medicine
oracknows | June 28, 2006Damn you, Kathleen.
Every time I think that I can give the whole mercury/autism thing a rest for a while and move on to less infuriating pastures, you keep finding things that keep dragging me back to the pit of pseudoscience inhabited by Dr. Mark Geier and his son David. The first time around, Kathleen found the Geiers misrepresenting David Geier's credentials on published journal articles to make it appear that David Geier had done the work reported in the articles at George Washington University when in fact he had not. I found David Geier's appropriation of the name of George Washington…
j7uy5 | June 27, 2006
Sarah Berga, et. al. presented a paper at
the
European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in
Prague, about the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy for treatment of
infertility. It this post, I elaborate on some of the details
that the mainstream media left out. I end by speculating
about what it might mean about our society, that such a simple solution
could have been overlooked for so long.
From a report on the Times Online:
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2235656,00.html">Learning
how to beat stress could be the best fertility treatment
by…
oracknows | June 27, 2006There's a lot of bad history out there. People abuse and misuse history all the time for their own ideological or political ends. Sometimes people are just ignorant of history. Fortunately, in the blogosphere, there's an antidote: The Carnival of Bad History. Jonathan has posted The Carnival of Bad History #6 at Frog in a Well. Naturally, there's lots of stuff on that ultimate in bad history (which I happen to take a great deal of interest in), Holocaust denial, but there are also debunked examples of lots of other bad history too. Enjoy.
clock | June 27, 2006The article I linked to in my previous post on the topic of having sex while asleep (or is it 'being sleep while having sex'?), e.g., the one I got pointed to by someone (e-mail?), is actually, quite terrible. So, instead, if you are interested in the topic, you should check out a much more serious website - Sleepsex.org, which focuses entirely on the phenomenon of sexsomnia.
I need to thank Karmen for pointing out that site to me. The site has extensive links to other sources of information, including links to all of Dr. Shapiro's papers on the topic. For instance, this paper (pdf)…
oracknows | June 26, 2006I've written several times about two young victims of what is normally a highly treatable cancer (Hodgkin's lymphoma) and how, with their parents' support, they have jeopardized their lives by choosing alternative therapies. The first, Katie Wernecke, was initially taken from her family by the State of Texas, but her parents ultimately won a court battle and took her out of the state for altie treatment with vitamin C infusions. Presently, she is somewhere out of state receiving some unknown treatment that, according to her father, he cannot disclose or the doctors will no longer treat her.…
oracknows | June 23, 2006Via Black Triangle, I've come across an article about a real medical hero, a man responsible for the development of many of the vaccines we have today. Indeed, it can be argued that this man, Dr. Maurice Hillman, may have saved more lives than any other physician in history. Those who remember him describe his reaction to the controversy stirred up by Andrew Wakefield:
The MMR was introduced into the UK in 1988, but became increasingly controversial following Andrew Wakefield's study published in the Lancet in the late 1990s, which linked the vaccine with autism.
That study has now been…
clock | June 23, 2006From L.A.Times (you'll have to click - I am purposefully citing out of context for humorous purposes):
Military researchers are considering a study to see whether Viagra could help soldiers function better at high altitudes.
High altitudes? How high? Who/what needs to get that high?
None of the cyclists reported an erection during the trials, she said.
Self-reporting, self-schmeporting! What do you think they were thinking about while "cycling"?
"If we send a group of guys into the mountains of Afghanistan, they need to be able to deal with the altitude," Fulco said.
Eh, as if our boys…
oracknows | June 22, 2006In the light of recently discovered possible chicanery on the part of Mark Geier and his dubious IRB, I found this report by John Leavitt very interesting:
My interest in inserting bacterial genes into mammalian cells stemmed from a paper published in Nature in 1971 by NIH scientists, Carl Merril, Mark Geier, and John Petricciani, entitled "Bacterial Virus Gene Expression in Human Cells." (Nature 233:398-400). Merril and colleagues presented experiments that claimed to show that a bacterial gene encoding galactosyltransferase, transduced into a bacteriophage DNA molecule, could be '…
j7uy5 | June 22, 2006I've written about this
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/02/pipeline-update-insomniaimplications.html">before,
but now there is some new information.
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16368265&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum"
rel="tag">Gaboxadol (THIP;
4,5,6,7-tetrahydroisoxazolo- [5,4-c] pyridin-3-ol)
is an investigational drug being developed by
title="company website" rel="tag"
href="http://www.lundbeck.com">Lundbeck in
conjunction with
href="http://www.merck.com/" rel="tag">Merck…
j7uy5 | June 22, 2006Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) currently is being
investigated as a treatment for major depression. (See
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3050">Psychiatry's
Shocking New Tools in IEEE Spectrum.)
