Medicine
j7uy5 | June 25, 2008Radio Frequency IDentification tags (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_frequency_identification">RFIDs)
are little devices that communicate with other devices, sending an
identification signal. You've probably seen them on various
items purched in stores. They commonly are used for inventory
control and theft prevention. They are increasingly used in a
wide variety of applications.
Now, they have been found to interfere with medical devices.
This includes critical items such as mechanical ventilators
and external pacemakers.
The study was published in JAMA ($ for full access…
sb admin | June 23, 2008On Saturday, Firedoglake hosted an online discussion on David Michaelsâ Doubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health â and David was lucky to have the chat hosted by Jordan Barab, whose wonderful Confined Space blog provided so much inspiration for The Pump Handle. In his introduction, Jordan not only did a terrific job summarizing the lessons contained in the book, but added some telling details from his own decades of experience promoting workplace health and safety. Here he is describing the demise of the long-awaited OSHA ergonomics standard:
I first…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, scientific ethics, Hippocratic oath, life scientists, corporate culture
I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member.
Scientific misconduct is very expensive, leading to years of wasted research dollars and effort in pursuit of a scientific mirage, and it damages…
jrosenhouse | June 23, 2008George Carlin was absolutely the very best stand-up comedian in the history of the business. Only Robin Williams in his prime was even in the same league. I have quite a few of his albums, and I find I can still listen to them with pleasure even though I have most of the routines memorized. The cadence of his voice and the strength of his writing make them enjoyable even long after their impact as humor has worn off. You will learn more about good teaching from observing his technique than you ever will in a teaching seminar or education course. The New York Times has a good article…
purepedantry | June 19, 2008Well that is not good:
In a survey last year of nearly 2,400 physicians conducted by a physician recruiting firm, locumtenens.com, 3 percent said they were not frustrated by nonclinical aspects of medicine. The level of frustration has increased with nearly every survey.
...
In surveys, increasing numbers of doctors attest to diminishing enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member from going into the profession.
The dissatisfaction would probably not have reached such a fever pitch if reimbursement had kept pace with doctors' expectations. But it has not.…
oracknows | June 19, 2008I'm a cancer surgeon, and if there's one thing that drives me straight to the liquor cabinet it has to be quack cancer "cures." Very early in the history of this blog, I discussed one of the biggest quacks of all time, a woman who thinks that all cancer is caused by a liver fluke (but only if the patient has propyl alcohol in his body, which, according to her, allows the fluke to become established) and that she can cure all cancer with a combination of herbs and the use of a device that she calls a "Zapper" (which looks suspiciously like a Scientology E-meter). I'm referring, of course, to…
oracknows | June 18, 2008David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Health at Yale University is not happy.
No, he is not happy at all. Specifically, he is not happy with the skeptical blogosphere. He apparently feels that we nasty, close-minded skeptics have been so very unfair in our discussions of him. Specifically, he is not happy how several of us have called him to task for his remarks at the 1st Annual Integrative Medicine Scientific Symposium held in April at Yale University. In particular, what stood out (and provoked the sarcasm and contempt of several bloggers devoted to…
sb admin | June 16, 2008Abel over at TerraSig dug up an interesting story about a man who was "murdered" killed rendered not-living (in the moral if not legal sense) by a "fake chiropractor" (although it's not clear to me what science separates a "real" from a "fake" chiropractor). One of the commenters wondered if lack of health insurance had driven the man away from standard medical care. Another bemoaned the inadequacy of treatment for chronic pain conditions.
This got me thinking...
In the case of the fake chiropractor, I'm guessing that many factors went into the decedent's seeking this particular care.…
sb admin | June 16, 2008In the course of reading the comments in the last several posts, I've come upon many mentions of the "placebo effect". Steve Novella has a few good posts on the placebo effect, but I'd like to take a look at the clinical view.
The placebo effect is a phenomenon often observed in clinical studies. When doing clinical studies, there is often a notable change in subjects response simply by being in the study. This effect is multifactorial, often due to such biases as a desire to please researches, better medical follow up, and others. It is most often a data artifact that arises when…
gregladen | June 15, 2008Medical woo is not restricted to Minnesota. They even have it in California.
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - A 76-year-old man operating an unlicensed chiropractic clinic out of his Oak Park, Calif., garage is suspected of killing one of his patients with a neck manipulation, according to Sacramento police.
Antonio Arellano, whose only training was a massage class he took in the 1940s, was booked into the Sacramento County jail Friday on suspicion of murder, authorities said.
According to police, Jose Lopez, 64, and his wife went to Arellano's home on Washington Avenue on Tuesday. Lopez went to see…
terrasig | June 15, 2008This is not at all funny but I guess ironic might be a better word.
The science blogosphere has been alight this past week with the recognition of naturopathy by the state of Minnesota as well as other aspects of alternative medicine.
