Science-Based Medicine

During the past academic year, I have written about CAM on campus for my student newspaper and fancy myself now somewhat notorious among the students who care about the issue. My article in the fall issue was a review of a homeopathy lecture that I described in detail for my first SBM post. In the winter issue I discussed two dueling WSJ opinions and the silliness of the “4 in 10 Americans use CAM” argument, channeling Drs. Gorsky and Crislip. I had a piece planned to wrap up the series, but sadly the spring issue has been canceled because the rest of the editorial staff is studying for USMLE Step 1. This is life at medical school, probably not just mine but universally: huge stresses and time obligations often crowd out extracurricular activities.

I began imagining this essay, an open letter to the campus CAM advocates about how I would direct their programming, just before my run-in with a pair of students unhappy about an SBM post. Before the accusations of unprofessionalism began flying around, I was thinking about how we could find common ground. Are there aspects of CAM that even a self-described skeptic can support? Clearly everyone on campus cares firstly about providing the best possible care for patients. Could the CAM advocates and I be collaborative rather than antagonistic? Some disagreement is inevitable given that I have classmates who have taken coursework in homeopathy and integrative nutrition, but I wondered if I could offer constructive advice on improving the CAM club rather than simply dismissing it as having no place on campus. Continue Reading »

Perhaps you have discovered for yourself that I am always the last to write a post on a ‘hot’ topic. I am definitely the slowest writer (and thinker?) on this blog, starting each post at least a week before it is up. So the faster writers weigh in first and I am left with clean up.

As I finish writing on Thursday, there have been 892 cases of H1N1 aka Swine flu and 2 deaths in the US. Looks like the world has avoided a disastrous pandemic like the 1919 flu that killed off 2 to 5% of the world. For now. Maybe. I hope.

However, the flood of nonsense about the flu far exceeds the infection rates from H1N1. This entry will be the limited by necessity. The quantity of quackery (9) far exceeds my ability to type. I thought that influenza virus replicated and spread fast. It pales next to the flu woo.
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