Month: April 2008

One Hand Clapping

CUSTOMER: Here’s one — nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! MORTICIAN: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing — here’s your nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! MORTICIAN: Here — he says he’s not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I’m not! MORTICIAN: He isn’t. CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill. DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you’re not...

/ April 30, 2008

Chiropractic and Stroke

I wonder how many people have heard that chiropractic neck adjustments can cause strokes. It isn’t exactly common knowledge. One organization is trying to raise public awareness through signs on the side of city buses (Injured by a Chiropractor? Call this number) and through TV commercials. I had never heard about this phenomenon myself until a few years ago, when I heard it...

/ April 29, 2008

The North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, Dr. Rashid Buttar, and protecting the public from practitioners of non-science-based medicine

One of the most contentious and difficult aspects of trying to improve medical care in this country is enforcing a minimal “standard of care.” Optimally, this standard of care should be based on science- and evidence-based medicine and act swiftly when a practitioner practices medicine that doesn’t meet even a minimal requirement for scientific studies and clinical trials to support it. At...

/ April 28, 2008

The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part V)

Part IV of this blog ended by observing that the NIH-funded trial of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas,† to have begun in March, 1999, was in trouble almost as soon as it started. As originally designed, it was to have been a randomized, controlled trial comparing gemcitabine, the standard chemotherapy, to the “Gonzalez regimen” of pancreatic enzymes, “supplements,” twice-daily coffee enemas, and other purported...

/ April 25, 2008

Conflict of Interest in Medical Research

The cornerstone of science-based medicine is, of course, scientific research. The integrity and quality of biomedical research is therefore of critical importance and to be thoughtfully and jealously guarded, if we care about maintaining an optimal standard of care. There are many threats and hazards to the institutions of medical research – mostly ideological. One that has not been discussed much on...

/ April 23, 2008

Women in Medicine

Why aren’t there more women in science and medicine? Just because we lack certain anatomical dangly bits, does that mean we’re less capable? Apparently Harvard’s president Lawrence H. Summers thought so. In a classic case of foot-in-mouth disease, he suggested that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. His comments (in...

/ April 22, 2008

Barriers to practicing science-based surgery

Much to the relief of regular readers, I will now change topics from those of the last two weeks. Although fun and amusing (except to those who fall for them), continuing with such material for too long risks sending this blog too far in a direction that no one would want. So, instead, this week it’s time to get serious again. A...

/ April 21, 2008

The Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo #4

That’s What I’m Talkin’ ’bout! The new single-paragraph paradigm for the W^5/2 seems to have worked: there were 13 Waluations for the paragraph submitted in W^5/2 #3, every one of ’em good. Several themes emerged; I’ll discuss them in no particular order. When did you stop beating your wife? The passage charges that the “biomedical model,” by which is apparently meant modern medicine, does...

/ April 20, 2008

The Ethics of “CAM” Trials: Gonzo (Part IV)

A Review; then Back to the Gonzalez Regimen† Part I of this blog introduced the topic of the “Gonzalez regimen” for treating cancer: “Intensive Pancreatic Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy With Ancillary Nutritional Support” and “detoxification” with twice daily coffee enemas, daily “skin brushing,” “a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month,” and more. The topic...

/ April 18, 2008

Borderlines in research

This is a slight departure from the usual fare of pseudoscience, but a matter that should concern us because of the vulnerability this matter confers on medicine – the borderline practices of major medical centers. The article can be viewed here. Several days ago the San Francisco Chronicle printed a second article about the plight of a 37 year old woman (EP)...

/ April 16, 2008