Science-based Medicine Feed

A week ago, Donald Trump said that, if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "go wild" on healthcare. RFK Jr. has said that he'd immediately remove fluoride from drinking water, while surrogates say he'd work to prove vaccines unsafe. This is why a Trump Presidency could represent an extinction-level event for science-based federal health policy.

The Stanford health economist turned right-wing pandemic star could help take down
academia and scientific institutions in a second Trump administration

Any doctor who is unabashedly pro-vaccine has already spoken up about the normalization of anti-vaxx quackery within our ranks.

The organization scapegoated by the lab leak-promoting GOP-led House Covid subcommittee publishes its defense

In a post on X/Twitter, antivaxxer turned Trump supporter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. declared MAHA war on the FDA, should Trump be elected. What would this actually mean in practice?

Millions of Americans are taking herbal remedies that may be toxic to the liver.

The Free Press = Unherd = Persuasion = Reason = Tablet

A recent meta-analysis of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy concludes that the evidence “confirms” EMDR is effective in treating depression. It is a great example of the limitations of meta-analysis, and how easy it is to create essentially a false narrative using poor quality research. EMDR was “developed” by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1987. It is the notion that bilateral […]

Ever since recombinant DNA has been used to develop and manufacture vaccines, antivaxxers have portrayed it as evil. This weekend, an antivaxxer decided that fear mongering about SV40 in COVID-19 vaccines wasn't enough. Here we go again...

WWTI doctors' cared only about infecting unvaccinated children with SAR-CoV-2, and they were willing to blatantly contradict themselves and make things up achieve this goal.

JAMA Internal Medicine just published an article titled: Acupuncture vs Sham Acupuncture for Chronic Sciatica From Herniated Disk, A Randomized Clinical Trial. In an accompanying editorial comment, Jerard Z. Kneifati-Hayek and Mitchell H. Katz write: “This was a methodologically rigorous study; there were multiple experienced acupuncturists, the comparison group used a well thought-out sham control, and patients were followed up for 1 […]

Hangovers: a problem with only one solution.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been antivax for two decades. His fellow travelers are not happy about his leaving out vaccines in his "Make America Healthy Again." To them it's an obvious misdirection, and they are turning on him.

It doesn't bode well for the future that "leaders" of major American institutions look at naked emperors and compliment them on their beautiful clothes.

Accumulated evidence does not demonstrate that elderberry has meaningful beneficial effects.

The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine goes to two researchers, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, for their work on microRNA. They began their research in the same lab in the late 1980s as postdoctoral fellow, and then continued to collaborate after they each started their own labs. Their research involves a key question about multicellular life. Every cell in the […]

Antivax is more ideology and conspiracy than science. The recent accusation that antivax influencers are running "limited hangouts" as part of "controlled opposition helps illustrate this characteristic, in which the insufficiently radical are portrayed as useful idiots for the enemy or even heretics.

Dying of COVID is worse.

Just recently, in casual conversation, someone commented to me that “they” already have a cure for cancer but are hiding it. This is a claim I frequently encounter. One survey, from 2005, found that 27.3% of those surveyed endorsed this belief. Another survey from 2014 found that 37% of people believe the FDA is suppressing natural cancer cures on behalf of “Big […]

[Editor note: Regular readers might—or might not have—noticed last Monday that, for the first time in more years than I can remember, I failed to post anything and didn’t even repost something from the archives or announce my absence. The explanation is unfortunately all too simple. The Sunday before, I spent something like 13 hours in the hall of at the emergency […]