oracknows | January 24, 2007Via Kevin, MD, a picture of a complication I hope I never have:
A description of the complication:
A 40-year-old man with Crohn's disease underwent an uncomplicated operation involving lysis of adhesions that were causing intestinal obstruction. After surgery, a cardiologist inserted a central venous catheter through the left subclavian vein. No problems with catheterization were noted. Three weeks later, after discharge, mild pain and edema developed in the patient's right lower leg. He was treated with antibiotics for 1 week, and his symptoms diminished. Six months after the operation, the…
oracknows | January 23, 2007The commentary on the Arthur Allen-David Kirby debate is coming in fast and furious. The latest is this excellent deconstruction of Kirby's parroting of the claim that autistic children are "poor excretor's" of mercury. I guess I can say that Dad of Cameron took this one on so that I don't have to...
oracknows | January 23, 2007I came across an interesting tidbit about dichloroacetate (DCA), the compound that the media and all too many bloggers are touting as some sort of cheap "cure" for cancer whose development is being ignored or suppressed by big pharma because it wouldn't be profitable enough. I poured a bit of cold water on all of them yesterday, because most of their comments were based on false hope, given how few drugs that show promise in cell culture and animals actually pan out in human trials, and ignorance of how clinical trials for new cancer drugs work.
This particular tidbit is posted on the…
oracknows | January 23, 2007The latest Grand Rounds has been posted over at Signout. It has a theme this time that, as any regular reader of this blog is aware, is near and dear to my heart: the interface of scientific evidence with health and health care; so I'm expecting that it will be of more than usual interest to most of my readers as well.
oracknows | January 23, 2007Well, it's finally been posted, video of the debate between Arthur Allen, author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver (a book that I am about 2/3 of the way through and plan on reviewing before the end of the month if possible) and mercury militia vaccine fearmonger David Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm and arguably one of the two people who have done more than anyone else to bring the bogus claim that mercury in vaccines is the cause of the increase in the number of diagnoses of autism over the last 15 years or so to a wider audience. (The other is Robert F…
oracknows | January 22, 2007
I demand the sum of.....one MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha!
Sometime while I was in clinic this morning, Respectful Insolence recorded its 1,000,000 visitor:
Hmmm. Durham, North Carolina, eh? Could it be that Bora or Abel put me over the top? Come on, boys, 'fess up! Were either of you taking in your daily dose of Respectful Insolence⢠around 8:52 AM EST?
In any case, it took 2 years, 1 month, an 11 days to reach 1,000,000 visits. Thanks to all my readers. When I first started this whole thing, I never expected to get anywhere near 1,000,000.
Now let's get cracking on 2,000,000.
oracknows | January 22, 2007I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon.
It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…
oracknows | January 21, 2007It looks like someone over at BlogCritics is undertaking the task of reviewing each of the component blogs of ScienceBlogs. So far, he's not particularly impressed with anyone except Martin and, to a lesser extent, Afarensis. Although he makes a few good points in checking out the first five blogs (he's proceeding in alphabetical order) and I have to applaud an attempt to do a critique of nearly 50 blogs, he clearly needs a gentle (for the moment) beating with a clue stick about a couple of things.
For one thing, he's full of crap when he says this about Janet:
My major criticism of this blog…
oracknows | January 21, 2007We see far too little of this in the mainstream media:
(Via The Bronze Blog and Memoirs of a Skepchick.)
Anderson Cooper is da man!
oracknows | January 21, 2007I had originally intended to use this one for a segment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. Unfortunately, when I tried to start writing, I realized it was unsuitable. No, it wasn't unsuitable because the content wasn't delightfully loopy enough to deserve targeting. The problem was that it was an insufficient--shall we say?--target-rich environment. Again, this wasn't because the overall concept wasn't bizarre enough. No, it is certainly more than strange enough to qualify. It was that there was so little information on how this supposedly works and the little information that was there was vague in…
oracknows | January 20, 2007Things have gotten a little heated around here, with an ID adherent named Dr. Cook taking umbrage at my expression of embarrassment for my profession over his having shown up over at Uncommon Descent and flaunting his excellent (albeit irrelevant to the discussion of evolution) credentials as he proudly told the assembled William Dembski sycophants there of his post-Darwinist "conversion story."
