medicine
palmd | February 8, 2010There's a prosecution going on in Texas that sounds so corrupt, and could have such a chilling influence on the pursuit of quackery nationwide, that it cannot be ignored. I urge you to read the story in the Times, but here's a brief recap.
In Kermit, a small Texas town, two nurses at local hospital became concerned about the practices of one of the physicians, Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles, Jr. Among the alleged practices were the improper peddling of herbal medicines to hospital patients, and the performance of (sometimes unorthodox) surgical procedures without the appropriate privileges to do…
oracknows | February 8, 2010It looks as though Generation Rescue's bubble-brained spokescelebrities Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey have finally found their niche. Can you guess where it is? Come on, take two guesses! That's right. They've made it into NaturalNews.com, crossposted from a post they had their handlers make to Age of Autism, entitled A Statement from Jenny McCarthy & Jim Carrey: Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys. Truly, it is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen on AoA or NaturalNews.com. You'll see why in a moment. Suffice it to say that Jenny and Jim have the most…
oracknows | February 7, 2010About five months ago, I blogged about a true miscarriage of justice, the sort of thing that should never, ever happen. In brief, it was the story of two nurses who, disturbed at how a local doctor was peddling his dubious "herbal" concoctions in the emergency room of the local hospital when he came in to see patients, reported him to the authorities. Moreover, they had gone up the chain of command, first complaining to hospital authorities. After nothing happened for months, they decided to report the physician, Dr. Rolando Arafiles, Jr., to the Texas Medical Board because they honestly…
oracknows | February 7, 2010My adopted alter ego may be nothing but a computer played by a box of colored blinking lights, but those few who are actually familiar with the 30 year old British SF TV show that featured Orac beginning in the last episode of its first season know that Orac is an arrogant and vain computer. Given that, how could I fail to notice a couple of accolades that came my way last week.
First off, on Friday, Respectful Insolence was included in a list of top skeptical blogs, along with Science-Based Medicine, NeuroLogica Blog (which Steve Novella informs me is down due to excess traffic and a really…
oracknows | February 5, 2010Thanks to Andrew Wakefield, it's been pretty much vaccine week for me. Well, mostly anyway, I did manage to have some fun with Mike Adams and the immune system, but otherwise it's been all vaccines all the time this week. As I mentioned yesterday, at the risk of dwelling on one topic so long that I start driving away readers, I've just decided to ride the wave and go with it until it's over. Unless something blows up over the weekend, I rather suspect that, for all intents and purposes, it'll be over as of today and I can move on to other topics starting Monday. At least I hope so.
But there'…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2010tags: health, medicine, TEDMED,health care, ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, technology, internet, Jamie Heywood, TEDTalks, streaming video
When Jamie Heywood's brother was diagnosed with ALS, he devoted his life to fighting the disease as well. The Heywood brothers built an ingenious website where people share and track data on their illnesses -- and they discovered that the collective data had enormous power to comfort, explain and predict.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the…
oracknows | February 4, 2010Here we go again (rest of the post below the fold because there is a video that autostarts):
"Irreprehensible"? "One in nine" are being diagnosed with autism? Where on earth did he get that figure? Can't CNN find more intelligent people to feature when it comes to reporting about the Wakefield retraction? Someone capable of putting together a rational argument, rather than a nearly incoherent bunch of conspiracy mongering strung together in seemingly random order? His arguments are painfully obtuse, and thus far there's only one skeptical voice in the comments.
On the other hand, this is…
palmd | February 4, 2010I recently raised some questions about narcotic therapy contracts and my readers raised even more issues. Some of these questions deserve further discussion.
First, despite the examples I gave, when I'm speaking about narcotic contracts I am talking about people chronically on narcotics. I don't normally use contracts for people with self-limited problems. That doesn't mean these patients aren't susceptible to the same problems as long-term users of narcotics, but the thinking is (based on what data, I don't know) that people with a clear, self-limited, anatomic problem, such as a kidney…
palmd | February 4, 2010Medicine has traditionally been full of hierarchies. Employees' uniforms make their role easy to identify: one color for radiology techs, another for secretaries, etc. When I was a resident, medical students wore short white coats, residents long blue coats, and attendings long grey coats.
Medicine is also a traditionally male-dominated field, and despite the fact that a small majority of medical students are female, the higher academic and administrative positions are still male-dominated.
