Medicine
oracknows | August 29, 2016About three months ago, I was displeased to see in a normally reliable source of medical news (STAT News) a story about a patient of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, Neil Fachon, that fell victim to every trope that Burzynski’s used for 40 years to present himself to the press as a “brave maverick” doctor and researcher rather than the unethical quack that he is. Basically, as was the case of so many similar stories in the 1990s and more recently, the story was framed as one of a desperate patient battling the FDA to save his life, instead of what the story really represented was a desperate…
oracknows | August 28, 2016Stem cells are magic. Stem cells cure everything. They are the next big thing in medicine.
That's the narrative one frequently hears about stem cells in the press and courtesy of offshore stem cell clinics in places such as Italy and direct-to-consumer marketing of stem cells in the US. Of course, stem cells aren't mystical and magical, although they are very promising as a treatment for some degenerative conditions. As promising as they are, though, they don't cure everything. In fact, we don't even know for sure that they cure anything because for the vast majority of conditions for which…
cmonforton | August 26, 2016The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought a lawsuit last week in U.S. district court against a Georgia-based poultry company for discriminating against an employee with a work-related injury. The firm, Wayne Farms, is one I’ve written about previously (e.g., here, here, here.) They’re a company identified by OSHA for not only serious safety problems, but for injury care that was seriously “out-of-date and contrary to good medical practice.” In one example, a worker with a repetitive motion injury had been seen at least 94 times at a plant's nurses station before being…
oracknows | August 25, 2016I’ve mentioned on quite a few occasions that there’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I also like to point out that Schopenhauer probably never said this and just how silly the thought behind this quote is when you think about it. Unfortunately, as I was perusing Twitter yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of this quote, but not in the way quacks and cranks usually intend. Rather, I was thinking of…
oracknows | August 23, 2016Here we go again.
Remember how I frequently say that naturopaths are relentless, how, whenever they attempt to get a naturopathic licensing bill passed in a state and fail, they’re soon back to try again. Basically, they keep trying until they succeed, and once they succeed, it’s game over for keeping their quackery from having the imprimatur of the state. Perhaps my favorite metaphor for this is that of the killer in a 1980s slasher flick, like Jason or Michael Myers, who frequently "dies" ta the end of one movie, only to come back the next movie to mow down another bunch of hapless teens.…
oracknows | August 21, 2016I've frequently written about various dubious and outright quack clinics in different parts of the word with—shall we say?—somewhat less rigorous laws and regulations than the US. Most commonly, given the proximity to the US, the clinics that have drawn my attention are located in Mexico, most commonly right across the border from San Diego in Tijuana for easy access by American patients. Sometimes, in the case of dubious stem cell clinics, they are located in countries like China, Argentina, or Kazakhstan. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of quack clinics right here in the US (…
oracknows | August 18, 2016I’ve been debating whether to write about this for a while now, given that the first article that I noticed about it was first published a week and a half ago. Part of the reason for my reluctance is that it would be too easy for politics to be dragged into this more than I generally like. Of course, I don’t make a secret of my political leanings, but I usually don’t go out of my way to be an explicitly political blogger. I do, however, frequently write about areas where science and medicine intersect, and when I do I always come down on the side of science and rationality.
This brings us to…
oracknows | August 12, 2016I frequently point out how antivaccine activists really, really don’t want to admit that they are, in fact, antivaccine, so frequently, in fact, that I have a series that I call The annals of “I’m not antivaccine.” It’s already up to part 21. It could easily be up to part 51, or 101, or even 1,001. The only reason it isn’t is because I don’t want to devote this blog to nothing other than how antivaccine activists who deny they’re antivaccine routinely inadvertently reveal the truth.
If there’s one area in which antivaccinationists reveal themselves to be antivaccine, it’s in their reaction to…
oracknows | August 9, 2016As I mentioned yesterday, there are news events involving medicine (more specifically pseudoscience in medicine) that are so ubiquitous and irritating that they’re enough to bring me briefly out of my vacation to bang out a quick post. So it was when I wrote my post yesterday about Michael Phelps’ enthusiasm for cupping, a practice attributed to traditional Chinese medicine that is actually an ancient practice that seems to have been independently thought up in multiple cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians. Basically, cupping therapy is a near-universal practice dating back at least 3,500…
oracknows | August 8, 2016So, in case you hadn’t noticed, I was taking a brief vacation, a long weekend if you will. As a result, I hadn’t planned on posting new completely original material until Wednesday or Thursday. (Monday’s post, some of you noticed, was a modified crosspost from my not-so-super-secret other blog.)
Then something happened.
