Tag: clinical trials
CCSVI Update
I have been following the story of Dr. Zamboni, an Italian vascular surgeon who claims that multiple sclerosis (MS) is primarily caused by blockages in the veins that drain blood from the brain. This results in backup of blood in the brain, leading to inflammation around the blood vessels and MS. He sought to find the cause and cure for MS because...
Echinacea for Cold and Flu
Echinacea continues to be a popular herbal product, used primarily for treating and preventing colds and flus. Sales were estimated at $132 million in the US alone in 2009, an increase of 7% over the previous year. Reports of major negative clinical trials have had only a modest and temporary effect on the popularity and sale of this herb, contradicting claims that...
Lies, damned lies, and…science-based medicine?
I realize that in the question-and-answer session after my talk at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium a week ago I suggested in response to a man named Leon Maliniak, who monopolized the first part of what was already a too-brief Q&A session by expounding on the supposed genius of Royal Rife, that I would be doing a post about the Rife...
The continuum of surgical research in science-based medicine
Editor’s note: Three members of the SBM blogging crew had a…very interesting meeting on Friday, one none of us expected, the details of which will be reported later this week–meaning you’d better keep reading this week if you want to find out. (Hint, hint.) However, what that means is that I was away Thursday and Friday; between the trip and the various...
Tom Harkin, NCCAM, health care reform, and a cancer treatment that is worse than useless
PRELUDE: SOME BAD NEWS FOR ADVOCATES OF SCIENCE-BASED MEDICINE It was a bad week for science-based medicine. It was a good week (sort of) for science-based medcine. First the bad. There has been a development that anyone who supports science in medicine and opposes quackery will likely find disturbing. Do you remember Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA)? We’ve written about him extensively over...
FDA approval of drugs and transparency in clinical trial results
Note: The reason that I am posting today rather than my usual Monday slot is because the article I discuss here was embargoed until last night. Consequently, I asked Harriet if she would trade days with me this week, and she was kind enough to do so. One thing that science relies on almost absolutely is transparency. Because one of the most...
Science, Reason, Ethics, and Modern Medicine, Part 2: the Tortured Logic of David Katz
In Part 1 of this series* I asserted that a physician’s primary ethical responsibility is to honesty and integrity, which in turn must be largely based on science and reason (I apologize if that sounded preachy; if there had been more time I might have couched it in more congenial terms). I mentioned the fallacious reasoning whereby proponents of implausible medical claims (IMC) point to real and...
Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine: Back to the Future – Part I
Either homeopathy works or controlled trials don’t! —Scottish homeopath David Reilly at the 2001 Harvard Medical School Complementary and Integrative Medicine Conference. Reilly based that assertion on his own series of four small studies of homeopathic treatments of hay fever, asthma, and allergic rhinitis, the outcomes of which had been inconsistent and largely subjective. (1) Later he explained that small-minded skeptics in...