Many readers noticed that we were down for a few days. What happened was that I was given a very kind mention in an article in the LA Times (along with some of my fellow skeptical bloggers). This had the very nice effect of sending a pulse of traffic to my blog.
However, this traffic exceeded the limits of my host, HostPapa, for simultaneous users. HostPapa responded by (without warning) permanently suspending my account, and putting up a friendly notice for all to see, making it seem like I haven’t been paying my bills. Now that’s customer service.
I noticed right away and contacted HostPapa, but this was over the weekend and they were less than responsive. Eventually they simply refused to turn my account back on, even temporarily, and simply said that I was permanently banished. That was their way of punishing me for increasing my blog traffic. It certainly seems as if they did their best to turn what is ordinarily a boon to a blog into a disaster – thanks HostPapa.
As promised, I watched the Inside Edition segment last night following up on the Desiree Jennings case. If you remember, she is the 25 year old woman who claimed to have a neurological disorder called dystonia following a seasonal flu vaccine. Her story never added up, and the video of her disorder that was made public (and disseminated, of course, on YouTube) did not show dystonia. Every neurologist who viewed the video and commented publicly, including me, were of the opinion that her symptoms were psychogenic.
The question at hand is whether or not she has a neurological disorder and whether it can plausibly be connected to the flu vaccine. I have made a strong case that her symptoms are not neurological but psychological (and to be clear, neither I nor any physician commenting on her case has accused her of lying or hoaxing her symptoms). Despite this, the anti-vaccine movement was quick to jump on the case and exploit Ms. Jennings for their own propaganda purposes. They were also quick to criticize me and others for commenting on her case, and in fact they grossly distorted the opinions we expressed.
Ms. Jennings eventually found her way to Dr. Buttar, who has been criticized by the North Carolina Medical Board for charging patients exorbitant fees for unproven and ineffective treatments. These complaints are still under investigation. Buttar diagnosed Ms. Jennings with both a viral encephalitis and mercury toxicity – when it would be impossible for her to have been exposed to both mercury and a live virus from the same vaccine. He treated her with chelation therapy and a few stints in the hyperbaric chamber, and then claimed a dramatic cure. In fact, I predicted this would happen and further predicted that an improvement in her symptoms that was too quick for any biological cause would confirm the diagnosis of a psychogenic disorder.
I was recently interviewed by Inside Edition for a follow up story on Desiree Jennings – the young woman who alleged to have dystonia as a reaction to the flu vaccine. (See here for my original post, and there are a few follow ups shortly after.)
Inside Edition initially broke the story nationally, and did not do a very good job – they basically accepted the story at face value and did not consult appropriate experts to give proper context to the story.
Well, it seems that they are now willing to do a follow up report and even try to correct their prior reporting. The show in which I am interviewed will air tonight on Inside Edition. I am always interested to see how these shows turn out – it is almost impossible to tell from the interview itself. Typically a very small percentage of the on-camera interview is used and anything can happen in the editing room. But hopefully they will do justice to the story.
I can tell you, there have been some interesting developments they will reveal on the show (which I cannot discuss until after it airs). I will write a follow up tomorrow after I see the show.
Dealing with patients in a coma is challenging in multiple levels. We are challenged to evaluate the degree of damage, or conversely the degree of neurological function that remains. We are challenged to give the family or caregiver an accurate prognosis. And we are challenged with dealing with the ethical and emotional issues that surround such cases. All of these challenges would be helped by improving our ability to accurately assess such patients – and fortunately we are making some progress in this area.
I have previously discussedresearch in which a woman in an apparently vegetative state was evaluated with functional MRI scanning (fMRI) and found to be able to change her brain activity when asked to imagine herself performing two distinct tasks. This study showed, at least in this one case, that a patient with no outward signs of consciousness (and therefore in what we call a persistent vegetative state or PVS) might still retain some hidden consciousness (and therefore really be in what we call a minimally conscious state or MCS).
Further, Dr. Steven Laureys and colleagues have been demonstrating that up to 40% of patients who are diagnosed as being in PVS by standard neurological exam demonstrate signs of minimal consciousness on a more rigorous exam better designed to detect subtle and intermittent signs of consciousness. They recommend this exam be used routinely to assess comatose patients, which is reasonable.
You may remember Dr. Laureys from the Rom Houben case – which was tainted by the introduction of bogus facilitated communication. As I have said – that case is an unfortunate distraction from the real research that is going on by Dr. Laureys and others. But it has successfully distracted and confused the media and by extension much of the public.
I was recently asked my opinion about the Biophysical250 – a series of 250 blood tests offered by a commercial lab for the out-of-pocket cost of $3,400. My skeptical alarms immediately began ringing – I am familiar with the commercial labs promising diagnostic tests directly to the public – generally not a good idea.
