Results for: lyme
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!
Milk Thistle and Mushroom Poisoning
If you’ve been fortunate to live in the parts of the US that were soggier than usually as of late – or unfortunate enough to have had flooding from hurricanes and tropical storms – then you’ve be noticing a tremendous burst of mushrooms. For mycologists – mushroom enthusiasts – there are two classic chestnuts: “There are old mushroom collectors and bold mushrooms...
Quoth the anti-vaccine group SANE Vax: Beware HPV DNA in Gardasil!
Every so often, there’s a bit of misinformation that starts spreading around the Internet that shows up in enough places that our readers take notice and e-mail us about it. What happens is that these in essence become “requests.” We at SBM are, of course, happy to consider all requests and sometimes will actually take them on, particularly when doing so will...
The Annals of Internal Medicine Qualifies for Fail Blog.
As most readers of the blog know, I am mostly an Infectious Disease doc. I spend my day diagnosing and treating infections and infectious complications. It is, as I have said before, a simple job. Me find bug, me kill bug, me go home. Kill bug. It is the key part of what I do everyday, and if there is karmic payback...
Blatant pro-alternative medicine propaganda in The Atlantic
Some of my fellow Science-Based Medicine (SBM) bloggers and I have been wondering lately what’s up with The Atlantic. It used to be one of my favorite magazines, so much so that I subscribed to it for roughly 25 years (and before that I used to read my mother’s copy). In general I enjoyed its mix of politics, culture, science, and other...
Parasites
I saw a patient recently for parasites. I get a sinking feeling when I see that diagnosis on the schedule, as it rarely means a real parasite. The great Pacific NW is mostly parasite free, so either it is a traveler or someone with delusions of parasitism. The latter comes in two forms: the classic form and Morgellons. Neither are likely to...
How to Interrogate an Herbal Medicine: Thunder God Vine
Thunder god vine may not be a useful herbal medicine but the compounds isolated from it are fascinating – if not as medicines, then most certainly as laboratory tools. Nature Chemical Biology recently published an article where a research team from Johns Hopkins, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Drew University in New Jersey, has determined the molecular mechanism of action...
Why haven’t we cured cancer yet?
Why haven’t we cured cancer yet? If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer? If we can harness the atom, why can’t we cure cancer? How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask this question myself. Saturday was the two...
Followup: More Evidence against the XMRV Virus as a Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
A mouse leukemia retrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV retrovirus), has been under consideration as a possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, and also prostate cancer). In a study published in Science in October 2009, Lombardi et al. found XMRV in 67% of CFS patients and 3.7% of controls. Several subsequent studies in the UK, the Netherlands, and the US...
When (Anti-Vax) Politics Intrudes
Over the last decade there has been a needed discussion about the relationship between politics and science. This has mostly been spawned by the perceived “Republican War on Science,” at the center of which is the global warming debate. In reality, both ends of the political spectrum (as evidenced, for example, by the Huffington Post) tend to trump science with ideology. That...