You know you’re a committed blogger when your vacation can be interrupted by an overpowering urge to write about something in the news. Longtime regular readers (or even not-so-longtime regular readers) can probably guess right away what I’m talking about. Of course, I gave it…
oracknows | August 3, 2016It is an article of faith among believers in alternative cancer cures that conventional oncology consists mainly of a bunch of money-hungry surgeons and oncologists who want nothing more than to cut, poison, and burn patients with cancer and charge them enormous sums of money to do so for as long as they can until the poisonous chemotherapy finally kills them. It is an evil and malicious caricature, of course. People don’t endure four years of medical school, three to five years of residency, and three years of fellowship in order to be able to cut, poison, and burn without regard for whether…
cmonforton | August 2, 2016It sounds like malpractice to me. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since learning how poultry workers are treated (and not treated) for work-related injuries.
The latest example comes from Pilgrim’s Pride, the largest US poultry processing company. Last week OSHA issued the first-ever citation in the industry for inappropriate medical care of repetitive motion injuries. The citation indicated:
“The employer failed to make timely appropriate medical referrals for employees with injuries related to chronic and acute exposures and incidents, heavy lifting and persistent and continuous pain in…
esiegel | July 31, 2016“Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now.” -Mattie Stepanek
It's been a fantastic week here at Starts With A Bang, where we've covered even more ground than normal! First off, for those of you not following me on SoundCloud, we've got a new science podcast out, on the last star in the Universe.
Have a listen and enjoy; that's all possible thanks to the generous donations of our Patreon supporters, as are the re-runs of each article, ad-free, on a 7-day delay over on Medium. Here were the new pieces of this past week:
Will the 'Great Attractor' defeat dark…
kkrisberg | July 29, 2016This morning, the Florida Department of Health reported a “high likelihood” of the first localized transmission of Zika virus from mosquito to person in the United States.
Up until now, the more than 1,600 documented Zika cases in the continental U.S. have been related to travel abroad; however, the news from Florida likely means that local mosquitoes are carrying the virus. The news also means that although public health officials have long warned that this day would come, local Zika transmission got here quicker than help from Congress did. Back in February, President Obama requested $1.9…
oracknows | July 27, 2016Many are the times that I’ve discussed the issue of quack doctors. I’m not just referring to naturopaths, whose abbreviation ND stands to me for “not a doctor.” In fact, I’m referring to actual, real physicians, doctors with an “MD” or “DO” after their names, doctors who have graduated from reputable medical schools, completed residencies at reputable hospitals, done fellowships, and are respected members of their communities. I’m referring to MDs who have embraced quackery and thus made themselves indistinguishable from NDs. Actually, they are worse than NDs, because, as MDs and DOs, they…
oracknows | July 26, 2016I’ve frequently referred to “integrative medicine” as the “integration” of quackery with conventional, science-based medicine for the very good reason that that’s what it really is. However, advocates of medicine not based in science are nothing if not masters of marketing, which is how, over the course of three decades or so, “alternative medicine” morphed into “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), which ultimately morphed into its most recent incarnation, “integrative medicine.” The term “integrative medicine” is fantastic from a marketing perspective because it implies (and is…
kkrisberg | July 26, 2016Every year in the U.S., more than 32,000 people die due to gun-related violence, suicide and accidents. That number includes the deaths of seven children and teens every day. So it’s not surprising that health care providers — those who witness the tragic results of gun violence — are often vocal proponents of gun safety reform. But when it comes to the intimate patient-provider relationship, do people want to discuss gun safety with their doctors?
A group of researchers set out to explore that question in what may be the first nationally representative survey on whether Americans feel it’s…
oracknows | July 21, 2016I’ve discovered an antivaccine loon I’ve never encountered before. At least, if I have encountered him, I don’t remember it. Basically, it happened this way. Not having found anything that fired me up to blog yet, I was perusing my usual collection of sites, both crank sites (as in antivaccine, quack, and pseudoscience) and medical/scientific sites, seeing if anything would grab my attention. Oddly enough, I happened upon the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism; even more oddly, for whatever reason, I haven’t really been paying much attention to AoA for the last few weeks. To be honest, AoA…
oracknows | July 14, 2016As a cancer surgeon and physician, I can’t stand Ty Bollinger. I’m sure that comes as a surprise to absolutely none of my regular readers, given what a massive cancer quack he is. Most recently, he has become known for a series of deeply dishonest videos about cancer, chemotherapy, and alternative treatments for cancer called The Truth About Cancer. If there’s one rule I’ve learned in skepticism, be it about quackery or any other outlandish claims, it’s that any time I see a book, movie, or article called “The Truth About...” chances are at least 95% that the content is not the truth about…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2016Mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, with more than 600 workers dying in fatal workplace incidents between 2004 and the beginning of July. And many more miners die long after they’ve left the mines from occupational illnesses such as black lung disease, while others live with the debilitating aftermath of workplace injuries. Today, researchers know a great deal about the health risks miners face on the job, but some pretty big gaps remain.
Kristin Yeoman and her colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) hope to begin closing that knowledge…