Testing a Chinese Herbal Flu Remedy
During the early days of the 2009 H1N1 influenza A pandemic, the popular herbal formula maxingshigan–yinqiaosan was used widely by TCM practitioners to reduce symptoms. (It’s hard to pronounce and spell, so I’ll refer to it as M-Y.) A new study was done to test whether M-Y worked and to compare it to the prescription drug oseltamivir. It showed that M-Y did...
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s muddled draft policy on “non-allopathic” medicine
Detroit is my hometown, and three and a half years ago, after nearly twenty years away wandering between residency, graduate school, fellowship, and my first academic job, I found myself back in Detroit minted as surgical faculty at Wayne State University and practicing and doing research at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. One thing that I had forgotten about while I...
Dummy Medicine, Dummy Doctors, and a Dummy Degree, Part 2.0: Harvard Medical School and the Curious Case of Ted Kaptchuk, OMD
Review The recent albuterol vs. placebo trial reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found that experimental subjects with asthma experienced substantial, measured improvements in lung function after inhaling albuterol, but not after inhaling placebo, undergoing sham acupuncture, or “no treatment.” It also found that the same subjects reported having felt substantially improved after either albuterol or each of the...
Oh yeah? Thalidomide! Where’s your science now?
Online discussions on the merits of alternative medicine can get quite heated. And its proponents, given enough time, will inevitably cite the same drug as “evidence” of the failings of science. Call it Gavura’s Law, with apologies to Mike Godwin: As an online discussion on the effectiveness of alternative medicine grows longer, the probability that thalidomide will be cited approaches one. A...
Homeopathic Thuggery
There have been many cases now of big companies or organizations, or wealthy individuals, threatening to sue or actually suing a blogger for libel. The most famous case is that of Simon Singh who was sued by the British Chiropractic Association over comments he made in an article. Simon braved through the expensive and exhaustive legal process (which is especially onerous in...
Wishing Away Warts
Common warts (verruca vulgaris) are more of a nuisance than a serious health problem, but they are interesting. There is a whole mythology surrounding their cause (touching toads?) and treatment (everything from banana peels to vitamin C). Many people believe they can be made to vanish by suggestion or hypnosis. I used to believe that too. Every doctor has wart stories. Here...
“Integrative medicine”: A brand, not a specialty
Back in the mists of time, what used to be considered quackery became "alternative medicine." Thus began the rebranding. The latest iteration is "integrative medicine," which advocates the "integration" of quackery with science-based medicine, which it portrays as the "best of both worlds." It's been a very effective campaign, unfortunately.
Train Therapy
Summertime and the living is busy. Finally we have sun in the Northwest. While the rest of the country has been melting in heat, this year we have rarely cracked 85. Global heating has avoided Oregon this year, and I will need some green tomato recipes. Good weather, work is busy, and it is the last two weeks with my eldest before...
Everthing Old is New Again!
I have as much of a sense of nostalgia as anyone. I love history. I think that there is lots to be said about the “good old days,” whenever the heck they were. I do not, however, think that the “good old days” generally include medicine. The fact is that it’s only been about 100 or so years since medical practitioners really...
The Scam Scam
In 1994 Congress (pushed by Senators Harkin and Hatch) passed DSHEA (the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act). As regular readers of SBM know, we are not generally happy about this law, which essentially deregulated the supplement industry. Under DSHEA supplements, a category which specifically was defined to include herbals, are regulated more like food than like medicinals. Since then the flood-gates...