Bioethics
oracknows | March 26, 2007There hasn't been much news in the last two or three months about Abraham Cherrix, the 16-year-old with Hodgkin's lymphoma who rejected conventional chemotherapy, first in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy and then for the ministrations of a radiation oncologist in Mississippi named Dr. Arnold Smith, who combines non-woo (low dose radiation therapy) with woo (a form of "immunotherapy" involving "belly plaques" that has no evidence showing efficacy, not "more innovative techniques, such as immunotherapy, which uses medications and supplements to boost the immune system," as the…
terrasig | March 23, 2007For your Saturday morning reading pleasure, here are two articles following up on my dichloroacetate (DCA) and bogus internet pharmacy death posts this week. Each was recommended by my clandestine operative from the Great White North, PharmCanuck:
Canadian cancer society warns of untested drug
Heather Logan, the director of cancer control policy at the society who trained as a nurse, has worked with people fighting to prolong their lives. Logan said she sympathizes with those who are buying the drug and mixing it at home as a last resort, but stresses there are serious safety concerns.
"The…
oracknows | March 21, 2007Late yesterday afternoon, I was lazily checking my referral logs to see who might be linking to Respectful Insolenceâ¢, as most bloggers like to do from time to time (and any blogger who claims otherwise is probably feeding you a line), when I noticed a fairly large number of visits coming from one location, namely here. I was wondering when this would happen, but it looks as though the regulars at The DCA Site have finally noticed some of my writing. Surprisingly, what they say about me is not that bad, although that's probably because they seem to have found the least--shall we say?--…
oracknows | March 20, 2007Although I've been blogging alot about dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that has shown promise against a variety of cancers in preclinical animal tumor models, but I'm not the only one. Fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy, whose knowledge of pharmacology surpasses my own, has also been on the case and has produced some articles worth checking out:
The dichloroacetate (DCA) cancer kerfuffleWhere to buy dichloroacetate...Local look at dichloroacetate (DCA) hysteriaEdmonton pharmacist asked to stop selling dichloroacetate (DCA)Four days, four dichloroacetate (DCA)…
j7uy5 | March 20, 2007Not
only that, but the genetically modified "organism" is an engineered
HIV. At least, that is what researchers at Emory College in
London are contemplating.
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href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1533745.ece">Disabled
Aids virus could provide cure for cystic fibrosis
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Henderson, Science Editor
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19, 2007
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The Times
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oracknows | March 19, 2007It figures.
Whenever I go away for a conference, things of interest to me that I'd like to blog about start happening fast and furious. Indeed, I could only deal with one of them, and I chose to post my challenge to the Paleyist "intelligent design" creationist surgeon, Dr. William Egnor. Now that I'm back, I'll deal with the other major issue that's been a frequent topic of blogging over the last couple of months and bubbled up again into the blogosphere over the weekend.
Remember all the posts that I did on dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that targets the…
oracknows | March 13, 2007I'm on the record multiple times as saying that I reject the entire concept and nomenclature of "alternative medicine" as being distinct from "conventional" medicine as a false dichotomy, when in reality there should be just "medicine." Moreover, this "medicine" remaining should, whenever possible, be based on sound scientific and clinical trial evidence. In essence, I advocate treating "alternative" medicine the same as "conventional" medicine subjecting it to the same scientific process to determine whether it has efficacy or not, after which medicine that is effective is retained and used…
terrasig | March 2, 2007For those who have been asking over the last couple of days, here are the oath of a pharmacist as recited at US colleges of pharmacy and a code of ethics adopted in 1994 by the then-American Pharmaceutical Association (now the American Pharmacists Association; still APhA). There seems to be a strong focus on the patient in the code of ethics but there's also a bit of wiggle room that can be interpreted as one sees fit.
Oath of a Pharmacist
At this time, I vow to devote my professional life to the service of all humankind through the profession of pharmacy.
I will consider the welfare of…
terrasig | March 1, 2007Yesterday's discussion of a pharmacist's right to refuse filling prescriptions based on moral or legal grounds generated some great discussion. I appreciate the thoughtful discussion of the commenters as well as two posts on the topic by Prof Janet Stemwedel. The first draws from her older post on the topic nearly two years ago, illustrating that we haven't come very far in this debate. As Janet noted then
Obviously, we've got a tug-of-war here between the moral convictions of the health care professionals and the moral convictions of the patients.
I'm also going to quote Janet heavily…
oracknows | February 24, 2007Remember how I alluded to the fact that perhaps I've been doing a little too much blogging about dichloroacetate and the unscrupulous "entrepreneurs" who are taking advantage of desperate cancer patients to sell the stuff to them? Well, I can't resist mentioning something truly amusing that I just noticed.
The "health freedom" warriors and "entrepreneurs" responsible for The DCA Site and BuyDCA.com appear to have noticed me and my humble efforts.
