False Balance for Homeopathy in the BMJ
The BMJ is a prestigious medical journal, which just goes to show that prestigious journals can sometimes make awful decisions. They recently published a pro vs con article on homeopathy. Peter Fisher dragged out the current repertoire of pro-homeopathy tropes, while Edzard Ernst did a fine job of summarizing why homeopathy is nonsense. I also think the article is an excellent example...
How To Listen to Chi
You will need flat shoes and a bottle of vitamins, herbal formula, or prescription medicine. Step 1: Hold the bottle with both hands, touching your chest Step 2: Stand up straight and get your balance Step 3: Close your eyes and feel what is happening to your body. Results: If your body moves forward or stays neutral – going side to side...
The uncertainty surrounding mammography continues
Mammography is a topic that, as a breast surgeon, I can’t get away from. It’s a tool that those of us who treat breast cancer patients have used for over 30 years to detect breast cancer earlier in asymptomatic women and thus decrease their risk of dying of breast cancer through early intervention. We have always known, however, that mammography is an...
Cryotherapy: A Layman’s Attempt to Understand the Science
NOTE: I get a lot of emails asking me whether treatment X is evidence-based or a scam. This one was different. Zachary Hoffman had done his homework and had already answered the question for himself (at least, as well as it could be answered with the existing published evidence). I asked him to write up his findings as a guest post for...
Ethical Failures
It is summer vacation for me in Eastern Oregon at Sunriver. Unbelievable geology, fantastic hikes, great biking, wonderful golf, delicious beer and good food. The thesaurus fails me for superlatives. It is hard to get too riled up about all things SCAM to produce a blog entry when I could be doing one or all of the above. I really...
Nevada’s new quack protection law
Practicing a licensed health care profession, such as medicine, without a license used to be a felony in Nevada. Not any more. As of July 1, quacks and charlatans are free to ply their trades unencumbered by the threat that they might have to answer to the regulatory authorities for their misdeeds, as long as they follow a few simple rules. This...
University of Toronto Coddles Quackery
The ongoing saga of quackademic medicine continues. The University of Toronto School of Public Health has been caught teaching utter nonsense to its students. Even worse, when called out on this dereliction of their academic responsibility, they defended it. Unfortunately, it is all too clear how something like this can happen. The department was teaching an alternative medicine course at U of...
Update on Cholesterol and Statins
The consensus of mainstream medicine is that a high blood level of LDL cholesterol is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and that lowering high levels can help with prevention and treatment. Statins have been proven effective for lowering cholesterol levels and for decreasing cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. I recently wrote about the new guidelines for statin therapy. Currently half of...
The war in California over nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, part 2
California has passed SB 277 into law. Beginning in the 2016-2017 school year, SB 277 will eliminate personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements. This will benefit the health of California schoolchildren, but the law is not perfect and already antivaxers are looking for loopholes.
Cochrane Review on Community Water Fluoridation
One of the overriding themes of the Science Based Medicine blog is to use rigorous science when evaluating any health claim – be it medical, dental, dietary, fitness, or any other assertion put forth with the intention of improving one’s health. Once the scientific evidence is evaluated as to efficacy, there are other criteria which must be taken into consideration, such as...
Don’t Blame the Patient