FEBRUARY 2021 NEWS

Featured topic: coronavirus

On Science-Based Medicine,

Scott Gavura:

  • Discussed a study on “The effectiveness of zinc and vitamin C on the duration of COVID-19 infections.” The study (Thomas et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Feb 1;4(2):e210369 Paper) found no benefit. Gavura noted that “there were also no serious negative consequences from their use. So while there is no evidence, based on this trial, to support their use, those that choose to take these supplements in line with this trial can also be reassured that they are unlikely to cause themselves any harm.” Edzard Ernst also discussed the study. He wrote: “This study has several limitations (and its authors are laudably frank about them): Its sample size is small; It has no placebo control group; It is open-label; Patients were not masked to which therapy they received. The trial nevertheless adds important information about the value of using zinc or vitamin C or both in the management of COVID patients.”

David Gorski:

  • Wrote “The efforts of antivaxxers to portray COVID-19 vaccines as harmful or even deadly continue apace: (VAERS edition).” “With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continuing apace, so are the efforts of antivaxxers to portray the vaccines as dangerous. This time around, they’ve resurrected the old antivaccine trick of deceptively misusing the VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System] database to imply causation from VAERS reports. That’s not how VAERS works, however.”

  • Discussed “Lipid nanoparticles in COVID-19 vaccines: The new mercury to antivaxxers.”

  • Posted “Can mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines cause prion disease or Alzheimer's?” “Even the most obscure antivaccine pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are being resurrected, dusted off, tweaked a bit, and repurposed to use to attack COVID-19 vaccines. There doesn’t need to be any evidence or even biological plausibility, just science-y speculation that sounds impressive to people without a background in the relevant sciences. Classen’s claim that mRNA vaccines can cause prion disease leading to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease is just another example of this.”

On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:

  • “The latest antivax false claim: mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are not vaccines but ‘medical devices’ or ‘gene therapy’.” “The bottom line is that grifting antivaxxers like Ken Stoller, Joe Mercola, and Judy Mikovits are using claims about COVID-19 vaccines that are grossly incorrect or obviously deceptive to spread fear and doubt about COVID-19 vaccines in the middle of a pandemic by combining new disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines with very old antivaccine tropes (i.e., false claims that vaccines will “permanently alter your DNA,” cause autoimmune disease, render women infertile, or in other ways be more dangerous than the disease) in order to frighten people. In doing so, they have blood on their hands because for every 100 people whom they frighten out of vaccinating and who as a result contract COVID-19, it’s likely that there will be one death.”

  • “Dr. Hooman Noorchashm and #ScreenB4Vaccine, revisited.” “The bottom line is that Dr. Noorchashm’s #ScreenB4Vaccine is not supported by evidence; the mechanism he proposes is not plausible from a basic science standpoint; and real world evidence after tens of millions of vaccine doses has not turned up any of the safety signals predicted by Dr. Noorchashm’s concept. Worse, #ScreenB4Vaccine is not only unnecessary but would add considerable cost and logistical difficulties to the mission of getting as many people vaccinated against COVID-19 as possible as quickly as possible and thus might even contribute to letting the newer more infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants, for which current vaccines appear to be less effective, to spread faster, thus costing lives.”

  • “Do COVID-19 vaccines cause heart attacks and cardiac death?” “The numbers cherry picked by RFK Jr. don’t even show an association, much less a strong association, between COVID-19 vaccination and cardiac events, including sudden cardiac death, nor do they even come close to showing a temporal association.”

  • “Über-quack Joe Mercola falsely claims that ‘legally’ the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines.” “Again, there are only two explanations for how Mercola could spread so much disinformation. He is either ignorant of all these things, or he is intentionally spreading disinformation about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.”

Edzard Ernst posted:

  • “Has homeopathy caused the dramatic decline of COVID-19 cases in India?” “…if I am correctly informed, the homeopathic remedies were dished out months before the decline in cases started. In fact, simply going by the timing, one would need to assume that homeopathy led to the enormous increase before the remarkable drop.”

