Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why not just castrate them? (Part 5) The Geiers’ “Lupron protocol” metastasizes

Of all the bizarre forms of antivaccine autism quackery, one of the strangest has to be Mark and David Geier’s “Lupron protocol.” I’ve written about it many times, dating back to 2006 and, more recently, when the Chicago Tribune provided the first coverage I’m aware of of the Geiers’ quackery in a major newspaper, thanks […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The absent-minded acupuncturist

Continuing on the theme for today, I can’t resist posting this little news report from Seattle that came up in my newsfeed: It kind of ruins the placebo effect to be left lying around after hours with a bunch of needles sticking in your back, doesn’t it?

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine infiltrates the New England Journal of Medicine

One of the things that disturbs me the most about where medicine is going is the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. So prevalent is this unfortunate phenomenon that Doctor RW even coined a truly apt term for it: Quackademic medicine. In essence, pseudoscientific and even prescientific ideas are rapidly being “integrated” with science-based medicine, […]

Categories
Announcements Blogging Medicine Science

Head on over to…

…Scientopia, a new science blogging collective that just opened shop today. You’ll note that several of its founding members are refugees from right here at Sb, including White Coat Underground, Good Math, Bad Math, Adventures in Ethics and Science, The Questionable Authority, This Scientific Life, and Thus Spake Zuska. There are also several other intriguing-looking […]

Categories
Medicine Science

Unforgivable medical errors, revisited

About six months ago, I applied my usual brand of not-so-Respectful Insolence to what I termed unforgivable medical errors. These are errors that are so obviously harmful and lethal that there is no excuse for not putting systems into place to prevent them or so egregiously careless that there is, quite simply, no excuse for […]