medicine
oracknows | October 27, 2008Two years ago, there was a brouhaha in Missouri over a ballot proposal to allow state funding for embryonic stem cell research using discarded embryos from fertility clinics. The issue made national news, including some rather despicable rhetoric from Rush Limbaugh about Michael J. Fox, who made ads in support of the Missouri initiative, as well as deceptive ads against the proposal featuring Patricia Heaton and members of the St. Louis Cardinals. It was a big stink that drew national attention.
Fast forward to two years later and to my home state of Michigan, and history appears to be…
clock | October 26, 2008The latest press release from ComScore - Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season - has all sorts of interesting statistics about relative traffic, etc., of the top independent (i.e., unaffiliated with MSM) websites and blogs. One tidbit I found particularly interesting:
Looking at the demographic profiles for the top three sites, HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com and DrudgeReport.com, one can conclude that visitors to these sites tend to be older, wealthier, and more likely to be male than the average U.S.…
clock | October 26, 2008As a follow-up to the yesterday's press release, Dr. Manzoor Bhat and Joseph Piven, M.D., researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who use the Drosophila model system to study neurexin and its implications in the development of autism, have now released the video response - well worth watching:
sb admin | October 26, 2008In a little over a week, Michigan voters will be asked to vote on Proposal 2. The proposal is very simple. It is a constitutional amendment that makes Michigan a less hostile place for human embryonic stem cell (HESC) research. It forbids state or local government from passing laws that are more restrictive than federal law. Here's how it will appear on the ballot:
PROPOSAL 08-2
A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO ADDRESS HUMAN
EMBRYO AND HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH IN MICHIGAN
The proposed constitutional amendment would:
⢠Expand use of human embryos for any research…
oracknows | October 24, 2008You remember Dr. Rashid Buttar, don't you? He's that blight on North Carolina's medical establishment, known for his "transdermal chelation therapy" that he's unable to demonstrate as being able to be absorbed through the skin, much less chelate anything (arguably a good thing, actually, because at least it probably doesn't hurt anyone, as a real transdermal chelation agent might). He's also known for some rather more--shall we say?--colorful "treatments" for autism (colorful as in "yellow"), not to mention IV ozone. He's also in trouble with the North Carolina Medical Board for using equally…
terrasig | October 24, 2008"Prescribing 'placebo treatments': results of national survey of US internists and rheumatologists," is the title of a newly-published article in the 23 October issue of BMJ (British Medical Journal). The full text article and PDF are available for free at the time of this posting.
In this study of 679 US physicians, Tilburt et al. reveal that 46-58% of those responding report regularly using some sort of placebo in their practice. The reason for the range is that questions were asked in a manner that did not use the word, "placebo," but instead took into account:
"Placebo treatment" is an…
jstemwedel | October 24, 2008Jake has a great post up today about the frequency with which American internists and rheumatologists prescribe placebos and the ethical questions this raises. Jake writes:
For my part, I don't think I would be comfortable deceiving my patient under any circumstances. I see my role as a future physician partly as a healer but also as an educator. Patients -- particularly patients with intractable chronic illnesses -- want to understand what is happening to them. I almost feel like in deceiving them, I would be denying them that small measure of control -- that small measure of dignity --…
purepedantry | October 24, 2008A survey of American internists and rheumatologists has revealed that over 50% of them regularly prescribe placebos. Tilburt et al. surveyed internists and rheumatologists to see whether they were prescribing placebos, and if so how and what kind they were using. The study, published in BMJ, found the following:
679 physicians (57%) responded to the survey. About half of the surveyed internists and rheumatologists reported prescribing placebo treatments on a regular basis (46-58%, depending on how the question was phrased). Most physicians (399, 62%) believed the practice to be ethically…
oracknows | October 24, 2008There are times in every physician's career when he or she faces a patient with a serious, even life-threatening disease or condition, who, for whatever reason, does not want treatment. These can be incredibly frustrating and challenging patients. Most physicians try reason, cajoling, and persuasion. Believe it or not, physicians are still held in enough esteem that this will often work on the force of the regard in which patients hold physicians alone. However, it doesn't always. Then the question becomes: How far can a doctor legitimately go to persuade the patient?
Shadowfax has an idea.…
purepedantry | October 23, 2008Whenever you are having a debate -- particularly a policy debate -- it is always important to check your premises. That is why I found this article in the Journal of the American Medical Association refreshing.
Emergency Department utilization is clearly on the rise in the US, and this rise in use is leading to longer wait times and diminished quality of care. One assumption that the cause of this problem are the uninsured, i.e. the uninsured are using the ED as an alternative to primary care and causing overcrowding.
However, Newton et al., in what will likely be a provocative article,…
oracknows | October 23, 2008I'll give Mike Adams one thing. He's consistent.
