Medicine
oracknows | October 13, 2015When last I discussed the cruel sham that is the tide of "right-to-try" laws that has been flowing through state legislatures to become law over the last year and a half. "Right-to-try" laws, as I pointed out when I first noted the earliest ones being promoted in Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, and Missouri, referring to them as Dallas Buyers Club bills based on their seeming inspiration from that movie and pointing out how they are very, very bad policy that, contrary to the claims of its proponents, are far more likely to harm patients than help them. In every state in which such bills have…
oracknows | October 7, 2015Earlier this week, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Youyou Tu for her discovery of the anti-malaria compound Artemisinin, as well as to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their discovery of a novel therapy for roundworm. Artemisinin, as some of you might know, is a compound derived from traditional Chinese medicine, which is why, to my irritation, it didn't take long for headlines like How traditional Chinese medicine finally won its Nobel Prize, What the 2015 Nobel Prizes mean for traditional Chinese medicine, and A Medical Breakthrough Made Possible By Ancient…
oracknows | September 29, 2015I've spent a lot of time in Cleveland. Indeed, I lived there for eight years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time I completed my surgery residency training, completed my PhD, and, even more importantly, met and married my wife. Even though I haven't lived there for nearly 20 years—I can't believe it's been that long—I still have an affinity for the city, which is perhaps why I've had a tendency to come down hard on venerable Cleveland medical institutions that turn to quackademic medicine, one where I trained (I'm talking to you, University Hospitals of Cleveland) and one…
oracknows | September 25, 2015Yesterday, I wrote about how pediatric neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson is an excellent example demonstrating how the vast majority of physicians and surgeons, even highly accomplished ones admired as being at the top of their professions, are not scientists and how many of them are disturbingly prone to buying into pseudoscience. In Dr. Carson's case, that tendency to believe in pseudoscience derives from his fundamentalist religion that led him to reject evolution and accept arguments against evolution every bit as ignorant as the ones Kent Hovind or Ken Ham serves up…
oracknows | September 23, 2015Our military veterans deserve the best medical care our nation can offer. Actually, I'd say they're owed it, actually. After all, many of them put themselves in harm's way for this country. Others have suffered grievous injury with permanent sequelae. Still others have paid the ultimate price. For those who served, the least we as a nation should be expected to provide, to me at least, is high quality medical care, particularly for service-related injuries and illnesses. Unfortunately, besides the usual problems of inadequate resources devoted to veteran care, other forces are conspiring to…
oracknows | September 22, 2015Antivaccine quackery is arguably one of the worst forms of quackery. First, the pseudoscientific beliefs undergirding such quackery are based on the fear and demonization of one of the greatest medical advances in the history of the human race, the result of which are children left unprotected against preventable diseases that routinely used to populate cemeteries with little bodies. Almost as bad, one of those beliefs, namely the scientifically discredited belief that vaccines cause autism, has led to a cottage industry of quack "treatments" based on the idea that autism is a manifestation…
oracknows | September 20, 2015Ever since late June, I've been intermittently taking note of a new conspiracy theory in the alternative medicine world. It began when notorious autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, one of the longest practicing, most prominent purveyors of the scientifically discredited notion that vaccines cause autism, was found dead in a North Carolina river on June 19. The police rapidly concluded that he had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. It was impossible not to note that the FDA had raided his clinic a few days before, and it later came out that it was due to his use of and unproven…
oracknows | September 16, 2015Regular readers of this blog will find it no surprise that I don't think much of Dr. Mehmet Oz. The reason, of course, is that his daily television show, The Dr. Oz Show, has been a font of misinformation about medicine almost since it began airing six years ago. It's not for nothing that I long ago labeled him "America's Quack." Simply searching for the name Mehmet Oz on this blog will quickly produce examples of the many times when he's credulously promoted quackery and pseudoscience such as homeopathy (The One Quackery To Rule Them All), faith healing, fear mongering about GMOs, and…
cmonforton | September 15, 2015For the second time this year, OSHA has put a poultry company on notice for inappropriate medical treatment of injured workers. The agency sent a letter last month to Delaware-based Allen Harim Foods raising concerns about the company's use of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) to treat chronic injuries and practices that contradict the firm's written protocols for treating injured workers.
The agency’s letter is a follow-up to citations issued in June to Allen Harim Foods, a topic I wrote about in “Crippled hands, strained bladders.” OSHA's letter, dated August 7, 2015, contains themes…
oracknows | September 12, 2015NOTE: Orac is on vacation recharging his Tarial cells and interacting with ion channel scientists, as a good computer should. In the meantime, he is rerunning oldies but goodies, classics, even. (OK, let's not get carried away.) Here's one from all the way back in 2007. Notice how, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Evidence-based medicine is not perfect.
There, I've said it. Like anything else humans do in science or any other endeavor, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has its strengths and its weaknesses. On the whole, I consider it to be potentially vastly superior to the…
gregladen | September 8, 2015I'm on my way to a taping of the Humanist Views with Host Scott Lohman. I do these now and then and have done so since I first moved to Minnesota back when it was still cold here. We'll be talking about science knowledge, and why basic science knowledge is important. We'll also be talking about how to go about evaluating science stories you encounter in the news, or more likely, on your Facebook feed or in other social media.
