Results for: geier

The stem cell hard sell

There are, unfortunately, a lot of clinics in the US that offer stem cell therapies for indications ranging from heart disease to anti-aging to even autism without good evidence that these therapies are actually efficacious. Real stem cell scientist Paul Knoepfler attended an informational seminar on stem cell therapies offered by a major clinic. Not surprisingly, it was more marketing than informational....

/ August 22, 2016

Dealing with vaccine hesitancy and refusal

Almost as long as there have been vaccines, there has been an antivaccine movement. The misinformation promoted by antivaccinationists can infect parents and make them vaccine-averse. Here, we deal with some antivaccine tropes that find their way to the vaccine-averse.

/ August 1, 2016

Forget stem cell tourism: Stem cell clinics in the US are plentiful

It's generally thought that quack stem cell clinics are primarily a problem overseas because the FDA would. never allow them on US soil. As a new survey shows, that assumption couldn't be more wrong.

/ July 4, 2016

Confusing overdiagnosis for an “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Japan after Fukushima

One of my favorite topics to blog about for SBM is the topic of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. These are two interrelated phenomena that most people are blissfully unaware of. Unfortunately, I’d also say that the majority of physicians are only marginally more aware than the public about these confounders of screening programs, if even that. Overdiagnosis has long been appreciated to be...

/ March 14, 2016

Worshiping at the altar of the Cult of the Brave Maverick Doctor

One of my favorite television shows right now is The Knick, as I described before in a post about medical history. To give you an idea of how much I’m into The Knick, I’ll tell you that I signed up for Cinemax for three months just for that one show. (After its second season finale airs next Friday, I’ll drop Cinemax until...

/ December 14, 2015

Vaccine Whistleblower: An antivaccine “exposé” full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Antivaccine lawyer Kevin Barry has published a book containing what are allegedly the transcripts of telephone conversations between "CDC whistleblower" William Thompson and biochemical engineer turned incompetent antivaccine epidemiologist Brian Hooker. Suffice to say, the transcripts do not show evidence of a massive coverup at the CDC of evidence that vaccines cause autism.

/ August 24, 2015

“Aborted fetal tissue” and vaccines: Combining pseudoscience and religion to demonize vaccines

As hard as it is to believe after seven and a half years of existence and nearly 2,400 posts on SBM, every so often, something reminds me that we here at SBM haven’t discussed a topic that should be discussed. So it was a couple of weeks ago, when I saw a familiar name in a news story that wasn’t about vaccines....

/ August 17, 2015

The Woo Boat, or: How far Andrew Wakefield has fallen

File this one under the category: You can’t make stuff like this up. (At least, I can’t.) Let’s say you’re a diehard all-conspiracy conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine believer (a not uncommon combination). You love Alex Jones and Mike Adams and agree with their rants that there is a New World Order trying to suppress your rights. You strongly believe that vaccines...

/ August 16, 2015

A journey to alternative and integrative medicine apostasy

WIRED posted a story about Jim Laidler recently discussing his movement away from autism biomed and back to science. It's a good story, that deserves sharing, and explores many of the motivations people have for embracing alternative medicine.

/ May 4, 2015

Bill Maher: Still an antivaccine crank after all these years

Bill Maher likes to represent himself as the epitome of rationality, primarily on the basis of his rejection of religion. However, rejection of religion does not necessarily make one a skeptic. Maher has demonstrated this over the last decade based on his embrace of antivaccine pseudoscience and other unscientific views. This time around, he fawned over antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

/ April 27, 2015