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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The antivaccine movement resurrects the zombie that is the “autism epidemic”

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned that I can always–and I do mean always–rely on from the antivaccine movement, it’s that its members will always be all over any new study regarding vaccines and/or autism in an effort to preemptively put their pseudoscientific spin on the results. It’s much the same way that they […]

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 […]

Categories
Medicine Religion

An uncomfortable question

Work called last night. (It happens.) Basically, I had two deadlines for two big things (finishing reviewing the grants assigned to me for study section and a major writeup for a project for my job). Unfortunately, both of them were today. I realized as I perused old posts that I hadn’t reposted this one in […]

Categories
Clinical trials History Homeopathy Medicine

Echoes of Semmelweis

As hard as it is to believe, I’ve been a physician for 23 years now and a fully trained surgeon for over 15 years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in that time, it’s most doctors really, really don’t like to be told what to do. I don’t know if part of it comes from […]

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Cancer Medicine

Oh, no, antiperspirants cause breast cancer! Well, not really…

As I’ve said before recently, I have mixed emotions regarding Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On the one hand, I look forward to it because it provides us with a pretext to get out science-based messages about breast cancer and to highlight a lot of the cool science that we do at our cancer center. On […]