Category: Medical Ethics
How SHOULD We Discuss Quackery with Innocents and the Not-so-Innocent?
Recents posts by Drs. Albietz and Gorski have highlighted questions that are recurrent on SBM. We are convinced that medicine should be based on real knowledge, to the extent that it exists, and that physicians should be honest; these are matters of science and ethics. How do we reconcile that with heartfelt, if misguided beliefs of patients, their families, and others? When Dr. Albietz...
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Case Study Exploring the Battle Lines of Science Based Medicine
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post solicited by Dr. Hall, who describes Dr. Albietz thusly: He’s a skeptical young pediatrician who works in a PICU and recently had a chiropractor come into the PICU to consult on a child with intractable seizures. He was sort of coerced to allow this at the parents’ request and against his better judgment. His hospital...
The “Gonzalez Trial” for Pancreatic Cancer: Outcome Revealed
A Review Dr. Lipson’s “detoxification” post on Thanksgiving Day and Dr. Gorski’s recent post about “Gerson Therapy” were timely, because last weekend I noticed something that I should have noticed months ago. Before delivering the punch line, let me remind you, Dear Reader, of the nature of the topic. The regimen advocated by Nicholas Gonzalez is a variation of a “detoxification” treatment for cancer that has...
Canadian Justice: Breast-Fondling Chiropractor Faces “Interpersonal Skills Training”
There is something unexpectedly sinister about this news report from my former home town in Canada. Apparently, a local chiropractor has been using his “medical training” to excuse his sexual misconduct. Here’s the story from the Halifax Chronicle Herald: During a hearing in July, the woman said the chiropractor would frequently grip her around the ribs and hold tight, sometimes cupping her...
“Integrative Medicine Experts”: Another Barrier to Effective Discipline
This is the final entry in the current series having to do with state regulation of physicians.† It is the final one merely because I’m tired of the topic, for now. There is plenty more to write about, including an event that occurred only yesterday right here at my own hospital. I’ll give a preview of that at the end of this post, but first we’ll look...
Does alternative medicine have alternative ethics?
Kimball Atwood has an interesting series of posts on the ethics of alternative medicine which I strongly encourage you to read. He does a great job examining the ethical implications of certain alternative medicine practices, and has a terrific dialog with Peter Moran, a frequent commenter here. At my other online locale, I make frequent forays into the morass of medical...
Circumcision: What Does Science Say?
There are no compelling scientific arguments for or against neonatal circumcision. Benefits and risks are, scientifically speaking, small. However, the nonscientific arguments for and against circumcision are loud, and often irrational.
How State Medical Boards Shoot Themselves (and You) in the Foot
This is almost the final entry (for now) in a series of posts about the pitfalls of regulating physicians who peddle quackery.† In previous entries we’ve seen how quacks have portrayed an illegal and pseudoscientific treatment, intravenous hydrogen peroxide, as legitimate; how a physician who practiced that and other dubious methods eluded definitive regulatory sanctions for years; examples of quacks banding together to...
Massage for AIDS
I recently learned of a study entitled “Dominican Children with HIV not Receiving Antiretrovirals: Massage Therapy Influences their Behavior and Development.” It disturbed me, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. They’re massaging these kids but letting them die of AIDS? I went back and read the complete article, and it left me even more disturbed. They studied 48 Dominican...
Pitfalls in Regulating Physicians. Part 2: The Games Scoundrels Play
A Few Things that No Doctor Should Do When a physician is accused of DUI, “substance abuse,” being too loose with narcotic prescriptions, throwing scalpels in the OR, or diddling patients, the response of a state medical board† tends to be swift and definitive. Shoot first, ask questions later. After all, the first responsibility of the board is to the public’s safety, not to preserving...