  • “An RCT [randomized controlled trial] on the efficacy of ayurvedic treatment on asymptomatic COVID-19 patients.” Among his comments: “Some of the effect sizes reported here are extraordinary and seem almost too good to be true. The claim of no adverse effect is implausible; even placebos would cause perceived adverse effects in a percentage of patients. If the study is solid and withstands the scrutiny of the raw data, it is of huge relevance for public health. So, why did the authors publish it in PHYTOMEDICINE, a relatively minor and little-known journal?...Am I the only one who fears that something is not entirely kosher about the study?”

Other topics

Best of the blogs, February – on Science-Based Medicine,

Jann Bellamy:

  • Wrote “Legislative Alchemy: Undaunted by rejection in 2020, naturopaths return to state legislatures seeking licensing and practice expansion.”

  • Posted “Bills eliminating school immunizations and other anti-vaccination measures confront state legislatures.” “Bills eliminating school immunizations and expanding exemptions are pending in state legislatures. Other state bills strengthen immunization requirements by eliminating exemptions, among other measures. An anti-vaccination misinformation campaign is underway to influence legislators’ votes.”

Scott Gavura:

  • Posted “Conspirituality: Where New Age wellness meets right wing conspiracy thinking.” “Conspiracy theorists and QAnon may sound miles apart from wellness, yoga and GOOP, but they’re converging into ’conspirituality,’ the integration of spirituality and conspiracy theories.”

Harriet Hall:

  • Posted “A pattern of deceptive video ads for supplements.” Using as an example an ad for a product for vision, Hall illustrates typical ploys used by supplement promoters.

Steven Novella:

  • Discussed “Infrared saunas for detoxification.” “At this point we can conclude that there is a thin rationale and little evidence to support sweating as a mechanism for detox. It is far better to allow the kidneys and liver to do their job. Saunas, both regular dry saunas and FIRS, result in short term changes to cardiovascular function, but there is no convincing evidence this is sustained or beneficial.”

On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:

  • Wrote “Grifters gonna grift: Cancer quacks Ty and Charlene Bollinger pivot to antivaccine and ‘Stop the Steal’ conspiracies.”

  • Posted “’The Control Group’: A litigation-driven antivaccine survey of the ‘unvaccinated’.” “Antivaxxers are now flogging a litigation-driven ‘survey’ called The Control Group Pilot Study to ‘prove’ the unvaccinated are healthier. It’s a ‘study’ even more utterly worthless than the usual antivax ‘science’.”

Edzard Ernst:

  • Wrote “Wayne Jonas joins ‘The Alternative Medicine Hall of Fame’.” Selection is based on nearly all published works giving positive conclusions about alternative medicine.

  • Posted “Infant receiving cupping treatment provokes outrage.” “Is there any reliable evidence about dry cupping for children? No…Is it demonstrably effective for any paediatric condition? No…Is it harmful? Probably not that much (other than undermining common sense and rationality).”

  • Discussed “Current research activity in various areas of so-called alternative medicine.” Medline-listed papers in a number of areas were listed. Commenting on the more than 2700 papers on acupuncture, he wrote: “The Chinese (TCM and acupuncture) are pushing the ferociously hard to conquer SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] research. The last point is worrying, in my view, because we know from several independent studies that Chinese studies are often the flimsiest and least reliable of all the SCAM literature. As I have suggested recently, the unreliability of SCAM research might one day be its undoing.”

  • Posted “Homeopathy in dentistry? No, thanks!” Analyzing a review, Ernst wrote: “So, what does this paper actually demonstrate? In my view, it shows that: the peer-review process at the JACM [Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine] continues to be a joke; poor quality trials run by enthusiasts tend to produce false-positive results; in so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), people get away with publishing even the most obvious falsehoods.”