This song is dedicated to Dr. Cook, for reasons that I think should be obvious:
Actually, this is one of my absolute favorite David Bowie songs. It was great with Queen, but this version is really…
oracknows | January 19, 2007The winners of the 2006 Medical Weblog Awards have been announced at Medgadget. Winners include our favorite pediatrician Flea (and if he manages to tick off the antivaccination loons, you know he's alright with me) for Best New Medical Weblog; NHS Blog Doctor for Best Medical Weblog; and Anxiety, Depression, and Addiction Treatments for Best Clinical Sciences Weblog.
Go here to find out who else won.
Congratulations to all the winners!
oracknows | January 19, 2007I admit it.
I'm a gadget freak. I sometimes think I should have gone into radiology. If you're a radiologist and work with MRI, CT scans, PET scanners, and numerous other cool gadgets. Of course, you also have to sit in dark rooms in the basement of the hospital and stare at films for several years to learn the basics of reading simple radiographs in order to qualify to work with the cool toys, not to that you also have to learn how to do barium enemas and other similarly unpleasant tests. Other times, I think that I should have become a radiation oncologist. Radiation oncology is a great…
oracknows | January 18, 2007The 52nd Edition of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist. It's a little late in coming (and I'm a little late in announcing it), but as usual another host has come through with a fine collection of skeptical blogging. So go pay him a visit. It also marks the end of the second full year of the Skeptics' Circle. Unbelievable. We're entering our third year, and it just keeps getting better.
Next up is Slicing with Occam's Razor (another great blog title), who will be hosting two weeks hence on February 1. So be sure to supply him with the blogging material…
oracknows | January 18, 2007If you want to know the skinny about the physiological mechanism by which a person can die of water intoxication, Radagast has posted A Look at Osmosis and Water Balance, a nice primer on the distribution of water in the human body and how it can be affected by drinking too much water too quickly.
oracknows | January 18, 2007Geez, I might as well just put a paper bag over my head right now around my fellow ScienceBloggers.
You've heard me lament before about the woeful ignorance about biology and evolution common among all too many doctors. (You haven't? Well check here, here, here, and here.) Heck, you've even heard me lament about it just a few days ago, my irritation being piqued by a physician by the name of Dr. Geoffrey Simmons.
Now, as if to rub my face in it, Dembski's crew over at Uncommon Design have made me aware of an orthopedic surgeon named David A. Cook, M.D., who's adding to my embarrassment. As…
oracknows | January 17, 2007The other day, I commented on the very sad death of a young woman named Jennifer Strange. In essence, Ms. Strange died after a radio contest to see who could drink the most water without urinating. The prize? A Wii. This was pretty clearly a case of water intoxication leading to hyponatremia, an impression that was reinforced by a later report (now confirmed) that she had drunk 2 gallons of water in a short period of time. Since then, the three DJs involved in the contest, plus seven other employees of the radio station, have been fired for "violating the terms of their employee agreements."…
oracknows | January 17, 2007Drat! Real life has once again interfered with my blogging. Fortunately, there's still a lot of what I consider to be good stuff in the archives of the old blog that has yet to be transferred to the new blog. Today looks like a perfect time to transfer at least a couple more articles from the old blog. This particular article first appeared on January 12, 2006. For those who haven't seen it before, pretend I just wrote it. For those who have, savor its Insolence once again.
I was perusing some journals yesterday, including the most recent issue of Nature, when I came across a rather…
oracknows | January 17, 2007Drat! Real life has once again interfered with my blogging. Fortunately, there's still a lot of what I consider to be good stuff in the archives of the old blog that has yet to be transferred to the new blog. Today looks like a perfect time to transfer at least a couple more articles from the old blog. This particular article first appeared on April 25, 2005. One reason I reposted it is that I recently forgot the very precepts that I discussed in it when over the holidays a relative brought up the topic of Sylvia Browne, provoking a clearly too vigorous response about her being a fraud. (…
oracknows | January 17, 2007Drat! Real life has once again interfered with my blogging. Fortunately, there's still a lot of what I consider to be good stuff in the archives of the old blog that has yet to be transferred to the new blog. Today looks like a perfect time to transfer at least a couple more articles from the old blog. This particular article first appeared on December 5, 2005. For those who haven't seen it before, pretend I just wrote it. For those who have, savor it once again.
There was an interesting article in this week's New York Times Magazine about Susan Sontag's last battle with cancer, written by…