medicine
oracknows | June 9, 2010Thanks to my "friends" at Generation Rescue and Age of Autism, I've learned of something that is so absolutely appropriate, so perfect in its complete perfection (if you know what I mean), it brought a smile to my face. It turns out that anti-vaccine hero and martyr Andrew Wakefield, who has been so disgraced that he's left speaking at pathetic anti-vaccine rallies with even more pathetic sing-alongs with anti-vaccine music (if you can call it that), is being interviewed again, and the venue could not be more of a perfect match for "Dr. Andy's" unique skill set and place in the anti-vaccine…
palmd | June 9, 2010I was catching up again on my favorite periodical (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report---the Dengue Fever story is Awe.Some.) I came across the official recommendations for Gardasil for males. Gardasil is the vaccine produced by Merck that can protect women against infection by four strains of human papilloma virus (HPV). The vaccine has been shown to prevent genital warts and pre-cancerous lesions caused by the virus. The vaccine, in conjunction with Pap tests, has the potential to significantly reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.
Of course, HPV infections do not arise…
oracknows | June 9, 2010Well, I'm home.
As I've mentioned before, I attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. Although one of the problems with ASCO, at least for surgeons like me, is that it is a meeting completely dominated by medical oncology. Quite frankly, not that much of what is presented at ASCO has a lot of relevance to my surgical practice. There are exceptions, of course. In fact, Monday morning's sessions on breast cancer were the best of science-based medicine that will change practice. Perhaps I'll blog about that tomorrow or later in the week. As I…
palmd | June 8, 2010As we ramped up for the H1N1 influenza pandemic last year, one of the worries expressed by the public and by the alternative medicine establishment was Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS). As explained by neurologist Steven Novella, GBS is a serious auto-immune neurologic disease that causes weakness. It is often preceded by a relatively mild upper respiratory or gastrointestinal illness. In 1976, when a novel swine flu appeared and spread quickly through a military reservation in the U.S. This was a pattern seen in the 1918 pandemic, and the government moved to stem a potential serious…
oracknows | June 8, 2010Orac is on his way home from the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night, his last night in Chicago. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This is something he wrote in 2007, after the last time he attended the ASCO meeting in Chicago. That means if you haven't been reading at least three years, this post is new to you. It also serves as an entry point for few pictures I want to post, just as soon as I get a chance to suck them out of my iPhone and onto my computer after I get home and…
oracknows | June 7, 2010Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. Although it's not about ASCO specifically, ASCO is an even bigger meeting. This was originally written in 2005 on the "old' Respectful Insolence blog and then reposted in 2006. That' means if you haven't been reading at least three and a half years, it's new to you. It's also related to scientific meetings. Hmmm. This reminds me. I really should update this or do more…
palmd | June 7, 2010I'm not sure what to write about this, but I feel a need to write something. There has been an interesting and infuriating discussion going on at Jason and Zuska's blogs.
Jason, whose posts on learning and cognition rock, started the discussion with an examination of a small amount of scientific literature on pornography. He's young, so he might not be aware of the extensive literature going back at least 25 years, including writings of Dworkin, MacKinnon, and many others. There's a lot of it, some of which I've read, but not for a very long time.
He starts by wading into a deep swamp…
oracknows | June 7, 2010Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This was originally written in 2005 on the "old' Respectful Insolence blog and then reposted in 2006. That' means if you haven't been reading at least three and a half years, it's new to you. It's also related to scientific meetings. Hmmm. This reminds me. I really should update this or do more installations in the saga, even if five years late. If you have any ideas, leave 'em…
oracknows | June 6, 2010I forgot to mention on Friday that I'm currently in Chicago attending the ASCO meeting. It's a lot of fun seeing the latest that science-based medicine has to offer, although ASCO isn't always my cup of tea. The reason is that it's very heavily based in medical oncology and chemotherapy, and there aren't a lot of surgical talks. Another reason is that it's a clinical meeting; so there isn't a lot of basic science. Still, there's plenty to keep my busy, and my blogging may be irregular over the next couple of days. Worse comes to worst, I'll post a "best of Orac" or two. Nothing short of death…
oracknows | June 4, 2010Since its very inception five years ago, The Huffington Post has been, to steal a phrase from Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least when it comes to anything resembling medicine. Of course, that's the problem. Very little, if anything, published in HuffPo resembles actual science-based medicine. The vast majority of medicine published there consists either of anti-vaccine screeds that are beyond stupid, quantum woo courtesy of Deepak Chopra, or pure, dangerous quackery, such as advocating homeopathy for H1N1 and acid-base woo for cancer. It's so bad that on more than one…
palmd | June 3, 2010Joe Mercola's website has always been a "target-rich environment" for quack hunters. His rants against vaccines, his incorrect flu information, his support of homeopathy, and just about everything else at his website comes free of evidence and full of unfounded assertions (as well as some seriously side-splitting giggles).
