Quackery
oracknows | March 20, 2008There's no doubt about it: Stem cells are hot.
Yes indeed, they're not only hot, but they're hip, they're happenin', they're right now, baby. Scientists are falling all over themselves with excitement at the potential applications that could potentially come from stem cell technology. True, no validated therapies for embryonic stem cells have yet made it into clinical practice, and the challenges that need to be overcome before that can happen are arguably greater than what was believed in the heady days a few years ago, before President Bush declared his ill-advised restriction on embryonic…
oracknows | March 19, 2008Imagine that you're a soldier in Iraq. Imagine further that you're on patrol in a dangerous area in the middle of summer, the desert heat penetrating your 80 lb pack much the way boiling water penetrates the shell of a lobster. Your heart is racing as you and your unit nervously dart to and fro, every shadow a potentially deadly threat, every alley a refuge from which the enemy can attack and kill. The area's thick with insurgents and terrorists, and you feel as though you have a huge bullseye painted on both your chest and back.
A loud roar fills your ears, and you feel as though you have no…
oracknows | March 18, 2008Imagine you're a medical student in a dreaded "allopathic" medical school other than Georgetown. Imagine further that you're finding the grind of learning science- and evidence-based medicine a bit tiresome. After all, there's so much to learn: principles of biochemistry, physiology, anatomy (and not with acupuncture points), and neuroscience. You're reading multiple chapters a night, staying up all night cramming your mind full of minutiae of various signaling pathways and eponyms for anatomic structures. All those facts, all that evidence, it's all so...hard! It's all so soulless. Where's…
oracknows | March 15, 2008I got in somewhat late last night and was tired from the meeting, but there's been something that's been bugging me more and more, and Kimball Atwood's recent posts about the distortions of language used by "complementary and alternative medicine" advocates brought it to the forefront. I first noticed this particular term being used by alties a few months ago by quantum homeopathic woo-meister supreme Lionel Milgrom, and I've been seeing it more and more, particularly in antivaccinationist circles.
I'm talking about the term "dis-ease."
Believe it or not, I'm not all-knowing about such issues…
oracknows | March 14, 2008The must-read post of the day comes from Mark Crislip of the (in)famous Quackcast and was posted over at the Science-Based Medicine blog. It's about two things primarily: How evidence and science result in physicians practicing science- and evidence-based medicine to change their practice and why that seems disturbing to those who don't understand how science works and would prefer unchanging certainty and how this changeability of practice based on the lastest evidence is in marked contrast to most so called "complementary and alternative" medicine, the vast majority of which is based on…
oracknows | March 14, 2008Readers who have followed my little Friday bit of fun every week have probably, like me, at times sat in front of their computer screens, jaw drooping, a little bit of spittle starting to drip out of the corners of their mouths, and eyes agape with wonder at just how anyone on earth could believe some of this stuff. Indeed, it is truly unbelievable to anyone with just a modicum of critical thinking skills. Sometimes, as I have, you've almost certainly laughed out loud at the silliness. Sometimes, as I have, you've probably had to stop reading because you feared that the concentrated woo in…
oracknows | March 11, 2008Buried in yesterday's post was a link to a post on the Science Business blog, which is one of the blogs of Forbes magazine that was a dangerous gratification to my ego in that it mentioned this humble blog as one of the Autism Debate Go-To Blogs. Although Matthew Harper, Associate Editor at Forbes, left out three go-to blogs about autism that probably surpass this blog (namely, Left Brain/Right Brain, Neurodiversity, and Autism News Beat), Harper did make an interesting observation about yours truly:
Respectful Insulence is written by a surgeon who goes by the nom-de-blog Orac. He blogs on…
oracknows | March 10, 2008Damn you, mercury militia.
I had had another topic entirely in mind for this week's post, but, as happens far too often, news events have overtaken me in the form of a story that was widely reported towards the end of last week. It was all over the media on Thursday evening and Friday, showing up on CNN, Larry King Live, the New York Times, and NPR. It happens to be the story of a girl from Georgia named Hannah Poling whose case before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which had originally part of a much larger proceeding known as the Autism Omnibus, was settled. This settlement…
oracknows | March 8, 2008Yesterday was annoying.
It started out hearing about the vaccine injury case conceded by the government in a story on NPR on during my drive into work. As I walked through the clinic waiting area on the way to my lab, the TVs in the waiting rooms were all on CNN, where--you guessed it!--there was more ignorant blather about how the government supposedly had "conceded" that "vaccines cause autism." I'll give the Polings and the antivaccinationists who are trying to use their case (with, apparently, them as willing accomplices) as a propaganda tool, they're good propagandists. Try as I might, I…
oracknows | March 7, 2008Sometimes my readers save my butt.
There I was earlier this week, looking through my Folder of Woo, as is my wont, and oddly enough nothing much was floating my boat. I know, I know, I've started this little weekly exercise before lamenting a lack of enthusiasm for the woo of which I am aware. Then as before then, I briefly wondered whether perhaps I had exhausted all the interesting woo. That seemed highly unlikely, given that I've only been at this about 20 months or so. After all, the woo supply is seemingly inexhaustible, and if I ever got tired of medical woo, there are so many other…
oracknows | March 6, 2008There's an idiotic poll up at Larry King Live with the question: "Do you believe vaccines cause or contribute to autism?" Idiotic, because it's science that says whether or not vaccines cause or contribute to autism. Whether the public thinks they do or not is irrelevant to the biological, medical, and clinical science that say, to the best of our knowledge, they do not.
