Category: Science and Medicine
Functional Medicine (FM) What Is It?
Functional Medicine – What is it? After extensive searching and examination, my answer is still – only the originators of “FM” know. Or, at least one must assume they know, because so far as I can see, I certainly see nothing that distinguishes “FM” from other descriptions of sectarian and “Complementary/Alternative Medicine” practices. A difference may lie in the advocates’ assumptions to...
Science-Based Medicine Conference
The Science-Based Medicine Conference has begun! Val is Twittering it at: http://twitter.com/drval Check it out at the tags #TAM7 and #SBM.
NIH Awards $30 Million Research Dollars To Convicted Felons: Cliff’s Notes Version
In case you’re coming late to this discussion (or have ADD), I’ve summarized Dr. Kimball Atwood’s terrific analysis of the ongoing clinical trial (TACT trial) in which convicted felons were awarded $30 million by the NIH. *** In one of the most unethical clinical trial debacles of our time, the NIH approved a research study (called the TACT Trial – Trial to...
Does popularity lead to unreliability in scientific research?
One of the major themes here on the Science-Based Medicine (SBM) blog has been about one major shortcoming of the more commonly used evidence-based medicine paradigm (EBM) that has been in ascendance as the preferred method of evaluating clinical evidence. Specifically, as Kim Atwood (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) has pointed out before, EBM values clinical studies above all...
Medical training versus scientific training
This month I will begin my third year of medical school, after a three-year break for laboratory research. Living alternately in the worlds of med school and grad school has prompted me to reflect on differences between these training programs. [Obvious disclaimer: I have studied at a single institution, and only for five years.] I am enrolled in a dual-degree MD/PhD program. About 120 US medical schools...
Human Subjects as Political Pawns
When it comes to “alternative medicine” trials, it seems that the NIH is willing to experiment on people in ways that would be unthinkable for real biomedical research. The federal Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) has posted a preliminary determination letter, dated May 27, 2009, addressing some of the charges we had made against the politics-driven NIH Trial to Assess Chelation...
I get mail–chiroquacktic edition
A long while back, at the original wordpress incarnation of my usual blog, I wrote a piece on the reasons that chiropractic is unscientific nonsense. Because it was popular, I resurrected it. Well, a chiropractor has come to bravely defend his field and left me a comment. A study in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics...
“Acupuncture Anesthesia”: a Proclamation from Chairman Mao (Part IV)
The Cultural Revolution After investigating ‘acupuncture anesthesia’ in the People’s Republic of China in 1973, John Bonica wrote: From the guarded comments made by several anesthesiologists, I concluded that this disuse [of ‘acupuncture anesthesia,’ after its introduction in 1958 until the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began in 1966] was the result of disappointing failures in a significant proportion of patients. During the...
The death and rebirth of vitalism
Vitalism was once central to the prescientific ideas about biology but was later abandoned to the enormous benefit of the discipline. These days, many CAM approaches want to bring it back.