Category: Science and Medicine
AAFP Endorses CAM
I recently chastised the American Family Physician (the journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians) for assigning a high SORT (strength of evidence) rating to acupuncture treatments that did not merit that rating. While the AAFP claims to strongly support evidence-based medicine, I have observed a gradual infiltration of CAM into their journal, their website, and their CME offerings. They seem...
HIV/AIDS denialists do it too!
Remember my post from Monday about fake scientific conferences organized by the anti-vaccine movement that are designed to paint a picture of legitimate science being done, so much so that they even fool some academics into speaking there? (I realize that the server issues we had from Monday through Wednesday that rendered the site completely FUBAR may have prevented some of you...
Boost Your Immune System?
The immune system is not a muscle, not a rocket, not a pump, not a balloon, nor anything else that can be inflated, expanded, or launched into the stratosphere simply by adding more power.
CAM and Fibromyalgia
One of the common themes regarding alternative medicine is the reversal of normal scientific thinking. In science, we must generally accept that we will fail to validate many of our hypotheses. Each of these failures moves us closer to the truth. In alternative medicine, hypotheses function more as fixed beliefs, and there is no study that can invalidate them. No matter how...
We’re Back
As you can see, Science-Based Medicine is now back online and fully functional. We have moved to a new host and a faster dedicated server. It seems that our problem was just that we outgrew our previous host. Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience. We will now resume our usual schedule of postings.
SBM Problems
As many of you have probably noticed, the science-based medicine site has been having connection problems for the last week, and was in fact down for most of Friday. We are actively working on the problem and hopefully will have it fixed soon. The site is functioning now, but remains very slow. Thanks for your patience, and sorry for any inconvenience.
“Gonzalez Regimen” for Cancer of the Pancreas: Even Worse than We Thought (Part II: Loose Ends)
Last week I discussed the dismal results of the “Gonzalez Trial” for cancer of the pancreas,* as reported in an article recently posted on the website of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I promised that this week I’d discuss “troubling information, both stated and unstated [in the report],” and also some ethical issues. More has come to light in the past few...
Kevin Trudeau’s Legal Trouble
Kevin Trudeau has made millions of dollars selling dubious medical products. He started his snake-oil salesman career selling coral calcium through infomercials. Trudeau claimed that this magical form of calcium could cure cancer and whatever ails you. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated Trudeau, who was making millions off his claims, and found that he was being, let us say, less than...
Applying Rigorous Science to Messy Medicine
The PowerPoint presentation that I gave at the Skeptic’s Toolbox workshop at the University of Oregon on August 7, 2009 is up on their website with the complete text of what I said. The theme of the workshop was scientific method. The title of my talk is “Tooth Fairy Science and Other Pitfalls: Applying Rigorous Science to Messy Medicine.” Click here for...
“Gonzalez Regimen” for Cancer of the Pancreas: Even Worse than We Thought (Part I: Results)
Review One of the more bizarre and unpleasant “CAM” claims, but one taken very seriously at the NIH, at Columbia University, and on Capitol Hill, is the cancer “detoxification” regimen advocated by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez: Patients receive pancreatic enzymes orally every 4 hours and at meals daily on days 1-16, followed by 5 days of rest. Patients receive magnesium citrate and Papaya...