But his latest post up at---where else?---the Huffington Post is patently dangerous. It is entitled, "Why You Shouldn't Drink Pasteurized Milk". If he had gone into the high caloric content of milk, the possible uses of alternative sources of calcium and other nutrients…
oracknows | June 2, 2010First, it was anti-vaccine "martyr" Andrew Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper.
Then it was his equally incompetent 2009 NeuroToxicology paper.
Now it's Wakefield's 2000 American Journal of Gastroenterology paper:
Errata, Corrigenda and Retractions
Am J Gastroenterol 2010; 105:1214; doi:10.1038/ajg.2010.149
Retraction: Enterocolitis in Children With Developmental Disorders
A J Wakefield, A Anthony, S H Murch, M Thomson, S M Montgomery, S Davies, J J O'Leary, M Berelowitz and J A Walker-Smith
Am J Gastroenterol 2000; 95:2285-2295
On 28 January 2010, the UK General Medical Council's Fitness…
palmd | June 2, 2010
Not an opium poppy
I took this picture a couple of days ago. This poppy popped up as a volunteer in my front bed. It's about four feet tall and the flower is about 5 cm in diameter. It's not an opium poppy, but it could pass, and I've been looking for an excuse to use the picture.
Opium derivatives---and later, synthetic opioids---have probably been used for millennia for the relief of pain. Given human biology, they've probably been abused for just as long. Opiate use disorders are a daily fact for primary care physicians; the use of these drugs has become more and more common for…
oracknows | June 2, 2010After diving into a heapin' helpin' of sheer craziness over the last week or two (well, except for yesterday, when I deconstructed an acupuncture study, which, while not crazy, certainly was misguided), I think it's time for a bit of self-absorbed navel gazing. After all, isn't that what bloggin's all about? Oh, wait, that's what I do almost every day here. No, what I really mean is that I came across an article that struck rather close to home regarding my career trajectory. So, if you don't mind, for one day I'll leave behind the rabid anti-vaccine loons, the homepaths, the alt-med mavens,…
oracknows | June 1, 2010A couple of weeks ago I made what I thought to be a rather obvious observation, namely that the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism is anti-vaccine, not, as it claims, pro-safe vaccine. One bit of the copious evidence that belies the claim is the obsessive focus of that blog on Gardasil. Even if science hadn't failed time and time again to find a link between vaccines and autism, even in the most fevered dreams of anti-vaccine zealots Gardasil couldn't have anything to do with autism because it is usually administered when a girl is between 10-13, long past the age when autism is most…
oracknows | June 1, 2010Of all the "alternative" therapies out there, arguably the most studied is the modality known as acupuncture. Perhaps the reason is that, unlike homeopathy, which based on physics, chemistry, and biology alone is so implausible that, for it to "work," huge swaths of well-established physics and chemistry would have to be shown to be not just wrong but extravagantly and outrageously wrong (making homeopathy far more akin to magic than science), or reiki, which, when you come right down to it, is nothing more than faith healing based on Eastern mysticism rather than Christianity, acupuncture…
grrlscientist | June 1, 2010tags: HIV and 'Flu -- The Vaccine Strategy, microbiology, epidemiology, virology, vaccines, medicine, public health, viruses, influenza, HIV, Seth Berkley, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Seth Berkley explains how smart advances in vaccine design, production and distribution are bringing us closer than ever to eliminating a host of global threats -- from AIDS to malaria to flu pandemics.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers…
palmd | May 31, 2010According to my family's recollection, none of our relatives has died fighting for the United States. My grandmother was from a small town in what is now Belarus and most people in the family were born, lived, and died there. One of her brothers, though, did something remarkable. If family memories are correct, he left town and went to the Sorbonne in Paris. After being there a short while, the Great War broke out, and he joined the French army to fight for his new home. He was killed, and my father and two of his cousins are named for him (in an Anglicized way).
I am in the first…
oracknows | May 31, 2010Today is a holiday in the U.S., Memorial Day. This is a day when we remember our war dead, but the three day weekend that accompanies the last Monday in May is also viewed as the unofficial start of summer. Consequently, I decided to take it easy and simply post a bit of e-mail from a reader apparently with the 'nym trose313:
You need a good dose of positive energy. Such negative rantings cannot be good. Plus, you are very one sided, which is never good. There is a lot of wonderful alternative treatments out there and when one hides behind such slanted information as you, I tend to wonder…
oracknows | May 29, 2010Damn! I knew I made my promise to myself not to write about vaccines again for at least a few days too soon! Whenever I do that, it seems, one of two things happens. Either something important happens that, having become, however it happened, the go-to blogger for commenting on the anti-vaccine movement, I can't ignore.
This is not what happened.
The second thing that happens whenever I make that promise to myself is that someone from the anti-vaccine movement writes something that's unintentional pure comic gold.
This is what happened.
Someone named Curt Linderman, Sr. characterized the…