medicine
oracknows | July 26, 2010On Friday, I noted an e-mail circulating around the Internet in which disgraced University of Kentucky chemist and card-carrying general in the mercury militia, Boyd Haley, announced that he was suspending sales of his industrial chelator turned "antioxidant dietary supplement" OSR#1. Now, true to form, Trine Tsouderos at the Chicago Tribune has noticed and published a story on Haley's decision, Controversial supplement to come off shelves:
Pharmacies are halting sales of OSR#1, a compound marketed as a dietary supplement to parents of children with autism, six weeks after the U.S. Food and…
oracknows | July 26, 2010Note: Parts of this post have appeared elsewhere, but not in this form.
If there's one aspect of so-called "alternative medicine" and "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) is that its practitioners tout as being a huge advantage over what they often refer to sneeringly as "conventional" or "scientific" medicine is that -- or so its practitioners claim -- alt-med treats the "whole patient," that it's "wholistic" in a way that the evil reductionist "Western" science-based medicine can't be. Supposedly, we reductionistic, unimaginative physicians only focus on disease and ignore the "…
oracknows | July 25, 2010Here's something for the more creative types out there at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles:
The first annual Charles Prize for Poetry will be awarded to the writer who submits for consideration the most outstanding poem within the context of health and medicine.
Open to everyone (patients, doctors, nurses, students, etc.).
Entries should be related to experiencing, practicing, or reflecting upon a medical, scientific, or health-related matter.
The winner will be selected by a panel of three judges, including me. These other judges may or may not be Nobel Laureates, you never know.
Is…
oracknows | July 23, 2010Even after having been at this skeptical medical blogging game for nearly six years, every so often I still come across woo about which I had been previously unaware. It's hard to believe, but it's true. In fact, I'm beginning to think that, even if I were to keep blogging until I drop dead (hopefully at least thirty or forty years in the future), as I type out my last extra cantankerous bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence (my cantankerousness merely increasing with advancing age, of course), I would come across some new and spectacular form of woo that somehow had been missed during my forty-…
oracknows | July 22, 2010As you may have heard, the strike is over. That doesn't mean the crisis is over, nor does it necessarily mean that I will be staying with ScienceBlogs, but I view management's response as a positive move that may be enough to keep me here. Now management needs to lose the Google ads for quackery, and then we have something to talk about. It seems that every time our benevolent overlords kill one set of quack ads, they disappear for a short while, only to reappear in a different guise. I think they understand that. At least I hope so.
In the meantime, I will speak no further of these issues,…
oracknows | July 21, 2010While the drama continues and interesting developments occur, I've found that I actually don't mind taking a couple of days off. Don't worry. Blogging's a bug that's gotten into me and, like PZ, I'll probably start twitching and seizing if I go too long without producing one of my patented logorrheic screeds of pure insolence, be it here, at my super not-so-secret other blog, or on some other blogging platform. At least 4,000 words would be best. Still, I should take a couple of days off more often and not under circumstances like the current upheaval.
Upheaval or no upheaval, strike or no…
tfk | July 20, 2010Calitics has the story about that whooping cough epidemic:
With whooping cough now at epidemic levels, it's becoming clear that one of the primary culprits is the idiotic trend over the last 10 years of parents, mostly affluent whites, opting out of vaccination out of a baseless fear that the vaccines are unsafe.
oracknows | July 20, 2010There's one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that this blog exists only to "bash 'alternative' medicine," and that's that it doesn't. This blog exists, besides to champion science and critical thinking (and, of course, to feed my ravenous ego), in order to champion medicine based on science against all manner of dubious practices. Part of that purpose involves understanding and accepting that science-based medicine is not perfect. It is not some sort of panacea. Rather, it has many shortcomings and all too often does not live up to its promise. Our argument is merely that,…
oracknows | July 19, 2010I can't believe it.
I really can't believe it.
I really, really, really can't believe it.
Bora has left ScienceBlogs.
Readers of just this blog probably don't know what a body blow that is to the ScienceBlogs collective. Readers of multiple ScienceBlogs probably realize that Bora was the proverbial heart and soul of ScienceBlogs. It's news that's left Isis the Scientist speechless and GrrlScientist "deeply upset." Even ScienceBlogs' big macher PZ Myers has pointed out how Bora compared the situation here to to Bion's Effect, where the departure of a few people at a party triggers a sudden end…
cevans | July 19, 2010
My grandmother suffered in her old age from macular degeneration, a common age-related eye disease that causes the center of your visual field (the macula) to gradually fritz out. As it affected her more and more, the font size in her emails ballooned to cartoonish sizes. She began walking with a cane, and needed a fancy electronic doo-dad to tell her when her cup of tea was full. By the end of her life, she was totally blind.
Watching my grandmother wink out from the world of seeing was tragic; the knowledge of macular degeneration's heredity terrifying. Relatives of those who have…
oracknows | July 19, 2010"I know you are, but what am I?"
