Comments on: Response to Peter Lipson MD of “Science” Based Blogs, My Blog Does Not Suck, Yours Does

By: Why I am Not Getting a Flu Shot This Year | Before You Take That Pill

Why I am Not Getting a Flu Shot This Year | Before You Take That Pill — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:42:42 +0000

[...] strike by Peter Lipson MD who wrote “Before You Trust That Blog” which I responded to here. Gorski later revealed that he had become incensed because my original blog “Flu Shots are [...]

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:58:27 +0000

Here let me quote my ‘original angioplasty post’ “angioplasty is not more effective than medication treatment alone in preventing heart attack and death in people with stable heart disease” that looks to me like I said “stable heart disease” but maybe I am seeing things, who knows. As for aspirin recommendations that those with 5 year risk of cardiac event of 3% or more take aspirin are not supported by the evidence.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60503-1/abstract

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:14:29 +0000

Dr. Bremner,

I stumbled upon this post through some other posts and decided to read both Lipson’s post and the posts he is referring to. I read the post on angioplasty and the one on aspirin. Allow me a bit of criticism, because I have to agree with Lipson on these.

On the angioplasty, nowhere in your own, original post do you make clear that your article only holds for acute, not for stable, coronary disease. This only becomes clear becomes someone in the comments points this out. Sorry, but if you’re going to accuse a whole professional group of doing something because of greed, the onus is upon you, not the commentators on the post, to get the facts right.

Similarly for your post on aspirin, I thought I’d track down the actual recommendations given. Those are not “just give aspirin to anyone aged 47 – 79, as I was led to believe in your post. Rather it is, give it to those in that age group if their chance on coronary events is above x and their chance of intestinal bleeding is below y. This is a decidedly different recommendation than the one you are criticizing and therefore your criticism is quite misleading.

You state that you write for a lay audience. But you neglect informing us (the lay audience) about the risk-benefit decision making that underlies the recommendations and research that you write about. This is not something all of us understand and neglecting this knowledge gap does a disservice to your audience.

By: henry

henry — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:43:33 +0000

http://www.seattlewomanmagazine.com/articles/may07-7.htm
for a broader look at Gardasil.

By: henry

henry — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:00:38 +0000

Try and leave aside the criminal nature of the current marketing of Gardasil and concentrate on the merits of the vaccine itself. The whole point of Gardasil is to vaccinate girls while they are still virgins. There isn’t any point in vaccinating them once they have acquired HPV. The vaccine PREVENTS infection, it doesn’t cure it. Also, taking reports from VAERS as meaning causality is contrary to the whole purpose of the system. Any reaction that occurs after a vaccine, no matter how unlikely it is to have been caused by the vaccine, must be reported. These are preliminary reports of events that happened within a time frame that makes it possible they were associated with the vaccine. They have yet to be investigated to see whether they were coincidental or caused by the vaccine.
The real crime here is not the vaccine, but the outrageous price and the profits that are being made from it. In developing countries which are in greatest need of this vaccine, the cost is prohibitive.
As for boys getting the vaccine, it is not just about preventing venereal warts, it is about making them equally responsible for preventing the spread of HPV.

By: Stephany

Stephany — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:44:44 +0000

Gardasil has death and convulsions as a side effect from the vaccine and it is being pushed onto 12-13 yr old girls sometimes as a pre-requisite to entering junior high school, mandatory vaccine with side effects for cervical cancer prevention for girls who are mostly still virgins.

Now onto the boys and their genital warts, and Cervarix, GSK’s version was just approved. Once again, a marketing pimping happening, approved by the FDA, what a joke.

Now that was off-topic, but someone brought it up here so why not comment about it. Trust the researchers? or the companies that have pushed this vaccine? I don’t.

Keep up the great blunt humor here Bremner, some people wear white coats and are so damn arrogant, like Dr. Stroganoff.

By: Angioplasty

Angioplasty — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:50:14 +0000

Loved everything you said. Then again if we all stopped being lazy and exercised a bit we’d all be in a better boat.

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:02:09 +0000

of course, you’re cynical. how could you not be in a world where the FDA just approved Gardasil for boys! your cynicism is one of the reasons we read (and love!) you

Gardasil was approved for the prevention of penile cancer. I’m curious — why is this a bad thing?

By: Eddie Vos

Eddie Vos — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:40:34 +0000

Hello Doug, you still run an excellent blog and please don’t let this fellow PAL get under your skin. Instead of him running a positive and creative blog, he occasionally [often] gets into insulting people, and not pulling excessively rude postings by anonymous others, while not backing up nonsensical statements of his own. Paraphrasing: “the US diet contains an excess of all [the nutrients] you need” and nothing could be done to have him give a single study in support [there are none]. I walked when the insults got too gross – followed by a snarky comment by PAL himself.

So, keep up the good works and, P.S., my response to Ridker’s JUPITER article is now also on the CircOutcomes site with a brief response by the latter. Cheers, Eddie

By: gr8googlymoogly

gr8googlymoogly — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:52:04 +0000

“Ah yes, another comment from one of the science-based barfers…”.

Well, ‘barf’ jokes ALMOST count as much as fart jokes. Touche, ‘Dr.’ Bremner!!