APRIL 2022 NEWS
Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine,
David Gorski posted:
“Science-based medicine isn’t just for CAM. The case of ivermectin shows that it never was.” Science-based medicine takes into account the prior probability that a treatment is likely to be effective. Given the high levels of ivermectin needed to kill viruses in cell culture, it was likely that it would not turn out to be a useful medication.
“Scientific review articles as antivaccine disinformation.” “Antivaxxers have always written dubious scientific review articles to try to make their wild speculations about vaccine science seem credible. Usually such articles wind up in bottom-feeding journals. Unfortunately a recent pseudo-review article [by Seneff and others] was published by an Elsevier journal, making it seem more credible when it isn’t…a torrent of questionable claims is made in an attempt to overwhelm the reader with the quantity of claims, with no regard for their quality…it is a journal that had no business publishing a review article like this, given that it’s not a journal dedicated to vaccines, infectious disease, epidemiology, or other relevant specialties.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Yet another ivermectin study, this time in the NEJM.” “Yesterday the The New England Journal of Medicine published a high quality clinical trial that found no benefit in treating COVID-19 with ivermectin.”
“Antivax rhetoric from Dr. Lee Hieb in 2015: the song remains the same.” Old arguments are now used concerning COVID vaccines.
“A risible attack on the ‘priesthood’ of 'scientific gatekeeping'.”
“Jennifer Margulis goes from antivax to anti-COVID-19 vaccine.”
“The Great Barrington Declaration never would have worked.” “A new paper provides yet more evidence that the ‘let COVID-19 rip’ strategy behind the Great Barrington Declaration would have made the pandemic even more disastrous than it has already been.”
Edzard Ernst posted:
“Homeopathy for COVID-19: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial shows that it does not work.”
April 18-21 – As reported in Consumer Health Digest, three articles have refuted claims in “Watch the Water,” “a 48-minute video of an interview between far-right radio host Stew Peters and Bryan Ardis, a retired chiropractor. Ardis claims that COVID-19 is caused by a synthetic snake venom spread through remdesivir, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and drinking water to ‘make you a hybrid of Satan’.”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, April – on Science-Based Medicine,
Scott Gavura:
Asked “Does marshmallow root tea have medicinal benefits?” “Based on its chemical components, marshmallow root has some interesting, though not unique, pharmacological properties. From an evidence-based perspective, there is little to suggest that the product is harmful when consumed, and it may have some effects that are felt to be helpful…Consuming the root (e.g. as a tea) is a reasonable option for those that want to self-medicate, particularly for those interested in a product for a sore throat or upset stomach. However, beyond that there’s little to suggest that the product has other medicinal benefits.”
David Gorski:
Posted “How to design high quality acupuncture trials: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” “Acupuncture advocates have published guidelines for ‘rigorous’ acupuncture randomized controlled trials. While that sounds good on the surface, the devil is in the details, which reveal that the dedication to scientific rigor is perhaps not so strong…the bar of evidence for a positive effect should be much higher when studying an incredibly implausible intervention, be it acupuncture, ivermectin for COVID-19, or even homeopathy, because basic science matters. What we find instead is that advocates of incredibly implausible treatments always cite lower quality evidence and even, while seeming to advocate guidelines for high quality RCTs [randomized controlled trials], still try to tilt the field to increase the likelihood that their treatment will appear to be validated by science.”
Wrote “Why is anyone surprised that there are so many antivax physicians?” “A new survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren’t paying attention before the pandemic…”
Harriet Hall:
Discussed Nugenix Total T and other testosterone boosters.” “Some men need testosterone replacement, but ‘Low-T’ is a controversial fad diagnosis. Some symptom lists virtually guarantee that any middle-aged man will self-diagnose low T. If a patient really needs testosterone, he should take testosterone itself, not products that are claimed (without evidence) to boost testosterone.”
Posted “The world’s first productivity drink.” “Magic Mind claims to be the world’s first productivity drink. There’s no supporting evidence.” “This appears to be just another one of those “everything but the kitchen sink” supplement mixtures cobbled together from ingredients that seem to be supported by some cherry-picked studies in order to sell a product with the new claim of ‘productivity’.”
