medicine
oracknows | September 16, 2011"CHEMOTHERAPY KILLS!!!!"
I've lost count of how many times I've come across brain-dead statements like the one above, often in all caps on websites resembling that of the Time Cube guy, quite frequently with more than one exclamation point, on the websites of "natural healers," purveyors of "alternative medicine." In fact, if you Google "chemotherapy doesn't work," "chemotherapy is poison," or "chemotherapy kills," you'll get thousands upon thousands of hits. In the case of "chemotherapy kills," Indeed, the top two autofill choices I get on Google for "chemotherapy kills" are "chemotherapy…
oracknows | September 14, 2011Oh goody.
Goody, goody, goody, goody, goody.
As I sat down to lay down a bit of the old ultrainsolence on a hapless bit of psuedoscience, I was near despair. For whatever reason, there didn't appear to be anything new out there for me to sink my teeth into. True, when this has happened in the past, I've often delved deep into the Folder of Woo in search of tasty tidbits of quackery saved for just this eventuality, but I really hate to do that. After all, it might be good to apply science, critical thinking, and reason to a particularly nonsensical bit of pseudoscience (which is fun) or to a…
pharyngula | September 14, 2011There was another Republican debate (I skipped it; there are limits to the horrors I can endure), and apparently, many people think Michele Bachmann trumped Rick Perry by jumping on his 'liberal' endorsement of using the HPV vaccine to prevent cancers in women. Bachmann ranted about the federal government forcing innocent little girls to get mental retardation injections, and the teabaggers loved it. They loved it almost as much as they loved Rick Perry's record of executions.
Orac rips her apart. It's great fun, and informative, too.
As I've pointed out time and time again, Gardasil is…
oracknows | September 13, 2011I don't often blog about politics anymore. As I've said on more than one occasion, political bloggers are a dime a dozen. Rare is the one that interests me much. However, sometimes things happen that lead me to make an exception, except that this time it's not really an exception because it has to do with two of the main topics that this blog is all about: science and the anti-vaccine movement. Those of you who watched the Republican debate the other day or saw the news reports about it yesterday probably know where this is going, but I'll go there anyway. First, I can't help but express my…
oracknows | September 13, 2011Unfortunately, I don't get to see very many movies these days. My wife and I both lead very busy lives, and with periodic spasms of grant writing, plus several new administrative responsibilities, it's just hard. Last weekend, however, a movie that I'd rather like to see came out. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it yet; so I can't give you a definitive review, but the movie caught my interest because it shows at least one thing that I don't recall ever having seen in a movie before. The movie is Contagion, and here's its trailer:
It's not so much the storyline that interests me. After all,…
oracknows | September 11, 2011If there's one thing about anti-vaccine activists that is virtually their sine qua non, it's an utter lack of understanding of science. Actually, a more accurate description would be that it's a highly selective understanding of science. Nowhere do I find this to be the case as much as when I see anti-vaccine loons pulling what I like to call the "toxins gambit," or, as I've put it before, "Why are we injecting TOXINS into our babies?" It's a gambit that anti-vaccine activists seemingly never tire of, and it comes in a wide variety of forms, but they all have one of two things in common.…
oracknows | September 9, 2011ORAC NOTE: Work kept me out late last night going out to dinner with a visiting professor. Fortunately, it was actually pretty fun. Unfortunately, it kept me from cooking up a heapin' helpin' of the Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, that my readers crave. So instead, here's a repost from elsewhere. I didn't think I could use it because the deadline for the survey I discuss was originally September 1. Fortunately, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) extended the deadline to September 16, making this post relevant for exactly one more week. Enjoy! And go…
oracknows | September 7, 2011One aspect of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) is the resurgence of practice of what has frequently been called "traditional Chinese medicine" (TCM). I've pointed out before that TCM is a prescientific system of medicine based largely on superstition and vitalism. Indeed, where ancient Greek and European medical systems believed that disease is due to imbalances in the four humors, TCM postulates disease to be due to imbalances in the five elements: Water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. These elements are thought to be related by cycles known as the Shen or Nourishing Cycle and…
oracknows | September 7, 2011I don't recall how many times I've said lately that I detest the term "integrative medicine." As I've pointed out time and time again, it's the preferred "successor," if you will, to the term "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) (at least among the woo-friendly). After all, as I've pointed out before, it just won't do to have the fashionable quackery du jour be considered as only being "complementary" or "alternative" to real medicine. That implies at best that it has a subsidiary role to real medicine and at worst that it is not real medicine, being "alternative" and all. The whole…
oracknows | September 6, 2011Sigh.
Why, oh, why do news organizations do such ridiculously stupid things?
In this case, the CBC decided to put up a poll regarding the chickenpox vaccine. Here's the setup:
The Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) says children should receive two doses of the chickenpox vaccine to avoid losing immunity and developing the disease as adults.
