medicine
j7uy5 | July 14, 2007A
couple of
href="http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec16/ch221/ch221g.html"
rel="tag">Parkinson's Disease related items came
across the news wires,
briefly. There are lessons in both of them, but both leave me
with unresolved questions.
The first one I noticed was a report based upon a journal article,
rev="review"
href="http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/69/2/187">Risk
factors for somnolence, edema, and hallucinations in early Parkinson
disease. The second was based on a
different article (in the same journal),
href="http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/01.wnl…
oracknows | July 13, 2007Cool cool water.
Yes, that's what I really needed earlier this week, as the temperature almost hit 100° F in my neck of the woods. There's nothing like it after walking through the sauna-like conditions and losing my precious bodily fluids in the form of sweat. After all, I wouldn't want to get dehydrated, would I? And, heck, it's quite possible to die of dehydration. If you believe those nasty "conventional" medical authorities, it takes a healthy person with healthy kidneys a few days, give or take, to become sufficiently dehydrated to endanger his life, and medical science tells us that…
oracknows | July 12, 2007Mike Adams is an idiot.
There, I said it.
Adams runs the NewsTarget website, a repository for all things "alternative" medicine. In it, he rails against "conventional" medicine as utterly useless and touts all manner of woo as the "cure" for a variety of diseases. I generally ignore his website these days because I fear that reading it regularly will cause me to lose too many neurons, and, as I get older, I want to hold on to my what neurons I have remaining for as long as possible, or, if I must lose them, to do so in a pleasurable way, perhaps as a result of a fine bottle of wine. But,…
oracknows | July 12, 2007It looks as though I've been tagged by Drug Monkey, who apparently thinks that I might have something worth saying about the state of the NIH and its peer review system, about which the NIH is presently soliciting comments, as pointed out to me by Medical Writing, Editing, & Grantsmanship. Why Drugmonkey might think this to be the case, I have no idea, but presumably it has something to do with some previous posts that I've made about the NIH, how biomedical research is funded in this country, and the disconnect between vision and reality at the highest level of the NIH. Although I used…
j7uy5 | July 12, 2007
A study
published in the British
Medical Journal indicates that use of a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probiotic" rel="tag">probiotic
drink can reduce the frequency of antibiotic-associated diarrhea in
general, and of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_difficile"
rel="tag">Clostridium difficile
colitis in particular.
Antibiotic-associated colitis is a complication of treatment with
antibiotics. About 15 to 25 percent of such cases are caused
by C. difficile.
C. difficile is particularly nasty. It
produces a toxin, can lead to bowel perforation,
href="http…
j7uy5 | July 11, 2007The
href="http://www.fda.gov/default.htm" rel="tag">FDA
just can't win. When they restrict something or say something
negative, they are being too restrictive or complicit with big pharma.
When they approve something too slowly they are insensitive
to the needs of patients. When they approve something too
quickly they are not protecting the public.
In fact, I've criticized them on all of these counts, all the while
knowing that it very difficult to know when the FDA is being fair and
balanced.
Now, we see headlines about a health claim that the FDA has denied.
It concerns
href…
oracknows | July 11, 2007About a month and a half ago, I posted an update to the story of the plight of a group of medical professionals who have come to be known as the "Tripoli 6" or the "Benghazi 6." These are six foreign medical workers who were falsely accused by Libyan authorities intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV in a Libyan hospital and then unjustly imprisoned under horrific conditions, where they have remained for nearly eight years. Thanks to the need of the Libyan government to find scapegoats for unhygienic conditions in the hospital, leading to an ignorant bloodlust whipped up against…
hrynyshyn | July 11, 2007So Michael Moore the documentarian takes on CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta the medical science guy in the former's first appearance on the network in three years, arguing that the latter committed libel by claiming the filmmaker "fudged the facts" in the new documentary Sicko. The two argued vociferously on Wolf Blitzer's "The Sitation Room" the other day. Who won? This being television news, no one, really. Moore came off as an obnoxious and impatient guest and Gupta as an inexcusably sloppy journalist. But Wolf was the real loser for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is failing get to…
j7uy5 | July 10, 2007(RWOS=Republican War
on Science) In
case you haven't noticed (and why would you?), the USA is without a
Surgeon General. The old one, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carmona" rel="tag">Richard
Carmona, unhired himself for unclear reasons last July, as
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/10/the_surgeon_generals_new_gig.php">noted
on Effect Measure. The
candidate for the position, Dr.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Holsinger" rel="tag">James
Holsinger, has proven to be
href="http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=67035601">…
oracknows | July 10, 2007...Tara over at Aetiology is hosting Grand Rounds.
What are you waiting for?
oracknows | July 10, 2007I'm devastated.
Truly and totally devastated emotionally and intellectually. Indeed, I don't know how I'll ever be able to recover, how I'll ever be able to live down the shame and go on with my career.