Nursing, on the other hand, is traditionally female. Nurses, despite their indispensable role…
oracknows | February 4, 2010I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I'm writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield's being found to have behaved unethically and dishonestly by the British General Medical Council, only to be followed up a few days later with the news that the editors of The Lancet had retracted his 1998 paper, the paper that started the MMR scare in the U.K. and launched a thousand autism quacks. Meanwhile, the cranks…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2010tags: health, medicine, health care, diagnostics, poverty, technology, George Whitesides, TEDTalks, streaming video
Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for regions that are most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer, at TEDxBoston, is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.
In his legendary career in chemistry, George Whitesides has been a pioneer in microfabrication and nanoscale self-assembly. Now, he's fabbing a diagnostic lab on a chip.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from…
palmd | February 3, 2010I'm heartened by the discussions of medical ethics arising out of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. From reading and listening to interviews with writer Rebecca Skloot, and from my brief conversations with her, I know that medical ethics were very much on her mind during the ten years it took her to create the book. If you read the book, you will see that she was also very concerned that she not be just another exploiter of the Lacks family. That's one reason comments such as this one are disturbing----and at the same time not really disturbing at all. It helps to highlight the amount…
oracknows | February 3, 2010
You know I'm a sucker for a heartfelt plea from an anti-vaccine activist. That's why, upon seeing Kim Stagliano write in Age of Autism:
Hi, I'd appreciate your comments over at HuffPo on my post, The Censorship of Autism Treatment" HERE.
I had to admit that I heartily agree. That's why I'm asking my readers to take Ms. Stagliano up on her offer and head on over to comment on her post! Who says Orac is not a kind and benevolent box of blinking colored lights?
Even more amusingly, Kim's post was entitled The Censorship of Autism Treatment, which makes what she says next even more rich in…
oracknows | February 3, 2010If I am wrong I will be a bad person because I will have raised this spectre.
Andrew Wakefield, March 3, 1998.
Interview in The Independent.
The martyrdom of brave maverick Saint Andy continues apace, it would appear.
As you recall, last week, after an interminable proceeding that stretched out over two and a half years, the General Medical Council in the U.K. finally ruled on the question of whether Andrew Wakefield, the man whose incompetently performed, trial lawyer-backed study published in the Lancet in 1998, acted unethically. The answer, not surprisingly, was a resounding yes, or,…
oracknows | February 2, 2010Sure, this is old, but I hadn't seen a video quite this cool before. Behold, a human polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN, or neutrophil) on a blood film, "chasing" Staphylococcus aureus.
There are more videos of cells in action here.
It never ceases to amaze me how cells can detect biochemical gradients over such short distances and use them for navigation. I'm sure I'll find it just as fascinating right up until the day I can't think of science anymore.
oracknows | February 2, 2010I know I spent a fair bit of time last week slapping down Mike Adams, creator of NaturalNews.com website. In reality, he richly deserved it, as he has richly deserved it many times in the past. Indeed, were I so inclined, I could devote this blog to nothing but the deconstruction of the quackery and woo laid down each and every day by Mike Adams and his merry band of quacks, much as Kim Wombles does with the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism through her blog Countering Age of Autism, but I'd eventually get tired of it and so would you. Sometimes I do get tired of it.
This is not one…
jstemwedel | February 1, 2010I have, of late, received a number of emails asking advice on matters somewhere in the territory between ethics, etiquette, and effective communication with members of the tribe of science. While I'm no Ann Landers (as has been noted before), I'll do my best to answer these questions on the blog when I can, largely so my very insightful commentariat can chime in and make the resulting advice better than what I could generate on my own.
Today we have a question from a reader struggling with the question of how to address one letter to two doctors. He writes:
Hi Dr Free-Ride,
I'm not sure if…
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
palmd | February 1, 2010Treating patients with narcotic analgesics is not simple. Narcotics can be very effective at relieving pain, but they come with a whole set of problems, including risk of adverse effects such as nausea, constipation, and altered mental status; overdose; and dependence. As I've written before, narcotic-dependent patients can be a challenge to treat. One of the tools we use is the "narcotic contract", a document which explicitly states the rights and responsibilities of the health care provider and the patient (although in practice, it tends to put more emphasis on the rights of the provider…
oracknows | February 1, 2010...from, of all places, a Daily Kos diary.
Although the post itself is quite good, some of the comments make baby Jesus cry. There's even one repeating the old myth about H. pylori and how Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were supposedly "ostracized" for their "heresy" back in the 1980s.
Still, it's good to see that the GMC ruling is having an effect as far as spreading the message about Andrew Wakefield.