medicine
oracknows | November 4, 2009Oh, hell. I actually used to like Smashing Pumpkins back in the 1990s. Unfortunately, its leader, Billy Corgan, has just revealed himself to be as medically ignorant as Jenny McCarthy in a recent blog post:
If you follow some of the links I have been supplying as of late, you'll notice many are focused on the propaganda build up to our day of reckoning with the Swine Flu virus. I say 'propaganda' because, in my heart, there is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic. merican President Obama has declared a…
palmd | November 3, 2009The mainstream media is finally catching on to a disturbing story--the insertion of faith-healing and other non-scientific practices into health care reform. Health bloggers have been on this story for a while, showing us that Senate Bill 1679 currently contains language that would require support for faith healing practices:
The essential benefits provided for in subparagraph (A) shall include a requirement that there be non-discrimination in health care in a manner that, with respect to an individual who is eligible for medical or surgical care under a qualified health plan offered through…
oracknows | November 3, 2009Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it's finally here:
Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.)
I can only say that, after having perused the next couple of chapters after Chapter 1, I can already feel my brain melting and oozing out through my ears, screaming as the neuron-necrosing stupidity liquifies it. I've also noticed that, by and large, this book is…
palmd | November 2, 2009One of my dear readers just left the internet equivalent of a flaming bag of turd on my bloggy doorstep:
Everybody should read this article by Dr. Russell Blaylock http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/What-We-H…
These are the facts folks, all information is derived from Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Whenever stamping out the flaming bag of poo, it's wise to remember ones shoes may become sullied. Still, how can I…
oracknows | November 2, 2009...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.
True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)
Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their…
jstemwedel | November 2, 2009Abel and Orac and Isis have recently called attention to the flak Amy Wallace had been getting for her recent article in WIRED Magazine, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All". The flak Wallace has gotten, as detailed in her Twitter feed (from which Abel constructed a compilation):
I've been called stupid, greedy, a whore, a prostitute, and a "fking lib." I've been called the author of "heinous tripe."
J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group that actress Jenny McCarthy helps promote, sent an essay title" "Paul Offit Rapes…
palmd | November 2, 2009This is not a normal flu season (if you hadn't heard). Normally, summer sees a return of flu cases to a low baseline, but not this year---this year we saw a bump in cases around April, with a consistent trickle of cases throughout the summer, and significant outbreaks at summer camps and military bases. And now, from that "higher low point" we are seeing an early, rapid rise in flu cases. Some of this is likely attributable to an increase in reporting---people are worried and going to the doctor for illnesses that they would normally ignore. But that isn't likely to be the bulk of reported…
oracknows | November 2, 2009Several of my readers have been writing in with links and stories about the case of Desiree Jennings, a 28-year-old cheerleader who was apparently healthy until sometime in August, when she received the seasonal flu vaccine. A typical news story on Jennings can be seen here:
I'm not a neurologist, which made me reluctant to take this on, but right from the beginning something didn't seem right. I had never heard of a case of dystonia that looked anything like the above, particularly the part where walking backwards reversed (if you'll excuse my word choice) her jerky motions or where she…
oracknows | October 30, 2009The little matter of finding out that the actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation appears to have anti-vaccine proclivities sidetracked me from something that I had actually wanted to blog about yesterday. Specifically, it's something that my blog bud Abel Pharmboy has been hitting hard over the last couple of days. It may also, sadly, because I've become a bit jaded at the nastiness that anti-vaccine groups such as Generation Rescue (i.e., "Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's Autism Organization"--at least days) and its erstwile founder J.B. Handley can lay down. I'm referring,…
clock | October 29, 2009If you follow me on Twitter or peruse the links in my daily Tweetlinks summaries, you may have noticed I posted several links to a new Collection at PLoS. This one is not a PLoS ONE Collection, but a PLoS-wide one, spanning six of the seven journals in the house.
The Collection Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease, was compiled by Jonathan A. Eisen (who you probably know from his excellent blog), the Academic Editor-in-Chief at PLoS Biology.
