Archive for category Medicine
Irresponsible headlines linked to alarmist media reports
This story first appeared in episode #049 of our podcast Skeptics with a K. Subscribe and download. You know it makes sense.
I was recently surprised to see the following headline on the BBC News website:
Common medicines linked to death
I’ll be honest, this struck me as scaremongering. And this wasn’t some obscure article tucked away in the health pages… it was the lead story, on the homepage, for a whole morning. Read the rest of this entry »
Newspapers Wake Up From A Coma Speaking Fluent Bullshit
Posted by Colin H in Journalism, Medicine, Pseudomedicine on April 26, 2010
This is a story that recently popped up in both the Daily Fail and the Telegraph (from now on referred to as the BellyLaugh).
Apparently, Croatian doctors are baffled after a teenage girl who fell into a mysterious coma woke up speaking fluent German. The teenager has been unable to speak Croatian – although can understand it when it is spoken to her – and now communicates only in German.
Pretty off-the-wall I think you’ll agree. This is the kind of thing that would have steadfast believers in past lives screaming “Proof!” in very loud voices, particularly if this unfortunate teenager didn’t speak German beforehand. Going by the tone of the article, you would think that this is what had actually happened. Read the rest of this entry »
The Power of the Placebo: a skeptical view
Posted by Mike in Medicine, Pseudomedicine, science on April 20, 2010
Something has always bothered me about the placebo effect. And I don’t just mean the way it is co-opted by advocates of pseudomedical bollocks to justify their claims. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve heard defend homeopathy or acupuncture with the statement “It does work – it just works through the placebo effect”.
Well, no. If something works as well as a placebo, that’s the same as saying it doesn’t work. If a plain sugar pill works as well as a homeopathically treated sugar pill then – whatever else might be helping the patient feel better – it is not the homeopathy.
No, my problem is why a placebo helps at all. How can actively doing nothing be different from passively doing nothing? Mind over matter? I’m skeptical.
The Doctor Says: There May Be Trouble Ahead
Posted by Marsh in 10:23, Homeopathy, Medicine, Public Health, Skepticism on January 7, 2010
Dr Selva Rasaiah is a regular at Merseyside Skeptics in the Pub. Here, in response to my support for real medicine, he takes an inside look at the NHS, and doesn’t like what he sees…
The other day, I read Marsh’s latest post ‘Real Medicine: I Wonder’ with interest – as (hopefully!) one of the “good doctors” he wrote of, I would like to report all is well within the NHS. Unfortunately I can’t. Virtually all the comments on his piece were positive about the use of conventional medicine, but an important point was raised regarding the care of osteoarthritic hip pain. Currently the options for “wear and tear” arthritis are very limited, the options being:
- do nothing
- take painkillers
- hip replacement surgery.
The only definitive treatment is option 3, which for most patients is a life changing procedure. Unfortunately it has a limited lifespan, and in general is only offered to more severely affected patients. As this condition can start in the 50’s or younger, we have the difficult task of informing people that they will have to put up with the pain for many years before surgery will be considered. The problem with evidence based medicine (EBM) is that it leaves lots of gaps, which CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) is more than happy to fill.
On a daily basis, we have to inform patients that their self limiting viral illness/gastroenteritis etc. will not respond to antibiotics. It is so easy to skip the explanation and just dish out the pills, but with the advent of MRSA and other drug resistant nasties, the finger is pointing more and more at “irresponsible GP’s” and their over-prescribing of antibiotics as the cause of this new epidemic. How tempting it would therefore be to prescribe a harmless placebo that might make people feel better, psychologically if not physically. There is however, something inherently dishonest about this approach that would prevent me and most of my colleagues from doing so.
However, a small – but noisy – bunch of GPs DO seem to have followed this route, and regularly post articles and comments in GP magazines. Read the rest of this entry »
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