medicine
oracknows | September 24, 2007While wandering through the medical center last week, I came across a rather unusual vending machine, one quite unlike any that I had ever seen before. It definitely hadn't been there the week before, but there it was now, around the corner from the hospital cafeteria:
Perfect if you're on call and feel the need for a potato knish at 3 AM.
I am, however, amused by the "24/6" label on the machine. Doesn't it work on the Sabbath?
oracknows | September 24, 2007Pity poor John Ioannidis.
The man does provocative work about the reliability of scientific studies as published in the peer-reviewed literature, and his reward for trying to point out shortcomings in how we as scientists and clinical researchers do studies and evaluate evidence is to be turned into an icon for cranks and advocates of pseudoscience--or even antiscience. I first became aware of Ioannidis two years ago around the time of publication of a paper by him that caused a stir, entitled Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research. In that study,…
grrlscientist | September 24, 2007tags: encephalon, brain, behavior, cognition, neurobiology, blog carnival
The last frontier: The brain.
Orphaned Image. Contact me so I can provide credit and linkage.
Several months ago, I was invited to host Encephalon, probably because I send so many submissions to this blog carnival and possibly also because I am fairly good at sending traffic to the contributors of those blog carnivals that I host. Unfortunately, I have not had wifi for the past two days, so I hope that you appreciate my modest efforts on behalf of this blog carnival. So, without further ado, I present to you the 32nd…
oracknows | September 23, 2007ERV explains: Vaccines strengthen superpowers.
Take that, Jenny McCarthy!
oracknows | September 23, 2007Believe it or not, this post is related, albeit somewhat tangentially, to my area of expertise, breast cancer. It's also related to one of my great loves in life, namely loud, obnoxious rock and roll. Unfortunately, it involves bad art and an album cover so puzzling that, even when considering the source, I have a hard time figuring out just what the heck they were thinking when they put this album cover together.
I'm talking about, believe it or not, the cover of the new Ted Nugent album Love Grenade.
I know, I know, it's not as if one expects the cover of a Ted Nugent album to make sense.…
oracknows | September 22, 2007Two words: Necrotizing pancreatitis.
There's nothing like repeated trips to the operating room to scoop out bits of dead pancreas, trips sometimes so frequent that we leave the abdomen open to facilitate repeat visits, in patients who are about as sick as any patient you'll ever see. There are few, if any, problems in general surgery more challenging, and saving such patients gives an enormous sense of accomplishment. It's also one area that distinguishes general surgeons from all other specialties. There's no other surgeon or internist who can handle these cases. When the pancreatitis…
oracknows | September 22, 2007I have to tip my hat to Kevin Leitch. I really do. He's done something that I couldn't manage to force myself to do, at least not completely.
He's subjected himself to the entire episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in which Jenny McCarthy showed up to plug her new book about her fight to "save" her child from autism, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism.
Far be it from me to attack Jenny McCarthy for wanting to help her autistic son. Her devotion is admirable, and virtually all parents, other than crappy parents, want to help their children. The problem is that, in seeking to…
grrlscientist | September 21, 2007tags: health insurance, medicine, Families USA report, medicaid
I haven't had health insurance since the middle of 2004. Since 2004, I have held numerous part-time temporary positions, and I was employed for one full year as a full-time professor of anatomy & physiology at a local university, yet even then, I still wasn't provided any health insurance. Further, I was unable to afford health insurance on the wages I was paid as a full-time "temporary" professor (nevermind that I can barely afford peanut butter and jelly as a PT temp). I am still uninsured, but now I am mostly unemployed…
oracknows | September 21, 2007
As I usually do on Thursday nights, I was perusing my legendary Folder of Woo looking for just the thing to be interesting and entertaining to both me as the blogger and you as the reader. As happens occasionally, nothing was really doing it for me. Nothing was getting me fired up to launch into yet another installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. I thought about going back to the well of Life Technology (believe it or not, there is still some woo there to which I have not yet applied my special brand of Respectful Insolenceâ¢), but somehow I just wasn't in the mood. Let's face it, after…
oracknows | September 20, 2007I don't know how I missed this one, but it jut goes to show that antivaccination ignorance with respect to autism is truly a bipartisan affair. You have folks like Representative Dan Burton on the right, and on the left you have this particular Daily Kos diarist, who falls like a ton of bricks for the recent Generation Rescue "study" of autism rates in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children:
The first ever study comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children was completed with startling results.