  • Presented his list of “The 20 best so-called alternative treatments.” He notes that “it is not always easy to find an adequate placebo…It follows that we must occasionally turn a blind eye, but ultimately cannot be completely certain that the procedure in question is in fact anything more than a placebo…most of the treatments in this category are effective for only a very few indications… while all of the methods mentioned are effective, they are invariably symptomatic. None of the ’20 Best’ represents a causal therapy that can address a disease causally and thus actually cures it…we must finally also ask ourselves which of these methods are actually better than the conventional treatment of the same condition. All 20 have been positively evaluated by me in terms of their benefit/risk ratio. But this does not mean that they are superior to conservative therapy with respect to this important criterion.”

  • Wrote “More evidence to suggest that acupuncture is but a theatrical placebo.”

  • Posted “’Traditional Chinese Medicine Enhances Survival in Patients with Gastric Cancer’ – oh really?” “Anyone with a minimum of critical thinking ability should know that CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION; sadly, the authors of this study seem to be the exception.”

February 8 – “A Baltimore-based company, Agora Financial, LLC, and several of its affiliates have agreed to pay more than $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they tricked seniors into buying pamphlets, newsletters, and other publications that falsely promised a cure for type 2 diabetes or promoted a phony plan to help them cash in on a government-affiliated check program” Press release. “The FTC alleged the defendants falsely touted a ‘100 percent success rate’ and claimed that ‘mainstream’ treatments are ineffective and may even make consumers’ diabetes worse. The company’s marketing materials for The Doctor’s Guide deceptively advertised that the disease—which Agora claimed was caused by electronic devices—could be cured with a combination of natural products called ‘Himalayan Silk,’ ‘Epsom Blue,’ and ‘Chromanite’.”

February 14 – Jarry wrote “The droning preacher of mitochondrial ecstasy” for the McGill Office for Science and Society. “Dr. Zach Bush is a rising star in the health guru space, infusing his denial of germ theory with spirituality.”

Additions to previous months

June 2020 – Khazdouz et al. reviewed “Effects of zinc supplementation on cardiometabolic risk factors” (Biol Trace Elem Res. 2020 Jun;195(2):373-398 Abstract). “Zinc supplements had beneficial effects on glycemic indices and lipid profile. Thus, it appeared that zinc supplementation might be associated with a decrease in cardiometabolic risk factors contributing to a reduction in risk of atherosclerosis.”

December – “Unicef, First Draft, Yale Institute for Global Health, and PGP (The Public Good Projects) have partnered to create the Vaccine Misinformation Management Field Guide.”

December 1 – Christen and others reported results of a large trial concerning vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids on age-related macular degeneration (JAMA Ophthalmol. 2020 Dec 1;138(12):1280-1289 Abstract). “Neither vitamin D3 nor marine ω-3 fatty acid supplementation had a significant overall effect on AMD incidence or progression.”

December 8 – Nicholls and others published “Effect of High-Dose Omega-3 Fatty Acids vs Corn Oil on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients at High Cardiovascular Risk: The STRENGTH Randomized Clinical Trial” (JAMA. 2020 Dec 8;324(22):2268-2280 Abstract). They concluded “Among statin-treated patients at high cardiovascular risk, the addition of omega-3 CA, compared with corn oil, to usual background therapies resulted in no significant difference in a composite outcome of major adverse cardiovascular events. These findings do not support use of this omega-3 fatty acid formulation to reduce major adverse cardiovascular events in high-risk patients.” The paper was accompanied by an Editorial (Sharma et al. pp. 2262-2264 First paragraph) and an Editor's Note (Curfman, pp. 2280-1), which discussed possible reasons the outcomes differed from those of another large trial (REDUCE-IT).

January 2021 – Gbinigie and others reviewed “Cranberry Extract for Symptoms of Acute, Uncomplicated Urinary Tract Infection” (Antibiotics (Basel). 2020 Dec 25;10(1):12 Paper). They wrote, “The current evidence base for or against the use of cranberry extract in the management of acute, uncomplicated UTIs is inadequate; rigorous trials are needed.”