Results for: abstract

What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Traditional Chinese Medicine is not actual medicine, and should not be treated as such. It has more in common with Galen's theory of the four humors than anything a doctor would recognize today.

/ January 25, 2012

NIH Director Francis Collins doesn’t understand the problem with CAM

As the sole cancer surgeon among our stable of Science-Based Medicine (SBM) bloggers, I’m probably the most irritated at the infiltration of pseudoscience into academia (or, as we sometimes like to call it, quackademic medicine) in the realm of cancer. Part of the reason, of course, is that cancer is so common and that the consequences of adding pseudoscience to cancer therapy...

/ January 16, 2012

The New England Journal of Medicine Sinks a Bit Lower

I suppose it was bound to happen, but it still rankles. Here is the back cover of last week’s issue of the decreasingly prestigious New England Journal of Medicine:   Here’s the front cover: It’s the 200th Anniversary issue, no less. Some might protest that ‘probiotics’—live bacteria of ‘good’ varieties, as far as the gut is concerned—aren’t all that implausible, and that...

/ January 13, 2012

Tonsillectomy Indications and Complications

Tonsillectomy remains a common surgical procedure with over half a million cases in the US per year, the most common surgical procedure in children. The indications and effects of tonsillectomy remain a matter of research and debate, as is appropriate. It is also a subject of popular misinformation and alarmism. A recent article by Seth Roberts raises many of the issues with...

/ January 11, 2012

Acupuncture, the Navy, and Faulty Thinking

A Navy neurologist, Capt. Elwood Hopkins, has posted a 3-part article on  “The Power of Acupuncture” on Navy Medicine Live, the official blog of Navy and Marine Corps Health Care. It can serve as a useful lesson in how not to think about medicine. It is a prime example of how an intelligent, educated doctor can be fooled and can fool himself...

/ January 10, 2012

The rebranding of CAM as “harnessing the power of placebo”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past seven years or so that I’ve been blogging, first at my other “super secret” (or, more accurately, super “not-so-secret”) blogging location, and then the four years I’ve been blogging here at Science-Based Medicine (SBM), it’s that the vast majority of “alternative medicine,” “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), and “integrative medicine” (IM) treatments (or...

/ January 9, 2012

The Cancer Cure Anecdote

Dr. Ian Gawler, a veterinarian, suffered from osteogenic sarcoma (a form of bone cancer) of the right leg when he was 24 in 1975. Treatment of the cancer required amputation of the right leg. After completing treatment he was found to have lumps in his groin. His oncologist at the time was confident this was local spread from the original cancer, which...

/ January 4, 2012

Hypothyroidism: The facts, the controversies, and the pseudoscience

As glands go, we don’t give the butterfly-shaped thyroid that straddles our trachea too much  thought — until it stops working properly. The thyroid is a bit like your home’s thermostat: turn it high, and you’re hyperthyroid: heat intolerant, a high heart rate, and maybe some diarrhea. Turn it down, and you’re hypothyroid: cold, tired, constipated, and possibly even depressed. Both conditions...

/ December 22, 2011

Iridology

Iridology claims that it can diagnose diseases through a careful examination of the iris. Unsurprisingly, there is no proof for this, and when tested it fails spectacularly.

/ December 21, 2011

Alas poor Craniosacral. A SCAM of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

It is hard to Sokalize alternative medicine. The closest has been buttock reflexology/acupuncture, but that is a tame example.  Given the propensity for projections of the human body to appear on the iris, hand, foot, tongue, and ear, postulating a similar pattern on the buttocks are simple variations on a common SCAM (Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine) theme. The buttocks?  Not really...

/ December 16, 2011