Steven Novella:
Posted “Fetal signs of autism.”’ “We now have multiple studies that convincingly demonstrate that ASD [autism spectrum disorder] is a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests mostly in late gestation. There are strong genetic correlates, but the environment of the womb appears to also play a role. However, this consensus of evidence is incompatible with the notion that childhood vaccines play any role in ASD.”
Wrote “Facilitated communication is still pseudoscience, after three decades. We cannot let proponents push these harmful methods into mainstream methods for helping those who are non-speaking or have impaired communication.”
Posted “Emotional Freedom Technique – acupuncture for the mind.” “Emotional Freedom Technique is based in pseudoscience and inadequate clinical research…In short, the research is nowhere near where it would need to be to properly establish EFT as having specific efficacy, even without the fact that it is based on pure pseudoscience without any basis in reality.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Posted “Eliminating school vaccine mandates is the antivax endgame.” “The endgame of the antivaccine movement has always been the elimination of school vaccine mandates. The pandemic has greatly accelerated the timeline for them to accomplish this.”
Edzard Ernst:
Posted “Malpractice litigation involving chiropractic spinal manipulation.” “Apologists will be quick and keen to point out that, in the US, there are many more successful cases brought against real doctors (healthcare professionals who have studied medicine). They are, of course, correct. But, at the same time, they miss the point. Real doctors treat real diseases where the outcomes are sadly often not as hoped. Litigation is then common, particularly in a litigious society like the US. Chiropractors predominantly treat symptoms like back troubles that are essentially benign.”
Wrote “Chiropractic: ‘a safe form of treatment’?” in response to claims made by the British Chiropractic Association.” Ernst located five papers published so far in 2022 relating to safety of chiropractic. “I think it might be safe to say: There is not much but at least some research going on in this area. The risks of chiropractic/spinal manipulation are real and are being recognized. BUT NOT BY CHIROPRACTORS! The most remarkable feature of the 5 papers, I think, is that none originates from a chiropractic team.”
Discussed “The new 'WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine' in India.” “Of course, one must wait and see who will direct the unit and what work the new centre produces. But I cannot help feeling a little anxious. The press release is full of hot air and platitudes and the track record of the Indian Ministry of Ayush is quite frankly abominable.”
Posted “Spinal manipulation for lumbar disc herniation?” “I don’t quite understand how the authors conducted a retrospective chart review and equally divide the 100 patients into two groups treated differently. What I do understand, however, is this: a retrospective review does not lend itself to conclusions about the effectiveness of any therapy; no type of spinal manipulation can hope to cure a lumbar disc degeneration or trauma that causes a herniation of the nucleus pulposus and annulus fibrosus. Thus, I recommend we take this study with a sizable pinch of salt.”
Wrote “Osteopathic manipulative treatment: an overview of the evidence.” “This paper raises several questions. Here a just the two that bothered me most: If the authors had truly wanted to evaluate the SAFETY of OMT (as they state in the abstract), they would have needed to look beyond SRs [systematic reviews], MAs [meta-analyses] or RCTs [randomized controlled trials]. We know – and the authors of the overview confirm this – that clinical trials of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) often fail to mention adverse effects…The authors (the lead author is an osteopath) might have noticed that most – if not all – of the positive SRs were published by osteopaths. Their assessments might thus have been less than objective.” A review by Ernst, not included, found that the data “fail to produce compelling evidence for the effectiveness of osteopathy as a treatment of musculoskeletal pain. It was published 11 years ago. But I have so far not seen compelling evidence that would make me change our conclusion. As I state in the newspapers: OSTEOPATHY SHOULD BE TAKEN WITH A SIZABLE PINCH OF SALT.”
Criticized an article on management of clinical problems experience by survivors of cancer, published in Lancet. The article, citing a Cochrane review, said there was good evidence for benefit of acupuncture. In fact, the review said there was “insufficient evidence to judge whether acupuncture is effective in treating cancer pain.”
