Safety fails, accessibility, multiple myths, and more…

FSM News and Articles

Multiple medications fail to meet safety standards: When unsafe products and contaminated medicines are identified through random checks by the TGA, it begs the question – how many health products are getting to consumers that fail to meet standards? It’s likely these products are just the tip of the iceberg – we need better systems in place for consumer and patient protection.

FSM Friends’ News and Articles

Legislative Alchemy 2019 – Naturopaths gain licensure in two states, try for authority to grant vaccination medical exemptions: “Naturopaths do not practice evidence-based medicine, which they reject in favor of folk remedies and pseudoscience. Many are anti-vaccination. Their practices include dubious diagnostic methods, like hair analysis for “toxicities” (used as a pretext for “detoxification“), and unproven treatments, like herbs, supplements, homeopathy, and colonic irrigation, many of which carry risks, including death, but provide no proven benefit. While they claim otherwise, there is no compelling evidence that “naturopathic medicine” improves health, prevents disease, or saves money. In fact, what little data there is suggests that utilizing a naturopath for primary care is associated with worse care.”

General

B.C. naturopath’s pricey fecal transplants for autism are experimental and risky, scientists say: “A Vancouver naturopath who charges $15,000 US for children with autism to have fecal transplants at a clinic near Tijuana, Mexico could put them at serious risk of infection with an unproven treatment, according to doctors and scientists.”

How to find and access peer-reviewed studies (for free): If you are unfamiliar with the tricks on how to find and filter peer reviewed science papers, and how to get them for free without going through a paywall, this article is quite useful.

Don’t get tricked by these three heart-health mythsThese misconceptions have been making the rounds for a while now. The Mayo Clinic sets the record straight.

Great Moments in Health and Science

The Invention of the Snellen Eye Chart: From driver licence testing to emergency department presentations, the humble eye chart is found in many areas of clinical health practice.

Today’s Abused Health Concept

Claims that Andrew Wakefield is innocent – another vaccine denier trope and myth: Andrew Wakefield worked with a team of doctors and researchers to produce his fraudulent anti-vacinne paper which linked the MMR vaccine to autism incidence. This involved failure to disclose conflicts of interest, failure to establish informed consent, mistreatment of the patients, and fraud regarding the data itself. Multiple doctors on this team were found to be guilty of professional misconduct by the British General Medical Council. However in the case of Professor John Walker-Smith, this was overturned by the courts. Anti-vaccinators like to claim that this indicates that Wakefield is similarly ‘innocent’. Nothing could be further from the truth. The courts found that Professor John Walker-Smith was not gulity BECAUSE HE WAS MISLED BY WAKEFIELD. This finding puts more blame on Wakefield, not less.