Category: Clinical Trials

Stanislaw Burzynski: The Early Years, part 1

It’s been a week now since I got back from TAM, where Bob Blaskiewicz and I tag-teamed a talk about a man who has become a frequent topic of this blog, namely Stanislaw Burzynski. I’ve been meaning to come back to the topic of Burzynski, but from a different angle. There hasn’t been much in the way of news lately other than...

/ July 22, 2013

Do clinical trials work? It depends on what you mean by “work”

Introduction (Skip to the next section if you want to miss the self-referential blather about TAM.) As I write this, I’m winging my way home from TAM, crammed uncomfortably—very uncomfortably—in a window seat in steerage—I mean, coach). I had been thinking of just rerunning a post and having done with it, sleeping the flight away, to arrive tanned, rested, and ready to...

/ July 15, 2013

Homeopathy Ramblings

There needs to be a SCAM index, some quantitative tool, a formula for ranking the SCAMs, so one SCAM could reign supreme, to be definitely declared the the goofiest of all SCAMs. Perhaps (number of adherents)x(number of Pubmed publications)x(age of SCAM) all divided by a plausibility factor. Homeopathy would win and any SCAM index that did not rank homeopathy at number one...

/ June 28, 2013

Coenzyme Q10 for heart failure: The hype and the science

Could a product sold as a dietary supplement really be delivering the benefits that advocates have claimed for decades? That’s what you might be wondering about coenzyme Q10, following recent stories like: The energy-boosting supplement that could HALVE the number of deaths from heart failure screamed The Daily Mail. It’s Official: Coenzyme Q10 Improves Heart Failure Survival from the “orthomolecular” advocates AOR....

/ June 20, 2013

Two Viewpoints

Most of what I read professionally is directed towards reality-based medicine. I spend my professional energies thinking about the application of reality to killing various and sundry microscopic pathogens. The conceptual framework I use, and that used by others in medicine, does not concern itself with the application of the Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicines that occupy the attention of this blog....

/ June 14, 2013

BBC Panorama investigates Stanislaw Burzynski

Last week, I reviewed a long-expected (and, to some extent, long-dreaded) documentary by Eric Merola, a filmmaker whose talent is inversely proportional to his yen for conspiracy, pseudoscience, and quackery. Through a quirk of fate that couldn’t have worked out better if I had planned it myself, a long-expected investigation of the Burzynski Clinic by the BBC aired on its venerable news...

/ June 10, 2013

New Developments in Acupuncture: Turtles and Motion-Style Treatments

Note: Lest you think that SBM is becoming “turtles all the way down,”   let me apologize for the duplication and explain that I had already written this right before I read Mark Crislip’s Turtle Agony article on Friday.   My focus is different, and turtles were only a small part of my article, so I decided to leave the turtles in....

/ June 4, 2013

Stanislaw Burzynski: A deceptive propaganda movie versus an upcoming news report

Well, I’ve finally seen it, and it was even worse than I had feared. After having heard of Eric Merola’s plan to make a sequel to his 2010 propaganda “documentary” about Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski The Movie: Cancer Is Serious Business, which I labeled a bad movie, bad medicine, and bad PR, I’ve finally actually seen the finished product, such as it is....

/ June 3, 2013

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...

/ May 17, 2013

Antibiotics for Low Back Pain

Low back pain is a particularly frustrating condition that is common, poorly understood, and difficult to treat. Could a long course of antibiotics be the answer for some patients? A recent study from Denmark suggests that it might be:  “Antibiotic treatment in patients with chronic low back pain and vertebral bone edema (Modic type 1 changes): a double-blind randomized clinical controlled trial...

/ May 14, 2013