medicine
oracknows | October 16, 2008Here's a new one on me:
Senator Obama's support for preventative medical care is another little noted but important key point of difference with Senator McCain that emerged from the debate. Under Obama it is far more likely that insurance plans will cover alternative medicine, including acupuncture, therapy, and government approved herbs and vitamins. This category alone could more than double the current spending by pharmaceutical companies, and would give a boost to local market media as Alternative Care centers compete with traditional medicine. Again, a McCain presidency is likely to…
sb admin | October 16, 2008On call one night as a medical student, I was presenting a case to my intern. As I recounted the patient's ER course, the intern stopped me and said, "Pal --- trust no one."
That sounded a little harsh to me, but the intern was nice enough to explain further.
"Look, you're going to be taking calls from doctors and nurses the rest of your career. They are going to give you information about a patient, but it's you who will be responsible for everything that goes right and wrong. Do you want to hang yourself on someone else's evaluation?"
As any internist knows, there is a perpetual tension…
oracknows | October 16, 2008Was it just me, or did anyone else find it jarring when suddenly John McCain interjected special needs children and autism into the debate last night? As you may recall, a few months ago he was tripped up by the antivaccine fearmongers who think, despite an absence of scientifically compelling evidence supporting their view, that vaccines cause autism. Now that Sarah Palin is on the ticket, he's doing it again, this time in the context of discussing her qualifications to be President. As part of a response to a question about why the country would be better off if his choice of a running mate…
sb admin | October 16, 2008NB: images in this post are thought to be in the public domain, but were not well labeled, so if you feel they have been posted without proper attribution, please email me or leave a comment. Thanks. Also, this is a revision of a post from yesterday which I've pulled secondary to ethical concerns. I've deleted the comments so we can start out fresh. --PalMD
I can't seem to get this whole "morgellons" thing out of my head (which gives me something in common with the sufferers). Lots of the "literature" on morgellons focuses on the "fibers" which supposedly infest these people. If you…
oracknows | October 16, 2008I thought I had seen it all.
Ever since I first discovered the antivaccination movement that is utterly convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that mercury from the thimerosal preservative that was in many vaccines until the end of 2001 or, more recently, vaccines themselves cause autism, I've been amazed at the panoply of dubious ideas proposed about how vaccines might bring this about. There is, of course, the claim of neurotoxicity from mercury, even though the symptoms of mercury toxicity do not come close to matching those of autism. Then, of course, there is the related claim…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2008tags: bipolar disorder, manic depression, mental illness, psychiatry, psychology, children
Image: Myself43.
If you are like me and suffered from unrecognized bipolar disorder as a child only to later have this mood disorder diagnosed upon reaching young adulthood, you might be pleased to learn that current research suggests bipolar disorder is increasingly being diagnosed as beginning in childhood. As a result, these bipolar kids are more likely to receive proper treatment and support such that they, their families and friends will suffer fewer of the deep emotional and social scars that…
oracknows | October 14, 2008Why, oh, why do I keep perusing NaturalNews.com?
Why do I subject myself to wave after wave of neuron-apoptosing stupidity of a magnitude that even activation of NF-kappaB, Akt, and neuronal cell survival signaling pathways can barely keep the killing stupidity at bay? I guess it's because it provides such good blog fodder for a skeptical blog dedicated to science- and evidence-based medicine. On the other hand, it often gives me a headache to read its contents. Really, it does. I mean, looking at how Mike Adams, the Woo-meister Supreme and Chief Tin Foil Hat responsible for the lunacy there…
sb admin | October 14, 2008(This one is cross-posted over at Science-Based Medicine. FYI. --PalMD)
If you've been a regular reader of SBM or denialism blog, you know that plausibility plays an important part in science-based medicine. If plausibility is discounted, clinical studies of improbable medical claims can show apparently positive results. But once pre-test probability is factored in, the truth is revealed---magic water can't treat disease, no matter what a particular study may say. So it was with great dismay that I read an email from a reader telling me about parents buying hyperbaric chambers for their…
clock | October 14, 2008Or so says this BBC article:
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.
oracknows | October 14, 2008OK, I give up.
I hadn't planned on blogging about this because I thought I had already taken care of this woo before. Well, not exactly this woo, but a related woo of which this new issue is just a warmed over more woo-ified version. Indeed, I had even considered it as a candidate to be the first "victim" of a new, improved, resurrected version of Your Friday Dose of Woo (yes, I still do intend to resurrect it but haven't managed to find the time to give it the justice it deserves), but decided against using this particular form of woo because, well, it's quackery that kills. And that's a…
oracknows | October 13, 2008Remember Sandy Szwarc of Junkfood Science?
