Category: Science and Medicine
A nutritional approach to the treatment of HIV infection—same old woo?
I get all sorts of mail. I get mail from whining Scientologists, suffering patients, angry quacks—and I get lots of promotional material. I get letters from publishers wanting me to review books, letters from pseudo-bloggers wanting me to plug their advertiblog—really, just about anything you can imagine. Most of the time I just hit “delete”; it’s obvious that they’ve never read my...
The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part I
March 4, 2010 Today I went to the one-day, 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Many of you will recall that the first version of this conference occurred in April, 2008. According to Yale’s Continuing Medical Education website, the first conference “featured presentations from experts in CAM/IM from Yale and other leading medical institutions and drew national and international...
A Welcome Upgrade to a Childhood Vaccine – PCV 13
Children aren’t supposed to die. That so many of us accept this statement without a blink is remarkable and wonderful, but it is also a very recent development in human history. Modern sanitation, adequate nutrition, and vaccination have largely banished most of the leading killers of children to the history books. Just look at the current leading causes of childhood death in...
In desperate times, what works, wins
When one of the worst natural disasters in history hit Haiti earlier this year I worried what sorts of alternative medicine “help” the Haitians might have thrust upon them. From around the world, health care workers with expertise in trauma and disaster relief offered their skills, realizing that anyone who came to Haiti must bring with them a lot of value—taking up...
The future of the Science-based Medicine blog: SBM is recruiting new bloggers
It’s been a rather eventful week here at Science-Based Medicine. I apologize that I don’t have one of my usual 4,000 word epics ready for this week. I was occupied all day Saturday at a conference at which I had to give a talk, and Dr. Tuteur’s departure produced another issue that I had to deal with. Fortunately, because Dr. Lipson is...
Changing Climate, Changing Infections
I will state my bias up front. I am convinced by the preponderance of data in favor of man made global warming. At the most simplistic level, I can’t see how converting humongous tons of fossil fuel into C02 and dumping it into the the atmosphere cannot have effects on the climate. To my mind its like determining vaccine efficacy or evolution....
Homeopathy Gets a Reality Check in the UK
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (STC) has released a report, Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy, in which they recommend that the NHS stop funding homeopathy. The report is a rare commodity – a thoroughly science-based political document. The committee went beyond simply stating that homeopathy does not work, and revealed impressive insight into the ethical, practical, and scientific problems caused...
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Retroviruses: Jumping the Gun
When I first heard that a retrovirus had been identified as a possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, I withheld judgment and awaited further developments. When I heard that two subsequent studies had failed to replicate the findings of the first, I assumed that the first had been a false alarm and would be disregarded. Not so. It’s a classic case of...
Autism Onset and the Vaccine Schedule – Revisited
This week on Science-Based Medicine I wrote an article about a new study looking at the onset of autism symptoms, showing that most children who will later be diagnosed with autism will show clear signs of autism at 12 months of age, but not 6 months. This is an interesting study that sheds light on the natural course of autism. I also...
Longing for a past that never existed
There once was a time when all food was organic and no pesticides were used. Health problems were treated with folk wisdom and natural remedies. There was no obesity, and people got lots of exercise. And in that time gone by, the average life expectancy was … 35! That’s right. For most of human existence, according to fossil and anthropological data, the...