medicine
ddobbs | May 6, 2009In a post titled "Dead, Your Majesty," H5N1, Crof ponders why we scramble to deal with swine flu while ignoring other problems ranging from cancer to the 3000 children a day who die of malaria in Africa :
Most of us are comfortably settled in rich industrial countries where problems like TB and AIDS are rarely in the news. Zimbabwe, like our own homeless, is a deplorable problem...but not our problem. We'd prefer to focus, via high-speed internet connections, on a conjectural disaster instead of the many real disasters killing people somewhere else.
If a thousand people died in the US…
oracknows | May 6, 2009A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed this tendency long before I saw Mark's post, including one Dr. Lorraine Day, who, besides being a purveyor of quackery, is also a rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who had treated arch-Holocaust Ernst Zündel with "alternative" therapies when he was in jail awaiting trial, and a conspiracy theorist…
palmd | May 5, 2009I recently had a pleasant, brief email exchange with Kris Newby, the producer of the latest medical advocacy pic, Under Our Skin. There's been a number of similar movies lately, mostly about quacky cancer therapies. This one is apparently much better made, and follows the controversy regarding "chronic" Lyme disease.
I'd heard an interview about the movie on Diane Rehm, and was rather unnerved by it. It sounded like a typical I-drank-the-Kool-Aid-now-I'm-gonna-make-a-movie kind of thing. Still, I haven't written about it, because I haven't seen the movie. That's going to change. Kris…
amillikan | May 5, 2009
The billionaire media icon Oprah Winfrey sealed a contractual deal with notorious anti-vaccination supporter Jenny McCarthy Monday that will enable McCarthy to spread her belief that vaccines cause autism across several platforms. This viewpoint is vehemently opposed in the scientific community, as it remains virtually unsupported after years of rigorous scientific investigation and, if heeded as true, has lethal consequences in the form of diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. With support from Oprah, McCarthy is slated to host a syndicated talk show and maintain a blog. According to…
amillikan | May 5, 2009
The Scientist revealed Thursday that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier—the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature—to produce a publication that gave the appearance of being a medical journal, but was actually a marketing promotion for Merck. The 2003 publication, The The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, was written by the staff of Merck to favor Merck pharmaceuticals and lacked the unbiased peer review that is crucial to the credibility of medical journals, presenting evidence for the efficacy of a Merck drug when…
oracknows | May 5, 2009Pinch me. I must be dreaming.
I say that because I actually see an article in The Huffington Post in which the blogger, Jacob Dickerman, actually correctly describes why homeopathy is quackery! For instance:
Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus knows exactly what the homeopath put into it. The thing is, if Hahnemann is somehow right about homeopathy, then it doesn't only fly in the face of all those sciences I listed above (physiology, physics, chemistry, germ theory, hydro-dynamics), it flies in the face of public safety. Because the…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression that folks around these parts do not hold JPandS in high esteem. However, it seems like there's an important distinction between a fake journal and a bad one.
Kathleen Seidel of the Neurodiversity Weblog wrote a meticulous examination of JPandS and of the professional society, the Association of…
j7uy5 | May 5, 2009Not sure what to make of this, as the prediction appears to be based entirely upon the intuition of an experienced pediatric infectious disease specialist. It is reported on Medscape (open access, free registration required).
PAS 2009: H1N1 Flu Predicted to Wane and Reemerge in Fall
Martha Kerr
May 4, 2009 (Baltimore, Maryland) -- Pediatric infectious diseases specialists and public health experts used the stage of the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting to update their colleagues on the latest statistics and projections on the H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak.
"I believe that we will…
oracknows | May 5, 2009Homeopathy is water.
Homeopaths will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that water "memory," which, the way they describe it is some mystical property whereby it "remembers" the remedy with which it's been in contact, even though the substance (whatever it was) has been diluted far beyond the point where there's likely to be even one molecule of it left. Not only that, but they will, in all seriousness, tell you that dilution is not enough. They will insist that, at each serial dilution, the remedy must be vigorously shaken (or, as they call it, "succussed") in order to imbue it with its…
terrasig | May 5, 2009Bear with me this morning because I am growing very weary of my physician colleagues enduring all sorts of haranguing for being hateful, pharma shills who only want to cut, burn, and poison.
I was extremely fortunate, personally and professionally, to train in two clinical units with strong basic science programs. As such, I worked at the bench with MD fellows and we schooled each other on our respective strengths. I loved when when my colleagues would come back from clinic and tell me of experiences that put our bench work in real world perspective. Yes, not all bench work is immediately…
oracknows | May 4, 2009...comes, from of all places, Gawker:
Oh, good, Oprah is going to give Jenny McCarthy a talk show, because she wants your kid to die of the measles.
