Category: Politics and Regulation
Conflicts of interest in science-based medicine
Science-based medicine is not perfect. Financial interests, conflicts of interest (COIs), and the pride of individual practitioners can at times undermine it. But it's so much better than any alternative we have tried before. It works, and, although it does so in fits and starts, sometimes all too slowly, it's getting better all the time. Dealing more effectively with COIs will only...
The NCCAM Seeks Comments for its “Strategic Plan: 2010.” Part I
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has posted three essays about its latest “strategic planning process,” and has invited “stakeholders” to make comments. I have previously made my own opinions clear,* as have fellow bloggers Gorski, Novella, Lipson, and Sampson: the best strategic plan for the NCCAM would be to extinguish itself. Since politics makes that plan unlikely, there...
Pseudo-expertise versus science-based medicine
I am a skeptic. My support for science-based medicine, as important as it is and as much time, sweat, and treasure I spend supporting it, is not the be-all and end-all of my skepticism, which derives from a scientific world view. That’s why, every so often, I like to step back from medicine a bit and look at the broader picture. It’s...
When Loud Wins: Will Your Tax Dollars Pay For Prayer?
Today the LA Times described a bizarre and troublesome healthcare reform bill provision that would require Medicare to pay for Christian Science Prayer as a medical treatment: …a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses. The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic...
Join CFI in opposing funding mandates for quackery in health care reform
Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of...
Beware religious meddling in the latest version of health care reform
Every so often, as the health care reform initiative spearheaded by the Obama Administration wends its way through Congress (or, more precisely, wend their ways through Congress, given that there are multiple bills coming from multiple committees in both Houses), I’ve warned about various chicanery from woo-friendly legislators trying to legitimize by legislation where they’ve failed by science various “alternative” medicine practices....
“Oh, come on, Superman!” (Part II): Bill Maher meets Kryptonite over vaccines and “Western medicine”
It’s rather amazing how sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men (and bloggers) come to naught. I had planned on doing a followup post to my previous post about the cancer quackery known as the German New Medicine by discussing a particularly nasty French variant of it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon your point of view), events conspired to move...
Health Care Bills: More Mischief in Washington
Forgive the departure from my usual verbosity. I’m on my way to a meeting, and I don’t have the time. Today I’ll report disturbing content found in health care bills that are competing for passage in Washington. Thanks to Linda Rosa for keeping our attention on language in one of the Senate bills: “S.1679 – Affordable Health Choices Act,” sponsored by (guess...
Head-In-The-Sand Consumer Affairs
Editor’s Note: Please be aware that Ben is deployed in Iraq right now. What that means is that his Internet access is somewhat sporadic. He will show up from time to time to answer comments, however. ERRARE HUMANUM EST, SED PERSEVERARE DIABOLICUM – To err is human, but to persist diabolical – Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD) The...
Report a doctor’s dubious practices, go to jail?
Althought I and other SBM bloggers have criticized state medical boards for not doing enough to protect patients from physicians who practice pseudoscientific medicine and quackery, they do nonetheless serve a purpose. Moreover, critical to medical boards doing even the limited amount of enforcement that they do is the ability of health care providers or other citizens to submit anonymous complaints against...