medicine
ddobbs | September 9, 2008The evidentiary landscape regarding antidepressant efficacy seems to grow ever more slippery. Now comes a study, drawn to my attention by the busy-eyed Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons, that finds that the beneficial effects of placebo treatment of depression last longer than generally thought.
As the study's authors note, "The assumption that the placebo response in depression does not endure is widely held and often stated in writing." In particular, many seem to assume that placebo effects fade while effects of actual medications persist -- another argument for antidepressants.
The point…
jstemwedel | September 8, 2008Back in July, Science ran an interesting news article about an on again, off again clinical trial of chelation therapy in the treatment of autistic children. I found the story fascinating because it highlights some of the challenges in setting up ethical research with human subjects -- not to mention some of the challenges inherent in trying to help humans to make good decisions grounded in the best available scientific knowledge.
From the Science article:
Believing that mercury in vaccines triggers autism, thousands of parents, often at the advice of their physicians, have given their…
oracknows | September 8, 2008"One dumb tumor is still smarter than ten smart oncologists."
--George Sledge, MD
My only retort is that, slowly but surely, oncologists and we oncologic surgeons are getting smarter.
oracknows | September 8, 2008If there's one thing that cancer researchers, indeed most biomedical researchers in the U.S., know today it's that the research funding climate sucks right now. Indeed, after the completion of the near-doubling of the NIH budget in 2003, during which time it was flying high, the NIH budget in essence crash landed--hard. Paylines, which had been well over the 20th percentile (meaning that over 20% of grant applications in any give deadline cycle were funded) plummeted to near single-digit ranges almost overnight. Indeed, I almost fell victim to this myself in 2004. The initial score on my R01…
sb admin | September 7, 2008I don't know. There was a pretty good piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, but it's really not clear enough for most readers (including myself).
The McCain and Obama websites give fairly comprehensive looks at their health plans, but nothing useful for a lay reader.
The good news is that both campaigns have a plan. The bad news is that it is virtually impossible for anyone who cares to make heads or tails of the two and compare them effectively.
Well, gentle reader, I'm going to do you a favor. As an educated and knowledgeable professional, I am not going to try to parse through…
oracknows | September 6, 2008...is through his plush guts, as Liz Ditz tells me:
I particularly like the plush pancreas, even though I haven't done pancreatic surgery on a regular basis since the 1990s. I'm a little confused, though, about why the plush gallbladder is purple instead of green. Surgeons really, really hate to see purple gallbladders, because the only purple gallbladder is a dead or dying gallbladder. (OK, necrotic gallbladders are usually greenish black, but they can look purplish in some areas.) I'm also a bit puzzled by the choice of yellow for the liver, given that the liver is reddish-brown. But,…
sb admin | September 5, 2008John Stossel of ABC's 20/20 has never been one of my favorites. He's one of those folks who often poses as a skeptic by using doubt and mockery indiscriminately. Tonight, though, he got it right. He discusses food obsessions and fads, pointing out the contradictions inherent in food cultists.
One of the worst of the food cult leaders is Viktoras Kulvinskas, a leader of the raw food movement. Stossel's interview with this wacko is great...he actually calls him out on his bullshit.
Raw foodists believe cooking vegetables even a little destroys their nutritional value. And eating meat is…
ddobbs | September 5, 2008You want mail, write about cell phones and DNA.
Earlier today, when I posted a heads-up to a Science story about questions raised about data-tampering in what Science called "The only two peer-reviewed scientific papers" showing strong links between cell phone use and DNA mutations, I noted I was surprised at the lack of press coverage about this, given how heavily most papers on the subject are reported. Two hours later I got a note from Louis Slesin, who blogs on such issues at Microwave News, asserting that the Science story oversimplified the situation. Slesin pointed me to his Sept 3…
oracknows | September 5, 2008I guess I'm just going to have to face it. I'm entering a period of lots of vaccine blogging again. After all, Jenny McCarthy's book is coming out this month, and I've heard rumblings that she's scheduled to be on the undisputed Queen of Woo Oprah Winfrey's TV show later this month; so beware. Already in some bookstores is Paul Offit's book Autism's False Prophets, and there's little doubt that the antivaccination smear machine is gearing up to slime him as hard as they can.
It's going to be a depressingly busy fall on the antivax front.
I keep hoping I can take an extended break from this…
clock | September 5, 2008NC State Is First University in Nation to Offer Canine Bone Marrow Transplants
Dogs suffering from lymphoma will be able to receive the same type of medical treatment as their human counterparts, as North Carolina State University becomes the first university in the nation to offer canine bone marrow transplants in a clinical setting.
