Category: Medical Academia

The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part IV)

A Review; then Back to the Gonzalez Regimen† Part I of this blog introduced the topic of the “Gonzalez regimen” for treating cancer: “Intensive Pancreatic Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy With Ancillary Nutritional Support” and “detoxification” with twice daily coffee enemas, daily “skin brushing,” “a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month,” and more. The topic...

/ April 18, 2008

The Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo #3

Last Week’s Entry: Everyone’s a Winner! The resounding total of 4 “translations” for the second W^5 entry might have been trying to tell me something…nah! I gotta say that each of the four nailed the central point: the esteemed Institute of Medicine (IOM), a subset of the esteemed National Academy of Sciences, has decided that it’s just fine—no, it is “important” and...

/ April 5, 2008

The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part II)

Laetrile and the Politics of NIH-Sponsored trials of “Alternative Cancer Treatments” Part I of this blog ended by asking how, in light of the implausible and arduous nature of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas, and the unconvincing “best case series,” the NIH could ever have decided to fund a trial of it.† This entry will begin to answer that question. In so...

/ April 4, 2008

Charlie Woo TV

Some of us received the announcement a week ago of the Bravewell Collaborative’s planned conference on “Integrative Medicine” co-sponsored with the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, to take place in February, 2009.  (Note: I like to cap slogans and commercial trademarks and such and enclose them in quotation marks. Especially when the terms have no consensus meaning or are intended to obscure...

/ April 3, 2008

How Can Smart People Be So Stupid?

This is a quick posting that begins to respond to the question posted today by Joe: What I don’t understand is why the majority of doctors at Columbia did not say “This is obvious abuse of patients, and it will not be tolerated here.” Given his richly-deserved malpractice record, why was [Gonzalez] even associated with Columbia? David Gorski answered it in part:...

/ March 28, 2008

The Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo #2

You Can’t Foo’ Stu with Woo! A Spitzerian (“pointed”) analysis Last week’s inaugural game elicited several amusing and penetrating analyses, including that of the hands-down Gold Medal Winner, Stu. His was the first entry, introduced in a concise and alliterative imperative, and was both hilarious and timely. It implied most of the points discussed by others. This distinctive combination has moved me to grant Stu a legacy here at the W^5....

/ March 21, 2008

The ultimate in “integrative medicine”: Integrating the unscientific into the medical school curriculum

For the second week in a row I find myself throwing out the original post that I had planned on doing in favor of a different topic. The reason this week is, quite simply, having read Dr. Atwood’s excellent two part post Misleading Language: The Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations (Part I; Part II). I don’t at this time intend to expand...

/ March 17, 2008

Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations Part II

Background I promised readers the “Advanced Course” for this week, which undoubtedly has you shaking in your boots. Fear not: you’ve already had a taste of advanced, subtle, misleading “CAM” language, and most of you probably “got” it. That was R. Barker Bausell’s analysis of how homeopathy is “hypothesized to work.” In the interest of civility, let me reiterate that I don’t...

/ March 14, 2008

Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations. Part I

The Best Policy From time to time I have been reiterating that correct use of the language has much to do with logic; I should add that it entails also honesty. I use the word “honesty” in its broadest sense… Concision is honesty, honesty concision—that’s one thing you need to know. —John Simon. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and its Decline. New York, NY:...

/ March 7, 2008

Prior Probability: the Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”—Continued Again

After the previous posting on the Bayesian approach to clinical trial data, several new comments made it clear to me that more needed to be said. This posting addresses those comments and adds a few more observations regarding the unfortunate consequences of EBM’s neglect of prior probability as it applies to “complementary and alternative medicine” (“CAM”).† The “Galileo gambit” and the statistics gambit...

/ February 29, 2008