Even so, please go tell him the real science about vaccines and autism. The pseudoscientists have already stacked the deck, and clearly antivaccinationists are voting, as the numbers are running around 80% to 20% in favor of…
oracknows | March 6, 2008I should have seen this one coming a mile away in light of the concession of vaccine injury in the case of one child that led to the incredibly shrinking causation claim when it comes to vaccines and autism. Having had it conclusively demonstrated through several large studies in multiple countries that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism (nor do vaccines themselves), the mercury militia are rapidly changing course. No longer is autism a "misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning."
Now it's a "misdiagnosis for mitochondrial diseases."
Or it soon will be. Just wait. The new propaganda from the…
oracknows | March 6, 2008Yesterday was a rather long day, starting with a long commute in the morning, followed by a long day in the office mainly doing grant paperwork, and capped off by getting home late. Even so, I couldn't ignore this particular story for two reasons. First, it's about so-called "alternative" medicine. Second, it's about Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer and the creative, if at times arrogant and abusive, creative genius behind Apple's recovery from the brink of bankruptcy 11 years ago to its current situation, where its computers are cool; its operating system rocks; and it rules over the…
oracknows | March 4, 2008I saw this and was going to write about it, but it turns out that Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata beat me to it. Basically, the makers of Airborne have been slapped down bigtime for false advertising:
WASHINGTON--The makers of Airborne--a multivitamin and herbal supplement whose labels and ads falsely claimed that the product cures and prevents colds--will refund money to consumers who bought the product, as part of a $23.3 million class action settlement agreement. The company will pay for ads in Better Homes & Gardens, Parade, People, Newsweek, and many other magazines and newspapers…
oracknows | March 4, 2008If there's one type of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" that I've always been very up front about, it's that I consider homeopathy to be the ultimate in pseudoscientific twaddle when it comes to CAM. The reasons should be obvious to anyone with a background in basic science. After all, homeopathy is nothing more than the most magical of magical thinking writ so large that it's a wonder than anyone can believe it.
Think about it. What are the two main principles of homeopathy? The first is "like cures like," which postulates on the basis of the prescientific observations of…
oracknows | March 3, 2008In case you had any doubt that it's about vaccines and the concept of vaccination itself, here's video of the protest held outside of the American Academy of Pediatrics a couple of weeks ago:
I'm not sure it was such a great idea to release video of this protest, given how tiny the demonstration looks and how obviously antivaccine their signs and rhetoric are. Either way, Dr. Eisenstein (whose "research" skills are legendary) makes me wonder how he earned his M.D. if he doesn't understand that the whole "toxins in vaccines" is a canard, and Dr. Ayoub is a conspiracy-monger. However, it's…
oracknows | March 1, 2008A couple of days ago, I wrote about a particularly deceptive and idiotic article by David Kirby about the settling of a case of vaccine injury by the U.S. government. Fellow skeptical physician Steve Novella couldn't resist taking a shot at Kirby as well and in doing so came up with one of the best lines about Kirby that I've ever heard in reference to Kirby's attempt to bring AZT into the discussion:
Among stiff competition, this is perhaps the most absurd and scientifically ignorant thing Kirby has every written.
Damn. I wish I had thought of that line. However, I would say to Steve that he…
oracknows | February 29, 2008Well, now I'm really in a pickle as far as the 2008 Presidential election goes. I really don't like Hillary Clinton and consider Barack Obama not ready for prime time; i.e., he's too inexperienced and too liberal for my liking. On the other hand, I used to like John McCain--at least until he started pandering to the religious right and became a cheerleader for the Iraq war. Now I have another reason not to vote for John McCain, which leaves me with not a single Presidential candidate that I can see myself voting for right now.
John McCain has credulously fallen for the blandishments of…
oracknows | February 29, 2008It's very bad when I have a week off. Very, very bad.
The reason is that when I have a week off I have this rather unfortunate tendency to stay up late at night, and when I stay up late at night I have an even more unfortunate tendency to check out late night infomercials that show up between the hours of 2 AM and 4 AM. Such was the case the other night when I found myself sitting in bed bathing in the glow of the LCD screen, staring in utter awe at the woo I found until my wife's annoyed retort told me that I was yelling at the TV screen. Even so, I still wondered whether I should use it for…
oracknows | February 26, 2008In a way, I have to hand it to Mike Adams.
As you may recall, Mike Adams is the man behind what is arguably one of the top two or three woo-filled sites on the Internet, NaturalNews.com (formerly known as NewsTarget.com). I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of someone who can deliver delusional paranoid conspiracy-mongering against the FDA, CDC, and big pharma, antivaccination lunacy, overblown claims about cancer, and (in my considered medical opinion, of course), dangerous cancer quackery, all in one tidy, ranting package. Sometimes the stuff Adams writes is so over-the-top that I…