Medicine
oracknows | May 13, 2011I and others have often written about how "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) represent a "bait and switch." The basic concept is that CAM/IM has co-opted several ostensibly science-based modalities, such as diet, exercise, relaxation, and the like. These are used as the bait by representing them as being somehow "alternative" and outside of the mainstream of medicine. The switch occurs when CAM/IM advocates use the known efficacy of modalities like this to argue that other woo works. They do this through a "big tent" policy, where diet, exercise,…
oracknows | May 12, 2011It's been a busy and rough week. The news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, with the release of one bad study and another highly touted great white hope of a legal study. As much as I'm tired of blogging about vaccines this week, it's still mandatory for me to note that something very wonderful has happened. So bear with me, please. Remember how recently, after well over five years of his flouting the law, the State of Maryland suspended "autism biomed" quack Dr. Mark Geier's medical license? In fact, Maryland didn't just suspend it, but emergently suspended it. Well, on…
lborkowski | May 11, 2011The American Society of Magazine Editors has announced its 2010 award winners, and I found it striking that three of the winning pieces address the issue of cancer. Over the past couple of years, we've heard more cautions about the downsides of aggressive screening for breast and prostate cancers - and then we occasionally also hear about the relatively young man or woman whose cancer is caught and treated early thanks to such aggressive practices. At the population level, we compile statistics about risk and survival rates, but those are easy to forget about when someone we love gets the…
sa smith | May 10, 2011I want you all to see an article I just found via Relative Risk Blog. Its about 'Chronic Lyme Disease'. About a young woman who was aggressively treated by a 'questionable' practitioner who had 'cured herself' of 'Chronic Lyme'. No one believes in 'Chronic Lyme'. 'Everyone' was 'against' this practitioner, while she insisted she 'KNEW' what she was talking about. Questionable tests. Off-label prescriptions. And this practitioner almost killed this young woman.
Janet Love and Dana Rosdahl come across as sincere in their belief that doctors routinely misdiagnose the disease, leading to…
oracknows | May 10, 2011As hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, I've been at this blogging biz a long time--well over six years now. However, I've been engaged, in one form or another, in combatting pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and crankery online since the late 1990s. Although I try hard not to fall into the same cognitive traps that a certain pediatrician to the stars does, namely considering my own anecdotal experience to be superior to controlled studies, that is not to say that personal experience is without value. At least, that's what I was thinking when I came across Steve Novella's post A failure to…
jtoney | May 6, 2011
Source.
A strange email arrived in my Inbox recently asking me for a picture of my tongue, assuring me "lifetime benefits." First I wondered how this email escaped my Spam filter. But then I wanted to explore.
Here's the email {you likely will have received it too}:
Dear distinguished guest,
How are you recently? Is everything ok? I am Sasha from Traditional Chinese Medicine center (short for TCM), the assistant of Dr.Huang, it's my honor to contact you via this email.
I hope our TCM center have left nice memories for you.
It's our responsibility to give our remote concern to you since…
oracknows | May 5, 2011The other day, I wrote about how mercury militia general and autism quack extraordinaire Dr. Mark Geier had his medical license suspended by the State of Maryland. At the time, I lamented how it was at least five years two late, but there was one aspect of the story that I didn't really dwell on, although I did mention it. It's something I hadn't known about before, something I was actually pretty shocked to find out, and I wanted to know how it could possibly have happened. I'm referring to the fact that Mark Geier's son David Geier had somehow slimed his quacky way onto the State of…
oracknows | May 3, 2011One of the most persistent myths is one that's been particularly and doggedly resistant to evidence, science, clinical trials, epidemiology, and reason. It's also a myth that I've been writing about since a couple of months after the beginning of this blog. Specifically, I'm referring to the now scientifically discredited myth that the mercury-containing thimerosal preservative that used to be in quite a few childhood vaccines causes autism. The myth began in the late 1990s and was later fed by the publication of David Kirby's book Evidence of Harm, which was basically a paean to various…
oracknows | May 3, 2011"Personalized medicine." You've probably heard the term. It's a bit of a buzzword these days and refers to a vision of future medicine in which therapies are much more tightly tailored to individual patients than they currently are. That's not to say that as physicians we haven't practiced personalized medicine before; certainly we have. However it has only been in the last decade or so that our understanding of genomics, systems biology, and cell signaling have evolved to the point where the vision of personalized medicine based on each patient's genome and biology might be achievable within…
oracknows | April 26, 2011NOTE: Dr. Novella has written up a detailed description of his experiences on The Dr. Oz Show. Please read it. Also note that the online video for Dr. Novella's appearance is now available:
Controversial Medicine: Alternative Health, Part 1
Controversial Medicine: Alternative Health, Part 2
Controversial Medicine: Alternative Health, Part 3
When I first learned that Dr. Steve Novella, Yale neurologist, blogger, and host of the popular skeptical podcast the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe was going to be on The Dr. Oz Show, I was concerned. After all, this is the same physician who had in…
oracknows | April 26, 2011"Health freedom." It's a battle cry frequently used by supporters of "alternative" medicine against what they perceive to be persecution by the medical and scientific establishment that uses the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and other federal agencies charged with regulating pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics, and medical devices in order to protect the public against fraud, adulterated food, and quackery. It's a potent argument to those not versed in skepticism and science-based medicine, and even to many who are. After all, Who could argue with "health freedom"?…
oracknows | April 22, 2011Steve Salzberg is a man after my own heart. You'll see why in a minute.
