complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | June 16, 2006In Petaluma, California (the Bay area), as reported by ABC 7:
June 14 - KGO - More former clients of a North Bay chiropractor are coming forward, echoing what we reported a month-and-a-half ago -- that Daniel Marsh is making money off some bizarre treatments.
State investigators are looking into Dr. Marsh, his treatments and his billing practices. They're checking out information uncovered by the I-Team. And now we've received new complaints about the Petaluma chiropractor.
Marianne Whitfield went to Petaluma chiropractor Daniel Marsh for her severe heartburn, or acid reflux. He had an…
oracknows | June 12, 2006Well, it didn't take The Spoof long to comment on the Andrew Wakefield affair. Choice bits:
While on holiday in the US in 1997 he was introduced to a creationist nutter called Professor Hugh Fudenberg who claimed to cure autistic children by giving them samples of his own bone marrow.
And, my favorite:
Wakefield was recruited for a sum not less than the publicly reported thrity peices of silver and began being tutored in Fudenberg's "transfer factor technology" - the secret key to mastering miracle cures for childhood autism syndrome.
This theory was based on a curious supposition that…
oracknows | June 11, 2006A couple of days ago, I wrote about a megafestival of altie woo taking place in my favorite city. It just occurred to me right now: If I were in Chicago right at this very minute, I could be in Hulda Clark's workshop (which is starting right now) learning how to cure all cancers and cure all diseases by zapping people's parasites and telling them to get their amalgam fillings and any teeth with root canals removed.
I'm missing a chance right now to learn a new skill that would let me become the ultimate doctor! Why on earth am I still here on the East Coast?
Well, I guess there's always…
oracknows | June 9, 2006It's times like this that I really wish I were back in Chicago. Actually, it's times like any time that I wish I were back in Chicago, but this in particular brings out that feeling:
The Health Freedom Expo is invading Chicago beginning today.
Of course, whenever you hear someone advocating "health freedom," it's a pretty good bet that it's an altie advocating quackery. After all, lacking data to support the efficacy of their favored treatments, alties often resort to the argument that attempts to suppress them are an attack on "health freedom." Of course, much of the time, what is being…
oracknows | June 7, 2006I really have to turn off my Google Alerts for this topic. I'm going to pull out my hair if I don't.
As you may recall, I've been posting about two young victims of the siren call of quackery who will most likely pay with their lives for their trust in quacks. The first, Katie Wernecke, rejected conventional medicine in Texas several months ago and is now at an undisclosed location receiving "secret" treatments, her father claiming that he can't reveal what treatment she is receiving or the doctors will stop treating her. The second, Abraham Cherrix, has gotten permission to leave Virginia to…
oracknows | June 4, 2006Last week, I wrote about two teens (Katie Wernecke and Abraham Cherrix) who, sadly, had been duped by the siren call of quackery and were, with the acquiescence of their parents, on the road to extinction. It figures that more information would become available over the weekend (after I had written my article) about both of them, first Abraham and now Katie:
Katie Wernecke, the cancer-afflicted girl at the center of a bitter state custody battle last year, is receiving secret treatment from an alternative practitioner at an undisclosed location.
"On a condition of receiving treatment, there…
oracknows | June 3, 2006Compared to the usual topics discussed during the week, I normally like to try to keep the weekend fare on the ol' blog relatively light and fluffy (mainly because traffic usually falls around 50% and I like to post my serious material on skepticism and science on days when I tend to have the most readers), but to me this can't wait until Monday. As you may recall, a couple of days ago, I wrote about Abraham Starchild Cherrix, a 15-year old who, with his father, has rejected conventional therapy for his Hodgkin's Lymphoma. It now looks as though he will get to go to Mexico:
ACCOMAC, Va. (AP…
oracknows | June 1, 2006About six months back, I wrote about Katie Wernecke, a 13-year-old girl diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, whose parents fought with Texas courts to let them take her to Kansas to receive high dose vitamin C therapy rather than the chemotherapy and radiation therapy that she needed to have a chance of beating her cancer. Events have suggested to me that an update is in order. It turns out that Katie is still alive, although it is unclear how she is doing. Her family has apparently taken her to an undisclosed cancer treatment center out of state, where she is getting more altie "…
oracknows | May 26, 2006This is just too rich.
As you know a few months ago, I commented about a British report that found high levels of mercury and other heavy metals in Chinese herbal medicines sold in the U.K. Some contained as much as 11% mercury by weight! It turns out that a JAMA paper from 2004 did the same thing for Ayurvedic medicines and found some of them also contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals, concluding:
If taken as recommended by the manufacturers, each of these 14 could result in heavy metal intakes above published regulatory standards
Indeed, in the compounds that tested postive for…
oracknows | May 23, 2006It seems a reasonable question to ask, given my propensity for it.
Unfortunately that's not what our Seed overlords asked this week. This week, they ask:
If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?
