August 12th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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On the heels of Scott Gavura’s superb post on dietary supplement regulation in the U.S. and Canada, I bring you one of the most egregious and obscene product cases I have seen in 15 years of teaching on botanical and non-botanical products: Miracle Mineral Solution. Please accept my apologies in advance for not having a scholarly post for you — this is just too unbelievable not to share with science-based medicine readers. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
August 12th, 2010 by David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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One of the things that disturbs me the most about where medicine is going is the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. So prevalent is this unfortunate phenomenon that Doctor RW even coined a truly apt term for it: Quackademic medicine.
In essence, pseudoscientific and even prescientific ideas are rapidly being “integrated” with science-based medicine, or, as I tend to view it, quackery is being “integrated” with scientific medicine, to the gradual erosion of scientific standards in medicine. No quackery is too quacky, it seems. Even homeopathy and naturopathy can seemingly find their way into academic medical centers. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
August 10th, 2010 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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Glucosamine is widely used for osteoarthritis pain. It’s not as impossible as homeopathy, but its rationale is improbable. As I explained in a previous post:
Wallace Sampson, one of the other authors of this blog, has pointed out that the amount of glucosamine in the typical supplement dose is on the order of 1/1000th to 1/10,000th of the available glucosamine in the body, most of which is produced by the body itself. He says, “Glucosamine is not an essential nutrient like a vitamin or an essential amino acid, for which small amounts make a large difference. How much difference could that small additional amount make? If glucosamine or chondroitin worked, this would be a medical first and worthy of a Nobel. It probably cannot work.”
Nevertheless, glucosamine (alone or with chondroitin) is widely used, and there are some supporting studies. But they are trumped by a number of well-designed studies that show it works no better than placebo, as well as a study showing that patients who had allegedly responded to glucosamine couldn’t tell the difference when their pills were replaced with placebos. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
August 5th, 2010 by David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
2 Comments »
One of the recurring themes of this blog, not surprisingly given its name, is the proper role of science in medicine. As Dr. Novella has made clear from the very beginning, we advocate science-based medicine (SBM), which is what evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be. SBM tries to overcome the shortcomings of EBM by taking into account all the evidence, both scientific and clinical, in deciding what therapies work, what therapies don’t work, and why.
To recap, a major part of our thesis is that EBM, although a step forward over prior dogma-based medical models, ultimately falls short of making medicine as effective as it can be. As currently practiced, EBM appears to worship clinical trial evidence above all else and nearly completely ignores basic science considerations, relegating them to the lowest form of evidence, lower than even small case series. This blind spot has directly contributed to the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine and so-called EBM because in the cases of ridiculously improbable modalities like homeopathy and reiki, deficiencies in how clinical trials are conducted and analyzed can make it appear that these modalities might actually have efficacy. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
July 29th, 2010 by Kimball Atwood IV, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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Josephine P. Briggs, M.D.
Director, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Dear Dr. Briggs,
As you know, we’ve met twice. The first time was at the Yale “Integrative Medicine” Symposium in March. The second was in April, when Drs. Novella, Gorski and I met with you for an hour at the NCCAM in Bethesda. At the time I concluded that you favor science-based medicine, although you are in the awkward position of having to appear ‘open-minded’ about nonsense.
More about that below, but first let me address the principal reason for this letter: it is disturbing that you will shortly appear at the 25th Anniversary Convention of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). It is disturbing for two reasons. First, it suggests that you know little about the tenets and methods of the group that you’ll be addressing. Second, your presence will be interpreted as an endorsement of those methods and of that group—whether or not that is your intention. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
