medicine
oracknows | July 22, 2006Head on over and give fellow physician and outspoken warrior against pseudoscience Dr. R. W. a hearty congratulations!
Today is his first blogiversary.
May there be many more!
clock | July 22, 2006Today's Raleigh News and Observer has a nice article about Elizabeth Edwards (the smartest of the 2004 Democratic candidate quartet), her battle with cancer and her new book (including a couple of short excerpts):
Edwards emerges from cancer with grace:
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John Edwards, says in a new book that she survived a harrowing battle with advanced breast cancer last year that left her too depleted for public appearances.
Largely out of the public eye since her husband's loss to the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004,…
oracknows | July 22, 2006I tell you, I take a night off from blogging, not even glancing at the blog or my e-mail, instead falling into a deep slumber at 10 PM after The Dog Whisperer on TV, thanks to a somewhat stressful week and a large meal plus a beer, and what happens?
Abraham' Cherrix's uncle comments on the old blog and the legal decision regarding whether Abraham has to undergo chemotherapy is issued, three days later than originally anticipated, that's what! In this case, the judge decided that Abraham must report on Tuesday to undergo conventional therapy. Fortunately, I realize (most of the time, anyway)…
oracknows | July 21, 2006Alright, I admit it.
I went a little overboard with last week's edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. This feature was intended to be a light-hearted look at whatever particular woo target that catches my fancy on a given week, as opposed to the more serious discussions of alternative medicine I like to do at other times. However, it's a fine line between believing in a bit of strange altie woo and possibly being a disturbed individual, and I fear that last week's targets (the guy who wanted to sell the secrets of Jesus on Ebay and Alex Chiu, who claims to have figured out how humans can be…
scientificactivist | July 21, 2006This post from the archives describes a recent research finding that may be welcome news for some....
(24 May 2006) If you know what I'm talking about, and if you are in fact "cool", then you might also be interested in the findings presented Tuesday by Dr. Donald Tashkin and his coauthors at an American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego. In short, smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer:
The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A…
j7uy5 | July 20, 2006This is from a study published in the latest NEJM: The "Gender Gap" in
Authorship of Academic Medical Literature — A 35-Year
Perspective [
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/355/3/281">abstract/
rev="review"
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/3/281">full
text/
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/3/310">editorial
(subscription required for full text and editorial)].
First, the good news:
During the past four decades, the participation of
women in medicine has increased dramatically. Women now represent 49
percent of all medical…
grrlscientist | July 20, 2006
Image source.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists revealed that they were pressured to exclude or alter research findings. Further, they said they fear retaliation for voicing safety concerns and they think that public health and safety will suffer without leadership from the FDA and Congress.
(Press release below the fold)
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today released survey results that demonstrate pervasive and dangerous political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one fifth…
oracknows | July 20, 2006You may have noticed that I opted out of the last two or three weeks worth of Ask a ScienceBlogger questions. The last couple of weeks it was because the questions simply didn't interest me, and the week before that it was because i just plain forgot.
This week, however, our overlords at SEED Magazine demand:
If you could have practiced science in any time and any place throughout history, which would it be, and why?
That's a pretty easy one. I'm with Stein in that I answer: Now.
Think about it. I'm a physician, and my interest is in studying cancer. I started graduate school in 1990. Since…
scientificactivist | July 20, 2006From the archives:
(19 January 2006) Which of the following does not belong?
(a) abortion
(b) medical marijuana
(c) physician-assisted suicide
Although all three are contentious and litigious medical issues, the answer seems to be choice (b), medical marijuana, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On January 17, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Gonzales v. Oregon that the U.S. Attorney General did not have the authority to criminalize the prescription of lethal doses of drugs, currently allowed under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, originally approved in 1994. The act, approved again in a…
oracknows | July 19, 2006I thought this was a joke when a reader e-mailed me about it. I mean, it's just so over-the-top that I had a hard time believing that it was real.
