medicine
oracknows | January 24, 2012If there's one thing about homeopaths, it's that they're indefatigable in their dedication to their unique brand of pseudoscience. They're also endlessly protean in their ability to induce their explanations for how homeopathy is supposed to "work" to evolve into endless forms not so beautiful. If it's not the claim that "like cures like" is some sort of immutable law of nature or that diluting a remedy somehow makes it stronger, it's pivoting to the claim that water has "memory." If it's not that, then homeopaths and homeopathy apologists invoke quantum entanglement that somehow works at the…
oracknows | January 23, 2012I've been an observer and student of the antivaccine movement for nearly a decade now, although my intensive education began almost seven years ago, in early 2005, not long after I started blogging. It was then that I first encountered several "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement both throughout the blogosphere and sometimes even commenting on my blog itself. I'm talking about "luminaries" such as J.B. Handley, who is the founder of Generation Rescue and was its leader and main spokesperson; that is, until he managed to recruit spokesmodel Jenny McCarthy to be its public face, and Dr. Jay…
pharyngula | January 23, 2012Mondays are my long, long days — this is the day I get to spend 3 hours talking to students in small groups about cancer (they're young and invincible, so so far it hasn't been as depressing as I feared.) And they teach me stuff! Among the things I learned today is that there was a Peanuts special from the 1990s about cancer, titled "Why, Charlie Brown, Why". I was incredulous — it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect on Peanuts — but I looked it up, and there it was on YouTube. So I'll share. It's not bad.
The class is operating on a much higher level than this special — it…
oracknows | January 23, 2012I was disturbed several months ago when I learned that the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, had agreed to be the keynote speaker at the Eight International Society for Integrative Oncology Conference in Cleveland, OH. I say "doubly" disturbed because it disturbed me that Francis Collins would agree to speak at such a function and, perhaps even more, because the host institution was Case Western Reserve University, the institution where I both completed my surgery residency and my PhD in Physiology and Biophysics. Sadly, it now appears that my old stomping…
oracknows | January 19, 2012It's a new year, but some topics remain the same. One of these is the case of the highly dubious cancer doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have discovered anticancer compounds in the blood known as antineoplastons, conducts "clinical trials" for which he charges patients and whose results he are largely unpublished, and of late has started marketing a do-it-yourself "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy" that--surprise! surprise!--almost always involves antineoplastons. More importantly, contrary to Dr. Burzynski's claim that he doesn't use chemotherapy and that his therapy…
oracknows | January 18, 2012Every so often, I come across a bit of antivaccine idiocy that's so amazingly idiotic, such a--shall we say?--target-rich environment that it's catnip to a cat. I just can't resist it, even when there are other topics and subjects out there that have backed up over the last few days and I want to cover. You'll see why in a minute. In this particular case the antivaccine lunacy comes in the form of a video that's been making the rounds amazingly quickly the anti-vaccine crankosphere since it was released yesterday. It comes to us courtesy of a nurse who calls herself "The Patriot Nurse," and…
oracknows | January 18, 2012One of my complaints about academic medicine is that, all too often, its practitioners seem unwilling to take risks to combat the misinformation and lies of the antivaccine movement. So kudos are indicated for Dr. Claire McCarthy at Children's Hospital Boston for her blog post Unencumbered by facts: what upsets me most about the anti-vaccine movement.
I see that, predictably, the antivaccine contingent has already begun to swoop down on her. She could use some pre-emptive tactical air support. Fly, my monkeys! Fly! :-)
ADDENDUM: Oh, look. Dr. McCarthy's post is cross posted at The Huffington…
denialism | January 18, 2012A few weeks ago Tara Parker Pope wrote The Fat Trap for the NYT and once I read it I started sending it to other doctors I know. It is a great summary on the current knowledge of why we get fat, and more importantly for those of us that already are tipping the scales, why is it so damn hard to take that weight back off. (I'll discuss Young, Obese and Getting Weight Loss Surgery nearer the end)
Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most…
oracknows | January 17, 2012I had been planning on either discussing a study or analyzing another cancer cure testimonial, but things have been (mostly) too serious around the ol' blog the last few days. What with depressing posts about the return of whooping cough thanks to antivaccine idiocy, more evidence that Andrew Wakefield is a despicable human being, and evidence that there are equally despicable ideas prevalent in "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), I was starting to enter one of my periodic periods of depression brought on by contemplating the sheer scope of human gullibility and stupidity. I…
oracknows | January 17, 2012Last week, I wrote about how advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integtrative medicine" (IM), having failed to demonstrate efficacy for the vast majority of the unscientific, anti-scientific, and/or pseudosciencitific treatment modalities, many based on prescientific concepts of how human physiology and disease work, have started trying to co-opt placebo effects as their own. In essence, given that the larger and better designed the study the more it is obvious that most CAM therapies do no better than placebo, CAM/IM advocates have decided to embrace their inner…
