palmd | April 8, 2009Blake has pointed out to me that my feedburner feed isn't working, so I'm changing back to the scienceblogs feed. If you use rss feeds, please change your settings accordingly. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.
palmd | April 8, 2009The Times is reporting that health care workers actively assisted in the torture of CIA detainees overseas. This, as you might imagine, sickens me.
Many of us have seen movies or read spy novels where a doctor stands by as someone is tortured, monitoring their condition and telling the interrogator when they need to back off. It turns out this really happens.
I don't have that much to say about this that isn't obvious, i.e., it's never acceptable for health care workers (HCWs) to participate in activities designed to cause their patients intentional discomfort or injury. That's a no-…
palmd | April 7, 2009Remember last week when I told you about this guy over at HuffPo who was all excited about an experiment on spooky distance healing? Remember how the "study" used glorified Scientology E-meters and ginned up the negative data to make it look good? Remember how this guy abused the word quantum until it begged for mercy?
Well, they let him write again. Very sad. But at least this time his article has an appropriate title: Why Rational Thinking Is Not All It's Cracked Up To Be.
It's like this: if you have a car, but you've never learned to drive, and aren't even sure what a car is for, you…
palmd | April 6, 2009I don't know what it's like to be autistic. I don't know what it's like to raise an autistic child. For this knowledge, I have to rely on others, and there are plenty of talented bloggers out there who write about these experiences all the time. What I do know is that there is a cadre of autism "activists" out there who do a great disservice to people who do know something about these experiences.
One such example is Dr. Jerry Kartzinel, who co-wrote Jenny McCarthy's latest monument to her own idiocy. "Dr. Jerry" is infamous among many parents of autistic children for this quote:
Autism,…
palmd | April 3, 2009Well, HuffPo does it again. No other mainstream news outlet brings the stupid on health news like Arianna. Take today's vapid article on vitamin supplementation.
Let me remind all of you amateur biologists that vitamins, discovered over a hundred years ago, were found to be "vital" to health. What made them different from macronutrients such as fats, proteins, sugars, etc., is that they were only required in very small quantities. There has always been a fascination with vitamins, and even during this time of nutritional excess, people like their supplements.
Thankfully there are…
palmd | April 3, 2009Open Lab is a project that collects all the best science blogging of the year, kills a few trees, and prints them all together in something called a "book". Of course, I am featured in Open Lab 2008 (with 49 of my closest friends), and I'd love to be this year as well.
Here is how you submit a post:
Just click on this thing. Of course, just nominating all of my fabulous posts would look a bit funny, so nominate posts from your other favorite bloggers as well. Don't worry about how many you submit---the editor can handle it.
palmd | April 2, 2009I don't get anywhere near the time I'd like with my daughter. We have, to say the least, rather divergent schedules. For a while I was getting her up in the morning, but my schedule is demanding that I get up earlier, and she's not so happy about that. This morning I got lucky, though.
This morning after the alarm went off, I heard the "tonk tonk tonk" of little feet running to the bathroom. I put on my robe and peeked in, to find my kiddo sitting on the can smiling. She was up and ready to chat (when she's awake, she's talking).
"Daddy, why don't you cuddle me at night anymore?"
"What…
palmd | April 2, 2009We're being far to easy on our medical students. In the old days, when giants walked the Earth, medical students wore sackcloth and lived in the anatomy lab with the cadavers. They didn't have time to do something as frivolous as writing.
Well, they are doing just that. Some rather clever med students are finding time to become blogospheric bros. I would point you to Tim Kreider, one of my co-bloggers at Science-Based Medicine. He's written some terrific stuff, and I think I can promise you some truly stimulating pieces to come.
We also have Beyond the Short Coat, which, despite it's…
palmd | April 2, 2009"You know the moon landings were ginned up on a Hollywood sound stage, right?"
"Hey, how come it's so hard to get the Truth out there about the 9/11 attacks being staged by the CIA/Mossad?"
"I don't know why they think I'm crazy; the aliens really did probe my anus."
We hear crap like this all the time, but these wackos never get ink in major media outlets because, well, they are so clearly paranoid and deranged. So why do we see a similarly paranoid, deranged person like Jenny McCarthy on the pages of Time magazine? Is it because she's more photogenic than most alien abductees? Is it…
palmd | April 1, 2009I have this friend. Wait, let me backtrack. I have this other friend, his name is Danny Dan. We pretty much grew up together, but lost touch as adults. A couple of years ago, I was at the mall with my little girl, and I saw a kid with a name tag from the same school as my kid. On the tag was his last name. I took one look, and I knew it was Dan's son. I'm sure Lori had something to do with it, but the boy looks just like Dan.
