medicine
oracknows | August 11, 2009...leave it to the Investor's Business Daily to kick it up a notch to thermonuclear as an anonymous editorialist tries to criticize President Obama's health plan by invoking the dreaded British NHS:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
I realize that many of you saw this quote over at Ed Brayton's blog, but the searing stupidity of the above statement just stands out so much that I had to add my little snark too. Can…
palmd | August 11, 2009It seemed inevitable. Crowds more akin to brownshirts than concerned citizens have been disrupting health care town hall meetings, depriving their fellow citizens of their right to be heard. It was only a matter of time before the intimidation become more overt.
Today, a protester showed up outside a venue where the President is appearing. His sign was disturbing enough: "It is time to water the tree of liberty!" To refresh your memory, he is paraphrasing a famous Revolutionary-era quote which says that to water that tree it is, from time to time, necessary to spill the blood of tyrants…
oracknows | August 11, 2009While I've let myself get sucked into commenting on health care politics (well, not exactly "sucked in"; I was pissed off enough at the "Obama = Hitler" analogies that I enjoyed skewering some of the idiots making them), there's another issue that's popped up that I can't resist commenting on in my usual inimitable fashion. It comes from, of all places, this blog's favorite den of quackery propaganda, NaturalNews.com and from, of all places, one of our favorite wingnut politicians, a man who's been a tireless promoter of quackery in Congress for many years now.
That's right, Ron Paul's back,…
ddobbs | August 11, 2009Massive feature finished, should be in print this November ... but more on that later. By way of returning to blogdom, a few of the few notables I've had time to read lately:
Effect Measure, usually quite restrained about predictions, joins quite a few others in predicting the swine flu will hit us pretty hard this fall. (The U.S. has already had 6,506 hospitalized cases and 436 deaths, despite it not being flu season. And while we've been tracking health-care debacles debates and pondering Palin, the flu has been hitting the southern hemisphere pretty hard.) Now, not later, when you're sick…
palmd | August 10, 2009So, not so bad so far today, after an imperfect weekend. The weekend was full of swimming and biking, but also food. I didn't eat too many things that were "empty" of nutrients, but I consumed more mass than I'd hoped too.
Today, I'm not doing too badly.
Breakfast:
2 eggs scrambled with a cup of spinach and a couple of pinches of Romano cheese
1/2 cup shredded wheat with 1/4 cup milk
A little over 300 calories
Lunch:
A "cobb" salad from the hospital: fresh greens, some shredded cheese, boiled chicken breast, tomatoes, bacon bits and a tablespoon of fat free italian.
Best guess, about 380-…
jstemwedel | August 10, 2009PalMD is trying to eat better (and drop a little weight). Dr. Isis has been offering some advice on what sorts of meals might help Pal cut the calories while still being healthy and satisfying. Pal has been taking the advice to heart, but finds time constraints an impediment to the kind of food he want to be eating.
As you might guess, my work and family situation give me some experience in throwing together meals under time pressure. So I wanted to offer a couple of quick recipes to Pal. But I also thought I'd page Dr. Isis to see if she'd weigh in on the nutritional punch these dishes…
oracknows | August 10, 2009
Remember the Hitler Zombie? He doesn't show up all that much anymore. The reason is not because a lot of brain dead Nazi analogies aren't being used to demonize political opponents. In fact, If I had a mind to, I could probably populate this blog with nothing other than people whose brains have obviously been eaten by the zombie, leaving so little intellectual firepower left that they actually believe that comparing President Obama to Hitler makes sense. Mainly, the reason that I don't do Hitler Zombie bits so often anymore is that the monster has chomped so many brains, producing so much…
oracknows | August 10, 2009If there's one theme that's run through this blog since the very beginning, it's that the best medical care should be based on the best science. In other words, I like to think of myself as being far more for science- and evidence-based medicine, than I am against against so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM).
Unfortunately, even though the proportion of medical therapies not based on science is far lower than CAM advocates would like you to believe, there are still more treatments in "conventional" medicine that are insufficiently based on science or that have never been…
palmd | August 9, 2009Thankfully, I'm not a week into this lifestyle change yet, because I'm getting good advice from experts. I know from my reading, that certain foods are better at inducing a durable sense of satiety, and I've been trying to incorporate these foods.
For example, my typical lunch of late has been a good salad with either a few ounces of grilled chicken breast or a hard boiled egg on it, and a nice portion of melon. This gives me a meal with a high volume of fruits and veggies, but still some fats and proteins. I think, and we'll see what the experts say, that it is a bit too carbohydrate-…
palmd | August 8, 2009It's true that I don't have a lot of free time on my hands, but last nights UStream event with the crew was lots of fun. Isis and Arikia have been hosting a regular Friday night get-together on UStream, which is a total blast, but last night Isis couldn't tear herself away from her hot, hot science to host. As an experiment, I opened up a UStream channel and we happily chatted far to late into the evening.
