Results for: oz
AARP and Alternative Medicine
I know I said the next entry would be about the efficacy of the influenza vaccine. The road to blogging in paved with good intentions. I will eventually write that entry, but the ADD has kicked in and my attention has wandered elsewhere. I am 51 and one of the benefits of this advanced age is you get to join AARP, the...
“Battlefield acupuncture”?
THE SCENE: Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere where U.S. troops are risking life and limb. THE TIME: The not-too-distant-future. Maybe even 2009. Joe is on patrol. It’s the middle of summer in the desert town. The air hangs heavy, hot, dry and dusty, like a blast furnace firing steel. The heat penetrates Joe’s 80 lb pack in much the same way the heat...
Credulous medical reporting
Science and medicine reporting is hard. In this space and otherswe’ve dealt with some of the problems that arise when “generalist” reporters try to “do” science and medicine. And now, CNN has shut down its science unit. Given the increasing complexity of medical and scientific knowledge, this is very bad news. As a fine example of poor medical reporting, let’s look at...
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Case Study Exploring the Battle Lines of Science Based Medicine
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post solicited by Dr. Hall, who describes Dr. Albietz thusly: He’s a skeptical young pediatrician who works in a PICU and recently had a chiropractor come into the PICU to consult on a child with intractable seizures. He was sort of coerced to allow this at the parents’ request and against his better judgment. His hospital...
Dr. Jay Gordon – “Anti-Vaccination”
Dr. Jay Gordon is a pediatrician and one of the stars of the anti-vaccinationist movement. (Dr. Gorski wrote an exellent criticism of many of his claims recently on SBM.) He is, in fact, the pediatrician to Jenny McCarthy’s son, Evan (who she claims was injured by vaccines). Several months ago he published an “open letter on vaccinations” which is now making the...
The science of purging, or the purging of science?
It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S., one of my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving habits get set down early in life, and the while I may find your lima bean casserole execrable, to you it’s just not Thanksgiving without it. And speaking of excrement, you can expect to see adds encouraging you to “detox” from all of your holiday excesses. Outside the field of substance...
Fecal Transplants: Getting To The Bottom Of The Matter
Many Americans will be introducing more food than usual to their GI tracts on this Thanksgiving Day, and so I thought I’d provide you with a special gastroenterology-related post to complement the mood. If you have already eaten, I might suggest that you come back to this post on an empty stomach. I will be discussing the alternative medicine practice known as...
Bee Venom Therapy – Grassroots Medicine
Pat Wagner (or “The Bee Lady,” as she likes to be called) treats herself for multiple sclerosis (MS) by allowing bees to sting her. She calls this bee-venom therapy (BVT) and believes it has saved her from MS. There are now thousands of people who administer BVT to themselves or others, mostly in private homes by unlicensed practitioners. BVT is not prescribed...
The (Not-So-)Beautiful (Un)Truth about the Gerson protocol and cancer quackery
Note added by editor: The complete movie is now available on YouTube: Although this blog is about medicine, specifically the scientific basis of medicine and threats to the scientific basis of medicine regardless of the source, several of us also have an interest in other forms of pseudoscience and threats to other branches of science. One branch of science that is, not...
The Infection Schedule versus the Vaccination Schedule
Antivaccination activists have claimed that when it comes to there are "too many, too soon". They apparently do not grasp the number of bacteria and viruses (and fungi and parasites) that we are exposed to every day for our entire life.