Author
Self-Treating with Serious Drugs on the Rise
One of the greatest innovations benefiting public health was regulation. In the pre-FDA “patent medicine” days, there were countless products on the market that ranged from useless to directly harmful. This was a time when you could sell radioactive tonics, cocaine-laced elixirs, and products containing poisons, like turpentine. The sellers of these products made many unsupported claims and preyed disproportionately on the...
Mapping the Brain
I think it’s important to recognize not only how fake science can degrade medicine and exploit health care consumers, but also how real science can benefit medicine and consumers. It’s also important to separate hype from reality, because there often is science-based snake oil, meaning that there are fake treatments based on the hype of real science. We are near the beginning...
The Misinformation Wars
The core mission of SBM comes down to a few things – examining the complex relationship between scientific evidence and healthcare, exploring issues of how optimally to regulate health care and health products, and fighting misinformation. Over the years I think we have made some solid strides on the first category. The medical infrastructure has been trending increasing towards higher standards of...
Will AI Save Medicine
Modern medicine is facing many challenges. As the science of medicine advances, it gets harder and harder. We have, in a way, picked all the low hanging fruit. People are living longer, and their medical conditions are getting more challenging to understand and to treat. In order to continue making medical progress we need more advanced technology. This technology – like stem...
David Geier Hired to Study Vaccines and Autism
If you are already tired of hearing about RFK Jr. being the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), buckle in. I get it – it can be exhausting. Don’t we already know everything we need to about what a medical crank he is? While SBM will not neglect the many topics that we cover, we certainly consider it a high priority...
On TikTok, Everything Is a Poison or Superfood
We have to face the fact that social media is now the primary way that many people get their information. More than half of people in the US get their “news” from social media at least some of the time. But I don’t think asking people where they get “news” captures the full phenomenon. People who watch TikTok videos might not consider...
Vitamin A Does Not Treat or Prevent Measles
It didn’t take long for concerns about RFKs unscientific ideological approach to healthcare to manifest. We are in the middle of a measles outbreak – the exact kind of situation for which we need a strong federal response. The person in charge of that response, RFK Jr., is a notorious anti-vaccine crank who is not a scientist or healthcare expert, even though...
Looking Back 5 Year Later – Were Lockdowns Worth It?
An excellent article on the BBC gives a good overview of the continuing controversy over universal lockdowns as a pandemic mitigation strategy during COVID. We now have significant data about how various countries around the world fared compared to their mitigation strategy. Interestingly, this data is unlikely to resolve the controversy. But it can inform our decisions for the next pandemic –...
Redefining Dyslexia
What, exactly, is dyslexia? What causes it, how should it be diagnosed, and stemming from that, how should it be treated? We can even ask a more fundamental question – does it actually exist as a discrete clinical entity? These questions have existed since dyslexia was first described and named in 1887, by German Opthalmologist, Rudolf Berlin. Not surprisingly, he thought the...
Trust Me-I’m a Doctor
Trust is a fragile yet critical resource for any institution. At the end of the day, civilization is mostly built on a handshake and a mutual agreement to follow the rules. This includes trust that designated experts have the expertise they claim, are competent, and are acting appropriately in the interest of others, rather than exploiting their position for self-dealing. A critical...