Year: 2013
Patient Participation in Decision-Making
“Patient-Centered” decision-making is a new buzz-word in medicine. It is a metaphor for a general approach to care that puts the patient’s experience and needs at the center, as opposed to the needs of the physician or the system. While this is an effective marketing term, and a useful principle as far as it goes, as a guide to medical practice it...
Coconut Oil
Is coconut oil a miracle food, or a health hazard? Likely neither.
“Alternative Medicine: Sense and Nonsense” Upcoming Lecture by Dr. Paul Offit
For those of you in the NYC/LI area: An Invitation from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for a Free Public Lecture! Please join us for the 2013 Lorraine Grace lectureship on societal issues of biomedical research: Alternative Medicine: Sense and Nonsense Saturday, June 8, 2013 3:00pm Grace Auditorium One Bungtown Road Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724 Americans love alternative medicine, and they are...
A brief note on killing cancer cells in a dish
I am taking the Memorial Day holiday off. I will return next week (or even earlier if something comes up that I can’t resist blogging about). In the meantime, here’s a general principle that needs to be remembered in cancer research: I would also add to that list: So does bleach. So does acid. So does alkali. So does pouring the media...
A closer look at vitamin injections
Vitamins are magic. Especially when they’re injected. Roll up the sleeve, find a vein, insert a needle and watch that colourful concoction flow directly into the bloodstream. It may sound somewhat illicit, but that person infusing it is wearing a white coat, and you’re sitting in a chic clinic. There must be something to it, right? Intravenous vitamin injections are popular with...
DSM-5 and the Fight for the Heart of Psychiatry
The new DSM is out, what are people saying about it?
Progressive Mythology
In their book Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left, Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell counter allegations of a Republican war on science by pointing out how political progressives are equally anti-science. According to Berezow and Campbell, progressives hold opinions that are not based on physical reality, and claim that their beliefs are based on science even when...
Angelina Jolie, radical strategies for cancer prevention, and genetics denialism
I had been debating whether to blog about Angelina Jolie’s announcement last week in a New York Times editorial entitled My Medical Choice that she had undergone bilateral prophylactic mastectomy because she had been discovered to have a mutation in the BRCA1 gene that is associated with a very high risk of breast cancer. On the one hand, it is my area...
Whack em hard/Whack em once and Stroke. On chiropractic induced trauma
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it. ~ George Bernard Shaw I work in a 5-hospital system and many of us practice at several hospitals. The residents rotate through at least three of the hospitals and the peripatetic nature of health care allows word of curious cases to percolate through the system. My current resident...
FDA v. Jack3d: Round 2
Jack3d is a dietary supplement manufactured by USPlabs and promoted by the giant supplement retailer GNC as producing “ultra-intense muscle-gorging strength, energy, power and endurance.” A key ingredient is DMAA, which the FDA doesn’t think is a proper dietary supplement ingredient at all and wants Jack3d and other products containing it removed from the shelves and the web. The FDA also questions its...