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Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Do negative clinical trials change practice?

One of the central themes of this blog from the very beginning is that all medicine, regardless of where it comes from or how it was developed, should be held to a single science-based standard with regards to efficacy, effectiveness, and safety. I tend to focus primarily on “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

No, the New York Times did not “kill your patient.”

One of the more depressing things about getting much more interested in the debate over how we should screen for common cancers, particularly breast and prostate cancer, is my increasing realization of just how little physicians themselves understand about the complexities involved in weighing the value of such tests. It’s become increasingly apparent to me […]

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Clinical trials Medicine

Neonatal death rates after home births and a strange skeptic kerfuffle

If there’s a topic that I don’t write about much, it’s obstetrics. The reason is that it’s not a major area of my interest, and it’s not an area where I have as much expertise as I do in, say, cancer or even vaccines. My expertise in cancer comes from my career, of course, and […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Autism clusters and "toxins"

Time to get back to business after yesterday’s festivities. One of the items of Gospel Truth among the “autism biomed” movement, which consists of people who fervently believe that autism is caused by some sort of external “toxin,” infection, or vaccines and that subjecting children to various forms of quackery designed either to “detoxify” or […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Quoth David Katz: Don’t abandon patients. Abandon science instead.

Dr. David L. Katz is apparently unhappy with me. You remember Dr. Katz, don’t you? If you don’t, I’ll remind you momentarily. If you do, you won’t be surprised. Let me explain a bit first how Dr. Katz recently became aware of me again. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a short (for me) […]