That's basically the child's version of a familiar logical fallacy known as the tu quoque, which basically means, "You, too!" It's a very simple and simplistic logical fallacy that tries to argue that, if one's trait shares one or more of the same bad traits of the people he is criticizing, then his arguments can be dismissed. It's sometimes very effective in that implied within the fallacy is a charge of hypocrisy. As a diversionary tactic, it can be very effective.
Not too surprisingly, I've found a doozy of an example of just this fallacy over at the other…
palmd | July 18, 2010The Midwest loves extremes. Our spring is a quick, cold bucket of water to the face, and the fall a brief but intense set of umber and auburn brush strokes on the landscape. Today is neither of those, but still, hot, and humid enough to make breathing uncomfortable. So I'm looking out the window, rather than sitting outside, and I see something heartening: a crow.
I've noticed---really noticed---the crows and blue jays this year. Several years ago, when I was a young attending physician, the hospital seemed filled with a new ailment. The victims were often elderly, had high fevers,…
palmd | July 16, 2010I shouldn't see any cases of pertussis ("whooping cough"), but I do. We have a safe, effective and affordable vaccine. But still, people are getting this disease. In the age group I see (adults), immunity has often waned, and if they haven't been revaccinated, they can get the disease and pass it on. In adults it often looks like a cold, but not in kids. Most properly vaccinated children are immune and remain so until there little airways are large enough to cope with the illness. But a certain percentage of kids either don't get vaccinated or aren't successfully vaccinated, leaving…
jstemwedel | July 16, 2010Dr. Free-Ride: I know you have some views, maybe, or questions, or something, about the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations about children, adolescents, and television. Although it's not actually just television, it's other screens, too. So, first off, can I get your general reaction to the fact that your pediatrician even has a view about what you should be doing with respect to screen time?
Elder offspring: (Piteous wailing.)
Dr. Free-Ride: That's rather inarticulate.
Elder offspring: (Poses like the figure in "The Scream")
Dr. Free-Ride: While this shows that you've been…
oracknows | July 16, 2010
Ever since I somehow stumbled into a niche in the blogosphere where I seem to be one of a handful of go-to bloggers for issues having to do with vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement, like Spider-Man I realize that with great power comes great responsibility.
Wait a minute. That beginning was too pompous and pretentious even for me. I know it's hard to believe, but even Orac has limits when it comes to pretentiousness.
Orac-ian pomposity aside, there are indeed certain topics that I can't resist. Whether it's because they intensely interest me or my being an aforementioned "go-to" blogger…
palmd | July 15, 2010Catherine Shoichet, a reporter at CNN, is reporting on a unique (as far as I know) public health intervention. For a few bucks, a randy Switzer can have a three pack of condoms delivered by bike in one hour.
How cool is that?
oracknows | July 15, 2010As much fun as I had at TAM8, there is one consequence of being out of town and not paying attention to the blog or the Internet as much as I usually do. Well, actually, there are multiple consequences. One is a momentary lapse in insanity. In other words, it's good for the mental health to cut back on the blogging. True, such is the level of my insanity that I didn't just stop altogether for five or six days, as I probably should have, but what can I say? Another consequence is that inevitably one or more things pop up that under normal conditions I'd be going full mental Orac on that…
palmd | July 14, 2010I was a bit torn when trying to figure out how to approach this piece. A reader emailed me about an article in the Huffington Post, and there is so much wrong with it that I felt overwhelmed. My solution is to focus on a few of the problems that can help illuminate broader points.
There is a small but vocal movement of people who refuse to believe that skin cancer caused by sunlight is a significant health risk. These people tend to also believe that the risk is being purposely hyped by others, and that our current approach to skin cancer prevention is causing an epidemic of vitamin D…
oracknows | July 14, 2010Orac note: Please be sure to read the addendum.
Say it ain't so, Jill! Check out this e-mail notice from the latest Generation Rescue mailing list sent to me by a reader. It's apparently legitimate, because I found a copy of it on the Generation Rescue website itself. Look at who's being featured at a fundraiser for anti-vaccine guru, discredited and delicensed U.K. physician and "researcher" Andrew Wakefield:
A Private Evening with Dr. Andy Wakefield
To benefit Dr. Wakefield's research:
"Strategic Autism Initiative"
WHEN: Sunday, July 25th
WHERE: Private house in Woodland Hills, California…
oracknows | July 14, 2010Wendy, I'm home.
Oh, wait a minute. I'm not that crazy. Yet.
Sometimes, though, it does seem as though the constant barrage of quackery, anti-vaccine pseudoscience, and pseudoscience in general might drive me to become like poor Jack Torrence of the Stephen King novel and movie The Shining. Fortunately for me, I discovered that there really are people out there who share my passion for science and reason and my dislike of woo. Unfortunately, I waited several years before venturing forth to gatherings of like-minded (and sometimes not-so-like-minded) skeptics to meet people in person and start…