Month: September 2013

Baby’s DNA in Mom’s Blood: Noninvasive Prenatal Testing

Until recently, the moment of birth was a surprise. We anxiously awaited the obstetrician’s announcement: “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Then we checked to see if any crucial parts were missing and we counted the fingers and toes. We had to wait for a baby to be born before we could know its sex and whether it was normal. Today,...

/ September 17, 2013

Is U.S. cancer care “in crisis,” as the Institute of Medicine proclaims?

Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle…When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. – General George S. Patton, Jr., June...

/ September 16, 2013

Naturopathic Medicine Week 2013, or: Quackery Week 2013

[Ed. Note: This is an extra “bonus” post from Dr. Gorski’s not-so-super-secret other blog. He thought the topic would be of interest to SBM readers as well. Fear not. There will be a post on Monday, as usual.] The vast majority of ideas and treatments that make up the “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) specialty known as naturopathy are quackery. There, I...

/ September 14, 2013

Chiropractic Vs. Conventional: Dueling Perspectives On Infant Colic…..

Infant colic, while not a deadly disease by any stretch of the imagination, is an extremely troubling entity. Not only can it be quite distressing to caregivers, it is also a well-established risk factor for neglect and abuse of the child. Excessive crying in general, whether diagnosed as infant colic or not, is a frequent impetus for seeking advice from medical professionals....

/ September 13, 2013

Food Allergies: Facts, Myths, and Pseudoscience

The price of life is eternal vigilance. If you have severe food allergies, that is your reality. Every day, every meal, every bite. Eating is an intrinsic and essential part of what we do and who we are, so the idea that our bodies can rebel violently to everyday foods can be difficult to believe. But it’s real, and the numbers of...

/ September 12, 2013

Everything Causes Cancer

It’s likely you know someone who has bought into the notion that nutrition is everything, the source of all health and the cause of all illness. Nutrition is very important, to be sure, but it is only one of many possible causes of disease, and if you live in a Western industrialized nation you probably have adequate nutrition. The notion, however, that...

/ September 11, 2013

What Can We Learn from the Kitavans?

A Swedish researcher, Staffan Lindeberg, has been studying the inhabitants of Kitava, one of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. He claims that sudden cardiac death, stroke, and exertion-related chest pain never occur in Kitava; and he attributes this to their eating a Paleolithic diet. 2,250 people live on Kitava. They are traditional farmers. Their dietary staples are tubers (yam, sweet...

/ September 10, 2013

Another antivaccine zombie meme: polio vaccine and SV40 and cancer, oh, my!

The Internet has produced a revolution with respect to information. Now, people anywhere, any time, can find almost any information that they want, as long as they have a connection to the global network and aren’t unfortunate enough to live in a country that heavily censors the Internet connections coming in. In addition, anyone any time can put his or her opinion...

/ September 9, 2013

I refute it thus. On vaccination.

Reality is one honey badger. It don’t care. About you, about your thoughts, about your needs, about your beliefs. You can reject reality and substitute your own, but reality will roll on, eventually crushing you even as you refuse to dodge it. The best you can hope for is to play by reality’s rules and use them to your benefit. Combined with...

/ September 6, 2013

CAM practitioners as primary care providers under the Affordable Care Act: Part 2

In the last post, we took another look at Section 2607 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits “discrimination” against licensed CAM practitioners by insurers, and how chiropractors are continuing their PR campaign to rebrand themselves as primary care physicians. This time, we review a recent white paper by the Academic Consortium of Complementary and Alternative Healthcare, an organization that might be seen as CAM’s...

/ September 5, 2013