Vaccines Caused Autism
Vaccines Caused Asthma
Vaccines Caused ADHD
The study was privated funded…
grrlscientist | September 20, 2007A couple days ago, I mentioned that I, along with several other blog writers, had been invited to participate in a conference call-interview with several experts who were going to discuss the topic of bipolar disorder with us so we could write about it on our blogs. Well, thanks to a friend here in NYC, who lent me his cell phone so I could make that call without using more of my severely limited daytime minutes, I did get to participate in this discussion. Even though I was not sure what to expect, I found it to be fascinating. I have not yet received the recording of the phone call, but I…
purepedantry | September 20, 2007This is the smartest thing anyone has ever done:
Hospital dress codes typically urge doctors to look professional, which, for male practitioners, has usually meant wearing a tie. But as concern over hospital-borne infections has intensified, doctors are taking a closer look at their clothing.
"Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily," the Department of Health said in a statement. "They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens."
The new regulations taking effect next year mean an end to doctors' traditional long-sleeved white coats,…
oracknows | September 20, 2007Mike the Mad Biologist posts a link to and excerpt from an article that he seems to think will make "M.D.'s heads explode."
It didn't. At least, not in the case of this M.D.
Basically, it's about physician reimbursement, a topic guaranteed provoke controversy, divided between those who think doctors are already overpaid (most non-physicians) and those who do not (most doctors). The article is by Shannon Brownlee and makes a proposal that is breathtakingly naive and poorly thought out:
...we don't end up saving any money by tightening reimbursements. But we do end up pissing off doctors, who…
clock | September 20, 2007Based in part on this study, lethal injection has been ruled (at least for now) unconstitutional in the state of Tennessee.
The executions by lethal injection have been on hold for several months now in North Carolina as well, until the legality of it is figured out. I hope NC follows in the footsteps of TN soon.
grrlscientist | September 19, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, mental health, depression, major depressive disorder, MDD, exercise, James A. Blumenthal
Image: Lucozade Sport.
"A lot of people know from their own experience that when they exercise, they feel better," observed James A. Blumenthal, a professor of psychology at Duke University and lead author of a newly published study that examined the relationship between exercise and depression. But does this anecdote hold up when examined in a scientific study? And how much better does exercise make one feel? According to this study, exercise is as effective at reducing…
oracknows | September 19, 2007Last week, upon arriving back at my office after a day in clinic, I noticed an odd box sitting in my "in" box. I didn't recall having ordered anything recently, and my first thought was that an order for the laboratory had somehow been delivered to my office instead of my lab by mistake. It's uncommon, but it occasionally happens. Curiosity piqued, I picked up the box. It was small, only a few inches high, and lighter than I had expected. I couldn't hear any swishing that might indicated a powdered reagent in a bottle in the box. Moreover, upon closer inspection, I noticed that the box had no…
oracknows | September 18, 2007I'm rather amused.
No, I'm very amused.
Yesterday, as you may recall, I discussed a seemingly alarming e-mail that's going around about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whom the State of California had allegedly removed from the custody of his mother because she and he had wanted to use "advanced natural medicine" to treat his melanoma, rather than surgery and chemotherapy. I pointed out a number of questionable elements in the story that made me very suspicious of its accuracy, not the least of which is the fact that the mainstay of melanoma treatment is surgery plus biological therapy, not…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2007tags: blog carnivals, Grand Rounds
This week's edition, issue 3.52, of the blog carnival Grand Rounds is now available. This blog carnival focuses on stories with medical significance, and is one of the longest running blog carnivals out there!
oracknows | September 18, 2007My recent update of my ongoing discussion of the Abraham Cherrix case reminded me that there's a bit of alarming e-mail being sent out and forwarded far and wide. If you read it, at first glance, you will think it sounds utterly horrifying, the Abraham Cherrix and Katie Wernecke cases all rolled up into one and then placed on steroids to the point that even a maven of evidence-based medicine would have to take pause--if the story were true.
The source of the e-mail seems to be the Natural Solutions Foundation/Health Freedom USA, given all the "donate" buttons in the webpage to which I tracked…
grrlscientist | September 17, 2007tags: medicine 2.0, blog carnival
The latest edition of the medical blog carnival, Medicine 2.0 is now available for you to read. Be sure to go there and explore the different essays they have linked, some of which include a critical look at the evolution of medicine itself.