FEBRUARY 2024 NEWS
Featured topic: COVID-19
On Science-Based Medicine,
David Gorski posted:
“Yet more evidence that we physicians need to clean up our act.” “A recent study found that physicians and scientists who are perceived as ‘experts’ are prevalent within the antivax community and more influential because of their status as physicians and scientists. Why do physicians continue to tolerate antivax quacks within our ranks?”
“How antivaxxers weaponize vaccine safety studies to falsely portray vaccines as dangerous.” “Antivaxxers have weaponized a huge multinational vaccine safety study of 99 million patient records that found rare adverse events and concluded that the risks of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the benefits. How? A combination of the Nirvana fallacy and spin.” In the Nirvana fallacy, “anything less than perfect safety (zero adverse events) and perfect efficacy (100% effective in preventing not just disease but transmission) is viewed as a reason to reject the vaccine.”
Jonathan Howard posted:
“Dr. Kelly Brogan wakes up to the ‘ball earth hoax.’ What does that reveal about prominent professors from prominent medical schools?”
“The Great Barrington Declaration wasn’t a plan for public health officials. It was a list of absurd demands of them.” “The authors of the GBD advised and influenced many politicians at the highest level. They claim to have delineated many practical policies to protect the vulnerable, and they said it would’ve been possible, certainly. So an obvious question emerges. Why didn’t they protect the vulnerable?”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Cureus shockingly does the right thing and retracts an antivax review about COVID-19 vaccines.” “A misinformation-laden review article in Cureus by prominent antivax activists that called for a moratorium on COVID vaccination has been retracted. What took so long, and how could such a paper been published in the peer-reviewed literature in the first place?”
February 2 – Stephen Barrett wrote “A skeptical look at Simone Gold and America’s Frontline Doctors.”
February 7 – As reported in Consumer Health Digest, “Newsguard's healthcare information team has identified more than 300 vaccine-related false narratives circulating on the internet, shared by more than 4,300 websites, other news sources, and social media accounts. Prominent promoters of the false narratives include Natural News, the National Vaccine Information Center, U.K.-based Principia Scientific, and NaturallyFTW.com.”
February 21- Lauren Weber wrote “Tax records reveal the lucrative world of covid disinformation.” “Four major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of medical misinformation collectively gained more than $118 million between 2020 and 2022, enabling the organizations to deepen their influence in statehouses, courtrooms and communities across the country.” The organizations discussed are: “Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Informed Consent Action Network, Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, and America’s Frontline Doctors. “Orac” discussed the story on Respectful Insolence. “A disturbing confluence of radical antivax beliefs, misinformation, and grift has brought us to where we are now, with antivax groups that would have been considered fringe even among antivaxxers now being not just mainstream antivax, but almost mainstream political groups. Come for the antivax quackery, stay for the grift indeed. It’s going to be the death of public health in the US.”
Other topics
On Science-Based Medicine,
Mark Crislip:
Criticized the concept of “indigenous science.”
Scott Gavura:
Posted “More Americans turning to complementary approaches to pain control.”
Wrote “Quality differences of supplements vs. drugs.” A study by Cohen and others was discussed. Galantamine is available as a prescription drug and as a supplement. A number of samples of each were analyzed. “The actual content of galantamine in the generic drugs ranged from 97.5% to 104.2% of the labeled content…The actual quantity of galantamine in the supplements ranged from less than 2% to 110% of the labeled quantity…Weak regulation that doesn’t require manufacturers to demonstrate quality before products are sold, or fails to hold manufacturers accountable for quality, might be expected to result in poor-quality products. And that’s the reality we see today.”
David Gorski:
Posted “COVID-19 antivax quacks are now ‘repurposing’ ivermectin for cancer.”
Wrote “False balance in an NBC news story on whole body MRI scans.” “NBC News aired a story on whole body MRI scans. Although it did include the usual cautions about false positives and the harm they cause, the caution was diluted by the story’s focus a rare case of a woman who had a brain tumor detected...There is no evidence that full-body MRI scans are beneficial for people of average risk. If there were clinical evidence that they were effective, such as a clinical trial showing that many people benefitted from these scans, then they would be incorporated into standardized screening protocols.”
