medicine
oracknows | April 10, 2007I don't want to make this blog "all Egnor all the time." I know it's hard to believe, given my posting behavior recently, but really I don't. No matter how much the Discovery Institute's creationist neurosurgeon may embarrass the hell out of me as (I shudder to have to admit) a fellow surgeon, I've recently been trying to ration the rebuttals of his nonsense about evolution, and I note that I took one swipe at him yesterday. Even so, I hope you'll forgive me for this brief lapse. I had to do it because my irony meter is building up to a meltdown and explosion because of what Dr. Michael Egnor…
grrlscientist | April 10, 2007tags: dog breeds, IGF1, insulin-like growth factor 1, cancer, growth disorders
One gene mutation makes all the difference in body size between a big dog and a little dog.
Image: NY Times.
There are several things that I think are amazing about dogs, Canis familiaris. First, there is a huge discrepancy in body size between different breeds -- greater than for any other mammal, in fact, and second, these vastly different dog breeds still recognize each other as being of the same species. Yet, according to a recently published research paper, this huge differential in the body size of dogs…
j7uy5 | April 10, 2007Here
at ScienceBlogs, and medical blogs in general, are generally
somewhat dismissive of complimentary and alternative medicine.
Every once in a while, though, something comes up that is
positive.
This is from American Family Physician, and is openly available.
href="http://www.aafp.org/afp/20070401/1027.html">Peppermint
Oil
BENJAMIN KLIGLER, M.D., M.P.H., Albert Einstein College
of
Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York
SAPNA CHAUDHARY, D.O., Beth Israel Continuum Center for Health and
Healing, New York, New York
Peppermint leaf and peppermint oil have a long history…
oracknows | April 10, 2007It figures. On the very day that I posted a rather long post about a series of three papers discussing the use of mammography and MRI for screening women for breast cancer, there would have to be another paper relevant to the topic of the early detection of cancer, again in this case breast cancer. This one didn't get as much play in the media, but it fits in very well with the primary messages of Part 1 and Part 2 of this series: that earlier detection is not necessarily better. This study, however, has a bit of a twist.
Now, despite the general tone of my commentary implying that newer,…
oracknows | April 9, 2007I tell ya, ever since I first posted my infamous You Might Be an Altie If..., it seems that everyone wants in on the action. Not that I mind much. I can't honestly take credit for the idea; so it would be silly of me to get upset if someone else uses it.
This time around, it's fellow skeptic Skeptico. As I do, he really detests the ridiculous woo that is The Secret. I don't necessarily like the term that he has come up with for aficionados of The Secret and the truly idiotic and woo-filled Law of Attraction (Secretards). After all, the term "altie," although meant a bit sarcastically, is not…
omnibrain | April 9, 2007Some interesting findings have popped up in the most recent issue of the Archives of Neurology.
It seems that when comparing individuals who have developed Parkinson Disease with family members who have not - the people with PD are less likely to have smoked or drank coffee on a daily basis.
Check out the abstract below:
Smoking, Caffeine, and Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs in Families With Parkinson Disease
Dana B. Hancock, BS; Eden R. Martin, PhD; Jeffrey M. Stajich, PA-C; Rita Jewett, RN; Mark A. Stacy, MD; Burton L. Scott, PhD, MD; Jeffery M. Vance, PhD, MD; William K. Scott, PhD…
oracknows | April 9, 2007Via Modern Mechanix, from the pages of Popular Mechanics, April 1924:
BEARD IS REMOVED WITH MUD AND USE OF X-RAYS
Shaving beards from men's faces, has been accomplished by a special mudlike paste that is undergoing experiments at the hands of a New York doctor. After the mass has been applied, it hardens and is torn off. To finish the operation, X-rays are then directed against the skin. The originator of the method claims that it is beneficial and if used regularly will remove scars and similar marks of long standing. It is also said that the sticky treatment does not leave any ill effects…
j7uy5 | April 9, 2007Ordinarily,
I dislike fisking as a literary style, but it does have its
place. This is one of them. As noted in the two
previous posts,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/04/health_care_debate.php">(Part
One,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/04/health_care_debate_part_two.php">Part
Two) some authors from the Cato Institute managed to get an
opinion piece published in the LA Times:
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-tanner5apr05,1,6553974.story?ctrack=2&cset=true">Universal
healthcare's dirty little secrets. In…
oracknows | April 9, 2007In my last couple of posts on the risks and benefits of ever more sensitive screening tests for various cancers, and in particular breast cancer, I marveled at a a bit of serendipity that had pointed me to a particular old article a mere few days before multiple new papers about breast cancer screening with mammography and MRI were released. It turns out that that's not the only serendipity that's been going on lately, as far as blogging goes. For example, there's been Dr. Michael Egnor, the creationist professor of neurosurgery who's become the Discovery Institute's seemingly favorite "…
oracknows | April 8, 2007Pediatric Grand Rounds is now up over at the abode of one of my favorite medbloggers, Flea. This time around, Flea has chosen a rather--shall we say?--unusual theme around which to organize the festivities.
j7uy5 | April 8, 2007In
order to make sense of this post, you probably need to read
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/04/health_care_debate.php">Part
One
first.
