Category: Science and the Media
The Media and Vaccines
As the name of this blog makes clear, the authors believe that the public is best served when the institutions of medicine and health care are science-based. The basis of medicine has many levels and institutions in our society. They include not only the practitioners of medicine, but hospitals, medical schools and other academic institutions, government and regulatory agencies, industry, insurance companies,...
The Real ID
Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.Stein (speaking about the Holocaust): …that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s...
The early detection of cancer and improved survival: More complicated than most people think
“Early detection of cancer saves lives.” How many times have you heard this statement or something resembling it? It’s a common assumption (indeed, a seemingly common sense assumption) that detecting cancer early is always a good thing. Why wouldn’t it always be a good thing, after all? For many cancers, such as breast cancer and colon cancer, there’s little doubt tha early...
Near Death Experiences and the Medical Literature
MIRACLE MAX: See, there’s a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he’s slightly alive. All dead, well, with all dead, there’s usually only one thing that you can do. INIGO: What’s that? MIRACLE MAX: Go through his clothes and look for loose change. — The Princess Bride Can you trust anyone when they purport to tell you...
Science and Health News Reporting – The Case of the Regenerating Finger
Last week it was widely reported that an Ohio man, Lee Spievak, had regrown the end of his finger that had been chopped off in an accident. Reporters informed us, for example: A man who sliced off the end of his finger in an accident has re-grown the digit thanks to pioneering regenerative medicine. But this was not the real story. The...
Mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants and autism: Is there a correlation?
On April 30, outside the courthouse in Dallas, a press conference/rally was held. This particular rally was in response to a new study published by a group led by Dr. Raymond F. Palmer in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, whose conclusion was that autism prevalence correlates strongly with proximity...
Charlie Woo TV
Some of us received the announcement a week ago of the Bravewell Collaborative’s planned conference on “Integrative Medicine” co-sponsored with the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, to take place in February, 2009. (Note: I like to cap slogans and commercial trademarks and such and enclose them in quotation marks. Especially when the terms have no consensus meaning or are intended to obscure...
How Can Smart People Be So Stupid?
This is a quick posting that begins to respond to the question posted today by Joe: What I don’t understand is why the majority of doctors at Columbia did not say “This is obvious abuse of patients, and it will not be tolerated here.” Given his richly-deserved malpractice record, why was [Gonzalez] even associated with Columbia? David Gorski answered it in part:...
The Business of Being Born
One of our readers asked for a critique of the movie “The Business of Being Born.” I guess my sex and specialty make me the best qualified to comment. I delivered over 200 babies as a family physician. I had two babies of my own (at age 37 and 39), one with intervention (forceps) and one 9-pounder who almost “fell” out before...
The Hannah Poling case and the rebranding of autism by antivaccinationists as a mitochondrial disorder
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I seem to have taken on the role of the primary vaccine blogger of this little group of bloggers trying desperately to hold the forces of pseudoscience and magical thinking at bay in the face of powerful forces trying to “integrate” prescientific belief systems with science- and evidence-based medicine, a process that would...