Denialism

Category: Medicine

  • Medical Hypotheses—“just make shit up; we’ll publish it”

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    MarkH
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    Orac was kind enough to pollute my inbox with the latest idiocy from the journal that has never met a crank it didn’t like. As Orac says, “Medical Hypotheses [is] the journal where the editors encourage the authors to make shit up.” Before I tell you about the latest “hypothesis”, let me give you an…

  • Eating can be bad for your health. Oh, and don’t forget the phages.

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    MarkH
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    Sure, we have obesity problems in this country, but we also have more direct food safety problems. Summer has brought with it news of the bungled tomato-Salmonella affair, and now, from the Midwest, contaminated beef. One of our local supermarket chains has been forced to recall hamburger meat because of over a dozen cases of…

  • As goes Vermont…

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    MarkH
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    I hadn’t realized that Vermont has passed a law requiring insurers to cover naturopathic care. We’ve covered extensively the quackery that is naturopathy, but really, if a patient chooses to see a quack, it’s their business. But with health care costs soaring, requiring insurers to pay for voodoo is a rather bad idea. Already, many…

  • Watch as Pfizer desperately clings to a patent…

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    MarkH
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    …instead of focusing on innovation. I’ve written about Pfizer and Lipitor a few times in the last year. Now, Pfizer has found a way to extend its patent on Lipitor, a very profitable drug used in the management of heart disease and high cholesterol. Lipitor’s a great drug. It treats high cholesterol very effectively, and…

  • Pain, privacy, and safety

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    MarkH
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    Abel 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…

  • Placebo effect, not placebo treatment

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    MarkH
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    In 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.

  • Goodbye, Mr. Russert

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    MarkH
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    Tim 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…

  • Faith Healing in the WSJ

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    MarkH
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    The WSJ brings us news of increasing opposition to laws that would protect faith healing. Or as I call it, negligence. As usual it has required the death of innocents before people will come to grips with common sense. The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure…

  • Naturopathy

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    MarkH
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    My little post on naturopathy was more controversial than I had anticipated. Some of the commenters gently (and otherwise) suggested that I should learn more about the subject, so I’ve been doing a little reading. Here are the basic questions: what is naturopathy, and what might it have to offer that “conventional” medicine lacks?

  • Can’t get into med school? Legislate your own doctorate!

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    MarkH
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    I guess it’s not just doctors watching this one—an alert reader and a fellow SciBling both picked up on this one. Apparently, in my neighboring state of Minnesota (really, check the map), home to Greg Laden, PZ Myers, and lutefisk, doctor wannabes have legislated themselves into “doctorhood”. You see, there is this entity called a…