health care
revere | May 13, 2008Second Life is a virtual reality site, superficially similar to some massive multiplayer role playing games one finds on the net (like World of Warcraft). But it's not a game but a social venue. I've tried it out and posted on or mentioned it several times (here, here, here and here). Second Life is a global phenomenon, not just a US one. Now Spanish public health officials are trying it out as a way to reach young people about drugs and sexually transmitted diseases:
Real doctors will log on and offer advice to their anonymous patients. What both will see is an image of a consulting room…
terrasig | May 13, 2008I'm not sure whether this story qualifies as alternative medicine or religion, or neither. I throw it out to you because I and other sci/med bloggers widely criticize the infiltration of so-called alternative medicine in our academic medical centers.
But here in today's Health Journal section of the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck tells us of the application of mindfulness, a practice derived from Buddhism, to overcoming binge-eating disorders. Sure, this may be considered alternative medicine but it's really an application of psychology under the auspices of integrative medicine:
In a…
When medical experimental therapeutics gets co-opted as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
terrasig | May 8, 2008Sorry to get to this so late but I wanted to weigh on an excellent post from my cancer blogging colleague, Orac, the other day on the investigation of CAM therapies in cancer. The post covers a lot of ground, as expected from any of Orac's exhaustive missives, but I wanted to focus on the comparison and contracts between NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine within the National Cancer Institute (NCI-OCCAM).
I am on record as a strong critic of NCCAM but a supporter of NCI's OCCAM in that the…
terrasig | April 25, 2008Okay, some people are smoking some bad dope.
Whilst helping the PharmKid get down to the car for school this morning, I came upon PharmGirl, MD, in a rage while sitting in front of her laptop. The object of her vitriol was a 17 April article in BusinessWeek entitled, "Are There Too Many Women Doctors?: As an MD shortage looms, female physicians and their flexible hours are taking some of the blame." The article derives from a point/counterpoint pair of essays in the 5 April issue of BMJ (British Medical Journal) entitled, "Are there too many female medical graduates?" ("Yes" position, "No"…
terrasig | April 17, 2008Dr Kimball Atwood IV at Science-Based Medicine and my long-time blogging colleague Orac have spilled oceans of e-ink on the institutionalization of alternative or integrative medicine in North America's top academic medical centers. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is now often called "integrative medicine" to intellectually justify the incorporation of evidence-free, anecdotal practices into the business of academic medicine. Of course, integrative medicine does co-opt a few areas of conventional medicine, like nutritional and psychological counseling, supported by an evidence…
terrasig | March 29, 2008A paper in last month's issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery reported that US drug approvals during 2007 were the lowest number since 1983. (17 new molecular entities and 2 biologicals; see this figure for 1996-2007 data.) The review cites increased regulatory action as a factor in this reduction, especially following high-profile post-marketing safety issues with blockbuster drugs like Vioxx or Avandia. But other commentators have noted other problems such as the science of drug discovery in pharma being overridden by managers or the reluctance to develop agents for diseases that afflict…
terrasig | March 18, 2008This issue was brought up by my fellow blogger, Joseph at Corpus Callosum, following an article in yesterday's LA Times.
For those not familiar with the concept or countries other than the US where laws may differ, generic drugs are those with the same active chemical as the originally-approved "brand name" drug. The original drug manufacturer is the one that conducts all of the preclinical and clinical safety and efficacy testing, natural product isolation and/or chemical synthesis, formulation with inactive ingredients to assure dissolution and reproducible release of the drug, etc. In…
terrasig | March 13, 2008[Hi Mom. Will call you soon but you really need not read this post. Love, Your son.]
Bora/Coturnix just alerted me to the FDA approval of a home sperm-check test that can be used to determine the effectiveness of one's vasectomy. The product, SpermCheck Vasectomy, was developed by Dr John C Kerr and fellow researchers at the University of Virginia through their faculty business start-up program. This test could minimize the embarrassment of the 500,000 US men who undergo the 3rd most popular contraceptive procedure by obviating the need to bring a 90-day post-vasectomy semen sample to the…
revere | March 11, 2008Here's what a flu pandemic might look like:
"In four weeks, we went from a ho-hum flu season to ridiculous overcrowding," said Dr. Maurice Ramirez, an emergency physician who works in several institutions in north Florida. "We have had so many people that we have them, not in beds in the hallway, but in chairs with a number taped to the wall over their heads."
"We've seen a tremendous amount of flu--from an anecdotal standpoint, a much busier season than in recent years," agreed Dr. Peter A. Lipson, a private practice internist in southern Michigan who also sees patients at a walk-in clinic.…
terrasig | February 28, 2008[Note: Mr. Tweedy's first post, Shaking It Off, went up on 5 March 2008]
Yesterday, London-based blogger Mo at Neurophilosophy alerted us to a new blog at the New York Times website entitled, Migraine: Perspectives on a Headache. A notable cadre of prominent migraine sufferers have started blogging about their experiences and answering reader questions. Bloggers include author Siri Hustvedt, author-journalist Paula Kamen, German neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Klaus Podoll, and noted Columbia professor and author Dr Oliver Sacks. The blog description is as follows:
More than 28 million…
terrasig | February 25, 2008[Note: I originally posted this last Thursday under another title but it got lost in other events of that day. As I find it ironic that Mr Comarow has been attacked by an alternative medicine practitioner and advocate, I find this story worthy of reposting.]
