medicine
oracknows | January 31, 2011Breast implants have been the subject of controversy since they were first developed in the 1960s, with the controversy reaching a head in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when thousands of women with silicone implants reported a variety of ailments, including autoimmune disease and a variety of other systemic illnesses. These reports led to a rash of lawsuits and, ultimately, the banning of silicone breast implants for general use for breast augmentation in 1992. After that, silicone breast implants were only permitted in women requiring breast reconstruction or women enrolled in clinical…
oracknows | January 30, 2011Of the two, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, I tend to favor The Daily Show because there are times when I find Stephen Colbert's schtick tiresome. True, Colbert can at times rise to the level of being brilliant, but there are other times when he gets on my nerves. In contrast, Jon Stewart tends to be more consistently funny.
However, tonight, there'll be a guest on who'll very likely get me to tune in to The Colbert Report on the night the show airs, rather than my usual practice of watching its rerun the next day. That's because on Monday, January 31 (i.e., today), Stephen Colbert's…
oracknows | January 28, 2011Sometimes a comment in the comment thread after one of my posts ends up turning into the inspiration for another post. This is especially likely to happen if I respond to that comment and end up writing a comment of myself that seems way too good to waste, forever buried in the comments where, as soon as the commenting on the post dies down, it remains, unread again. So it was after my post on the "integration" of quackery into academic medical centers. In that post, I applied some of my inimitable not-so-Respectful Insolence to a deal between Georgetown University, what should be a bastion…
oracknows | January 27, 2011If there's a single TV show out there that has the widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, there is no doubt that it's Oprah Winfrey's show. If there's a show that has the second-widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, arguably it's Dr. Mehmet Oz's show. Whether it be his recent show featuring quackmaster supreme, Joseph Mercola, or his upcoming show featuring a faith healer, I fear that Dr. Oz has given up whatever claim he once had to promoting science-based medicine. Yes, it's true that he has had a soft spot for reiki for a long time, but other than that he's…
oracknows | January 26, 2011Beginning not long after this blog began, one recurring theme has been the infiltration of "quackademic medicine" into academic medical centers. Whether it be called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM), its infiltration into various academic medical centers has been one of the more alarming developments I've noted over the last several years. The reason is that "integrative" medicine is all too often in reality nothing more than "integrating" pseudoscience with science, quackery with medicine. After all, when you "integrate" something like reiki or…
oracknows | January 25, 2011I've on occasion been asked why I even bother responding to the brain--and I do use the term loosely--droppings of Mike Adams, the purveyor of one of the largest repositories of quackery on the entire Internet. Good question. Sometimes I wonder that myself. After all, Adams is so far out there, so beyond the realm of rational thought, so full of bizarre conspiracy theories and defenses of quackery that anyone the least bit rational and science-based should be able to see through his nonsense. Applying a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to someone as reality-challenged as Mike…
oracknows | January 23, 2011Most of the woo I write about, fortunately, I don't have to deal with directly close to home. This is a good thing indeed, because it means that where I practice is blissfully free (for the most part) of pseudoscience. Unfortunately, earlier this year, I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I found out that there was going to be a showing of a rather annoying movie. It also occurred to me that I had never, to my memory, discussed the topic of this movie, namely the health claims of raw ("living") food veganism. The vitalism at the heart of this movie and its accompanying "educational" DVD…
oracknows | January 21, 2011
Over the last three weeks, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been publishing a multipart expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis of his now infamous 1998 Lancet article suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and a syndrome consisting of regressive autism and enterocolitis. Indeed, Deer even went so far as to describe Wakefield's fraud as "Piltdown medicine,"…
oracknows | January 20, 2011I was originally going to blog this yesterday, but Dr. Oz's offenses against science and medicine on his show that aired on Tuesday kind of pushed it out of the way. It's not that I didn't think the third part of Brian Deer's expose of Andrew Wakefield's fraud worthy of my attention. Rather, the Oz thing really got me peeved, peeved enough to push aside (temporarily, at least) Brian Deer's deconstruction of how the editors of The Lancet scrambled to cover their proverbial asses, which they proceeded to do with alacrity, as the title of Deer's article implies: The Lancet's two days to bury bad…
oracknows | January 18, 2011Stick a fork in Dr. Oz. He's done.
I know I've been highly critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz, Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University and medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program (i.e., Columbia's quackademic medicine) program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Those are his academic titles. More important, in terms of his promotion of pseudoscience, is his role as daytime medical show host. Dr. Oz's television show, called, appropriately enough, The Dr. Oz Show, is a direct result of his having been featured on Oprah Winfrey's show on numerous occasions as one of…
oracknows | January 18, 2011My faithful minions have pointed me in the direction of a poll that desperately needs crashing. Apparently, Andrew Wakefield posted a link on his Facebook page, and the forces of anti-science have already descended upon it. Here's the poll:
We think the British Medical Journal's report debunks once and for all the supposed link between autism and the MMR vaccine. But what do you think? Is the vaccine-autism link debunked? Take our poll.
