medicine
grrlscientist | May 21, 2010tags: ABC Nightline Twittercast, legalization of marijuana, NORML, Allen St. Pierre, Heritage Foundation, Brian Darling, weed, pot, drugs, twittercast, streaming video
Let's kick off Silly Saturday with an interesting ABC twittercast debate about legalization of marijuana. This video is amusing because, as one person observed, it's like watching a scientist argue with a 9-year-old about the existence of Santa Claus. [Despite the moron guest on this twittercast, I find this interesting because it suggests an alternate medium for future news casts to utilize -- twitter -- and these so-called "…
oracknows | May 21, 2010Yesterday's post made me sad. It always makes me sad to contemplate a 14 year old boy facing the loss of his father to an aggressive form of leukemia, as Danny Hauser is. The kid just can't catch a break. First he himself develops Hodgkin's lymphoma. Because he happens to live in a family that has taken up a faux "Native American" religion that claims its "natural healing" is better than chemotherapy, he resists undergoing treatment, and his family supports him. After a judge orders him to undergo chemotherapy, Danny and his mom then take off on the lam from the law, heading for Mexico and…
palmd | May 20, 2010Dana Ullman, a Huffington Post blogger who never fails to bring the stupid, has now gathered all the idiocy he can find, put it in a wheelbarrow, and dumped it into his latest piece up at HuffPo. In this piece, he calls on readers to stop all medications (except, presumably, the voodoo potions he approves of). A lawyer probably got to him before posting because he inserted an asterisk after this idiotic piece of advice recommending consulting your doctor first.
Which is it, Dana? Do the doctors have it all wrong, or should we consult them before "unplugging"? Dana suggests that this "…
oracknows | May 20, 2010Around this time last year, the major topic of this blog was the case of a young teen named Daniel Hauser. In fact, right around this time last year, this particular case was approaching its climax. Hauser, as you may recall, was the 13-year-old Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma who refused chemotherapy. His stated reason was his religion, namely Nemenhah, a fake American Indian religion that his parents joined 18 years ago. However, I had my doubts that religion was the main reason why Hauser was refusing chemotherapy and his mother was supporting his decision to pursue "…
ddobbs | May 20, 2010
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Phineas Gage enjoys an unfortunate fame in neuroscience circles: After a 5-foot iron tamping rod blew through his head one September afternoon in 1848, the once amiable and capable railroad foreman became a uncouth ne-er-do-well â and Exhibit A in how particular brain areas tended to specialize in particular tasks. (In his case, the prefrontal cortical areas that went skyward with the tamping rod proved, in retrospect, to be vital to his powers of foresight and self-control.)
I've always taken an extra level of interest in Gage because his horrific accident happened in my adopted home…
oracknows | May 19, 2010I've blogged a lot about anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield over the years. The story has become long and convoluted, and to tell it takes a lot of verbiage, even by Orac standards. However, I've found a good resource that tells the tale of Andrew Wakefield and his misdeeds in a highly accessible form:
The question at the very end of the story is about as appropriate as it gets. Unfortunately, the answer to the question is: Yes.
Speaking of Wakefield, it looks as though he's starting to resurface. Apparently The Statesman will publish an interview with him tomorrow. Keep an eye out. I'm…
palmd | May 19, 2010If there were a parallel universe, and in that universe medicine, instead of being based on science, was simply a gemisch of various folkways and superstitions, medicine in that universe would be called "naturopathy".
"Remember. Hey, how come this never works with water?"
I've discussed the absurdity of naturopathy nux vomica ad nauseum, but a loyal reader mentioned hearing that naturopathy might be good for allergies. This will require a bit of science to start off (unless, of course, Spock's rocking the goatee).
Seasonal allergies are caused by a pathophysiologic process called "type I…
oracknows | May 19, 2010Here we go again.
I've written a few times before about the controversy over whether cell phones (a.k.a. mobile phones in most of the rest of the world) cause brain cancer, concluding on more than one occasion that the evidence does not support a link. For example, there has not been a large increase in brain cancer or other cancers claimed to be due to cell phone radiation in the 15 to 20 years since the use of cell phones took off back in the 1990s, nor has any study shown a convincing correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer.
