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Science-Based Medicine

May 17, 2012

The regulation of nonsense

 The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense. – Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD., professor, Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, University of Exeter, UK One necessity of licensing so-called “complementary and alternative,” or “CAM,” practitioners is to spell out exactly what is encompassed in the CAM scope of practice. This is unfortunate for [...]

May 16, 2012

Prince Charles Alternative Medicine Charity Closes

The Princes Foundation for Integrated Health closed shop in 2010. Now the company that ran the foundation has officially closed. The foundation was a vanity project by Prince Charles, who had a soft spot for so-called alternative medicine and natural therapies. The foundation was established in 1993 and in the last 19 years has misinformed the [...]

May 15, 2012

RISUG: Birth Control for Men

According to an enthusiastic article on the Internet, “The Best Birth Control In the World Is For Men.” It’s called RISUG: Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance. It involves a minor surgical procedure in which the vas deferens is exposed and pulled outside the scrotum by the same techniques used for a vasectomy. A copolymer, [...]

May 14, 2012

Another cancer tragedy in the making

I despise cancer quacks. I know, I know. My saying that is probably akin to saying that the sun rises in the east, water is wet, and Donald Trump’s hair resembles nothing in nature. You know, brain-meltingly obvious statements. It’s true, though. I despise cancer quacks. It doesn’t much matter to me whether the quack [...]

May 11, 2012

Dental X-rays and Brain Tumors — Oh My!

Fear sells, and the media loves it. If it’s scary, no matter how tenuous the link or inconclusive the study, you are going to see it on the news. How many times over the years have you heard that your cell phone might give you brain cancer, even though it never turns out to be [...]

May 11, 2012

Announcement: New Edition of Consumer Health

For decades Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions was the only textbook available for college classes on the subject, and it is still the best: the most comprehensive and the most reliable. It was first published in 1976, and it has clearly had staying power. An updated 9th edition has just been released. The [...]

May 10, 2012

The drug expiry date: A necessary safety measure, or yet another Big Pharma conspiracy?

Consider this scenario: You’re in good health and take no prescription drugs. You use the following remedies occasionally: Excedrin for the rare migraine Arnica 30CH for bumps and bruises Echinacea capsules, when you feel a cold coming on Today you look in your cupboard, and notice all three products expired last year. Would you still [...]

May 9, 2012

Pseudoscience is not Cost Effective

Industrialized nations are in the middle of a health care crisis (some more than others), or at least a dilemma. As our medical technology advances, people are living longer, they are living with chronic diseases, and they are consuming more health care. The cost of this health care is rising faster than economic growth, so [...]

May 8, 2012

Homeopathy and Nanoparticles

I had never heard of Dr. Shantaram Kane, a chemical engineer in Mumbai, India. I don’t know how he heard of me, but he apparently knows I am critical of homeopathy. He e-mailed me out of the blue to tell me about a study he had published in 2010 in the journal Homeopathy: “Extreme homeopathic [...]

May 7, 2012

Plausibility bias? You say that as though that were a bad thing!

On Friday, you might have noticed that Mark Crislip hinted at a foreshadowing of a blog post to come. This is that blog post. He knew it was coming because when I saw the article that inspired it, I sent an e-mail to my fellow bloggers marking out my territory like a dog peeing on [...]

May 4, 2012

Stop Making Sense

I usually rely on the Secret.  Every two weeks or so the Universe offers up some bit of wacky whimsey and I have a topic for an SBM blog entry.  This week the Universe has failed me. Nothing has crossed my LCD so I have no studies to evaluate and I have been unusually busy [...]

May 3, 2012

The CAM Docket: Texas MDs v. DCs

In April, the Texas District Court of Appeals (Third District) affirmed a lower court ruling that chiropractors are prohibited from performing manipulation under anesthesia and needle electromyography[EMG]. The lower court also ruled that the Texas Board of Chiropractic Examiners exceeded its authority in defining the chiropractic scope of practice to include “diagnosis.” This part of [...]

May 2, 2012

Funding CAM Research

Paul Offit has published a thoughtful essay in the most recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in which he argues against funding research into complementary and alternative therapies (CAM). Offit is a leading critic of the anti-vaccine movement and has written popular books discrediting many of their claims, such as disproved claim for [...]

May 1, 2012

G-Spot Discovered? Not So Fast!

Is this the G-Spot? The press release proclaims “Study Confirms Anatomic Existence of G-Spot.” The study itself is titled “G-Spot Anatomy: A New Discovery.”  It was just published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.  The author, Adam Ostrzenski, is an “internationally renowned gynecologic surgeon” with multiple degrees (MD, PhD, Dr Hab) and many peer-reviewed articles [...]

April 30, 2012

Supplements and cancer prevention

The bloggers here have been very critical of a law passed nearly 20 years ago, commonly referred to as the DSHEA of 1994. The abbreviation DSHEA stands for about as Orwellian a name for a law as I can imagine: the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Of course, as we’ve pointed out time and [...]

April 27, 2012

Consumer Reports and Alternative Therapies

Consumer Reports (CR) and its Health Newsletter provide sound advice about nutrition and medicine, with one exception: their recommendations concerning alternative therapies, especially dietary supplements. With regard to dietary supplements, part of the problem is the failure of CR to make a distinction between authentic dietary supplements, such as multivitamins and minerals, and non-vitamin, non-mineral [...]

April 26, 2012

Gold mine or dumpster dive? A closer look at adverse event reports

All informed health decisions are based on an evaluation of expected risks and known benefits. Nothing is without risk. Drugs can provide an enormous benefit, but they all have the potential to harm. Whether it’s to guide therapy choices or to ensure patients are aware of the risks of their prescription drugs, I spend a lot of [...]

April 25, 2012

Hypnotherapy For Pain and Other Conditions

Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis as a medical intervention, usually for the treatment of pain and other subjective symptoms. It remains controversial, primarily because the evidence for its efficacy is not yet compelling, but also because it is poorly understood. This situation is not helped by the fact that it is often characterized as [...]

April 24, 2012

Chiropractors as Family Doctors? No Way!

A recent three-part article published in ACA News advocates turning chiropractors into “conservative primary care providers” who would be the initial point of contact for patients, would serve as gatekeepers for referrals to medical doctors and specialists, and would co-manage patients with those specialists on a continuing basis: essentially, family doctors.  I think that’s a [...]

April 23, 2012

The problem with preclinical research? Or: A former pharma exec discovers the nature of science

If there’s one thing about quacks, it’s that they are profoundly hostile to science. Actually, they have a seriously mixed up view of science in that they hate it because it doesn’t support what they believe. Yet at the same time they very much crave the imprimatur that science provides. When science tells them they [...]