I’m sometimes asked why I do this. Why, people ask me, do I spend so much time generating post after post after post day after day after day? Obviously, one reason is that it interests me. Another reason is the passion that drives me to support science and science-based medicine and to detest the damage […]
Entries Tagged as 'Health'
In which Orac basks in the adoration of an antivaccine fan… [Respectful Insolence]
May 19th, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: Health
The (not so) Thinking Moms’ (D)evolution continues apace [Respectful Insolence]
May 17th, 2012 · No Comments
About a week ago, I took note of what appears to be a new offshoot of the antivaccine movement known as the Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR). At the time, I pointed out the toxic combination of hubris mixed with ignorance that resulted in a risible “declaration of independence” from “medical tyranny.” In reality, it was […]
Tags: Health
Now there’s some "anti-science"… [Respectful Insolence]
May 17th, 2012 · No Comments
I’m sometimes criticized for referring to various people who are “anti-science” as, well, “anti-science.” People, for whatever reason, have a hard time believing that anyone is anti-science; so when I point out how much, for example, antivaccinationists, alternative medicine believers, or creationists are anti-science, they have a had time believing it. This is particularly true […]
Tags: Health
Acupuncture and COPD? Not so fast… [Respectful Insolence]
May 15th, 2012 · No Comments
I acquiesce.
I know that I’m not going to have a lot of control over my selection of blogging material for a given day when I see more than one or two requests for an analysis of an article. So it was, when links like these were showing up in my e-mail:
Acupuncture May Help Ease Symptoms […]
Tags: Health
The Pill for HIV: No, really, this is a bad idea [erv]
May 15th, 2012 · No Comments
So some panel at the FDA just approved this antiretroviral drug, Truvada– they say its okay to prescribe this drug for HIV negative people to keep them from getting HIV.
Im going to this news the nicest way possible:
I think there were a lot of MDs, and very few PhDs, on this FDA review panel. […]
Tags: Health
"Plausibility bias"? Try "reality bias" when it comes to clinical trials. [Respectful Insolence]
May 14th, 2012 · No Comments
Last week, I pointed out that, when referring to a therapy and considering whether it should be tested in clinical trials, plausibility does not mean knowing the mechanism. Today, I intend to elaborate a bit on that. As my jumping-off point, I couldn’t ask for anything better (if you can call it that) than an […]
Tags: Health
Settling Conflicts: Guns and Homeschooling [Greg Laden’s Blog]
May 14th, 2012 · No Comments
There was a time when I blogged regularly about homeschooling, though I have not done so in a long time. A while back I started to blog about gun ownership. I engaged in each of these topics for similar reasons. I have a political and professional interest in homeschooling (as a science […]
Tags: Health
If your toddler falls from your window, will it necessarily die? [Greg Laden’s Blog]
May 13th, 2012 · No Comments
No! A surprising number of toddlers who manage to get their way through a window opening to fall to the pavement below live. Something just over three thousand toddlers do this every year in the US.
Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…
Tags: Health
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Heal your genome? [Respectful Insolence]
May 12th, 2012 · No Comments
It’s been a while since I’ve done a bit of Your Friday Dose of Woo, and I actually kind of miss it. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything that hasn’t been worthy of this “honor” for a while. On the other hand, there hasn’t been anything in a while that combines just the right […]
Tags: Health
Two more tragic tales of Burzynski patients [Respectful Insolence]
May 11th, 2012 · No Comments
One of my newer blogging interests is the “alternative” cancer doctor named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. Although I had heard of him years ago, mainly in the context of his desperate patients tapping into the generosity of kind-hearted strangers to pay for his “antineoplaston” therapy, I hadn’t really written much about him until very recently. About […]
Tags: Health