More questions about acetaminophen: Does it cause ADHD?
“Will Tylenol harm my baby?” Pharmacists are among the most accessible of health professionals, and so we receive a lot of questions from the public. No appointment required, and the advice is free. Among the most frequent sources of questions are women seeking advice on drug use in pregnancy. This is an area where some health professionals are reluctant to tread....
More Measles Myths
Antivaxxers spread misinformation. This does not have to be the case – I can envision those who wish to function as watchdogs on the vaccine industry or prioritize personal freedom over government programs (even good ones), but who strive to be logical and evidence-based. The culture within the anti-vaccine movement, however, is not logical and evidence-based. Rather, they spread whatever misinformation supports...
Point-of-Care Ultrasound: The Best Thing Since Stethoscopes?
A bit of good news for a change: a “Perspective” article in the New England Journal of Medicine describes how point-of-care ultrasound devices are being integrated into medical education. The wonders of modern medical technology are akin to science fiction. We don’t yet have a tricorder like “Bones” McCoy uses on Star Trek, but we are heading in that direction, and the...
Agnotology: The Study of Ignorance
A comment from the blog: Every single time – bar none – I have had a conversation with someone about CAM and its modalities, they are absolutely astonished when I explain to them what the modality really is. One story I love telling comes from my friend in the year behind me. His parents are professional chemists and he came home one...
Naturopathy vs. Science: Allergy Edition
I glanced at my pharmacy license recently, and noticed I became a licensed pharmacist almost exactly twenty years ago. Two decades seems like a long time to do pretty much anything, yet I can still vividly recall some of the patients I encountered early in my career, working evenings in a retail pharmacy that drew heavily on the alternative medicine crowd. It...
Medical Conspiracies
Anyone publicly writing about issues of science and medicine from a pro-science perspective likely gets many e-mails similar to the ones I see every week. Here’s just one recent example: Im sorry the medical community has become decadent and lazy as most that follow your stance could care less to study the real truth. I have also seen it much more deviant...
Nature vs. Technology
Nathanael Johnson has written an interesting book about what "natural" means, and doesn't mean, drawing upon his own life but more importantly - the scientific literature.
A bit of shameless self-promotion: Dr. Gorski interviewed by Point of Inquiry about Stanislaw Burzynski
Every so often, I or one of my fellow SBM bloggers, is interviewed somewhere. This time, it’s my turn, and this time I was interviewed by Lindsay Beyerstein over at Point of Inquiry. In these days when credulous reporters still, in essence, do Burzynski’s bidding with respect to the message he wants to get out, while Burzynski takes advantage of the desperation...
A tale of quackademic medicine at the University of Arizona Cancer Center
NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers like the University of Arizona should provide rigorously science-based treatment. Unfortunately, magical mystical "treatments" like reiki are offered to UA patients, as I learned from a father of a child treated there.