medicine
j7uy5 | January 6, 2007(This is a public health announcement for women and men.)
News agencies are, appropriately, reporting on the finding that the
average levels of folate in American women are falling. (e.g.
href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-04-folates_x.htm?csp=34">Folate
levels in young American women fall, could lead to rise in birth defects)
The media are doing a pretty good job of putting this in context.
I am happy to see that the subject is getting as much
attention as it is. But it is so important,
that I want to add some additional background information, in order to
reinforce…
oracknows | January 6, 2007Before I move on to other topics, I can't resist one last comment about the corrupt and sleazy Andrew Wakefield, the man who, with the help of heaping piles of cash from lawyers, almost singlehandedly produced a scare over the possibility that the MMR vaccine causes autism so large that vaccination rates in the U.K. fell precipitously, leading to massive misery due to a resurgence of the diseases prevented by the MMR vaccine and at least one death. Brian Deer, as you may know, is the journalist who exposed the disgusting underbelly of Wakefield's activities and who also broke the story of…
oracknows | January 6, 2007In case anyone from Southern California of a skeptical bent is interested in attending the debate about whether thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, here is the event information that I mentioned yesterday:
Vaccines and Autism, Is There a Connection?
A Thoughtful Debate
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Featuring:
David Kirby - Author, Evidence of Harm
and Arthur Allen - Author, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
Event Information:
Location: UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093
Time: Lecture & Debate 10:00am to 12:30pm
Reception &…
oracknows | January 5, 2007Better late than never, I guess.
I should have announced three days ago that the polls are now open to vote for the 2006 Medical Weblog Awards. Polls will close at midnight on Sunday, January 14, 2007 (PST), and the winners will be announced on Friday, January 19, 2007.
I happen to be nominated for Best Medical Weblog, but the competition is fierce, with other deserving nominees including fellow ScienceBlogs Aetiology, The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, and Effect Measure, plus worthy non-ScienceBlogs such as Surgeonsblog, Flea, Kevin, MD, and the ever-skeptical Unintelligent Design.…
j7uy5 | January 5, 2007(I know Shelly has
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/01/post.php">already
posted about this on Retrospectacle.
Hopefully, you'll see there is a different slant to this.)
Significant controversy arose over the idea of using pharmaceutical and
surgical methods to permanently stunt the growth of children with
severe disabilities. The controversy arose with the
publication of stories in the media about "Ashley X."
The medical profession refers to this as
"growth attenuation treatment." In order to understand the
controversy, it first is necessary to understand what was…
scientificactivist | January 5, 2007The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is a matter of British pride, despite some minor shortcomings. Strong on preventative and routine medical care, the NHS has on the other hand been criticized for its long waiting lists required for more involved procedures. The BBC reports today, though, that the NHS is making progress in this area, as waiting lists are now at an all-time low:
Between October and November 2006, NHS inpatient waiting lists dropped by 8,000 to 769,000.
This meant the number of patients waiting for treatment was the lowest since the records began in 1987....
Mr Burnham…
oracknows | January 5, 2007It's always a shame to see a once confident man reduced to whining. Well, maybe not always. Sometimes it's immensely satisfying, particularly when that man happens to be David Kirby, who, through his book Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, was one of the two men most responsible for publicizing the pseudoscientific scare-mongering that claims that mercury in thimerosal, the preservative that was until late 2002 used in childhood vaccines, causes autism. (The other was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) Unfortunately for poor ol' David, time and science…
oracknows | January 5, 2007It's back.
Yes, I was wondering what would be the best way to start out a brand new year of Your Friday Dose of Woo. Once again, as is all too unfortunately the case, there was an embarrassment of riches, a veritable cornucopia of woo out there, each one seemingly just as worthy of Orac's loving attention as the other. And, after having taken a week off from this, there was even a backup of woo. (I wonder if a little cleansing might be in order to relieve the backup.) Then it occurred to me. I started YFDoW with a very special treatment of some truly spectacular woo known as quantum…
clock | January 4, 2007Praying Online Helps Cancer Patients, Study Suggests
Breast cancer patients who pray in online support groups can obtain mental health benefits, according to a new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research that was funded by the National Cancer Institute.
