Integrative Medicine – Sectarians’ Trojan Horse
Integrative Medicine – Sectarians’ Trojan Horse leapfrogs science (Or, I can misuse language with the best of them…) I stumbled across an article from Archives of Internal Medicine, 2002 (Integrative Medicine: Bringing medicine back to its roots. Arch Intern Med. 2002 Feb 25;162(4):395-7). It is one of the first authored by Andrew Weil on “Integrative Medicine “ – another is BMJ in...
One Hand Clapping
CUSTOMER: Here’s one — nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! MORTICIAN: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing — here’s your nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! MORTICIAN: Here — he says he’s not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I’m not! MORTICIAN: He isn’t. CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill. DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you’re not...
Chiropractic and Stroke
I wonder how many people have heard that chiropractic neck adjustments can cause strokes. It isn’t exactly common knowledge. One organization is trying to raise public awareness through signs on the side of city buses (Injured by a Chiropractor? Call this number) and through TV commercials. I had never heard about this phenomenon myself until a few years ago, when I heard it...
The North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, Dr. Rashid Buttar, and protecting the public from practitioners of non-science-based medicine
One of the most contentious and difficult aspects of trying to improve medical care in this country is enforcing a minimal “standard of care.” Optimally, this standard of care should be based on science- and evidence-based medicine and act swiftly when a practitioner practices medicine that doesn’t meet even a minimal requirement for scientific studies and clinical trials to support it. At...
The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part V)
Part IV of this blog ended by observing that the NIH-funded trial of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas,† to have begun in March, 1999, was in trouble almost as soon as it started. As originally designed, it was to have been a randomized, controlled trial comparing gemcitabine, the standard chemotherapy, to the “Gonzalez regimen” of pancreatic enzymes, “supplements,” twice-daily coffee enemas, and other purported...
Conflict of Interest in Medical Research
The cornerstone of science-based medicine is, of course, scientific research. The integrity and quality of biomedical research is therefore of critical importance and to be thoughtfully and jealously guarded, if we care about maintaining an optimal standard of care. There are many threats and hazards to the institutions of medical research – mostly ideological. One that has not been discussed much on...
Women in Medicine
Why aren’t there more women in science and medicine? Just because we lack certain anatomical dangly bits, does that mean we’re less capable? Apparently Harvard’s president Lawrence H. Summers thought so. In a classic case of foot-in-mouth disease, he suggested that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. His comments (in...
Barriers to practicing science-based surgery
Much to the relief of regular readers, I will now change topics from those of the last two weeks. Although fun and amusing (except to those who fall for them), continuing with such material for too long risks sending this blog too far in a direction that no one would want. So, instead, this week it’s time to get serious again. A...
The Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo #4
That’s What I’m Talkin’ ’bout! The new single-paragraph paradigm for the W^5/2 seems to have worked: there were 13 Waluations for the paragraph submitted in W^5/2 #3, every one of ’em good. Several themes emerged; I’ll discuss them in no particular order. When did you stop beating your wife? The passage charges that the “biomedical model,” by which is apparently meant modern medicine, does...
The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part IV)
A Review; then Back to the Gonzalez Regimen† Part I of this blog introduced the topic of the “Gonzalez regimen” for treating cancer: “Intensive Pancreatic Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy With Ancillary Nutritional Support” and “detoxification” with twice daily coffee enemas, daily “skin brushing,” “a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month,” and more. The topic...