Live Blood Analysis: The Modern Auguries
I saw a patient last week who was self referred. He had been seeing a DC/ND for a variety of symptoms that turned out to be asthma. Not that the DC/ND made that diagnosis. His DC/ND diagnosed him with an infection, based on live blood analysis, and offered the patient a colonic detox as a cure. My patient thought he should get...
Research, Minus Science, Equals Gossip
“A person is smart. People are stupid.” – Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men In Black Regular readers of my blog know how passionate I am about protecting the public from misleading health information. I have witnessed first-hand many well-meaning attempts to “empower consumers” with Web 2.0 tools. Unfortunately, they were designed without a clear understanding of the scientific method, basic statistics,...
Another Negative Study of Vitamins
Perhaps one of the most common questions I receive from those who wish to utilize science-based medicine for their own health is what I think about vitamins. Even among hard-nosed skeptics, this question is often perplexing. On the one hand, vitamins themselves were discovered by medical and biological science, they play a vital role (by definition) in the healthy functioning of our...
Chiropractic’s Pathetic Response to Stroke Concerns
The chiropractic industry must be feeling the pressure. Billboards, signs on the sides of buses, chiropractic victims’ organizations, and lawsuits are telling the world that chiropractic neck adjustments can cause strokes. The risk is very small, but it is very real. We have addressed the subject before on this blog here, here, and here. Chiropractors are in denial and are trying to...
More evidence that CAM/IM advocates see health care reform as an opportunity to claim legitimacy
Four weeks ago (was it really that long?), I wrote one of my usual lengthy essays for this blog in which I analyzed two editorials published by some very famous advocates of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM)/”integrative medicine” (IM). They included one in that credulous repository of all things antivaccine The Huffington Post (no, this isn’t about vaccines, but I can’t resist...
Antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield: Scientific fraud?
Pity poor Andrew Wakefield. Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity at all. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the colon, a study that...
Yes We Can! We Can Abolish the NCCAM! Part III
A Reminder… …of why we keep harping on this. A couple of days ago The Scientist reported that the “economic stimulus package” may include a windfall for the NIH: Senate OKs big NIH bump Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 4th February 2009 04:12 PM GMT] The US Senate, which is furiously debating the details of the economic stimulus package making its...
The Anniversary
I received a surprising morning call several weeks ago “Wally?” “This is he.” “This is Judy V…. I just wanted to call and thank you again for what you did for me. It’s the 35th anniversary of my cancer…“ Judy V. is a physician’s widow. Her husband, a surgical specialist died in his 40s, 20plus years ago. She had a Stage II...
Where Does Sanjay Gupta Register On The Quackometer?
Four weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Sanjay Gupta’s nomination by the Obama administration as our potential new Surgeon General. Many of you voiced concerns about Sanjay’s nomination, specifically because of his poor handling of the Raelians’ Clonaid fiasco, his inability to counter Michael Moore’s health statistics as presented in Sicko and his relationship to the pharmaceutical industry. As I...
Some Good News on the Academic Front
There is a recent trend in UK Universities to close programs offering science degrees for various forms of so-called alternative medicine (CAM), such as homeopathy, crystal healing, and traditional Chinese medicine. This occurs amid growing scientific criticism of these programs. This is a very good thing, and something I would like to see replicated in the US. The scientific community is appropriately...