oracknows | January 16, 2012The other day, I noted a contrast between certain parts of the developed world (namely, Europe) where, thanks to fears of the MMR vaccine stoked by Andrew Wakefield and the credulous and sensationalistic British press, MMR uptake rates have fallen and, predictably, measles incidence has skyrocketed, and the rest of the world, where polio is now on the verge of being eradicated, thanks to vaccination campaigns. It's evidence that the antivaccine movement, inspired by Andrew Wakefield and promoted by antivaccine groups like Generation Rescue, the National Vaccine Information Center, the…
oracknows | January 14, 2012In deciding to sue Brian Deer, Fiona Godlee, and the BMJ for Brian Deer's BMJ article about his scientific fraud a year ago, Andrew Wakefield was clearly grabbing for publicity, seeking to fire up his supporters (which he's largely succeeded in doing), and trying to make himself relevent again after the allegations published in the BMJ a year ago led to his further decline. Regarding making himself relevant again, I might caution Andy to be careful: He might just get what he wished for, just not in the way he wished it. After all, right before his lawsuit became public, Wakefield had already…
denialism | January 13, 2012Via Zite I found the article How Doctors Die by Ken Murray and was surprised to find it one of the best I've read on the issue of end-of-life care. The context is that of how Doctors typically forgo extreme measures in the face of terminal diagnoses, and often reject the type of care we routinely provide to our patients as "not for us". While the article lacks hard data on the prevalence of these attitudes or behaviors, I have to say this viewpoint is consistent my experience of learning my colleague's beliefs and how I now personally feel about ICU care . And I'm someone who is interested…
oracknows | January 13, 2012It's funny, but it's only been one week since I expressed extreme skepticism that that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, had reformed itself. The reason, of course, was that HuffPo had announced that it was starting a science section. Even though on the surface it seemed that HuffPo was making the right moves, recruiting real scientists to blog for it, even asking Seth Mnookin to write an pro-vaccine article that was the very antithesis of the antivaccine idiocy that has run rampant at HuffPo from the very beginning and, with only rare interruptions, continuing during…
oracknows | January 11, 2012For all the good things about my life there are, there is one bad thing, and that was that I was born so that I reached high school age right at the height of the disco era. At least, that's the way I viewed it at the time because at the time, like many teenaged boys of that era, particularly in Detroit, I hated disco. Loathed it. Despised it. I used to draw cartoons in the back of my notebooks showing Robert Plant destroying disco records, and I was a card-carrying member of DREAD. Not for me were the Bee Gees, who were so huge during my sophomore and junior years in high school, although I…
oracknows | January 11, 2012When I wrote last week about the latest legal thuggery against an opponent of antivaccine pseudoscience, this time by hero of the antivaccine movement, who sued investigative reporter Brian Deer for defamation, there was one thing about the case that confused me, one aspect that didn't add up to me. Part of it was why Wakefield sued Brian Deer over an article he wrote for the BMJ a year ago, although in retrospect it's become apparent to me that it was almost certainly because the statute of limitations for a libel action in Texas is one year. More importantly, the silence of the antivaccine…
oracknows | January 9, 2012I've spent a lot of time over the years looking at cranks, examining crank science (i.e., pseudoscience), and trying to figure out how to inoculate people against crankery. Because I'm a physician, I tend to do it mostly in the realm of medicine by critically examining "alternative" medical claims and discussing the scientific basis of medicine, both with respect to those "alternative" claims and to more conventional medical claims. However, I don't limit my skepticism and critical thinking just to medicine, although lately I think that I've been "specializing" too much, almost totally…
oracknows | January 9, 2012Will it never end?
First we had "America's Doctor," Dr. Mehmet Oz, credulously featuring psychic medium scammer John Edward on his show last year. Sadly, but typically, Dr. Oz was completely taken in by Edward's cold readings, even the most transparent ones. Even if his previous shows featuring Joe Mercola and a faith healer weren't enough to convince you that Dr. Oz either has no critical thinking skills or does have them but doesn't care about anything but entertainment, bread and circuses, this one should have been.
My readers have now told me today that it looks as though in 2012 Dr.…
denialism | January 9, 2012As Chris discussed Saturday the WSJ had a silly article in which a woman demands a prescription drug from a flight attendant, asking for the wrong drug to treat her problem acutely, and then shockingly was refused this service. Worse, Nexium is mentioned by name, multiple times, and Nexium is actually a drug which should never have even been approved by the FDA. It really is only prescribed because of intense marketing because, logically, it has no business on the market and is no different than an existing drug, prilosec. Why would doctors irrationally prescribe this drug then? Because…
oracknows | January 8, 2012Three and a half years ago, I bought a new car. The reason why I mention this as a means of beginning this post is because that car had something I had never had in a car before, namely Sirius XM satellite radio preinstalled. Curious, I subscribed, and I now barely listen to regular radio anymore. A couple of years after I had bought the car, a new channel was added to the lineup, a channel called Radio Classics. I don't know how I discovered it, but I rapidly became hooked on what's commonly referred to as old time radio. Basically, that's classic radio of the sort that was broadcast between…