It's been a long time since we've last encountered her. Indeed, it was last year when there developed a debate on whether her posts were suitable for the Skeptics' Circle. At the time, I was conflicted. In many ways, Ms. Szwarc seemed to be a skeptic--at least, when it came to most topics. However, when it comes to one topic, she is a crank, and that is the topic of the relationship between diet, obesity, and health. It's not obvious that she is a crank, and it took my reading her blog over several weeks before I came to the inescapable conclusion…
sb admin | October 12, 2008A letter from a reader (thank you, Mr. "Smith") got me thinking---could the fight against improbable medical claims be aided by a better knowledge of science? In another attempt to bring complicated science to the masses, today we will learn a bit about how we breathe. The first thing we need to understand is what we breathe.
Let us speak of air. We know we need it. Most of us know that the oxygen that makes up about twenty percent of it is necessary for life. If you think a little bit more, you probably realize that in addition to the oxygen content, there is another variable that is…
oracknows | October 12, 2008NOTE: This post, which is related to a discussion of Dr. Paul Offit's Book Autism's False Prophets, originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to archive it as one of my own posts. Besides, I know the antivaxers are more likely to see it here...
On Friday, while discussing what is perhaps the aspect of Autism's False Prophets that is at the same time the most important set of observations (namely, how the media and government miscommunicate…
oracknows | October 11, 2008NOTE: This post, which is related to a discussion of Dr. Paul Offit's Book Autism's False Prophets, originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to archive it as one of my own posts. Besides, I know the antivaxers are more likely to see it here...
One of the major points made by Dr. Offit in Autism's False Prophets is how badly the media deals with scientific issues and stories in which science is a major component. Indeed, he devotes two full…
terrasig | October 11, 2008Nobel Prize month also means that Denver's 5280 magazine has announced the annual results of their top 270 medical professionals in 79 specialties. While the picture here is the cover of last year's issue featuring my dear colleague, Dr John J (Jay) Reusch, the good doctor was again named among the top six physicians in Cardiovascular Medicine. Our other compatriot, Dr Daniel (Dan) Bessesen was named for the sixth year among the top specialists in Endocrinology, Diabetes, & Metabolism.
Even my former pulmonologist, Dr James (Jim) Good, made the list - for his 14th year! The Pulmonary…
terrasig | October 11, 2008. . .is not the name of my new punk rock band.
It is, however, the key text of lab results that came back this week in following up on the most highly-read post of my blogging career.
That is all.
oracknows | October 11, 2008NOTE: This review of Dr. Offit's book Autism's False Prophets originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to archive it as one of my own posts. Besides, I know the antivaxers are more likely to see it here...
Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...
Well, not really. I might have one of the two. Or not.
Be that as it may, I'm Orac, and I blog regularly at Respectful Insolence. In the more than two and a half years I…
oracknows | October 10, 2008...Dr. John Kiely, a.k.a. EpiWonk, will school you otherwise. (I had to attend a function for work last night; so no new insolence for you right now. Maybe later. Hard as it is to believe, I do sometimes have to let my job interfere with my blogging. Fortunately, I've been meaning to plug Dr. Kiely's post since it came out.)
After telling the harrowing story of his brush with serious complications from the measles as a child, he sums up the current day know-nothing, "green our vaccines" antivaccination movement succinctly and accurately:
Meanwhile, the modern anti-vaccination movement, which…
oracknows | October 9, 2008The relentless march to Skeptics' Circle 100 continues, this time around with Evolved Rationalist over at Evolved and Rational. It's all for the lulz and the mudkip. What it in fact does is make me realize that I'm not as hip to the latest Internet stuff as I thought, because I had no idea what lulz meant or what a mudkip is. Oh, well. It's still a fantastic collection of the latest skepticism from around the blogosphere.
In the meantime, next up is The Uncredible Hallq, who's a past host and did a great job then. I'm glad he's doing it again, and he'll be hosting on October 23. So get your…
sb admin | October 9, 2008As a physician, I have a lot of politically conservative colleagues. Much of this stems from our experience with the government. The influence of Medicare helps set prices, which we are not at liberty to change, and affects how we practice. On the other hand, Medicare is usually pretty good at paying its bills---except when it doesn't. If our costs go up, say in increased rent, we can't raise our prices. And if we get together with a group of doctors to try to negotiate fees, it can be considered collusion, and as such, illegal. So we're in a bind.
On the other hand, the current…