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November 1st, 2011, 10:47 am

Breaking Down the Health Risks from Radiation

Most of what we know about radiation injury comes from the 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine. After a nuclear accident, people can be exposed to radioactive iodine and cesium. Some of the expected health risks from exposure:

Acute radiation sickness

Heavy radiation exposure can cause an illness that gets worse over several days. It causes these symptoms:

Vomiting
Bloody diarrhea
Fatigue and weakness
Rash
Poor wound healing
Crippling of the immune system

This illness can result in death from infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) and a group called the Chernobyl Forum studied the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. In the first year, about 350,000 people helped to clean up the radiation. These people accounted for most of those with heavy exposure. In all, 134 developed acute radiation sickness. In the first year after exposure, 28 died.

Thyroid cancer

The thyroid gland in the neck absorbs and stores radioactive iodine. We can inhale this chemical or absorb it through the skin. We also can swallow it in contaminated food or in milk from exposed dairy cows. Thyroid cancer was the major health result from the Chernobyl accident. Experts estimate that 5,000 cases occurred. Higher rates of this cancer began to appear 4 years later. It was especially common among exposed children. This increase occurred across a very large area -- up to 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Chernobyl. Thyroid cancer can be detected early and cured with surgery.

Taking iodine viagra cialis online pharmacy pharmacy at the time of a radiation exposure can help to prevent thyroid cancer. These tablets saturate the thyroid gland with iodine. This means it can't absorb the radioactive iodine. The body clears it out quickly through urine. After the Chernobyl accident, nearby Poland gave iodine pills to millions of its people. This action certainly helped to prevent some thyroid cancers.

Leukemia

Radiation also doubles the risk of leukemia for people with high exposure, such as clean-up crews. This was seen after Chernobyl and also after the atomic bombings in Japan.

Other cancers

The risk for other cancers also is increased. But this adds only a very small fraction to a person's total cancer risk, experts say.

Cataracts

Cataracts can result after fairly small exposures to radiation.

Social displacement and anxiety

The most widespread health impact of a nuclear accident is from the evacuation of people. Food and housing become scarce. People also are vulnerable to epidemics of infection.
The most important step that Japan will take if a reactor releases much radiation will be to evacuate nearby areas.

People in the area where a nuclear accident occurs also can take iodine tablets. This could greatly reduce the number of thyroid cancers. Iodine tablets can cause minor side effects. These include rash and stomach ache. Some people have severe allergic reactions to iodine.

Iodine tablets are not for everyone. They are only recommended for people younger than age 40 who are close enough to an accident to have a very large radiation exposure. This would be higher than 5 centi-Gray units, or cGy.

Iodine is not recommended for people exposed to less radiation.

Radioactive iodine breaks down quickly. The WHO report about Chernobyl says that having children stop drinking milk from local cows could have prevented most of the health problems from that accident.

October 29th, 2011, 09:29 am

Medical Quackery Meets Legal Quackery

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's lawsuits that are only filed to intimidate people into silence. Well, there are lots of things that I can't stand, actually, but this one sucks because, not only does it inconvenience the people who run web sites and news businesses, but it often deprives us, the readers, of useful information. Hiring lawyers is expensive, even when all you have to do is show up and ask the legal equivalent of "why are they wasting our time by filing this suit?"

A case in point is a suit recently filed by a medical laboratory that was accused of fulfilling requests for tests of dubious medical value. The lab, Doctor's Data, Inc. (DDI), was identified as having performed such a test by Steven Barrett, a retired psychiatrist according to his web bio, who runs a website named Quackwatch. The article begins:

Many patients are falsely told that their body has dangerously high levels of lead, mercury, or other heavy metals and should be "detoxified" to reduce these levels. This article explains how a urine test is used to defraud patients.

The report pictured to the right is a "urine toxic metals" test from Doctor's Data, a Chicago-based laboratory that caters to chelation therapists and other offbeat practitioners. The patient who gave it to me was told that his mercury and lead levels were high and should be reduced with EDTA chelation therapy.

