Speaking of which, one of the critiques from the commenters was that I said ‘cuz’, and how could you take anyone seriously who said that. Well this had come up before on this blog, and I reserve the right to say ‘cuz’ and ‘anyhoo’ and ‘lol’ and ‘ROTFL’, cuz, well, I want to. And if you don’t like it go read someone else’s blog. Cuz, well, what do you think this is, customer SERVICE?

He also accused me of being ‘cynical’ but a quick perusal of the lame and snarky comments he made unrelated to anything science based would put him in a fair competition for the title.

For instance he threw out my post ‘Breast cancer screening essentially useless’ (he has provided links to all of my posts so I won’t reproduce them here), saying that yes they may not be needed for everyone, namely me (as I am a male). Well obviously I am not going to get breast cancer screening, I was obviously referring to women, and the fact that screening does not reduce mortality, probably related to the fact that many of the “cancers” would not ever lead to any real disease, so women are getting over diagnosed and put under undue anxiety.

What is wrong with pointing out that breast cancer screening doesn’t save lives, and that the public info messaging is not accurate, so that people can decide for themselves? I don’t have any problem with that, do you?

They also accused me of being a “populist”, and “like Bill O’Reilly”. Well the fact that I write in a way that people can actually UNDERSTAND, I take as a compliment. As for O’Reilly, he is a right winger which I am not. As for their “science based blogs” like “The White Underground”, a quick perusal shows that they spend much of their time talking about their “kiddos”, which doesn’t have anything to do with science, and frankly if I want to read about kiddos I can go to pampers.com. They keep throwing out that I am ignoring evidence or not fact based but give no specific credible examples.

Next, my post on angioplasty being useless, he complains that the title of the blog doesn’t state that angioplasty is useful for people with acute coronary events. Well the body of the blog clearly states that, and I don’t think most people having acute cardiac events will read my blog anyway. But since I already had one other blogger MD go bananas over this (btw there are still billions of dollars of angioplasties performed on people with stable heart disease that are in fact useless) I will change the name of the blog. Stay tuned. Should be interesting.

Next, he throws rocks about taking aspirin to prevent heart disease, and mumbles something about my comprehension of primary and secondary prevention. Well only a rock head would tell you to take aspirin if you don’t have heart disease (which would be primary prevention, my friends. Secondary would be if you already have heart disease, and I never quibbled about that). If he wants to argue, go argue with Mrs. Bremner, who is a cardiovascular epidemiologist and has an article on the topic on F1000.

What else. I guess his main beef was with my blog “Flu shots are for idiots”. My main point was that advocates for the flu shot like the Centers for Disease Mongering (oops, I mean Control) for all population groups are not based on the evidence. So he ignores that main point, and focuses on those over 65, and cites a retrospective assessment of a database of those who did and did not get flu shots. Well that kind of analysis is potentially rife with confounders. The only way to see if something really works is with a randomized controlled trial (RCT), as we have learned from the sorry saga of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which was touted as great but the RCT showed to increase death. If you actually read the links he provides you see the problems with those studies.

The only real substantive critique he has is of my flippant comment that most people who die from the flu are the elderly who may have compromised immune function and won’t benefit anyway (he presents it like they WILL which is misleading). I still don’t think we know who amongst the elderly actually benefits. The fact is that CDC and public health agencies are telling EVERYONE to get a flu shot. And his comments about swine flu affecting children more therefore they need flu shots are egregious since it wasn’t around when I wrote that post, nor were some of the articles he claims I ignored. And I still don’t think kids should get flu shots since the mortality rate is not higher than the regular flu. And the comment that flu shots target more than one virus is lame since the point that it doesn’t cover all flu (maybe 25-50%) still holds.

So before you go calling names, come up with a substantive critique.