Is integrative medicine “strong medicine”? I thought I could trust the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) to recommend the best medicine available. My family practice residency followed their philosophy. By learning what the AAFP taught I was able to pass the board certification exam with flying colors. Their flagship journal American Family Physician rates its recommendations
Misogyny persists in clinical and academic medicine. We need to be aware of subtle micro aggressions and report abuses, but we mustn’t get carried away into paranoia and conspiracy theories. We should be guided by common sense and moderation in all things. In the June 17, 2021 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine Dr. Erica
Mayim Bialik is a neuroscientist. In her TV commercials for Neuriva Plus she asserts that it is backed by strong science. I don’t think so. I wrote about the brain supplement Neuriva over a year ago. I thought their claim to have proof from clinical studies was misleading. I won’t repeat here what I said there
The FDA has a difficult job. It is understaffed and underfunded. It has to walk a very fine line between prematurely approving a new drug that may turn out to be useless or even harmful and rejecting or delaying approval of a drug when earlier approval might have been saving lives. On the whole, I
A correspondent suggested I should have known that the pandemic was over months ago. That’s obviously a myth. But where did that idea come from? Everything I have been reading indicates that the pandemic is far from over. Around the world, people are still testing positive, being hospitalized, and dying. It is not as deadly
This book about the first woman doctor in America contains fascinating details about the Blackwell sisters, their struggles, and the times they lived in. Elizabeth Blackwell is to be commended for her accomplishments, but it appears that she was not a nice person. This is a review of the book The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering
Disease vs. Illness The words “disease” and “illness” are often used interchangeably, but their meanings are very different. Diseases are biomedical entities where there is impairment of the normal functioning of the body. Illness refers to the way a patient experiences a sickness. There can be disease without illness and illness without disease. Diseases may
Note from Dr. Harriet “SkepDoc” Hall: I now have the dubious distinction of being the only author on the Science-Based Medicine website to have ever had an article retracted, my book review of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier. Michael Shermer promptly republished it on Skeptic.com at https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/trans-science-review-of-abigail-shier-irreversible-damage-transgender-craze-seducing-our-daughters/ SBM’s retraction
What do you know about Mark Twain? That he was a famous humorist? That he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Maybe you know he questioned many conventions like organized religion. What you may not know is that he was an enthusiastic proponent of “alternative medicine” long before the term was coined. Mark Twain, the
InstaHard is advertised in a stupid video as a cure for erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems. The claims are unbelievable, but they are good entertainment; they made me laugh. Oh, no, not again! Yet another video promoting an untested mixture of dietary supplements. I’m not looking for these stupid videos, but they keep finding