Of course, one would not expect a priori, based on…
oracknows | May 18, 2010Over the last week or so, I've been a bit--shall we say?--dismissive of claims by anti-vaccinationists when they insist that, really, truly, honestly, they aren't "anti-vaccine," usually with a wounded, indignant, self-righteous tone. Either that, or they make like the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail by demanding the surrender of the public health community, even as limb after limb of their claims have been lopped off by the sword of science, all the while not even realizing how risible it is to demand respect for their views after they have been totally discredited…
oracknows | May 18, 2010As a followup to my rather "epic post" on dichloroacetate, I thought I'd just post a brief follow up. A reader sent me this video of Evangelos Michelakis, the investigator who has been testing DCA in the clinic and who did the study testing DCA against gliblastoma, describing his results:
It's always interesting to hear research results "straigh from the horse's mouth, so to speak."
palmd | May 18, 2010
Common osteoporosis drugs do not increase the risk of unusual fractures (probably): Bisphosphonates (such as Fosamax and Actonel), a class of medications used to prevent fractures in osteoporosis, are effective in preventing certain types of common back and hip fractures. As we've developed more patient-years of experience with the drugs, we've found certain problems, such as damage to the esophagus (which has been reduced by developing less frequent dosing regimens) and rare episodes of destruction of the jaw bone. Data has now accumulated that we may be able to give these medications for…
oracknows | May 17, 2010Last week, I did three posts about the anti-vaccine movement. (What? Only three? Well, last week was slower than usual on the anti-vaccine craziness front. It happens.) Two of them were variations on a theme, namely how the anti-vaccine movement vehemently, desperately does not want to be seen as "anti-vaccine, even though that's what many of them are. First, I pointed out how the "health freedom" movement is teaming up with the anti-vaccine movement next week in Chicago to hold an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park as part of its annual autism quackfest known as AutismOne. My second post asked…
clock | May 17, 2010
New podcast and forum at PRI World Science:
Listen to a story by reporter Laura Starecheski, followed by our interview with Ethan Watters.
Our guest in the Science Forum is journalist Ethan Watters.
His latest book is Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche.
"America is homogenizing the way the world goes mad," Watters writes. He contends that Americans are exporting their view of mental illness to the rest of the world.
Watters says culture influences not only how people deal with mental disorders but how mental disorders manifest themselves. Yet those cultural differences…
oracknows | May 17, 2010Yesterday was a sad day indeed, as a blogger that I've been following almost since I myself started blogging has decided to close up shop:
It's been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It's been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It's time to simplify my life and while my family has had me all along, at times science got short shrift. Now my time is getting short and I want to turn my attention to my research, the…
sciencepunk | May 17, 2010From the Department of Sensible Things That Are Still Quite Funny comes these life size testicles, made with BIOLIKE⢠synthetic tissue. Now you can fondle your balls in public without fear of prosecution! Yours for just $115.
One happy customer reports:
One of the best purchases that I've ever made! Several of my co-workers have thanked me for bring them in and sharing. I'm so glad to have them, then one model is attached to the rear view mirror on my VW Beetle. All I can say is stop playing around and get this real deal!
The only downside is that there are two synthetic tumours embedded…
palmd | May 17, 2010We're now fifty years into the history of oral contraceptive pills, and we've learned an enormous amount. We've learned about various therapeutic uses of the Pill and unanticipated risks. We've learned to adjust the amount of medication to a lower effective dose. We've given women the opportunity to very effectively control their own fertility in a safe, private, and effective manner. But we haven't ended the controversy.
Leaving aside idiotic moralist rantings about the Pill, the alternative medicine movement has treated it harshly. The decision to use or avoid any intervention…
oracknows | May 16, 2010Late last week, a crank I hadn't heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I'm referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design" creationism. This is what he said:
Hi Orac,
terrasig suggested you do a followup article on dichloroacetate (DCA) given the paper just published on the phase 1 trial in Edmonton.
Three years have passed and countless cancer patients were denied this drug. Now at the end of its first phase one trial we know exactly what we did from the reports of people self-…
oracknows | May 14, 2010
"I don't want knowledge. I want certainty!"
--David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire)
If there's one universal trait among humans, it seems to be an unquenchable thirst for certainty. This should come as no surprise to those committed to science and rational thinking because there is a profound conflict between our human desire for certainty and the uncertainty of scientific knowledge. The reason is that the conclusions of science are always provisional. They are always subject to change based on new evidence. Although by no means the only reason, clearly this craving for certainty the…
oracknows | May 13, 2010I've frequently referred to Age of Autism as the "anti-vaccine" crank propaganda blog and Generation Rescue, the organization that primarily runs it, a an anti-vaccine propaganda organization. Although longtime readers know exactly why I say such things, newbies might not. That's why I consider it instructive to take note of this observation by reader Todd W.:
You know, I always wondered why Age of Autism, the "Daily Web Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic" has articles on Gardasil. They have absolutely no connection to autism. There have been no studies linking Gardasil to autism. There aren't…
palmd | May 13, 2010So-called "morgellons syndrome" is an interesting phenomenon. This syndrome is not at this point generally recognized by the medical community, but its sufferers describe many different systemic symptoms, such as "brain fog" and fatigue, and characteristic skin lesions which they describe as containing or extruding an unknown substance. The patients are most often diagnosed as having delusions of parasitosis, a diagnosis which understandably is not often acceptable to the patient.
One of the most consistent facts to date about the disorder is that there has been no significant scientific…