McCarthy, a famous celebrity from the long-defunct Playboy magazine and much missed MTV channel, has been on a crusade to find an evildoer responsible for her son's autism. She settled on vaccines, because why not. And now she spends a great deal of time on TV explaining that the mercury that has not been vaccines since 1999 is giving all the kids autism, but it can be cured with Chelation therapy, which has so far only killed one or two autistic…
palmd | May 4, 2009The news broke this weekend about the unholy alliance of Elsevier and Merck to publish a fake medical journal. You can read the details from the links at the bottom of this page. We all agree that creating deceptive, fake medical information is a "bad thing". What worries me, however, is what the "other side" will make of this.
What we have in science-based medicine is a method that works. It is, by far, the best way we have to approach the study and treatment of human health and diseases. But like all systems, there are and will always be problems. The strength of the system, though…
oracknows | May 4, 2009Ugh.
Double ugh.
Sitting in my e-mail in box this morning were lots of your e-mails warning me about a bit of news that shows definitively that Oprah Winfrey is beyond redemption, at least when it comes to any sort of medicine or science (not nice, given that I hadn't even had my morning coffee yet).
The reason? Jenny McCarthy has inked a deal with Winfrey's Harpo Studios to develop a syndicated talk show and other media projects, including a blog, which has already started dishing out the stupid, albeit (thus far) not about vaccines and autism. Apparently sensing that her advocacy of the…
oracknows | May 4, 2009It's times like these when I'm happy that I haven't published in too many Elsevier Journals during the course of my career. I say that because on Thursday, it was revealed that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier to produce a fake medical journal that, to any superficial examination, looked like a real medical journal but was in reality nothing more than advertising for Merck. As reported by The Scientist:
Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only…
palmd | May 4, 2009I haven't forgotten about you, gentle readers, but I just got back to town after a week of vacation and it turns out there was this "swine flu" thing going on while I was gone and now I have to explain to everyone in the world why they probably don't have the flu and why they probably don't need tamiflu "just in case".
jstemwedel | May 3, 2009John Lynch and Dr. Isis have already posted on the revelation that Elsevier published something, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, that looked and sounded like it was a medical journal but that turned out to have been fancy advertising for pharmaceuticals company Merck.
The Scientist has the details:
Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles--most of which presented data favorable to Merck products--that appeared to act solely as…
jstemwedel | May 2, 2009It seems that some people respond to public concern about swine flu and its spread by trying to sell you stuff. This stuff is not limited to face masks and duct tape, but includes products advertised to prevent, diagnose, or treat swine flu, but whose claims of safety and efficacy do not have a basis in evidence.
In other words, snake oil.
Now, some will take the P.T. Barnum view that separating the gullible from their money is a good living (and perhaps a good incentive for people to be smarter). The FDA, however, regards at least some snake oil peddlers as criminals -- and the agency is…
scientificactivist | May 2, 2009Although I've only written a bit about the recent outbreak of influenza A H1N1 (swine flu), I'd encourage you to take a look at this post by Kent Newsome that discusses where to find reliable information on this topic. This post is particularly nice, because it gives concrete examples of some of the useful things this blogger has learned from these various sources. Granted, most of the sources he discusses are affiliated with ScienceBlogs, but that shouldn't really be surprising, given that there has been so much quality blogging here recently on the topic of swine flu (particularly by…
oracknows | May 2, 2009PalMD, PalMD, PalMD...why did you have to make me aware of this?
What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Preparing for the Swine Flu
The blogger, Lisa Sharkey, opines:
What can I do to keep my family safe? How can I boost our immune systems now and what complementary medicines can I begin taking immediately, regardless if I ever come in contact with the dreaded Swine Flu?
You know what sort of answers are coming, I bet. That's right: Supplements, herbalism, homeopathy, reflexology, tapping, this post is a veritable cornucopia of quackery for swine flu, with Sharkey touting it all as "immune-…
palmd | May 1, 2009Remember the Quack Miranda Warning? You know, the magic phrase that makes all the crappy and dangerous medical advice you're about to give OK?
Well, look what HuffPo's doing:
Author's note: This swine flu story on alternative and complementary medicine is not meant to replace anything you hear from you doctor, the WHO or the CDC, but is meant to show you some natural ways to enhance your overall wellness in addition to any medication you may need either to prevent or treat the flu.
Heh. Shit wrapped in gold foil smells just the same as shit in a brown bag tied with twine.