Denialism

Category: Medicine

  • Live forever!

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    MarkH
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    Look, whether you like it or not, you can’t live forever. I bring this up because there is always a new book or new add purporting to have “the answer” to long life and good health, which never includes modern, evidence-based medicine. Still, perhaps some of these books contains good advice. Or not. Let me…

  • DrPal, tell us more about HPV and cancer

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    MarkH
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    OK, if you insist. This comes with the usual caveat directed at scientists that I know this is oversimplified, but I wish to reach the largest audience possible. Feel free to correct my mistakes, but please don’t bother me about oversimplification. So here’s the deal. Several decades ago, it became scientifically fashionable to believe that…

  • Galileo, Semmelweis, and YOU!

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    MarkH
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    To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted: you must also be right. –Robert Park I used to spend a lot of time on the websites of Joe Mercola and Gary Null, the most influential medical cranks of the internets (to call them “quacks” would imply that they are real…

  • Privacy Cagematch—DHS vs. HHS

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    MarkH
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    OK, this post gets a big IANAL stamped across it. I don’t know the legal ins and outs here (and I’m not sure if anyone does), but the new announcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding laptop computers puts physicians and other health care providers in a bit of a spot. HIPAA (the…

  • Diagnosis–what is the value?

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    MarkH
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    In an earlier post, I wrote about the epistemology (or perhaps ontology—we never really did settle it) of disease. Defining what is disease is sometimes obvious, sometimes not. If you have HIV, you have HIV—a test is positive or negative, treatments are known. If you have high blood pressure, it’s a little trickier. How do…

  • Conscientious objector or deserter?

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    MarkH
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    The discussion we’ve had since Friday regarding the Bush administration’s latest foray into theocracy brought up some interesting points. We discussed implications of the draft regulations including likely limitations on access to safe and effective birth control. But there is another issue here that disturbs me greatly. Last week we talked a little bit about…

  • Theocracy in action—HHS proposes to limit birth control

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    MarkH
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    I’m so angry I can barely type coherently. I have very strong feelings about abortion, but I believe it is possible to respectfully disagree about the ethical issues involved. I have an obstetrics colleague who does not perform abortions, but refers patients needing this service to others. That’s the ethical way for a doctor to…

  • More on the effects of tobacco poisoning

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    MarkH
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    My recent post on tobacco poisoning focused on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the cause of about one-third of smoking related deaths. Let’s move on to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which accounts for another third. When we talk about CVD, what are we taking about? The pathophysiology is very interesting…go and read. Heart disease, which includes heart…

  • Another reader question, and open thread

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    MarkH
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    This is one of those topics I’ve always sort of avoided, and I’m still avoiding it for now. But that doesn’t mean you have to remain silent. Here’s the reader comment/question: This is off-topic, but I wanted some doctorly input to a discussion that I am having over at another blog. This lady is hyperventillating…

  • How real science works

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    MarkH
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    Every once in a while I like to do a piece on how real science works. The New England Journal of Medicine was kind enough to serve up a nice example for us this week. Real science is hard. It’s time-consuming, expensive, and leads down many blind alleys. That’s one of the reasons pseudoscience is…