Category: Politics and Regulation
Bad scientific arguments in the service of animal rights activism
One of the greatest threats to the preclinical research necessary for science-based medicine today is animal rights activism. The magnitude of the problem came to the forefront again last week with the news that animal rights terrorists tried to enter the home of a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) whose research uses mice to study breast cancer and...
A Foolish Consistency
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) It is odd isn’t it? Large numbers of quality studies published in the best peer review journals consistently showing the same or similar effect and no contradictory studies. Despite the emphasis on evidence-based medicine, the entire literature is dismissed as...
Antiscience-Based Medicine in South Africa
South Africa’s Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is fighting to protect the traditional healers of her country from having their methods tested scientifically. She warns that, “We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development,” and that she does not want the incorporation of traditional healing to get “bogged down in clinical trials.” Her arguments are anti-scientific and represent a health...
Iraq civilian deaths II: Summing up
Call me naive, but I did not expect the volume or the emotional depth of the responses to the Iraqi civilian death post. I thought many would respond to the new NEJMed survey as I did; wondering about the validity of the previous surveys and recognizing that they have a validity problem. And, that there is a question about what is printed...
Proposed Changes to FDA Regulation Present a Dilemma
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing a very interesting loosening of their regulations of pharmaceutical company marketing. The pros and cons of the proposed changes present an interesting dilemma, with legitimate points on both sides. When the FDA approves a drug it is approved for a very specific medical indication. I have long thought that FDA approved indications for drugs...
The Iraqi Civilian War Dead Scandal
This is a story about a story and a story or two within that story. The first story is one of faulty epidemiology – data collection in a war zone. The first inside one is how medical news and journals affect not only national news, but are being used as political weaponry, to affect elections , and to change history. Within that...
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your tax dollars hard at work
What’s an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I’ve pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned before, when I first read Wally Sampson’s...
Collision of Incompatibles
Last week’s post was about a recent (October 2007) meeting held at Harvard University on the subject of fascia. The purposes for commenting were several. First, the organizers were partial believers in some forms of “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (“CAM”), now being called “Integrative” but more realistically called sectarian or anomalous, aberrant medicine. The meeting is another in a long series of...
No-Touch Chiropractic
Some time ago, I learned that a Seattle chiropractor, Johanna Hoeller, had been featured on a local TV newsmagazine show. She was so proud of the segment that she had it posted on her web page for all to see. Unfortunately it is no longer there, so I’ll have to tell you what it showed. She demonstrated her techniques on-camera. She put...