Month: June 2009
What is disease? Diabetes, diagnosis, and real science
How do we know if people are sick? First, a disease is defined, then we check patients against the criteria. Though it sounds simple, it's not always.
Vaccines and Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy
I was recently asked to write about vaccines and autism for Skeptic magazine. I approached the project with trepidation. So much has been written, from Paul Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets to a veritable flood of blogorrhea on the Internet. I didn’t have anything new to add, and I couldn’t hope to cover all aspects of the subject. After some thought, I...
Animal acupuncture
Periodically, one sees newspaper articles extolling the virtues of acupuncture for animals. To those familiar with the practice of acupuncture, the tag lines are nauseatingly familiar, e.g., acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, it works to stimulate the animal’s natural energies, etc., etc. Ditto the testimonials; Fluffy wasn’t helped by anything else; now, after a few months of treatment (and...
Applying evolutionary principles to cancer treatment
EDITOR’S NOTE: Unfortunately, this weekend, I was forced to get my slides together for the upcoming SBM Conference, plus editing a manuscript for resubmission, plus working on a manuscript that I should have submitted six months ago, plus reading over some grants, plus…well, you get the idea. What this means is that, alas, I didn’t have any time to prepare one of...
“The Oprah-fication of Medicine” in The Toronto Star
I’d just like to take a moment to engage in a little bit of shameless self-promotion and point out that an SBM post has actually seen print. Specifically, my post about the malign influence Oprah Winfrey’s promotion of dubious medical practices on her show (The Oprah-fication of Medicine) has been adapted (with heavy cutting and editing) into an op-ed piece in The...
Herd Immunity
Some infections can be eradicated from the face of the planet. Smallpox is the one example of disease eradication to date. Smallpox still exists in US and Russian labs, but there has been no wild cases since 1977. It is, like the Dorothy, history. Why were we able to eradicate smallpox? Three reasons: 1) There is only one form of smallpox. Unlike...
Will The Real, Silent Majority Please Stand Up – To Oprah and Jenny McCarthy?
Much to my surprise and delight, my recent blog post about Jenny McCarthy’s “educational” video was picked up by several other blogs and websites, resulting in a small flood of emails applauding my efforts to expose dangerous pseudoscience. I had braced myself for what I assumed would be an onslaught of hate mail (what else would irrational folks do about a sensible...
Should Vaccines Be Compulsory?
In the US children must have proof of vaccination before entering the public school system, although it is becoming easier in many states for parents to gain exemptions from this requirement. In the UK there is no such requirement. This distinction has allowed for a comparison of the impact of scaremongering about the safety of vaccines and the effectiveness of campaigns to...
Adverse Effects of Chiropractic
There is a very good chance that you will feel worse after seeing a chiropractor. According to a new systematic review, serious complications of spinal manipulation are rare, but 33-60% of patients experience milder short-term adverse effects such as increased pain, radiation of pain, headaches, vertigo and even loss of consciousness. The study, published in the journal Spine, involved searching PubMed and...
The Oprah-fication of medicine
When it comes to quackery, Oprah really is the Queen of All Media. The Secret, Dr. Phil, "America's Quack" Dr. Oz, and Jenny McCarthy all got their start thanks to Oprah, plus a whole lot of New Age nonsense.