medicine
oracknows | July 12, 2009I've just returned from Las Vegas after having attended The Amazing Meeting.. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, However, my flight was scheduled to arrive very late Sunday night, and I'm still recovering. Consequently, for one more day I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
I really shouldn't do it.
I really shouldn't go perusing the blog of the…
oracknows | July 12, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
Mike Adams is an idiot.
There, I said it.
Adams runs the NewsTarget website, a repository for all…
palmd | July 12, 2009A month ago, I was diagnosing several cases of influenza-like illness (ILI) every day. Then, as suddenly as it began, it disappeared---no ILI, no positive nasal swabs for influenza A (and hence H1N1/swine flu)---just the usual strep throat, poison ivy, ankle sprains, etc. So what happened?
The new influenza A/H1N1 (hereafter called "H1N1" or "swine" flu) emerged early this year and rapidly became pandemic. It caused a "second" flu season, ramping up just as the usual winter flu epidemic was winding down. This graph shows vividly the two-peak flu season we have this year due to the new…
oracknows | July 11, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2008.
I suppose I had better get ready for another e-mail with a wounded, puppy-dog, plaintive complaint of "…
oracknows | July 10, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel later today! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2006.
I have to apologize for last week's Dose of Woo. No, I'm not…
palmd | July 9, 2009On July 4th at 5 a.m., I'm loading the family into the car and driving very far away, where cellphones, pagers, and most critically the internet, do not work. Blogging has been very hard for me lately. I love writing, but due to work and family mishegos it's been hard to keep up with the posting. I'm hoping a stint up in the woods providing medical supervision to 400 souls will be rejuvenating. While I'm gone, I'll leave you with some of my favorite posts about the human side of medicine. I hope you enjoy reading them again, or for the first time. --PalMD
Urinary tract infections (UTIs…
oracknows | July 9, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel later today! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two (or three), but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2006.
Alright, I admit it.
I went a little overboard…
ejohnson | July 9, 2009View image
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is used by psychiatrists to accurately diagnose patients along five different axes of disorders. Four versions have been produced since the first publication in 1952, and a specially appointed task force began revisions on a fifth, DSM-V, in 2007, for publication in 2012. But critics of DSM-V say that the manual's introduction of dimensional, rather than categorical, diagnoses is a paradigm shift that the field is not ready for. Secrecy surrounding its development has…
oracknows | July 9, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
"What do you think about second hand smoke?" he asked me. I sensed…
oracknows | July 9, 2009TAM or no TAM, Vegas or no Vegas, I can't help but mention that one of my favorite bloggers from years past, who shuttered up his blog back in 2007 back when he was with us here at ScienceBlogs, has reopened his Examining Room. Please take a moment to welcome him back to the blogosphere.
Now...back to TAM.
terrasig | July 8, 2009Great news hit my e-mail box overnight: one of the premier literary physician-bloggers of my childhood days in the blogosphere has returned.
Hi all, I missed you. I missed blogging.
Just wanted to let you know that I'm returning to writing at http://theexaminingroom.com
I hope you'll stop by, and I look forward to catching up with you all!
Dr. Charles
back from 2007 retirement
This is VERY good news for all of us, especially if you never had the pleasure of reading The Good Doctor before.
I cannot write with his clarity, of course. But I can say that Dr. Charles has a tremendous gift for…
oracknows | July 8, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2008.
Last week, The New York Times started a rather unusual series in its…
oracknows | July 8, 2009Today, I'm leaving for The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas. I can't wait to get there. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm there I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
This sort of thing makes one wonder if the personification of…
grrlscientist | July 8, 2009tags: Onion News Network, human kidneys, organ transplant donations, medical news, humor, satire, streaming video
In this video, ONN reports that an anonymous hero donates 200 human kidneys to a hospital. Hospital officials hope to locate the good Samaritan that dropped off a sack of human organs in the middle of the night so they can thank him. [1:11]
ddobbs | July 7, 2009Scientific American has a good story by Edmund S. Higgins suggesting that might be the case. As the story notes, the evidence for such a toll is still preliminary. But the story's opening, which tells of a parent seemingly overeager to medicate a child who didn't need it, gives an idea of why the question is more important than we might like.:
At the time of this visit, the boy was off the medication, and I conducted a series of cognitive and behavioral tests on him. He performed wonderfully. I also noticed that off the medication he was friendly and playful. On a previous casual encounter,…
oracknows | July 7, 2009Almost exactly a year ago, I noted the very sad case of Jeremy LaBrie, an 8 year old autistic child with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma whose mother Kristen withheld his medications and failed to take him to appointments with his oncologist. As a result of his failing to undergo his complete course of chemotherapy, his cancer returned with a vengeance. As of one year ago, his odds of survival were estimated to be no more than 10-20%, after having had a good prognosis when initially diagnosed. At the time, I thought it was entirely appropriate for the state to prosecute Kristen LaBrie for medical…
oracknows | July 6, 2009Blogging is usually such an instant gratification sort of thing. I see a story or hear about something. I write about it. I almost have to. Most stories in the blogosphere have a really short half-life anyway. Wait more than a day or two, and no one cares anymore. Hell, wait more than a few hours in the case of hyperkinetic bloggers like P.Z. will be all over it. However, sometimes it's a good idea to restrain myself, not to leap on something right away even when I can.
This is one of those times.
Last week, I was tipped off by the merry band of anti-vaccine loons over at Age of Autism to a…
oracknows | July 6, 2009It gives me no pleasure to do this, but sometimes even friends let loose with such jaw-droppingly bad arguments that it is impossible for me not to redirect a bit of the old Respectful Insolence in their direction. So it was earlier, when I saw an unreasonable article by an otherwise reasonable guy sneak into my newsfeed. If you want to see an example of a bad analogy, watch Dr. Kevin Pho have at it in a post entitled We've Tried Single Payer Health Care, and It Has Failed.
Quoth Kevin:
Based on an agreement in 1787, the government is responsible to provide free health care to Native Indians…
oracknows | July 6, 2009Two of the major themes on this blog since the very beginning has been the application of science- and evidence-based medicine to the care of patients and why so much of so-called "complementary and alternative" medicine, as well as fringe movements like the anti-vaccine movement, have little or--more commonly--virtually no science to support their claims and recommendations. One major shortcoming of the more commonly used evidence-based medicine paradigm (EBM) that has been in ascendance as the preferred method of evaluating clinical evidence. Specifically, as Dr. Kimball Atwood IV (1, 2, 3…
j7uy5 | July 6, 2009Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) has been controversial, as
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031602913.html">noted
in the Washington Post.
Admittedly, most of the controversy has been contrived.
Fortunately, the process is moving forward; there is no meaningful
opposition at this point.
A good summary of the objections of this was posted by Hilzoy at
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_05/018133.php">Political
Animal. I'll deal with the objections simply by posting the
link, as refuting them is not the…