February 1st, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor
4 Comments »
I personally find the word-completion tool kind of annoying on the iPhone – especially as a doc. The software is geared towards choosing the most common word after a few letters, and you can bet that physicians are not typing out common words. Like “emycin” is not “empty” – I’m just sayin’.
A couple of awkward ones recently – my friend was texting me about a tragic and unexpected event and I responded with “Geeze!” which (as I pressed send) turned into “Geese!” That one was hard to explain, and quite insensitive at the time. Err…
Another friend of mine was dealing with a sick kitty at home. She had taken the cat to the vet because she’d stopped eating/going to the litter box. The kitty was diagnosed with an infection and was on the road to recovery, when a couple days later she had her first bowel movement. So my friend decided to text her husband the good news via her iPhone. She typed “the cat went poo,” but alas, the iPhone had the last word. Her husband received this alarming, if not perplexing text message:
“the cat went pop”
Have you had similar iPhone drama? Do share…
January 31st, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews, Opinion, Quackery Exposed
3 Comments »
David Kroll, Ph.D. and I share more than an appreciation for bibs and crab legs (pictured at left during our recent “academic” rendezvous) – we are pro-science bloggers who want to understand the evidence for (or against) health treatment options, both in the natural product world and beyond. At our recent meet up at The Palm we discussed homeopathy – a bizarre pseudoscientific approach to medicine often confused with herbalism. Homeopaths believe that “like cures like” (for example, since an onion causes your eyes to water and nose to run, then it’s a good cure for a cold) and that homeopathic remedies become more potent the more dilute they are. So if you want a really strong medicine, you need to mix it with so much water that not even a molecule of it is left in the treatment elixir. Of course, homeopathy may have a placebo effect among its believers – but there is no scientific mechanism whereby tinctures of water (with or without a molecule of onion or other choice ingredient like arsenic) can have an effect beyond placebo.
David graduated with his B.S. in toxicology from one of the most prestigious schools in the country, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (PCP&S). In the early 1900s PCP&S graduates were critical players in combating snake oil hucksters and establishing chemical standards, safety, and efficacy guidelines for therapeutic agents. So it was with utter amazement that he received recent news that PCP&S was planning to award an Honorary Doctorate of Science to a major leader in homeopathy – on Founders’ Day, no less.
“Our founders would be rolling in their graves,” David told me. And he wrote a letter of complaint to the University president which you can read here. This is a choice excerpt:
Awarding Mr. Borneman an Honorary Doctor of Science is an affront to every scientist who has ever earned a degree from the University and, I would suspect, all current faculty members who are engaged in scientific investigation. Homeopathy is a fraudulent representation of pharmacy and the pharmaceutical sciences that continues to exist in the United States due solely to political, not scientific, reasons. Indeed, homeopathic remedies are defined as drugs in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act [21 U.S.C. 321] Section 201(g)(1) as a result of the 1938 actions of U.S. Senator Royal Copeland (D-NY), a noted homeopath of his time. But scientifically, homeopathic remedies are nothing more than highly-purified water misrepresented as medicine based upon an archaic practice that is diametrically opposed to all pharmacological principles.
Honoring people who actively promote pseudoscience is wrong in many ways as David points out. I would also add that doing so confuses the public. If academic institutions committed to scientific integrity lend their names to cranks, then it makes it more difficult for the average person to distinguish quackery from science. I have the utmost sympathy for the patients out there who are trying to figure out fact from fiction in medicine. That is why I have a “trusted sources” tab on my blog – please click on them for guidance regarding health information you can trust.
As for PCP&S, if they value their academic principles (as no doubt many within the organization do) the president should rescind his offer to honor Mr. Borneman’s “entrepreneurial spirit” on founder’s day (February 19th, 2009). Finding a way to sell water to people as cures for their diseases is certainly entrepreneurial – but I see nothing honorable about it. I hope that President Gerbino sees the light before founder’s day.
January 30th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Friday Funny
2 Comments »
Don’t tell me you can’t relate, ladies…
And thanks to Kerri Morrone Sparling from Six Until Me for modeling her Better Health t-shirt. She was the winner of our recent caption contest!
January 29th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Audio, Expert Interviews
No Comments »
Billy Tauzin has spent most of his life in politics. He has been a member of the House of Representatives as both a democrat and a republican, though his recent experience with a rare and usually terminal cancer (duodenal adenocarcinoma) radically changed his career path and trajectory. I caught up with Mr. Tauzin by phone at the America’s Agenda conference in Miami. You may listen to our podcast conversation or read my summary of our discussion below.
[Audio:http://blog.getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/billy-tauzin.mp3]
Dr. Val: Tell me a little bit about your intestinal cancer and how that changed the course of your life.
Tauzin: I was in the process of finishing up a 25-year career in Congress when one night I had a sudden, massive bleed. I was taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with a rare cancer with a poor prognosis: duodenal adenocarcinoma. There was a hole in my intestine, right next to my pancreas.
I went to Johns Hopkins to have a Whipple procedure – and as you know a Whipple procedure is one of the most aggressive types of surgery anyone can endure. They kind of split you open like a fish, pull out your innards and restructure you. They had to remove part of my stomach, intestines, and pancreas, and then reconnected it with new ducts and channels. The Whipple was supposed to cure me, but unfortunately I found out (at a follow up visit at MD Anderson) that there was still cancer in my body.
The doctor told me very frankly that I was going to die.