I've frequently written about the pseudoscientific nonsense that goes on at the University of Maryland. Indeed, the University of Maryland School of Medicine is a hotbed of quackademic medicine, including the use of reiki at its world-renowned trauma center along with other forms of quackery. Steve Salzberg is on the faculty at the University of Maryland, and he's not happy:
So what's going on at Maryland's medical school? UMM is home to one of the nation's premier "integrative medicine" programs, which promotes a wide…
oracknows | April 14, 2011Here we go again.
If there's one thing about the anti-vaccine movement, it's all about the ad hominem. Failing to win on science, clinical trials, epidemiology, and other objective evidence, inevitably anti-vaccine propagandists fall back on attacking the person instead of the evidence. For example, Paul Offit has been the subject of unrelenting attacks from Generation Rescue and other anti-vaccine groups, having been dubbed "Dr. Proffit" and accused of being so in the pocket of big pharma that he'll do and say anything for it. I personally have been accused by Jake Crosby of a conflict of…
oracknows | April 12, 2011They call them Necromancers.
Necromancers have an uncanny ability to resurrect an old thread by commenting on it months, even years, after the last comment. Unfortunately, as hard as it is to believe, the version of Movable Type used by Seed to power our blogs does not have a preference panel that allows us to turn off our comments on posts after a set amount of time, for instance three months. Consequently, every so often I"m plagued with Necromancers bringing long deceased comment threads back from the dead to the annoyance of all. Of course, the most annoying Necromancers are the one who…
sa smith | April 7, 2011A couple of days ago, Orac directed us towards an article that is one of the funniest pieces of 'Science Journalism' I have ever seen, anywhere. See, those of us on the 'non-kook' side of things have marvelously eloquent writers like Carl and Ed, and inquisitive investigatory journalists like Trine. Sure theyre 'educational', but their work is depressingly devoid of 'WTF LOL!!' moments like this piece by an apparent anti-vax 'science' journalist, Sharyl Attkisson:
The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what…
oracknows | April 5, 2011I'm not infrequently asked why the myth that vaccines cause autism and other anti-vaccine myths are so stubbornly resistant to the science that time and time again fails to support them. Certainly useful celebrity idiots like Jenny McCarthy are one reason. So, too, are anti-vaccine propaganda websites and blogs such as Age of Autism and anti-vaccine organizations like Generation Rescue, the National Vaccine Information Center, and SafeMinds and the organizations that publish them. However, these are clearly not the only reason. Alone, these people and organizations are in general quite…
mikethemadbiologist | April 1, 2011...hopefully, they won't murder anyone. Speaking of Research has documented the anti-medical research threats by an organization known as Negotiation Is Over (italics mine; no direct link to terrorist organizations on this blog):
Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are…
jhalper | March 30, 2011Today's Weizmann Institute news stories include two new papers from the prolific lab of Prof. Yadin Dudai. The first is on a protein that boosts memory in rats. Dudai and his group have been investigating this protein for several years. Previously, they had managed to show that blocking the protein, even for a very short time, erases memories. Now, they have demonstrated that adding more of the protein to certain areas of the brain can strengthen memory. Note: They increased the protein via gene-carrying viruses that infiltrated the rats' brain cells - not a clinic-ready technique. But until…
kcollins | March 28, 2011
Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Catherine Mohr, Nominated by FIRST.
She began her career as a mechanical engineer, working many years developing alternative-energy vehicles and high-altitude aircraft. But a mid-career change set Catherine Mohr on a different path for which she is known today: developing the next generation of surgical robots and robotic procedures that allow patients to heal faster and better.
If the idea of a robot helping to perform surgery makes you nervous -relax. Thousands of robotically assisted surgeries are performed every year in the U.S, operations which allow human…
oracknows | March 24, 2011Remember Dr. Jay Gordon? I haven't written about him in a while because, well, as much as he's descended into anti-vaccine apologia over the last few years, he really has nothing new to say. However, apparently he's been Tweeting a lot lately, and he hasn't exactly been doing himself proud. Earlier today, one of my readers sent me an example of a Tweet by Dr. Jay that sinks to a new low of argumentation:
So...should I call this particular logical fallacy argumentum ad television or argumentum ad bradi bunchium? Seriously, Dr. Jay, this sort of argument is pathetic, even by your standards.…