Month: January 2009
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Dr. Egnor: taking medicocrity to a whole new level
I hate to do this to you but I have to fisk a fisking. You see, Dr. Michael Egnor, the creationist neurosurgeon, was a bit miffed about my takedown of a particularly idiotic post of his. For those of you who left your program at the gate, Egnor is a (apparently competent) neurosurgeon in New…
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Open letter to the protesters at the corner
(note: i didn’t go out except to the hospital, and had to rely on what my upset friends and family reported) Dear Protesters, As someone who loves our American democracy, I value your right to protest. I would even fight to protect it. Still, I wish you would exercise some common decency. Today, when you…
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The war has begun…
…and I’m just itchin’ for a fight. The medical “De-lightenment”, that movement to marginalize the role of science in medicine, has just made a strategic error. Like other weak movements, they’ve formed unwise alliances. Orac reports that so-called mainstream altmed folks like Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra have now made friends with the more obviously…
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Antidepressants, physical dependence, and semantics
Antidepressants are a very useful class of medications. With the introduction of the first modern antidepressant, fluoxetine (Prozac) in the U.S. in the late 1980’s, the pharmacologic treatment of depression has undergone a revolution (and an enduring controversy). Older classes of antidepressants were often effective, but came with a host of unpleasant toxicities—MAOIs can lead…