Month: November 2012

Down the Virtual Rabbit Hole: Kangan water®

The interwebs are more than a series of tubes, it has the power of endless distraction and tangents, a series of clickable rabbit holes that can drag you deeper and deeper into the alternative universes that are parallel with our own. One moment you can be on Science Based Medicine, grounded on the terra firma of reality, and then with a click...

/ November 30, 2012

Oregon Naturopaths v. Evidence-Based Medicine

Like every state, Oregon is struggling with the unsustainable costs of taxpayer-funded health care programs. In an attempt to tame this beast, Oregon recently established a system of coordinated care organizations, or CCOs, to (as the name suggests) coordinate medical, mental health, and dental care for residents enrolled in Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program. The new system requires supervision of...

/ November 29, 2012

Journal of Clinical Oncology editorial: “Compelling” evidence acupuncture “may be” effective for cancer related fatigue

Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) is a high impact journal (JIF > 16)  that advertises itself as a “must read” for oncologists. Some cutting edge RCTs evaluating chemo and hormonal therapies have appeared there. But a past blog post gave dramatic examples of pseudoscience and plain nonsense to be found in JCO concerning psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and, increasingly, integrative medicine and even integrations...

/ November 28, 2012

Homeopathic Vaccines Revisited

One of the core fictions of “complementary” or “integrative” medicine is that they are primarily offered in addition to science-based medicine and only to fill gaps in what SBM can offer. The original marketing label used to promote treatments that are not adequately supported by evidence , “alternative medicine,” was a bit more accurate in that at least it acknowledged that such...

/ November 28, 2012

Ecstasy for PTSD: Not Ready for Prime Time

Hundreds of desperate combat veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are reportedly seeking experimental treatment with an illegal drug from a husband-wife team in South Carolina. The Bonhoefers recently published a study showing that adding MDMA (ecstasy, the party drug) to psychotherapy was effective in eliminating or greatly reducing the symptoms of refractory PTSD. It was widely covered in the media, for...

/ November 27, 2012

A holiday round in the mammography debate

There are times when the best-laid blogging plans of mice and men often go awry, and this isn’t always a bad thing. As the day on which so many Americans indulge in mass consumption of tryptophan-laden meat in order to give thanks approached, I had tentatively planned on doing an update on Stanislaw Burzynski, given that he appears to have slithered away...

/ November 26, 2012

Chiropractic “Research” on Tourette Syndrome: The Trouble with Case Reports…..

I can think of few conditions with clinical features more ideal for establishing a pattern of abuse at the hands of practitioners of so-called alternative medicine than Tourette syndrome. Tourette syndrome (TS), which first manifests itself in early childhood in the overwhelming majority of patients, is a neurological disorder with infamous motor and vocal manifestations and a troubled past. Historically the condition...

/ November 23, 2012

Bad Pharma: A Manifesto to Fix the Pharmaceutical Industry

“There is no medicine without medicines” write Ben Goldacre in his new book Bad Pharma. To Goldacre, an author, journalist and physician, this cause is personal. The title, a reference to both his first book, Bad Science, as well as the pharmaceutical industry’s nickname Big Pharma, is a bit of a misnomer. While the focus is pharmaceutical companies and their actions, there are...

/ November 22, 2012

Anecdotes: Cheaper by the Dozen

A loan officer sets up a meeting with an aspiring entrepreneur to inform him that his application has been denied. “Mr Smith, we have reviewed your application and found a fatal flaw in your business plan. You say that you will be selling your donuts for 60 cents apiece. “Yes” says Mr. Smith, “that is significantly less than any other baker in...

/ November 21, 2012

True Informed Consent Is Elusive

Most of us would agree that doctors should not treat patients without their consent, except in special cases like emergency care for an unconscious patient.  It’s not enough for doctors to ask “Is it OK with you if I do this?” They should get informed consent from patients who understand the facts, the odds of success, and the risk/benefit ratio of treatments....

/ November 20, 2012