Month: July 2010

Risibility. The Superior Therapeutic Intervention?

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. ~Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts“ We have a saying in medicine that you can’t kill a jerk.  Not that we try to kill anyone, but that particularly unpleasant individuals, rife with psychopathology, survive whatever illness comes their way.  The corollary is that particularly nice...

/ July 30, 2010

Special Challenges of Science-Based Veterinary Medicine

On this site there have been several thoughtful posts (e.g. by Dr. Atwood and by Dr. Novella), and subsequently much heated commentary, on the distinction between Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Science-Based Medicine (SBM). I agree wholeheartedly with the position that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that SBM is essentially EBM as it should be practiced, with a comprehensive consideration of...

/ July 29, 2010

Meat and Weight Contol

A new study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is reporting an association with eating meat and weight gain. This is a fairly robust epidemiological study, but at the same time is a good example of how such information is poorly reported in the media, leading to public confusion. The data is taken from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer...

/ July 28, 2010

Glucosamine: The Unsinkable Rubber Duck

Glucosamine is widely used for osteoarthritis pain. It is not as impossible as homeopathy, but its rationale is improbable. As I explained in a previous post, Wallace Sampson, one of the other authors of this blog, has pointed out that the amount of glucosamine in the typical supplement dose is on the order of 1/1000th to 1/10,000th of the available glucosamine in...

/ July 27, 2010

NCCAM Director Dr. Josephine Briggs and the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians

On Friday, one of my partners in crime here at Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Kimball Atwood, wrote an excellent Open Letter to Dr. Josephine Briggs. Dr. Briggs, as most regular readers of SBM know, is the Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). As most regular readers of SBM also know, we at SBM have been quite critical of...

/ July 26, 2010

Open Letter to Dr. Josephine Briggs

Josephine P. Briggs, M.D. Director, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Dear Dr. Briggs, As you know, we’ve met twice. The first time was at the Yale “Integrative Medicine” Symposium in March. The second was in April, when Drs. Novella, Gorski and I met with you for an hour at the NCCAM in Bethesda. At the time I concluded that you...

/ July 23, 2010

Californians give a whoop – or I hope they do.

I’m certain by now many of our readers have come across news of the current pertussis, aka whooping cough, epidemic in California.  Beginning this February and accelerating dramatically through May and June, California has so far seen a ~500% increase in pertussis cases compared to last year, and only two days ago announced the death of a sixth baby from infection.  Public...

/ July 22, 2010

Taking On Homeopathy in Germany

Homeopathy is having a bad year. From a scientific point of view, it has had a couple of bad centuries. The progress of our scientific understanding of biology, chemistry, and physics has failed to confirm any of the core beliefs of homeopathy. Like does not cure like (this is a form of superstition known as sympathetic magic, with no basis in science)....

/ July 21, 2010

The China Study Revisited: New Analysis of Raw Data Doesn’t Support Vegetarian Ideology

Over a year ago I wrote about The China Study, a book by T. Colin Campbell and his son based on a huge epidemiologic study of diet and health done in China. The book’s major thesis is that we could prevent or cure most disease (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, bone, kidney, eye and other diseases) by eating a whole foods...

/ July 20, 2010

The Texas Medical Board acts in the case of the Winkler County whistle blowing nurses

I can’t speak for anyone else who blogs here at Science-Based Medicine, but there’s one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that we exist only to “bash ‘alternative’ medicine.” We don’t. We exist to champion medicine based on science against all manner of dubious practices. Part of that mandate involves understanding and accepting that science-based medicine is not perfect....

/ July 19, 2010