It was (found via MacDailyNews):
The huge rise of autism in Britain is linked to old iPod batteries, mobile phones and other products of the electronic age, a leading scientist claimed this weekend.
Autistic children have been shown to have problems getting rid of toxic metals - and those metals are increasingly polluting the environment, says Dr Richard Lathe.
"Think of iPod batteries, computers, television sets and mobile phones - thousands of…
oracknows | July 19, 2006Here we are, five and a half years into George W. Bush's Presidency, and he's not yet vetoed a bill. Not even a single bill. All sorts of bad legislation have been passed, from the bankruptcy reform legislation that makes it harder for people to start again after declaring bankruptcy, to budgets containing huge increases in spending, to a really offensive campaign finance reform package that restricts political speech.
All passed with nary a peep from the President.
So what gets Bush's dander up enough to finally pull out his veto pen and use his power to veto a bill he doesn't like?…
terrasig | July 18, 2006Monday's contest to win $50 decoding the chemical and historical nature of the Terra Sigillata banner masthead got such a response that I didn't even expect it. Amazingly, one entrant answered 4 of the 5 questions correctly, with the 5th being closest of anyone.
I'll be contacting the lucky feller forthwith regarding delivery of his fifty American dollars. The answers will follow in subsequent posts, but here are the questions once again of you care to exercise your mind:
1. What is the complete name of the dude on the righthand side of the banner and why do you think I picked him to as the…
oracknows | July 17, 2006The time is rapidly approaching again. This Thursday, the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle, the only blog carnival that I'm aware of that is dedicated to skepticism and critical thinking, is scheduled to appear at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant, which means you have only two days to get your best skeptical blogging to Mike, per his instructions here. Guidelines for what sorts of blogging the Skeptics' Circle is looking for can be found here.
oracknows | July 17, 2006Via Kevin, MD, here's a Washington Post article describing how the religious beliefs of health care practitioners result in the denial of care. Here are some examples:
Cynthia Copeland also had a run-in with a pharmacist in 2004. He wrongly assumed she was planning an abortion because she had a prescription for a drug that can be used for that purpose. In fact, Copeland had already had undergone a procedure to remove a fetus that had no pulse, and she needed the drug to complete the process.
"I was sitting there in the drugstore waiting and heard the pharmacist say really loudly, 'I refuse to…
oracknows | July 17, 2006Many of the bloggers here at ScienceBlogs lament about the woeful state of science knowledge among the U.S. public. This ignorance about the basics of science and the scientific method has been blamed on many things, whether it be the poor quality of science education in the public schools, an all-too-prevalent view of science as not being "sexy" or "interesting," and the rise of a distinct antiscience bias, particularly in the present administration. Many of us have also lamented at one time or another about how this ignorance allows pseudoscientific belief systems like "intelligent design"…
terrasig | July 16, 2006I've never properly acknowledged the commercial artist, Mr Brien O'Reilly of SaBOR Design, who designed the content-rich, scientific eye-candy banner in the masthead above for the Sb version of Terra Sigillata.
So, I'd like to kick off the week raising awareness of the banner and advertising Mr O'Reilly's talents and services by asking some questions of you about the design elements of the banner. And, since I know that many readers of Terra Sig are poor graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, I'm well-aware that nothing gets your attention like cash-for-knowledge. (Well, yes, free…
oracknows | July 16, 2006It was a sad day when of the earliest and most prolific medbloggers, Medpundit retired from blogging a couple of months ago. However, like many of us, she's found that she just can't keep out of the blogospher, and, via Kevin, M.D. and GruntDoc, I've learned that she's back:
Well, it's official. I'm a blogging addict. I can't give this up. Not quite two months away from it, and I'm forsaking my family to rejoin the blogging life.
I'm not really forsaking them. They urged me to return. Smothering mothering is not working out well for us. Not only that, without blogging, my rants against the…
oracknows | July 16, 2006Pediatric Grand Rounds, vol. 1, no. 7 has been posted at Pediatricsinfo.com. Check it out.