Month: September 2014
Ebola SCAMs
Ebola, like all diseases, is an opportunity for some to offer up curious treatments. Here is a brief budget of Ebola-related SCAM (supplements, complementary and alternative medicine) and a few Dug the Dog digressions. Homeopathy Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned. ~ Emile Durkheim. Homeopath? In its classic form, as promulgated by Hahnemann,...
Chiropractic “pediatrics” firmly in the anti-vaccination camp
Who would you invite to speak at your conference if you wanted to show the world you are firmly in the anti-vaccination camp? Barbara Loe Fisher, head of the National Vaccine (Mis) Information Center (NVIC)? How about Andrew Wakefield, the thoroughly disgraced British physician who, having been stripped of his medical license, continues his despicable anti-vaccination campaign? How about both? The International...
CAM and Headaches
A recent editorial entitled “CAM in the Real World: You May Practice Evidence-Based Medicine, But Your Patients Don’t” published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain by Robert Cowan, a headache specialist, addresses the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the treatment of headaches. Unfortunately he propagates many common misconceptions about CAM in the article. I do agree...
The Unpersuadables
We would like to believe people are rational. We would like to believe that if they have formed a false belief based on inaccurate information and poor reasoning, they will change that belief when they are provided with accurate information and better reasoning. We are frequently disappointed. An example of what should happen I recently talked with a college professor who believed...
The “CDC whistleblower saga”: Updates, backlash, and (I hope) a wrap-up
Given that this is a holiday weekend here in the US and that I’m having a bit of a staycation right now, I had thought of simply not posting today or of rerunning a “classic” (if you want to call it that) blast from the past. But the topic I wrote about last week has only festered and grown bigger since Monday;...