Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Patient satisfaction versus quality of care, round two

About a month ago, I wrote about a study that looked at metrics of patient satisfaction and compared them to hard outcomes often used to evaluate quality of care, including frequency of emergency room usage, frequency of hospitalization, and overall mortality. Even though these days there appears to be an implicit assumption that increased patient […]

Categories
Autism Medicine Quackery

Camel’s milk: The cure-all that cures autism, too?

The Autism File bills itself as a magazine dealing with all aspects of autism. In reality, it’s basically a crank magazine dedicated to autism biomedical quackery plus a generous helping of antivaccine fear mongering. In fact, this passage should tell you all you need to know about the publication: Autism File is a lifestyle guide […]

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 […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics

Now Andy Wakefield will prevail in his libel suit against Brian Deer because John Walker-Smith won his appeal? Not so fast there, pardner…

I don’t know what it is about the beginning of a year. I don’t know if it’s confirmation bias or real, but it sure seems that something big happens early every year in the antivaccine world. Consider. As I pointed out back in February 2009, in rapid succession Brian Deer reported that Andrew Wakefield had […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Television

Age of Autism’s Anne Dachel takes on Bill Moyers over vaccines. Hilarity ensues.

Thanks to the partying and backslapping going on in the antivaccine movement over the reversal of the decision of the British General Medical Council to strike Professor John Walker-Smith off of the medical record, after a brief absence vaccines are back on the agenda of this blog. Antivaccine cranks view the decision as a vindication […]