The Butchering Art is medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris's first book. And what a book! Descriptions that bring the horrors of pre-anaesthesia, pre-antisepsis surgery shudderingly into view? Very definitely. Science and history? Oh yes, lots of it, and beautifully told. And through it all, the humanity and vision of Joseph Lister and others like him, working to […]
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the last of the iron lungs
That's the title of this excellent article by Jennings Brown, and I urge you to go and read the whole thing. It's the tale of perhaps the last 3 people in the US who are still alive because they are still living in iron lungs. It's a story of courage and endurance that lets them […]
Continue readinganother antivax myth (ingestion vs injection)
There’s an oft-repeated claim by the more strident antivaxxers that ingesting and injecting are two different things when it comes to subsantces like aluminium. This betrays a disturbing lack of knowledge of biology and physiology (especially from those who boast of ‘having done their research’), but they repeat it nonetheless. (Red’s self-belief is mildly amusing.) […]
Continue readingthe various ‘costs’ of measles
On that FB thread, one commenter proudly proclaimed that she & her four children had all had measles. Over in a week, no problems, stop yer whining. Well, lovely for her – & if the illness indeed lasted only a week per person then they were lucky; 7-10 days is the norm for uncomplicated measles. But measles […]
Continue readingantivaxxers still ‘delusional’ and ‘dangerous’
Aaron Leaman’s excellent storyA in the Waikato Times and in Stuff used those words, and I’m sticking with them – because those adjectives desribe the majority of the comments on the relevant FB page. When Aaron interviewed me for that story, I commented that it’s essential for scientists and doctors to continue to confront the […]
Continue readingcancer, oils, and uncritical reporting
On Sunday, the Stuff website carried a story about a particular brand of essential oils that may as well have been marked 'advertorial'. This is because most of the article comprises positive commentary from those involved in selling the products – you have to scroll well down the screen to find a photo & brief comment […]
Continue readingtl;dr: antiperspirants don’t cause breast cancer
Facebook certainly leads me to read papers that I normally wouldn’t. For whatever reason, a post about deodorants popped up on my feed, from the Wendyl’s Green Goddess page. In the blurb for a sale of products was the following: Conventional products contain aluminium ingredients which have been linked to cancer. Do your skin and […]
Continue reading‘pregnancy isn’t a death event’ – social media’s window to the dark side
Today I was on leave and, the weather being bad, thought I’d do a bit of catching up on the news. And so it was that I found, on the Stuff FB page, an item about the (lack of) funding for cutting edge cancer drugs. So far, so innocuous (although also somewhat sad) – until […]
Continue readinganti-vaccination activists – deluded and dangerous
The latest news reports indicate that the mumps outbreak in Auckland is spreading. As you might expect, the very first commenter on the FB page for that story is someone claiming that vaccines don’t cure mumps and offer a significant risk to health. (I wish Moveable Type allowed the Comic Sans font…) The only reason […]
Continue readingleech ‘therapy’ redux
Back in 2012 the Herald ran a series on alternative 'therapies' that included a somewhat uncritical piece on the use of leeches – the practitioner concerned claimed, for example, that they could be used to 'treat' diabetes. I blogged on this back then, as did fellow Sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles, & the criticisms we made then still stand. […]
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