Dr. Michael Dixon – “A Pyromaniac In a Field of (Integrative) Straw Men”
Dr. Michael Dixon, the medical director of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, wrote an editorial for BBC news that is a densely packed rant of tiresome straw men often trotted out by the defenders of so-called “integrative” medicine. (The reason for the quotes in the headline, by the way, is because I stole that line from George Will who used in...
PSA – To Screen or Not to Screen
Is the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test worth taking? It's, like, really complicated.
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part III)
In Parts I and II of this series* we saw that from 2000 to 2002, key members of the Harvard Medical School “CAM” program, including the Director, had promoted quackery to the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We also saw other explicit or tacit promotions by Harvard institutions and professors, and embarrassing examples of such promotions on InteliHealth, a consumer health...
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends: The Jenny and Jim antivaccine propaganda tour has begun
As hard as it is to believe, 2009 started out very promising from the perspective of actually countering the misinformation of the antivaccine movement. Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield, who with the help of the credulous and sensationalistic media started the entire MMR-autism scare in the U.K. a decade ago, was revealed as not just having been in the pocket of trial lawyers...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part II)
In Part I of this series† we saw that in 2001 Dr. David Eisenberg, the Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education (CAMRE), and Atty Michael Cohen, the CAMRE’s Director of Legal Programs, had contributed to a report commissioned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that would, if accepted as valid by the legislature, provide state protection for a...
Sunday fun: On being “open minded”
One of the most common refrains from advocates of quackery and “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) is the charge of being “close-minded,” that they reject out of hand any idea that does not fit within their world view. Of course, this is a canard, given that science, including science-based medicine, thrives on the open and free exchange of ideas, and it is...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part I)
Several years ago I stumbled upon disturbing information regarding my alma mater, the Harvard Medical School (HMS).† Its professed commitment to investigate implausible medical claims had somehow metamorphosed into the advocacy of such claims. I’ve previously mentioned some of this on SBM (here and here). A couple of pertinent essays appeared in the public domain in 2002 and 2003, but the full...
Medical Propaganda Films
David Gorski suggested I expand on a comment I left recently on one of his November posts. His subject was the then new documentary movie, “A Beautiful Truth.“ “Truth” is about the Gerson method – the dietary deprivation cum coffee enema cancer treatment developed by Dr. Max Gerson, a refugeee from Germany I the 1930s. His daughter, Charlotte now runs the Gerson...
Book Review: Triumph Of The Heart, The Story Of Statins
Triumph of the Heart, as its name does not suggest, is about science. The book’s author, Jie Jack Li, is a medicinal chemist who meticulously reviews the history relevant to the discovery of lipid-lowering drugs. He spares no details, even recounting the amusing quarrels and quirks of the scientists engaged in the “apocryphal showdowns” leading to the manufacture of cholesterol in a...
In Jenny McCarthy’s own words
Jenny McCarthy, regular readers of SBM know, has been a frequent target of criticism here. The reasons, of course, are very simple. She has become the most famous public face of the antivaccine movement, releasing a book every year or so since 2007 about how her son Evan has been “cured” of autism through the dubious biomedical treatments she’s given him and...