How the "Urine Toxic Metals" Test Is Used to Defraud Patients

Chelation, incidentally, is a treatment where chemicals are introduced into a patient for the purpose of removing metals from his body. What that does is raise the level of mercury detected in the subject's urine:

In contrast, Doctor's Data uses reference values of less than 3 ug/g for mercury and 5 ug/g for lead. Standard laboratories that process non-provoked samples use much higher reference ranges [4,5], which means that if all other things were equal, Doctor's Data is far more likely than standard labs to report "elevated" levels. But that's not all. A disclaimer at the bottom of the above lab report states—in boldfaced type!—that "reference ranges are representative of a healthy population under non-challenge or nonprovoked conditions." In other words, they should not be applied to specimens that were obtained after provocation. Also note that the specimen was obtained over a 6-hour period, not the standard 24-hour period, which raised the reported level even higher.

How the "Urine Toxic Metals" Test Is Used to Defraud Patients

As befits a medical site, it goes on for some length about why this isn't a valid test. The upshot is that a patient who was given this test would assume he had unhealthy levels of mercury or other heavy metals in his body, when that was not really the case. Several states, according to Dr. Barrett, have found that using this form of test was worthy of censure or suspension of a doctor's license.

To make matters worse, one of the cures for excess heavy metal toxicity is chelation, which has some dangerous potential side effects:

Absolutely! All chelating agents have both minor and potentially life threatening side effects. They must be used under the supervision of a physician in a hospital setting.

Side effects of CaNa2-EDTA include: [kidney damage, loss of nutrient metals like iron and zinc, skin peeling]

Your online pharmacy viagra: Chelation Therapy

It's not something you want to go through if you don't have to.

Orac, who writes the medical blog Respectful Insolence, takes up the tale from there:

[P]rovoked urine testing is a bogus test. According to Dr. Barrett, only does DDI use reference ranges for unprovoked urine tests, values that are utterly meaningless for provoked urine testing, but it uses reference ranges that are lower than what is commonly accepted by reputable laboratories and academic medical centers. This combination of factors virtually guarantees that it will produce many "positive" results for "elevated" mercury and other heavy metals in the urine, which practitioners can then apply dubious therapies, such as chelation therapy, to treat. Obviously DDI disputes this, but it doesn't provide any quality scientific data to do so, in my opinion. Consequently, in my view, what DDI does in essence is to do a technically sound measurement of mercury and heavy metals in the urine but on urine specimens collected using a completely inappropriate methodology that is not scientifically or medically valid.

More Legal Thuggery

As you might expect, DDI took action, which was to sue Dr. Barrett. They sent a cease and desist letter to Dr. Barrett which did not identify the specific things they found wrong with his article. The letter is reprinted in that link, by the way. Barrett requested that they identify the portions of the article that they found objectionable, and he would try to correct it if possible. They did not. As Orac explains:

This is typical. Note that [DDI lawyer Algis] Augustine doesn't actually list which specific parts of Dr. Barrett's article are incorrect, false, fraudulent or otherwise not truthful in the view of his client. Doctor's Data doesn't appear to be interested in accuracy, at least not if the letter from its lawyer is any indication. It appears far more interested in shutting up the opposition, of purging the Internet of material that can be used against it in the lawsuit it is facing in Texas. The rest of the text of the letter comes close to actually admitting this.

More Legal Thuggery

Which is what honks me off. As I said, lawyers are expensive. This kind of lawsuit, commonly referred to as strategic lawsuits against public participation or SLAPP suits, are discouraged in some states by making the losing party in such suits pay all court costs. But that's not true everywhere. According to John Pieret, an attorney who runs the site Thoughts In A Haystack, DDI's case has little merit. In his first reaction, he wrote:

As I explained in my post about the the suit by the doyen of the anti-vaccination movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, against Dr. Paul Offit, under US libel law, specific words must be alleged that make a factual claim about a person. Complaining that you are described as part of a class of people who are irrational, uneducated, unscientific, controlled by fear and/or a danger to public health is not enough to allege defamation under US law.

