Absurd medical claims
palmd | October 1, 2009Fever is a fascinating phenomenon. The biochemistry and physiology of it is fairly well understood (sort of), but historically and presently, it is endowed with great teleologic power. The nearly magical ability of the body to heat up dramatically was noted by the earliest physicians. In the Hippocratean school, fever was often viewed within the humoral framework as an excess of yellow bile and was seen to be beneficial, although it was also recognized that some fevers were a grave sign. Later in the history of medicine, fever was equated with infection as was thought to be "a bad thing"…
palmd | September 27, 2009Warning: this post has a long, boring prologue. Proceed at your own risk.
I am an expert in the prevention and treatment of adult diseases. That's what I do from well before the sun rises until well after it sets every day of every week. To become an expert and retain this status is not a simple task. After college I completed four years of medical school, three years of residency in my specialty, and chose to become "board-certified". There are doctors who are not board certified in their specialties, and there's nothing nefarious about that---all that is required to practice medicine…
palmd | September 25, 2009The stupid truly burns brightly in this one. Dana Ullman, known to readers of Respectful Insolence, Science-based Medicine, and this blog as Hahnemann's cognitively impaired bulldog, has started blogging at the Huffington Post. It's certainly an appropriate venue for his brand of cult medicine belief, but that doesn't make it any less painful. His inaugural piece, entitled The Wisdom of Symptoms: Respecting the Body's Intelligence betrays a stunning level of ignorance of basic human biology.
I have good and bad news about the human body: it is neither wise nor foolish, good nor evil, nor is…
palmd | September 24, 2009It's like this: science requires a tolerance of failure. If your shiny, happy hypothesis fails to stand up to rigorous scrutiny, you drop it and move on. If instead of a true, disposable hypothesis, you have a fixed belief that will not change based on the data, you are delusional. Boosters of alternative medicine prefer the term "maverick" to "lunatic" but in the two are often the same.
It is nearly impossible to get someone to abandon a belief in alternative medicine, no matter how strong the evidence against it. Study after study has failed to validate homeopathy as anything other…
palmd | September 15, 2009A recent piece of mine caused a bit of a "blogwar", if you will. It lead to a "rebuttal" on Dr. Bremner's blog, and an additional response from Dr. David Gorski. The discussion has been interesting (no, not Doug's incoherent response, but the comments and emails of others). One letter in particular helps sum up the ideologic rift between science-based medicine and "everything else".
The following was written by a physician:
I would ask Drs Gorski and Lipson if an iconoclast like Dr Bremner might be serving a valuable role as gadfly to an entrenched failing status quo in bio-medicine who…
palmd | September 9, 2009In the latest conversation about placebos, Steve Silberman got a number of things just right, including these converse statements:
Anthracyclines don't require an oncologist with a genial bedside manner to slow the growth of tumors.
...the placebo response has limits. It can ease the discomfort of chemotherapy, but it won't stop the growth of tumors.
Placebo, if it exists as a utile clinical entity (and I'm still not convinced) cannot cure cancer---but chemotherapy can, no matter what hand waving and chanting may or may not accompany it. This goes directly to the concept of "plausibility…
palmd | September 6, 2009Doug Bremner has a blog. That blog sucks.
Bremner is an apparently well-regarded psychiatrist, and takes a refreshing look at the influence of industry not just on pharmaceuticals but on the conduct of science itself. His outspoken views have led to attempts to squelch his academic freedoms. But his sometimes-heroic record does not excuse dangerous idiocy.
I can understand how wading into the shit pool that is conflict of interest can leave one cynical. But cynicism and suspicion turned up to "11" is no longer bravery---it's crankery. It's not his snarkiness that burns---it's his…
palmd | September 3, 2009If I read one more crappy article about placebos, something's gotta give, and it's gonna be my head or my desk. Wired magazine has a new article entitled, "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why." Frequent readers of skeptical and medical blogs will spot the first problem: the insanely nonsensical claim that "placebos are getting better". This not only "begs the question," but actually betrays a fundamental misapprehension of the concept. I've written several times about the nature and ethical implications of placebos, but it's time for a serious…
palmd | August 23, 2009My friend Janet has a piece up about what qualifies one to be a philosopher, a piece which is remarkably brief but says much. She points out that get a position at a university, there are certain requirements, but that one can be "off the books". Anyone can call themselves a philosopher, and if enough of us assent to their claim, well, then they're a philosopher, no matter how muddled their thinking may or may not be.
In medicine, we have a similar problem---the problem of assent. To become a primary care doctor (a category which includes internists and family physicians) the "official"…
palmd | August 20, 2009Let's say you have cancer. And let's say you're really, really sick of having cancer. And let's say that you're also pretty tired of scans, chemo, radiation, hair loss, nausea. And let's say you're not really sick and tired of living, but actually pretty happy to be alive.
Finally, let's say someone says that they can get rid of your cancer, without all of those pesky side-effects. It's a win-win, no?
