Category: Humor

Leech Therapy

Medicine can be aggravatingly slow to change and it can take years for new diagnostic or therapeutic interventions to percolate through the medical community. It can take equally long for old practices to fade. I have tried to follow the dictum of “be neither the first to try nor the last to abandon a therapy.” But nothing in the real world rivals...

/ September 2, 2016

Science-Based Satire: Robotically-Assisted Acupuncture Brings Ancient Healing Technique Into the 21st Century

Developed over many thousands of years (or maybe a little less), what has come to be known as traditional Chinese acupuncture has proven capable of curing or at least ameliorating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions. But one of its greatest strengths, the intimate connection between the practitioner and the acupuncture needle, is also one of its most significant weaknesses....

/ July 15, 2016

The New Chiropractic. And I thought SBM had an uphill battle.

Over at the Society for Science-Based Medicine we have Sisyphus as the logo on the website. Sisyphus, as you may know, is the Greek who had to push a boulder up a hill every day, the archetypal metaphor for futile labor. It was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek, but only a bit. As quackademia proudly expands I sometime feel...

/ July 8, 2016

Chiropractic Moves into Transportation

I debated which of two topics to blog about this week that appeared in my feeds. The first was “Graduate slams CQU for offering ‘pseudoscience degree’,” where an Australian is upset that her University is offering an undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Chiropractic and a postgraduate Master of Clinical Chiropractic degree because chiropractic is “complete pseudoscience”. And the second was: “Foundation for...

/ June 10, 2016

Vaginal Seeding. Ew. That’s nuts. Hmmm, interesting.

Sometimes a headline will cause me to run through a series of reactions in rapid sequence. For example “Mothers facing C-sections look to vaginal ‘seeding’ to boost their babies’ health”: Early studies show that swabbing a mother’s vagina and transferring it to her baby’s mouth, eyes and skin may stimulate microbiome development similarly to babies born naturally – and protect it from...

/ May 13, 2016

Chiropractors, Blind Pigs, and Acorns

When people are at the end of their life they like to pass on their life lessons. One thing I have never had a patient say is “Doc, I sure wish I had spent more time at work.” I try and keep that in mind, but then there are those work commitments that are hard to avoid. I need to have a...

/ April 29, 2016

The Brown M&M’s of Science-Based Medicine

Medicine is constantly changing, and like most health professionals, I am required to maintain my competency to practice. I doubt pharmacists are unique in being inundated with offers of continuing medical/pharmacy education. Some courses are free, some cost hundreds of dollars, and it can be difficult to distinguish the high-quality programs from the biased or low-quality education that furthers a agenda, rather...

/ April 21, 2016

Science-Based Satire: Hiring a Doula for Dental Procedures

Suzy Flanders had always dreamed of having a natural tooth extraction without pain medications, sedation, or local anesthesia, just like in the Bible or on an episode of Keeping Up With Kardashians. “When the day finally came on April 1st 2011, and my dentist recommended the removal of an impacted third molar, I almost couldn’t believe it,” Flanders explained. “After reading everything...

/ April 8, 2016

Science-Based Medicine’s Not-So-Psychic Predictions for 2016

The new year is upon us, and with it comes a unique opportunity for the Science-Based Medicine team to look deep into our crystal balls, to channel our Atlantean spirit guides, and to ride the waves of cosmic consciousness in order to bring to you our predictions for 2016. But before you scoff at our collective powers of prognostication, know that we...

/ January 1, 2016

SCAM Cell Therapies

Injecting animal cells into humans for therapeutic reasons has a long history. The most infamous was John Brinkley who injected goat testicles into 16,000 men in the 1920s and 30s to treat impotence. Harriet wrote a review of Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, which covers the topic. I wonder who would get...

/ November 27, 2015