All posts by Mark Crislip

Mark Crislip, MD has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon, from 1990 to 2023. He has been voted a US News and World Report best US doctor, best ID doctor in Portland Magazine multiple times, has multiple teaching awards and, most importantly,  the ‘Attending Most Likely To Tell It Like It Is’ by the medical residents at his hospital. His multi-media empire can be found at edgydoc.com.

Placebo Speculations

I have a new term to add to the English language, ebolasmacked, a derivative of the British term gobsmacked. Ebolasmacked defines my life the last few weeks since Ebola, or at last preparations for Ebola, have taken a huge bite out of my time with many interesting twists and turns. I think this is maybe the 9th outbreak (HIV, MERS, SARS, Legionella,...

/ October 17, 2014

Chaperones Needed. On acupuncture.

I receive a monthly newsletter from my medical board. Among other issues discussed are the results of disciplinary actions for physicians. Occasionally a physician who has boundary issues is required to have a chaperone present when doing exams. I was thinking that the concept of a chaperone could be more widely applicable. Consider “You Docs: Amazing acupuncture,” the latest from Drs Oz...

/ October 3, 2014

Rationalizing the Ridiculous: Acupuncture

I remain flummoxed. How do physicians and health care systems, trained in all the sciences that lie at the heart of medicine, justify the use of pseudo-medical interventions with no basis in reality? Rationalization. Making excuses: a defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation, and...

/ September 19, 2014

Ebola SCAMs

Ebola, like all diseases, is an opportunity for some to offer up curious treatments. Here is a brief budget of Ebola-related SCAM (supplements, complementary and alternative medicine) and a few Dug the Dog digressions. Homeopathy Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned. ~ Emile Durkheim. Homeopath? In its classic form, as promulgated by Hahnemann,...

/ September 5, 2014

That’s so Chiropractic

Old bad studies: Fantastical autopsy results I found the following quote at “Chiropractic care can treat more than just bad backs” (FYI. Chiropractic can’t): Luse references a study published in The Medical Times authored by Dr. Henry Windsor [sic], M.D. that showcases the correlation of spinal health to overall wellness. Windsor dissected 75 human cadavers to investigate their causes of death. The...

/ August 22, 2014

Yet another plague panic

Case #3 from the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Zaire; picture by Dr. Lyle Conrad, Centers for Disease Control – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #7042. This image is in the public domain and thus free of any copyright restrictions. As a matter of courtesy the CDC requests that the content provider be credited...

/ August 8, 2014

Why People Continue to use SCAMs

I remain curious as to why people use, and continue to use, useless pseudo-medicines. I read the literature, but I find the papers unsatisfactory. They seem incomplete, and I suspect there are as many reasons people choose a pseudo-medicine as those use them. There are numerous surveys on what SCAMs people use. Designing and offering these surveys to every possible medical condition...

/ July 25, 2014

The Truth?

Summertime and the living is easy. I am in Sunriver, Oregon for the week and I though, hilariously, that I would have plenty of time to write a post. Between the hiking, the biking, the golf, the food and the beer, there has been little time to sit in from of a keyboard. There may be no better place to spend a...

/ July 11, 2014

TCM Hodgepodge

I suspect there is more published about traditional Chinese medicine than any other SCAM. Here are some of the recent curiosities of TCM. Burning genitals The little girls laughed about the germs, because they didn’t believe in them; but they believed about the disease, because they’d seen that happen. Spirits caused it, everyone knew that. Spirits and bad luck. Jack had not...

/ June 27, 2014

Astrology, Alchemy, ESP and Reiki. One Of These Is Not Like The Other

I knew that Jann was thinking of writing about reiki and fraud, but did not know the details of her most excellent discussion from yesterday until I had finished my penultimate draft for today. Think of them as a match set, two perspectives on the same elephant. Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being...

/ June 13, 2014