Jonathan, together with PLoS Biology Senior Editor Catriona J. MacCallum, wrote the introductory editorial explaining what the Collection is about and…
oracknows | October 28, 2009
Unfortunately, Brent Spiner is not living up to Commander Data's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
Say it ain't so, Data! Say it ain't so!Last night, I decided for the heck of it to check my Twitter account, something I only tend to do sporadically, although I do keep a constant stream of links to the latest Insolence flowing, to the gratitude and awe of my followers, when I saw this Tweet directed at me from someone with the 'nym Zombie President:
@BrentSpiner I prefer @oracknows over Dr jay gordon any day.
Huh? I wondered what was going on. One thing you should know before I continue is that…
palmd | October 28, 2009A hat-tip to my buddy Abel over at TerraSig for keeping this story alive and inspiring me to chime in. --PalMD
It's no secret that I find the anti-vaccination crowd to be abhorrent. The public's health is the first victim, followed closely by individual patients and parents struggling with individual health decisions. I cannot fault patients for making bad decisions---the anti-vaccination movement has a very effective propaganda arm. Folks like Jenny McCarthy have a large audience and make no secret of their desire to see infectious diseases increase in others:
I do believe sadly it's…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of "alternative" medicine have already done through Senator Tom Harkin, and hijack the health care reform process to codify their preferred unscientific health care modalities as legitimate after science has…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Damn you, PZ!
Not only are you muscling into my territory (what, aren't creationism and atheism enough?), but you had to subject me to the most mind-numbing example of why homeopaths are the most clueless purveyors of pseudoscience there are! Behold, Dr. Charlene Werner, an optometrist (apparently) and a homeopath. I warn you, however. If you have any understanding of physics or chemistry whatsoever or if you've ever read (and liked) Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (or anything else he's ever written), sit down now. Take a deep breath. Heck, crack open a bottle of wine and down at…
palmd | October 27, 2009The young resident presented the patient in the usual dry terms we use for such things.
"The patient is a 42 year old woman recently hospitalized for cirrhosis due to alcohol use. Her cirrhosis has been complicated by esophageal varices, encephalopathy, and refractory ascites."
In other words, the woman has drunk herself nearly to death.
"Is she still drinking?" I asked.
"She says not. She says she stopped about six months ago when she first got sick."
"What did GI say? Did they refer her for transplant evaluation?"
"No," she said, a bit disappointedly, "they said she wasn't a candidate…
ejohnson | October 27, 2009President Obama declared the swine flu epidemic a national emergency on Saturday, after more than 1,000 US deaths--over 100 of them children--were confirmed as linked to the virus. The Centers for Disease Control report that this is purely a step towards preparedness, but many are wondering how effective this measure will be in preventing the spread of H1N1 in light of recent vaccine shortages. David Dobbs of Neuron Culture points out why the current chicken egg-based system of engineering vaccines is "too slow, too glitchy--and apparently, not terribly accountable." The White Coat…
ddobbs | October 27, 2009A bit early yet, but as I'm traveling the rest of the month, here's my top 5 over the last month.
1. The Weird History of Adjuvants, in which we ponder the inclusion of eye of newt and such in vaccines, and the strangeness of the fact that dirty is good.
2. Why is the swine flu vaccine so late? Who are you to ask such a question? was a close runner-up despite appearing only yesterday. Includes bonus trash-talk from a Canadian.
3. Embargo? Embargo? The case of the missing swine flu paper In which rumor runs not just amok, but quite a bit of policy as well. A particularly interesting…
oracknows | October 27, 2009
About a month and half ago, we learned that über-quack Hulda Clark, the woman who said that she had the Cure for All Cancers, had died on September 3, 2009. I was criticized for entitling my post Requiem for a Quack, but, given how Clark's quackery had contributed to the suffering and deaths of an unknown number of cancer patients, I didn't really feel too bad about it, although I do realize that the taboo about speaking ill of the recently dead is a strong one.
At the time, I was curious what the cause of Dr. Clark's death was, because it seemed rather mysterious, being described as the…
palmd | October 26, 2009When I see a patient at the office, I spend time developing trust, forming a therapeutic alliance, thinking through their physical complaints, examining them, and applying the best evidence to formulating a plan for maintaining their health. It's a lot of fun.
Less fun is the part where I try to get paid. To bill an insurance company, I must use numeric diagnostic codes that best fit what I'm seeing, and I must pick a code representing a level of service, that is, how hard I worked.
The diagnostic codes are referred to as ICD-9 codes, and the service codes are called E/M codes. Not all ICD-…