Posted “Surprise, surprise: Homeopathy is not an effective painkiller! Another negative trial of homeopathy.” “I applaud the authors from the Institute of Integrative Medicine, Witten/Herdecke University, Herdecke, Germany (not an institution known for its objectivity in SCAM [so-called alternative medicine]) to have published this negative study in a journal that is so clearly pro-SCAM that it very rarely contains anything in its pages that is not positive about SCAM. Yet, I am baffled by two things: The plant Hypericum is used in SCAM as a painkiller. According to the ‘like cures like’ axiom of homeopathy, it should thus INCREASE the pain of post-op patients. The researchers used a C 200 potency. I ask myself, how can anyone assume that such a dilution has any effect at all? C200 means that the plant tincture…[has] Less than one molecule of the plant per several universes!”
Wrote “SAMe: a dietary supplement that might not be as harmless as we had thought.” “A team from Manchester and Kyoto universities reported that the supplement can break down inside the body into substances that cause a wide range of medical problems, including kidney and liver damage.”
Discussed a review of psychological interventions for chronic, non-specific low back pain. “Is there a lesson here for patients consulting SCAM practitioners for their back pain? Perhaps it is this: it is wise to choose the therapy that has been demonstrated to be effective while having the least potential for harm!”
Posted “So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) in top mainstream journals from 5 different countries.” Searches looked for papers on homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, and herbal medicine in seven leading medical journals. “Overall, the findings do not generate the impression that – despite the many billions spent on SCAM research during the last decades – SCAM has made important inroads into science or medicine.”
Asked “Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica): a good treatment for type 2 diabetes?” “My advice to diabetics is therefore this: if you want to try herbal antidiabetic treatments, please think twice. And if you persist, do it only under the close supervision of your doctor.”
Posted “Veterinary acupuncture is not evidence-based.”
April – The Center for Inquiry (CFI) announced an Office of Consumer Protection from Pseudoscience. The main focus is unscientific products being marketed as alternative medicine.
April – Phenibut is a drug prescribed for anxiety and other conditions in Russia, but not approved in the US. It is, however, being marketed as a dietary supplement, despite FDA warnings of death and other adverse effects. Cohen and others (Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2022 Apr;60(4):486-488 Abstract) examined four supplements containing phenibut. “The doses of phenibut per serving increased in most products after the FDA warnings and were found to be as much as 450% greater than a typical 250 mg pharmaceutical tablet. Our findings are consistent with prior research that FDA advisories regarding supplement ingredients are not effective in removing prohibited ingredients from supplements.”
April 14 – “Science advocates have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against Boiron, Inc., one of the largest manufacturers of homeopathic products in the world, for deceiving vulnerable consumers with useless products dressed up to look like real medicine. The Center for Inquiry (CFI), which fights on behalf of consumers against pseudoscience, says Boiron routinely made false claims about what its products will treat and heal, misleading the public about the absurd pseudoscientific basis for Boiron products, and even lying about the ingredients their products contain” Press release.
April 19 – A Press release was entitled “FDA Warns of Risks Associated with Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening Tests.” “Many laboratories offering these tests advertise their tests as ‘reliable’ and ‘highly accurate,’ offering ‘peace of mind’ for patients. The FDA is concerned that these claims may not be supported with sound scientific evidence. While these laboratories claim their tests are highly accurate, there are limitations due to the rarity of some of the conditions included in the screening. For example, when screening for a very rare condition, a positive screening result may be more likely to be a false positive than a true positive, and the fetus may not actually be affected. In other cases, a positive screening result may accurately detect a chromosomal abnormality, but that abnormality is present in the placenta and not in the fetus, which may be healthy.”
April 21 – A study of time-restricted eating found no benefit for weight loss (Liu et al. N Engl J Med 2022; 386:1495-1504 Abstract).
April 28 – As summarized in Consumer Health Digest, “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that Herschel Walker, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate election in Georgia, has promoted dubious health products for many years.”
Additions to previous months
September 25, 2021 and March 31, 2022 – Jarry wrote “Zeroing in on the cause of multiple chemical sensitivity.” “An 840-page report by Quebec’s public health agency summarizes the state of our knowledge on MCS and comes to the conclusion that trace amounts of chemicals are not to blame and that MCS is a type of anxiety disorder in which anticipation of a danger causes very real and debilitating physical symptoms.” A summary of the report (pdf file) is available. Jarry later published a response to critics of the original article.
February – An Australian study with more than 20,000 participants more than 60 years old found that administration of vitamin D did not reduce mortality (Neale et al. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2022 Feb;10(2):120-128 Abstract).