Predictably, some ScienceBloggers answered: evolution and what it really means, not the parody of evolution presented by creationists or the simplistic version of it that is often taught in school or discussed in the mainstream media. I can't argue with that answer, but I'm a physician; so my answer will be different:
If I could get the public to…
oracknows | May 19, 2006Damn if PZ didn't beat me to this one:
A federal panel concluded yesterday that there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against use of multivitamins and minerals -- the popular dietary supplements taken by more than half of American adults in the hope of preventing heart disease, cancer and other chronic illnesses.
Americans spend an estimated $23 billion annually on various multivitamins and multi-mineral supplements, the 13-member panel found. One of the latest federally funded national surveys showed that 52 percent of adults reported taking multivitamins. Slightly more than a…
oracknows | May 15, 2006NOTE: I had been thinking about how to migrate my old posts from the old blog over to ScienceBlogs, and came up with an idea. Whenever "real life" intrudes on my blogging--as it has now, thanks to two different grant applications that ate up my entire weekend that prevented me from coming up with the more involved piece about science or pseudoscience analysis that I usually like to start the week off with--I'll repost one or more of my favorite "classic posts" from the old blog. Given that there is well over a year of material there, there's lots of stuff that I want to transfer over to…
oracknows | May 3, 2006Last week, I wrote a rather lengthy (or, as my detractors would probably call it, "long-winded") post about the concept of a medical wikipedia. As you may recall, I expressed considerable skepticism about whether the wikipedia concept could work as well as its boosters claim it could. Even though others have clarified what a medical wikipedia could and could not do, I still can't help but worry that activists and alties would hijack the wiki for their own purposes.
Now I've found an actual example to consider, although it's not quite what I warned about.
It turns out that there is an AIDS…
oracknows | April 28, 2006I tell ya, life just ain't fair.
I work and slave for many years to master medicine, surgery, and molecular biology because I want to be part of developing new therapies for cancer. My reward? Instead of being in the lab directly participating in experiments, I spend more of my time begging for money to fund my lab (otherwise known as writing grant applications) than actually supervising the work that goes on there and worrying about losing the funding that I have. Pay lines for NIH grant applications keep getting tighter and tighter, and private sources are becoming way more competitive.…
oracknows | April 11, 2006OK, I've been prodded enough!
Yes, I've been aware of the study purporting to present good anecdotal case reports showing that there might be something to the hypothesis that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer where other therapies fail. I've also been aware of an in vitro study that suggested selective toxicity of vitamin C to tumor cells compared to normal cells. I've even been meaning to write about since I first saw it a couple of weeks ago, but the AACR intervened, as did a number of other topics, and, like so many other topics that I want to write about but somehow never find the…
oracknows | April 1, 2006You know, after all these years as a scientist, physician, and skeptic, I've been wondering. Perhaps it's time to undergo a reassessment of my and philosophy. I've always been a bit of a curmudgeon, and it hasn't really gotten me anywhere. My words appear to have no impact on the credulous.
For example, perhaps I've been a bit harder than I should be on purveyors of dubious alternative medicine. Millions of people use it every day. Would they use it if there weren't anything to it? I think not. After all, look at all those testimonials for chelation therapy, Reiki therapy, Chinese energy…
oracknows | March 29, 2006Leave it to The Onion:
Alternative-Medicine Practitioner Refuses Alternative Method Of Payment.
oracknows | March 21, 2006Recently, the BBC posted an article soliciting opinions about whether African traditional or alternative medicines have a role in combatting AIDS. Not surprisingly there were a lot of credulous responses saying yes, but one response was more on target:
BBC, this question "Can herbal medicine combat Aids?" to me is a big joke. HIV death rate in Africa is growing at an alarming rate. If herbalists have power to cure people with HIV, why should they let the continent suffer? I have a number of old schoolmates who were affected by virus, their families took them away from town to villages…
oracknows | March 17, 2006EoR reports that in Australia, legislation has been passed that allows people other than doctors to issue medical certificates for absences from work, including pharmacists, nurses, acupuncturists, and physiotherapists.
Quite naturally, he wonders when the "the reikiists, the homeopathists and the therapeutic touch" practitioners will want the same privileges and imagines the sorts of letters they will produce:
This is to certify that Joe Bloggs is suffering from
Stagnant qi
Liver toxins
Mercury poisoning
He will be unfit for work for two weeks while he strengthens his immune system.
Heh. I…
oracknows | March 13, 2006{NOTE: Here is the post that was delayed last week due to my announcement of arson at the Holocaust History Project.}
It occurs to me that I haven't done much straight science blogging lately. Yes, debunking pseudoscience and quackery is fun, useful, and has the potential to educate people about how science is misused, but this is ScienceBlogs. Since arriving here four weeks ago, I haven't fulfilled my quota of science blogging, and it's time to remedy that.
Fortunately, while perusing a recent issue of Cancer Research, I found just the ticket, something that would let me discuss science and…