General
Pulling back the curtain on ‘The Doctors’ and ‘The Dr. Oz Show’ – What our analysis revealed: Medical talk shows, people love them. But how credible are they? Answer: not very. Most the advice dispensed has no scientific basis and a lot of the products touted are being advertised on the show. No conflict of interest there. Bottom line: get medical advice from your doctor, not from a TV show, not even if they have doctors on the show. Not everyone is honest.
According to TV, heart attack victims are rich, white men who clutch their hearts and collapse: Here’s why that’s a worry: If asked to list the diseases plaguing and killing Australian women, many people might say breast cancer. But heart disease is the number two killer of Australian women (after dementia and Alzheimer’s disease). The risk factors and signs of heart disease are well known, but unfortunately in our media we usually see heart disease from a male perspective. This might be a problem as it can cause women to underestimate their heart disease risk. This is also problematic as symptoms of heart attacks can be quite different for men and women. Women are less likely to experience chest pain during a heart attack than men – instead nausea, shortness of breath and dizziness are more common
Type 2 diabetes – small reduction in alcohol, big reduction in heart disease risk: “People with type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of getting cardiovascular diseases, including heart attack and stroke. Lifestyle factors, such as diet and physical activity, affect the risk of developing diabetes, but there has been little research about how people with diabetes can change their lifestyle to lower their long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.”
American with no medical training ran center For malnourished Ugandan kids. 105 died: “So I walk in,” Kramlich recalls, “and there’s this child, swollen, wheezing.” Kramlich could see the blood still being transfused into Patricia’s vein. “And [Bach] goes, ‘You know, I think she might be having a reaction. But I don’t know. Because, you know, Google says that if they’re having a reaction, they’ll have a rash. And I don’t see a rash.”
‘Reprehensible’ prescribing to vulnerable patients: A medical practitioner has been found guilty of professional misconduct, providing 1018 stimulant prescriptions for weight-loss in a single year, including drugs that have no evidence of a therapeutic effect on weight-loss. The practitioner only provided phone or web consults, failing to properly examine patients, to monitor vital statistics or check for contraindications such as pregnancy or heart conditions, and failed to consider risk to the patients. The tribunal found the doctor paid “scant or no regard to his obligation to obtain an informed consent from patients before prescribing stimulant medication. We find that the practitioner’s conduct in prescribing compounded stimulant medication for this cohort of particularly vulnerable patients, without a physical examination, was totally inappropriate,” the tribunal said. “We also find that the practitioner had, and still has, a completely inadequate understanding of what is required by the regulation.”
The name is not released yet, and orders are yet to be decided, but this is an individual that FSM has made complaints about, and the finding is a satisfying result. This is precisely the type of behaviour that the medical community will not tolerate in its midst, and that must rooted out in any community of ethical practitioners.
Great Moments in Health and Science
History of Sutures: From non-sterile plant material to modern dissolvable sutures, the simple method of holding wounded tissue together to promote healing continues to be used in modern wound management.
Today’s Abused Health Concept
Stem cell therapy – the good, the bad and the ugly: “Though the potential for tissue regeneration through stem cells is theoretically limitless…” and many are under active investigation, only a very few treatments are approved for used in Australia. “That has not stopped a proliferation of private clinics offering to treat many other conditions…”