Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Patient satisfaction versus quality of care, round two

About a month ago, I wrote about a study that looked at metrics of patient satisfaction and compared them to hard outcomes often used to evaluate quality of care, including frequency of emergency room usage, frequency of hospitalization, and overall mortality. Even though these days there appears to be an implicit assumption that increased patient […]

Categories
Autism Medicine Quackery

Camel’s milk: The cure-all that cures autism, too?

The Autism File bills itself as a magazine dealing with all aspects of autism. In reality, it’s basically a crank magazine dedicated to autism biomedical quackery plus a generous helping of antivaccine fear mongering. In fact, this passage should tell you all you need to know about the publication: Autism File is a lifestyle guide […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Fighting the “acid” of negative (e)motions?

If there’s one quack who both amuses and appalls me at the same time, it’s Robert O. Young. You remember Robert O. Young, don’t you? He’s the guy who thinks that all disease is caused by excess acid. I’ve written about him quite a few times over the last several years. For instance, he amused […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Beware! Vaccines will sap and impurify your precious bodily DNA!

Antivaxxers are claiming that vaccines have DNA contaminants that will “hybridize” with your DNA and thereby corrupt it.

Categories
Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

“Patient-centered care” vs. CAM in the New England Journal of Medicine

“Patient-centered care.” It’s the new buzzword in patient care. Personally, I find the term mor ethan a little Orwellian in that it can mean so many things. Basically, it’s a lot like Humpty Dumpty when he says to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither […]