Category: Science and Medicine

Can it get any worse?: industrial bleach as cancer and HIV cure

On the heels of Scott Gavura’s superb post yesterday on dietary supplement regulation in the US and Canada, I bring you one of the most egregious and obscene product cases I have seen in 15 years of teaching on botanical and non-botanical products: Miracle Mineral Solution. Please accept my apologies in advance for not having a scholarly post for you today –...

/ August 6, 2010

Supplement Regulation: Be Careful What You Wish For

A recurring theme at SBM is the regulation of supplements, and the impact and consequences of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). As one of SBM’s international contributors, I thought it might be helpful to look at how the DSHEA stacks up against the equivalent regulations of its neighbor to the north, Canada. Given the multiple calls for overhauls...

/ August 5, 2010

Acupuncture Pseudoscience in the New England Journal of Medicine

Here is the conclusion quoted from a recent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) review article on acupuncture for back pain: As noted above, the most recent wellpowered clinical trials of acupuncture for chronic low back pain showed that sham acupuncture was as effective as real acupuncture. The simplest explanation of such findings is that the specific therapeutic effects of acupuncture, if...

/ August 4, 2010

“Hard science” and medical school

One of the recurring themes of this blog, not surprisingly given its name, is the proper role of science in medicine. As Dr. Novella has made clear from the very beginning, we advocate science-based medicine (SBM), which is what evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be. SBM tries to overcome the shortcomings of EBM by taking into account all the evidence, both scientific and...

/ August 2, 2010

Risibility. The Superior Therapeutic Intervention?

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. ~Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts“ We have a saying in medicine that you can’t kill a jerk.  Not that we try to kill anyone, but that particularly unpleasant individuals, rife with psychopathology, survive whatever illness comes their way.  The corollary is that particularly nice...

/ July 30, 2010

Open Letter to Dr. Josephine Briggs

Josephine P. Briggs, M.D. Director, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Dear Dr. Briggs, As you know, we’ve met twice. The first time was at the Yale “Integrative Medicine” Symposium in March. The second was in April, when Drs. Novella, Gorski and I met with you for an hour at the NCCAM in Bethesda. At the time I concluded that you...

/ July 23, 2010

Californians give a whoop – or I hope they do.

I’m certain by now many of our readers have come across news of the current pertussis, aka whooping cough, epidemic in California.  Beginning this February and accelerating dramatically through May and June, California has so far seen a ~500% increase in pertussis cases compared to last year, and only two days ago announced the death of a sixth baby from infection.  Public...

/ July 22, 2010

Terrible Anti-Vaccine Study, Terrible Reporting

One of my goals in writing for this blog is to educate the general public about how to evaluate a scientific study, specifically medical studies. New studies are being reported in the press all the time, and the analysis provided by your average journalist leaves much to be desired. Generally, they fail to put the study into context, often get the bottom...

/ July 16, 2010

Bought and Sold: Who Should Pay for CME

There are two topics about which I am a crank. The first, as you might have guessed, is alternative medicine. The other is pharmaceutical reps. Drug companies are somewhat schizophrenic. They have amazing scientists who invent drugs that treat an astounding array of diseases. Then, they take these drugs and turn them over to marketing, to be sold with all the enthusiasm...

/ July 16, 2010

New CMS Chief Donald Berwick: a Trojan Horse for Quackery?

NB: I posted this on Health Care Renewal a couple of days ago, figuring that Dr. Gorski’s post would suffice for the SBM readership (he and I had discussed the topic while at TAM8 last week). But Managing Editor Gorski has asked me to repost it here, which I’m happy to do. I am especially pleased to demonstrate that I am capable...

/ July 15, 2010