Pursuant to this, I wrote a blog post that talks about how science stories go out to the general public. I also report on a request I sent out a few days ago to my…
oracknows | August 28, 2015I must admit that I'm surprised. Pleasantly surprised, but quite surprised. The reason is that yesterday the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Director Mike Zimmer rejected the recommendation of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Review Panel to add autism to the list of qualifying conditions for which cannabis can be prescribed in the state of Michigan. I didn't expect this outcome, but I am pleased.
Although I've changed my mind over past stands and am now in favor of legalizing marijuana for recreational use, I have been harshly critical of the "medical marijuana" movement. Indeed…
oracknows | August 21, 2015I've written more times than I can remember about the phenomenon of overdiagnosis and the phenomenon that is linked at the hip with it, overtreatment. Overdiagnosis is a problem that arises when large populations of asymptomatic, apparently healthy people are screened for a disease or a condition, the idea being that catching the disease at an earlier stage in its progression will allow for more successful treatment. Two prominent examples include—of course—screening for breast cancer with mammography and screening for prostate cancer with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, and I've…
oracknows | August 20, 2015Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo, but it's hard not to grudgingly admire just how—shall we say?—malleable or adaptable a placebo it is. What I mean by this is that, if you believe its practitioners and adherents, acupuncture can treat almost literally any disease or health problem. Any! Pain? Acupuncture. Allergies? Acupuncture. Biliary colic? Acupuncture. Infertility? Acupuncture. Menstrual problems? Acupuncture. Prostate problems? Acupuncture. Asthma? Acupuncture.
Well, maybe not asthma, but that doesn't stop acupuncturists from claiming that acupuncture can treat it.
Oh, and if you're a…
oracknows | August 11, 2015There's a delightful meme going around Facebook right now, featured above, that portrays five African women, fists raised, all wearing aprons proclaiming "Kick out polio!" Accompanying the meme is a message from the American Academy of Pediatrics celebrating that yesterday marked one full year since the last case of polio was recorded on the continent of Africa and praising African leadership in executing successful vaccination campaigns against this dread disease, in particular recent declarations in support of eradication from the African Union Heads of State Summit and the Organization of…
oracknows | August 9, 2015I learned over the weekend that a historic figure in science-based medicine has died. If you know anything about the history of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you will know this woman's name, Frances O. Kelsey, MD, PhD. It turns out that Dr. Kelsey died on Friday at the age of 101. Somehow I missed the news on Friday, but once the story showed up in my news feeds over the weekend, I knew I had to make her today's topic. Here's the short version:
The sedative was Kevadon, and the application to market it in America reached the new medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration…
gregladen | August 4, 2015A guest post by Robet Hollander, Winemaker
2redWinery, makers of the award-winning Ziniphany© Zinfandel and #2red is 38% towards goal on Indiegogo with all proceeds supporting prostate cancer research through the Robert and Susan Hollander Foundation, an IRS approved 501c3 organization. Campaign supporters, in exchange for their tax-deductible support, can secure wine from the 2015 vintage or from the award-winning wine library of 2redWinery.
Robert Hollander, the winemaker and principle of 2redWinery, started small-volume winemaking in 2007 to indulge a long-standing passion. Passion…
oracknows | July 28, 2015I hate stories like this, but what I hate even more is the way stories like this are all too commonly reported. Readers have been sending me links to stories about a woman named Alex Wynn that have been published over the last few days, in particular this story about her in the Daily Mail (better known as the Daily Fail when it comes to medical stories). As is the Fail's wont, the headline blares Newlywed shuns chemotherapy for CARROTS as she vows to beat cancer with alternative therapies while trying for a baby - even though doctors warn there's 'no evidence' they work, with a picture of an…
cmonforton | July 27, 2015[Updated below (8/3/15)]
The occupational health community, coal miners, their families and labor advocates are mourning the loss of physician Donald Rasmussen, 87.
For more than 50 years, he diagnosed and treated coal miners with work-related lung disease, first at the then Miners Memorial Hospital in Beckley, WV and later at his own black lung clinic. A lengthy story by John Blankenship in Beckley’s Register-Herald written two years ago profiled Dr. Rasmussen’s career.
“ In 1962, a young doctor from Manassa, Colorado, saw a help wanted advertisement in a medical journal needing doctors in…
oracknows | July 26, 2015Many are the lies and epic is the misinformation spread by the antivaccine movement. For instance, they claim that vaccines cause autism, autoimmune diseases, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), cancer, and a wide variety of other conditions and diseases when there is no credible evidence that they do and lots of evidence that they don't. One particularly pernicious myth, designed to appeal (if you can call it that) to religious fundamentalists, is the claim that vaccines are made using fetal parts. This particular claim reared its ugly head again in the context of a propaganda campaign…