New Treatment for Sore Throat

Well according to American singer-songwriter Suzi Quatro, "I used to get a lot of sore throats and then one of my sisters told me that all illnesses start in the colon. I started taking a daily colon cleanser powder mixed with fresh juice every morning and it made an enormous difference," Quatro told the Daily Mail newspaper.

It is unclear how many ounces of juice, what type of juice, and grams of colon cleansing powder was required to obtain this beneficial effect.

For her outstanding contribution to pseudo-science, she was awarded the prestigious 2011 SAS.

(If you haven't figured it out already, daily colon cleanser powder does NOT help with sore throats. However, there are rare situations where colon diseases like Crohn's Disease can cause throat problems including soreness and swallowing problems.)

Source:
Whale sperm, orgasmic feet top 2011 bad science list. Reuters 12/28/11

Even Kids Can Spot Adult Bull^!#$& ... And Publish It in a Medical Journal!

Though often adults find kids to lack intellectual rigor and devoid of rational thought, sometimes it's the other way around.

Take Emma Rosa, age 9, who debunked the idea of therapeutic touch back in 1998. She watched a TV program about nurses who practise “Therapeutic Touch”, claiming they can detect and manipulate “human energy field” by hovering their hands above a patient. Emma recognized this adult nonsense and conducted a scientific study for a 4th grade science fair to not only prove it, but also publish her results in a peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA. She found that 21 experienced practitioners of therapeutic touch were unable to no more than chance able to detect a human hand under their right or left hand hidden by a screen (so the therapist can't see).

There are other instances where kids have similarly debunked quack medical treatments, though not necessarily published in a scientific journal. Take Rhys Morgan, age 15, who after being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and while internet searching on this topic to educate himself, came across Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) that claimed to cure not only Crohn's, but also cancer, Aids, malaria, and basically most things short of actual death. Being 15, he was able to do his own research to evaluate this "amazing" treatment through which he discovered that MMS is in essence industrial bleach. Rhys has since campaigned hard to eliminate MMS.

Beyond quackery, I often see it in my ENT clinic where elementary school-aged kids offer utterly profound observations that go way beyond their years.

In a time when potential leaders and politicians are espousing claims in the media that lack rational thought and intellectual rigor (watch the news) and even the educational system is being attacked for teaching scientific principles like evolution in favor of Biblical explanations, I sometimes wonder if we need children like Emma Rosa and Rhys Morgan to come to our rescue even if we are adults who should know better.


Reference:
A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch. JAMA. 1998;279(13):1005-1010. doi: 10.1001/jama.279.13.1005

The man who encourages the sick and dying to drink industrial bleach. Guardian.co.uk Wednesday 15 September 2010 07.30 EDT

Why Does Medical Science Keep Changing Its Mind???

I read with interest a blog post by Robert Krulwich of NPR fame on why there is so much public resistance to accept changes in truth with new scientific discoveries (some of which was new to even me)...

1) Triceratops with their beautifully placed 3 horns is actually the teenage dinosaur version of the adult Torosaurus (who had ugly asymmetric horns). Now... a decision had to be made regarding which name to stick with. Ultimately, "Triceratops" won out, perhaps because of the "Save the Triceratops" Facebook page???

2) The same unfortunately is not true for the Brontosaurus. It was clear that Apatosaurus is the same dinosaur and as such, the "Brontosaurus" name is no more much to the dismay of many lay public...

3) Pluto is no longer a planet... tell that to many elementary school children who are still being taught Pluto is the ninth planet in the solar system.

Well... guess what... The same is true in the ENT medical world... Here's a few of my favorites:

1) We all have FOUR tonsils... not two as many people think. The four tonsils are:

• Two palatine tonsils located in the back of the mouth
• Adenoid (aka, nasopharyngeal tonsil) which is located in the back of the nose
• Lingual tonsil which is located on the back of the tongue

2) The tongue is able to sense four different taste qualities -- sweet, bitter, sour, and salty. Now hold on... don't forget about umami (or savory added in 1985) which brings it up to five taste sensations... Oooops... there's now possibly a sixth simply called "calcium" which has been proposed in 2008 (but not official yet, but maybe soon).

3) How many sinus cavities are there? Most people are aware of the frontal, maxillary, ethmoid, and sphenoid sinus cavities. You ask an ENT that question and they'll probably answer the same... but if you press harder for other sinus cavities beyond those basic 4? You just might get them to start listing the agger nasi cell, onodi cell, haller cell, concha bullosa, etc.

For that matter, most people believe the nose is just an empty cavity that connects to the sinuses for drainage and allows breathing. Not so fast... The nose contains a midline wall called the septum that divides the nasal cavity left and right. Within each side, there are 3 sets of turbinate tissue (inferior, middle, and superior). For awhile, even in the ENT world, there's been debate whether the superior and even a supreme turbinate is present.

The take home message here is that science constantly evolves and is never quite the universal truth people think it is. It is ever-evolving and changing... just like the iPhone or your computer's microchip.

However, it is not as bad as it used to be... After all, people believed the earth to be flat and that the sun rotated around the earth for centuries... to think or say otherwise resulted in scientists being even executed or arrested!