medicine
palmd | January 7, 2010The following is a collaborative effort by PalMD, the usual author of this blog, and Ames Grawert, JD, a soon-to-be-sworn-in attorney working in New York City.
Proponents of science-based medicine have always had one major problem---human beings are natural scientists, but we are also very prone to cognitive mis-steps. When we follow the scientific method we have developed, we succeed very well in understanding and manipulating our environment. When we follow our instincts instead, we frequently fail to understand cause and effect. This is how people on the fringes of medicine and science…
oracknows | January 7, 2010As 2009 ended and 2010 began, I made a vow to myself to try to diversify the topics covered on this blog. Part of that vow was to try to avoid writing about vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement for more than a couple of days in a row. Unfortunately, even in the middle its very first full week, 2010 has already conspired to make a mockery of any "plans" I thought I might have for the blog, with a flurry of vaccine-related news items relevant to the pseudoscience that is the anti-vaccine movement coming fast and furious. Oh, well. I might as well just go with the flow and do what I do best--…
scientificactivist | January 6, 2010This isn't really anything new, but Emily Anthes has a nice summary in Slate today of what we currently know about the effectiveness of nutritional supplements--namely that they don't consistently show any clear benefits except in a few very specific situations:
Vitamins--with their promise to bridge the gap between the nutrients our bodies need and those they get--have always seemed reassuringly simple: Just pop a multivitamin and let your body soak in those extra nutrients. But not any longer. During the past few years, study after study has raised doubts about what, if any, good vitamins…
razib | January 6, 2010The Accuracy of Stated Energy Contents of Reduced-Energy, Commercially Prepared Foods:
The accuracy of stated energy contents of reduced-energy restaurant foods and frozen meals purchased from supermarkets was evaluated. Measured energy values of 29 quick-serve and sit-down restaurant foods averaged 18% more than stated values, and measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated. These differences substantially exceeded laboratory measurement error but did not achieve statistical significance due to considerable variability in the…
palmd | January 6, 2010It's hard to avoid news about the "obesity epidemic". Depending on who you talk to, obesity may be the number one killer of Americans or completely irrelevant to health. Alternative med boosters love to focus on obesity and other supposedly behavior-related illness. They use this to simultaneously blame the patient for their own ill-health, blame society for enabling them, and blame real doctors for not fixing it right.
The truth is that obesity is a real threat to health. The causes are protean. Societal problems, individual genetics, and politics can all contribute to obesity, as can…
oracknows | January 6, 2010One of the key claims of the "autism biomedical" movement is that something about autism derives from or is exacerbated by the gut; i.e., that there is some sort of link between GI problems, particularly inflammatory diseases of the GI tract, and autism. Although I may not be as versed in the history of this claim as I could be, as far as I can tell, even if this idea didn't originate with Andrew Wakefield, he certainly did a lot to popularize it. Indeed, a common misconception about his misbegotten 1998 Lancet paper that launched the anti-MMR anti-vaccine movement in the U.K. is that it…
oracknows | January 5, 2010After yesterday's post about how anti-vaccine grande dame Barbara Loe Fisher is suing Dr. Paul Offit, almost certainly in order to harass and intimidate him into silence, there was something that still bugs me, and that's the issue of jurisdiction. The defendants live in three different states: Paul Offit in Pennsylvania, Amy Wallace in California, and Condé Nast in New York. For instance, get a load of this tortuous justification for suing in Virginia, straight from Loe Fisher's complaint:
8. This Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants under Va. Code § 8.01- 328.1(A)(4) because…
palmd | January 4, 2010I'm giving two sessions at ScienceOnline10. The first, which I will be co-hosting with Dr. Val Jones, is entitled Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything. I've given similar talks to physicians, but given that Val and I may be nearly the entire medical team at the conference, we'll probably let the conversation branch out significantly. If you're interested in the session, please go to the conference wiki and let us know what you're thinking. Val is a great public speaker and I have a set of points I'd like to hit on, but this is supposed to me more…
oracknows | January 4, 2010Heh. Leave it to xkcd to sum it up perfectly:
(Click for full comic)
You know, I happen to love CSI:Miami as much as the next guy. In fact, it's one of my guilty TV pleasures. But any time there's a lab scene on that show (or any of the other CSI shows) it cracks me up. Beautiful people in pristine white lab coats delivering DNA sequences in an hour! Loud rock music blaring over cuts so fast that they induce seizures and would be considered too hyperactive even for a music video or a Michael Bay movie. Multi-colored Eppendorf tubes back lit so that they glow. These sorts of scenes have…
palmd | January 4, 2010I love it when friends read my blog. Maybe it's simple vanity, but I love being able to talk to people about what I'm writing. Readers who ask good questions (especially friends, because I trust their motives) help me reevaluate my message and my facts.
So an old friend sent me an email this weekend after reading a post, and it's a question deserving of careful examination. It goes to the mixed messages physicians give to patients even when we don't mean to.