So, saying that someone is "catering" to loonies "nonstandard practitioners" is not good enough. Not only is that not a factual claim, but no reasonable person could interpret that as anything other than a statement of opinion, which is fully protected speech under the First Amendment. As I pointed out before, even calling someone a "pathological liar" is protected speech, so it is hard to see how calling someone a 'caterer' could rise to the level of defamation.

This Could Take Awhile

In a later article, he added:

The Doctor's Data, Inc. (DDI) suit against Dr. Stephen J. Barrett and his excellent resources Quackwatch and The National Council Against Health Fraud is a piece of work. It's not loony-tunes, like the Institute for Creation Research's lawsuit against the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. In some ways, it is much worse. It is a professionally drafted complaint that throws plenty of s**t against the wall in hopes that something might stick. It is nothing but (a lot of) smoke and mirrors in furtherance of an obvious SLAPP suit.

The DDI DDIdn't

It appears that John hasn't quite gotten all the way through the complaint yet, so he may have additional thoughts. I doubt, though, that this basic opinion will change.

Which means that there's a website that needs help. Quackwatch provides a valuable service, which is to warn us against the sort of quackery that this lab seems to be enabling. Letting miscreants intimidate expert bloggers into silence will only make it that much harder to get honest information.

So, if you can, please drop a bit of change at Quackwatch's contributions page.

UPDATE: John Pieret was kind enough to add this in a comment:

Just so you know, I've been through all the allegations of fact and I don't see any viable actions for libel. But the plaintiff has included claims for "restraint of trade" under Federal law, "trademark dilution," "consumer fraud" and "deceptive trade practices" under Illinois law, "tortious interference with contracts," "fraud" and "civil conspiracy." None of those should survive a determination that Barrett was exercising his freedom of speech but they introduce nuances that I'm not yet willing to pontificate on.

Medical Quackery Meets Legal Quackery: Comment #1

Thanks for that update, John. As a non-lawyer, it's hard for me to believe they'd have much of a case with any of that, but the courts seem to make a habit of surprising me.

May 24th, 2011, 07:50 am

How Viagra Works

Sexual Health Medicine-1

cheap viagra cialis (Sildenafil) was approved by the Food and Drug administration (FDA) in 1998 and was the first drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Given as an oral medication, 9 tablets are dispensed every second worldwide and Pfizer, the manufacturer of the drug says that millions of men have been helped to improve their sex lives. Impotence, or erectile dysfunction, is a problem that affects most men at some time in their lives. Viagra is a drug for those whose problem is not resolving in the short term and who have been advised by their doctor that it is a safe drug for them to try.

How Viagra Works

Originally studied for the use in people with high blood pressure and cardiac problems the drug was found to have a very interesting side effect. Viagra increases the blood flow to the penis and enables a man to maintain an erection for at least 4 hours. It only works if the man is sexually stimulated so will not cause an erection by just taking the pill.

Cost Viagra

Viagra costs about anywhere from $5 dollars per pill, but market forces and source can vary the price considerably.

How to take it

The medication is taken in pill form by mouth. One Viagra tablet can be taken in 24 hours, it will usually work within 30 minutes to 1 hour and lasts about 4 hours.

Common side effects

The most common side effects are headache, facial flushing, dizziness, visual problems such as blurred vision, bluish vision and sensitivity to light, nasal congestion, an upset stomach.

Viagra can be dangerous

Do not take Viagra if you use nitrate drugs. These types of drugs used to treat cardiac problems such as angina can if used in combination with Viagra cause the blood pressure to drop to unsafe, sometimes life threatening levels.

People with cardiac problems, anatomical malformations of the penis such as Peyronie's disease, men with a predisposition to prolonged erections caused by sickle cell anemia, multiple myeloma (a form of cancer), leukemia, liver problems (especially severe liver disorders), kidney problems and people taking certain medications used for HIV or those over 65 should NEVER take the drug unless prescribed by a medical practioner. Deaths have occurred during sexual activity in men using the drug.

Viagra is one of the medications that has revolutionized the treatment of erectile dysfunction. It has allowed those who where unable to maintain an erection or only able to have partial erections enjoy a better

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