Health bloggers get conned by Wellsphere

Up to 1700 bloggers signed away the intellectual propert rights to their blogs to Wellsphere. They were slipped up by the following clause in the Ts and Cs:

…All Website Materials, including any intellectual property rights in such Website Materials, are the property of Wellsphere, its affiliates, licensors, or the designated owners, and are protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You should assume that everything you see on this Website is copyrighted unless otherwise noted, and may not be used without our written permission except as provided in these Terms…

A great blog on the subject is on betterhealth, which includes some of the letters that Geoff Rutledge, a physician working for wellsphere, sent to bloggers.

1700 bloggers!! Geoff was a busy man.

More dementia ‘breakthroughs’ as failed drugs go unreported

BBC News reports on rember, a new drug for dementia that shows promising results in a phase II trial. Another trial suggests that statins might prevent or delay the onset of dementia.

New therapies for dementia seem to be coming along thick and fast (eg dimebon) and the press love to write stories about them. But how many of them actually work? Take tarenflurbil for instance. As recently as June, BBC News reported on this exciting new drug:

Experimental drugs are being hailed as a potentially exciting step forward in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. The drugs, still in clinical trials, form a new class called gamma-secretase modulators (GSM). Doctors are in the third and final phase of trials on human volunteers to test the first GSM, a molecule called tarenflurbil, branded as Flurizan.

Unfortunately, trials on tarenflurbil have been abandoned since the trial “had failed to achieve statistical significance on either of its two primary endpoints”. This is according to the press release from the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease – the same conference where rember was presented. So why did the BBC not report on this as well?

BBC caption which says it all: "Jimmy Hardie used to mistakenly put sugar in the fridge"

YouTube video shows doctors laughing and cheering as spray can is removed from patient’s rectum

This week’s Private Eye features a startling story from the Philippines. (The story has been around since April but this is the first time I’ve heard of it)

Jan-Jan, a florist from Cebu City told a press conference (as quoted in The Eye):

“I got very drunk on New Year’s Eve and paid a male prostitute 100 pesos for a night of sex. But an argument started when I criticised the size of his wang, and before I knew what was happening, he shoved an aerosol can of Black Suede body spray right up my bottom, where I could not reach…When I awoke next day, I knew something was very wrong. So I told my family what was happening and went to the Vicente Sotto Medical Centre, expecting professional courtesy and sympathy for a victim of sexual abuse. But instead, a dozen doctors and nurses stood around pointing and jeering at me while the can was being removed, and took a video of the entire operation which ended up for several weeks on YouTube.”

The Sun-Star newspaper goes on:

The unauthorized 2:54-minute video of a noisy operating room shows VSMMC doctors and nurses laughing, giggling and cheering. At one point, a hand appears with a cell phone camera taking a close-up picture of the surgery. As a doctor gingerly pulls out the six-inch long canister from the male patient’s rectum, someone shouts, “Baby out!” amid loud cheers. The doctor then removes the canister cap and sprays the contents toward the crowd of nurses and doctors viewing the procedure.

Readers with a strong stomach can watch it on YouTube.

Updated gold guide published

The Gold Guide, aka ‘A Reference Guide for Postgraduate Specialty Training in the UK’ was re-published this week. The guide clarifies amendments to speciality training made this year and includes a list of the specialties that have been uncoupled (all of them as far as i can tell) and confirms that FTSTA’s will be phased out, only remaining in areas where a two year training post cannot be arranged.

Download the document here or read more about it in this BMJ article.

Skin cancer excision in primary care scare

The Times reports that having skin cancers removed by GPs may not as effective as having it done in hospital by a dermatologist:

Dr Helena Malhomme dela Roche, who carried out the study, said: “The incomplete excision rates for patients with high-risk BCC managed by GPs is unacceptably high at 54 per cent.”

Dr Elisabeth Fraser-Andrews, one of the authors of a study of BCC surgery in Essex, said: “The proportion of BCCs excised in primary care is low, showing that patients receive sub-optimal treatment in primary care compared with secondary care.

The article rightly points out that auditing of GPs practice, especially when it comes to skin cancers, is of vital importance. It does not, however, tell us the size of the study or give GPs the opportunity to respond.

LED helmet cures dementia!

I remember talking to someone about this device – i think her dad was involved with the project. I thought she was making it up, but apparently not, as this article in The Daily Mail proves. How wearing 700 LEDs for 20 minutes a day can reverse dementia is beyond me. I eagerly await the randomised controlled trials.

Hello world!

Welcome to Doctor Jo’s blog. Please forgive me for the weak pseudonym.