Donald Trump and the dangerous vaccine politics of the 2016 Presidential race
At the second Republican debate of the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump parroted antivaccine pseudoscience, and Ben Carson walked back his previously strong support for vaccine mandates. Earlier in the campaign, Rand Paul blamed vaccines for "neurologic injury," and Chris Christie briefly pandered by questioning vaccine mandates. What's going on here? Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?
The Worst Homeopathy Study. Ever
I run across a lot of information in my feeds that I need to save for further evaluation. The study “Does additional antimicrobial treatment have a better effect on URTI cough resolution than homeopathic symptomatic therapy alone? A real-life preliminary observational study in a pediatric population“, I saved with the file name, ‘jaw droppingly stupid’. The worst homeopathy clinical trial ever doesn’t...
Massage Therapy rubs me the wrong way
Back in my days of practicing law, one of my escapes from reality was a good massage. It was a great treat, exchanging the high-octane atmosphere of the law office for the soothing music, subdued voices and pastel tones of the treatment room. I could have stayed on that table for hours. Little did I know just how much an escape from...
Seneff Claims GMOs Cause Concussions
You read that headline correctly. Stephanie Seneff first came to skeptical attention when she published a study claiming that vaccines were linked to autism. She trolled through the VAERS database and, as David Gorski noted, “tortured the data until it confessed.” Last year she published a paper in which she claimed glyphosate caused autism, claims which I addressed almost a year ago....
Frontal Lobotomy: Zombies Created by One of Medicine’s Greatest Mistakes
Frontal lobotomies have a dramatic, thankfully rather brief, history in the treatment of mental illness. Janet Sternburg has written an illuminating, and humanizing, book on the history of lobotomies, both personal and societal.
The Federal Trade Commission takes on homeopathy—maybe
Well, I’m back. OK, returning from London isn’t nearly as epic as Sam Gamgee’s final words in The Lord of the Rings returning to his wife and daughter after having accompanied Frodo, Gandalf, Bilbo, and key elves of Middle-Earth to the Grey Havens, there to say goodbye to them as they boarded a ship to the undying lands. I just love the...
Here be Dragons: Caring for Children in a Dangerous Sea of sCAM
As a pediatrician working in a relatively sCAM-inclined region, it is not uncommon to find myself taking care of patients who are also being followed by so-called alternative medicine practitioners. This often creates a major obstacle to providing appropriate care and establishing an atmosphere of mutual trust in the provider-patient/parent relationship. It usually makes me feel like I’m battling invisible serpents in...
Are guidelines for calcium and vitamin D rooted in evidence, or vested interests?
Do osteoporosis guidelines overstate the benefits of calcium and vitamin D supplements? And is their continued presence due to vested interests and conflicts of interest? That’s the provocative argument made by Andrew Grey and Marc Bolland, two endocrinologists who recently detailed their analysis in The BMJ, in a paper entitled “Web of industry, advocacy, and academia in the management of osteoporosis” [PDF]....
The Alternative Medicine Racket
ReasonTV just put out a new video called, “The Alternative Medicine Racket: How the Feds Fund Quacks,” Produced and edited by Todd Krainin. The video is a documentary about the rise of alternative medicine in the US, and is a must-watch for anyone interested in the issue. The documentary does well what a good history documentary is supposed to do – put...
Lawsuit Alleges School Wi-Fi Harmed Child with Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
My mother had a favorite saying that rhymed: “All you need from dawn to dawn is someone else to blame it on.” WiFi involves mysterious emissions that you can’t see and that sneakily permeate our environment, and they have become a popular target for blame. A lawsuit has been filed against the Fay School in Massachusetts on behalf of a 12-year-old boy...