Month: May 2020
Do Masks Work?
Let's review the evidence for the effectiveness of wearing face masks during a pandemic (reprinted from NeuroLogica).
Prenatal Screening Tests for Chromosome Abnormalities
Science has made remarkable advances in prenatal screening, but false positives and false negative results can occur, and there are ethical concerns.
Plandemic: Judy Mikovits and the mother of all COVID-19 conspiracy theories (some final thoughts)
Last Friday, I deconstructed Plandemic, a misinformation conspiracyfest of a video that went viral last week. It turns out that Judy Mikovits, the disgraced scientist featured in the video has even more conspiracy theories and misinformation up her sleeve.
Plandemic: Judy Mikovits and the mother of all COVID-19 conspiracy theories
Judy Mikovits is a disgraced scientist who published a paper claiming that a retrovirus called XMRV causes chronic fatigue syndrome, results that other investigators were unable to replicate. Since then, she's been a regular on the antivaccine circuit, but now she's been reborn as a "Fire Fauci" COVID-19 conspiracy theorist. Sadly, it worked. Her book is #1 on Amazon.
Chinese government recommends bear bile for COVID-19
The Chinese Government is relentlessly promoting TCM for COVID-19, including a remedy containing bear bile, which is cruelly extracted from the gall bladders of living wild or "farmed" bears.
MMR is Safe and Effective
A new systematic review shows convincingly that the MMR vaccine is safe and effective.
Neuriva: Clinically Proven?
Neuriva claims to have proof from clinical studies. That's misleading.
COVID-19: Out-of-control science and bypassing science-based medicine
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there hasn't just been a pandemic of coronavirus-caused disease. There's also a pandemic of misinformation and bad science. It turns out that doctors today are just as prone as doctors 100 years ago during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic to bypass science-based medicine in their desperation to treat patients.
Hydroxychloroquine, retinal toxicity, and COVID-19
Hydroxychloroquine is being promoted as a treatment or prevention for COVID-19 based on questionable evidence. The long-term impact of hydroxychloroquine on the retina introduces another reason to be cautious about its use outside of clinical trials.