And...the format is interesting. I can broadcast live video, and have a parallel text chat. This got me thinking. There are one or two online doctor shows (OK, only one that I know…
palmd | August 7, 2009So, Dear Readers, I've been "dieting", that is, changing my lifestyle now for nearly a week, with some success. Lots of people have their own advice, their own stories, their own beliefs. One fascinating discussion is about whether one must or will necessarily be hungry when eating right. My contention is that most overweight people feel hungry, defined as a desire to eat more, if they have a negative calorie balance.
BUT....
As one super-hot physiologist has pointed out, there are ways to mitigate this.
I say "mitigate" because I really think that there are some people who, if the…
clock | August 7, 2009You may remember Dr.Charles whose blog was here on Scienceblogs.com for a while two years ago. He took a hiatus from blogging, but is now back at it with a vengeance at his new site which I warmly recommend you visit.
Today's post is interesting - and not just because it is partially about a PLoS ONE paper - Why Exercise is Not the Best Prescription for Weight Loss which fits perfectly within the ongoing discussion about weight-loss and dieting going on a couple of my SciBlings' blogs right now.
PalMD is going on a diet and monitoring his progress publicly, on his blog.
Dr.Isis tells him he…
oracknows | August 7, 2009I'm soooo envious.
Why and of whom am I envious? I'll tell you. Phil Plait, a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer, attracts a more famous class of antivaccine loon. He's managed to attract Dr. Joe Mercola himself in the comments of a post about anti-vaccine zealots:
If you TRULY are interested in finding out the truth about this topic you are encouraged to attend the Fourth International Public Conference on Vaccines in Washington DC in October.
http://www.nvic.org/Events/overview.aspx
The top experts in the world on this topic will be presenting and you can really understand the science rather than…
clock | August 7, 2009The World is a radio show co-produced by WGBH Boston, Public Radio International and BBC. You can probably hear it on your local NPR station - if not, you can find all the shows recorded on the website.
You may remember that I went to Boston a few months ago, as a part of a team of people helping the show do something special: use the NSF grant they recently received to expand their science coverage and, in collaboration with Sigma Xi and NOVA, tie their radio science coverage to their online offerings.
The result is The World: Science website, a series of weekly science podcasts with Elsa…
oracknows | August 7, 2009Dr. Bob Sears is the bane of science- and evidence-based pediatricians everywhere. As pediatrician Dr. John Snyder relates, whenever he hears a parent say "I was reading Dr. Sears" or sees a patient in his office holding a copy of Dr. Sears' The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Choice for Your Child, he knows what's coming next: Resistance to vaccination. It would be one thing if this resistance were based on evidence or science-based concerns about the safety of vaccination, but it's not. As Dr. Snyder explains, while playing the "open-minded" "tell both sides" gambit, Dr. Sears credulously…
scientificactivist | August 6, 2009Mike Dunford tells a compelling story today at The Questionable Authority:
Yesterday, I took the kids to the doctor for their school physicals. I wouldn't normally subject you to an account of the day-to-day minutia of my personal life, but given the current debate about how we should handle health care in the United States, the details might be of interest.
We arrived - without an appointment - at a medical facility that we had not been to before. We did not have medical records with us, and the only paperwork of any kind that we had brought were the forms that needed to be filled out to…
palmd | August 6, 2009A short while ago I wrote about a fear-mongering piece in the Wall Street Journal, written by Betsy McCaughey. It turns out that my imagination was insufficient to comprehend the scope of her audacious mendacity. McCaughey is one of the thugs pushing the lie that the health care reform bill would mandate euthanasia counseling. Her deceitful comments were picked up by Rush Limbaugh and others, and spread across the wackosphere. So what did she say?
The health care reform bill "would make it mandatory -- absolutely require -- that every five years people in Medicare have a required…
tqa | August 6, 2009
Yesterday, I took the kids to the doctor for their school physicals. I wouldn't normally subject you to an account of the day-to-day minutia of my personal life, but given the current debate about how we should handle health care in the United States, the details might be of interest.
We arrived - without an appointment - at a medical facility that we had not been to before. We did not have medical records with us, and the only paperwork of any kind that we had brought were the forms that needed to be filled out to enroll the kids in sports programs. When we checked in, the only thing I…
palmd | August 6, 2009So yesterday was filled with yummy veggies and fruit, with some proteins and fats thrown in. I made some compromises that were less than healthy (granola bars), but managed to get some great locally-grown melon, salads, and some nice marinated beans, among other things.
This morning I woke up feeling like it was, well, morning, but climbed on the stationary bike for 16 minutes.
Yea!
oracknows | August 6, 2009There is no doubt that the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical schools in this country represents a profound threat to science-based medicine. By mixing mysticism, non-science, and pseudoscience along with science-based medicine, medical schools are in essence endorsing quackery and elevating it to the same level as science-based and science-tested modalities. Worse, they're running the risk of training a generation of medical students accepting of this "integrating" woo with science, who can't recognize highly implausible treatments or recognize obvious quackery. By letting…