Year: 2010

CAM and the Law Part 2: Licensure and Scope of Practice Laws

This post is intended to illustrate a bit about how medicine, including alternative medicine, is defined and limited legally by state licensure. This is, of course, an enormous topic, especially given the variety of laws and regulations among the 50 states and District of Columbia, and the many, often mutually inconsistent, court decisions interpreting them. A comprehensive survey would resemble Gibbon’s history...

/ November 11, 2010

Vitamin E and Stroke

One of the recurrent themes of science-based medicine is that any medical intervention that can plausibly cause physiological benefit can also plausibly cause physiological harm.  There is no such thing as “it can’t hurt.” Sometimes the risk may be minuscule – but we should never assume that it is zero. Being “natural” or “holistic” or being blessed with some other alleged marketable...

/ November 10, 2010

Chronic Pain: A Disease in its Own Right

Melanie Thernstrom has written a superb book based on a historical, philosophical, and scientific review of pain: The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering. Herself a victim of chronic pain, she brings a personal perspective to the subject and also includes informative vignettes of doctors and patients she encountered at the many pain...

/ November 9, 2010

CAM and the Law, Part 1: Introduction to the issues

When I write or talk about the scientific evidence against particular alternative medical approaches, I am frequently asked the question, “So, if it doesn’t work, why is it legal?” Believers in CAM ask this to show that there must be something to what they are promoting or, presumably, the government wouldn’t let them sell it. And skeptics raise the question often out...

/ November 9, 2010

Integrating patient experience into research and clinical medicine: Towards true “personalized medicine”

We advocate science-based medicine (SBM) on this blog. However, from time to time, I feel it necessary to point out that science-based medicine is not the same thing as turning medicine into a science. Rather, we argue that what we do as clinicians should be based in science. This is not a distinction without a difference. If we were practicing pure science,...

/ November 8, 2010

Answering a criticism of science-based medicine

Attacks on science-based medicine (SBM) come in many forms. There are the loony forms that we see daily from the anti-vaccine movement, quackery promoters like Mike Adams and Joe Mercola, those who engage in “quackademic medicine,” and postmodernists who view science as “just another narrative,” as valid as any other or even view science- and evidence-based medicine as “microfascism.” Sometimes, these complaints...

/ November 8, 2010

Improving Our Response to Anti-Vaccine Sentiment

As Vaccine Awareness Week draws to a close, I thought it might be instructive to step back and look at the tactics, impact, and successes of the anti-vaccine movement. Yesterday, Orac questioned the best approach to counter the anti-vaccine movement. With today’s post, I’ll summarize two pertinent papers on the effectiveness of their tactics, and suggest some possible approaches. There’s overwhelming evidence...

/ November 6, 2010

Homeopathic Vaccines.

It is probably of no surprise to anyone who has read my blog entries, I am a proponent of vaccines.  They give the most bang for the infection prevention buck, and many of the childhood illnesses covered by the vaccine are now so rare that many physicians, even in Infectious Diseases, have never taken care of cases of measles or mumps or...

/ November 5, 2010

Vaccine Wars: the NCCAM Drops the Ball

If you go to the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), you’ll find that one of its self-identified roles is to “provide information about CAM.” NCCAM Director Josephine Briggs is proud to assert that the website fulfills this expectation. As many readers will recall, three of your bloggers visited the NCCAM last April, after having received an...

/ November 4, 2010

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