OCTOBER 2021 NEWS
Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy posted:
“Anti-vaccination ideology and COVID misinformation in chiropractic continuing education courses: ‘Plandemic’ edition.” “Chiropractors can still get state-approved continuing ed credit for anti-vaccination courses, with bonus COVID misinformation now added to the curriculum.”
David Gorski posted:
“'Natural immunity' versus the vaccine for COVID-19.” “Antivaxxers have long appealed to ‘natural immunity’ as being somehow inherently superior to vaccine-induced immunity, which is apparently ‘artificial.’ This is a trope that comes from alternative medicine concepts about purity and contamination that is now endangering us in the age of the pandemic.”
“Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 6: Incompetence and fraud everywhere!”
Jonathan Howard posted:
“The trolley problem and vaccinating young people against COVID-19.”
“COVID-19 and children – more useless comparisons.” David Leonhardt of The New York Times is criticized for minimizing the risks to children.
“The road to Hitler is paved with...masks and vaccines?” “The next time a healthcare worker or educator is attacked by a ‘freedom-loving’ anti-vaxxer, it’s reasonable to wonder who convinced the assailant that life-saving public health measures are in fact a ruse to pave the way for the next Hitler.”
“The JCVI speaks: ‘Natural infection in children could have substantial long-term benefits on COVID-19 in the UK’.” “The UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation suggested using sick children as human shields to protect adults.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Dr. Vinay Prasad goes full Godwin over COVID-19 public health measures.”
“Ecological fallacy: When a scientist (inadvertently, I hope) uses a favorite antivax form of study.”
“The Great Barrington Declaration strikes back.” “A month after a BMJ article linking the Great Barrington Declaration to the right wing think tank AIER, the two are attacking the authors of the BMJ piece and denying any payment or even connection. Why?”
“Attacks on scientists in the age of COVID-19: how ‘they’ view us.” “Nature recently published a survey showing how common online and other attacks on scientists trying to communicate science-based information are. The hatred is nothing new. What’s new are COVID-19 and social media.”
“Richard Moskowitz goes full COVID-19 conspiracy theorist for Age of Autism.” “What I see in his posts is how belief in antivaccine pseudoscience and quackery like homeopathy provided fertile ground for Dr. Moskowitz to pivot to every COVID-19 conspiracy theory out there, mainly because none of them are new.”
“'Fetal cells' in COVID-19 vaccines...again.” “In the age of COVID, everything old is new again in antivax conspiracy world. This time around, antivaxxers are trying to claim (yet again) that COVID vaccines contain ‘fetal cells’.”
Edzard Ernst posted:
“A new study of homeopathy for the prevention of COVID-19 infections.” “None of the 5 homeopathic treatments generated encouraging findings and none should be explored further. Studies of this nature must be discouraged firstly because homeopaths would not accept the findings of a trial of non-individualized homeopathy, and secondly because such trials will further confuse the public who might think that homeopathy is worth trying.”
“The International Chiropractors Association's statement on vaccination.”
October 5 – Monroe and Savillo wrote “Fox has undermined vaccines nearly every day in the last six months.”
October 14 – Turner and others published “Ethical issues and public communication in the development of cell-based treatments for COVID-19: Lessons from the pandemic” (Stem Cell Reports. 2021 Sep 28;16(11):2567–76 Paper). “Rushed development and premature commercialization of cell- and gene-based therapeutics for COVID-19 and other respiratory virus infections and hyped communication of related clinical and research findings will inevitably harm the field of regenerative medicine, increase risks to patients, and erode the public's trust.”
October 20 – An article on CNN by Kuznia, Bronstein, Devine and Griffin was entitled “They take an oath to do no harm, but these doctors are spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccine.”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, October – on Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy:
Wrote “Legislative alchemy: naturopathic licensing bill now before Wisconsin Senate Committee.”
Christine Conelea and Clay Jones:
Posted “Don’t jump to conclusions about so-called Tik Tok tics.”
