NOVEMBER 2021 NEWS
Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy posted:
“The 'Natural Immunity is Real Act': real or an act?” “Republican legislators have proposed a law requiring federal agencies to acknowledge, accept, truthfully present and incorporate ‘consideration of natural immunity’ in their COVID regulations. It’s just political theatrics based on a flawed understanding of infection-induced ‘natural’ immunity.”
Scott Gavura posted:
“The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a boom in herbal supplement sales.” “…a lack of effectiveness is no barrier to sales success.” Products discussed include elderberries, ashwagandha, and apple cider vinegar.
“The misuse and abuse of meta-analyses.” “The meta-analysis has been misused and weaponized to promote dubious COVID-19 treatments.”
David Gorski posted:
“Echoes of measles outbreaks in 2019: Antivaxxers are targeting Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn with COVID-19 misinformation.”
“Pfizer's new COVID-19 protease inhibitor drug is not just ‘repackaged ivermectin’.”
“COVID-19 vaccines versus 'purity of essence,' revisited.” “Antivaxxers frequently make the false claim that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines ‘permanently alter your DNA.' These claims are really a concern about ‘impurifying’ their ‘purity of essence’ and have now gone into some truly disturbing territory, such as antivaxxers calling themselves ‘purebloods’.”
“Are the FDA’s VRBPAC [Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee] and the CDC’s ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest over COVID-19 vaccines?” “…part of the central conspiracy of the antivaccine movement is that no one can ever be pro-vaccine because of a rational evaluation of the risk-benefit ratio of vaccinating. It must be because they are blinded by ideology or in the pockets of big pharma.”
Jonathan Howard posted:
“Children, underlying conditions, and COVID-19.” “That we can identify children who have a higher risk for severe outcomes shouldn’t be used to minimize the virus and argue against vaccination in healthy children. Rather, we should recognize there are populations of vulnerable children that need extra protection, and the best way to do this is through vaccinating ourselves and all eligible children.”
“Doctors must be honest with parents about known risks of COVID-19.”
“Contrarian doctors: the pandemic is over, again.” “I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons the pandemic isn’t over yet, is because contrarian doctors repeatedly said it was.”
Steven Novella posted:
“Third dose prevents infection.” “The evidence is in. Booster shots work.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Dr. Ryan Cole and Mike Adams”: Fear mongering about cancer and COVID-19 vaccines.” “Antivaxxers have long claimed that vaccines cause cancer. Dr. Ryan Cole is now spreading the same misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.”
“Martin Kulldorff has joined the Brownstone Institute.”
“What happened to The BMJ?” “The BMJ recently published an ‘exposé’ by Paul Thacker alleging patient unblinding, data falsification, and other wrongdoing by a subcontractor. It was a highly biased story embraced by antivaxxers, with a deceptively framed narrative and claims not placed into proper context... I can’t help but conclude that The BMJ is now complicit in spreading COVID-19 and antivaccine disinformation. Worse, its editors do not know or, worse, do not care.”
“Does spike protein from COVID-19 vaccines interfere with DNA damage repair?” “Did I mention again that this is just a single in vitro study done in only two related cell lines whose relevance to the in vivo situation is not shown? Also, no experiments here show that spike actually interacts with the DNA damage repair proteins postulated, just that the levels of various DNA damage repair proteins remained unchanged by cranking up the expression of spike protein. Other problems that I’ve seen pointed out include a distinct lack of proper controls… If the results of this paper actually did translate to humans, it would be a very strong argument not against vaccination for COVID-19 but for being vaccinated.”
“Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and the problem of COVID-19 misinformation.” “The 45 year career of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, whom multiple medical authorities including the Texas Medical Board and FDA have failed to stop, serves as a warning about how difficult it will be to discipline physicians for spreading COVID-19 disinformation.”
“How antivaxxers weaponized an abstract by a Goop doctor against COVID-19 vaccines.” The abstract claims that “COVID-19 vaccines hugely increase the risk of heart attacks.”
Edzard Ernst posted:
“Learning about homeopathy the hard way: the story of Aaron Rodgers.” “Orac” also discussed Rodgers on Respectful Insolence, writing: “Aaron Rodgers is antivaccine and antimask, two crappy tastes that taste crappy together and, unfortunately, frequently go together. Yes, he ‘did his own research,’ because of course he did, and found several common antivax tropes, such as the claim that it might make him sterile and the antimask nonsense about ‘breathing your own CO2’.”
“COVID-19, just a flu? No! More than 28 million excess years of life were lost in 2020 in 31 countries.”
“And again: is vitamin C the solution for COVID-19 infections?”
“Homeopathy and other SCAMs [so-called alternative medicines] for long-COVID: WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”
“The American Medical Association take a stand against chiropractors, naturopaths, or homeopaths granting medical exemptions to vaccines.” “…only licensed physicians should determine whether a person should receive a medical exemption from vaccines.”
“Carrie Madej: an osteopathic doctor’s ‘battle for humanity’.” “She thinks she has discovered how Big Tech collaborates with Big Pharma introduced new technologies in the coming vaccines, that will alter our DNA and turn us into hybrids.”
November 16 – As reported in Consumer Health Digest, “The National Council of State Boards of Nursing and eight other organizations that promote scientific standards and professionalism in nursing have issued a policy statement opposing COVID-19 misinformation to the public about masking, vaccines, and medications.” Policy statement (pdf file).