Dr. Steven Suter, assistant professor of oncology in NC State's College of Veterinary Medicine, received three leukophoresis machines donated by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Leukophoresis machines are designed to harvest healthy stem cells from cancer…
oracknows | September 5, 2008I've railed on more than one occasion about how much I detest science by press release. For one thing, it bypasses the peer review process and reports results directly to the public, which to me is a strike against any study. Indeed, releasing results by press release or using a press release to tout a study before it's even published is, as far as I'm concerned, quite dubious, and when I see it I'm automatically way more suspicious of whether the study represents good (or even OK) science.
One form of science by press release that can be a bit more subtle than, say, the cold fusion guys…
sb admin | September 4, 2008Last week I went to the dermatologist. I have a few moles, and some of them were looking a little funny. The dermatologist did a full skin exam, and agreed that some of my moles looked funny, and she removed them. About a week later a pathology report confirmed that I have dysplastic nevi, and not melanoma. Yay! Sort of. The literature isn't entirely clear what to make of patients with small numbers of dysplastic nevi---are they at increased risk of melanoma? What is the proper follow up interval? Dermatologists keep a close eye on these buggers, so I'll be visiting her again in the…
purepedantry | September 4, 2008Kara asked whether this article about the sudden death of young men when arrested by police is for real.
The article details data presented before the European Society of Cardiology concerning 60 unexplained deaths over 10 years in Spain. The individuals were all relatively young men that were taken into police custody. The reports from these cases show no previous history of cardiovascular disease. They believe they can rule out mistreatment or drug use from the autopsies as well.
The author of the study, Manuel Martinez Selles, argues that this sudden death may represent a new syndrome…
oracknows | September 3, 2008This is getting to be monotonous, but it's a monotony that I like, as should anyone who supports scientific medicine and hates the resurgence of infectious diseases that antivaccinationists have been causing of late with their fearmongering about vaccines that frightens parents into refusing to vaccinate their children. It's the drumbeat of studies, seemingly coming out every few months, that fail to find even a whiff of a link or correlation between vaccines, thimerosal-containing or otherwise, and autism. You'd think that the pseudoscientists who are so utterly convinced that it absolutely…
moleculeoftheday | September 3, 2008Oxymetazoline is yet another arylethylamine:
The broad class tickles adrenergic receptors in some way. This one finds use in nasal sprays and eyedrops, making you less dribbly and look less terrible in the morning, respectively.
oracknows | September 3, 2008Since I've been discussing histidine and histamine today (how's that for a segue to an entirely different topic?), it seems like the perfect time to mention a story I saw yesterday about the ten worst cities for fall pollen, such as ragweed, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA).
I was amazed to see that none of the cities is located anywhere near where I live. Few of them are where I guessed they might be. Perhaps one of them is where you live, or nearby.
In any case, every year in the late summer and into fall I can look forward to a life of continual snot, with a…
oracknows | September 3, 2008Some people should keep their "gut feelings" to themselves.
You know the type: People who have no knowledge about a topic or, even worse, just enough knowledge to sound as if they have a clue about it to people who don't have a clue but who are at the same time easily spotted as utterly and completely clueless by people who do have a clue. These people often think they've discovered something that scientists, in all their blindness have missed, and have a burning urge to share their "gut feeling" about what they think they have discovered as though it's some revelation, a bolt out of the blue…
clock | September 2, 2008Providing Surgical Services Should Be Global Public Health Priority:
When you think of public health efforts in developing countries, you probably think of childhood vaccinations, programs for clean water, malaria and TB eradication campaigns. Surgery is rarely considered as a tool for improving the health of the world's poorest people. Prompted by an article in their on-line journal suggesting that it should be, the editors of PLoS Medicine have added their voice to the discussion.
oracknows | September 2, 2008ResearchBlogging.org, that aggregator for blogging about peer-reviewed scientific research, has been given a makeover and a major overhaul. New features include:
There will be much, much more on our official launch date of September 2, but here is a partial list of new features:
Multiple language support (and 30 new German-language bloggers!)
Topic-specific RSS feeds
Post-by-post tagging with topics and subtopics
"Recover password" feature
Email alerts when there is a problem with posts
Users can flag posts that don't meet our guidelines
Customized user home pages with bios and blog…
oracknows | September 2, 2008Hanging out last night, the final night of a three day holiday weekend, I was momentarily at a loss for what to write. For one thing, having spent a good chunk of the last three days unpacking the remaining stuff we've had in our basement in boxes for the last six or seven months, my wife and I had a pretty good sense of accomplishment but not a lot of energy left. So much for one of my analyses of a study or a medical issue.
I was also half-tempted to go back and listen again to the Science Friday last week because the antivaccinationist named Chantal who called in at the end was a perfect…