Consistently a crank, that is.
Yes, that purveyor of woo, paranoia, and conspiracy theories, not to mention the creator of one of the five largest repositories of quackery support on the Internet, NaturalNews.com, the other three being Mercola.com, Whale.to, CureZone, and Gary Null, is up to his usual tricks again. He's back promoting cancer quackery in his own inimitable style, in which cancer can be prevented and cured with virtually 100% efficacy using supplements and diet and conventional medicine never cures any disease ever. Perhaps what'…
oracknows | October 22, 2008I hate it when an article starts right out with a rather annoying usage of terminology, even when it provides information that interests me:
(AP) -- Nearly a fourth of widely used new-generation biological drugs that treat several common diseases produce serious side effects that lead to safety warnings soon after they go on the market, the first major study of its kind found.
Included in the report released Tuesday were the arthritis drugs Humira and Remicade, cancer drugs Rituxan and Erbitux, and the heart failure drug Natrecor. All wound up being flagged for safety.
That might surprise…
oracknows | October 21, 2008Oprah Winfrey supports quackery.
That has been richly demonstrated over the last few years, particularly with her gauzy, praise-filled segments featuring such pro-woo luminaries as Jenny McCarthy, her frequently having physicians boosters of "alternative medicine" like Mehmet Oz and Christiane Northrup on her show, and her tight embrace of New Age "spirituality."
Alarmed at the antivaccination nonsense being pushed on Oprah's show, Every Child By Two has been circulating an e-mail:
Please Take The Time To Contact The Oprah Winfrey Show
It has been quite some time since Every Child By Two (…
oracknows | October 21, 2008I've been very critical of The Huffington Post since shortly after its formation three years ago, when (I believe) I was the first blogger to notice a proliferation of antivaccination propaganda at the then brand new group blog. It is a situation that the HuffPo has maintained to the present day. Indeed, on that day three years ago, I noticed that, right in among posts written by such mercury militia antivaccine apologists such as David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there was also Dr. Jay Gordon, who is currently very unhappy at having had a taste of not-so-Respectful Insolence yesterday.…
oracknows | October 19, 2008Note: The following is a collaborative post between James (a.k.a. Dad of Cameron of Autism Street) and Orac. Feel free to tell which parts were written by whom.:-)
Jenny McCarthy's latest book, Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds, contains a foreword penned by "pediatrician to the stars' children", Dr. Jay Gordon. Dr. Gordon (or, as he often refers to himself, Dr. Jay), is the pediatrician for Jenny McCarthy's son Evan, whose autism McCarthy blames on vaccines and whom she has also claimed to have "cured" of autism with so-called "biomedical interventions. Dr…
sb admin | October 19, 2008How stupid do you have to be for Jenny McCarthy to legitimately toss the epithet back at you?
This question may seem unanswerable, but in this case, McCarthy may have gotten it half right regarding Dennis Leary. The headline at MSNBC delcares: McCarthy calls Leary 'obviously stupid'
I don't know much about Leary, but like many comedians he has said something that he will probably regret and move on. In attempting to be funny, Leary scored an epic fail (you can tell it's an epic fail because Jenny did get it half right):
"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers…
oracknows | October 18, 2008There's not much to add here, other than Jenny McCarthy needs to be stopped. Stopping her is even more important than stopping Sylvia Browne. As vile as Sylvia Browne is, at least she doesn't endanger millions of children by self-righteously promoting antivaccinationist lies that have already started to lead to the return of formerly controlled vaccine-preventable diseases. Sylvia's just a run-of-the-mill scam artist, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Intentions like Jenny McCarthy's.
Also, here's a little something for a "friend" of the blog: A reader took the time to…
sb admin | October 17, 2008This thread needed to be moved up for obvious reasons. Have at it. --PalMD
I've been writing quite a bit about "questionable" illnesses, shameless quacks and the like, but there are reasons that people seek out odd diagnoses and cult doctors. They feel crappy, and they haven't yet found someone who can make them feel less crappy.
Of course, some people will never feel OK. That's just human nature. But almost everyone can be helped to feel better in one way or another. What are some of the ways physicians approach difficult-to-treat patients?
First of all, there are many syndromes that…
oracknows | October 17, 2008It's time.
Well, it's sort of time, anyway.
As you know, it's been over three months since I last indulged in my little Friday exercise known as Your Friday Dose of Woo. At the time it was because I couldn't get myself into the appropriately light-hearted but nonetheless just vicious enough frame of mind to do the exercise after we had to have our dog put to sleep. In retrospect, however, it was clear to me that the whole feature had been running on fumes for a while before that. It had become a bit stale and, I thought, could benefit from a hiatus. At the time, I hadn't planned for the…