David Gorski:
Discussed an electroacupuncture study published in Nature. “Last week, a study claiming to have identified a neurologic mechanism by which acupuncture reduces inflammation was published in Nature. It does no such thing. it’s another bait-and-switch mouse study that likely would never have been published in such a high profile journal if it hadn’t rebranded electrical stimulation as ‘electroacupuncture’.”
Posted “How we got here with political and health misinformation: the case of 'Hacker X' and Mike Adams.” Hacker X “helped Mike Adams expand his online empire of health fraud into an empire of fake news and political disinformation, thus intertwining health and political misinformation into the deadly combination we see now.”
Harriet Hall:
Posted “Blue Zones Diet: Speculation based on misinformation.” “The so-called Blue Zones are geographical locations where people are said to live longer than elsewhere…The Blue Zone Diet essentially repeats much of the conventional advice for a healthy diet…”
Discussed “Laser Therapy for Vaginal Rejuvenation.” “Laser therapy for postmenopausal vaginal atrophy is no better than placebo, is much more expensive than topical estrogen, and may have serious side effects.” Alistair MacLennan also discussed the subject on Edzard Ernst.
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Posted “Quackademic medicine at the Marcus Center for Cellular Cures: Stem cells for autism.” “Stem cells are an unproven therapy for autism, but that isn’t stopping Duke University’s Marcus Center for Cellular Cures from teaming with a for-profit stem cell company to market this quackery for big bucks…”
Edzard Ernst:
Challenged the idea that alternative medicine treats the root cause of disease.
Wrote “We need to more than double the daily vitamin C intake recommended by the WHO.”
Discussed “Beliefs and behaviors of US chiropractors.”
Posted “Dry scooping – a harmful internet fad.” Taking creatine powder without water is dangerous.
Asked “Does cannabidiol ('CBD') oil induce lung cancer regression?”
Posted “German homeopathy suffers another blow.” “the Bavarian Medical Association decided yesterday to ditch the postgraduate education program in homeopathy for its doctors. This means that, of the 17 regional medical associations in Germany, 12 have now discontinued their further education efforts in homeopathy.”
Wrote “Patients consulting chiropractors, homeopaths, or naturopaths are less likely to agree to the flu jab.” “And the irony of all this must not get lost here: chiropractors, homeopaths, naturopaths, and their respective organizations all pride themselves regularly that they attribute particular importance to disease prevention.”
Discussed a paper on the “Effect of Chinese herbal medicines on the overall survival of patients with muscular dystrophies.” “What the authors have shown is a CORRELATION, and from that, they draw conclusions implying CAUSATION. This is such a fundamental error that one has to wonder why a respected journal let it go past... A possibility in the present case is that these patients had adopted a different lifestyle together with employing CHM which, in turn, resulted in a longer survival.”
Posted “Gua sha: who cares how it works, when it is unproven that it works?” “...the forceful scratching of the skin is bound to have all sorts of physiological effects. These are, however, totally irrelevant until someone has shown that the procedure also has therapeutic value.”
Discussed increased intestinal permeability (also known as leaky gut syndrome): “patients who think they suffer from IP often fall into the hands of SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] practitioners who assure them to have a non-existing disease and relieve them of their money by treating them with bogus SCAM.”
Posted “Does vitamin D supplementation lower the risk of cancer and precancers?”
Posted “Homeopathy: no longer reimbursed in Austria.”
Discussed a definition of integrative medicine: “it turns out to be a poorly disguised bonanza of strawman fallacies combined with ‘bait and switch’ deception.”
Wrote “Lyma, the “world’s 1st super supplement”, might cause severe liver damage.” Lyma contains ashwagandha, an Ayurvedic herb linked to liver injury.
October 26 - Tiller wrote “Cryotherapy: the cold, hard truth” for Skeptical Inquirer. “A generous interpretation of the data would be that small studies show a benefit on muscle soreness and possibly inflammation, but these effects are very small and appear no better than other thermal recovery strategies. A less generous interpretation would be that whole-body cryotherapy is an expensive, largely unproven, and potentially dangerous intervention that detracts from more effective and economical forms of recovery.”