Yes.
No.
You know what to do, my minions. Make me proud.
oracknows | January 18, 2011Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
Part 4 is here.
I realize I say these things again and again and again, but they bear repeating because together they are a message that needs to be spread in as clear and unambiguous a form as possible. First, whenever you hear someone say, "I'm not anti-vaccine," there's always a "but" after it, and that "but" almost always demonstrates that the person is anti-vaccine after all. Second, for antivaccine loons, it's always about the vaccines. Always. It's not primarily about autism advocacy; it's primarily about the vaccines and blaming them for…
oracknows | January 17, 2011Something amazing happened on Friday. Unfortunately, I didn't get to blog it as soon as I would have liked because (1) it happened on Canadian TV and the video wasn't available to anyone outside of Canada until it showed up on YouTube and (2) Craig Willougby's changing his mind about Andrew Wakefield really did gobsmack me to the point that I had to blog about it, so rare is it for someone who used to accept pseudoscience to have the courage and intellectual honesty to admit publicly that he is changing his mind. Still, even though it's three days later, I didn't want to let this pass,…
oracknows | January 17, 2011I take back all those nice things I said about Dr. Oz.
Well, I never actually said that much nice about Dr. Oz, but I usually gave him at least a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, other than for his love or reiki. Then Dr. Oz had über quack Dr. Joe Mercola on his show (with Deepak Chopra, too!), leading me to ask whether Dr. Oz had finally crossed his Woo-bicon.
Well, if that wasn't Dr. Oz crossing the Woo-bicon, perhaps this is:
That's right. Dr. Oz is featuring Dr. Mercola on his show again, this time featuring him as The man your doctor doesn't want you to listen to. Never does…
oracknows | January 17, 2011You know, sometimes I think that the United States, Australia, and the U.K. must be unique in their level of tolerance for pseudoscientific nonsense. Of course, that's probably mostly because that's the majority of the English-speaking world, and I speak English. I don't see and can't understand anti-vaccinationists in most other languages. Unfortunately, fellow ScienceBlogger tells me that they have anti-vaccinationists in Sweden too. Worse, they're peddling the same idiotic "vaccines didn't save us" gambit that Raymond Obamosawin is peddling.
I don't feel better that pseudoscience isn't…
oracknows | January 17, 2011What does it take to get an advocate of pseudoscience to change his or her mind? Many are the times I've asked myself that question. Over the years, I've covered the gamut of techniques, going from what some might call "militant" or even insulting to being as reasoned and calm as can be--and probably everywhere in between. It's not just the anti-vaccine movement, either, but the anti-vaccine movement provides a convenient example. This is particularly true because of the recently released revelations, both more detailed old and also new, about how anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield not only…
cagapakis | January 16, 2011Yesterday I mentioned Symbiotic Households, an art project imagining genetically engineered mosquitoes that provide mood stabilizing compounds to a population plagued by worries caused by climate change. Today on twitter I saw a link to a US patent application filed by Microsoft about engineering parasites to monitor and maintain human health. The possible engineered parasites covered in the application include:
mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, bed bugs (Cimicidae Cimex lectularius), midges (such as Ceratopogonidae), other blood sucking arthropods, annelids or leeches, nematodes such as Ascaris…
oracknows | January 16, 2011Oh, geez. Will the media never learn?
Yep, it looks as though Andrew Wakefield will be on Good Morning America tomorrow. True, it is a holiday in the U.S., but that just might mean that viewership will be higher because more people will be at home. I, of course, will be at work; so I probably won't get to see it until it's either on YouTube or the GMA website later. In the meantime, the promo is here. It's probably better that way, at least for my blood pressure.
Fallacious "tell both sides" journalism about scientific fraud and pseudoscience lives, it would appear.
oracknows | January 14, 2011It's now been over a week since the first installment of Brian Deer's expose in the BMJ revealing the depths of Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent research. Over that week and a half or so, I've wondered just how someone like Wakefield could have had so much influence over so many parents. True, the British press was guilty as sin when it comes to credulous reporting of Wakefield's original case series, which, even if it hadn't been fraudulent, would not have justified Wakefield's promotion of the idea that the MMR vaccine caused a syndrome consisting of regressive autism and enterocolitis.…
oracknows | January 14, 2011I'm tired.
Well, not exactly. I think I'm just suffering a case of what I like to call "anti-vax burnout." It's been a busy couple of weeks on the antivaccine front, given the new set of revelations about Andrew Wakefield, including even more detail about the nature of the scientific fraud he committed and previously untold information regarding just how extensive his business plans were to profit from the MMR scare that his fraudulent science was instrumental in launching in the U.K. Regular readers know that, from time to time, when the news about the anti-vaccine movement is coming fast…