Commercial deception: undeclared drugs in herbs and other dietary supplements
Back in February, an acupuncturist in Key West, Florida, was arrested on charges of using a physician’s credentials to obtain controlled substances and other prescription drugs. While some of these drugs were for the individual’s personal use, the Key West Citizen reported from arrest records that the acupuncturist had obtained other drugs for her patients, including anxiolytics, a muscle relaxant, and sedative...
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April 14, 2009
Evolutionary Medicine
I have been asked to review a pre-publication proof of a book that will be published in May 2009: Evolution Rx: A Physician’s Guide to Harnessing Our Innate Capacity for Health and Healing by William Meller, MD. It offers “a primal yet radical new view of why we act and feel the way we do, why we get sick and how we...
Primary care challenge
In this space we’ve read about the efforts of “alternative” practitioners such as naturopaths to gain the moniker “primary care provider”. I’ve been wondering a bit about this. I’m a primary care physician. Specialists in internal medicine, pediatrics, and family medicine provide the bulk of primary care in the U.S. They attend a 4-year medical school, complete a 3-4 year residency, take...
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends, part II: Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine propaganda machine, and “Fourteen Studies”
I hadn’t planned on writing about the antivaccine movement again this week, so soon after having had to subject myself to yet another round of Jenny McCarthy on Larry King Live and a truly execrable Generation Rescue “study.” I really hadn’t. For one thing, there’s just so much nonsense laid down by antivaccinationists these days that it’s utterly impossible for one blogger...
Modern shamanism—naturopathy for hypertension
I’m a primary care physician. What I, other internists, pediatricians, and family medicine docs do is prevent and treat common diseases. When we get to diseases that require more specialized care, we refer to our specialist colleagues. There is a movement afoot to broaden the role of naturopaths to make them primary care doctors. The big difference between naturopaths and real primary...
The Dull-Man Law
Kimball Atwood is obviously trying to throw mud at Harvard and at homeopathy, but when you throw mud, you get dirty… (Sigh) So little time, so much misinformation. Hence the Dull-Man Law: In any discussion involving science or medicine, being Dana Ullman loses you the argument immediately…and gets you laughed out of the room. This will be the last time that I...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part IV)
HMS Puts the Messenger in its Crosshairs When, during the fall and winter of 2001-02 I first approached Dean Daniel Federman of the Harvard Medical School (HMS) with evidence that the HMS “CAM” program was promoting pseudomedicine, I gave him some materials that I thought would be adequate to make the case: ‘CAM’ Director David Eisenberg’s dubious funding sources and his failure to...
This one’s for you, Dana
As you may have noticed, everybody’s “favorite” homeopath, Dana Ullman, has made a return visit to our humble little blog, where he is laying down his usual list of logical fallacies and irrelevencies (such as attacking Oliver Wendell Holmes) in defense of homeopathy. Consequently, now’s as good a time as any to unveil what is perhaps the best ready-for-a-poster criticism of homeopathy...
Response to a “CAM on campus” post
I only recently began contributing to SBM, bringing not any particular expertise or scholarship but rather the perspective of a student. My goal in blogging is not to focus on issues specific to my school, of which I am quite fond and proud in general. Instead I hope to use my experiences, which SBM editors and readers tell me are not unique, to illustrate...
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...