Herbal remedies and other Hooey
purepedantry | March 12, 2009Most of the stuff you hear about hyperbaric oxygen being used to treat is total nonsense. It isn't effective at treating autism or cerebral palsy.
But an article in the Times makes the point that it is effective for treating some things:
The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, the professional organization in this field, recognizes 13 conditions for which it is legitimate to place patients in high-pressure chambers that force pure oxygen into their blood and tissues. Eleven of those conditions have been approved by Medicare for reimbursement, indicating that solid evidence supports…
purepedantry | March 10, 2009Did you catch this story? A man in Illinois walks into a church and shoots the pastor. After killing the pastor, his gun jams, he grabs a knife and starts stabbing himself. At which point, he is tackled by two guys and remanded into custody.
Now his lawyer is claiming that his mental status was impaired because he had Lyme disease. (And, shocker: this interpretation of the story is being pushed over at Huffington Post.)
Listen, this guy may be crazy. In fact, he undoubtedly has severe emotional and neurological problems. But Lyme disease isn't why.
Lyme disease is caused by a…
purepedantry | February 3, 2009This beat poem is too funny. It is by Tim Minchin in which he describes a dinner party where he confronts a hippie -- recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in December 08.
Sadly NSFW and audio only. Check it out beneath the fold:
My favorite quotes:
"You know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work: medicine."
"I am like a rabbit suddenly trapped in the blinding headlights of vacuous c*&$."
"Science adjusts its views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that faith can be preserved."
purepedantry | December 1, 2008For acupuncture to work, you don't actually have to put in the needles:
The acupuncture study of 215 patients who were undergoing radiation treatment in the abdomen or pelvic region chose by lot one of these two acupuncture types.
109 received traditional acupuncture, with needles penetrating the skin in particular points. According to ancient Chinese tradition, the needle is twisted until a certain 'needle sensation' arises. The other 106 patients received a simulated acupuncture instead, with a telescopic, blunt placebo needle that merely touches the skin.
The acupuncture was performed by…
purepedantry | June 12, 2008Crooked Timber has a great post on using what you think ancestral man ate to argue for various types of fad diets:
There seems to be about as much theorising relative to evidence in the discussion of what cavemen ate and did, as the ev psych crowd try to get away with about their family and political arrangements. Obviously, the suggestion that cavemen "didn't eat carbohydrates" can't be meant literally -- we would never have survived if this had been true. They ate fruit, seeds, roots and all sorts. I suspect that what's meant here is that cavemen didn't eat much starch because they hadn't…
purepedantry | March 12, 2008A Christmas present, maybe? Maybe not.
A "neurotheology" researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the "God Helmet" lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it's much more interesting than that.
Persinger is a proper scientist. The temporal lobes have long been implicated in religious experiences: epileptic seizures in that part of the brain, for example, can produce mystical experiences and visions. Persinger's helmet stimulates these temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields through the skull, and in…
purepedantry | February 6, 2008My rant last Friday about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) promoted a vigorous discussion, and I am happy about that. That ambivalence about CAM in even the scientific community is an interesting issue in and of itself.
Several commenters criticized my piece on the grounds that I was being inexact or extreme.
For example, jope had this to say:
While agree that in many cases individuals put far too much faith (and investment) in CAM, it is my opinion that you are going too far in making a blanket statement. While the majority of CAM probably does boil down to placebo effect (at…
purepedantry | February 1, 2008Complementary and alternative medicine has no business participating in mainstream science or medicine.
As I understand it, there are five core premises on which complementary and alternative medicine is based. I would like to confront each in turn:
1) The evil, old white men who run the medical establishment are united in a vast conspiracy to suppress legitimate treatments. If we had only looked to folk remedies sooner, we would have cured things like cancer and Alzheimer's long ago.
Think about that for a second: do you sincerely believe that everyone -- I mean everyone -- in the…
purepedantry | January 31, 2008Color me unsurprised.
You have no doubt seen the commercials for the herbal penis-enlarging supplement Enzyte. They feature a guy with a weird smile and his grinning wife. The pills themselves come in suspiciously medicinal-looking packaging. (With a picture of a race car on the package, you begin to wonder who their target market is...)
Well, all of those guys are getting prosecuted for fraud. And one exec -- likely to save his own ass -- is coming clean.
James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District…
purepedantry | May 16, 2007If my job was to debunk poorly justified herbal remedies, I would eat well for life.
Here is the newest one: stem cell enhancers.
As covered in the Scientist:
A California company is marketing the latest in dietary supplements, an extract from algae they claim will boost the number of circulating stem cells, easing disease and discomfort. Consumers have already spent millions on the "stem cell enhancer," but some stem cell researchers remain unconvinced the product even works -- and warn that the "enhancer" may trigger other problems, including cancer.
...
According to STEMTech HealthSciences…