Bioethics
oracknows | October 25, 2007I approach this topic with a bit of trepidation. I say this not because I'm unsure that I'm correct in my assessment of the article that I'm about to apply some Respectful Insolence⢠to. Rather, it's because the last time I brought up anything having to do with abortion, it got ugly. The topic is such a polarized one that virtually anything one says is sure to attract vitriol. Regardless, though, this article by Dennis Byrne, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the "study" to which it refers, are so appallingly idiotic that even fear of touching the third rail of American politics will…
oracknows | October 10, 2007One of the most important responsibilities of health care workers and hospitals is to protect the privacy of the patients for whom they care. Unfortunately, in the case of George Clooney's recent hospitalization for injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash, a consequence of electronic medical records was revealed when dozens of employees, some of whom apparently leaked the information to the press, accessed Clooney's medical records. Of course, these employees didn't seem to realize that EMRs allow the tracking and identification of anyone who logs on to the system. Anyone who logs on leaves…
oracknows | October 5, 2007Some readers have been sending me links to this article on CNN.com entitled 5 Alternative Medicine Treatments That Work. Unfortunately, Your Friday Dose of Woo took up the time that normally would have gone into given this article the lovingly Respectfully Insolent⢠treatment that this utterly credulous article so richly deserves and that you, my faithful readers, demand. Fortunately Mark over at denialism.com has taken the time to fisk this one in detail. Does that mean Orac has nothing more to say on this article?
You know the answer to that one. Mark just made it so that I can restrain my…
terrasig | August 29, 2007Nick Anthis at The Scientific Activist had a great post yesterday on the fallacies in an article from the UK Guardian detailing a peer-reviewed publication on replacing animal research with in vitro and computational models. As much as all scientists would wish this were true, there are simply no replacements for animal research in many areas, as noted by PZ Myers.
One of my favorite sources for promoting the factual necessity for animal research (and exposing extremist groups for attacks on scientists) is the Washington, DC-based, Foundation for Biomedical Research. The poster above is…
oracknows | August 28, 2007Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on February 10, 2005. Enjoy!
A few days ago, I had been thinking that it's been a long time since I've blogged about alternative medicine. I was going over a list of potential topics, debating whether I should talk about alt-med in general or pick specific "therapies." And then, there it was, sitting in the in-box on my desk at work, a…
j7uy5 | August 22, 2007In 2005, there was a plague. It started
inadvertently, as
most do, but spread rapidly, resulting in many deaths.
Officials scrambled to find a solution. Eventually
it was contained.
The plague was caused by a miscoded spell (
href="http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/gadgets/index.blog?entry_id=1230071">Corrupted
Blood), in the massively-multiplayer
online role-playing game (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG" rel="tag">MMORPG),
href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/index.xml">World of
Warcraft. The people who died were not
real people. Nonetheless, it may be that the…
j7uy5 | August 19, 2007Hard to know what to make of
href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3499544">this.
The American Psychological Association considered a proposal
to ban participation in military interrogations.
Specifically, APA members would have been prohibited from
assisting in interrogations "in which detainees are deprived of
adequate protection of their human rights."
The APA national meeting is being held in San Fransisco this year.
In a session 19 August 2007, they chose not to ban
all participation. Instead, they adopted a substitute motion.
href="http://www.apa.org/governance/…
oracknows | August 16, 2007[Note: Part I is here.]
I tell ya, I stay up all night putting the finishing touches on a grant, and what happens? Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism.com finds a real hum-dinger of stupidity published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately (or fortunately, given the rampant stupidity that appears to be going on in this article), I do not have a subscription to the WSJ; however, a little Googling found the whole text here. I've written about this conflict before, and it's a recurring theme in the multiple posts that I've done regarding dichloroacetate (DCA), the small…
terrasig | August 9, 2007A federal appeals court has denied the right of patients to the use of cancer drugs prior to their complete assessment of safety and efficacy. The case was filed against the US FDA in 2003 by the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs, who argued that patients have a constitutional right to any drug in clinical trials.
The 8-to-2 decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came in a closely watched and emotional case that pitted desperate patients willing to try unproven, even risky, therapies against those arguing that drugs should be proved safe…
j7uy5 | August 1, 2007A
couple of months ago, I
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/06/psychologists_and_torture.php">wrote
about the revelation that the a committee of the American
Psychological Association had been manipulated into tacitly supporting
the involvement of psychologists in developing harsh interrogation
techniques.
A couple of weeks ago, journalist Katherine Eban published an article
with more detail on the subject. Her article,
href="http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707">Rorschach
and Awe, appeared in Vanity Fair
on 17 July 2007.
