Continuing to commemorate the World Homeopathy Awareness Week (WHAW)…
I came across this paper (Homeopathy, 2009, 98:267-79), which explores the utility of mouse models in homeopathy research, looked at the putative efficacy of homeopathic drugs against radiation-, cytotoxicity-, genotoxicity- and oxidative stress induced damage. I was particularly curious about this paper because of my long association with mouse models in various infectious diseases.
I am a bit late to the party. I have been meaning to write up several posts to commemorate the occasion of the World Homeopathy Awareness Week (April 10-17, 2010), but haven’t been able to manage the time until now.
It has been a while since I last posted on homeopathy. Frankly speaking, having written about it quite a bit, I have grown kinda tired of the utterly unscientific, nonsensical nature of homeopathy, and foolishness of its relentless proponents. However, a few days ago on Twitter, my attention was brought to a whole new level of ridiculousness in this quackery modality, and I found it concerning anew because of what it implies for the hapless, gullible and vulnerable patients desperately seeking medical care. Today’s short post touches on this.
A paper published last month in PLOS One by a group of investigators from the University of Verona in Italy states that Arnica montana Stimulates Extracellular Matrix Gene Expression in a Macrophage Cell Line Differentiated to Wound-Healing Phenotype. Given my abiding interest in pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, I was suitably intrigued because the extract derived from Arnica montana, a European flowering plant of the sunflower family, is likely to be biologically active due to the presence of certain sesquiterpene lactones (same class of substances as present in the plant-derived anti-malarial Artemisinin), the plant metabolite flavonoids (substances with some in vitro anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory activity), and derivatives of thymol (phenolic substance with antimicrobial action). Like many bioactive phytopharmaceutical substances, Helenalins, the sesquiterpene lactones and their fatty acyl esters in Arnica montana, are toxic in high concentrations, but have anti-inflammatory properties via its inhibition of the transcription factor NFkB.
It all started with a silly article that had landed in my inbox on Friday morning via the platform called ‘Medium’. The lede of the article in the Pacific Standard magazine by Elena Gooray asked: How do you beat a curse? It caught my eye even in the middle of an eye-roll. I wish it hadn’t. Because inevitably I caught the sub-lede: A practiced Santa Barbara psychic weighs in on Lil B’s so far effective curse against basketball superstar Kevin Durant. And my hackles were raised.
Those who read my regular posts (Yes, that rare breed of people…) are amply aware that I am no fan of pseudoscience and quackery, as well as the relentless invasion of quackery into academia, leading invariably to scientifically implausible, nonsensical “research”, for which Dr. Harriet Hall had aptly coined the term “Tooth Fairy Science” several years ago over at Science Based Medicine.
Nasal allergies (a.k.a. Allergic Rhinitis, or hay fever) represent a frequent allergic disorder that reduces the sufferer’s quality of life, and has harsh economic implications in terms of healthcare costs and social productivity.
Poor wee “All Natural”, “Herbal” dietary supplements — ‘safe and effective’ alternative medical modalities so beloved of the pseudoscience aficionados and woomeisters all over the world: they can’t get a break!
On June 2, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public warning – via its Medication Health Fraud webpage – against 6 over-the-counter products for ‘Sexual Enhancement’, its second-largest single-day set of warning in this particular category. (The largest-yet set was warnings against 7 products in June last year.)
Two things I encountered today, good and bad in equal measures. First, the good.
In the recent past, I received an invitation for reviewing a submitted manuscript from a noted journal (which shall remain nameless). The topic of the study verged on pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, both areas of knowledge that I – as an erstwhile drug discovery researcher in another lifetime – find fascinating. I accepted the invitation to review because the study piqued my interest.
Via Teh Grauniad, science correspondent Ian Sample reported today on a phenomenon that is at once hilarious and extremely concerning for the academic science research community.
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