Year: 2012

Homeopathy and Nanoparticles

I had never heard of Dr. Shantaram Kane, a chemical engineer in Mumbai, India. I don’t know how he heard of me, but he apparently knows I am critical of homeopathy. He e-mailed me out of the blue to tell me about a study he had published in 2010 in the journal Homeopathy: “Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective.”...

/ May 8, 2012

Plausibility bias? You say that as though that were a bad thing!

On Friday, you might have noticed that Mark Crislip hinted at a foreshadowing of a blog post to come. This is that blog post. He knew it was coming because when I saw the article that inspired it, I sent an e-mail to my fellow bloggers marking out my territory like a dog peeing on every tree or protecting my newfound topic...

/ May 7, 2012

Stop Making Sense

I usually rely on the Secret.  Every two weeks or so the Universe offers up some bit of wacky whimsey and I have a topic for an SBM blog entry.  This week the Universe has failed me. Nothing has crossed my LCD so I have no studies to evaluate and I have been unusually busy at work preventing my browsing the Interwebs...

/ May 4, 2012

The CAM Docket: Texas MDs v. DCs

In April, the Texas District Court of Appeals (Third District) affirmed a lower court ruling that chiropractors are prohibited from performing manipulation under anesthesia and needle electromyography[EMG]. The lower court also ruled that the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners exceeded its authority in defining the chiropractic scope of practice to include “diagnosis.” This part of the ruling was overturned by the Court...

/ May 3, 2012

Funding CAM Research

Paul Offit has published a thoughtful essay in the most recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in which he argues against funding research into complementary and alternative therapies (CAM). Offit is a leading critic of the anti-vaccine movement and has written popular books discrediting many of their claims, such as disproved claim for a connection between some vaccines or ingredients...

/ May 2, 2012

G-Spot Discovered? Not So Fast!

Is this the G-Spot? The press release proclaims “Study Confirms Anatomic Existence of G-Spot.” The study itself is titled “G-Spot Anatomy: A New Discovery.”  It was just published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.  The author, Adam Ostrzenski, is an “internationally renowned gynecologic surgeon” with multiple degrees (MD, PhD, Dr Hab) and many peer-reviewed articles listed in PubMed. The G-spot, or Gräfenberg...

/ May 1, 2012

Supplements and cancer prevention

The bloggers here have been very critical of a law passed nearly 20 years ago, commonly referred to as the DSHEA of 1994. The abbreviation DSHEA stands for about as Orwellian a name for a law as I can imagine: the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Of course, as we’ve pointed out time and time again, the DSHEA is not about...

/ April 30, 2012

Consumer Reports and Alternative Therapies

Consumer Reports (CR) and its Health Newsletter provide sound advice about nutrition and medicine, with one exception: their recommendations concerning alternative therapies, especially dietary supplements. With regard to dietary supplements, part of the problem is the failure of CR to make a distinction between authentic dietary supplements, such as multivitamins and minerals, and non-vitamin, non-mineral medicinal products. For example, the September 2010...

/ April 27, 2012

Gold mine or dumpster dive? A closer look at adverse event reports

All informed health decisions are based on an evaluation of expected risks and known benefits. Nothing is without risk. Drugs can provide an enormous benefit, but they all have the potential to harm. Whether it’s to guide therapy choices or to ensure patients are aware of the risks of their prescription drugs, I spend a lot of time discussing the potential negative consequences of...

/ April 26, 2012

Hypnotherapy For Pain and Other Conditions

Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis as a medical intervention, usually for the treatment of pain and other subjective symptoms. It remains controversial, primarily because the evidence for its efficacy is not yet compelling, but also because it is poorly understood. This situation is not helped by the fact that it is often characterized as an “alternative” therapy, a label that can...

/ April 25, 2012