Dan, Lori, and Hayden
I know Lori was involved with making the kid because she gave birth to him. A few weeks after mini-Dan was born, she went to her follow…
palmd | April 1, 2009My friend Isis wrote today about her immigrant past, and it reminded me a bit about mine, although a generation removed. Last year I wrote a little piece about rediscovering family, and today I'd like tell you a little more detail about their immigration.
My grandfather Phil came from a town called Ostrow-Mazowiecka in Poland (my grandmother has a similar story, but from another town called Skitel, in Belarus), and while he was not wealthy, his cousins owned some of the prosperous businesses in town, including the lumber mill, the brewery, and the electric station.
My cousins in front…
palmd | March 30, 2009This war taking place in our nation's medical schools and academic medical centers. Orac at Respectful Insolence has been tracking this trend, as have those of us writing at Science-Based Medicine. It is a war between those who feel that medicine should continue to be based on science and those who want to integrate faith-based practices. The model for this war is not that of pedagogical disputes or funding scuffles. More than anything else, it resembles a religious war.
The basic story goes like this: medical schools are in charge of educating future doctors. Individual hospitals are…
palmd | March 27, 2009Pope Benedict, the former head of the same Church body that ran the Inquisition, has done it again. He just committed an act which is morally equivalent to involuntary sodomy, and did it to an entire continent.
Africa, the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, sometimes seems to have not all that much going for it---AIDS drugs are expensive, some leaders have been idiots, but there have been some bright lights, such as Botswana's comprehensive HIV prevention program.
So when some German dude walks in and tells everyone that condoms are wrong and may make the problem worse, one might consider…
palmd | March 26, 2009The best way to prevent sexually transmitted infections is the proper use of condoms. That being said, it's not the only way to prevent STI's. Abstinence is one way, but it involves an amputation of sorts---the removal of a critical human behavior. Another amputation (of sorts) that prevents STIs is circumcision. Male circumcision has been found in several good studies to reduce the rate of HIV transmission, and now a study out of Uganda shows a significant decrease in rates of genital herpes infections (HSV-2), human papilloma virus (HPV) infection (the strains that cause penile,…
palmd | March 26, 2009My first blogiversary at scienceblogs.com came and went on March 20th, and I failed to eat cake. Oh well, next time I'll remember party favors.
palmd | March 25, 2009Whatever you think of its political reporting, no other mainstream media outlet can bring the stupid like the Huffington Post, especially with regards to medical reporting. Its most famous contributors include antivaccinationists like David Kirby and Robert Kennedy, Jr., and kumbaya therapy wackaloon Deepak Chopra.
Now they bring us an article by some dude I've never heard of with a title that should have him laughed out of any legitimate scientific institution: "The Science of Distant Healing". This is one stupid article.
First of all, who the hell is this guy? According to his bio:
Dr.…
palmd | March 24, 2009The current insanity at JAMA has been well reported elsewhere (also see these links: here, here, here, and here). I'll give you a thumbnail sketch. A professor from a small university wrote to JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) to let them know that an author of an antidepressant study appeared to have an undisclosed conflict of interest (COI). When he didn't hear back from JAMA he wrote to a more prestigious journal, the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) who published his letter. This caused the editors at JAMA to completely lose their shit, threatening the letter…
palmd | March 23, 2009There's nothing like the sound of a little kid laughing. It's not just a sound, but an experience of the entire body and mind. They lose control---often of the bladder, and without shame. Anything sets them off---a joke, a pratfall, a burp (and everyone's favorite, the butt-trumpet).
We had a great weekend together. Lot's of play time and cuddling. Her cousin came over to play. They're about a year-and-a-half apart and have sleep-overs all the time. They might as well be sisters (they sure fight like sisters).
Nights are the best, laughs or not. She loves my iPod (as do I) and we…
palmd | March 22, 2009I was invited to speak on Atheist Talk this morning, a radio show put on by Minnesota Atheists. Stephanie Zvan did the interview, and she's quite good. The show is available as a podcast, and today's show had little to do at all with atheism (in fact, in all the times Stephanie and I have corresponded, I'm not sure if I've ever discussed my views on religion). This morning's show was on medicine and skepticism, and I think it's worth a listen.
Between the radio show and the bloggingheads gig, I didn't manage to crank out a PalCast today, but I'll see what i can do later in the week.
palmd | March 21, 2009Janet and I have another bloggingheads discussion up. We talk about ethics, alternative medicine, and her prostate. Go and watch.