Democracy…
oracknows | July 30, 2007Saturday, I thought that I knew what I'd be writing about for Monday, which, I've learned from my two and a half years of blogging, is a great thing when it happens. A certain Libertarian comic had decided that he wanted to argue some more about secondhand smoke and indoor smoking bans, starting a few days earlier with a rather specious analogy (which was handily shredded by you, my readers) and then finishing by annoying me with a comment and a post that implied that I didn't "care about the little guy." It looked like great fodder for a post to start out the week and a chance to apply a…
oracknows | July 29, 2007Here's something that's not a good idea:
Boston, MA (AHN) - The Board of Registration in Medicine, which is the governing authority issuing licenses to Massachusetts doctors, has reportedly suspended a Boston anesthesiologist from the practice of medicine for dozing off during an operation.
However, the headline is misleading. It turns out that this doctor has a bit more of a problem than just dozing off during an operation:
In December 2005, Thomas Ho admitted inhaling anesthetic gas while on lunch break on another occasion. The Board also added that following month Ho had taken a…
j7uy5 | July 26, 2007For
some reason, my Father used to say that when he made an
indisputable point of some significance. It is in the
href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=put+that+in+your+pipe+and+smoke+it"
rel="tag">Urban Dictionary in case you are curious
about the expression. It is also the title of
href="http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/17/put-that-in-your-pipe-and-smoke-it-fords-made-of-hemp/">a
post on Autoblog about a 1941 Ford made of organic plastic,
which had been made from plant material. Apparently they now
are researching a similar idea using hemp.
href="http://blog.…
oracknows | July 25, 2007...At least, that's what I most definitely say after reading this account of The rise & fall of the prefrontal lobotomy.
One question that stands out: How could a stepmother force her stepson to get a lobotomy just because she didn't like his sullenness and defiance, even after being told by other doctors that there was nothing wrong with the boy? An observation that stands out is that medicine and surgery are periodically caught up in fads. That's why it's every bit as important to apply evidence-based medicine to the newest procedures and treatments as it is to apply it to alternative…
j7uy5 | July 10, 2007(RWOS=Republican War
on Science) In
case you haven't noticed (and why would you?), the USA is without a
Surgeon General. The old one, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carmona" rel="tag">Richard
Carmona, unhired himself for unclear reasons last July, as
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/10/the_surgeon_generals_new_gig.php">noted
on Effect Measure. The
candidate for the position, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Holsinger" rel="tag">James
Holsinger, has proven to be
href="http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=67035601">…
oracknows | July 10, 2007Actions have consequences, as do beliefs. For example, the widespread erroneous belief among many parents of autistic children that the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that was used in most childhood vaccines until 2002 somehow caused autism in their children have led some pseudoscientists and parents who have fallen under their sway to subject their children to all manners of "biomedical" interventions to "extract" the mercury and supposedly cure their children of autism. In extreme form, this belief has led to highly dubious "treatments" such as those served up by Mark and David…
oracknows | July 8, 2007As I mentioned yesterday, I recently perused all the e-mails that Gmail had flagged as spam and to my dismay found a lot of legitimate e-mail, including mailing list e-mails and Movable Type e-mails notifying me of comments being caught up in the filter. However, I found something scarier than that. In fact, I found perhaps the scariest spam that I've ever encountered.
Did you know that spammers are claiming to be selling chemotherapeutic agents from India? Check it out:
From: euroasias@ricmail.com
Subject: Anti-Cancer Drugs
Date: July 6, 2007 10:32:56 PM EDT
To: [ORAC]
EUROASIA's…
oracknows | July 2, 2007About a month ago, I did a facetious throwaway piece about "homeopathic enchantments" being used by one of my favorite comic characters (who, alas, no longer has his own comic series), namely Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. Given that it was not intended as anything other than a lark, I was rather surprised when it generated a long discussion thread fueled by a homeopath named Dana Ullman, who showed up in the comments and argued with me and several of my best regular commenters. He kept the discussion thread going far longer than the average thread on this blog, provoking annoyance on…
oracknows | June 28, 2007Once again, I was going to post about the amusing homeopath that I've come across, and once again something came up with the whole Autism Omnibus came up, leaving our poor homeopath to wait a little while longer for the loving application of a bit of Respectful Insolence⢠that she so clearly craves. If you're getting tired of hearing about the lunacy of antivaccinationists, I apologize and sympathize. I plan on taking a break from the subject for a few days unless some truly new news comes to light, as once again I don't want any one topic to dominate this blog for too long.
However, before…
oracknows | June 21, 2007I've written extensively before about Starchild Abraham Cherrix, the (now) 17-year-old who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease when he was 15 and who, after one course of chemotherapy, refused any further evidence-based medicine in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. His refusal led to a big legal battle in Virginia, and the court ultimately (sort of) compromised, letting Abraham go to Mississippi to be treated by a radiation oncologist with taste for alternative medicine named Dr. R. Arnold Smith, who would give him low dose radiation and an unconventional variety of…