Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Update on Starchild Abraham Cherrix

Compared to the usual topics discussed during the week, I normally like to try to keep the weekend fare on the ol’ blog relatively light and fluffy (mainly because traffic usually falls around 50% and I like to post my serious material on skepticism and science on days when I tend to have the most […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Two young victims of alternative medicine

About six months back, I wrote about Katie Wernecke, a 13-year-old girl diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma last year, whose parents fought with Texas courts to let them take her to Kansas to receive high dose vitamin C therapy rather than the chemotherapy and radiation therapy that she needed to have a chance of beating her […]

Categories
Medicine Quackery

A new method of colon cleansing?

When I first saw this, I thought that it had to be a joke, but now I’m not so sure. I’m guessing you’ve all heard of ear candling, which can supposedly cure tinnitus, clean the ear canal of wax buildup, relieve vertigo, cure swimmer’s ear, and provide a variety of other supposed health benefits? Well, […]

Categories
Medicine

Justify my existence?

Our Seed overlords demand a response: Since they’re funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies? Ooh, boy. That’s a loaded question that depends a lot on how you interpret it. My first reaction was similar […]

Categories
Medicine

Post-Memorial Day carnival barking

Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 36 has been posted at Kidney Notes. Go forth and check out the best medical blogging from the last week. Geez, I was so busy last week on call that I forgot to submit an entry. While we’re at it, here’s a belated plug for a special Memorial Day edition […]