"We know that many cancer patients pray in online support groups to help them cope with their illness. This is the first study we are aware of that examines the psychological effects of this behavior," says Bret Shaw, an associate scientist in UW-Madison's College of…
oracknows | January 4, 2007You know, like the namesake of my nom de blog, I'm not immune to a little vanity. Indeed, I daresay that no human is. What differs among humans are two things: the level of vanity and what we're vain about. Given that I don't have all that much in the looks department going on, it's fortunate that I'm probably not as vain as my blog namesake. Even so, I like to think that I'm pretty intelligent and that possess close to the proper level of skepticism, being neither so credulous that I'm easily fooled nor so skeptical that it devolves into cynicism. Consequently, when someone apparently thinks…
j7uy5 | January 3, 2007According to the CDC, there is a risk of pet hamsters harboring some
darn serious pathogens.
class="inset"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 460px; height: 345px;"
alt="CC license: share alike, attribution"
title="by Yukari*, some rights reserved."
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/121153744_1a08613c1e_o.jpg">
photo credit:
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukariryu/121153744/">Yukari.
Hamsters, technically Class: Mammalia; Order: Rodentia; Suborder:
Myomorpha; Superfamily: Muroidea; Family: Cricetidae; Subfamily:
Cricetinae, are cute little pets that people…
oracknows | January 3, 2007Today, The Cheerful Oncologist reminded me why he was one of my role models when I first started blogging, as he takes on the issue of palliative care:
As often as rain falls from the skies do patients reach that point in their illness where their doctor says "There is nothing more I can do for you."
If you ever hear that phrase, remember this: it is a lie. Physicians who tell their patients this may actually mean "I'm getting depressed watching you die and want to avoid you," or they may think of illness as a contest of skill where only victory has any value, and defeat must be acknowledged…
clock | January 3, 2007If you do not know who Roper is, read this, this and this. A total fundie wingnut in charge of a large teaching hospital! Oy vey! I did not know that fact when I originally wrote this post, but this explains it....(From July 15, 2005)
----------------------------------------
Do you know what's wrong with the US health-care system? It was taken over by MBAs, meddling - again - in areas they know nothing about. They have implemented the "business model" of health-care, which is the most nonsensical way imaginable. Medicine never was, is not, should not be, and cannot be a business. It is…
oracknows | January 3, 2007Two days after the holidays are over, and I'm still taking care of unfinished business from last year. Still, the study I'm about to discuss is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and because it's about breast cancer risk I felt the need to weigh in. This is particularly true, given some of the representations of this study that are popping up in the press and in the blogosphere, particularly among right wing bloggers. Let's start with a BBC news story about the study:
Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.
The research on more…
purepedantry | January 2, 2007Who knew:
While public perception may frame surfing as a dangerous sport, new research begs to differ. In the first study of its kind, researchers have computed the rate of injury among competitive surfers and found they are less prone to harm than collegiate soccer or basketball players. Led by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School, the findings of the study are published in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
"We found that competitive surfing has a relatively low risk of injury - 6.6 significant injuries per 1,000 hours of surfing -…
oracknows | January 2, 2007Believe it or not, there are times when I really, really wish I weren't right.
No, I'm not implying that I'm right so much of the time that I wish I were wrong more often. I'm human and therefore perfectly capable of being wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. (Of course, as we all know, that sort of thing rarely happens on this blog, right? Right?) But sometimes, even as I know I'm right about something, deep down I hope that I'm not. Usually such cases involve watching patients choosing alternative medicine reach the point where they have to the consequences of their choice. Despite all my…
j7uy5 | January 2, 2007There have been stories and novels about the end of privacy.
1984, by George Orwell, comes to mind. I also
remember reading a science fiction short story once, about how
technology had made privacy so difficult to maintain, and so accepted
by society, that it was considered rude to want privacy. I
can't remember who wrote that one.
This post was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal, that
points out how little privacy there is when it comes to medical
records. More below the fold...
Time Magazine just published 25 "top-10" lists for 2006. One
of the lists is for
href="…
oracknows | January 1, 2007This should come as no surprise. Thanks to Brian Deer, the journalist who uncovered so much of Dr. Andew Wakefield's shady research and dealings, we now know that Wakefield was paid by lawyers before his infamous MMR study and that he failed to disclose this clear conflict of interest:
ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe.
The payments, unearthed by The Sunday Times, were part of £3.4m distributed from the legal aid…
oracknows | December 30, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts, most of which are more than a year old.) These posts will be interspersed with occasional fresh material. This post originally appeared on November 30, 2005 and is the followup to the first article I did (reposted earlier today). I debated whether to repost…