Sysiphus Speaks

The Nevada Legislature just passed a "Quack Full Employment Act." The official purpose of this legislation is to protect purveyors of "wellness services" from prosecution for the unlicensed practice of medicine or some other health care practice, like chiropractic or massage, for which a state license is required.

Effect of a soy isoflavone supplement on lung function and clinical outcomes in patients with poorly controlled asthma: a randomized clinical trial was published this week in JAMA. Bottom line: Among adults and children aged 12 years or older with poorly controlled asthma while taking a controller medication, use of a soy isoflavone supplement, compared with placebo, did not result in improved lung function or clinical outcomes. These findings suggest that this supplement should not be used for patients with poorly controlled asthma.

Last year, two young men died after overdosing on caffeine powder. One was an 18-year-old high school student trying to stay awake for class projects coming due. Another was a newlywed, recently graduated from college. Their deaths were a wake-up call to the FDA.

I had never heard of Nasal Cranial Release Therapy. It is a mutant combination chiropractic and craniosacral therapy and goes by a variety of other names including Endonasal Technique, Nasal Cranial Release, Bilateral Nasal Specific Technique, Functional Cranial Release, and Neurocranial Release Balloons are inserted in the nose and inflated to realign cranial bones. Really.

But neither post does the treatment of chronic lyme justice. For that you need Suffering from the anguish of chronic Lyme disease, a case of horrible reporting about mind-boggling medical care.  It is one thing to write about these cases in the aggregate, it is quite another to see what happens to another human.

The California Senate voted by a wide margin to end the state's personal belief and religious exemptions to childhood immunizations on Thursday. The measure now moves to the Assembly and a new round of hearings, which promise to be contentious. If passed, California would become only the third state in the country allowing only medical exemptions.

The purpose of Institutional Review Boards, IRB, is to protect patients, especially vulnerable patients such as children. To quote the FDA the clinical investigation may proceed only if: The IRB finds and documents that the clinical investigation presents a reasonable opportunity to further the understanding, prevention, or alleviation of a serious problem affecting the health or welfare of children… When it comes to pseudo-medicine they fail. All the time. I can see no way that acupuncture could ever meet that criteria. Especially for post-operative pain.

Because being Dr. Oz means never having to you are really sorry.

The International Chiropractors Association (ICA) lobbed another volley a few days ago in the ongoing war between the straight and mixer factions of chiropractic.

They keep trying to merge cow pie with apple pie. To paraphrase me, it will not make the cow pie better, it will only make the apple pie worse. First attempt was in 2001. Canada’s York University rejected a merger proposal with Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.

We sometimes laugh about pseudo-medical meta-analyses as they almost always say the same thing in the conclusions: Effects are small or non existent, the clinical trials included are all methodologically poorly done making any likely effects noted due to bias and poor study design. Yet somehow more studies need to be done. 25 years of the same results, yet somehow acupuncture not only has not been abandoned, it is thriving. Amazing.

I keep coming back to the concept that there is no acupuncture: no standardization of the intervention by its practitioners.

Like patient satisfaction, there is no evidence that integrative medicine (even after the 20 or so years it's been around) has done one thing to actually improve patient outcomes.

The secret to make a fortune legally is to manufacture and sell real fake medications. Just keep away from fake real medications.

The National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE) periodically conducts a survey of chiropractors to see what they do in their practices. The NBCE's Practice Analysis of Chiropractic 2015 is out now and provides an intriguing inside look at this insular group of health care practitioners. The survey certainly deserves more than one look, but I provide some initial observations here.