complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | August 19, 2006And, worse, this is from my home state as well:
LANSING - A Rochester Hills chiropractor defended the techniques of a Fenton chiropractor accused of performing unorthodox breast treatments.
The teen girls treated by Robert J. Moore have spinal curvatures that may have caused their bodies to tilt and force one breast to droop lower than the other, said Dr. Robert Ducharme, a chiropractor who testified Tuesday in Moore's defense.
Moore risks losing his chiropractic license after four women, including two teenage girls, claim he fondled them during office and after-hours visits.
Moore, 41,…
oracknows | August 18, 2006Given how much I've written about the Abraham Cherrix case, I would be remiss in not pointing out some posts by fellow ScienceBloggers:
1. First, Abel Pharmboy discusses how this might all come down to a failure of communication between Cherrix's doctors and Cherrix and his parents. While this is probably true, I'm not sure that any amount of communication and empathy would have changed Cherrix's mind. Abel also makes some good points about "natural" therapies in cancer. I would also agree with him that it is important to be as nonconfrontational as possible when a patient insists on…
oracknows | August 18, 2006Glutton for punishment that I am, all in the name of skepticism, critical thinking, and evidence-based medicine, I am sometimes wont to surf through the stranger parts of the Internet in search of truly amazing material for Your Friday Dose of Woo. Sometimes, I hit the jackpot, as I did a few weeks ago. Sometimes I don't. Regardless, I'm always amazed at the strangeness that I encounter. This week, I was pondering what topic to cover. Once again, there were so many possibilities that I was having a hard time making up my mind, even more so than usual. While contemplating this dilemma, I felt…
oracknows | August 17, 2006I wondered what took him so long (maybe diving into heated debates is not his style), but fellow ScienceBlogger The Cheerful Oncologist has weighed on on the Cherrix case, in which a 16-year-old has refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's disease. And he would know better than I what the treatment options are for relapsed Hodgkin's disease. Personally, I'd like to see him chime in on such issues more often.
oracknows | August 16, 2006Sadly, Starchild Abraham Cherrix is almost certainly doomed:
ACCOMAC, Virginia (AP) -- A 16-year-old cancer patient's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy.
At the start of what was scheduled to be a two-day hearing, Circuit Judge Glen A. Tyler announced that both sides had reached a consent decree, which Tyler approved.
Under the decree, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, who is battling Hodgkin's disease, will be treated by an oncologist of his choice who is board-certified in…
oracknows | August 15, 2006Damn you PZ!
(Heh, I haven't gotten to say that since he shamed my profession by showing us an example of a certifiably loony young earth creationist physician running for Lt. Governor of South Carolina.)
This time around, I'm annoyed at PZ for pointing me in the direction of an article so absurd, so ridiculous, so full of postmodernistic appeals to other ways of knowing with respect to science that at first I thought that it had to be a parody of postmodernism in the form of, as PZ put it, suggesting that Foucault or Derrida should have as much value treating your cancer as evidence-based…
oracknows | August 9, 2006As you probably remember, the case that first got me discussing the issue of children and minors opting for "alternative therapy" rather than conventional medicine was not Starchild Abraham Cherrix (Abraham's personal website). Rather, this is a topic that I first approached nine months ago, even before I moved over to ScienceBlogs. With the prominence of the Cherrix case, the Wernecke case has dropped off the map more or less. Basically, her parents won the right to refuse the recommended radiation therapy for her, a treatment with a good chance of rendering her disease-free, and instead…
oracknows | August 4, 2006After the last couple of weeks of Your Friday Dose of Woo, I was in a bind. You see, people were telling me that they really enjoyed the last couple of weeks, particularly last week. For some reason, they were amused by my discussion of various liver cleansing regimens, hot on the heals of having discussed colon cleansing regimens. (Must be the bathroom humor; it gets 'em every time.) Some of you were surprised at the real obsession that alties have with "purifying" their insides from various "poisons" or "toxins." As I discussed, some of these folks seem to believe that their insides are…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Today, the Skeptics' Circle turns 40. Well, not exactly, but it is the 40th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and this time around it's being held at Daylight Atheism. Once again, it's time for an antidote for the rampant credulity in the blogosphere, where dubious stories travel around the world far faster than skeptics can apply critical thinking skills to them, this time by entering the Daylight Atheism Museum of Superstition and Pseudoscience:
The doors of the Observatory are closed, and an eager crowd has gathered before them, milling about anxiously to await the unveiling of the newest…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Ron Rosenbaum on Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his choosing the Hoxsey treatment over chemotherapy:
Young Cherrix has expressed his feelings this way to the Associated Press: "I'll fight until I do die. I'm not going to let it go. I would rather die healthy and strong and in my house than die in a hospital bed, bedridden and unable to even open my eyes."
It's a moving and heartfelt plea, but a problematic one as well. My instinct to support young Cherrix on libertarian grounds is undermined by the not quite fully developed thought process this statement suggests.
