In 2011, chiropractor J.C. Smith published The Medical War Against Chiropractors: The Untold Story from Persecution to Vindication. He promises an exposé comparable to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s exposé of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His thesis is that the AMA waged a shameless attack on competition, motivated only by money. I think the reality is closer to what he
I intended to read Sam Kean’s new book The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius as Written by our Genetic Code just for fun. I was expecting a miscellany of trivia loosely gathered around the theme of DNA. But I found something much more worthwhile that I thought merited a book review
In 2005, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz was called to the zoo to examine a non-human patient, an emperor tamarin with heart failure. She was surprised when the veterinarian told her not to look her patient in the eyes because eye contact could cause capture myopathy. In this condition, when an animal is captured, restrained, and feels
Three years ago I wrote an article critical of “evolutionary medicine” as it was presented in a new book. Recently a correspondent asked me if I thought another book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, by Randolph M. Nesse, MD and George C. Williams, PhD, was a more reasonable approach to the subject.
The term “evidence-based medicine” first appeared in the medical literature in 1992. It quickly became popular and developed into a systematic enterprise. A book by Ulrich Tröhler To Improve the Evidence of Medicine: The 18th century British origins of a critical approach argues that its roots go back to the 1700s in Scotland and England.
Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! By Robert Todd Carroll. James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011. Available through Amazon.com and other electronic outlets exclusively in e-book format, $9.99. Robert Todd Carroll, the author of the invaluable Skeptic’s Dictionary, has written an e-book that makes a perfect complement to his Dictionary. Titled Unnatural Acts: Critical
In writing about science-based medicine, we give a lot of attention to medicine that is not based on good science. We use bad examples to show why science is important and how it is frequently misapplied, misinterpreted, misreported, or even wholly rejected. It’s a pleasure, for a change, to write about a straightforward example of
The Right Chemistry is many things. It is a column in the Montreal Gazette, a radio show on CJAD in Montreal, a blog, a podcast, and now it’s a book: The Right Chemistry: 108 Enlightening, Nutritious, Health-Conscious and Occasionally Bizarre Inquiries into the Science of Everyday Life , by Joe Schwarcz. Known as “Dr. Joe,”
A correspondent asked me to review the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel. She wrote “I’m very worried about this book.” She had just seen an NPR article about the book and was alarmed because it provided an excerpt from the book recommending that patients with morning sickness “Try
Marcia Angell has written a two-part article for The New York Review of Books: “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” and “The Illusions of Psychiatry.” It is a favorable review of 3 recent books: The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the
