Quackery and fraud
revere | May 5, 2010Regular readers know I don't have strong feelings about nutritional supplements and herbal medicine, unlike some of my medical blogger colleagues. I don't recommend or use them but for the most part it's not a subject that really gets me going, probably because I don't know enough about abuses. A lot of regular medical practice is not that soundly based, either, and some of it is pretty harmful. That's also not a subject that gets me going.
The one prejudice I do have I got from my physician and surgeon father. His diet advice was "everything in moderation." That goes for nutritional…
revere | June 22, 2009If you don't want to smell, the FDA has a recommendation: use an over-the-counter cold remedy that contains an intranasal zinc solution. You won't smell. Possibly ever again:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent. (FDA Press Release)
Losing your sense of smell is no joke. It is intimately involved with your sense of taste and is a warning sense for dangerous gases. The role of zinc in…
revere | June 2, 2009Ten days ago Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that the US government was allocating $1 billion to help companies with production costs for a swine flu vaccine. Among the beneficiaries was French vaccine giant, Sanofi-Aventis, whose Sanofi Pasteur unit got a $190 million order. It was likely only the first in a series of expected orders for the company. Sanofi knows how to make vaccines. So what could go wrong?
Drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis has agreed to pay nearly $100 million to settle allegations it cheated Medicaid on the cost of nasal sprays.
The Justice…
revere | April 7, 2009I rarely do quack posts here. For one thing, this is an area ably covered by my Sciblings, chief among them Orac at Respectful Insolence (who likes to call it "woo"; I don't like the term; whatever you term it, it's quackery). For another, I'm not much interested in it. I do religion once a week on the Freethinker Sermonette, so that pretty much uses up my bullshit quotient. However yesterday I found a story on Boingboing about drinking water being sold at a Manhattan (Columbus Circle) Whole Foods store, and since I am professionally interested in drinking water, I read on. Fortunately I am…
revere | February 15, 2009Mix a little hard line nationalism with religious fundamentalism and what do you get? The formula for cow piss soft drink:
A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to "corrupting" Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow's urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release. (Reuters)
The Hindu Taliban want to desecularize Indian society and…
revere | January 24, 2008Unlike Orac at Respectful Insolence, I'm not particularly obsessed with what he calls "woo": medical quackery and fraud. He has every reason to go bullshit over it, since it is potentially very dangerous stuff. But I have a limited supply of outrage and quackery just doesn't set me off. Usually. So I am surprised at how bullshit I get every time I see this piece of shit advert for something called the Kinoki footpad detoxification system. I want to scream when it comes on television. I mean really SCREAM. Mrs. R. has to restrain me from yelling at the TV. This ad pushes all my buttons. It…
revere | October 14, 2007ScienceBlogs likes to take on quacks. Orac, over at Respectful Insolence, does it every Friday and does it well. It's a good project and I'm not against it. But there are a lot of quacks around that aren't called quacks. They have corporate suits and research departments. And advertising and marketing departments. Big companies. Like Nestle.
Recently a team of scientists in the UK decided to take them on:
[Physicist Jennifer] Lardge is one of an informal group of scientific researchers who had met through various workshops sponsored by the UK charity, Sense About Science. Over the past…
revere | January 11, 2007Missouri's nickname is the "The Show Me State." If you live anywhere near the state capital in Jefferson City, it isn't too late to be shown an exhibit in the Capitol Rotunda on "The Industry of Death." Today and tomorrow.
In it you will learn:
Twenty-five percent of psychiatrists sexually abuse their patients. Psychiatrists deliberately kill about 10,000 people a year - sounds about right. And for the big surprise, psychiatrists were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - guilty by association, at least, since psychiatrists are responsible for the existence of terrorists and suicide…