November 19 - An editorial by Gerber and Offit (Science. 2021 Nov 19;374(6570):913) was entitled “COVID-19 vaccines for children.” “…a choice not to get a vaccine is not a risk-free choice; rather, it’s a choice to take a different and more serious risk.”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, November – on Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy:
Posted “Too many lab tests still escape FDA review, threatening patient safety.” “The meaningless distinction between LDTs [laboratory-developed tests] and other IVDs [in-vitro diagnostics] must be eradicated and all tests subject to regulation based on what they do (or don’t do), not where they were made. The VALID Act is certainly a big improvement, although I wish it more directly addressed the threat to consumers from quack and DTC [direct-to-consumer] diagnostic tests.”
Harriet Hall:
Discussed “Virtual reality therapy.” “…it may be no more than a gimmick to enlist the patient’s cooperation with effective treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).”
Clay Jones:
Posted “A 2-month-old infant seriously injured by chiropractic neck adjustment.” “The child in this case report was severely injured by an unproven and implausible chiropractic intervention for a condition that has a proven safe and effective medical treatment. Add this report to the large and growing pile of evidence supporting calls to remove the right of chiropractors to treat young children.”
Edzard Ernst:
Posted “Yet more evidence to suggest that acupuncture is a placebo therapy.” Discussing a study of “patients’ perceptions on non-specific effects of acupuncture,” Ernst wrote what the conclusions “seem to imply and what the authors (proponents of acupuncture) ignore totally is the following: acupuncture responders are those people who respond to the context of the treatment situation. Thus their positive result is not due to the specific effects of acupuncture itself but to non-specific effects. In other words, acupuncture operates predominantly or entirely via non-specific effects. Or, to put it bluntly: this analysis confirms what we have discussed many times before…, namely that acupuncture is a placebo therapy.”
Discussed “Disgracefully low methodological quality of systematic reviews on acupuncture.” “…this pollution of the literature with complete rubbish will have detrimental effects. Because poor reviews almost always draw an over-optimistic picture of the value of acupuncture, this phenomenon must seriously mislead the public. The end result will be that the public believes acupuncture to be effective.”
Wrote about reincarnation therapy.
Posted “Promising results for equine-assisted therapies.” “EAT is, of course, one of those modalities which are difficult to research. What, for instance, is a good control intervention? And how can one blind the patient? Moreover, EAT is expensive and required lots of resources that are rarely available. Considering these issues, one should perhaps ask whether EAT is sufficiently better than other therapeutic options to justify the cost.”
Posted “Fairies in my garden!...or…Scientific proof for homeopathy!,” by Richard Rasker.
Wrote “So-called alternative medicine can be effective for cancer patients having radiotherapy.” “One particular finding of the new review struck me as intriguing: The rate of favorable change did not differ based on the type of SCAM [so-called alternative medicine]. Combined with the fact that most studies are less than rigorous and fail to control for non-specific effects, this indicates to me that, in cancer palliation (and perhaps in other areas as well), SCAM works mostly via non-specific effects. In other words, patients feel better not because the treatment per se was effective but because they needed the extra care, attention, and empathy.”
Posted “No effect from adding chiropractic manipulations to exercise for neck pain.” “This is a rigorous and well-reported study. It suggests that adjuvant manipulations are not just ineffective for neck pain, but also cause some adverse effects. This seems to confirm many previously discussed investigations concluding that chiropractors do not generate more good than harm for patients suffering from neck pain.”
Discussed “Manipulation versus mobilization for the management of cervicogenic headache.” “If, however, we ignored this major flaw [only 45 patients] and assumed the results are valid, they would be consistent with both manipulation and mobilization being pure placebos. I can imagine that many chiropractors find this conclusion unacceptable. Therefore, let me offer an alternative: both approaches were equally effective. Therefore, mobilization, which is associated with far fewer risks, is preferable.”
Posted “No effect of lavender oil on perioperative pain, anxiety, depression, and sleep of cancer patients.”
Discussed “A meta-analysis of open-label placebos in clinical trials.” “My impression is that the effect of OLPs is small and of doubtful value in clinical practice. My prediction is that, as more and better research emerges, it will diminish further, if not vanish totally.”
November 4 – Turner published “The American stem cell sell in 2021: U.S. businesses selling unlicensed and unproven stem cell interventions” (Cell Stem Cell. 2021 Nov 4;28(11):1891-1895 Paper). “Nearly 1,500 U.S. businesses now advertise purported stem cell therapies for a wide range of diseases and injuries. Businesses make such claims despite lacking FDA approval for their stem cell products and absent convincing evidence from well-designed and appropriately powered controlled clinical trials that their interventions are safe and efficacious.”
November 18 – Tiller wrote “Diets, detox, and other delusions” for his Skeptical Inquirer “The Skeptic’s Guide to Sports Science” column. “How can the prevalence of obesity and profits from the diet industry both be at record levels? The incongruity exists because the diet industry is underpinned by short-term gimmicks and quick fix interventions, neither of which are effective at facilitating long-term weight management.”
November 29 – “Center for Inquiry Sues HHS for Access to ‘Bible of Homeopathy’” Press release. The Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States regulates homeopathic remedies, but is not freely available to the public; “access to the book can cost upwards of $15,000 per year.” According to Aaron Green, staff counsel for CFI, “We asked, but the industry refused to give us access. Unless they know that its thousands of pages of magical recipes made up of various toxins, poisons, and animal viscera is purely make-believe, it’s not clear what they’re trying to hide.”