October 9th, 2011 by Medgadget in News
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BI, Inc. a manufacturer of compliance monitoring technology for community offenders, has announced an upgraded version of the company’s BI-TAD alcohol consumption monitoring bracelet.
The BI-TAD is an ankle-worn bracelet which measures an offender’s alcohol consumption levels through vapors and perspiration passing through the skin. The device also features radio-frequency circuitry to detect the presence of the offender in their own home at a given time. The upgraded BI-TAD sensor now includes wireless functionality allowing it to transmit compliance data through the cellular network to a remote base station. The device log can then be checked against an offender’s profile to see if he is adhering to specific curfews or drinking restrictions.
From the press release: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
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*
