All posts by Harriet Hall

Harriet Hall, MD also known as The SkepDoc, is a retired family physician who writes about pseudoscience and questionable medical practices. She received her BA and MD from the University of Washington, did her internship in the Air Force (the second female ever to do so),  and was the first female graduate of the Air Force family practice residency at Eglin Air Force Base. During a long career as an Air Force physician, she held various positions from flight surgeon to DBMS (Director of Base Medical Services) and did everything from delivering babies to taking the controls of a B-52. She retired with the rank of Colonel.  In 2008 she published her memoirs, Women Aren't Supposed to Fly.

RISUG: Birth Control for Men

According to an enthusiastic article on the Internet, “The Best Birth Control In the World Is For Men.” It’s called RISUG: Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance. It involves a minor surgical procedure in which the vas deferens is exposed and pulled outside the scrotum by the same techniques used for a vasectomy. A copolymer, powdered styrene maleic anhydride (SMA, for which...

/ May 15, 2012

Announcement: New Edition of Consumer Health

For decades Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions was the only textbook available for college classes on the subject, and it is still the best: the most comprehensive and the most reliable. It was first published in 1976, and it has clearly had staying power. An updated 9th edition has just been released. The authors have changed over the years: this...

/ May 11, 2012

Homeopathy and Nanoparticles

I had never heard of Dr. Shantaram Kane, a chemical engineer in Mumbai, India. I don’t know how he heard of me, but he apparently knows I am critical of homeopathy. He e-mailed me out of the blue to tell me about a study he had published in 2010 in the journal Homeopathy: “Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective.”...

/ May 8, 2012

G-Spot Discovered? Not So Fast!

Is this the G-Spot? The press release proclaims “Study Confirms Anatomic Existence of G-Spot.” The study itself is titled “G-Spot Anatomy: A New Discovery.”  It was just published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.  The author, Adam Ostrzenski, is an “internationally renowned gynecologic surgeon” with multiple degrees (MD, PhD, Dr Hab) and many peer-reviewed articles listed in PubMed. The G-spot, or Gräfenberg...

/ May 1, 2012

Chiropractors as Family Doctors? No Way!

A recent three-part article published in ACA News advocates turning chiropractors into “conservative primary care providers” who would be the initial point of contact for patients, would serve as gatekeepers for referrals to medical doctors and specialists, and would co-manage patients with those specialists on a continuing basis: essentially, family doctors.  I think that’s a terrible idea. It might benefit chiropractors by...

/ April 24, 2012

The Future of Medicine

Eric Topol, MD, has written a book about the convergence of the digital revolution and medicine. It is full of fascinating information and prognostication, but I wish he had given it a better title.  He called it The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care. Medicine will not and cannot be “destroyed.” It will be improved...

/ April 17, 2012

Update: Homeopathy in Brazilian Scientific American

Last week I wrote about a regrettable piece on homeopathy that was published in Scientific American Brasil.  There have been gratifying developments. Within hours, the editor in chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, appeared in the Comments. She said that Scientific American does not condone the pseudoscience of homeopathy, that the piece clearly should not have been published, that it would never have...

/ April 10, 2012

Scientific American Declares Homeopathy Indispensable to Planet and Human Health

I recently received an e-mail from one of SBM’s readers in Brazil, Felipe Nogueira Barbara de Oliveira, a PhD candidate in Medical Science who holds an MS in Computer Science and is who is trying to promote critical thinking and scientific medicine in his country. He sent me a jpeg copy of a short piece that was published (in Portuguese) in the...

/ April 3, 2012

Brief Announcement: World Skeptics Congress

The 6th World Skeptics Congress will be held on May 18-20 in Berlin, Germany. Topics will include: Why do people turn to pseudoscience for help? What makes alternative medicine so attractive – and how can we find out what really works? Why is it so difficult for us to deal with risk and uncertainty in a rational way? Can we teach children to...

/ April 2, 2012

CAM as a Dumping Ground

I know a woman who is a survivor of colorectal cancer. At one point, doctors had given up hope and put her in hospice, but she failed to die as predicted and was eventually discharged. She continues to suffer intractable symptoms of pain with alternating diarrhea and constipation. I don’t have access to her medical records, but she tells me her doctors...

/ March 27, 2012