Chickenpox is an infectious disease that results in a blister-like rash, itching, tiredness, and fever. (Dr. John Noble, Jr./CDC)"Adults who get chickenpox have more serious illness, are more likely to get pneumonia and to be admitted to hospital. They also…
pharyngula | September 6, 2011We're finally rid of Jerry Lewis and his smarmy, condescending sponsorship of a telethon for muscular dystrophy. I think he meant well, but he had the wrong ideas: this article celebrating his absence makes a significant point. There are many diseases for which there can be no cure short of magically rebuilding entire bodies and brains — that is, no cure short of changing essentially the entirety of who the person is.
All that money was supposed to find what Jerry called "a cure." Every year he said "We're closer than ever to a cure." But every doctor and nurse will tell you the same thing:…
oracknows | September 5, 2011Over the weekend, I chilled out a bit, at least as far as the blog was concerned. I won't make too much of a secret of it, but thanks to the new policy of the new owners I have a decision to make. In the meantime, while I'm dithering, you, my readers, were deluging me with requests. Well, it wasn't exactly a deluge. Maybe three or four e-mails. But, hey, over a dull holiday weekend, when I spend most of the time either working on a grant or working in my yard? That's a deluge! Never let it be said, either, that I don't give the people what they want (usually, at least). So what are the latest…
oracknows | September 5, 2011This happens to be a holiday weekend. Believe it or not, sometimes even Orac needs a break from life, the universe, and every blog, particularly this one. I'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I realize that I've posted videos like this before (in fact, I'm sure that at some point or another I've linked to this one, but, hey, it's a holiday). However, this one is amazingly prescient, given that it dates back to the early 1990s.
Have fun commenting, and Orac will return on Tuesday--or even possibly before that....
oracknows | September 1, 2011One of my interests in skepticism and critical thinking has been the similarity in the fallacious arguments, approach to data, and general behavior of those who are--to put it generously--not so skeptical or scientific in their approach to life. I'm talking about believers in the paranormal, quacks, anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theory mavens, Holocaust deniers, creationists, anthropogenic global warming denialists, and cranks of all stripes. Indeed, it is this similarity in mindset that led Mark Hoofnagle to coin the term "crank magnetism," a perfect description of how people who…
oracknows | August 31, 2011It's one of those things that can't be repeated too many times, but homeopathy is ridiculous. In fact, so ridiculous is homeopathy that I don't usually write about it all that often. The reason is that, like homeopathic dilutions, a bit of skeptical blogging about homeopathy goes a long, long way (although I'm not sure whether diluting the blogging makes it stronger). True, anti-vaccine ideas are often just as ridiculous, but they're also dangerous to children, which is why I'll sometimes write about nothing but anti-vaccine nonsense for several days in a row. Homeopathy, on the other hand,…
oracknows | August 30, 2011Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty when I'm writing a post deconstructing anti-vaccine nonsense, "alternative medicine" quackery, or some other form of pseudoscience. This guilt usually derives when I end up picking a target that's just too easy, a study that's just so mind-numbingly, brain-meltingly awful that it's not much of a challenge, even though at the time I perceive that it needs to be done. I suppose it's like the feeling that a professional sports team might feel if it were ever paired with a high school team--or even a junior high--team for a game. In fact, I was half-tempted…
pharyngula | August 30, 2011My wife and I have three kids, and while that pregnancy and childbirth thing is way, way back in the past, we did have some strong opinions after our experience. Midwives were wonderful, we had only the best and most positive experiences with them, and they were the indispensable supporters we were glad to have there. The doctors…meh. They didn't seem to be involved much, and it was rather strange when they'd come by after all the work was done and sign the birth certificate, as if they were taking credit. But my wife had relatively uneventful, uncomplicated deliveries (the second was a bit…
oracknows | August 29, 2011I detest the term "integrative medicine," which is what promoters of "alternative medicine" pivoted to call "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) when they decided that they needed to lose the word "alternative" altogether. After all, no longer were CAM practitioners content to have their favorite quackery be "complementary" to real medicine because "complementary" implied a subsidiary position and they wanted to be co-equals with physicians and science- and evidence-based medicine. The term "integrative medicine" (IM) served their purpose perfectly, and "integrative medicine"…
oracknows | August 28, 2011Whenever I refer to an anti-vaccine activist as an "anti-vaxer" or an "anti-vaccinationist," I can always count on outraged and self-righteous denunciations from the the person who is being labeled as "anti-vaccine." "Oh, no," she'll say, "I'm not 'anti-vaccine.' I'm pro-safe vaccine." or "I'm a vaccine safety activist." Of couse, over the years, I've learned that the vast majority of such people are deluded in that they probably do really believe that they aren't anti-vaccine, but everything they do and say is pretty much always anti-vaccine. It's easy enough to tell just by asking a couple…
oracknows | August 26, 2011Here we go again.
Having been in the blogging biz for nearly seven years and developed a special interest in the anti-vaccine movement, I think I've been at this long enough to make some observations with at least a little authority. One thing that I've noticed is a very consistent pattern in which, every time a new study or report released that either fails to find evidence that vaccines cause autism or significant harm or that even concludes that vaccines do not cause autism, the anti-vaccine movement is right there, ready to attack it with pseudoscience, misinformation, and exaggerations…