All posts by Peter Lipson

Peter A. Lipson, MD is a practicing internist and teaching physician in Southeast Michigan.  After graduating from Rush Medical College in Chicago, he completed his Internal Medicine residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He currently maintains a private practice, and serves as a teaching physician at a large community hospital He also maintains appointments as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine and at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, the first being a large, established medical school, the latter being a newly-formed medical school which will soon be accepting its first class of students.  He blogs at White Coat Underground at the Scientopia blog network. A primary goal of his writing is to illuminate the differences between science-based medicine and everything else.  His perspective as a primary care physician and his daily interaction with real patients gives him what he hopes is special insight into the current "De-lightenment" in medicine.  As new media evolve, pseudo-scientific, deceptive, and immoral health practices become more and more available to patients, making his job all that much more difficult---and all that much more interesting. Disclaimer: The views in all of of Dr. Lipson's writing are his alone.  They do not represent in any way his practice, hospital, employers, or anyone else. Any medical information is general and should not be applied to specific personal medical decisions.  Any medical questions should be directed to your personal physician.  Dr. Lipson will not answer any specific medical questions, and any emails and comments should be assumed public. Dr. Lipson receives no compensation for his writing. Dr. Lipson's posts for Science-Based Medicine are archived here.

Define the disease first

My first post on this blog addressed the problem of what I have called “fake diseases” (a problem which needs a more neutral moniker). As I wrote at the time, people suffering from vague ailments are often twice victimized: the medical establishment cannot satisfy them, and quacks prey on them. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction and validation to having your symptoms...

/ May 11, 2009

Lyme disease—who is credible?

I recently had a pleasant, brief email exchange with Kris Newby, the producer of the latest medical advocacy pic, Under Our Skin. There’s been a number of similar movies lately, mostly about quacky cancer therapies. This one is apparently much better made, and follows the controversy regarding “chronic” Lyme disease. I’d heard an interview about the movie on Diane Rehm, and was...

/ May 6, 2009

Primary care challenge

In this space we’ve read about the efforts of “alternative” practitioners such as naturopaths to gain the moniker “primary care provider”.  I’ve been wondering a bit about this.  I’m a primary care physician.  Specialists in internal medicine, pediatrics, and family medicine provide the bulk of primary care in the U.S. They attend a 4-year medical school, complete a 3-4 year residency, take...

/ April 13, 2009

Modern shamanism—naturopathy for hypertension

I’m a primary care physician. What I, other internists, pediatricians, and family medicine docs do is prevent and treat common diseases. When we get to diseases that require more specialized care, we refer to our specialist colleagues. There is a movement afoot to broaden the role of naturopaths to make them primary care doctors. The big difference between naturopaths and real primary...

/ April 11, 2009

Medical students actively recruited for CAM

Here at Science-Based Medicine we’ve been getting a lot of letters from medical students.  This is a good thing and a bad thing.   I’m glad people see us a a resource for SBM, but I’m unhappy that medical students: 1) need us; 2) don’t have someone to approach on campus.  Let’s explore some of the more subtle ways cult medical practices...

/ March 30, 2009

The kindest cut?

The best way to prevent sexually transmitted infections is the proper use of condoms. That being said, it’s not the only way to prevent STI’s. Abstinence is one way, but it involves an amputation of sorts—the removal of a critical human behavior. Another amputation (of sorts) that prevents STIs is circumcision. Male circumcision has been found in several good studies to reduce...

/ March 27, 2009

How not to think

Thankfully, I don’t receive all that much blog-related mail.  But this weekend I received several communications about a piece in popular liberal blog.  The piece is (ostensibly) about Lyme disease, which coincidentally happens to be one of the topics of my first post here at SBM.  In fact, I’ve written about Lyme disease a number of times, and Dr. Novella has a...

/ March 16, 2009

Prevention—science vs. nonsense

There are many ways in which cult medicine believers try to insinuate themselves into the health care system.  As Dr. Gorski has pointed out, “prevention” is one of their metaphorical feet in the door.  The cult medicine literature often says things like, “mainstream medicine is fine for treating acute illness, but what we do is prevention.” What they often leave out is...

/ March 5, 2009

Tom Harkin’s War on Science (or, “meet the new boss…”)

This was cross-posted at White Coat Underground, despite the topic having been covered by Dr. Gorski yesterday. The topic is important enough that many of us in the medical blogosphere are going to be talking about this. Remember when President Obama said something about returning science to it’s rightful place? Well, our new president has a real tough climb ahead of him....

/ March 2, 2009

Health care and the Stimulus Plan

In my last post, I told you a little story about using science- and evidence-based medicine to improve health care.    The focus was primarily on preventing an iatrogenic illness, namely intravenous catheter infections.  A researcher came up with a plausible idea for an intervention, studied it, and found it to be successful—the intervention was science-based in that it was proposed based...

/ February 16, 2009