Shingles Vaccine (Zostavax) Confirmed Safe
Shingles (herpes zoster) is no fun. It usually begins with a couple of days of pain, then a painful rash breaks out and lasts a couple of weeks. The rash consists of blisters that eventually break open, crust over, and consolidate into an ugly plaque. It is localized to one side of the body and to a stripe of skin corresponding to...
Doctor’s Data Sues Quackwatch
A few weeks ago I posted an article about bogus diagnostic tests. I cited Doctor’s Data, Inc. (DDI), as “a company with a long history of dubious offerings.” I also wrote: You can’t help but have noticed that many of the links in this post are to articles on Quackwatch. That’s because the site is chock full of useful information about bogus tests,...
Homeopathy in the ICU?
Editor’s note: It’s still a holiday weekend in the United States. I had considered simply taking the day off altogether, particularly since I’m busily working on my talk for TAM8–which (holy crap!) is in a mere three days–but then I figured today’s a good time to resurrect a “classic” (if you will) post that I wrote a few years ago, dust it...
Not to worry! Chiropractic Board says stroke not a risk of cervical manipulation.
Back in January, the Connecticut Board of Chiropractic Examiners held a four-day hearing to decide whether chiropractors must, as a part of the informed consent process, (1)warn patients about the risk of cervical artery dissection and stroke following neck manipulation and (2) give patients a discharge summary listing the symptoms of stroke.1 On June 10th, the Board of issued a written opinion...
Acupuncture CME
Some Universities have more cachet than others. On the West coast it is Stanford that has the reputation as the best. There is Oxford, Yale, MIT, and maybe Whatsamatta U. I would wager that in most people’s mind the crème de la crème is Harvard. Harvard is where you find the best of the best. If Harvard is involved, a project gains...
It sounds so “nutritionous”
Dietitians are a critical part of modern medicine. In the hospital, dieticians not only educate patients on dietary treatment of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease; they also evaluate the nutritional status of critically ill patients and develop nutrition plans that may involve tube feeding or intravenous feeding. This is complicated, and takes into account a patient’s nutritional needs, medical conditions,...
Personalized Medicine Bait and Switch
Mark Hyman, a proponent of so-called “functional medicine” promoting himself over at the Huffington Post (an online news source that essentially allows dubious medical infomercials to pass as news) has posted a particularly egregious article on personalized medicine for dementia. In the article Hyman distorts the modern practice of medicine, the current state of genetic science, and the very notion of “disease.”...
Bioidentical Hormones
The Medical Letter recently evaluated “bioidentical” hormones and concluded There is no acceptable evidence that “bioidentical” hormones are safe or effective. Patients should be discouraged from taking them. “Bioidenticals” include progesterone, estrogens (estriol, estradiol, and estrone), and testosterone. They have mainly been promoted as a safer, more natural alternative to menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but they are also claimed to increase...
The price of opposing medical pseudoscience
When quacks can’t answer with science (which is most commonly), they fall back on their favorite ad hominem attack. They call their critics “pharma shills.” Then they try to silence them by almost any means they view as necessary. Those means can include attempts to get critics fired by going to their bosses and falsely accusing them of serious misdeeds. Dr. Gorski...
Dedicated to Jake Crosby and Age of Autism…
I'm still standing, better than I've ever been.