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.

Does your antivax doctor have another agenda?

Several weeks back, I wrote a piece in praise of Michigan’s Fresh Air Camp’s decision to admit only properly vaccinated children. Predictably, there was a bit of a backlash from people who, despite the obvious benefits, oppose vaccinations. I can’t fault a parent for the decisions they make for their kids. We all work from the gut when it comes to our...

/ June 4, 2016

What to make of Medical Dogs

For thousands of years we have guided the evolution of dogs to fulfill our needs for work and companionship.  Service dogs are pretty remarkable.  I love to watch herd dogs mimicking the dance of predator and prey.  When you see a guide dog help someone navigate a building or street, you can’t help but to be impressed by the dogs “devotion” and...

/ May 25, 2012

Lying for the State

Quacks lie.  In some ways, that’s what separates us from them.  Real doctors are stuck with the messy truth: with bad news, with uncertain outcomes.  It’s this reliance on the truth which gives us much of our credibility. Laws forcing doctors to lie to patients take me back to reading Kundera in the 80s; the hovering fear that everyday actions might bring...

/ March 30, 2012

Potential market for alternative medicine left untouched

A few days ago, I had the good fortune to share lunch and ideas with David Gorski and Kimball Atwood.  Kimball was on his way from a talk at Michigan State to one at Brigham and Women’s, one of the country’s best-known teaching hospitals.  David was planning a future talk for a group in Florida.  These guys have been thinking and writing...

/ November 2, 2011

Return of an old foe

In 2000, a panel of experts was brought together by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They came to discuss whether measles was still endemic in the United States, that is whether it still existed in the general background of US infectious diseases. They concluded that measles had been eradicated in the US, and that the occasional cases imported from...

/ November 1, 2011

When a “scientific study” is neither

There is quite a bit of art to the practice of medicine: knowing how to get and to give information to a patient, how to create a sense of worry without creating a feeling of panic, how to use the best available science to help them maintain or return to health.  Underlying all of the art is the science: what blood pressure...

/ August 25, 2011

Asthma, placebo, and how not to kill your patients

A number of years ago I was walking along Lake Michigan with a friend (a fellow medical resident) when she turned to me and said, “are you wheezing?  Do you have asthma?”  I had always been physically active and assumed my breathlessness while walking down the trail was due to the thirty extra pounds of pizza and doughnuts I’d acquired during residency....

/ July 23, 2011

We get mail

There are a few “laws” of the blogosphere, one of them being that a response to a post that comes more than a few weeks later is generally useless or crazy.  But once in a while, someone takes the time to look at an old post and formulate a thoughtful response. This is not one of those times. Or maybe it is....

/ June 22, 2011

Dr. Oz, you’re not helping diabetics

Dr. Mehmet Oz is one of America’s most influential doctors.  Just ask him.  He has a TV show and everything.  And in the past, much of his advice had been practical and mundane, the same advice you might hear from your own (perhaps less charismatic) physician.  But lately, he’s been giving out frankly bizarre medical opinions.  Not all of Oz’s recommendations are...

/ February 24, 2011

Why science reporters should do their homework

One of the most significant medical advancements of the last few decades has been the use of cholesterol-lowering medications called statins.  These drugs, when used properly, have been shown over and over to lower the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and death.  But like all drugs, they have many effects, both those we like (preventing heart attacks) and those we don’t (in...

/ November 4, 2010