FDA
kkrisberg | February 12, 2016Manufacturers who market their products as “BPA-free” aren’t just sending consumers a message about chemical composition. The underlying message is about safety — as in, this product is safe or least more safe than products that do contain BPA. However earlier this month, another study found that a common BPA alternative — BPS — may not be safer at all.
“BPS works very similarly to BPA,” said Nancy Wayne, a reproductive endocrinologist and professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine. “We’re not the first to show this, but what’s captured…
oracknows | January 20, 2016I like to say that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All (although of late I've debated whether homeopathy or reiki is the most properly referred to as that). It's a strange beast, homeopathy. Its two main "Laws" are so clearly pseudoscience that you'd think that no one could ever fall for something that dumb, but, well over 200 years after Samuel Hahnemann pulled those two Laws out of his nether regions, not only is homeopathy still popular in large swaths of the developed world, but there are actual physicians who use it.
Just consider homeopathy's laws. The first is the Law of…
oracknows | January 15, 2016I feel as though I'm experiencing an acid flashback to 2011, and I've never in my entire life once tried acid—or any mind-altering substance other than booze.
What am I talking about? Let's take a trip down memory lane, if you will, back to those halcyon days of—oh—five years ago. That was the time when I first took an interest in the Polish oncologist wannabe named Stanislaw Burzynski. Although I had mentioned him before because he featured prominently in Suzanne Somers' 2009 paean to quackery Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer–And How to Prevent Getting It in the First…
kkrisberg | December 16, 2015In a recent study, Harvard public health researchers decided to test a few dozen types of electronic cigarettes for diacetyl, a flavoring chemical associated with a severe respiratory disease known as “popcorn lung.” The researchers found diacetyl in a majority of the e-cigarettes they tested. News outlets jumped on the findings, with some announcing that e-cigarettes could cause the often-debilitating respiratory disease.
But scientist Joseph Allen wants to be clear: His study doesn’t make a definitive statement about the effect of diacetyl in e-cigarettes. Instead, Allen said his goal was…
oracknows | November 17, 2015Now that's what I'm talking about! Yesterday, the Justice Department announced criminal charges and lawsuits against the sellers of several supplements! This is the ort of thing that is long overdue—incredibly so, in fact. Before I get to this specific case, let's discuss a little background.
One of the regular topics I write about, both on this blog and at my not-so-super-secret other group blog, is how supplement manufacturers take advantage of the lax regulation of dietary supplements in this country. It's a problem in our laws that we've had since the supplement industry and its lapdogs…
oracknows | November 17, 2015The other day, I suddenly realized that it's been a long time since I've written about the Polish expat doctor in Houston who treats patients with advanced brain cancer with a concoction that he dubbed antineoplastons (ANPs). I'm referring, of course, to Stanislaw Burzynski who, despite the fact that he has no training in medical oncology, has treated thousands of cancer patients with ANPs beginning back in the late 1970s. Somehow, despite the fact that he's never even come close to showing that ANPs are effective and safe against the cancers for which he uses it, the FDA has, with a brief…
kkrisberg | October 28, 2015The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette use is outpacing the ability of regulatory bodies to protect the public’s health and educate consumers about possible risks.
The new data is from CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, which first began collecting data on e-cigarette use…
oracknows | October 16, 2015If there's one thing I've been consistent about, it's that, however ridiculous all the other woo I routinely discuss here is—homeopathy, reiki, reflexology, I'm talking to you and your friends—herbal medicine and supplements might have value because they might have a physiological effect that is beneficial in treating or preventing disease. Of course, if that's the case, it's because the herb or supplement contains chemicals that act as drugs. They're "dirty" drugs in that they are mixed with all sorts of other substances in the herb or supplement that might or might not have effects, which…
oracknows | September 25, 2015Yesterday, I wrote about how pediatric neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson is an excellent example demonstrating how the vast majority of physicians and surgeons, even highly accomplished ones admired as being at the top of their professions, are not scientists and how many of them are disturbingly prone to buying into pseudoscience. In Dr. Carson's case, that tendency to believe in pseudoscience derives from his fundamentalist religion that led him to reject evolution and accept arguments against evolution every bit as ignorant as the ones Kent Hovind or Ken Ham serves up…
oracknows | September 18, 2015Homeopathy is a frequent topic on this blog, for reasons that regular readers no doubt understand all too well by now. Homeopathy is, as I like to call it, again borrowing from Tolkien, The One Quackery To Rule Them All. When it comes to quackery, few can even come close to homeopathy for the sheer ridiculousness of its precepts. Whether it is the Law of Similars, which claims that to cure a disease you need to use a substance that cause's that diseases symptoms in healthy people, a "law" that has no basis in science, or the Law of Infinitesimals, which postulates that serially diluting a…
oracknows | August 9, 2015I learned over the weekend that a historic figure in science-based medicine has died. If you know anything about the history of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you will know this woman's name, Frances O. Kelsey, MD, PhD. It turns out that Dr. Kelsey died on Friday at the age of 101. Somehow I missed the news on Friday, but once the story showed up in my news feeds over the weekend, I knew I had to make her today's topic. Here's the short version:
The sedative was Kevadon, and the application to market it in America reached the new medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration…
oracknows | April 21, 2015Well, it's over.
