Year: 2011
Comparative Drug Research
The latest issue of the BMJ contains an editorial recommending that regulators (this is in the UK, but the argument applies in the US and elsewhere) should require pharmaceutical companies to provide research on direct comparison to existing therapies as part of the approval process. The authors, Sorenson, Naci, Cylus, and Mossialos, write: When a drug comes to market, evidence on the...
Menstrual Synchrony: Do Girls Who Go Together Flow Together?
When women live together, do their menstrual cycles tend to synchronize? It’s been a long time since I first heard that claim. I didn’t believe it, for a number of reasons. I had never observed it myself, I saw no plausible mechanism to explain how it could happen, I thought the statistics to prove it would be problematic and complicated, and I...
Economically-Motivated Herb Adulteration
As early as 2006, I used to be able to write monthly about US FDA warnings on erectile dysfunction supplements being found adulterated with prescription drugs such as sildenafil, the phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor found in Viagra. These adulteration episodes raised the question of how many anecdotal reports of herbal products “working” had to do with them containing approved medicines. So common was this...
Who’s to Blame for Drug Shortages?
All the best effort to practice science-based medicine are for naught when the optimal treatment is unavailable. And that’s increasingly the case – even for life-threatening illnesses. Shortages of prescription drugs, including cancer drugs, seem more frequent and more significant than at any time in the past. Just recently manufacturing deficiencies at a large U.S.-based contract drug manufacturer meant that over a...
Acupuncture and Acoustic Waves
Here is yet another study claiming to show “how acupuncture works” when in fact it does nothing of the kind. It does, however, reveal the bias of the researchers – it is, in fact, surprising that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is dutifully reporting the biased claims of the researchers without any independent verification or analysis....
Are Prenatal Ultrasounds Dangerous?
Several questionable sources are spreading alarms about the possible dangers of prenatal ultrasound exams (sonograms). An example is Christine Anderson’s article on the ExpertClick website. In the heading, it says she “Never Liked Ultrasound Technology.” [She] has never been sold on the safety using Ultrasounds for checking on the fetuses of pregnant women, and for the last decade her fears have been confirmed...
Seven Deadly Medical Hypotheses revisited
Back in February, Mark Crislip and I both deconstructed an article written by Dr. Reynold Spector that appeared in the March/April issue of Skeptical Inquirer (SI), the flagship publication for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). The article was entitled Seven Deadly Medical Hypotheses, and, contrary to the usual standard of articles published in SI, it used a panoply of spin, bad...
The Annals of Internal Medicine Qualifies for Fail Blog.
As most readers of the blog know, I am mostly an Infectious Disease doc. I spend my day diagnosing and treating infections and infectious complications. It is, as I have said before, a simple job. Me find bug, me kill bug, me go home. Kill bug. It is the key part of what I do everyday, and if there is karmic payback...
When a “scientific study” is neither
There is quite a bit of art to the practice of medicine: knowing how to get and to give information to a patient, how to create a sense of worry without creating a feeling of panic, how to use the best available science to help them maintain or return to health. Underlying all of the art is the science: what blood pressure...
Legislative Alchemy I: Naturopathy
Via the magic of “legislative alchemy,” state legislatures transform implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into perfectly legal health care practices.[1] Without the benefit of legislative alchemy, chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, acupuncturists and other assorted putative healers would be vulnerable to charges of practicing medicine without a license and consumer fraud. Thus, they must seek either their own licensing system or exemption...