I was anxious about vaccines and meted them out a little bit more slowly than is typical (only one or two at a time - just took…
oracknows | January 3, 2010In general, one of the biggest differences between those defending science-based medicine and those defending pseudoscience, quackery, and anti-science is that science inculcates in its adherents a culture of free and open debate. In marked contrast, those advocating pseudoscience tend to cultivate cultures of the echo chamber. Examples abound and include discussion forums devoted to "alternative" medicine like CureZone, where never is heard a discouraging word--because anyone expressing too much skepticism about the prevailing view on such forums invariably finds himself first shunned and…
palmd | January 2, 2010Being a physician and a father, I keep an eye out for news about childhood vaccinations. I've always been concerned about local statutes that allow kids to be admitted to school unvaccinated, especially when all that is required is an affirmation or a letter from a doctor or religious figure. This not only endangers these individual children but also others. As the rates of vaccination drop vaccine-preventable diseases regain a foothold. Children and adults who are either ineligible for vaccination or in whom vaccination was not completely effective can become ill. Parents can, of course…
oracknows | January 2, 2010Given my long known weak spot for Downfall parodies (even though they are an Internet fad whose time has come and probably already gone), how on earth did I miss this?
PodBlack Cat shows me that, believe it or not, Hitler was a chiropractor. He's been asked to talk about the use of chiropractic for infant colic (you know, the same thing that Simon Singh got in trouble in the U.K. for criticizing), but there is a most unfortunate (and hilarious) complication:
Best line: "Christ, there is more evidence that Elvis is still alive!" Well, maybe not. There are lots of good lines, and I had a hard…
palmd | January 1, 2010Or if he does, he's even a worse person than I'd realized. After suffering chest pain in Hawaii he was evaluated in a hospital. When discharged today, he held a briefing in which he praised the U.S. health care system as being the best in the world and remarked that he sees nothing wrong with it at all. He also stated that he received no special treatment. (I don't have links yet, as it was just on TV.)
Such unmitigated arrogance. Such hateful, uncompassionate ignorance. Chest pain can be a useful example of how we approach health care in the U.S., so let's dig and see how spectacularly…
oracknows | January 1, 2010Well, it's finally happened. 2009 is now in the dustbin of history. It was a thoroughly awful year, which is why hope springs eternal that 2010 will be better. Given that it would be difficult for 2010 to be worse than 2009, it's a pretty sure bet that it probably will be better, but I never underestimate the power of the universe to mess things up worse than they already are messed up. In other words, whenever I start thinking that things can't get any worse, I remind myself that they most definitely can. On the other hand, as far as the ol' blog goes, 2009 was a fantastic year. After around…
oracknows | December 31, 2009NOTE: Orac is on semi-vacation this week, trying very hard to recharge his Tarial cells. Actually, although he is at home, he is spending much of his time in his Sanctum Sanctorum (i.e., his home office) working on an R01 for the February submission cycle. Given that the week between Christmas and New Years Day tends to be pretty boring, both from a blogging and blog traffic standpoint, he's scaling back the new, original stuff and mixing in some "best of" reruns, as well as some more recent stuff that appeared in a different form elsewhere, modified a bit to be more appropriate to this blog…
palmd | December 30, 2009The fake doctors at HuffPo are at it again. This time, Patricia Fitzgerald is writing about the "Top 10 Healing Foods of the Decade." The article has just enough correct information in it to be exceptionally wrong.
One of the more ironic aspects to this is her quoting Michael Pollan. I have problems with some of Pollan's ideas, but I like his little saying, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." When he first wrote this in a New York Times piece, he was arguing against "nutritionism", the idea that you can break foods down into their components and then consume the component…
oracknows | December 30, 2009You know, when Age of Autism starts announcing its yearly "people of the year" awards, there's always a lot of blog fodder there to be had. Given that this is the time of year when I ramp the blog down a bit and, trying to relax a little, don't spend as much time doing detailed deconstructions or analyzing peer-reviewed papers, it's perfect for some quick observations about the anti-vaccine movement, of which Generation Rescue promotes through its propaganda blog, Age of Autism. This time around, I'm noting how these year end awards reinforce the point that "autism advocacy" of the type that…
palmd | December 30, 2009Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is reportedly a doctor, although according to her website, she no longer practices medicine in any recognizable way. Perhaps that's why she utters completely idiotic statements such as this one pointed out to me by Brother Orac:
Study these numbers. We've had SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu. On average, approx. 190 children/year die from the flu. Considering there are about 62M kids under the 14 years of age in the US, this is NOT "statistically signficant" and should not even make the radar screen. See how they manipulate parents into vaccinations?
Next year, PLEASE do not…
oracknows | December 29, 2009Vaccines save lives. In fact, they arguably save more lives than any other medical intervention devised by human beings. Unfortunately, the converse is also true. Anti-vaccine beliefs and the vaccine refusal that results from them kill. They leave children vulnerable to preventable diseases, and, sadly, here's yet more evidence that this is true:
At least 30 children have died in eastern At least 30 children have died in eastern Zimbabwe where members of the Johanne Marange Apostolic Faith church have refused to allow their children to be vaccinated against the deadly communicable disease.…