I'm referring to the two day hearing held by the FDA in Bethesda seeking public comment regarding how it should modernize its regulation of homeopathic products. Actually, as I discussed before (as did Jann Bellamy over at my favorite other blog, Science-Based Medicine), in fact it's arguable wither there is currently much, if any, actual regulation of homeopathic remedies. Oh, sure, sometimes when a foolish company or true believer tries to market something as unremittingly dangerous as a homeopathic asthma nasal spray, the FDA takes notices. However, for the most part, the…
kkrisberg | April 17, 2015In just a year, electronic cigarette use has tripled among American teens. And considering that no one really knows what the related health impacts are and any regulatory framework is lagging far behind the growing popularity of e-cigarettes, public health advocates say it’s time for action.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data from the 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey finding that current e-cigarette use among high school students, which is defined as using at least once in the prior 30 days, nearly tripled — from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.4…
oracknows | April 16, 2015Once again, repeat after me: Homeopathy is quackery. In fact, it's what I like to refer to as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. You would think that, in a modern world and given the incredible advancements in our scientific understanding of biology, physiology, chemistry, and physics over the course of the over 200 years since Samuel Hahnemann pulled the concepts behind homeopathy out of his nether regions, it never ceases to depress me that there are large numbers of people who think that homeopathy could ever work. But they do.
A couple of weeks ago, I took notice of a, well, notice from…
oracknows | March 27, 2015Homeopathy is quackery. It can't be repeated often enough.
Homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. It is based on prescientific vitalism and principles so addled that one must wonder whether Samuel Hahnemann, the guy who dreamt up this medical system, was a fan of excess alcohol use, opium, marijuana, or some unholy combination of the these. Think about it. The first principle of homeopathy is the law of similars, which states that like cures like. In other words, to relieve a symptom, homeopathy tells us, you must use something that causes that symptom in healthy people. There is no…
kkrisberg | February 13, 2015When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first vaccine to protect against cancers caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, public health advocates cheered its arrival and life-saving potential. Unfortunately, the new vaccine quickly became embroiled in a debate over whether immunizing young girls against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease, would lead to risky sexual behavior. A new study, however, finds that the vaccine is not associated with an uptick in STDs — an indicator that HPV immunization does not promote unsafe sex.
To conduct the study, which…
lborkowski | December 8, 2014Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration published a final rule that updates requirements for what prescription-drug information must disclose about potential effects for pregnant and breastfeeding women and their babies. Under the old labeling rules, drugs were placed in one of five categories -- A, B, C, D, or X -- depending on research findings (or lack thereof). An "A" designation meant that human studies did not find adverse effects in pregnant women or their babies, while and "X" designation meant that studies in humans or animals found a risk of problems to the baby and that…
oracknows | December 1, 2014
Every so often there's an article that starts making the rounds on social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter, that cries out for a treatment by yours truly. Actually, there are more such articles that are constantly circulating on social media that I could work full time blogging and still not cover them all. So I'm stuck picking and choosing ones that either (1) particularly pique my interest; (2) irritate me enough to goad me into action; or (3) reach a level of ubiquity that I can no longer ignore them. I don't think this one's hit #3 yet, but it certainly scores on #1 and #2.…
carlyo | November 4, 2014The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools.
Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Karen Elkins
Vaccines against diseases such as measles, polio, and whooping cough have greatly reduced deaths and suffering. These vaccines are designed to mimic the microbes that cause the disease. When given a vaccine, the body's immune system is inspired to…
oracknows | October 28, 2014
One of the biggest medical conspiracy theories for a long time has been that there exist out there all sorts of fantastic cures for cancer and other deadly diseases but you can’t have them because (1) “they” don’t want you to know about them (as I like to call it, the Kevin Trudeau approach) and/or (2) the evil jackbooted thugs of the FDA are so close-minded and blinded by science that they crush any attempt to market such drugs and, under the most charitable assessment under this myth, dramatically slow down the approval of such cures. The first version usually involves “natural” cures or…