A viral cause for chronic fatigue syndrome?

A study published in Science last week reports finding a high incidence of XMRV in patients with chronic fatigue. XMRV stands for “xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related” virus and is a retrovirus which seems to have jumped species from mice to men.
Dr. Mikovits and researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic reported in [...]

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Placebo…..more complicated than you’d expect!

Oh how little we understand about the so-called “placebo response”. Here’s an interesting study to throw into the mix. Apparently, the actual symptoms experienced by “placebo responders” in clinical trials accurately mimic the drugs being tested. The likely ill-effects reported by those who took a placebo in a trial are likely to be just like [...]

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Causation

Was HPV vaccination responsible for the death of that little girl in England last week? We live in a society where simplistic and judgmental conclusions seem to be both valued and common. In response to that news story you’ll have read some people argue that the vaccine isn’t safe, and others argue that it had [...]

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Forest

SCOTLAND

JAPAN

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Vitality + Resilience = Health

There really are many definitions of health, and that’s not a bad thing. Such a complex phenomenon cannot be wholly understood by the use of a sound bite, a mission statement, or a simple formula. However, a simple statement or formula can provoke thought, change a perspective, or shine a light on a poorly understood [...]

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Questions about the UK swine flu strategy

How accurate are the published figures about swine flu?
Once the decision was taken to skip swabs and diagnose on symptoms only, the figures have likely to have become very unreliable. Is anyone objectively studying the percentage of those who have a swine flu diagnosis from the questionnaire only, who actually have evidence of swine flu [...]

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Iris at work

….stepped out into the garden at work and look what I found!

(emerveillement)

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The financial cost of homeopathy

Both Channel 4’s “more4news” and the NHS Confederation today contributed to the ongoing attack on homeopathy in the NHS by claiming that removing homeopathic care from the NHS would make a useful contribution to improving the NHS finances. Are they serious?
According to more4news the NHS in England spent about £3.5 million pounds a year on [...]

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Diversity

Look at these daffodils.
All daffodils, but all so different.

I love and am endlessly amazed by the diversity of Nature.
I am reminded every day how different we all are. Every patient I meet tells me a new story, one I’ve never heard before. The appeal of diversity and difference, of uniqueness, is probably one of the [...]

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When what you see isn’t what you should treat…

Patients present their problems to doctors as stories. Stories are the way we attempt to communicate what’s invisible – the inner, subjective reality that only we can experience. Take pain as an example. There is no way to see pain, or to experience another person’s pain. There are no instruments to measure it. So when [...]

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