palmd
Posts by this author
January 24, 2010
Tragedy can bring out the best and the worst in humanity. The Haitian earthquake has seen an outpouring money (the most needed type of aid) and other emergency aid. A few days ago I pondered what sort of quackery would emerge to fill a need that doesn't exist.
Homeopaths responded, of course,…
January 20, 2010
There has been much written about the doctor-patient relationship, and specifically how to best maintain a clinical distance while at the same time being empathic and compassionate. This is something individual doctors work on throughout their careers, but something else interests me here.
Most…
January 19, 2010
I was traveling on the 14th, the official date of my first blogiversary at WCU, Sb edition. I started blogging in May of 2007 at the original WCU on Wordpress, then was invited to join the denialism blog here at Sb, and then decided to reclaim my brand.
It's been a helluva year, blogging-wise, and…
January 18, 2010
I had the good fortune of spending a woefully-insufficient amount of time with author Rebecca Skloot at ScienceOnline10 last weekend. Rebecca has worked for the last decade on a remarkable book which is being released next month, but thanks to a quick hand on the keyboard, an active twitter…
January 18, 2010
The current tragedy in Haiti may turn out to be one of the worst natural disasters (if not the worst) the Western Hemisphere has seen in the post-colonial era. Immediate deaths caused directly by trauma from the quake itself will likely number in the tens of thousands but we can be pretty sure…
January 14, 2010
The great Dr. Sandy Templeton once asked his pathology class, "Why do people go to the doctor?" People came up with all sorts of responses, but to each he gave his best British, "No, no, no, no!" Then he would tell us, "They come to the doctor because they don't feel well and they want you to…
January 13, 2010
An inside source on Crisler's non-steroid-fueled "muscleboards.com" (which is now reg-protected) has fed me some classy stuff:
And someone told me he thinks PalMD is a child molestor. That is why he does not post his true name. A cursory look at what he has chosen to publish shows him to be a man…
January 13, 2010
Two recent posts raised some ethical questions about the practice of a very public doctor who has proclaimed himself (on the front page of his website) to be an expert on testosterone replacement therapy.
Leading TRT expert Dr. Crisler is now available for consultations, lectures, advanced…
January 11, 2010
Yesterday I wrote a piece expressing some concerns about a physician's practice featured in the news recently. Dr. John Crisler is a self-described anti-aging and men's health physician. A couple of my concerns regarded his prescribing practices and his possible practice of distance medicine.…
January 11, 2010
The shamans of stupidity over at Huffington Post recently wrote a completely insane article whining about how unfair it is that science keeps winning. Orac did his usual best to illustrate how bizarre these folks are (and how wrong). But I also love the comments to the piece. They were an…
January 10, 2010
An interesting discussion has been going on over at TerraSig. Abel used his expertise in pharmacology to help explain some of the nearly-inexplicable events that led to the injury of dozens and deaths of several participants in a sweat lodge ceremony. The investigation led to a Michigan physician…
January 8, 2010
Next week, Val Jones and I are leading a discussion of professional ethics as they intersect with a professional's online life.
Each profession has its own set of ethics and draws its own lines but medicine is what I know best. I'd like to invite participants (or anyone, actually) to proffer…
January 7, 2010
As we mentioned earlier, Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the infectious disease promotion group NVIC, is suing a bunch of people for "defaming" her.
Today she posted a piece at Age of Autism entitled, "2010 Needs A Fearless Conversation About Vaccination." She is suing a nationally-known…
January 7, 2010
The following is a collaborative effort by PalMD, the usual author of this blog, and Ames Grawert, JD, a soon-to-be-sworn-in attorney working in New York City.
Proponents of science-based medicine have always had one major problem---human beings are natural scientists, but we are also very prone to…
January 6, 2010
One of the best blogs out there, Terra Sigillata, seemed to have gone on a bit of a hiatus for a while, but Abel Pharmboy is back and better than ever.
His posts over the last 8 weeks or so are all must-reads. Go, read, discuss.
January 6, 2010
It's hard to avoid news about the "obesity epidemic". Depending on who you talk to, obesity may be the number one killer of Americans or completely irrelevant to health. Alternative med boosters love to focus on obesity and other supposedly behavior-related illness. They use this to…
January 4, 2010
I'm giving two sessions at ScienceOnline10. The first, which I will be co-hosting with Dr. Val Jones, is entitled Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything. I've given similar talks to physicians, but given that Val and I may be nearly the entire medical team…
January 4, 2010
I love it when friends read my blog. Maybe it's simple vanity, but I love being able to talk to people about what I'm writing. Readers who ask good questions (especially friends, because I trust their motives) help me reevaluate my message and my facts.
So an old friend sent me an email this…
January 3, 2010
I don't know if Garrison Keillor is anti-semitic and I don't really care, but the question was raised by his Christmas editorial at Salon.com. After reading it last month I decided I had nothing to say about it. Who really cares what Garrison Keillor says, right?
This morning I was on my way to…
January 3, 2010
I woke up way too early---my damned sinuses. After a good lavage I managed to fall back asleep until a little warm body curled up next to me and used one of its appendages to turn on the TV. That's when I realized how hungry I was. I left the kiddo to her shows and poked around the kitchen.
I…
January 2, 2010
Being a physician and a father, I keep an eye out for news about childhood vaccinations. I've always been concerned about local statutes that allow kids to be admitted to school unvaccinated, especially when all that is required is an affirmation or a letter from a doctor or religious figure.…
January 1, 2010
Or if he does, he's even a worse person than I'd realized. After suffering chest pain in Hawaii he was evaluated in a hospital. When discharged today, he held a briefing in which he praised the U.S. health care system as being the best in the world and remarked that he sees nothing wrong with it…
December 31, 2009
New Year's Eve. This is a profoundly arbitrary designation---the end of the year, end of the decade---really, there is nothing about December 31st that's any different than any other day. But for historical reasons, this is the secular new year. Looking back on the last 12 or 13 months I can say…
December 30, 2009
The fake doctors at HuffPo are at it again. This time, Patricia Fitzgerald is writing about the "Top 10 Healing Foods of the Decade." The article has just enough correct information in it to be exceptionally wrong.
One of the more ironic aspects to this is her quoting Michael Pollan. I have…
December 30, 2009
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is reportedly a doctor, although according to her website, she no longer practices medicine in any recognizable way. Perhaps that's why she utters completely idiotic statements such as this one pointed out to me by Brother Orac:
Study these numbers. We've had SARS, Bird flu…
December 28, 2009
I've never understood food fads. Michael Pollan's maxim, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," has always seemed like reasonable, practical advice. Maybe it's a disease of plenty---we have so much food, we have to find new ways to conceptualize it. Unless you live in an inner city, you can go…
December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas to my readers who celebrate this one. For those of you who do, you may sometimes wonder what those of us who don't are doing today. Well, I find that Christmas is a great time to work at the hospital. It gives my Christian colleagues a break. Here in Michigan Jewish groups have…
December 25, 2009
Do you know how many people have chlamydia? Syphilis? No?
Me either. But it's a lot. Depending on the group evaluated, chlamydia rates among young women range from 7-15%. And with STDs, there is always at least one other victim.
The holidays tend to be a time of seeing old friends and drinking…
December 23, 2009
Wouldn't it be cool if after we died we didn't...die? Just like in the fairy tales, we could go to some place where we play harps on clouds and eat marshmallows for breakfast; we could play with our dead dogs, and somehow manage to live in harmony with all of our dead lovers. Unless we go to a…