, published in the
open-access Canadian journal, Journal of…
November 5, 2009
The standard wisdom in management of Major Depression, is that
medication plus psychotherapy is better that either treatment
alone. Many studies have shown this. But this one does not.
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/66/11/1178?home">Cognitive
Behavioral Analysis System…
November 2, 2009
A reader sent me a link about a scam that targets MD offices. It
is a retread of
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/01/me-and-tom-delay-in-my-last-article-i.html">a
scam that I wrote about in 2004, wherein I mention that I was
targeted for this scam. The new version of the scam…
October 31, 2009
The world's largest shopping mall boasts some impressive statistics:
7.1 million square feet (659,612 square meters) of leasable
space and 890,000 square meters of total floor space; attractions,
including a roller coaster and a Venice-like canal; and over 1,500
shops, with an occupancy rate of 0.…
October 30, 2009
It's not photoshopped, and it really was for the Windows 7 launch.
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The picture was taken in Sietes, Spain, which had been decorated for an
advertisement for the event. In point of fact, the
href="http://www.spanishnews.es/20091012-tiny-spanish-village-has-the-…
October 29, 2009
In general, I try to be respectful of cultural groups, even ones that
are rather aberrant. Somehow, though, I find it exceedingly
difficult to muster any sympathy or respect for Scientology.
By now, you probably have heard that Scientologists were fined $600,00
Euros in France:
href="http://www.…
October 26, 2009
In 2007, the American Psychological Association commissioned their Task
Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.
The background is this: early in the history of mental health treatment
efforts, homosexuality was considered to be an illness.
Therefore, it was thought to be…
October 25, 2009
We used to see a lot of cartoons that portray a psychiatrist's
couch. That is not so common anymore. When we do see them,
they tend to be annoying. This is no different, because it is so
unrealistic.
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No psychiatrist would put the couch under the window like that…
October 22, 2009
The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photography competition winners have
been announced. (The spelling, Environnement, is
correct; it's a French company.) The competition is operated by
the Natural History
Museum (London) and BBC Wildlife Magazine, sponsored by Veolia
Environmental Services.
The…
October 21, 2009
I spend a lot of time working with gang kids.
One of the amusing things, is to see some of these kids strutting
around,
feeling like a million bucks, because they are so smart. In
actuality, they have IQs in the 90-100 range. But the rest of
their crew is down in the 70-80 range. Such is the…
October 19, 2009
Sometimes I think I have difficult patients. Then I saw this:
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Yes, it is a gorilla in a CT scanner. The poor animal had
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001034.htm">mastoiditis;
the scan was used prior to surgery. The surgery was…
October 16, 2009
Just goes to show how lobbying reform hasn't gone anywhere near far
enough:
href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/guest-post-bank-lobbyists-not-only-trying-to-kill-new-regulations-they-are-trying-to-weaken-existing-regulations.html">Bank
Lobbyists Are Not Only Trying to Kill NEW…
October 13, 2009
National Geographic reports on a new consequence of global climate
change: giant, mucus-like sea blobs. They've been around for a
while, actually, but now there are more of them.
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This is from the on-line article,
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009…
October 12, 2009
This is about chronic fatigue syndrome and the association with
XMRV. I apologize in advance for the provocative title, and the
subsequent gratuitous references to the Nobel Prize, but there is a
point to this.
Take a look at this summary of the "old-fashioned disease":
During the nineteenth…
October 11, 2009
The topic of neural enhancement has created controversy. This
came to wide attention in late 2007, upon the publication of various
articles in Nature, as noted by
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/12/cognitive_enhancers_in_academi.php">Shelley
Batts,
href="http://scienceblogs…
October 9, 2009
This is from an open-access article in the Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry: an article featuring a debate about the relevance of
randomized, controlled trials to clinical practice. It is mostly
about research on psychotherapy, but with some treatment of
psychopharmacology.
href="http://…
October 5, 2009
This is an odd one. A study of 5191 adults showed an
association between air pollution and attacks of acute appendicitis.
href="http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/cmaj.082068v1">Effect
of ambient air pollution on the incidence of appendicitis
CMAJ 10.1503/cmaj.082068
Published online…
October 2, 2009
This is a bad sign. Specifically, it is an instance of the mainstream media starting to hint at the truth. I take this as a sign that things are getting worse, as the effort to keep up the pretense is no longer even remotely credible.
What this article shows, is that the economic models are…
September 28, 2009
The new drug is called iloperidone; the brand name in the USA
will be Fanapt. It is yet another antipsychotic that
blocks D2 and 5HT2 receptors. Although there is no universally
accepted way of classifying drugs into families, it will be referred to
as an atypical or second-generation…
September 25, 2009
Practitioners are warned that it is astonishingly easy to make dosing
errors with the oral suspension of Tamiflu (oseltamivir).
This is a product that is mostly given to kids, although it
could be used for adults who have difficulty swallowing, or for anyone
if there is a shortage of the capsules…
September 24, 2009
A recent report refers to
the increasing number of Alzheimer patient an "emergency." Yet,
despite an enormous amount of research, and a handful of drugs, we are
not particularly close to having a robust intervention for this
condition.
Perhaps the reason is that we have been looking in the wrong…
September 21, 2009
This is kind of strange: a post about an insurance company, that has
nothing to do with health care.
href="http://www.guideone.com/">Guideone Mutual Insurance
Company recently settled a lawsuit in which religious
discrimination was alleged. This had to do with a "product"
called FaithGuard,…
September 17, 2009
The people of Obama are selling jellyfish candy. Really.
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The photo shows a diver next to a specimen of Nomura's jellyfish,
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomura%27s_jellyfish">Nemopilema
nomurai. These creatures occasionally
href="http://scienceblogs.com/…
September 15, 2009
There is an interesting parallel between the fight over rural
electrification, in 1935, and the current health insurance debate. (HT
href="http://dangerousmeta.com/site/comments/newwestnet_if_you_read_nothing_else_today/">dangerousmeta)
href="http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/…
September 14, 2009
The SEIU website makes an
href="http://www.seiu.org/2009/09/domestic-violence-victims-have-a-pre-existing-condition.php">astonishing
claim:
But, in DC and nine other states, including Arkansas,
Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, South Dakota, and…
September 9, 2009
I understand as well as anyone, that the health care finance reform
process has been dispiriting so far. Congressman Joe Wilson of
South Carolina has
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6165489/Barack-Obama-health-care-speech-Republican-calls-president-a-liar.html"…
September 8, 2009
Poets on Prozac is the short title of a book by
psychiatrist-poet Richard M. Berlin, MD. The full title is: Poets
on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process.
Berlin was an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School; now he's in private…