Category: Pharmaceuticals

“Oh, come on, Superman!”: Bill Maher versus “Western medicine”

I realize that I’ve spent a fair amount of verbiage (to put it mildly) expressing my frustration with celebrities whose support for pseudoscience and even outright quackery endanger public health. The two most frequent targets of the wrath, sarcasm, frustration, and puzzlement of me and my partners in crime at SBM have been Jenny McCarthy and her boyfriend Jim Carrey for their...

/ September 7, 2009

Off-Label Use of Prescription Drugs

A recent survey of 599 primary care physicians and 600 psychiatrists found that: The adjusted response rate was 47%, respondents were similar to non-respondents, and physicians commonly prescribed the drugs examined. The average respondent accurately identified the FDA-approval status of just over half of the drug-indication pairs queried (mean 55%; median 57%). Accuracy increased modestly (mean 60%, median 63%) when limited to...

/ August 26, 2009

Is Tylenol Safe?

Tylenol (acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol outside the US) has been in the news recently. Most of the stories I’ve seen have been accurate, but I’ve run across a couple of people who misunderstood what they read. I thought I’d try to put the record straight. An FDA advisory panel has recommended reducing the maximum allowed single dose from 1000 mg to...

/ July 21, 2009

Naturopathic Prescribing: The Dark Side Beckons

I am a terrible Oregon chauvinist.  I think there is no better place to live on the planet. Period.  Great natural beauty, not a lot of people, best beer ever and no pro football team. Oregon is both casual and tolerant.  It is safe to say that dressing up in the Pacific NW means tucking your t shirt into your jeans.  And...

/ June 19, 2009

Counterfeit Drugs: A Growing Global Health Crisis

A resistant strain of bacteria –created by partially effective counterfeit antibiotics – doesn’t need a VISA and passport to get to the U.S. –    Paul Orhii, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Nigeria I attended a conference in DC yesterday called, “The Global Impact of Fake Medicine.” Although I had initially wondered if homeopathy and the supplement industry would...

/ June 11, 2009

Is IV Sedation Over-Used?

We criticize alternative medicine for not being evidence-based, and they criticize conventional medicine in turn, saying that much of what conventional medicine does is not based on evidence either. Sometimes that criticism is justified. I have run across a conventional practice that I suspect began because it sounded like a good idea, but that never was adequately tested and is not carefully...

/ April 21, 2009

Book Review: Triumph Of The Heart, The Story Of Statins

Triumph of the Heart, as its name does not suggest, is about science. The book’s author, Jie Jack Li, is a medicinal chemist who meticulously reviews the history relevant to the discovery of lipid-lowering drugs. He spares no details, even recounting the amusing quarrels and quirks of the scientists engaged in the “apocryphal showdowns” leading to the manufacture of cholesterol in a...

/ April 2, 2009

When fraud undermines science-based medicine

The overriding them, the raison d’être if you will, of this blog is science-based medicine. However, it goes beyond that in that we here at SBM believe that science- and evidence-based medicine is the best medicine. It’s more than the best medicine, though; it’s the best strategy for medicine to improve therapy for our patients. We frequently contrast science-based medicine with various...

/ March 16, 2009

Scientific Fraud Hits Home

Last week the story broke that Scott Reuben, an anesthesiologist and clinical researcher at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, had falsified data in at least 21 publications over a period of at least 12 years—making it one of the most enduring examples of scientific fraud in memory. Almost all of Reuben’s papers had reported innovative methods for providing post-operative pain relief...

/ March 13, 2009

Wyeth Vs. Levine: Joe Six Pack Trumps The FDA

The New York Times has called today’s US Supreme Court ruling in the Wyeth vs. Levine suit the “most important business case in years.” I have been following this case for many months, astonished that a medical malpractice suit had gotten all the way to the Supreme Court. But even more shocking is the fact that the court actually ruled that lay...

/ March 5, 2009