November 20th, 2011 by ErikDavis in News, Quackery Exposed
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Hey there skeptifans. Here are the media Fails and Wins you sent me last week.
Edzard Ernst on alternative medicine
After Steve Jobs death, which we now know may have been hurried due to his decision to choose alternative treatments over evidence based ones, Maclean’s chose to run this Q&A with alternative medicine expert Edzard Ernst. Several years ago Dr. Ernst set out to find out if there is evidence to support the most popular alternative treatments. His findings were that the vast majority of alternative medicine is quackery. I hope this interview will help sway some people on the fence about chiropractic and other placebo treatments.
Family Doc Says No To Perilous Chickenpox Pops
Anna spotted this story on NPR. Apparently, there is a mom in Texas selling chicken pox infected lollipops to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North*
October 26th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Opinion
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The new book is out about Steve Jobs. You may have already heard that he regretted delaying surgery for months for a type of pancreatic cancer and explored alternatives, including dietary changes. He told his biographer he later came to the conclusion that it was the wrong personal health decision.
If you check out social media conversations about health, the value of dietary changes is always a hot topic. Can becoming a vegetarian, for example, arrest the development of cancer or prevent its recurrence?
This week I will participate in a webinar on social media and breast cancer. One other panelists helps run a patient advocacy group. The other is a respected nurse who helps run the breast center at Johns Hopkins. In a preliminary discussion they each noted that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
October 15th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Opinion, True Stories
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It’s too young to die at age 56. It’s too young to die when you have four children and a wife. It’s too young to die when you have led one of the most successful technology companies ever. It’s too young to die when you are very rich, have so much more to do and to give back. But pancreatic cancer doesn’t care. This time, again, one of our most deadly cancers won.
Medicines, nutrition, surgery, liver transplant, apparently Steve Jobs, celebrated CEO of Apple, tried them all. But, as I wrote in a recent blog, continuing was just too much. To be sure, Jobs did not have the most common type of cancer in his pancreas. His was a neuroendocrine tumor and life expectancy can be longer. But, as has been noted widely in the media, Steve Jobs came to know that his mortality clock was ticking. His eight year-survival was probably what he knew he was facing all along. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
October 11th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in Opinion
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Doctors love their Apple Products. Just walk into any hospital ward, and see the types of mobile devices we are using. At weekly Grand Rounds conferences, you see plenty of iPads in use. At physician meetings, the laptop of choice is often the Macbook Pro. The data backs these anecdotal examples as well.
Doctors love their Apple Products – and Steve Jobs was obviously an extension of these products, often times cited as the singular force behind these products, and it’s why physicians who love his products mourn his passing.
There are three specific reasons why :
1) Simplicity
In medicine, we deal with enough complexity. Knowing disease pathology and the mechanism of various illnesses and their treatments is a fascinating exercise, but it’s taxing. For every known in medicine, there are at least five unknowns. It’s what makes being a physician exciting, but stressful as well. We’re always on high alert – especially those of us who practice in the critical care arena.
Juxtaposed to this is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 12th, 2011 by PreparedPatient in Health Policy
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How do you calibrate care so that it is neither too much nor too little? In this collection of recent posts, health care professionals search for that “just right” level of care.
“I bet celebrities and other VIPs (as they’re known in hospitals) get some of the worst healthcare in America. And, when I mean worst, I mean the most,” says Jay Parkinson in a recent post. Parkinson explores what is publically known about Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs’ care and calls specific attention to “incidentalomas.” Parkinson describes these asymptomatic tumors, sometimes discovered by especially aggressive care, and suggests that they may be over-treated, leading to poor health outcomes.
Mark W. Browne asks, Is the health quality bar set high enough? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
