medicine
jstemwedel | July 5, 2007 I recently finished reading Greg Critser's Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies.
Frankly, I don't feel so well.
Critser starts off by dropping us into the regulatory environment in the U.S. in the early 1970s, walking us through the multifarious forces that started to change that environment. Some of the changes seem welcome and important -- for example, removing the requirement that companies wishing to market generic versions of FDA approved drugs (once the patents had expired on those drugs) produce additional studies demonstrating the…
denialism | July 5, 2007An alert reader noticed that when he performed a Google search on 'Sicko', guess who pops up in the sponsored links? Why, our good friends at AEI, a denialist organization second only to CEI, but since they have a lot of the same people working for both it's really just academic which one you're arguing with. When you need your crappy industry defended from public criticism, you can always rely on AEI or CEI to chomp at the bit and pretend there is "no problem".
What's even more interesting is that Google actually solicited ads (fixed link) to combat Sicko's bad PR for the insurance…
oracknows | July 4, 2007Happy 4th of July to all my American readers!
For more serious ruminations about the 4th by yours truly, check out posts I've done on the topic before:
Fourth of July thoughts
One last fourth of July thought
In the meantime, I'll be rounding on my partners' patients all morning, as I drew the 4th of July as one of the holidays that I have to cover on call. I'll also be dreading tonight's fireworks display. Now don't get me wrong; I like a good fireworks display as much as the next guy. The problem is that our town's display is close enough to our house that the explosions reduce our…
omnibrain | July 4, 2007There is a great article today on Slate about why the pretty ridiculous idea that vaccinations containing trace amounts of mercury cause autism will never go away. Here's the first little part of the article:
At the recent 12-day hearing into theories that vaccines cause autism, the link between the disorder and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came across as shaky at best. As for the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was used in other vaccines, witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or…
j7uy5 | July 4, 2007Recently, a friend asked my opinion on an article that
appeared in Life Extension magazine: How
Congress Is Being Misled to Think That DHEA Is an “Anabolic
Steroid”.
title="Dehydroepiandrosterone">DHEA has been
a topic here before; I wrote about it (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/10/tepid_water_thrown_on_a_hot_pr.php">Tepid
Water Thrown on a Hot Product: DHEA); Tara wrote about it (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/10/failure_of_alternative_med.php">The
failure of alternative medicine); and Orac wrote about it (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/…
oracknows | July 3, 2007One of the things that I found most disturbing about the recent failed bombing attempts in London and the car attack in Glasgow, aside from the terrorism and potential for huge losses of life, is this:
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) -- British police focused Tuesday on at least four physicians with roots outside Britain - including a doctor seized at an Australian airport with a one-way ticket - in the investigation into failed car bombings in Glasgow and London.
At least four of the eight suspects were identified as doctors from Iraq, Jordan and India. One of the doctors from India, 27-year-old…
oracknows | July 3, 2007One thing that's become obvious to me over the last few years that I've been engaged in dealing with various forms of pseudoscience, alternative medicine, and conspiracy theories is that people who are prone to credulity to one form of pseudoscience, the paranormal, or other crankery tend to be prone to credulity towards multiple forms of crankery. For example, Phillip Johnson, one of the "luminaries" of the "intelligent design" creationism movement is also a full-blown HIV denialist who doesn't accept the science that demonstrates that HIV causes AIDS. Another example is Dr. Lorraine Day,…
oracknows | July 2, 2007I thought I knew all the good websites to get information about cancer research and research funding opportunities. Perusing Medical Writing, Editing, & Grantsmanship, I found I was wrong.
Check out the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Research Portfolio.
It lets cancer researchers search quickly for funding opportunities, what cancer-related projects are already funded, and peruse a number of other resources. It even has a link to the International Cancer Research Portfolio, where you can search for funded projects and research opportunities covered by the American Cancer Society, the…
oracknows | July 2, 2007About a month ago, I did a facetious throwaway piece about "homeopathic enchantments" being used by one of my favorite comic characters (who, alas, no longer has his own comic series), namely Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. Given that it was not intended as anything other than a lark, I was rather surprised when it generated a long discussion thread fueled by a homeopath named Dana Ullman, who showed up in the comments and argued with me and several of my best regular commenters. He kept the discussion thread going far longer than the average thread on this blog, provoking annoyance on…
omnibrain | July 2, 2007There has been a whole lot crap floating around the press in the last couple weeks since the trial started that is seeking to link vaccination with higher incidence of autism. Now a survey funded by one of these anti-vaccination groups is correlating, through a random telephone survey, more mental health issues like ADHD with vaccination. So why do you think this correlation exists? Is there a simple way of simply explaining away this correlation (think less pirates = more global warming).
