medicine
purepedantry | February 7, 2008I completely agree with this public service announcement at MDOD: if you have the flu, do not go to the emergency room. The flu is caused by a virus. There is nothing the doctor in the ER can do to help you. Antibiotics are neither required nor effective at alleviating your symptoms. Further, unless you are immunosuppressed (read: have AIDS or have had a transplant) or are very elderly, there is nothing about your condition that constitutes an emergency.
Please stop stressing our already fragile health care system -- not to mention the patience of several very overworked ER residents --…
oracknows | February 7, 2008I was perusing my newsfeeds last night looking for topics for Your Friday Dose of Woo this week when I came across what, initially at least, I considered to be primo material for my weekly bit of fun at the expense of the more far out excursions into woo. Then I thought about it some more. Early in the history of YFDoW, I admit that I did a couple of misfires. Perhaps the most notorious misfire was when I decided to take on the German New Medicine. Certainly the woo was there and it was good, but I quickly regretted taking such a lighthearted approach to this topic because it quickly became…
j7uy5 | February 7, 2008Zyprexa Adhera is a new formulation of
href="http://zyprexa.com/index.jsp">Eli LIlly's
antipsychotic medication,
href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a601213.html">olanzapine.
It contains the same active ingredient as the pills, but it
is a long-acting injection. It is supposed to last two to
four weeks.
There is not a lot of specific information available yet. It
is not on the market yet, either. The milestone is that in
was just recommended for approval by the
title="Food and Drug Administration">
href="http://www.fda.gov/">FDA.
Background:…
oracknows | February 6, 2008I sometimes feel a bit guilty beating up on homeopathy. It just seems like beating up on a blind man. The feeling passes quickly, of course, but it's at least somewhat understandable. Homeopathy is so patently ridiculous from a scientific standpoint that watching homeopaths try to justify and defend a therapy that consists of substances that are usually so diluted that there is not a single molecule remaining by invoking the "memory" of water or even quantum theory is, in a perverse way, entertaining to a skeptic like me. I'm always waiting to see what sort of strange analogy or explanation…
oracknows | February 5, 2008I love it when advocates of "alternative" medicine start combining their therapies. Well, I don't "love" it because they are combining two wildly improbable therapies so much as I love it for the entertainment value. Here's one that didn't quite reach the level of craziness needed for Your Friday Dose of Woo but that I can't resist mentioning. It's the combination of the ultimate woo with one of the most popular forms of woo. I have two words for you:
Homeopathy and acupuncture.
What an excellent combination! They call it "acupoint injection therapy" because they inject homeopathic remedies…
oracknows | February 5, 2008I hadn't planned on blogging about vaccines again for a while. Really, I hadn't. Even I realize the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse just one time too often. Also, It seems that I've been writing about antivaccination loons a lot lately, even more than usual. However, aside from a prime time spot for antivaccinationist propganda, the news has been mostly good, with study after study poking holes below the waterline in the hull of the rickety rustbucket of a boat that is the whole antivaccinationist belief that vaccines cause autism.
Here's another one.
This time, in yet another in a…
scientificactivist | February 5, 2008A few interesting items have recently come up in the news and in the scientific literature about various methods for preventing the transmission of HIV.
First up is a study (1) published in PLoS Medicine this week that demonstrated the effectiveness of a combination of antiretroviral drugs in preventing viral transmission in a monkey model of HIV. The researchers demonstrated that taking the antiretroviral drug emtricitabine (FTC) orally could reduce the chance that a macaque would become infected. Adding tenofovir-disoproxil fumarate (TDF) increased protection, and injecting both drugs (…
oracknows | February 4, 2008...posterior:
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide instead of water to give them enemas.
Itar-Tass news agency reported Thursday that 17 tourists in the Caucasus spa town of Yessentuki had to be treated in hospital after the mix-up.
All I can say is...ouch! It's a wonder none of them burned a hole in the colon and needed an emergency operation. What would EneMan think? But what's really funny is the excuse for the mixup:
Sources at the sanatorium said the mistake was explained by water and hydrogen peroxide looking the…
oracknows | February 4, 2008I did not watch Eli Stone last Thursday.
