Category: Science and Medicine
Random Flu Thoughts
Influenza is a serious disease (not an upset tummy). The vaccine is an imperfect, yet still valuable tool in preventing deaths due to influenza. Get your 'flu shot!
Potential market for alternative medicine left untouched
A few days ago, I had the good fortune to share lunch and ideas with David Gorski and Kimball Atwood. Kimball was on his way from a talk at Michigan State to one at Brigham and Women’s, one of the country’s best-known teaching hospitals. David was planning a future talk for a group in Florida. These guys have been thinking and writing...
CAM practitioners react to Andrew Weil’s proposal for a board certification for integrative medicine. It isn’t (all) pretty.
About a month ago, I discussed a rather disturbing development, namely the initiative by Dr. Andrew Weil to set up something he was going to call the American Board of Integrative Medicine, all for the purpose of creating a system of board certification for physicians practicing “integrative medicine” (IM), or, as I prefer to call them, physicians who like to integrate pseudoscience...
Constipation Myths and Facts
When it comes to health issues, bowels are big business. Bowel movements are part of everyday life, and we notice immediately when our routine changes. Constipation, from the Latin word constipare (“to crowd together”) is something almost everyone has some experience with. In most cases, it’s an occasional annoyance that resolves quickly. For others, particularly the elderly, constipation can be a chronic...
Alpha Brain – What’s Wrong with the Supplement Industry
There is an endless stream of supplement products on the market that are of questionable value. They tend to follow a similar pattern: put an essentially random assortment of vitamins, minerals, perhaps herbs and nutritional elements into a pill and then make whatever pseudo-health claims you want. Usually the claim is implied in the name of the product itself – sleepwell, or...
KA at U Minnesota and Michigan State
I’ll be giving a talk, “Homeopathy and Skepticism,” to skeptical students this Thursday, Oct 27, at the University of Minnesota (7:00 PM at MCB 3-120) and this Friday, Oct. 28, at Michigan State University (7:00 PM at Holmes Hall 106). Here is the abstract: Homeopathy is an extraordinary popular delusion that has persisted for more than 200 years. It is now a...
Cranial Osteopathy in Dentistry
Editor’s note: Having just submitted a major grant on Friday and then having had to turn around and head to an NIH study section meeting today in Bethesda, I just didn’t have the time to produce something up to the usual standards of SBM for today. (And, being managing editor, I should know what’s up to the usual standards of SBM; what...
Crislip and Atwood at Boston Skeptics in the Pub, Wednesday, 10/19
Look here for details. We’ll talk about acupuncture for not too long, and then hang out and drink. Hope to see you there! KA
Dummy Medicine, Dummy Doctors, and a Dummy Degree, Part 2.2: Harvard Medical School and the Curious Case of Ted Kaptchuk, OMD (cont. again)
“Strong Medicine”: Ted Kaptchuk and the Powerful Placebo At the beginning of the first edition of The Web that has no Weaver, published in 1983, author Ted Kaptchuk portended his eventual academic interest in the placebo: A story is told in China about a peasant who had worked as a maintenance man in a newly established Western missionary hospital. When he retired...
The Prostrate Placebo
I seem to be writing a lot about the urinary tract this month. Just coincidence, I assure you. As I slide into old age, medical issues that were once only of cursory interest for a young whippersnapper have increasing potential to be directly applicable to grumpy old geezers. Like benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH). I am heading into an age where I may...