Now, there is a report that it also may be useful for
migraine headache.
href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060621.whmigraine22/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home">Magnetic
device can head off migraines, neurologists say
UNNATI GANDHI
Globe and Mail
It's like something out of a video game.
Flashing lights, vertigo, a visual…
oracknows | June 22, 2006The latest Tangled Bank has been posted. Go get your science fix there.
Over at Emergiblog, a new nursing blog carnival (Change of Shift) has been inaugurated with Volume 1, Number 1.
oracknows | June 22, 2006Holy crap.
Just when I thought I had heard or seen it all, something comes up that proves me wrong. This time, the "something" comes to my attention via Corpus Callosum. It's a story about people abusing a drug. Only it's not just any drug, but a drug commonly used to treat breast cancer (which, given that a large part of my practice is the treatment of breast cancer patients, is why this item caught my attention).
They're abusing tamoxifen.
A survey of male and female gym attendees found not only growing rates of steroid abuse but also greater misuse of prescription drugs.
Prescription drugs…
oracknows | June 21, 2006Via The Onion (of course), Dr. Mike Ruddy proclaims:
'm a doctor, and I'm damn good at it. Why? Because I learned to be a doctor the old-fashioned way: gumption, elbow grease, and trial and error. I'm not one of these blowhards in a white coat who'll wear your ears out with 10 hours of mumbo-jumbo technical jargon about "diagnosis" this and "prognosis" that, just because he loves the sound of his own voice. No sir. I just get the job done.
Those fancy-pants college-boy doctors are always making a big deal about their "credentials." But I'm no show-off phony with a lot of framed pieces of…
clock | June 21, 2006The very first edition of Change Of Shift, the new carnival of nursing is up on the wonderful Kim's Emergiblog.
purepedantry | June 21, 2006Future Pundit reports on research that demonstrates -- shockingly enough -- that vegetables are good for you. Alert the media I say!
Anyway, I wouldn't even mention it, but I love this line by him:
Most people do not eat an optimal amount of vegetables. Another report providing yet more evidence on the benefits of vegetables won't cause many to alter their diets. Maybe what we need is some sort of Pop-Tart that is mostly vegetables but with flavoring designed to hide the vegetable taste. (Emphasis mine.)
Perhaps some sort of magical Veggie-tart that tastes good yet is good for you -- a…
oracknows | June 21, 2006It's been a very interesting week for those of us who try to keep an eye on antivaccination warriors who scare mothers with claims based on either no science or bad science of dire consequences that will come from vaccinating their children.
A very interesting week indeed, kind of like that old curse, "May you live in interesting times."
Last week, eight years after his study that set off scare whose repercussions continue even now, Andrew Wakefield was finally called to account for professional misconduct for unreported conflicts of interest and highly unethical and unprofessional behavior.…
j7uy5 | June 20, 2006I'm sitting here, wondering why in the world I wrote so much about a
topic that is of no more than passing interest to me. Perhaps
if I keep writing, I will figure it out.
Note: this will not make much sense unless you've already read Janet's
more recent post on the topic of breastfeeding, here:
href="http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/06/what_are_the_real_benefits_of.php">What
are the real benefits of breastfeeding? Statisticians weigh in.
You also have to have read the main article she cites, here:
href="http://www.stats.org/stories/breast_feed_nyt_jun_20_06.htm">…
j7uy5 | June 20, 2006Sometimes, when I write about new psychotropic medication coming to
market, I include a comment on the abuse potential. For
example, I've commented before on the relative lack of abuse potential
for
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozerem" rel="tag">ramelteon
(
href="http://www.rozerem.com/home_c.aspx" rel="tag">Rozerem)
and
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil" rel="tag">modafinil
(
href="http://www.provigil.com/" rel="tag">Provigil).
Usually, I end with a disclaimer: "but some people will abuse
anything."
Despite that universal disclaimer, I really never…
oracknows | June 20, 2006Australian skeptic Peter Bowditch was challenged by a homeopath to take some homeopathic 200C belladonna tablets. Ever the intrepid skeptic and critical thinker, Peter has now answered the challenge in front of 100 people and reported his experience, beginning with a description of what he should have experienced:
A Modern Herbal by Mrs Maud Grieve, where it says that I should have been experiencing ""Strange indescribable feelings with giddiness, yawning, staggering or falling on attempting to walk; dryness of mouth and throat, sense as of suffocation, swallowing difficult, voice husky; face…