Category: Politics and Regulation
Bob and I are now published in Skeptical Inquirer
As regular readers know, I was quite happy that Skeptical Inquirer (SI) agreed to publish articles by Bob Blaskiewicz and myself about the highly dubious cancer doctor in Houston known as Stanislaw Burzynski. Indeed, Bob and I have been busily doing our best to promote it, appearing on various podcasts, including Point of Inquiry and, most recently, The Skeptics’ Guide to the...
Stanislaw Burzynski’s propaganda victory on antineoplastons: The FDA caves
Sadly, it looks as though Stanislaw Burzynski is going to win his latest round with the FDA. Same as it ever was.
When healing turns into killing: religious and philosophical exemptions from parental accountability
Parents have a fundamental right to guide the upbringing of their children protected under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This includes the choice of medical care for the child. They also have a First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religious beliefs, including the right to care for their children in accordance with the tenets of their...
“Right to try” laws and Dallas Buyers’ Club: Great movie, terrible for patients and terrible policy
"Right-to-try" is a new kind of bill that claims to give terminally ill patients the "right to try" experimental therapeutics that have passed phase 1 testing. It's a smokescreen, no more real than the movie that seemingly inspired it.
The illusions of “right to try” laws
[Ed. Note: For additional commentary on why “right-to-try” laws are such a bad idea, see “Right to try” laws and Dallas Buyers’ Club: Great movie, terrible for patients and terrible policy and The false hope of “right-to-try” metastasizes to Michigan.] There is nothing like a touching anecdote to spur a politician into action. And those who want to try investigational drugs outside...
Measles gets a helping hand
In a recent post I shared a bit of my personal, near-death experience with measles during the US epidemic of 1989-1991. As I describe in that post, I contracted a very serious measles infection at the end of medical school, and was highly infectious when I interviewed for a residency position at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Like others my age who received an...
Eric Merola and Ralph Moss try to exhume the rotting corpse of Laetrile in a new movie
Note: Some of you have probably seen a different version of this post fairly recently. I have a grant deadline this week and just didn’t have time to come up with fresh material up to the standards of SBM. This left me with two choices: Post a “rerun” of an old post, or recycle something. I decided to recycle something for reasons...
A cure for chiropractic
Almost 10 years ago, a thoughtful article, entitled “Chiropractic as spine care: a model for the profession”, appeared in the journal Chiropractic & Osteopathy. The authors were a group of both academic and practicing chiropractors, as well as representatives from a health insurer specializing in coverage of CAM provider services. Another article, under different authorship, appeared the same year deploring some aspects...
Twenty days in primary care practice, or “naturopathic residency”
The metastasis of alternative medicine throughout the health care system comes, in no small part, at the hands of the federal and state governments, mostly the latter and most particularly the state legislatures. Under their jurisdiction rests the decision of who can, and cannot, become a licensed health care practitioner, and what they can, and cannot, do. This is the gateway through...
Washington State’s Unconscionable, Unconstitutional Child Protection Law
I recently wrote about the conflict between child protection and the religious freedom of believers in faith healing. That issue has reared its ugly head again in the state of Washington. Washington law currently denies the children of Christian Scientists equal protection under the law governing child abuse and neglect, and it grants a special exemption from criminal prosecution for abuse and...