medicine
oracknows | May 18, 2009You knew it was just a matter of time. At least I did. Let me back up a minute and tell you what I mean.
Over the last week, I've done three posts about a chemotherapy refusenik (as some oncologists I've worked with tend to refer to them as) named Daniel Hauser. Hauser is a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who, after having undergone one course of chemotherapy for his disease, decided that he didn't want anymore. He and his mother justified his refusal using the teachings of a faux Native American cultish religious group but in reality are probably only using religion as a convenient…
oracknows | May 16, 2009Over the last week, I've written about the case of a 13-year-old chemotherapy refusenik named Daniel Hauser, who lives in Minnesota. After having been diagnosed with a highly curable form of cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, back in February and having undergone one cycle of chemotherapy that apparently made him very sick, he refused further chemotherapy and his mother actually went to court to justify this decision. As part of their justification, they tried to use freedom of religion based on Daniel's supposedly being a "medicine man" in a cult of faux Native American wannabes called Nemenhah,…
jstemwedel | May 15, 2009Earlier this week, I found out about a pair of new case studies being released by The Global Campaign for Microbicides. These cases examine why a pair of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical trials looking at the effectiveness of microbicides antiretrovirals in preventing HIV infection were halted. Here are some details:
Between August 2004 and February 2005 the HIV prevention world was rocked by the suspension and cancellation of PrEP effectiveness trials in Cambodia and Cameroon. To the considerable surprise of researchers, advocates, and donors, the trials became embroiled in…
palmd | May 15, 2009People who identify themselves as having "morgellons" syndrome claim to have fibers and parasites emerging from their skin. As my commenters have pointed out, it's a rather simple task to evaluate such samples in a laboratory. If "morgellons" "researchers" wish to illuminated this "novel" "disease" (I just wanted to see how many scare quotes I could squeeze in), then where are the case series or other published data?
A PubMed search reveals no published research on the topic---not even case studies. The Morgellons Research Foundation website, however, has a "research" section. Of what…
oracknows | May 15, 2009About a week ago, I lamented an astoundingly bad ruling in the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against skeptic Simon Singh. The ruling was so bad that many observers are wondering whether it's possible for Singh to go on or whether he can afford to appeal. Blogger Jack of Kent, who has been following the case with astute obsevations, tells us:
I understand that Simon Singh will announce whether he will appeal on Monday 18 May 2009 at a public support meeting to take place in London at 6.30pm.
The venue will be the Penderels Oak, the usual meeting place of London…
oracknows | May 15, 2009
While I'm on the topic, blog bud has proclaimed that he loves Jenny McCarthy's new blog at the Oprah website, in particular her Poop Stories. Personally, when I first saw Jenny's blog, my first thought was that a question I had always had ever since Jenny McCarthy became the chief propagandist for the antivaccine movement had finally been answered. I now know why that cesspit of anti-vaccine lunacy, The Huffington Post, had never invited Jenny McCarthy to blog. HuffPo may not have standards when it comes to science, but at least it has standards when it comes to writing, and Jenny's…
palmd | May 14, 2009I've decided I love Jenny McCarthy's Oprah-blog. It's like watching a mad scientist---you know he's gonna blow something up, but still, those Tesla coils have a beautiful inutility. Her latest piece is truly a monument to stupidity, and if she really keeps this up, I'll never run out of blog-fodder.
It's called "Poop Stories", and it's about, well, Jenny's poop, so pull on those hip-waders and let's go take a look.
I don't know why I've always loved talking about poop, but to me it is a great tool in detecting what's wrong in our bodies.
Heh heh. She said "tool".
I continuously monitor…
oracknows | May 14, 2009A loving ode to Jenny McCarthy from her good friends, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella:
Genius. That's all I can say.Thank you Brian Thompson, a.k.a. the Amateur Scientist. And to you, Jenny McCarthy, the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella offer their profound thanks for saving them from eradication in the U.S., just as they've offered their thanks to Andrew Wakefield for saving them from eradication in the U.K..Bloggers, you know what to do. Spread this video far and wide. E-mail it to your friends. Even better, e-mail it to antivaccinationists. Let's see if we can make this sucker go viral. (Hey,…
palmd | May 14, 2009I really didn't mean to get dragged back in to the Morgellons controversy. Really. But I made a flippant comment on a recent post, and here I am. Let me put down some brief thoughts here:
1) There exists a loosely affiliated group of people who are suffering from diverse and (to them) unexplained symptoms, and they have named these "Morgellons".
2) The public voices of these people are dominated by people who come off as being nuts. This is not the fault of the sufferers.
3) The suffering is real---the is the clearest truth.
4) The science to date does not support any new and unusual…
oracknows | May 14, 2009I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism.
The reason for the hate part should be obvious. AoA is, without a doubt, a cesspool of pseudoscience and anti-vaccine propaganda. All while oh-so-self-righteously denying that its agenda is "anti-vaccine," AoA on a daily basis lays down articles blaming vaccines for autism, while setting up websites attacking vaccine science, taking out full page ads attacking vaccines as causing autism, gloating when learning of declining vaccination rates in the Ukraine, and high-fiving (blogospherically speaking)…
palmd | May 13, 2009I love my commenters. Some of them are really, really smart. I'd like to share an exchange with you, but first the context.