Clay Jones:
Discussed “Music for reducing pain in newborns.” “Newborns are exposed to painful procedures for good reason every day. Treating pain is important in this population, and music might play a role. At least it definitely won’t hurt.”
Steven Novella:
Wrote “The menace of wellness influencers.” “Wellness influencers are often also conspiracy theorists, as both mindsets rely upon the same underlying methods, motivation, and narrative... All this money, estimated to be in the trillions of dollars worldwide, fuels a cultural, business, and political movement that is highly destructive. That is the ultimate menace of ‘wellness.’ Snake oil peddlers, con artists, and gurus operate best in a space that is free from government regulations, free from experts or institutions that provide quality control or scholarship, free from ethics or legal ramifications, or any attempt at consumer protection. They operate best in chaos, where ‘truth’ is subjective, and the only thing you think you can trust is the influencer themselves, whose image is optimized for feel-good pseudo-intimacy.”
Posted “Mayo Clinic promotes reiki.” “We have only small poorly designed studies looking at subjective outcomes without any plausible mechanism. This is a poster child for alternative medicine. By promoting this practice, and a completely biased review of the scientific evidence, Mayo Clinic is planting its flag on the side of pseudoscience in medicine, and dealing a blow to the institution of scientific medicine.”
Wrote “What is somatic therapy?” “The result of all this is an internal system of claims and philosophy, mostly based on placebo effects, with hand-waving claims about mechanism, and all based on the thinnest of evidence.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Wrote “Former director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute: still antivax?” Dr. Daniel Neides, former director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute fired for antivax writings, now inspires a new generation of antivaxxers.”
Posted “Kevin Hennings vs. stage IV colon cancer: Are ivermectin and fenbendazole the new laetrile (Part one: fenbendazole).” “...alternative cancer cure testimonials never change; only the cures do.” (See also David Gorski post above.)
Posted “An antivaxxer is creating his own bogus institutional review board (IRB).” “James Lyons-Weiler recently announced that his antivax org, Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), is creating his own IRB. Its real purpose? Most likely to provide cover for unethical antivax studies.”
Posted “Quack tycoon Joe Mercola now thinks he’s ‘the new Jesus’ who will save the world.” “Quack tycoon Joe Mercola has fallen under the spell of a psychic who channels ‘Bahlon’ to give business advice and now thinks he’s the ‘new Jesus’ who will ‘save the world.’ Is the conman now being conned?”
Edzard Ernst:
Posted “'Touch massage' for reducing anxiety of patients in a sterile hematology unit? An almost touching trial.” “…if they were not amateurs, they would know that perhaps the touch-massage itself had nothing to do with the outcome, but that the attention, sympathy and empathy of a therapist or a placebo effect can generate the observed effect.”
Asked “Is tai chi a way to keep us young?” “Sadly this RCT [randomized controlled trial] did not yield significant findings. Essentially this means that either Tai Chi did not work, or the study was naively inadequate, e.g. too small and too short-term.”
Wrote “Curcumin: a case study of large-scale research fraud.” Curcumin is found in turmeric. “Despite curcumin’s apparent lack of therapeutic promise, the volume of research produced on curcumin grows each year. More than 2,000 studies involving the compound are now published annually. Many of these studies bear signs of fraud and involvement of paper mills... The damage done by this epic fraud is huge and far-reaching. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, countless hours spent toiling by junior scientists, thousands of laboratory animals sacrificed, thousands of cancer patients enrolled in clinical trials for ineffective treatments, and countless people who have eschewed effective cancer treatment in favor of curcumin, were encouraged by research steeped in lies.”
Discussed a study claiming to support the effectiveness of Buteyko breathing technique for patients with asthma. “I disagree with this conclusion and think it ought to be changed to: BBT or a placebo effect was clinically effective. The reason is that, as many readers have heard me say before, the infamous A+B versus B design does not control for placebo effects and thus is guaranteed to produce a positive result.”