Here's some of the info from medical news today:
The survey, commissioned by Generation Rescue,…
oracknows | July 1, 2007For your Sunday afternoon edification, the latest version of Pediatrics Grand Rounds has been posted over at Breath Spa for Kids.
In addition, Change of Shift, the blog carnival for nursing-related blogs, has also been posted at NursingLink.
Enjoy!
j7uy5 | June 30, 2007There
is a refreshingly whimsical article, on a very serious subject, in this
month's edition of Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain.
rev="review"
href="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1526-4610.2007.00665.x">Harry
Potter and the Curse of Headache
Fred Sheftell MD, Timothy J Steiner MB, PhD, Hallie Thomas
Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 47 (6), 911–916.
doi:10.1111/j.1526-4610.2007.00665.x
Headache disorders are common in children and adolescents. Even young
male Wizards are disabled by them. In this article we review Harry
Potter's headaches…
denialism | June 30, 2007
I went to see Michael Moore's Sicko last night and it is truly worthy of being seen by every American. I say that knowing how many feel about Michael Moore and his tendency towards spectacle. I hope that people can set aside whatever prejudice they have towards Moore and see this movie.
This is a movie that contains more truth than any he has made so far. I went in with a skeptical mind, knowing the issues that face the practice of medicine in the United States in this new millennium, how easy they can be discussed inaccurately or flippantly and how medicine was once practiced in this…
oracknows | June 29, 2007I love these old ads. Remember, keep fresh batteries in your house or you might poison your baby!
The tag line sounds almost like the reaction of an antivaccination loon to the polio vaccine.
oracknows | June 29, 2007I wrote about this classic crank gambit a bit about a week and a half ago, emphasizing that no amount of studies will convince a crank.
Now, MarkH at denialism.com takes on the same issue in more detail so that I don't have to bother with David Kirby's latest spew. Thanks, MarkH! The point is that, for people who've already made up their mind to take a position that already contradicts what large amounts of available evidence says, no amount of other studies is ever enough. The "just another study" gambit should be recognized for what it is: a delaying tactic designed to buy time and distract…
oracknows | June 29, 2007Here's something I've wanted to try for a while now. It'll either be wildly successful and popular, along the lines of You Might Be an Altie If..., or it'll be an utter failure, sinking into oblivion. Which one it ends up being will be up to you, O faithful readers of Your Friday Dose of Woo. The beauty of blogging, of course, is that if it fails next week I can pretend that it never happened and move on to (hopefully) greener pastures, my utter humiliation at publishing crap quickly forgotten, except, of course, living forever on the web.There are two other reasons that today is the perfect…
j7uy5 | June 29, 2007A
recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine caught my attention,
because it has significant implications for stress management by
physicians. The study also generated a bit of
attention in the popular media. For example, this article in
NYT:
title="NYT permanent link via RSS"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/health/26doctors.html?ex=1340510400&en=f56fa2071d6a6fa7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">Study
Says Chatty Doctors Forget Patients
By GINA KOLATA
Published: June 26, 2007
...To their surprise, the researchers discovered that doctors talked…
oracknows | June 28, 2007Yesterday, I did a deconstruction of Generation Rescue's dubious "study" (in reality an automated telephone poll) that claims to show that vaccines increase the rate of autism and other "neurologic diseases."
Now skeptical blogger extraordinaire Prometheus has posted his own excellent deconstruction at his blog A Photon in the Darkness.
I said it before, if I were J. B. Handley, I'd want my money back.
oracknows | June 28, 2007Pity poor Deepak Chopra.
I've abused him on this blog many times, even coining a word ("Choprawoo") for the silliness that emanates from his keyboard every time he posts his inanity to the Huffington Post or his own IntentBlog. I even wrote the only response ever needed to Choprawoo. Of course, he richly deserves the abuse heaped upon him, given his idiotic meanderings in which he misrepresents evolution and neuroscience willy-nilly in his attempt to argue that we are infused by the "consciousness of the universe." It also doesn't help that he's a credulous woo-meister who sells non-evidence-…
oracknows | June 28, 2007Once again, I was going to post about the amusing homeopath that I've come across, and once again something came up with the whole Autism Omnibus came up, leaving our poor homeopath to wait a little while longer for the loving application of a bit of Respectful Insolence⢠that she so clearly craves. If you're getting tired of hearing about the lunacy of antivaccinationists, I apologize and sympathize. I plan on taking a break from the subject for a few days unless some truly new news comes to light, as once again I don't want any one topic to dominate this blog for too long.
However, before…