Tag: breast cancer

The cancer screening kerfuffle erupts again: “Rethinking” screening for breast and prostate cancer

I see that the kerfuffle over screening for cancer has erupted again to the point where it’s found its way out of the rarified air of specialty journals to general medical journals and hence into the mainstream press. Over the last couple of weeks, articles have appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, radio networks like NPR,...

/ November 2, 2009

Mainstreaming Science-Based Medicine: A Novel Approach

I have often mused about the difference between being right and being influential – especially in light of the relative success of the anti-vaccine movement. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for a link between vaccines and autism, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy have manufactured public mistrust in one of the safest, most cost effective means of combating disease known to...

/ October 29, 2009

Suzanne Somers’ Knockout: Dangerous misinformation about cancer (part 1)

If there’s one thing I’ve become utterly disgusted with in the time since I first became interested in science-based medicine as a concept, its promotion, and the refutation of quackery and medical pseudoscience, it’s empty-brained celebrities with an agenda. Be it from imbibing the atmosphere within the bubble of woo-friendly southern California or taking a crash course at the University of Google...

/ October 26, 2009

Science-Based Medicine Meets Medical Ethics

There are four main principles in medical ethics:  Autonomy  Beneficence  Non-maleficence  Justice Autonomy means the patient has the right to consent to treatment or to reject it. Autonomy has to be balanced against the good of society. What if a patient’s rejection of treatment or quarantine allows an epidemic to spread? Beneficence means we should do what is best for the patient....

/ August 4, 2009

Are one in three breast cancers really overdiagnosed and overtreated?

Screening for disease is a real pain. I was reminded of this by the publication of a study in BMJ the very day of the Science-Based Medicine Conference a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, between The Amaz!ng Meeting and other activities, I was too busy to give this study the attention it deserved last Monday. Given the media coverage of the...

/ July 20, 2009

Hyping Health Risks

Three kids on the same block were diagnosed with leukemia last year. That couldn’t happen just by chance, could it? There MUST be something in the environment that caused it (power lines, the chemical plant down the street, asbestos in their school, iPods, Twinkies?). Quick, let’s measure everything we can think of and compare exposures to other blocks and find an explanation....

/ March 31, 2009

Do over one in five breast cancers detected by mammography alone really spontaneously regress?

It figures. Last Wednesday, right before the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, as I was far more interested in preparing to have family over the next day than in what was going on in the medical news or the blogs, the results of a most fascinating study hit the news. In Medscape, the title of the news report was Mammography Study Suggests Some...

/ December 1, 2008