As if the risks of going to an alternative practitioner are not enough, here is an alarming case from Sacramento, CA, of a patient dying at the hands of someone posing as a chiropractor:
Authorities said Antonio Arellano, 76, was taken into custody on suspicion of homicide after operating his clinic in the 4000 block of Washington Avenue.
On Tuesday, a 66-year-…
sb admin | June 13, 2008Tim Russert died suddenly today. I admired his journalism, his ability to press questions that has become so rare. He didn't seem to suffer from the "two-side-ism" that has become so common in today's journalism; he realized that some issues don't have two valid opposing views. But others will eulogize him. I'd like to talk about why he died.
Of course, we don't know very much at this point. What we do know is that it was sudden.
There are a number of reasons for someone to suddenly drop dead, the most common having to do with the cardiovascular system. Pulmonary embolism and massive…
oracknows | June 12, 2008From my perspective, one thing that's always been true of surgery that has bothered me is that it is prone to dogma. I alluded to this a bit earlier this week, but, although things have definitely changed in the 20 years since I first set foot, nervously and tentatively, on the wards of the Cleveland VA Medical Center for my first ever surgical rotation, some habits of surgeons die hard.
Of course, regardless of the tendency towards dogma, one thing that differentiates evidence- and science-based medicine from pseudoscientific woo is that studies do make a difference. In general and…
oracknows | June 10, 2008Somehow, with all the blogging about vaccines last week, I totally missed a major update to a story that's been of great interest to me since I first became aware of it. It turns out that Starchild Abraham Cherrix, the teen who two years ago rejected conventional therapy for his lymphoma and sought out the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy, has turned 18:
Abraham Cherrix, the teenager who fought a court battle on the Eastern Shore for the right to choose his own cancer care, turns 18 today, officially freed from reporting his medical condition to the Accomack County court that has required…
neurophilosophy | June 8, 2008
Logo by Ricardo at My Biotech Life
Welcome to the 33rd edition of Gene Genie, the blog carnival devoted to genes and genetic diseases.
In this edition, there is a strong emphasis on cancer. There's also a focus on leukodystrophy, and a special section on personalized genetics.
Spotlight on Leukodystrophy
The term leukodystrophy refers to a group of diseases characterized by progressive degeneration of the white matter in the brain. The conditions are normally inherited, and are associated with mutations in the genes encoding components of the myelin sheath.
Leukodystrophy came under the…
sb admin | June 5, 2008When a resident of student presents a patient with me and I help them formulate a plan, we call it "staffing" the case. Recently while I was staffing, I was presented with a patient who speaks little English, but speaks another language fluently. Unfortunately for us, this language wasn't Urdu, Spanish, French, Romanian, or Hindi (languages spoken by the people immediately within my reach). The medical instructions we needed to give were fairly complex---too complex for Pidgin English, so I paged one of my interns.
"Hey, S.," I said, "how well do you speak (insert little-known language…
oracknows | June 5, 2008
(Note: In the photo above, the guy in the sunglasses behind Jim Carrey is our old friend Dr. Jay Gordon, Santa Monica antivaccinationist-sympathetic pediatrician to the beautiful people. He's the one with his tongue sticking out.)
It's worse than I thought.
In seeing the first bits of video last night from the "Green Our Vaccines" rally led by celebrity useful idiots Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. I had been thinking of trying to be "nicer" to them, given that their fans who have shown up here seem to think I have been very, very mean to her and that I lack compassion. I also realize…
sb admin | June 4, 2008I am often the bearer of bad news. I don't think I've ever been formally taught how to deliver bad news, but I've developed a style over the years, and I'm pretty good at it.
I work with medical residents every day in their outpatient clinics. Most of them have never had to deliver bad news. Some people are natural communicators, and some aren't. Often, one of my residents just "gets it"---they have a great deal of empathy, can "read" the patient from moment to moment, and without any help from me, they can successfully give the news.
What does it mean to give bad news "successfully"?…
oracknows | June 3, 2008Sadly, it's almost here.
I'm referring, of course, to the "Green Our Vaccines" rally led by that useful idiot for the antivaccinationist movement Jenny McCarthy and sponsored by Talk About Curing Autism (TACA), Generation Rescue, and a variety of other , which will take place a mere day from now. I'll give the organizers credit for one thing. They have come up with a slogan that's truly brilliant in an Orwellian sort of way, namely "Green our Vaccines," with an accompanying press release:
McCarthy, author of the best-selling book "Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism," and…
kcontreary | May 31, 2008A cat hit by a motorcycle in Port Harcourt, Nigeria allegedly turned into a middle-aged woman. Good thing there were lots of people around to kill a second cat-person and beat the accident survivor into a confession of witchcraft.
What could be described as a fairy tale turned real on Wednesday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, as a cat allegedly turned into a middle-aged woman after being hit by a commercial motorcycle (Okada) on Aba/Port Harcourt Expressway.
Nigerian Tribune learnt that three cats were crossing the busy road when the okada ran over one of them which immediately turned into a…