I didn't really need to, given that prerelease descriptions made it clear that the show's pilot episode was nothing more than a load of antivaccination propaganda. Indeed, it was so bad that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually took the step of drafting a public letter to ABC asking it either to can the show or run a disclaimer stating that science does not support the contention in Eli Stone that mercury in vaccines is a major cause of autism. In response, David Kirby, the Energizer Bunny of the mercury militia, posted a predictable screed…
denialism | February 4, 2008I've just completed my first month of my surgical rotation and still find almost every day fascinating. I just finished a 4-week rotation in the hepatobiliary service (liver, biliary and pancreatic surgeries mostly) and now go on to thoracic for 2 weeks, and then trauma for 2 weeks to complete the core requirement. I'll also be doing orthopedic trauma and neurosurgical rotations before I'm done in March and I'll be sure to write about those as well.
Friday night we had the medical student pimp-off AKA surgical jeopardy. For the uninitiated, pimping refers to the practice of quizzing…
jstemwedel | February 2, 2008Via Greg Laden, I see that there is now some research to support our primal revulsion toward double-dippers:
Last year the food microbiologist's [Clemson University professor Paul L. Dawson] undergraduate students examined the effects of double dipping using volunteers, wheat crackers and several sample dips. They found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from an eater's mouth to the remaining dip sample.
"I was very surprised by the results," Dawson said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I thought there would be very minimal transfer. I didn't think we would…
oracknows | February 2, 2008It's been a while since I've posted any fan mail, but I did get one a few days ago that amused me. It came from someone with a 'nym of "Baxtour". I post it because it represents a common flavor of antivaccinationist response to my blog:
You are a fucking moron, which I'm sure you already know, but if there is one thing you know absolutely nothing about it's thimerosal! You shouldn't even talk about it because you are so fucking clueless!!!
Sincerely,
Someone that actually has a brain
Truly, against such intellectual firepower, even Orac has a hard time standing. My first thought was that it…
oracknows | February 1, 2008...courtesy of fellow ScienceBlogger Jake Young.
Two money quotes:
"First, what is CAM bringing to the table that science and medicine didn't have? Good feelings. Acquaintance with the ways ignorance. Newer, better superstitions. Frankly, you can keep them."
"Science complemented by non-science ceases to be science, and there are no alternatives to the truth."
I may have to steal that last one, perhaps with the addition of a flourish or two of my own. For example, I'd add that science "integrated" with nonscience runs a very high risk of ceasing to be science.
We need more medical students…
oracknows | February 1, 2008Water.
It's the essence of life. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and we can't live without it for very long. Our cells both contain it and are bathed in it. The enzymatic reactions necessary for life require an aqueous solution to work. Don't think these facts have escaped the woo-meisters, either. Water woo is a a long time favorite of woo-meisters everywhere. Indeed, it began with the "water cure" favored by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who could be forgiven for coming up with it, given that they had very little idea of how human physiology actually worked and at the very least it…
oracknows | January 31, 2008Ack!
The new Skeptic's Circle is here! Yes, the 79th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has convened over at Podblack Blog, and it's another great collection of skeptical blogging. So why am I disturbed? I just realized that I've utterly failed in my organizer duties in that I totally forgot to submit one of my own posts to the Circle. The shame! Even worse, the Circle's just fine without me; if I hadn't pointed it out I doubt that anyone would have noticed that I hadn't submitted anything.
So why point it out?
Actually, in a way it's a very good thing. It just goes to show that the Skeptics'…
omnibrain | January 31, 2008The Super Bowl is all about chips and dip - so be careful. It could kill you if you're not!
If you're a Seinfeld watcher you probably remember this scene:
TIMMY: What are you doing?
GEORGE: What?
TIMMY: Did...did you just double-dip that chip?
GEORGE: Excuse me?
TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!
GEORGE: "Double-dipped"? What are you talking about?
TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite.
And you dipped again.
GEORGE: So...?
TIMMY: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!
GEORGE: Well, I'm sorry, Timmy...…
oracknows | January 31, 2008I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. At the time, I thought that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to apply the scientific method to the various "CAM" modalities and let the chips fall where they may.
Unfortunately, two developments have made me sour on NCCAM and develop an opinion more like Dr…
tqa | January 30, 2008
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver, and her spleen. She ended her year as an outpatient at Walter Reed, waiting for her superiors to decide whether or not she would have to stand court-martial for inflicting that wound upon herself. In between, she had to recover from her physical wounds, learn to deal with the inner demons that led to them, she had to deal with superior officers who believed that she would be more…
oracknows | January 30, 2008Three and a half months after Kevin Leitch announced that he was shutting down his most excellent blog, Left Brain/Right Brain, it appears that, thankfully, he's changed his mind. Appearing yesterday on the archives of his blog, Kev announced that his blog is open for business again.
Join me in welcoming Kev back to the blogosphere. Head on over and leave a message. It's good to see that he decided not to let bastards like John Best silence him permanently.