Is the choice he faces really…
oracknows | August 2, 2006Here's something so obvious that it should have been done years ago:
WASHINGTON -- Unlike prescription drugmakers, manufacturers of vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies have no obligation to tell the Food and Drug Administration if consumers suffer serious side effects after taking their products.
That may soon change.
Legislation headed for a vote in the Senate would mandate for the first time that makers of dietary supplements and over-the-counter drugs inform the FDA when they learn of any serious adverse event linked to their products.
"The current reporting system is voluntary. It's…
oracknows | August 1, 2006I don't often do reader mailbag sorts of posts, but this question was so good that I thought it would be worth answering on the blog. Indeed, I almost thought of making this whole question another in my Friday Woo series, but decided that I wanted to answer it now.
Reader TB writes:
I've been following your blog for a few months now and love being both educated and entertained. The Friday Dose of Woo is great. While I have an idea of what you mean by woo it would be helpful to me and others visiting the page if you included a definition and perhaps the etymology.
My first temptation was to…
oracknows | July 31, 2006In the quiet and still of the crypt, something stirred. It was barely perceptible at first, but became more definite.
It lived again.
In the depths of what remained of its mind, only sheer instinct prevailed. It had fed long and well recently, and had returned to its crypt to digest its unholy meal. Some primeval instict told it that it was still being hunted. How it knew this it is impossible to know, but a sense of urgency had led it back to to the safety of its crypt to ride out the storm. The peace of eternal rest denied it, it could still occasionally have a brief taste of that rest only…
oracknows | July 28, 2006I have to apologize for last week's Dose of Woo. No, I'm not apologizing for the subject matter (the obsession that reigns supreme among some alties with "cleansing" one's colon to "purge toxins" and achieve the super-regularity of several bowel movements a day). Rather, I'm sorry I didn't point out just how disgusting one of the links I included was, because among all the glowing testimonials for how great colon cleansers felt after having supposedly rid themselves of all that nasty fecal matter caked on the walls of their colons and achieved the Nirvana of many bowel movements a day (or, as…
oracknows | July 27, 2006It's not your Friday Dose of Woo yet, but fear not. You'll get your weekly dose of woo in due course.
Kevin Trudeau is arguably the most prominent snakeoil salesmen of our time. I've leafed through his first book, Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About at the bookstore and recoiled at the conspiracy-mongering, lies, and self-promotion (a lot of discussions in the book urge you to pay for access to his website to get more information). As you may know, he's now released a followup book More Natural Cures Revealed.
Fortunately, Christopher Wanjek has read it so that I don't have to…
oracknows | July 27, 2006I hadn't intended to mention this case again for a while, but an article in Stats.org brought up a point that, although I had somewhat alluded to it, I hadn't really explicitly addressed. It has nothing to do with the judicial decision, the Cherrixes' successful appeal for a new trial and the stay ordered by the higher court, or any the legal issues involved with the case.
It has to do with the atrocious reporting of this case by the mainstream media. In other words, it has to do with how the case has been framed, which has been essentially a near total success for the Cherrixes and those who…
oracknows | July 26, 2006Unfortunately, I didn't have time to write much for today. Fortunately, this gives me the perfect opportunity to remedy a situation in which I've been remiss. As you know, Kathleen Seidel has been tirelessly exposing the dubious science promoted by Mark and David Geier, who advocate using Lupron to shut of sex hormone synthesis as a means of "treating" autism by "making chelation therapy more effective." She's posted much more since I last referenced her.
The advantage of my not having much time is that you can read the results of her investigations directly without my extensive commentary.…
oracknows | July 25, 2006From the AP:
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- A 16-year-old cancer patient was headed to court Tuesday with his lawyers to try to block a judge's order requiring him to report to a hospital the same day for treatment as doctors deem necessary.
A juvenile court judge on Monday denied a request by lawyers for Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his parents to stay his order pending an appeal in a higher court, said John Stepanovich, attorney for Jay and Rose Cherrix.
Lawyers also asked the Accomack County Circuit Court to take over the case and grant the stay, and a hearing was set for noon Tuesday in that court…
oracknows | July 24, 2006Not surprisingly, since the court decided that Abraham Cherrix, a Virginia teen who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at age 15, underwent chemotherapy, relapsed, and then refused to undergo any further chemotherapy, opting instead for an "alternative medicine" treatment known as the Hoxsey treatment, to be administered at the Biomedical Center in Tijuana, the blogosphere has been abuzz with chatter about the decision. Not surprisingly, I find myself in the minority in approving of the decision, even if I do so reluctantly. Indeed, not only do I find myself in the minority, but I find…
oracknows | July 22, 2006I tell you, I take a night off from blogging, not even glancing at the blog or my e-mail, instead falling into a deep slumber at 10 PM after The Dog Whisperer on TV, thanks to a somewhat stressful week and a large meal plus a beer, and what happens?
Abraham' Cherrix's uncle comments on the old blog and the legal decision regarding whether Abraham has to undergo chemotherapy is issued, three days later than originally anticipated, that's what! In this case, the judge decided that Abraham must report on Tuesday to undergo conventional therapy. Fortunately, I realize (most of the time, anyway)…