medicine
oracknows | March 20, 2013This will be an uncharacteristically short (for Orac) post.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the sad story of a young man from Ireland named Seán Ó'Laighin diagnosed with an inoperable brainstem glioma at age 19. Even more sadly, this young man heard about the Burzynski Clinic in Houston and believed the claims of its founder, Stanislaw Burzynski, that being treated with antineoplastons would provide him with a much greater chance of survival than anything conventional medicine had to offer. As has been the case for so many patients of Stanislaw Burzynski, Seán and his family started…
oracknows | March 19, 2013I've had a rule of thumb for a while that helps me identify quacks with a high degree of accuracy. It's not very sensitive, as a lot of quacks don't exhibit this trait, but it's very specific. A lot of quacks don't use the term; so not hearing says nothing about a practitioner. If you hear someone using this term, however, it's at least 99% likely that he is a quack. At least.
I'm referring to the word "dis-ease."
You see it everywhere. Instead of using the word "disease," quacks will often use the word "dis-ease" instead. Basically, the idea (apparently) is to choose not to empower health…
denialism | March 18, 2013Two links today for denialism blog readers, both are pretty thought provoking. The first, from Amy Tuteur, on the newly-released statistics on homebirth in Oregon. It seems that her crusade to have the midwives share their mortality data is justified, as when they were forced to release this data in Oregon, planned homebirth was about 7-10 times more likely to result in neonatal mortality than planned hospital birth.
I'm sure Tuteur won't mind me stealing her figure and showing it here (original source of data is Judith Rooks testimony):
Oregon homebirth neonatal mortality statistics, from…
oracknows | March 15, 2013It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday's post. Sure, I framed it semi-humorously, with The Evil Skeptics infiltrating the screening of the Burzynski sequel, but part of the reason that I did that is because the subject matter is so unrelentingly depressing. That's why when a reader sent me a link to the victim target subject of…
oracknows | March 13, 2013Film producer Eric Merola seems to think that there is a conspiracy of skeptics (whom he calls The Skeptics) hell bent on harassing his hero, Brave Maverick Doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. According to his latest film Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as Burzynski II, to distinguish it from Merola's first Burzynski movie, to which I will refer as Burzynski I), there is a shadowy cabal of Skeptics out there just waiting to swoop down on any Burzynski supporter who has the temerity to Tweet support for him, any cancer patient being treated by Burzynski who…
oracknows | March 12, 2013With very limited exceptions, chelation therapy is, as I said before in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. The sole exception is for real, documented cases of acute heavy metal poisoning that are known to respond to chelation, such as iron overload due to transfusion, aluminum overload due to hemodialysis, copper toxicity due to Wilson's disease, acute heavy metal toxicity, and a handful of other indications. Basically, chelation therapy involves infusing chemicals that can bind to metal ions and make them easier for the kidneys to excrete. The problem is, there is no good basic…
oracknows | March 8, 2013So I finally made it to the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Symposium. Thanks to the snowstorm that apparently wasn't (at least, I don't see any snow around), my arrival was delayed by a day, as all flights to the Washington, DC area were canceled on Wednesday. But I did finally get here, and, although I missed most of the first day, I did at least get to see a talk given by a friend of mine late in the day and I had a chance to hang out for a while with an old friend.
I also got the chance after I got back to my hotel room to be highly amused by a "response" to criticism from the author…
oracknows | March 7, 2013I'm not a big fan of Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). That I don't much like CTCA should come as no surprise, given that this particular hospital chain distinguishes itself from other hospital chains by advertising its full body embrace of quackery, in particular "naturopathic oncology." At the same time as it's advertising its "integrative cancer care." It all sounds great on the surface, but anyone who understands exactly what "integrative medicine" is and how it basically represents the evolution of quackery will also understand that when you "integrate" quackery and…
oracknows | March 6, 2013I know I have quite a few readers in the Washington, DC area; so I thought I'd just take advantage of the prerogative of the blog to do a little pimping. (And what good is having a blog if you can't do a little shameless promotion every now and then?) A "very good friend" of mine will be in DC this weekend giving a talk forthe National Capital Area Skeptics. The talk will take place at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA on Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 1 PM. So if you're in the DC area and want to hear a familiar voice pontificate about quackademic medicine (and, really, what…
oracknows | March 5, 2013That didn't take long.
Earlier today I wrote about how Colorado Public TV (channel 12) has betrayed its public trust by airing movies promoting quackery and/or pseudoscience. The most recent example is its upcoming airing of the first Burzynski movie, a propaganda piece so blatantly one-sided and full of cherry picked information and conspiracy mongering that it's painful for anyone with two neurons to rub together to watch.