Wrote “Homeopathy and cancer – I hope King Charles avoids them both!”
Posted “The EU will phase out the use of dental amalgam.”
Announced that Richard C. Niemtzow, inventor of the ‘BATTLE FIELD ACUPUNCTURE’, enters the ‘ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME.’” “Battlefield acupuncture” is “a form of ear-acupuncture allegedly reducing pain in emergency situations... Niemtzow has, as far as I can see, never himself conducted a study of ‘battle field acupuncture’. In fact, there only very few trials of ‘battle field acupuncture‘. The most recent (albeit lousy) study even suggest that it is less effective than electroacupuncture (EA).”
Posted “Reiki is a laughable scam.” “The present study has many flaws that are too obvious to even mention. While reading it, I asked myself the following questions: How could a respectable university ever allow this pseudo-research to go ahead? How could a respectable ethics committee ever permit it? How could a respectable journal ever publish it? The answers must be that, quite evidently, they are not respectable.”
Posted “REASON FOR CONCERN: The use of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) in the US is increasing.” The report discussed is: Nahin et al., JAMA. 2024 Jan 25;331(7):613–5. “The percentage of individuals who reported using at least one of the SCAMs increased from 19.2% in 2002 to 36.7% in 2022...The analyses also suggested a rise in the proportion of US adults using SCAMs specifically for pain management. Among participants using any SCAM, the percentage reporting use for pain management increased from 42% in 2002 to 49% in 2022.”
Discussed his own review of “Meditation for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease” (Rees et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2024 Feb 15;2(2):CD013358 Abstract). “Overall, we found very little information on the effects of meditation on CVD clinical endpoints, and limited information on blood pressure and psychological outcomes, for people at risk of or with established CVD...As our review demonstrates, meditation and similar treatments are not nearly as well supported by evidence as their proponents try to make us believe. In other words, the often-voiced claims that such therapies are effective for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease are largely unfounded.”
Posted “The NCCIH (formerly NCCAM, formerly OAM) has proven to be a monumental, unethical waste of money.” NCCIH is the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Richard Rasker is quoted: “So what’s the score now, after more than 30 years and well over 4 billion dollars in taxpayers’ money? How many SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] modalities have they managed to ‘validate’, i.e. definitively proven to be effective? The answer is: none, for all intents and purposes. Even their research into herbal medicine – one of the most effective (or should I say: least ineffective) SCAMs out there – is best described as woefully lacking. Their list of herbs and plants names just 55 species of plants, and the individual descriptions are mostly to the tune of ‘a lot of research was done, but we can’t say anything definite’.” Ernst added: “The NCCIH has managed to spend more money on SCAM research than any other institution in the world...The NCCIH has wasted precious funds on plenty of dubious studies; arguably, this is unethical. It has misappropriated its role from testing to validating SCAMs. And it has validated none.”
Posted “Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: is acupuncture truly a ‘first-line treatment’?” In this study, therapists were not blinded, and it was not demonstrated that patients were successfully blinded. “We therefore might assume that the effect of patient de-blinding – combined with the confounder described above – was sufficient to bring about the relatively small effect sizes observed by the authors... if acupuncture itself is ineffective (which I suggest), settling for acupuncture as a first line therapy for PTSD is in nobody’s interest and a disservice to severely suffering patients.”
Posted “Surveys are the bane of so-called alternative medicine.”
Discussed a study on “The effect of reiki on sexual function and sexual self-confidence in women with sexual distress.” “The study has the most obvious of all design flaws: it does not control for a placebo effect, nor the effect of empaty/sympathy received from the therapist, nor the negative impact of learning that you are in the control group and will thus not receive any treatment or attention.”
Compared his own views of thirty years of homeopathic research to those of Jennifer Jacobs.
