routine colonoscopies and the relationship to overdiagnosis
‘ROUTINE’ COLONOSCOPIES OFTEN ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE “Not surprisingly, the studies in the endoscopy literature do not mention overdiagnosis at all in their discussions of complications and harm. The recent JNCI (Journal of the National Cancer Institute) editorial points out that overdiagnosis is a significant issue in colonoscopic screening, noting that the majority of findings at […]
evidence-based medicine: who decides what constitutes evidence?
EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE: PICKING AND CHOOSING THE EVIDENCE Unfortunately, the title of this post could have easily been, ‘The More Things Change, The More they Stay the Same.‘ According to his Facebook page, Dr. Brian Earp is a Yale-trained scientist who is both a research assistant at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and a […]
why you can never trust our government to do the right thing concerning healthcare
POLITICIANS AND FINANCIAL CONFLICTS-OF-INTERESTYOU DON’T SAY If you take the time to at least read the titles of the posts I’ve filed under EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE, you start to realize how little you can actually trust our medical community, whether we are talking about researchers or treating physicians. It’s not that all these individuals are evil, […]
still more on invisible and abandoned research
DESPITE LEGISLATIONINVISIBLE AND ABANDONED STUDIESCONTINUE TO BE AN AMERICAN EPIDEMIC Georges Jansoone dalbera “If my high school teachers would just have listened to me and not figured in all those bad grades, I would have been the class valedictorian for sure!” Charles Piller, writing for the medical newspaper STAT, wrote a piece on Sunday called […]
could the medical profession be doing better when it comes to educating patients about nutrition?
DOCTORS AND NUTRITION? COULD DOCTORS BE GETTING BETTER RESULTS BY DISCUSSING NUTRITION W/ PATIENTS? “Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked nutrition educators from over 100 medical schools to describe the nutrition instruction offered to their students. While the researchers learned that almost all schools require exposure to nutrition, only […]
depression drug for teens
DEPRESSION DRUGS FOR CHILDRENTHEY’RE A R.I.A.T. Anthony Appleyard “Basic problems of representation are driving growing concerns about relying on published research to reflect the truth. The end result is that the healthcare, biomedical research, and policy communities may end up drawing scientifically invalid conclusions based on only those parts of the evidence base they can […]
more on our government’s war on dietary fat
YET ANOTHER REASON TO BE LEERY OF GOVERNMENTAL DIETARY RECOMMENDATIONS janeb13 – Pixabay “The scientific committee advising the US government has not used standard methods for most of its analyses and instead relies heavily on systematic reviews from professional bodies such as the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, which are heavily […]
more fun and games with the fda: why you can’t trust medical research
FINANCIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST INSIDE THE FDA:MEDICAL RESEARCH IS A FARCE WITH THE FOXES GUARDING THE HEN HOUSE “He’s the ultimate industry insider.” Harvard Political Science Professor and expert on the FDA, Dr. Daniel Carpenter “Dr. Califf ran a multimillion-dollar clinical research center at Duke University that received more than 60 percent of its funding […]
more under-reporting the side-effects of medication
MEDICATION AND THE UNDER-REPORTING OF SIDE EFFECTS Jonny Lindner – Pixabay “Researchers found that people with advanced lung cancer receiving chemotherapy in real-world settings were almost eight times more likely to be hospitalized during treatment than those participating in clinical trials, which are highly controlled and regulated.” From Andrew Seaman’s September 17, 2015 article for […]
saturated fat -vs- trans fat: which one causes chronic illness and death?
HEART DISEASE AND DIETARY FATWHAT’S THE CONNECTION? Bryan Brandenburg “The average American consumes approximately 60 percent of their calories from sugar, flour, and refined oils. I’ve labeled these folks ‘dietary crackheads’ because these calories are so addictive…. What about those who consume 60% of their calories from dietary crack? The answer is obvious: most gain […]
data for dollars: chasing coca-cola’s money
COKE PEDDLES MONEY AND INFLUENCETO THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY If you are one of those who refuses to believe that people are not influenced by money, you haven’t been following politics (be sure to watch John Goodman’s 1995 movie Kingfish: The Story of Huey P. Long). The same could be said about the practice of medicine. […]
evidence-based pain relief: “the big five”
Evidence-Based Pain Relief: Can the Evidence Be Trusted? The American MEDICAL and PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES (not to mention the FDA) are a lesson in contradictions. On one hand, they try so hard to show the world how PC they are by touting the (erroneous) fact that everything done for patients here in the US is based […]
more on mammography, over-diagnosis, and breast cancer
MORE ON THE LINK BETWEEN MAMMOGRAPHY, OVERDIAGNOSIS AND BREAST CANCER “Our analysis shows that, when directed toward the general US population, the most prominent effect of mammography screening is overdiagnosis.” The first sentence of conclusion of the Harvard University study discussed below “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire —- and where there’s Overdiagnosis, there’s Overtreatment. Unfortunately, […]
should i call you mister guinea or mister pig?
YOU ARE BIG PHARMA’S GRAND EXPERIMENT: AND THEIR SOURCE OF CASH “Annually, prescription drugs cause over 81 million adverse reactions and result in 2.7 million hospitalizations. This epidemic of harm from medications makes our prescription drugs the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Including hospitalizations and deaths from prescribing errors, overdosing, […]
why so much medical news must be taken with a grain of salt
WHY YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL IF YOU FOLLOW MAINSTREAM MEDICAL NEWS “Science as it is practiced today (and, in fact, as it has always been practiced) relies on a fair measure of trust. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest. There has to be some level of trust that scientists reporting their […]
big pharma and the failure of evidence-based medicine
BIG PHARMA AND THE FAILURE OF EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE “Pharmaceutical companies will inevitably continue to be the dominant influence in deciding what research is undertaken and conducting that research, publishing it and providing information to prescribers” House of Commons Health Committee. The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry. Fourth Report of the Session, 2004-2005, Volume I. March, […]
the dilemma
CHRONIC PAIN SUFFERERSAND THE DILEMMAS THEY FACE(WEIGHING YOUR OPTIONS) OpenClipart Chronic Pain can and often does throw people’s lives into turmoil. Each day I receive significant numbers of correspondences (blog comments / responses and emails) from desperate people whose lives have been wrecked by pain and an inability to lead a normal life, and to […]
tell me again why you want an mri?
THINKING ABOUT SPRINGING FOR AN MRI? CONTROL YOUR EXPECTATIONS “MRI is unnecessarily overused. In a study of 221 patients who had MRIs, the results showed that only 5.9% actually needed to have an MRI done. The remaining 94.1% of the patients sacrificed their time and money. What’s worse is that the use of MRI for […]
more on mups (medically unexplainable symptoms)
AMERICA’S EPIDEMIC OF MUPS(MEDICALLY UNEXPLAINED PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS) “Unfortunately, many MUPS patients seek care to find an organic disease they fear, but do not have. Doctors then may test for and even treat (non-existent) organic disease. This produces high use of services, unnecessary laboratory testing and consultation, increased costs and high iatrogenic complication rates – eg, […]
the perils of complimentary alternative medicine
NATURAL MEDICINE IS DANGEROUSHUH? Image by “Mike” on Wikimedia “Alternative medicine is unregulated and unsafe.” From Lisa Szabo’s July 2, 2013 story in USA Today (Book Raises Alarms about Alternative Medicine) “The scientific community has criticized alternative medicine as being based on misleading statements, quackery, pseudoscience, anti-science, fraud, or poor scientific methodology. Promoting alternative medicine […]