Missouri tackles primary care shortage with “assistant physicians”
A new law in Missouri will allow medical school graduates who have not completed a residency to practice in underserved areas. They will be able to call themselves “doctor” but will be licensed as “assistant physicians” with significant limitations on their practice. (The first link is to Senate Bill 716, the bill that was passed and signed by the governor. It covers...
Privileged Antivaxxers
The Hollywood Reporter recently published what is mostly an exposé on privileged Hollywood parents who have elected to delay, limit, or avoid altogether immunizing their children. The most common headline coming out of this article is that some LA communities have vaccination rates at third-world levels, such as South Sudan. The issues raises many questions pertinent to the promotion of science-based medicine...
The Human Mold: Another Example of Self-Deception
José Jarimba believes that our bodies are physically molded into an asymmetric form by our mothers’ sleeping positions during pregnancy, that this has lifelong adverse impacts on health, and that shoe inserts can eliminate pain and other health problems by realigning the body. This is a silly untested hypothesis by a single individual. As such, it would be too minor to merit...
Only two months until Skepticon
I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but I will be speaking at Skepticon in November. (Holy crap, that’s just over two months away. I’d better get my talk ready. It’ll be about the central dogma of alternative medicine. Or some such medically-related topic.) In any case, now’s crunch time, the time of year when Skepticon’s fundraising needs to go into...
Medicine past, present, and future: Star Trek versus Dr. Kildare and The Knick
I love the new Cinemax series The Knick, which is set in 1900 and portrays a brilliant maverick surgeon named Dr. John Thackery on the cutting edge of medicine at the time. I also love Star Trek's Dr. "Bones" McCoy and have recently come to like the old radio show featuring Dr. Kildare. Looking at how the three shows portray medicine in...
Fluoride: Still Not Poisoning Your Precious Bodily Fluids!
We dentists are an evil group of sociopaths. When we’re not trying to kill you or give you chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis with our toxic mercury saturated fillings, we are advocating for the placement of rat poison/industrial waste (i.e. fluoride) in your water supply by our governmental overlords. What is up with us? The problem is, we’re failing miserably. Even...
Legislating Ignorance
Science is under attack, and not just from anti-vaccine celebrities and parents with degrees from Google University. Scientific illiteracy is being woven into the very fabric of our society through legislative assault. If you dismiss this as alarmist hyperbole, you haven’t been paying close enough attention. Every day thousands of pediatric health care providers throughout the country provide safety advice to patients...
Side effects may include liver failure
“Safe and natural.” It’s a marketing phrase attached to dietary supplements that’s often accepted as self-evident. The marketing works. Supplements have a strong health halo. But evidence suggests that this reputation may be undeserved. Not only are there continued questions about whether most supplements have any health benefits whatsoever, there is also evidence that they can be harmful. We can’t even be...
Autism Prevalence Unchanged in 20 Years
That there is an “autism epidemic” is taken as a given by those who feel autism has a dominant environmental cause. The Age of Autism blog, for example, bills itself as a, “Daily Web Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic.” The term “epidemic” also implies an environmental factor, such as an infection. The epidemiology of autism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has never...
The Reality of Ancient Wisdom: Acupuncture and TCM Weren’t So Great
A mythology has grown up around traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The ancient wisdom of the inscrutable Orient supposedly helped patients in ways that modern science-based medicine fails to understand or appreciate. A typical claim found on the Internet: “The ancient beliefs and practice of traditional Chinese medicine have been healing people for thousands of years.” As Steven Novella has said, “TCM is...