medicine
oracknows | May 23, 2009About a year ago in Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl named Madeleine Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis thanks of the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who prayed for her but did not take her to a physician even as Madeleine became weaker and more ill, her deterioration leading to a most unpleasant death. Highly unusual in such cases, the DA actually prosecuted the parents for second-degree reckless homicide. Given the unjustifiably privileged position irrational religious justifications for doing horrible things have in our society, I was even more shocked that this case went to…
palmd | May 22, 2009It would certainly seem so. Alternative autism "experts" have a long history of dehumanizing autistic kids. But the Geiers take it one step further. The father-son team is chemically castrating autistic children. And what do they have to say about this?
...the Geiers focus on issues most likely to disturb parents, such as aggressive behavior and excessive masturbation.
"With masturbating there is a degree of normal, and then there is autism. Parents will say: 'He will hump pillows, he will hump your leg,' " David Geier told doctors at Eisenstein's office. He made similar statements on the…
oracknows | May 22, 2009As promised, the Chicago Tribune served up the followup article to its expose of father-and-son autism quacks Mark and David Geier. This time around, the Trib takes on Dr. Mayer Eisenstein of the woo-friendly suburban Chicago medical practice known as Homefirst in two articles, Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism and Dr. Peter Rosi places blame on some parents for their babies' deaths (Dr. Rosi is one of Homefirst's longest-serving doctors). The reason Dr. Eisenstein came to the Trib's attention is because (1) he has started using the Geiers' Lupron protocol and (2)…
palmd | May 22, 2009You don't have to be a parent to care about the welfare of children---but it does bring things into a sharp, personal light. I recently wrote about Daniel Hauser, a child likely to die of Hodgkin's disease due to his parents' cult medicine beliefs. Cases like his are aberrations---they stand out for their rarity, but also for their horror. Still, the horror is mitigated somewhat by the rarity.
More frightening are systemic abuses of children via cult medicine beliefs, ones that affect dozens or hundreds of kids at a time. One of the most egregious of these is Lupron therapy for autism.…
ddobbs | May 22, 2009
Having lived with fire ants, stepped in fire ants, laid down with fire ants, and been bit just about everywhere by fire ants, the news that parasitic flies turn fire ants them into zombies by eating their brains pleases me immensely.
Speaking of pleasure: Vaughn whacks the dopamine = pleasure meme.
Sharon Begley says Obama may get a lot done, but he can't erase stereotype threat (so far).
We may be dozing, but Europe is ordering its swine flu vaccine. D'oh! Update: We're getting a start too.
"Good night, sleep tight, I love you." Why consistent bedtime routines work.
Why the best…
denialism | May 22, 2009A dishonest campaign has started against healthcare reform in this country and the first shot has come from Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), a group purporting to show that patients in universal health systems suffer from government interference in health care. To bolster their argument, they have a pile of anecdotes from people around the world who have suffered at the hands of evil government-run systems. The problem, of course, is that anecdotes are not data, it is impossible to determine the veracity or reasonableness of these claims, and there is no way, ethically or…
oracknows | May 22, 2009I originally joined this wild and woolly collective known as ScienceBlogs back in February 2006. I was not part of the very first wave of bloggers who made up ScienceBlogs when it launched, although I potentially could have, mainly because I had to work out policies about outside employment with my university before I could join up. In any case, one of the very first posts that I did back then that made a bit of a splash was a little ditty I called in my usual inimitable and restrained fashion, Why not just castrate them?
It was the dark saga of an even darker father-and-son tag team of…
jstemwedel | May 21, 2009You may have heard that the Obama administration has proposed new rules for federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. (The proposed rules are available in draft form through the end of the public comment period; the NIH expects to finalize the rules in July).
While researchers are enthusiastic at the prospect under this administration of more funding for ESC research, not everyone is happy about the details of the proposed rules. Indeed, in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell [1], Patrick L. Taylor argues that there is something fundamentally misguided about the way the new…
j7uy5 | May 21, 2009Traumatic Brain Injury
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/08/traumatic_brain_injury_on_the.php">has
been called the "signature injury" of the Iraq War, due to the
reported high prevalence of the injury there. This is in contrast
to previous wars. It's not that head injury is necessarily more
common; what is more common is for soldiers to sustain such injuries
and survive.
