Medical Stories behind the headlines

UCIrving is pushing medical nonsense, and the press finally noticed it.

medical professionals who believe that healthcare should be based on treatments validated by science view the very term “integrative medicine” as a path to introduce unproven or disproven therapies into medicine. 

yeah. Read the whole thing. It's quackery.

placebo, suggestion, and hypnosis do work on 30 percent of people: 

about the same percentage of people who test high or moderately high on the neurological test for ability to be hypnotized.

This is religion: and what disturbs me is that we docs are not supposed to push our religious beliefs on people.
Quiet Bible study, saying the rosary, spending an hour in "Eucharistic adoration", doing art or music, having a "Sing" or traditional ceremony or having the local prayer group pray over you all are ways that people integrate their souls, minds and bodies in times of stress and illness.

But these aren't part of the curriculum. I wonder why (/sarcasm).

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awhile back I referred to the "Black Legend" of Spanish atrocities.

TeaAtTrianon links to a post at CountingStars with the facts that the legend ignores.

... In 1542 the Emperor Carlos V dictated the New Laws, which expressly prohibited the submission of Indians to slavery and forced labor. To this we must add that between the Spanish population and the Indians there was a great miscegenation, even among the nobles. On the contrary, in British North America, the miscegenation between colonists and Indians was almost non-existent, and the Indians were robbed of their lands and confined to reservations, which did not occur in Spanish America. (Read more.)

and of course, the epidemics, not atrocities,, that killed people were not deliberately spread by the Spanish soldiers who, like everyone in those days, had little knowledge of how disease is spread.

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letter in LATIMES:



This country has no use for John Kelly's nostalgia

because respecting those who die to defend civilians from terrorists is soooo yesterday.

As I pointed out a few days ago: Often patients and their families are angry and upset, so they mis hear what you are trying to say, and turn their anger on you, the healer, not on the disease or cause of the death (in this case, some very bad terrorists who attack local civilians in the area).

AnneAlthouse points out that

If we make it too hard to talk to a person in dire circumstances, a lot of people will play it safe and not speak at all.

From "Half Empty" by David Rakoff (who was facing the cancer treatment of amputation of his left arm and shoulder): 

But here’s the point I want to make about the stuff people say. Unless someone looks you in the eye and hisses, “You fucking asshole, I can’t wait until you die of this,” people are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will find yourself on both sides of the equation many times over your lifetime, either saying or hearing the wrong thing. Let’s all give each other a pass, shall we?

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eu plans to ban another weedkiller
r because it might cause cancer.

Chemicals often have subtle adverse effects. But banning them might cause more problems.


so how many will die of malnutrition related disease vs how many will die (at a much older age) of cancer? CNN report here says they found 800 cases that might be associated with the chemical... the number of people dying of poverty related malnutrition because there is enough food around, but they can't afford to buy it?
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great books podcast of the week: The Gulag Archipelago

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Instapundit links to
NYTimes the Long War on Polio.




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update: StrategyPage has this on polio:

There is another major effort this year to vaccinate vulnerable Afghan and Pakistani children against polio. In 2016 there were 20 cases of polio in Pakistan and 13 in Afghanistan. There were four in Nigeria, a country that is expected to be free of polio this year or next. In Pakistan and Afghanistan there are still religious problems with vaccination. The Afghan Taliban have openly supported the vaccination program but there still some rural areas where local Moslem clerics or teachers continue to denounce the vaccinations. There is a similar situation in Pakistan, where some fringe Islamic groups will still try and kill members of the vaccination teams. Despite this continued resistance polio cases in both nations continues to decline. F

longer version of this post on my medical blog.