Category: Clinical Trials
Threats to science-based medicine: When clinical trials for new drugs are designed by the marketing division
When the marketing division designs clinical trials, scientific medicine loses.
High dose vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?
Treating cancer with high-doses of vitamin C is a zombie idea that began with Linus Pauling, and has failed to die ever since. But has new research vindicated this idea? No. No in any meaningful way. This work is the very definition of a long run for a short slide.
The Orange Man
Alternative medicine is not harmless, and carrots cannot cure cancer.
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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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...