On McGill Office for Science and Society:
Jonathan Jarry:
Posted “Naprapathy stretches credulity.” “Take-home message: Naprapathy is a hands-on therapy that focuses on massaging connective tissue to address a number of health problems and it was created by an American named Oakley Smith after he split from chiropractic in the early 1900s. Although many naprapaths believe their practice is supported by clinical trials, the results of only three have been published and these studies contain major flaws. Manual therapies like naprapathy may offer some benefits, but it is challenging to separate them from the overhyped claims and the pseudoscientific theories they rely on.”
Discussed leaky gut syndrome. “Take-home message: Leaky gut syndrome is not a medically accepted diagnosis, yet it is common in integrative medicine, naturopathy, and functional medicine. Changes to the permeability of the intestine have been noted in inflammatory bowel disease, gut infections, HIV/AIDS, even IBS, but they appear to be consequences of these conditions and not their cause. The lactulose-mannitol test sometimes used to diagnose leaky gut syndrome is not reliable, and the dietary supplements often prescribed to treat the syndrome are not based on good scientific evidence.”
Christopher Labos:
Wrote “No, chocolate isn’t good for you. Sorry.” “The totality of the evidence does not suggest that eating chocolate is heart-healthy, good for your brain or beneficial in any way. That’s not to say you can’t eat chocolate...You just can’t delude yourself into thinking it’s healthy.”
Joe Schwarcz:
Discussed hydrogenated water Article Video. Alleged benefits, such as antioxidant effects, “seem to have some substance, although they are based on laboratory experiments, animal studies and a few small clinical trials in humans. None of these are particularly compelling, but neither can they be dismissed... It is hard to imagine that the tiny amounts of hydrogen that could enter the bloodstream from water in which it hardly dissolves in the first place, could have effects of practical significance. Would not much of the hydrogen be exhaled from the lungs?”
Posted “Nothing memorable about memory supplements.” “What then is the overall conclusion about slowing memory decline? There is not enough evidence to back any memory supplement. Better spend the money on flavonoid-rich foods.”
Discussed the “Repronizer”. The hairdryer is alleged to improve hair quality by reprogramming the “field of matter.”
February 5 – Claudia Lopez Lloreda discussed bovine colostrum supplements. Dr. Pieter Cohen says it is interesting to explore, but “it’s not ready for prime time.” Dr. Jennifer Smilowitz said that “she is hopeful that bovine colostrum could help certain patients with immune or gut issues. But without more data or oversight, she said, people interested in it should ‘be cautious’ and start by talking to their doctors.” As for other claims, “There’s no rigorous, published data yet to back up claims that the supplement can support skin regeneration, lead to weight loss or reverse age-related changes.”
February 22 – The FDA posted “Tianeptine in dietary supplements.” “Because tianeptine does not qualify as a dietary ingredient, is not an approved food additive, is not GRAS [generally recognized as safe], and does not meet any of the other listed exceptions to the dietary supplement definition, it is an unsafe food additive, and dietary supplements containing tianeptine are adulterated under the FD&C Act. Tianeptine is used as a prescription drug in some European, Asian, and Latin American countries, but it is not approved as a drug in the United States. The FDA is aware of several serious adverse event reports associated with tianeptine.”
February 23 – Lindsey Bever published “Can tart cherries help reduce inflammation and pain?” “Small studies suggest that when used preventively, tart cherries — more specifically, tart cherry juice — may help with inflammation and muscle damage associated with muscle exertion after strenuous exercise. Experts say, however, that more comprehensive studies are needed.”
February 27 – Anahad O’Connor wrote “How drinking coffee may lower your risk for diabetes.”
Addition to previous months
December 29 – Rasouli and others published a review and meta-analysis of vitamin D supplementation and cardiovascular disease risk (J Res Health Sci. 2023 Dec 29;23(4):e00594 Paper). “According to the results of clinical trial studies carrying higher levels of scientific evidence, it can be concluded that vitamin D supplementation does not exert a significant effect on the incidence, mortality, and reduction of CVDs.”