Overdosing on homeopathic drugs?

I recently ran across this 2009 article about a young woman who apparently tried to overdose on a homeopathic drug called "Traumeel." I'm not trying to make light of a sad situation, but only to use this example to illustrate the widespread ignorance regarding homeopathy. A good description of homeopathy was given by James Randi in his 2001 talk at Princeton: Note the math lesson beginning at the five minute mark. Homeopaths argue that the more dilute a solution is, the more powerful it is. At the 7:30 mark, Randi explains that a "30X" solution is so dilute that it reaches the "number of no return." "30X" is so dilute that it is the equivalent of placing 15 drops of water in a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Other homeopathic solutions are available in 1,500x solutions. How dilute is that? It's the equivalent of (12:00) smashing one grain of rice into a sphere of water the diameter of the solar system, shaking it up, and then further diluting that same solution 2 billion more times in an equivalent sized sphere. To bring the matter full circle, at the ten-minute Randi explains how he ate two entire packages of a popular homeopathic sleeping pill (sold at nationwide pharmacies) without overdosing. Believe it or not, the active ingredient was caffeine. At 13:30, Randi characterizes the people who sell these "medicines" "swindlers, liars, cheats, frauds, fakes, criminals." For more on homeopathy, now used by five million people world-wide, consider the many statistics in my earlier post and consider viewing this video by Richard Dawkins. At the 3-minute mark, Dawkins wryly notes that if water really had "memory" of the ingredients it formerly contained (as fans of homeopathy contend), what should we make of the fact that "in each glass of water we drink, at least one molecule has passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell." At the 5-minute mark, when discussing whether homeopathy theory is plausible, the Director of a brand new English hospital (who actually was trained as a rheumatologist) unleashes this whopper of a quote: "The fact is that I couldn't stop what I do even if I wanted to. My patients wouldn't let me. They say it helps." BTW, check out the not-so-impressive medical research by the manufacturer of Traumeel. The manufacturer's recipe of a British narrator uttering big scientific words is featured in this video, and it is doubtless irresistible to many potential purchasers. Here's a bit of much needed skepticism regarding Traumeel. Whatever you do, don't utter the word "placebo" to anyone who pays big money for these "medicines."

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A succinct history of the birth control pill

Time Magazine has published a fascinating 8-page history of the birth control pill. I learned many things that surprised me, including the fact that in 1957, 30 states still had laws against promoting birth control. The 1965 U.S. Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut struck down a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception," including providing contraception for married couples. In Griswold, Planned Parenthood's Executive Director, a licensed physician and a professor at the Yale Medical School ran a medical clinic that "gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free." It's incredible to think how much the world has changed since 1965 (the birth control pill first came to market in 1959). Here's one of the opening paragraphs from the Time article, which is well worth reading in its entirety:

Its main inventor was a conservative Catholic who was looking for a treatment for infertility and instead found a guarantee of it. It was blamed for unleashing the sexual revolution among suddenly swinging singles, despite the fact that throughout the 1960s, women usually had to be married to get it. Its supporters hoped it would strengthen marriage by easing the strain of unwanted children; its critics still charge that the Pill gave rise to promiscuity, adultery and the breakdown of the family. In 1999 the Economist named it the most important scientific advance of the 20th century, but Gloria Steinem, one of the era's most influential feminists, calls its impact "overrated." One of the world's largest studies of the Pill — 46,000 women followed for nearly 40 years — was released this March. It found that women who take the Pill are less likely to die prematurely from any cause, including cancer and heart disease, yet many women still question whether the health risks outweigh the benefits.