The Pentagon has recognized this, and (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/05/signing_a_check_for_iraqs_sign.php">reportedly)
is addressing it. But now, a paper published in NEJM…
oracknows | May 21, 2009I know I've been very, very harsh on Jenny McCarthy. After all, she has become the face of the anti-vaccine movement in America, and her activities are directly endangering children. Let's take a look back, oh, a few days to a video that she made in which she decried all manner of "toxins" in vaccines as the cause of autism, including aluminum (which is not toxic at the doses used in vaccines), mercury (which is no longer in most childhood vaccines other than in trace amounts), antifreeze (there is no antifreeze in vaccines), and ether (again, there is no ether in vaccines). Then look back a…
oracknows | May 20, 2009Over the last couple of weeks, I've been blogging regularly about the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with stage 2B Hodgkin's lymphoma who, after one course of chemotherapy in January, refused to undergo any more, citing a faux religion run by a woo-meister naturopath and Native American wannabe called "Chief" Cloudpiler. In reality, it probably wasn't so much belief in this fake religion, which is really no more than an excuse to use laws guaranteeing Native Americans freedom to practice their religions as justification for using peyote and various quackery for disease, but rather…
jstemwedel | May 20, 2009At White Coat Underground, PalMD explores the question of what kind of responsibilities might fall on celebrities, especially those who use their soapboxes in a way that exceeds the tether of their expertise. The particular celebrities under examination are Jenny McCarthy, who has used her celebrity to spread her views on the proper treatment and prevention of autism, and Oprah Winfrey, who has used her media empire to give McCarthy a soapbox with more reach.
Pal writes:
Jenny claims an expertise based on her personal experience. Whether one views themselves as an expert is largely…
palmd | May 20, 2009I've been reluctant to write about the Daniel Hauser case. I don't even want to imagine what his parents are going through. If you're not a parent, I can't explain it to you, so you'll have to trust me---having a kid with a life-threatening illness can drive you to do the unimaginable.
And what Daniel's parents have chosen to do is nearly unimaginable, but until you've been there, judgment must be tempered by compassion. But that compassion is only for the parents and the patient, not for those who are supporting their horrible decisions.
The basics
Daniel is 13 year old boy with…
ddobbs | May 20, 2009
What's wrong -- but horribly expected -- in this picture? One week the CEO of Lilly attacks the idea of a public health insurance plan because it might reduce consumers' "ability to choose, in an informed way, from all the available alternatives." The next week, PhRMA, the trade group this CEO's company is a part of, launches a campaign to undermine comparative effectiveness studies -- which would produce the data necessary for informed consumer choice. If that's not enough, this campaign against collecting actual empirical effectiveness data, spearheaded under the astroturf group…
oracknows | May 20, 2009I know I've been writing a lot about the Daniel Hauser case, and forgive me if I may be beating a dead horse, but cases like these reprsent supreme "teachable" moments that don't come along that often. The antivaccine movement, for instance, will be with us always (or at least, I fear, as long as I still walk this earth and beyond), but cases like that of Daniel Hauser don't come along that often. As tragic as they are, they always bring up so many issues that I have a hard time leaving them alone.
This time around, I wanted to touch on an issue that has come up frequently in the discussions…
oracknows | May 19, 2009Maybe I was wrong.
I praised the decision of Judge Rodenberg last Friday, in which he placed chemotherapy refusenik Daniel Hauser in the custody of his parents and ordered them to take him to an oncologist and have him undergo repeat staging studies in order to determine the extent of his Hodgkin's lymphoma. I did mention my one reservation was that leaving Daniel in the custody of his mother did run the risk of their fleeing to avoid the court order. Unfortunately, shades of Katie Wernecke, that's exactly what they appear to have done:
Daniel Hauser and his parents, Colleen and Anthony…
oracknows | May 19, 2009A reader informs me of a plaintive, heartfelt request from Oprah for help in developing the television show of her new protege Jenny McCarthy:
You've seen it all over the news...Jenny McCarthy, one of America's funniest and coolest moms and Harpo is giving her, her own show.
Here is where YOU come in.
What would you like to see featured on Jenny's show? What would you like for her to talk about? What are you and your friends buzzing about?
Any topics you'd like for her to tackle? Are there any questions that you have -- that you would love for her to answer?
If so -- we definitely want to…
oracknows | May 19, 2009As you may have noticed if you've been paying attention to the comments over the last few days, you may have noticed that we've had a bit of an infiltration of believers in "alternative cancer cures" (or, as I will abbreviate them, ACCs). The main focus of the infiltration appears to be in this post about Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy who refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's lymphoma and whose case was recently decided, with the judge ordering his parents to obtain repeat staging studies and then to get him to a science-based practitioner in order to get appropriate therapy. Oddly…
terrasig | May 19, 2009
Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community.
I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter.
Among…
palmd | May 18, 2009In relation to my recent bits about Jenny McCarthy and her antivaccination nonsense, reader Isabel asks the following:
I've been following this discussion for awhile, PalMD, and while I agree that JM sounds like a nut, and while I feel sorry for her kid for being stuck with her as a mother, it's hard for me to see her as the evil force she is being portrayed as.
For starters, through no fault of her own, she's obviously not particularly bright, which makes it hard to take her seriously, in either a positive or negative way. She seems like countless other neurotic women who are desperate for…