Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food? The obsessive worship of “medicinal foods”

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – attributed to Hippocrates Who said anything about medicine? Let’s eat! – attributed to one of Hippocrates forgotten (and skeptical) students   Who hasn’t seen or heard Hippocrates’ famous quote about letting food be your medicine and your medicine your food? If you have Facebook friends who are the least bit into...

/ June 1, 2015

Chiropractic Nose Balloons

You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you can’t pick your friends nose. Unless you practice Nasal Cranial Release. There are so many pseudo-medicines, it is hard to keep track. New variations appear, new combinations of old SCAMs occur, old pseudo-medicines wax and wane, although no pseudo-medicine ever dies. Except phenology? Maybe? I find a few phrenology sites...

/ May 29, 2015

Florida strikes out against Brian Clement

Brian Clement is a charlatan. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the State of Florida. I made two (which turned into three) attempts to get the state to take action against Clement or the Hippocrates Health Institute, where he serves with his wife Anna Maria Gahns-Clement as co-director. All of them failed. Brian Clement slithered through the cracks in...

/ May 28, 2015

Attitudes Predict CAM Use

One of the persistent themes of SBM is that CAM (complementary and alternative medicine, or integrative medicine) is nothing more than a marketing brand. Its recent popularity is not based upon new evidence or a changing paradigm of medicine as its proponents claim. Its popularity is increasing despite the lack of evidence for specific CAM treatments and despite a dedication to evidence-based...

/ May 27, 2015

Escharotic Treatment for Cervical Dysplasia: A New Incarnation of Black Salve?

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and black salve (which contains bloodroot) are promoted and sold as a cure for many things, including cervical dysplasia. While it does kill cancer cells, it does so just like a flamethrower - indiscriminately, killing lots of normal cells along the way.

/ May 26, 2015

As in 2014, “right-to-try” laws continue to metastasize in 2015, part 2

"Right-to-try" laws sound on the surface to be reasonable and compassionate. They are neither. And they continue to metastasize from state to state.

/ May 26, 2015

Should placebos be used in randomized controlled trials of surgical interventions?

Trials of new experimental drugs frequently compare them to placebo, particularly when there is a large subjective component to the disease being treated, such as pain. In contrast, placebo-controlled trials are rarely undertaken in surgery, mainly because it's been considered ethically dicey to do sham surgery on one group. Should this change? Should we be more open to doing randomized, placebo-controlled surgery...

/ May 25, 2015

Don’t just stand there, do nothing! The difference between science-based medicine and quackery

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines science as: Knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation. And: Knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding. While this should distinguish science from pseudoscience, those who practice the latter often lay claim to the same definition. But one of the major differences between science and pseudoscience is that science...

/ May 22, 2015

Legislators want “pharmaceutical cost transparency”. Are they asking the wrong question?

If science-based medicine is unaffordable, then your care won’t be science-based. Prescription drug costs are one of the biggest concerns in health care today. There seems to be no upper limit on prices, with some new treatments costing over $1,000 per day. The arrival of new drugs to treat (and cure) hepatitis C has created a perfect pharmaceutical storm: highly effective treatments,...

/ May 21, 2015

The PIED Piper of Nootropics

Nootropics are an emerging class of drugs that are designed to enhance cognitive function. They are part of a broader category of drugs known as performance and image enhancing drugs (PIED) which are used for enhancement of memory and cognition, sexual performance, athletic performance or musculature (also called “lifestyle” drugs). It will probably come as no surprise to regular readers of SBM...

/ May 20, 2015