Category: Clinical Trials

Sterile Water Injections for Pain Relief

Before ethical standards changed, doctors used to occasionally fool patients with placebo injections of sterile saline or water. If my obstetrician had tried to give me sterile water instead of an epidural, I probably would have hit him. But apparently women are getting sterile water injections for childbirth and are telling us they work. What’s going on? A recent study in Sweden...

/ August 5, 2008

HIV Treatment Extends Life Expectancy

People with HIV are living longer on the latest anti-retroviral therapy. This is something any infectious disease specialist knows from their own clinical experience – but it’s reassuring (I would even argue necessary) to have objective data to support experience. A study published in the latest issue of Lancet provides this objective data. (Lancet. 2008 Jul 26;372(9635):293-9.) The press release from Bristol...

/ July 30, 2008

Cavalcade of Quackery: A Pantomine Horse

Last week I received the news release below that Steve Zeitzew, an orthopedic surgeon at VA Hospital Los Angeles and UCLA, sent to the Healthfraud list. It was sent to me by our colleague Liz Woeckner, President of the nonprofit research protection advocacy organization Citizens for Responsible Care in Research (CIRCARE) http://www.circare.org/ Ms. Woeckner sent it on with a cryptic comment, wondering...

/ July 10, 2008

Should We Study Chelation for Autism?

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) supports doing a study on the effects of oral chelation therapy in autism. The proposal is highly controversial, is drawing criticism from many scientists, but has popular support among parents who believe this type of therapy might help their children with autism. The proposal raises many questions about the ethics of biomedical research. Chelation and...

/ July 9, 2008

Resistance is futile

Dr. Sampson’s droll post on Thursday written from the point of view of an advocate of unscientific “alternative” medicine modalites (these days known as “complementary and alternative medicine”–abbreviated “CAM”–or “integrative” medicine), coupled with Dr. Atwood’s most recent contribution to his ongoing series on how the mish-mash of a little valid herbal medicine mixed with a whole lot of woo otherwise known as...

/ June 30, 2008

Forks in the road

It’s been decades since the onslaught of organized quackery began against science and reason. Although most physicians are still capable of reasoning, the percentage of medical graduates whose brains have been cleansed of that ability seems to have increased. Either the brains have been cleansed or they have learned to coexist with unreason and to use both functions simultaneously. The latter is...

/ June 12, 2008

Stem Cell Therapy and the Need for Transparency

Dr. Geeta Shroff is an Indian physician who is running a New Delhi clinic offering embryonic stem cell therapies for a large number of various medical conditions. The only thing these medical conditions have in common is that they are incurable. Indian law allows for the use of unproven treatments for terminal or incurable diseases. I cannot know Dr. Shroff’s intentions, but...

/ June 4, 2008

Early detection of cancer, part 2: Breast cancer and MRI

Note: If you haven’t already, you should read PART 1 of this two-part series. It defines several terms that I will be using in this post, and I don’t plan on explaining them again, given that they were explained in detail in Part 1. Of course, if you’re a medical professional and already know what lead time bias, length bias, and stage...

/ June 2, 2008

The TACT is at least as Bad as We Predicted

I had wanted to follow Dr. Sampson’s discussion of “Healing Touch” with one of my own, because I had an interesting experience with one of its proponents years ago, and I’ll do that soon. I had also wanted to begin a series of posts about acupuncture, which I’ll also do eventually. Just yesterday, however, Liz Woeckner, co-author of our recently published critique of...

/ May 30, 2008

Changing the Rules of Evidence

My daughter, Julia, loves to play games and has a bit of a competitive streak. She can make any activity into a game and is adept at making up rules on the spot. When she was younger, like most children, she had a tendency to add to or change the rules on the fly – usually to ensure a favorable outcome for...

/ May 21, 2008