This is about an opinion piece that was published in the LA Times,
written by some advocates from the
rel="tag">Cato Institute:
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-tanner5apr05,1,6553974.story?ctrack=2&cset=true">Universal
healthcare's dirty little secrets.
Let me get one thing out of the way first. The title is
bullshit. (Yes, that is how I really feel.) There
is nothing dirty, there is…
clock | April 7, 2007The Bodies Exhibition is coming to The Streets at Southpoint in Durham.
My wife saw it last year in NYC. My daughter will probably be too squeamish for it, but I'll try to get my son to come with me.
Once I go....well, it is certainly a bloggable event.
j7uy5 | April 7, 2007It is
charitable to call it a "debate" about health care. It is
really a flame war with a veneer of civility.
It started with an opinion piece published in what is ordinarily a
respectable publication: the Los Angles Times (free registration
required). Two bloggers jumped on it. Then the
comments came in.
The bloggers who weighed in on this,
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/ezra_klein_heal.html">Brad
DeLong
and
href="http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/04/health_insuranc.html"
rel="tag">Ezra Klein, both
correctly identified the argument as deeply flawed. But…
oracknows | April 7, 2007Via Terra Sigilatta (who beat me to this one, as I saw the press release yesterday but never got around to blogging about it), we find yet another case of heavy metal contamination of a popular supplement, this time herbal kelp supplements. This discovery was prompted by the investigation of a case of woman who suffered real harm from these supplements:
The new study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives - available online at www.ehponline.org - was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UCD Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-…
oracknows | April 7, 2007I don't recall how I came across this. Perhaps it was while looking for photos of our intrepid mascot that I don't already have, or perhaps it was to see if anyone else has anything to say about our cheery but strange mascot, the purpose of whose head you really don't want to think too much about. (On the other hand, I would compare EneMan to Casey Luskin, given how firmly Luskin likes to put his head up the behinds of various luminaries of the "intelligent design" movement, but that would be a profound insult to EneMan, who at least serves a highly useful purpose in preparing the rectum and…
oracknows | April 6, 2007In perusing my Folder of Woo, which is becoming every more crammed with potential targets begging for the tender mercies of Orac in their very own Your Friday Dose of Woo installments, I was wondering which one to pick. After all, it's an embarrassment of riches (if you can call it "riches") in there, with so much woo and so little time. I needed something different after last week's installment, which, sadly, appeared to have grossed some people out. I don't know why it might have grossed more people out than previous posts on colon cleanses and liver flushes, but for some reason it did. But…
oracknows | April 5, 2007An "integrative" medical practitioner observes:
I just came from a lecture by a Chinese Prof. who has a cancer hospital in China (Fuda Cancer hospital). What is strange, was it didn't use therapies from China, but rather technologies from the USA. They have cryoablation, photodynamic therapies, dendritic cell therapies, immunotherapy as well as chemoablation.
They claimed to have a very good success rate in increasing survival. Patients from all over have come to this hospital in Guangzhuo.
Why is he surprised?
As I've pointed out before, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is losing out to…
oracknows | April 5, 2007[Note: If you haven't already, you should read PART 1 of this two-part series. It defines several terms that I will be using in this post, and I don't plan on explaining them again, given that they were explained in detail in Part 1. Of course, if you're a medical professional and already know what lead time bias, length bias, and stage migration are, then you should still read Part 1 for its scintillating writing.]
I hadn't expected that it would take me this long to get around to part 2 of my post from Monday, but, alas, other matters intervened. Better late than never, and besides, we…
oracknows | April 4, 2007Apparently after a long night of drinking, Egyptian fruit bats wake up craving particular types of sugar. In a recent study, Francisco Sanchez from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) showed that the bats prefer foods high in the sugar molecule, fructose, after eating slightly fermented figs and dates. Fructose is known to reduce the toxicity of ethanol. After eating the alcoholic fruit, the bats even show visible signs of inebriation, such as bumping into objects and having a higher susceptibility to predators. As of yet, Sanchez has not witnessed a group of bats singing "Tiny…