How do I know that they've noticed me? Remember the long exchange between Heather Nordstrom and two people questioning the ethics and legality of…
oracknows | February 22, 2007I've probably beat this one into the ground over the last couple of days; so this will be uncharacteristically brief, because it's time to move on. Also, it was fun to see DaveScot go into paroxysms to try to justify the dangerous, unethical, and reckless actions of Heather Nordstrom and her stepfather in setting up The DCA Site and its sister site, BuyDCA.com, where Heather et al are selling "Pet-DCA" in a ludicrously obvious (and probably ineffective) ploy to be able to claim to the FDA, "Hey, we're not selling this for human consumption." One wonders, perhaps, if DaveScot may actually have…
oracknows | February 21, 2007Yesterday, I wrote about how anti-science pro-"intelligent design" kook extraordinaire Dave Springer (a.k.a. DaveScot) has taken to promoting dichloroacetate as a treatment for cancer and one website in particular, The DCA Site that claims to exist to "help inform people of the exciting research done on DCA [dichloroacetate] by scientists at the University of Alberta. In January 2007 a team of scientists at the University of Alberta published a paper in the scientific journal Cancer Cell describing the discovery that a simple, cheap molecule, DCA, worked to reactivate the apoptosis mechanism…
oracknows | February 20, 2007I hadn't planned on writing about dichloroacetate, the inexpensive compound whose success in treating experimental cancer in rats that provoked a blogopheric storm about a "cancer cure" that would supposedly never see the light of day because it's not patentable. After all, I've done about seven posts on the topic, give or take a couple, in the course of the last four weeks or so. That's saturation blogging, and, really, nothing new has happened on the news front that merits a new post.
Or so I thought.
Then, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III, just when I thought that I was out…
oracknows | February 14, 2007[Note: There is a followup to this post here.]
I've been writing a lot about dichloroacetate (DCA) lately, perhaps even to the point of becoming repetitive and risking boring my readers. Fortunately, this post is not primarily about DCA. Unfortunately, it's about a question that is related to the recent hype over DCA in that it pits the desperation of dying cancer patients who want to try out the latest drugs, even if they haven't been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, versus the what remaining ability the FDA has to regulate drug safety and, some might argue, the scientific method…
oracknows | February 12, 2007Yes, I know that my blog buddy Abel wrote a post with almost exactly the same title as this. No, I'm not mindlessly aping him. I'm doing it because of what Abel revealed in his post: That most of his referrals lately have been Google searches looking for information on where to buy dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA.
I, too, have noticed a lot of referrals to my original post on DCA, in which I tried to explain why it isn't the "cure" for cancer that some have been touting it as, most recently, a rather annoying troll going by the name of Robert Smith who's been infesting my blog lately in my posts…
oracknows | February 12, 2007I've written about the corrosive effect that religion can have on medical care when it is allowed to become too pervasive. One example where the intersection of religion and medicine concerns me is when various religious doctors insist on very dubious evidence that religiosity is good for a patient's health and that physicians should therefore take a "spiritual history" of all of their patients, with one even going so far as to claim that "excluding God from a consultation should be grounds for malpractice." I've also critically discussed studies that purport to show various benefits of…
oracknows | February 8, 2007Well, here I am in sunny Phoenix, having spent pretty much all of yesterday at the conference, sneaking in alterations to and practicing of my talk in between sessions. All in all not a bad day, although I spent the entire day indoors and didn't get to partake of the bright and cheery warmth, which is sad, because it's particularly welcome given the weather at my present abode. The conference produced one other thing for me as well: A good blogging topic. Not only that, but it's a good blogging topic that fits in with the whole "Just Science" theme of this week. Don't worry, though, no…
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007Part six. It is ironic, isn't it, that this game is being
broadcast in High Definition, and it is raining, and the rain makes the
picture indistinct. I've been skeptical of the value of High
Definition TV. Seems like a waste of bandwidth. Did it ever
occur to anyone that bandwidth is a strategic asset? It's like
the supply of titanium (element 22).
Seems like with all the emphasis on national security these days, the
last thing we should be doing is cluttering up our bandwidth with
gigabits of hi-res football. Not to mention all the head
trauma. And brain rot. Don't forget about the…
j7uy5 | January 30, 2007And what an unflattering light it is.
It occurs to me that often, when I write about the pharmaceutical
industry, I have something negative to say. Really, my thoughts
are not all negative. It's just that it is easier to come up with
criticisms when responding to news items.
Anyway, this one (from Washington Post) deserves comment:
href="http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2007/01/drug_ads_taking_medicine_never.html">Drug
Ads: Taking Medicine Never Looked So Good
Remember all those tricks drugmakers used to get you to take medicine
as a kid? They made cough syrup sweet and…
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…