Well, Colorado PBS, Channel 12 has responded (click to embiggen):
Indeed. Colorado PBS must have incredible contempt for its viewers to think that such a transparent…
oracknows | March 3, 2013Over the weekend, as I was contemplating what to write about for today, I received a rather odd and unexpected e-mail. Indeed, it was with great surprise that I read this e-mail on Saturday morning, sent to the Burzynski Movie mailing list:
Dear Burzynski Movie Subscribers:
Major International Distribution Deal For
Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II:
We are pleased to announce that Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II has landed a major international distribution deal with one of America's top distribution companies.
We can't give out any specific details until…
denialism | March 2, 2013There's been an interesting edit in Marc Bittman's sugar post, as he has now changed his tune on the PLoS one sugar study, now Bittman acknowledges obesity too is important. That was big of him, it is after all, the most important factor. Maybe my angry letter to the editor had an effect, but he's grudgingly changed this statement:
In other words, according to this study, obesity doesn’t cause diabetes: sugar does.
To:
In other words, according to this study, it’s not just obesity that can cause diabetes: sugar can cause it, too, irrespective of obesity. And obesity does not always lead to…
oracknows | March 1, 2013I really hate to write this post, but I feel compelled. The reason I hate to write it is because someone I admire screwed up. The reason I feel compelled is because of my longstanding interest in World War II and Holocaust history, not to mention my longtime interest in refuting the lies of Holocaust deniers. I had meant to write about it the first time I came across it, but for some reason did not. I don't remember the reason, although it might very well be because of how much I respect the person who wrote it. Again, I don't remember, and today it really doesn't matter why. Whatever the…
denialism | February 28, 2013The New York Times made big news with reports that the New England Journal of Medicine study on the beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet showed it could dramatically reduce the rates of heart attack and stroke. But this study has major issues that bear directly on whether or not physicians should make new recommendations about dietary intake of fats like olive oil, or whether patients should adopt the diet as a whole. Let's talk about the trial.
First of all, this is a randomized, controlled trial, in which 7447 men and women between 55 and 80 years of age who had major risk factors…
denialism | February 28, 2013Diet seems to be all over the New York Times this week, with an oversell of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and now Mark Bittman, everyone's favorite food scold, declaring sugar is the culprit for rising diabetes. His article is based on this interesting new article in PLoS One and begins with this wildly-inaccurate summary:
Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.
A study published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal PLoS One links increased consumption of sugar with increased rates…
oracknows | February 28, 2013The other day, I took note again of a rather amusing internecine war going on between various factions of antivaccine cranks. On the one side, spearheaded by everyone's favorite inept conspiracy theorist and bumbling epidemiologist wanna be, Jake Crosby, there are the true believers, who believe that the other side, the more "mainstream" antivaccine groups (such as SafeMinds) and elder statesmen (such as Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill) somehow shafted Jake's hero, the even more bumbling antivaccine "scientist" Brian Hooker out of a role testifying in front of Darryl Issa's last antivaccine…
oracknows | February 28, 2013Yesterday, I expressed my dismay at learning that what used to be a bastion of science-based medicine, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, is now peddling the quackery known as acupuncture to children, or, as I put it, "integrating" nonsense with science. Sadly, as I've written about all too often because I keep seeing it again and again, it's an all too common trend. Hospitals are increasingly embracing pseudoscience and quackery, laboring under the misguided belief that by doing so they are somehow "cutting edge"; that the patients really, really want it; and as a marketing tool. Although I…
oracknows | February 27, 2013Thanks to a winter storm that dumped a heapin' helpin' of heavy wet snow on us last night, we lost power before this post even got going. However, I did have a bit of time this morning to finish it up as a quickie (by my standards) before my laptop battery indicator started expressing its displeasure. Since it's a topic that doesn't really necessitate a long post anyway, it's a perfect fit for today, and I'll just put off what I was going to write about today until tomorrow. Or the day after if nothing else comes up between now and then that interests me more. You see, the power company is…
oracknows | February 24, 2013That the myth that vaccines cause autism is indeed nothing more than a myth, a phantom, a delusion unsupported by science is no longer in doubt. In fact, it's been many years now since it was last taken seriously by real scientists and physicians, as opposed to crank scientists and physicians, who are still selling the myth. Thanks to them, and a dedicated cadre of antivaccine activists, the myth is like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, or Freddy Krueger at the end of one of their slasher flicks. The slasher or monster appears to be dead, but we know that he isn't because we know that he'll…
oracknows | February 21, 2013Over the last couple of weeks, I've been discussing How "They" See "Us," which is basically that "they" see "us" as pure evil. Well, maybe not always sheer evil, but certainly not good, and even more certainly as having ulterior motives, the most common of which is filthy pharma lucre. As a result, when a grant deadline approached, I reposted a post about the "pharma shill gambit." However, how do these brave maverick doctors see themselves? Given that I'm traveling (and my plans have been impacted by the big storm heading through Kansas and Missouri now, it seemed appropriate given that I…