I checked out their website, which set off more alarms. The first thing you see, in the upper left corner, is this:
Would you like to get back the vibrancy and passion you enjoyed when you were younger? Are there things you would like to be doing at work or with your family and friends that you don’t have the energy to accomplish?
Umm…yes, please. Probably like every 45 year old, I would love to feel like I did when I was 25 (although honestly I am pretty healthy, except for hypertension, some occasional lower back pain, and I probably have a small rotator cuff tear in my right shoulder). Will these blood tests fix all that, repair 20 years of wear and tear and rejuvenate my cells? Oh!…darn.
6.022137 × 10^23 – that’s Avogadro’s number. It’s the number of atoms or molecules of a substance in a number of grams of that substance equal to its atomic mass. So 1 gram of elemental hydrogen or 12 grams of carbon12 will have Avogadro’s number of atoms. This amount is also called a mole – so a mole of anything has Avogadro’s number of elementary particles – a mole of water has Avogadro’s number of water molecules.
Amedeo Avogadro first came up with the concept in 1811. In 1895 the number was first estimated by Josef Loschmidt, and when referring to the mass of an ideal gas is called the Loschmidt constant, but the number itself in 1909 was named in honor of Avogadro.
Samuel Hahnemann invented the principles of homeopathy (he “discovered” nothing, it turns out) in the 1790s and published his first article on the topic in 1796. So you see – Hahnemann could not have known about Avogadro’s number, in principle or in name, at least when he invented homeopathy. He died in 1843, long after the scientific community knew that his “law of infinitesimals” was rubbish.
On a regular basis I am sent links to YouTube to review the latest UFO video footage. Most often it is by a fellow skeptic who just wants to share the latest crappy evidence being offered by the UFO community. Sometimes the links are sent by readers who are perplexed and are looking for an explanation, and occasionally they are sent by UFO believers as a challenge.
The YouTube UFO phenomenon (or “YouFOs” – yes, I just coined that) is a good way for budding skeptics to practice their skilz. This is purely armchair skepticism, unless you want to do some actual investigation, which can be fun too. But armchair skepticism has its place – it is an exercise in logic and plausibility. Someone is presenting you with evidence and you analyze it critically. You may not have the time or resources to do investigative journalism, or to replicate experiments. But asking good critical questions is an essential part of science, and since the burden of proof is on those making the claim it seems reasonable that they should be able to answer our questions.
Andrew Wakefield, the UK researcher who sparked unwarranted fears about the risks of the MMR vaccine, has been the subject of a two-and-a-half years ethics investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC). This afternoon the GMC announced their conclusion, ruling that Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in his research and with “callous disregard” for the children that were the subject of his research.
Wakefield’s Story
In 1998 Wakefield and others published a story in the Lancet where they claimed to find an association between finding the measles virus in the GI tract of children with autism following the MMR vaccine. The study itself was small – only involving 12 children, and the conclusions were modest, not specifically suggesting a link between MMR and autism. But in subsequent press conferences Wakefield raised the alarm, saying, “Urgent further research is needed to determine whether MMR may give rise to this complication in a small number of people.”
The result was a significant drop in MMR compliance and a resurgence of measles cases, as this BBC chart demonstrates.
Mark Twain would have made an excellent blogger. The man had a wit and eloquence difficult to match, and he was not afraid to use his skills. Fortunately, some of his writing can be repurposed for blogging – Letters of Note brings us a letter written by Twain in November of 1905 to the seller of a patent medicine that had just attempted to sell his wares to Twain.
The letter shows that Twain was savvy regarding the nature of patent medicines – they were a scam, born of the carnival barker tradition. Anyone unhindered by ethics could put whatever they wanted into a bottle, usually cutting it with some alcohol or other such substance, and then make whatever health claims they wished for their concoction. The FDA put an end to the patent medicine era, but now we are in the middle of a resurgence of patent medicine scams. The only thing that has changed is the name – now they are called “supplements”. The FDA has been weakened to allow anyone to put just about whatever they want in a bottle (as long as it is not already classified as a drug) and make whatever health claims they want for it (as long as they are the slightest bit clever in their wording – phrasing the claims as “structure/function” claims, rather than disease claims).
This concept may bring new meaning to the phrase “Doc in a box” (used to refer to small walk-in clinics). Increasingly computers are infiltrating the practice of medicine – but to what extent have or will computers replace the cognitive work of trained health professionals? This is a concept I have been following with interest, but at the moment there is probably much less in the way of computer-assisted medicine than the the public imagines.
A news story today reminded me of the baby-steps that are being taken in the direction of AI (artificial intelligence) medicine. A new study shows that a computer program is as good or better at making a specific measurement (wear of the meniscus) on MRIs of the knee – but only when they are mild to moderately damaged, severe damage still requires a human eye.
This kind of thing is definitely the low-hanging-fruit for medical AI systems – interpreting digital images. It does not require making a diagnosis, weighing choices, or interpreting human input. It is simply using pattern recognition to measure one feature of an image.