What could bring me to this point, you ask? I'll tell you. Everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon and dualist Dr.Michael Egnor thinks I'm "unprofessional."
Worse, he does it while agreeing with Pat Sullivan's article in which Pat asserts that "Darwinism" has what he calls a "marketing problem," in essence seemingly saying that, because he can't understand "Darwinism" but can understand…
omnibrain | July 10, 2007Channel 4 in Britain has created a series documenting what goes on in Autopsies, but even more exciting is that they've made them available online for your viewing...pleasure?
I'm a pretty squeamish guy, which is one of the (many) reasons I didn't go to medical school. So if you're particularly grossed out by dead, cut open people then you should perhaps not watch these graphic videos. I'm about to force myself to check out the videos though! Wish me luck ;)
Here's a short description from the show webpage:
These clips contain scenes of a graphic nature demonstrating disections of the…
oracknows | July 10, 2007Actions have consequences, as do beliefs. For example, the widespread erroneous belief among many parents of autistic children that the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that was used in most childhood vaccines until 2002 somehow caused autism in their children have led some pseudoscientists and parents who have fallen under their sway to subject their children to all manners of "biomedical" interventions to "extract" the mercury and supposedly cure their children of autism. In extreme form, this belief has led to highly dubious "treatments" such as those served up by Mark and David…
hrynyshyn | July 10, 2007Could autism be caused by not enough sun? I sincerely hope that parents of children with autism-spectrum disorders apply the appropriate degree of skepticism and caution to the latest possible explanation for this most maddening of diseases. The absence of a convincing explanation for the recent increase in children diagnosed with autism must be exasperating -- witness the willingness to embrace and cling to the discredited theory that vaccines containing mercury are the culprit. This new suspicion is little more than that, however, and it may prove just as wrong.
The theory, propounded by…
clock | July 9, 2007I had a great pleasure recently to be able to interview Senator - and now Democratic Presidential candidate - John Edwards for my blog. The interview was conducted by e-mail last week.
As I am at work and unable to moderate comments, the comment section is closed on this post, but will be open on the previous post (here) where I hope you will remain civil and stay on topic. You are also welcome to comment on this interview at several other places (e.g,. DailyKos, MyDD, TPMCafe, Science And Politics, Liberal Coalition, the Edwards campaign blog as well as, hopefully, your own blogs).
I…
oracknows | July 9, 2007I just don't understand it.
I just don't understand how anyone can take discredited antivaccination loon Andrew Wakefield seriously anymore. In particular, I don't understand how any reputable newspaper can actually take him seriously anymore, given how thoroughly he and his "work" have been discredited. First came the news in late December that at the time he did his "research" that purported to show a link between the MMR triple vaccination and autism and bowel problems, Dr. Wakefield was in the pay of lawyers looking to sue for "vaccination injury" and failed to disclose his clear conflict…
oracknows | July 8, 2007Given that my electronic leash is always with me and that ubiquitous pagers and cell phones make doctors reachable 24 hours a day, it's amazing to contemplate a time when a PA system at a hospital was considered new and high tech:
I especially like the part touting the volume control, as if that were some technological wonder that one wouldn't expect on a P.A. system!
Personally, when I see such a system, I can't help but think of the Three Stooges in Men In Black. Of course, when it comes to any paging system, be it a PA system or a pager, there are times when I feel like doing exactly…
oracknows | July 8, 2007As I mentioned yesterday, I recently perused all the e-mails that Gmail had flagged as spam and to my dismay found a lot of legitimate e-mail, including mailing list e-mails and Movable Type e-mails notifying me of comments being caught up in the filter. However, I found something scarier than that. In fact, I found perhaps the scariest spam that I've ever encountered.
Did you know that spammers are claiming to be selling chemotherapeutic agents from India? Check it out:
From: euroasias@ricmail.com
Subject: Anti-Cancer Drugs
Date: July 6, 2007 10:32:56 PM EDT
To: [ORAC]
EUROASIA's…
oracknows | July 5, 2007The other day, I wrote about how several of the suspects arrested in the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow were physicians or in training to be physicians. At the time, I expressed dismay at what I viewed to be a betrayal of the very basis of our profession, that we try to help people and make them better, not kill them. The post engendered a lot of discussion (and the expected amount of doctor-bashing based on my supposed naivete in stating that most physicians go into medicine to help people, a statement that I stand by).
Now, via Kevin, MD (who apparently got this by way of…
jstemwedel | July 5, 2007In his book Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (reviewed in the last post), Greg Critser includes a quotation from a physician (in a self-help book [1]) that I found really striking:
In your search ... you are going to come across physicians who may initially be skeptical of any medication, technique, or new technology that has not already been proven to be successful with an indisputable double-blind study. This would not be the right physician for you. The very essence of Vitality Medicine has to do with flexibility, change, and a…