Category: Science and Medicine
Asthma, placebo, and how not to kill your patients
A number of years ago I was walking along Lake Michigan with a friend (a fellow medical resident) when she turned to me and said, “are you wheezing? Do you have asthma?” I had always been physically active and assumed my breathlessness while walking down the trail was due to the thirty extra pounds of pizza and doughnuts I’d acquired during residency....
Dummy Medicines, Dummy Doctors, and a Dummy Degree, Part 1: a Curious Editorial Choice for the New England Journal of Medicine
Background This post concerns the recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) titled “Active Albuterol or Placebo, Sham Acupuncture, or No Intervention in Asthma.” It was ably reviewed by Dr. Gorski on Monday, so I will merely summarize its findings: of the three interventions used—inhaled albuterol (a bronchodilator), a placebo inhaler designed to mimic albuterol, or ‘sham acupuncture’—only albuterol...
Salt: More confirmation bias for your preferred narrative
Judging by the recent press reports, the latest Cochrane review reveals that everything we’ve been told about eating salt, and cardiovascular disease, is wrong: The New York Times: Nostrums: Cutting Salt Has Little Effect on Heart Risk The Daily Mail: Cutting back on salt ‘does not make you healthier’ (despite nanny state warnings) Scientific American: It’s Time to End the War on...
Honey
I cram for TAM, and, combined with other commitments, not the least of which is that it is finally sunny and warm in Portland, after a year that has resembled All the Summer in a Day, which leads to a relatively short post. There are just so many hours in a day and if possible those days need to be spent in...
SOS DD
What does it take to become a doctor? Endurance and perseverance help. It is a long haul from college to practice. But the skill that is most beneficial is the ability to consume prodigious amounts of information, remember it, and recall it as needed. Although I often relied on ‘B’ to get me through some of the exams. Thinking, specifically critical thinking,...
Update on Josephine Briggs and the NCCAM
Dr. Gorski is in the throes of grant-writing, so I’m filling in for him today by following up on a topic introduced a few months ago. It involves a key medical player in the U.S. government: Dr. Josephine Briggs, Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Background Steve Novella and I first encountered Dr. Briggs at the 2nd...
Magnets and Blood Flow
Over the last week I have received numerous questions about a recent study (yet to be published, but highly publicized in the press) in which it is claimed that the application of a magnetic field can improve blood flow. Physics World declared in the headline that, “Magnetic fields reduce blood viscosity.” This is not a bad summary of the study, but then...
“CAM” Education in Medical Schools—A Critical Opportunity Missed
Mea culpa to the max. I completely forgot that today is my day to post on SBM, so I’m going to have to cheat a little. Here is a link to a recent article by yours truly that appeared on Virtual Mentor, an online ethics journal published by the AMA with major input from medical students. Note that I didn’t write the...
Et tu, Biomarkers?
Everything you know may be wrong. Well, not really, but reading the research of John Ioannidis does make you wonder. His work, concentrated on research about research, is a popular topic here at SBM. And that’s because he’s focused on improving the way evidence is brought to bear on decision-making. His most famous papers get to the core of questioning how we...
We get mail
There are a few “laws” of the blogosphere, one of them being that a response to a post that comes more than a few weeks later is generally useless or crazy. But once in a while, someone takes the time to look at an old post and formulate a thoughtful response. This is not one of those times. Or maybe it is....