Sysiphus Speaks

Raw milk is unpasterized milk, which means it can be chock full of all sorts of infectious organisms, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157 and Campylobacter. As you may have noticed, the milk production facility of the cow is located quite close to the endpoint of the cow's digestive system. This is not an ideal food production setup unless you are a calf.

As to the flu vaccine Dr. Oz said in an interview Anderson Cooper, that while he was required as a condition of employment to get the H1N1 vaccine his wife and children would not get the vaccine.

Some are not content to do new worthless, poorly designed, pseudo-medical trials. Some need to reformulate the metaphor under which the magic of pseudo-medicine is understood. So we get "A Disturbance Rejection Framework for the Study of Traditional Chinese Medicine."

actual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions

Which brings me to Complementary and alternative medicine from the Mayo Clinic, with the subtitle You've heard the hype about complementary and alternative medicine. Now get the facts. Given that they have an Integrative Medicine Department, I was wondering how they would spin 'the facts.'

The curriculum for the Doctorate program starts with Introduction to Evidence-Based Medicine and Critical Thinking and Reasoning in Clinical Practice. If taught correctly, there would be no need for the rest of the classes: Advanced TCM Diagnostic Techniques, Advanced Acupuncture and Moxibustion Therapy, Advanced Chinese Herbal Treatment as well as various 'Integrative' courses. It would save the student around $30,000 in tuition.

It never occurred to me in my training that measles, polio, mumps, and the rest of the preventable infectious pathogens would be anything but occasional curiosities, imported from counties where vaccination rates were low. Until this century that was true.

The naturalistic fallacy is probably more common in users of alternative medicine, but I can't find the proof. I went looking at all the surveys of alternative medicine use that proliferate like mushrooms after a rain, I could find none that correlated use of pseudo-medicines and various cognitive biases such as the naturalistic fallacy.

The clinical education of NDs is woefully inadequate. It occurs mostly in ND school-based clinics, where they are supervised by an ND faculty. The range of diseases and conditions they treat is limited and their exposure to patients not in ambulatory out-patient settings, such as nursing homes, hospitals, and rehabilitation centers, is practically nil. And they can go into practice immediately after they graduate from school, no residency required.

The discussion is that of how to interpret a p value.

There is a product called Immutides Spray that is supposed to boost the immune system.

From a prior plausibilty perspective, any positive effect from acupuncture is likely due to a combination of bias and poor study design. But that never stops the Cochrane collaborative, who will run anything and everything through their grinder to produce a meta-analysis sausage. Unfortunately, unlike sausage, I often know what goes into the meta-analysis. Acupuncuture is the rodent hair and insect parts the Bratwurst that is Acupuncture for treating acute ankle sprains in adults. . Can I beat a metaphor to death or what.

Doctors must take off their lab coats and engage the people of their communities and states. They must be willing to defend and spread the good news about science-based medicine. If doctors themselves are unwilling to defend medicine, how can we expect others to do so?

The Connecticut Legislature recently passed Senate Bill 437, giving naturopaths, according to the American Association for Naturopathic Physicians, a more "modern" scope of practice. An odd choice of words considering that naturopathy is based on vitalism, a pre-scientific belief that some incorporeal "life force," unknown to science, governs bodily functions. Nothing modern about that.

Maybe they might know a bit more if certified, but the pass rates for acupuncture boards are not impressive In February 2014, only 62% of first time test takers in California passed and over all 49% passed. Gives one pause.