No.
It's easy to believe in promises that are congruent with our wishes. That's what makes human beings so easy to deceive. A case in point is the VIBE Machine, a discredited quackery…
palmd | August 14, 2009I've been blogging long enough now that it's hard for me to keep track of what I have or have not written, and on which particular blog. I used to be pretty compulsive about digging up old links to my first blog (now in storage) or to denialism, or even to this blog, but this can be paralyzing. I still try to make sure to link to other writer's pieces, whether on denialism blog, or at other blogs that I like, but if I were to be overly compulsive about this, I'd never get any writing done.
And with that in mind, it's time for a review of alternative medicine (one that is a bit more…
palmd | August 13, 2009There is no clear definition of "quackery". Stephen Barrett, founder of Quackwatch, discusses the slippery nature of the definition and the issues of intent and competence. Defining quackery of necessity involves some subjective judgment, but there are objective parameters we can apply. If someone is hyping a medical practice without adequate scientific evidence and is profiting from it, they are a quack.
Quackery differs from "fraud", which is a legal concept. In my state health care fraud is defined as:
Intentional deception or misrepresentation made by a person with the knowledge…
palmd | August 12, 2009Science is hard. Real science requires time, patience, modesty, and a high tolerance for failure. Good ideas can lead to better ideas, or to dead ends, and these dead ends actually help us map out our reality. Quite a while back, I wrote about a study of certain compounds in chocolate and their effect on the cardiovascular system. One of the things I liked most about the study was the authors' refusal to draw overly broad, immodest conclusions from their findings. That's how real scientists operate.
This is in stark contrast to undereducated pseudo-scientists---if they see a result…
palmd | August 2, 2009If you haven't heard by now, the parents who murdered their diabetic daughter are getting a taste of justice. This week Dale Neumann, the father of the diabetic girl whom he and his wife watch die in their home while giving only "prayer", was found guilty of reckless homicide. Death by diabetic ketoacidosis is not pretty. The symptoms start with extreme thirst and frequent urination. Then the person develops headaches, abdominal pain, and vomiting. Eventually, they become confused and lethargic, then lapse into a coma before dying. The discovery of insulin has made this event rare, at…
palmd | July 30, 2009I've been a terrible netizen. I haven't been keeping up with my blog carnivals, especially my favorite, the Skeptics' Circle.
Well, it's up now at Beyond the Short Coat. Go and read!
palmd | July 27, 2009Smelting: gerund, the act of catching smelt (a small Great Lakes fish) by dipping a bucket in the water during the smelt run season: ex. Smelting is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Sometimes it's too easy. You see, when you criticize someone for being wrong, that's one thing, but when you imply that they are wrong because their entire world-view is incorrect, well, sometimes you get a response.
In a piece last week I was very critical of a new diet and it's creator, and she apparently watches the web, because she came by to comment.
From reading her website and her comment, I get the…
palmd | July 23, 2009Alternative medicine practitioners love to coin magic words, but really, how can you blame them? Real medicine has a Clarkeian quality to it*; it's so successful, it seems like magic. But real doctors know that there is nothing magic about it. The "magic" is based on hard work, sound scientific principles, and years of study.
Magic words are great. Terms like mindfulness, functional medicine, or endocrine disruptors take a complicated problem and create a simple but false answer with no real data to back it up. More often than not, the magic word is the invention of a single person who…
palmd | July 20, 2009In 1994, Congress enacted the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). This act allows for the marketing and sales of "dietary supplements" with little or no regulation. This act is the work of folks like Tom Harkin (who took large contributions from Herbalife) and Orrin Hatch, whose state of Utah is home to many supplement companies.
DSHEA has a couple of very important consequences (aside from filling the pockets of supplement makers).
What does the FDA require of "supplements"?
Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), the dietary supplement…
palmd | July 15, 2009I've frequently written that alternative medicine beliefs are much like religion, and often cult-like. When reading about alternative medicine, you'll often encounter charismatic leaders, faith in the unknowable, and conversion experiences. A fine example of the latter is currently up at the Huffington Post. It's written by "Dr" Patricia Fitzgerald, HuffPo's "wellness editor". Just to remind you of her credentials, she is a "Licensed Acupuncturist, Cert. Clinical Nutritionist, Homeopath, [and] Author." In other words, she's not a doctor in any well-recognized sense of the word.
Her…
palmd | July 13, 2009By now, we all know that the Huffington Post represents the zombification of medical news---interesting ideas are taken, eviscerated of any real meaning, their innards replaced with pablum, and the reanimated creature set loose on the world.
Reanimation of the undead is, it would seem, a rather addictive behavior, because HuffPo just keeps at it. Another one of their fake experts is "Dr" John Neustadt. The scare quotes indicate that John is not a doctor in any recognized sense: he's a "naturopathic doctor", representing a fringe, vitalistic health cult. But that fact isn't made clear.…