November 2011 Picture Puzzles – Answers
1. Free For All (or, All for Nothing)
2. This Above All
3. Go Up In Smoke
4. Play Misty For Me
5. Way over the line
6. Once Upon a Time
7. South of the Border
Month: October 2011
“Mixed Bag” November 2011 Answers
1. a) berates / rebates b) waste/sweat c) claimed/decimal
2. a) band b) will
3. Tamworth
4. Oils
5. quire
6. prayers
7. Aramaic
8. Rainy Days and Mondays
9. Ronald Reagan
10. He didn’t exist – the poems were a hoax on the publisher, written as a spoof on the current fashionable trends in poetry.
November 2011 Crossword Solution
(click on the grid to enlarge it)
Giving the Tiger Some Teeth – A Forum
It’s no secret that this site has been heavily involved in Alt Med issues recently – partly due to circumstance, and partly because we’ve taken some initiatives.
A great source of frustration is that statutory regulatory bodies like the Therapeutic Goods Administration can’t (or won’t) provide real consumer protection in ensuring that alternative medical products live up to their claims.
Vic Skeptics have arranged a forum to investigate this issue, on Wednesday evening 16th November at La Notte Restaurant in Carlton, featuring a distinguished panel:
Dr Stephen Basser
Dr Ken Harvey
Dr Michael Vagg
Loretta Marron
Further details, including how to book: HERE
The Pharmacy Guild Deal with Blackmores
by
Dr Ken Harvey
The Pharmacy Guild says its deal to promote Blackmores complementary medicines (CMs) has been withdrawn in view of “media reporting of the endorsement which was ill-informed and inflammatory”. My own view is that the deal itself was ill-informed and inflammatory. It involved an undisclosed payment by Blackmores to enable GuildCare dispensing software to prompt pharmacists entering prescriptions to on-sell Blackmores “Companion” products.
The four Guild-endorsed Blackmores products were a probiotic to be promoted with antibiotics, zinc with blood pressure drugs, coenzyme Q10 with vitamin D3 for statins and magnesium with proton pump inhibitors.
The National Prescribing Service (NPS) and others have pointed out that there is no good evidence to support the routine use of these supplements with the prescription drugs targeted.
In addition, this practice would unnecessarily add to the “medication burden” experienced by many patients taking multiple drugs, including compliance difficulties, increased cost and potential drug interactions.
Finally, it presents ethical problems for GuildCare (who were recommending one brand only) and for individual pharmacists (who would benefit financially if they went along with prompts that may not be in their patient’s best interest).
Several polls have shown that View More The Pharmacy Guild Deal with Blackmores
Skeptics In the Pubs – How are We Travelling?
You’d have to say “very well”.
Victoria has adopted the “Skeptics In The Pub” idea with enthusiasm. If you turn to the back page of your latest Skeptic magazine , you’ll see that of the eight new Australian regional groups listed, six are in Victoria.
We’ve discussed Skeptics in the Pubs before;
Your Very Own Skeptics In the Pub
Here’s a brief look at each group in alphabetical order.
Pharmacy Guild / Blackmore’s Deal Defunct
RMIT (Not So) Open Day
(Part Two)
by Mal Vickers
And so it was, I went along to RMIT’s Open Day on August 14, 2011, with my camera, voice recorder and some prepared questions. As any good skeptical researcher would do, I went searching for the evidence and for the experts that might help me find it.
Surely, if there is any up-to-date science behind chiropractic the leaders of chiropractic teaching in Australia would know? Would I be the one to eat humble pie and change my mind if the science had come of age?
The Chiropractic Department at RMIT is housed on the Bundoora Campus, Bundoora is a suburb in the outer north of the Melbourne metropolitan area.
As you would expect of any university open day, there were the usual information booths, people helping with directions and information, tours of the facilities etc. I took a tour of Building 213, the Chiropractic Clinic. On the outside, the sign said Building 213 was the School of Health Sciences, Teaching Clinics. Although once you’re inside, a different sign states RMIT, 
Complementary Medicine Clinics. (How does that song go? ‘things that make you go, hmmmmmm’) Interestingly, the building is also shared with RMIT’s Chinese Medicine Clinic.
Inside the many chiropractic treatment rooms, were ‘trigger points’ charts. They look like a cross between genuine science-based anatomical charts and reflexology charts. I don’t wish to get to side-tracked, so if the reader desires, you can side-track yourself and read about the chiropractic idea of ‘trigger points’ on Wikipedia.
It was rather confronting to observe pseudoscience being so openly View More RMIT (Not So) Open Day