Month: January 2015

Selling complementary and alternative medicine: An business ethics perspective

Is it ethical to sell complementary and alternative medicine? This presentation — by a philosopher and a pharmacist — considers CAM from the perspective of commercial ethics.

/ January 31, 2015

Hot-Zone Schools and Children at Risk: Shedding light on outbreak-prone schools

The subject of parental vaccine refusal and the impact that has on disease outbreaks has been covered many times on SBM and elsewhere. I apologize to our readers who are growing tired of the subject, but there is perhaps no subject more deserving of focus and repetition. There’s also an important angle to the discussion that I’ve written on previously and which...

/ January 30, 2015

Lies, fraud, conflicts of interest, and bogus science: The real Dr. Oz effect

  I thought I’d written my final post on the Dr. Oz-fueled green coffee bean extract (GCBE) diet supplement fad. But now there’s another appalling chapter, one that documents just how much contempt The Dr. Oz Show seems to show for its audience, and how little Dr. Oz seems to care about providing advice based on good science. This week it was...

/ January 29, 2015

Treating Migraines

I am a headache specialist and so I receive many questions, through SBM, NeuroLogica or listeners of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, about how to best treat headaches, or about a specific, often unusual, treatment. Migraines and severe headaches are very common. According to the latest statistics: 14.2% of US adults 18 or older reported having migraine or severe headache in...

/ January 28, 2015

Another Misguided Cancer Testimonial

Mike Shedlock wrote a post about how he beat prostate cancer. In doing so, he provides a typical example of how difficult the medical literature can be for a layperson to read, and where they can get things wrong.

/ January 27, 2015

An aboriginal girl dies of leukemia: Parental “rights” versus the right of a child to medical care

One topic that keeps recurring and obligating me to write about it consists of critically analyzing stories of children with cancer whose parents, either on their own or at the behest of their child, stop or refuse chemotherapy or other treatment. It is, sadly, a topic that I’ve been discussing for nearly a decade now, starting first on my not-so-super-secret other blog...

/ January 26, 2015

Upcoming Toronto talk: Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Business Ethics Perspective

I’ll be joining Professor Chris MacDonald on January 28 for a discussion about the ethics of selling complementary and alternative medicine: Is it ethical to market complementary and alternative medicines? Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are medical products and services outside the mainstream of medical practice. But they are not just medicines (or supposed medicines) offered and provided for the prevention and...

/ January 24, 2015

Gut Check. Probiotics and Metabiome.

I always cringe when I see an acupuncture headline with ‘needle’ or ‘point’ in the title. Can’t the writer avoid the clichéd pun? I had an editor who commented that the titles of my essays are often obtuse. Probably true. In going back over my essays on SBM I often can’t tell from the title what I have written about until I...

/ January 23, 2015

Are skin-lightening glutathione injections safe and effective?

Naturopaths advertise injections claimed to lighten skin. Are these products safe and effective?

/ January 22, 2015

Unfalsifiable Beliefs

As we search for a logo for SBM or the SfSBM, Mark Crislip has been a strong advocate of using an image of Sisyphus, endlessly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again. It’s a bit too self-defeating to be enthusiastic about that suggestion, but it does reflect a common feeling among all of us here...

/ January 21, 2015