When I first heard of acupuncture, in medical school in the late 60’s, I became convinced that it worked. I read impressive media reports from China touting it for everything from pain relief to anesthesia for open heart surgery. Our Chief of Anesthesiology, Dr. John Bonica, was convinced it worked and was studying it. As
A newspaper ad for BladderMax is disguised as a news story reporting “the end of bladder leakages.” The information is inaccurate and the headlines are preposterous. There is a half-page article in my newspaper. The headline announces, “Scientists Predict End of Bladder Leakages by 2019.” This is reinforced by accompanying statements: “New developments in scientific
Reader’s Digest is advertising a memory aid, Prevagen, that has been tested and shown not to work. Shame on them! I am a long-time subscriber to Reader’s Digest. I enjoy the jokes and some of the human interest stories, but I have become increasingly disturbed by some of the questionable health information they present. The most recent
There is a new celebrity fad: vampire facials. Have you seen the pictures of Kim Kardashian West after her vampire facial, showing her face spattered with blood and covered with tiny puncture wounds? If not, click on the link and look now. Pretty horrific.And she now says she regrets doing it, and it was quite painful. But
An opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine complains about the limitations of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and recommends a new approach they call “interpersonal medicine.” In my opinion, good clinical medicine is already interpersonal medicine; there is no need for something new. The 22 November 2018 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine carried an opinion
First there was leaky gut; now there’s leaky brain. These questionable concepts are being promoted by practitioners of so-called “functional medicine.” First there was leaky gut Three years ago Mark Crislip wrote about leaky gut syndrome for SBM. He said, “because of an almost complete lack of supporting basic science and few therapeutic clinical trials showing no effect,
The new science of molecular phylogenetics tells the story of evolution with no need to consult the fossil record. It has produced some surprises, including a whole new domain of life, the archaea. Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species was a well-written, well-argued introduction to evolution, to the theory that populations evolve and species differentiate
The human body is clearly not the product of an intelligent designer. Its many flaws tell the fascinating story of evolution’s accidents and constraints. In his new book Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, Nathan Lents, a professor of biology at John Jay College, CUNY, has demonstrated that
Vaccines are unquestionably one of the greatest triumphs of modern medicine. Smallpox was the deadliest scourge in human history. It was responsible for 300-500 million deaths in the 20thcentury alone, when it was already on its way out. Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been completely eradicated. And now polio is well on its way to
In James Alcock’s classic 1995 article “The Belief Engine,” he said, “Our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival.” Now he has expanded that thesis into a book, Belief: What It Means to Believe and Why Our Convictions Are So Compelling.It’s