August 3rd, 2010 by Dr. Val Jones in News, Opinion
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I received this press release and was depressed by the prevalence of lawsuits filed against doctors in this country. More than 40% of physicians are sued at some point in their careers, and the vast majority of these suits are found to be meritless. If that doesn’t make you want to quit practicing medicine, I don’t know what does.
This kind of litigious climate definitely adds to my stress levels — and makes me fearful of caring for very sick and fragile patients who are likely to have poor outcomes, regardless of what I do. Many of my colleagues practice medicine with one eye always looking over their shoulder, wondering when that one bad apple will take them to court in an attempt at a financial windfall.
In Canada, those who bring frivolous lawsuits to court are responsible for all legal costs. Read more »
May 13th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Research
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On SBM we have documented the many and various ways that science is abused in the pursuit of health (or making money from those who are pursuing health). One such method is to take a new, but reasonable, scientific hypothesis and run with it, long past the current state of the evidence. We see this with the many bogus stem cell therapy clinics that are popping up in parts of the world with lax regulation.
This type of medical pseudoscience is particularly challenging to deal with, because there is a scientific paper trail that seems to support many of the claims of proponents. The claims themselves may have significant plausibility, and parts of the claims may in fact be true. Efforts to educate the public about such treatments are frustrated by the mainstream media’s lazy tendency to discuss every study as if it were the definitive last word on a topic, and to site individual experts as if they represent the consensus of scientific opinion.
Recent claims made for low-dose naltrexone (LDN) fit nicely into this model –- a medical intervention with interesting research, but in a preliminary phase that does not justify clinical use. And yet proponents talk about it as if it’s a medical revolution. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*