Dr. Val: Tell me about the experimental drug that you were introduced to at that point.
Tauzin: My doctor reviewed my options with me: I could undergo another surgery, but that would probably kill me and would be unlikely to cure the cancer. They had no approved protocol for people in my position, but there was a drug (called Avastin) that had been successful in treating colon cancer – but was not yet approved for duodenal adenocarcinoma. The drug works by cutting off the blood supply to tumors – which meant that the drug could either damage my healing process or kill the cancer. My wife and I decided to take the risk because we had very little to lose. It was really a choice between “going to die” (my current situation) and “might die” (Avastin could cure me).
It’s a good thing we tried Avastin because it worked like a miracle. By the end of my first round of chemotherapy, the radiologist couldn’t even find the tumor on my CT scans. It was gone. I completed several courses of chemo and radiation and I’ve been cancer-free for over 5 years now.
Dr. Val: Did this miraculous recovery influence your decision to become the CEO of Phrma?
Tauzin: After I recovered from cancer, I was fortunate to be offered many different job opportunities. However, my wife looked at me and said, “You know Billy, you really ought to go to work for the people who saved your life.” And I thought, “If there’s a meaning in why I’m alive today – then surely it must be to use my experience to help patients like me across the world.”
Dr. Val: So what are you hoping to achieve at the America’s Agenda conference in Miami?
Tauzin: This conference is unusual in that we’ve gathered together a group of very disparate voices from different perspectives – labor, business, health plans, trade associations, academic medicine, etc. hosted by Donna Shalala (former Secretary of HHS) at the University of Miami. We are trying to define our commonalities so we can influence health reform more effectively.
Washington is all about differences – it’s partisan, it’s mean, and I’ve been on both sides of the aisle. I can tell you that there are good people in both parties, but they’d never know it because they consider each other enemies. What we’re trying to say here is: patients don’t sign in as democrat or republican when they register at a hospital. They sign in as sick people. This is not a partisan issue. We have a sick care system that needs to be a health care system.
Dr. Val: What should the Obama administration choose as their top priorities for health reform?
Tauzin: First of all we need to recognize that we spend 75 cents of every dollar on the damage done by 5 chronic diseases (including diabetes, heart disease, mental health, cancer, and lung disease). We must focus our system on early detection and prevention of these diseases, so that we manage them well and avoid the costly toll they take when untreated. We’re destined to be a poorer, sicker society if we don’t get insurance coverage for every American. We need insurance to provide early detection, prevention, and good management of our chronic diseases. How we do that is debatable. But we need to get there.
January 29th, 2009 by Stacy Stryer, M.D. in Health Policy, Uncategorized
1 Comment »
By Stacy Beller Stryer, M.D.
Just last week three parents in my practice either refused or asked to alter the recommended vaccine schedule for their infants, and so far this week there have been another two. None of them have had good reasons, and none had truly researched the pros and cons of having their child receive each vaccine. The other day there was a memo on my desk, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which discussed 5 children under age 3 years who had developed haemophilus influenza (Hib) in Minnesota last year, one of whom died. Three of the children who became ill, one of whom died, were unimmunized because of parent refusal. Another had a recently diagnosed problem with the immune system, and the last hadn’t finished the Hib series at the time of illness.
It is difficult to hear these parents refuse the vaccine, and, although asked by parents, I cannot choose which vaccines they should get now and which they should get later because all are potentially deadly. If only parents could see what I saw as a medical student and resident, before there was the widespread use of the Hib vaccine, and before the development of the pneumococcus vaccine. If only they could see the infants and toddlers admitted with terrible infections, such as meningitis, where some developed permanent brain damage or total hearing loss, and others were not so lucky. Or the children who developed epiglottitis and could barely breathe, where even asking them to open their mouths or agitate them by examining them was risky and could cause respiratory collapse. Or those who developed arthritis in their hip or bones and received antibiotics for weeks, hoping that they would not need surgery or develop permanent damage. And, of course the many children who were admitted to the general ward or intensive care unit with pneumonia and significant respiratory distress. These are just some of the things I saw before the development of these two vaccines, most of which I just do not see anymore.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, before the widespread use of the vaccine about 15 years ago, Hib occurred in over 20,000 children per year, and about one in 200 children under age 5 years developed meningitis, with 25% of those affected developing permanent brain damage. Since the use of the vaccine, the number has dropped dramatically but is now beginning to increase again because parents are not immunizing their children adequately. The Hib vaccine prevents against infections such as meningitis, epiglottitis, septic joints, bone infections, soft tissue infections and pneumonia. There are no known serious side effects to this vaccine. The pneumococcal vaccine prevents against pneumonia, sinusitis, ear infections, meningitis, and soft tissue infections, among others.
Not only do parents harm their own children refusing a vaccine, but they also harm others. If parents don’t immunize their children, they are at greater risk of becoming ill with serious illnesses, are more likely to infect others with these infections, decrease the general “herd” immunity in the community, and may need to be excluded from school or other activities during outbreaks with vaccine-preventable illnesses. I am asking you to read about these vaccines, look at the research on their association with autism, ask your physician questions (we did spend seven years in medical school and residency learning about this), and make an informed decision. I am confident that, if you educate yourself, your decision will be the right one.
I personally find the word-completion tool kind of annoying on the iPhone – especially as a doc. The software is geared towards choosing the most common word after a few letters, and you can bet that physicians are not typing out common words. Like “emycin” is not “empty” – I’m just sayin’.
