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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

The costs and benefits of the latest, greatest cancer drugs

Last week, The New York Times started a rather unusual series in its medical section entitled, The Evidence Gap, described thusly: Articles in this series will explore medical treatments used despite scant proof they work and will consider steps toward medicine based on evidence. When I first saw the series, I was prepared for a […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Medicine

Recall bias, vaccines, and illness

In the eyes, of anti-vaccine advocates, vaccines bear the brunt of blame for a variety of conditions, including autism, asthma, neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune disorders and a wide variety others. Often this link is based on retrospective data, in which parents or patients recall and self-report how many vaccines they’ve had and which ones. This self-recall […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

The paradox of screening mammography and breast cancer

If there’s one thing that lay people (and, indeed, many physicians) don’t understand about screening for cancer is that it is anything but a simple matter. Intuitively, it seems that earlier detection should always be better, and it can be. However, as I explained in two lengthy posts last year, such is not always the […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy

Giving credit where credit is due to naturopaths…

…is one of my favorite surgeon-bloggers Sid Schwab when he discusses what happens when naturopaths actually subject their “healing art” to scientific examination. In the wake of the rather–shall we say–vigorous discussion that ensued after my post last week about the recently passed law in the State of Minnesota to license and regulate naturopaths, today […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One last time: The latest Geier & Geier paper is not evidence that thimerosal causes autism

Several people have been sending me either links to this paper or even the paper itself: Young HA, Geier DA, Geier MR. (2008). Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: An assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink. J Neurol Sci. 2008 May 14 [Epub ahead of print]. (Full text here.) Some […]