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People Are Idiots. A Cynical Observation

The video below from TED is chilling in many ways. Michael Specter touches on observations about the resistance people have toward anything that seems to threaten their hobbit-hole view of the world. A little of this, as he rightly points out, is fine, even agreeable, but when it burgeons into matters that threaten lives and seek to derail all that has made this present era as wonderful as it is---and it must be stressed, in the face of overwhelming negative press, that we are living in a magnificent period of history---then it loses whatever quaint appeal it might otherwise have. We respect the Amish, but they don't tell the rest of us how to live and try their level best to be apart from the world they disapprove. When you see people filing lawsuits with the intent to halt necessary, beneficial progress because they have bought into some bogeyman horror movie view of science or politics or morality, it behooves us to come to terms with a fundamental reality with which we live today. First, though, the video. Watch this, then read on. Okay, what reality? That many people are just idiots. I cannot think of a more tasteful way to phrase it. But when you consider the list, justifications and rationalizations fade. The Tea Party. The Anti-vaccine Movement. The Birthers. Young Earth Creationists. Medjugorje. Deepak Chopra. PETA. Free Market Capitalism. Global Warming Deniers. Holocaust Deniers. Abstinence-Only. Just Say No. The Shroud of Turin. Astrology. Texas Board of Education. Evolution Deniers. Frankenfood Protesters. Homeopaths. Herbalists. Psychics. Scientology. I could go on. [more . . . ]

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Framing the deaths of children

An article at MSNBC caught my eye. The title: "Doctors hastened dying kids’ death, say parents." My initial reaction was that the doctors had done something bad. The article turned out to be more nuanced than the headline, but the opening paragraph suggested that some doctors were acting nefariously:

It's a situation too agonizing to contemplate — a child dying and in pain. Now a small but provocative study suggests that doctors may be giving fatal morphine doses to a few children dying of cancer, to end their suffering at their parents' request.
But then I thought, what if the opposite were true? And then what if the opposite headline read like this:

A provocative study suggests that some doctors are refusing to give enough pain-relieving morphine to children dying of cancer, thereby exacerbating and extending their horrific suffering.

My point is not just to be provocative. Before going further, I should disclose that I am the parent of two young (healthy) children, so this horrid situation is something that I find extremely uncomfortable to even contemplate. Nonetheless, what would I do if I had a a child who was writhing in pain, and who had only weeks or months before he would die? Would it really a bad thing to give that child more pain medication in order to lessen his pain, knowing that it would shorten his already terribly shortened life expectancy? I am amazed at how Americans make simplistic cartoons out of so many moral dilemmas. We call it "mercy killing," even when the aim is to reduce suffering. I would never criticize a parent for wanting to relieve a child's suffering by giving pain medication when that child is dying of cancer. Maybe we need a new language to meaningfully discuss this situation. How about calling it "relieving the suffering of an innocent child." Why call it "killing" at all? Why even call it euthanasia (literally, "good death")? When a child is being non-stop crushed with pain, what kind of parent enhances the pain by withholding drugs in order to attempt to display an incredibly shallow version of moral superiority to others in the community? Shouldn't the whole focus be what's best for the child? Is it better for the child to be in excruciating pain, every hour of the day, or to be given relief from the pain, even though it shortens his life? I know that many people disagree with me--they think that any wretched existence is superior to the end of one's earthly existence. Ironically, most of those people believe in an afterlife. I don't get it. When we're dealing with the family pet, everyone knows the answer. We call it being "humane" to the pet when we choose to painlessly put the pet out of its misery. But somehow, when we are being "humane" to humans, we intensify and extend their suffering. What's driving this upside-down logic? Are the critics merely having sport with doctors, most of whom are working extremely hard to give the families what they need and want? This issue is not limited to dying children, of course. Hence the moral second-guessing when sick elderly adults choose to die in far off places like Switzerland. There are many other ways to needlessly kill healthy children and to make them suffer and to deprive them of healthy minds, but we don't use the word "kill" when describing legislation that does this. You know . . . legislation that cuts medical care, closes subsidized daycare, fails to fund nutrition education centers, or allows bad schools to continue to operate. Perhaps we should use the word "kill" in those situations, since that word often provokes people to take action. But I also think that we need to jettison the "kill" language for those gut-wrenching situations where children are dying and parents are struggling to figure out what to do. We should start over when an entirely new language devoid of the word "kill," because it is the disease that is killing such children, and the parents are trying to deal with the disease. Only with a new language with a more thoughtful version of causation is worth of such situations.

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How Good Need Medical Evidence Be to Prevent Quackery?

Here is an interesting observation posted in a medical journal. It concludes:

Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticized the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

So, do we really know if parachutes are better than a placebo for surviving skydiving? Alt-Med advocates are all over this one.

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