Morgellons syndrome is a label created by an American woman to describe a group of people who all believe they have mysterious fibers coming out of their skin. I've posted a bit on this before, but basically, there is not evidence of a discrete disease entity here, other than, perhaps delusions of parasitosis.
When these fibers and sores are examined by reputable medical authorities, they are invariably bits of environmental fluff, such as clothing fibers. There are…
jstemwedel | May 13, 2009One of the things we'd like to be able to do with our powers of ethical reasoning is tackle situations where we're not immediately certain of the right thing to do (or, for that matter, of the reason why the plan someone else is advocating strikes us as wrong).
A common strategy (at least in an ethics class) is to whip out an ethical principle or rule, try to apply it to the situation you're pondering, and see what it tells you to do: What can I do here that respects the humanity of others and of myself? or, Which of the available courses of action maximizes benefits and minimizes harms (…
oracknows | May 13, 2009I have to hand it to acupuncture mavens. They are persistent. Despite numerous studies failing to find any evidence that acupuncture is anything more than an elaborate placebo whose effects, such as they are, derive from nonspecifice mechanisms having nothing to do with meridians, qi, or "unblocking" qi. Moreover, consistent with the contention that acupuncture is no more than an elaborate placebo, various forms of "sham" acupuncture (needles that appear to insert but don't or acupuncture in the "wrong" locations, for example) produce results indistinguishable from "real" acupuncture.
That…
j7uy5 | May 13, 2009A post at Energy Bulletin recaps a recent presentation at the
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in
conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
href="http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48895">The post is U.S.
public health community begins discussing peak oil.
The presentation was:
href="http://www.jhsph.edu/preparedness/events/eventscalendar.html">Peak
Oil: Implications for Disaster Preparedness & Response (the
link goes to the event calendar, so it probably won't be valid after a
while. The archives are
href="http://www.jhsph.edu…
razib | May 13, 2009Via Marginal Revolution, Has Overweight Become the New Normal? Evidence of a Generational Shift in Body Weight Norms:
We test for differences across the two most recent NHANES survey periods (1988-1994 and 1999-2004) in self-perception of weight status. We find that the probability of self-classifying as overweight is significantly lower on average in the more recent survey, for both men and women, controlling for objective weight status and other factors. Among women, the decline in the tendency to self-classify as overweight is concentrated in the 17-35 age range, and, within this range, is…
ddobbs | May 12, 2009Ezra Klein thinks the stars -- and the forces -- are so far lining up much more promisingly than in 1994:
The opponents of health reform are, at this juncture, entirely isolated. Industry is adopting an attitude of relentless positivity. Republicans are grudgingly attempting to appear cooperative. The only straight opposition is coming, as Maddow and Howard Dean say, from Rick Scott, a disgraced former hospital executive whose company was convicted of defrauding the federal government in the largest ever case of its kind.
You can say, of course, that the traditional opponents of reform will…
denialism | May 12, 2009In response to the conversation on "Obesity, Evolution and Delayed Gratification" on the main page and Razib's coverage of a fascinating new study on the relationship to the lactase gene and obesity, I thought now would be a good time to write about an important new study that helps define the boundaries of what normal and healthy weights are in humans.
This study, entitled Body-mass index and cause-specific mortality in 900 000 adults: collaborative analyses of 57 prospective studies is a whopper of a meta-analysis. That is, a study that increases the power of other similar studies by…
denialism | May 12, 2009I was pleased to see president Obama deliver this address yesterday:
Click To Play
I was even more pleased because he has gathered the traditional opponents of healthcare reform around him and has convinced them to commit to reform in the US system. This is a positive sign. However, I'm concerned because, as with all political debates that challenge a dominant ideology - in this case free-market fundamentalism - we will soon see the denialists come out of the woodwork to disparage any attempt at achieving reforms that may result in universal health care coverage. This has, in fact,…
oracknows | May 12, 2009Yesterday, I wrote about Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who, with the support of his parents, has refused conventional therapy for his cancer, which would normally consist of chemotherapy and radiation. Given his stage and type of tumor, he could normally expect at least an 85% chance of surviving and perhaps even greater than 90%, wherea without therapy he is certain to die of his disease, barring a rare spontaneous remission. The reason given by his Daniel and his mother Colleen is that they belong to a highly dubious-sounding American Indian religion called…
oracknows | May 11, 2009Remember about a week ago, when I lamented how scientific publisher Elsevier had created a fake journal for Merck that reprinted content from other Elsevier journals favorable to Merck products in a format that looked every bit like a peer-reviewed journal but without any disclaimers to let the unwary know that it wasn't a peer-reviewed journal?
Whoops, Elsevier did it again. Six times:
Scientific publishing giant Elsevier put out a total of six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored by unnamed pharmaceutical companies and looked like peer reviewed medical journals, but did…