The problem with preclinical research? Or: A former pharma exec discovers the nature of science

If there’s one thing about quacks, it’s that they are profoundly hostile to science. Actually, they have a seriously mixed up view of science in that they hate it because it doesn’t support what they believe. Yet at the same time they very much crave the imprimatur that science provides. When science tells them they are wrong, they therefore often try to...

/ April 23, 2012

Spring Update on Prior Posts

Although I write the definitive entries on topics in this blog, new information trickles in after publication.  The new studies are often not worth an entire entry, recapitulating prior essays, but the new information is still worth a mention.  What follows are updates on topics covered in  prior SBM posts. Raw Milk In Oregon we are having a small outbreak of infections...

/ April 20, 2012

The CAM Docket: Boiron II

Five consumer lawsuits are pending in the U.S. against Boiron, the world’s largest manufacturer of homeopathic products. One lawsuit is also pending in Canada. As reported in a previous post, the U.S. plaintiffs claim they purchased homeopathic products, such as Coldcalm, Oscillo, Arnicare and Chestal Cough Syrup, based on Boiron’s misleading and false statements that they are effective for various ailments. Therefore,...

/ April 19, 2012

The Skeptical Clinician

All scientists should be skeptics. Serious problems arise when a less-than-skeptical approach is taking to the task of discovery. Typically the result is flawed science, and for those significantly lacking in skepticism this can descend to pseudoscience and crankery. With the applied sciences, such as the clinical sciences of medicine and mental therapy, there are potentially immediate and practical implications as well....

/ April 18, 2012

The Future of Medicine

Eric Topol, MD, has written a book about the convergence of the digital revolution and medicine. It is full of fascinating information and prognostication, but I wish he had given it a better title.  He called it The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care. Medicine will not and cannot be “destroyed.” It will be improved...

/ April 17, 2012

Cancer care in the U.S. versus Europe: Is more necessarily better?

The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I’m not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other than to point out that how to rein in these costs has long been a flashpoint for debate. Indeed, most of the...

/ April 16, 2012

Low-Back Pain: Causes, Care, and Consequences

Low-back problems are one of the most common reasons for visits to doctors’ offices and the most common cause of disability among persons under the age of forty five. Most of the time, acute low-back pain is the result of simple strain and is a self-limiting condition that will resolve in four to six weeks, with or without treatment. But since back...

/ April 13, 2012

Systemic Enzyme Therapy

One of the recurrent themes in alternative medicine is the practice of simplifying complex medical conditions, and then offering up equally simple solutions which are positioned as still being within the realm of science. This approach allows the practitioner to ignore all of the complexity and difficulty of practicing real medicine, yet offer nostrums that, on first glance, can sound legitimate. Science-y,...

/ April 12, 2012

Herbal Medicine and Aristolochic Acid Nephropathy

Herbs are little more than dirty drugs, with uncertain dosing, potency, and often-unrecognized side effects. Aristolochic acid, which is present in the Aristolochia genus of plants often used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for many uses. Used in the West as a weight loss aid, Aristolochia is a case study in the unrecognized dangers of herbal medicine; it is a powerful nephrotoxin, and...

/ April 11, 2012

Update: Homeopathy in Brazilian Scientific American

Last week I wrote about a regrettable piece on homeopathy that was published in Scientific American Brasil.  There have been gratifying developments. Within hours, the editor in chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, appeared in the Comments. She said that Scientific American does not condone the pseudoscience of homeopathy, that the piece clearly should not have been published, that it would never have...

/ April 10, 2012