Results for: bravewell

An Age of Endarkenment? The American Veterinary Medical Association and Homeopathy

It can be frustrating, and sometimes even a little depressing, to be a skeptic. Promoting reason and science-based medicine often feels like a Sisyphean effort that garners lots of hostility and ad hominem attacks from proponents of pseudoscience and few concrete victories. But once in a while, something happens to give a little hope and inspiration. In 2010, for example, the House...

/ January 26, 2013

SCAMlandia. CAM in Oregon.

I quite like Portlandia. I find it funny and it captures a part of Portland. I recognize large swaths of the city’s culture in the show. Other representations of the city I recognize less. Sunset publishes beautiful photographs of the NW, but when I look at the photos I think, that section of the city never looks that good. It is quite...

/ January 11, 2013

What’s past is prologue

Today marks the five year anniversary of the blog. I was not part of the initial stable of writers, my first entry published Jan 31. As I remember it shortly thereafter they browbeat me into writing twice a month. I had a lot of hesitancy participating as I was uncertain I could keep up with the twice monthly writing requirements. I am...

/ January 1, 2013

CAM and Creationism: Separated at Birth?

Over the past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend CSICon in Nashville, Tennessee. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (“CSI”) combats all sorts of pseudoscience, including creationism/creation science/intelligent design and alternative/complementary/integrative medicine. Our own Team SBM was ably represented by Harriet Hall, David Gorski and Kimball Atwood, whose presentation highlighted the credulous acceptance of CAM in some medical schools, and by Steve...

/ November 1, 2012

Andrew Weil/AAFP Article Rejected by Slate

I was asked to write an article for Slate, the on-line magazine, about Andrew Weil’s selection as the keynote speaker for the 2012 AAFP annual scientific assembly. The science and health editor, Laura Helmuth, was initially enthusiastic about what I wrote, but eventually decided not to publish it. Here is the initial draft of my article. My comments follow. Original Draft of...

/ October 30, 2012

The problem of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

It’s that time of year again, namely flu vaccine time. My very own cancer institute will be offering the flu vaccine for its staff beginning October 1, and I plan on getting mine just as soon as I get back from the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress in Chicago early next week. In the meantime, it’s always great to read Mark...

/ September 23, 2012

Physicians and “CAM”

In the last 20 or so years, the popularity of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” began to lure physicians (M.D.s and D.O.s) into employing CAM treatments, or what is now rebranded as “integrative medicine.” Of course, CAM use by a physician necessarily requires some deviation from the “conventional” standard of care. Because deviation from the standard of care can be grounds for discipline by the...

/ September 20, 2012

The “central dogma” of alternative/complementary/integrative medicine

There is something in molecular biology and genetics known as the “central dogma.” I must admit, I’ve always hated the use of the word “dogma” associated with science, but no less a luminary than Francis Crick first stated it in 1958, and it has been restated over the years in various ways. Perhaps my favorite version of the central dogma was succinctly...

/ August 27, 2012

NCCAM manipulates spinal manipulation

“Complementary and alternative medicine,” as pediatrician and fellow blogger John Snyder aptly stated in a recent journal article on CAM and children, is a term used to describe a disparate, poorly defined set of practices and treatment modalities presumed to be distinct from so-called ‘conventional medicine’. As we have discussed here at Science-Based Medicine, this amorphous concept facilitates a convenient fluidity in delineating...

/ July 26, 2012

NCCAM on “integrative medicine”: What’s in a word?

I don’t know how I’ve missed this, given that it’s been in existence now for a month and a half, but I have. Regular readers (and even fairly recent readers, given that I write about this topic relatively frequently) know that I’m not a big fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). (Come to think of it, neither...

/ July 2, 2012