Category: Surgical Procedures
Abortion and breast cancer: The manufactroversy that won’t die
Whatever one thinks about abortion from a moral standpoint, we at SBM would argue that any discussion of the risks of abortion should be based in rigorous science. One "risk" of abortion frequently claimed by antiabortion activists is that it causes breast cancer, even if it takes science as bad as that found in a recently published epidemiological "study" on abortion and...
A Case Study In Aggressive Quackery Marketing
With some degree of sadness I recently “outed” a former co-resident of mine who has turned to the dark side and begun putting money-making before truth and science. Without any clear evidence of benefit beyond placebo, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is now being marketed aggressively as a cure-all for sports injuries. And at about $300 per injection (the NYT reports $2000/treatment), there’s plenty...
Platelet-Rich Plasma
I’ve often marveled at the marketing successes of “integrative” medicine – a practice which generally refers to the act of blending effective treatments with ineffective or untested/equivocal ones. Only the marketing elite know how integrative medicine became associated with enlightenment. Perhaps they’re the very same people who came up with the idea that women should be excessively concerned about cellulite? Thanks a...
Vertebroplasty for compression fractures due to osteoporosis: Placebo medicine
When seemingly science-based medicine turns out to be placebo medicine.
“Acupuncture Anesthesia”: A Proclamation from Chairman Mao (Part I)
James Reston’s Appendectomy For many Americans, the current wave of public fascination with “complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)” can be traced to a single event: New York Times columnist James Reston’s appendectomy in China during the summer of 1971, which Reston reported in an interesting and amusing article on July 26 of that year. Many of those who noticed the publicity following this event...
Human subjects protections and research ethics: Where the rubber hits the road for science-based medicine
Although clinical trials are science, they often can't be controlled as well as experiments in most branches of science. The reason is that the experimental subjects are human, and ethics demands that risks and harms be minimized and benefits maximized.
Is IV Sedation Over-Used?
We criticize alternative medicine for not being evidence-based, and they criticize conventional medicine in turn, saying that much of what conventional medicine does is not based on evidence either. Sometimes that criticism is justified. I have run across a conventional practice that I suspect began because it sounded like a good idea, but that never was adequately tested and is not carefully...
Alternative medicine use and breast cancer
Of all the posts I and my cobloggers have written for SBM over the last 15 months, most provoke relatively few comments. However, a few stand out for having provoked hundreds of comments. The very first post that provoked hundreds of comments was Harriet’s excellent discussion of the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics. In fact, Harriet seems to be quite good at...
When fraud undermines science-based medicine
The overriding them, the raison d’être if you will, of this blog is science-based medicine. However, it goes beyond that in that we here at SBM believe that science- and evidence-based medicine is the best medicine. It’s more than the best medicine, though; it’s the best strategy for medicine to improve therapy for our patients. We frequently contrast science-based medicine with various...
Another challenge to surgical dogma
Better late than never with this one. The dogma that I’m referring to is the remaining practice of using NG tubes in anyone with upper gastrointestinal surgery (liver, stomach, pancreas, duodenum, proximal small intestine) and then placing a jejunostomy tube (a tube, also often called a J-tube, that goes into the jejunum, or the proximal part of the small intestine, through which...