Results for: "great plains"
Trump administration announces some COVID-19 tests can skip FDA review, providing new opportunities for dubious lab tests
The Trump administration unexpectedly announced that the FDA will no longer regulate some lab tests, including those for COVID-19. In addition to potentially allowing unreliable COVID tests on the market, the decision creates an opening for more bogus CAM tests.
MyMedLab Offers Expensive, Useless, Nonstandard Lab Tests
Direct to consumer lab testing is good marketing but not good medicine. For instance, there is no reason to spend $199 to measure glyphosate levels in your blood.
Here be Dragons: Caring for Children in a Dangerous Sea of sCAM
As a pediatrician working in a relatively sCAM-inclined region, it is not uncommon to find myself taking care of patients who are also being followed by so-called alternative medicine practitioners. This often creates a major obstacle to providing appropriate care and establishing an atmosphere of mutual trust in the provider-patient/parent relationship. It usually makes me feel like I’m battling invisible serpents in...
New FDA regulatory role threatens bogus diagnostic tests
The FDA regulates in vitro diagnostic devices (IVDs) as medical devices. IVDs analyze human samples, such as blood, saliva, tissue and urine. However, in the past, the agency did not use its authority to regulate what are known as “laboratory-developed tests” (LDTs), tests developed and performed at a single laboratory, with all samples sent to that particular lab for testing. Instead, it...
Naturopathy vs. Science: Autism
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. My blogging plan was to take a break from my series of naturopathy versus science posts, where I’ve been contrasting the advice from naturopaths against the scientific evidence. From a blogging perspective, naturopathy is a fascinating subject to scrutinize as there is seemingly no end of conditions for which naturopaths...
The autism “biomed” movement: Uncontrolled and unethical experimentation on autistic children
Ever since I first discovered the anti-vaccine movement, first on Usenet, specifically on a Usenet newsgroup devoted to discussing alternative medicine (misc.health.alternative, or m.h.a. for short) and then later on web and on blogs, there have been two things that have horrified me. First, there are the claims that children suffer all sorts of harm from vaccines, be it being made autistic...