Results for: NCCAM
Ngrams and CAM
Ngram is a Google analytic tool/way to waste lots of time on the internet, a byproduct of Google’s scanning millions of books into its database. In a matter of seconds, Ngram scans words from about 7.5 million books, an estimated 6 percent of all books ever published. Type a word or phrase in the Ngram Viewer search box and in seconds a...
Top 10 Chiropractic Studies of 2013
ChiroNexus recently listed the top 10 chiropractic studies of 2013. In my experience, chiropractic studies tend to be of poor quality. A media report says “study shows chiropractic works for X,” and when I look for the study it turns out to be a single case report or an uncontrolled study. When Simon Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for...
The Exciting Conclusion
On the slim chance that you’ve been perched on the edge of your seat wondering how the New Mexico appellate court ruled on chiropractic prescription privileges, whether the Council on Chiropractic Education got approved for another three years as an accrediting agency, if NCCAM ever came clean about spinal manipulation, and the fate of Brandon Babcock, DC, at the hands of the...
More evidence that routine multivitamin use should be avoided
If scientific evidence guides our health decisions, we will look back at the vitamin craze of the last few decades with disbelief. Indiscriminate use is, in most cases, probably useless and potentially harmful. We are collectively throwing away billions of dollars into supplements, chasing the idea of benefits that have never materialized. Multivitamins are marketed with a veneer of science but that...
Journal of the American Dental Association Falls for Tooth Fairy Science
Another venerable scientific journal has fallen prey to “alternative” medicine research. The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) has joined the New England Journal of Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine, among others, with its publication of “A pilot study of a chiropractic intervention for management of chronic myofascial temporomandibular disorder,” in the October, 2013, issue. And what “chiropractic intervention” is...
Chemotherapy doesn’t work? Not so fast… (A lesson from history)
If there’s one medical treatment that proponents of “alternative medicine” love to hate, it’s chemotherapy. Rants against “poisoning” are a regular staple on “alternative health” websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer chemotherapy is because of the “cancer industrial complex” in which big pharma profits massively from selling chemotherapeutic agents and oncologists and hospitals profit...
Student Health Professionals and Attitudes about CAM
While I’m now two full decades out of pharmacy school, I am occasionally invited to return to give a lecture or facilitate a workshop. Pharmacy education has changed a lot since the 1990’s. For me, pharmacy was a Bachelor’s degree program you started right out of high school. Today, students must have a few years of university completed before they can apply...
Integrative Medicine’s Collateral Damage
Integrative medicine combines the practice of medicine with alternative medicine. Proponents tend to take a paragraph or two to say this, but that is what remains when boiled down to its essence. By putting this more concise definition together with Tim Minchin’s often-quoted observation about alternative medicine, you get: integrative medicine is the practice of medicine combined with medicine that either has...
Answering Our Critics, Part 2 of 2: What’s the Harm?
Last week I posted a list of 30 rebuttals to many of the recurrent criticisms that are made by people who don’t like what we say on SBM. I thought #30 deserved its own post; this is it. At the end, I’ve added a few items to the original list. What’s the harm in people trying CAM? Science-based medicine has been criticized...