A few weeks ago the skeptical blogosphere was up in arms about an article in US News & World Report by Avery Comarow on alternative medicine services in US academic medical centers. Mr Comarow is a senior medical writer for USN&WR and best known as editor for the last 18 years of the magazine's annual feature, America's Best…
revere | February 24, 2008Stories about insurance companies denying coverage are all too common (what kind of world is this, anyway?). But yesterday's story that a big insurer would have to pay for it is a surprise (what kind of world is this, anyway, that this is a surprise?):
One of California's largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy.
The ruling by a private arbitration judge was the first of its kind and the most powerful…
terrasig | February 21, 2008Back in January several science bloggers had an exchange that degenerated into discussion of the process and aftermath of the vasectomy.
Well, as PhysioProf is wont to say, today I will sack up, literally. As part of my gift to PharmGirl for her [significant] bday next week I will undergo the knife this afternoon to render me no longer able to contribute to the gene pool. Of course, I won't be completely sperm-free until 20 to 30 post-operative ejaculations, the thought of which brings me great comfort. We have had one child and do not anticipate wanting any more - we got us a good one the…
grrlscientist | February 20, 2008tags: book review, HIV, AIDS, Africa, epidemic, public health, Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure
"AIDS has come to haunt a world that thought it was incomplete. Some wanted children, some wanted money, some wanted property, some wanted power, but all we have ended up with is AIDS."
-- Bernadette Nabatanzi, traditional healer, Kampala, Uganda, 1994.
The occurrence of AIDS in East and southern Africa is uniquely severe: even though less than 3 percent of the world's population lives here, this region is home to more than 40 percent of all those people with HIV infections. Throughout much of the…
terrasig | February 19, 2008For more details on this story, you can go to Mark Chu-Carroll, Orac, Mike the Mad Biologist, or the Autism Blog. I just wanted to share my personal views on the need for childhood vaccinations and support a public information campaign from the AAP.
Until I started medical blogging, I had not realized quite how vocal was the community of individuals refusing to vaccinate their children, mostly at the urging of those who claimed that vaccines and related components caused illness in their own children. I will first say that no drug product, natural or otherwise, is completely and absolutely…
terrasig | February 12, 2008There are responsible ways to present medical information and irresponsible ways. I will say at the outset that I have no ethical issues with discussing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with cancer patients, as long as the information presented is based in fact.
So it was no surprise to me and actually quite alarming to read a recent report suggesting that while only 1 in 20 breast cancer websites offer incorrect information, CAM-focused websites were 15 times more likely to contain inaccurate or incorrect information. The study to which I refer will appear in the 15 March issue…
revere | February 10, 2008There is so much crap written in US media about alleged fatal flaws of the Canadian system of universal health care that it could be used to fertilize the crops of US agribusiness for a year. One apparent myth is that Canadians hate their system and that it results in long waits and unsatisfactory service. The province of British Columbia surveyed its citizens twice on how they feel about one of the most important aspects of the system, the Emergency Room (for American readers: before you read the results ask yourself how satisfied you were with your last trip to the ER):
The survey was…
revere | January 27, 2008There's no vaccine for the influenza subtype, H5N1, of most concern as the agent of the next pandemic but evidence exists that there is some cross-reactivity with existing seasonal vaccines (it's not clear how much if any, but it might not take much) or that previous vaccination with seasonal vaccine produces a much quicker response to an H5N1 vaccine. Moreover there remains a substantial toll in morbidity and mortality from the seasonal influenza which the current vaccines are designed for. So strategies to encourage key populations to get the existing flu vaccine are of interest to public…
revere | January 9, 2008Last Saturday night Mrs. R. and I voluntarily subjected ourselves to four hours of political debates, two involving aspirants for the presidential nomination of the Republican party and two hours for the Democrats. Bad karma? Anyway, for the record, the Democrats won both debates, their own and the Republican debate. In particular, listening to the know-nothing Republicans "debate" health care reforms amongst themselves was laughable since they unanimously agreed that black was white, in this case, that the US had the "best health care in the world." Virtually everybody knows this is false so…
terrasig | January 4, 2008I'm very excited to announce to Terra Sig readers the kickoff of a new group blog called Science Based Medicine. Yes, it may sound odd that one would need to preface "Medicine" with the qualifier, "Science-Based," but therein lies the goal of this new resource from its mission statement:
Safe and effective health care is critical to to everyone's quality of life; so much so that it is generally considered a basic human right. The best method for determining which interventions and health products are safe and effective is, without question, good science. Therefore it is in everyone's best…