FSM News and Articles
Why the complementary medicine regulatory push was shelved: The medical board of Australia have scaled back efforts to regulate complementary medicines – reverting to the status quo of a ‘risk based’ approach. This means that if a therapy is considered to be low-risk it will be very difficult to its use, even if there is no good evidence base behind it. ‘The key issue really is that patients are being exploited by non-evidence based practice like stem cell therapy or chelation therapy that can sometimes be attractive to vulnerable people,’ said FSM’s Ken Harvey. ‘‘Therapies that are not evidence-based really shouldn’t be offered other than in clinical trials … Yes, medicine changes and we don’t want to stifle innovation or emerging treatments that may eventually become standard. But the only way of sorting that out is with randomised clinical trials – not from gurus saying we will fix you with our stem cells.’
The race is on … vaccines vs variants. The global response will determine the winner:“So the race is on. To end the pandemic we need a huge proportion of the human family to be immunised in a relatively short period. If vaccination efforts are prolonged immunity may wan before their chances of meeting up with the virus again are eliminated. History will judge us harshly if we allow local selfish imperatives to dominate the vaccination program for the world.”
Crowdfunding for complementary and alternative medicine – What are cancer patients seeking? “These campaigners pass misinformation about the efficacy of CAM interventions to a wide audience through highly compelling testimonials.”
FSM Friends’ News and Articles
Legislative Alchemy – Undaunted by rejection in 2020, naturopaths return to state legislatures seeking licensing and practice expansion: For people who never went to medical school and who present themselves as an alternative to “mainstream medicine”, naturopaths in the USA continue to go to enormous lengths to gain drug prescription rights and call themselves doctors.
General
‘Epidemic of misinformation’ is eroding trust in institutions and media, finds a new survey: “Trust in information sources such as traditional media, search engines and social media has declined significantly over the last year to record lows.”
Great Moments in Health and Science
First reported clinical trial. James Lind: The man who helped to cure scurvy with lemons: Scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. James Lind’s experiment with citrus fruit was one of the first reported clinical trials in medicine.
Thanks to Science
The development of the PET Scan: A PET (positron emission tomography) scan is an imaging test used to diagnose certain diseases. Doctors use it to find tumours, diagnose heart disease, brain disorders and other conditions. PET scans can be used to look at your whole body, or just one area.
Lesser-known Health Professions
About Occupational Therapy: “Occupational therapy is a client-centred health profession that involves ongoing assessments to understand what activities you can do (and those you want to do), any current limitations, your goals/motivations and also to offer advice/techniques about how to do something more easily and safely.”