Skeptical reporter @ 2013-03-08

Skeptical Reporter for March 8th, 2013 Continuing their raid on quacks and faith healers, health officials in India nabbed as many as 36 persons this week. The officials said a self-proclaimed doctor they cayght had more medicines than food items in his kitchen. The quack was identified as M K Singh who fled from the spot when he saw the team arriving. His neighbours told the health team that Singh retired as a sweeper from a central public sector undertaking. Chief medical offices Dr Yadav said, "These so-called doctors are playing with the health of the rural people. The quacks not only fleece them, they spoil their medical condition. In many cases, the quacks are to be blamed for the death of patients." He revealed that his teams had to face resistance at three different places. In Kakori, the superintendent of the community health centre heading the team was held hostage by the employees of Seher nursing home. Officials in the health team revealed that the quacks were well connected. In many places, the moment the health team cracked down, cell phones of the team leaders started ringing. "Politicians and their aides used all sorts of measures to deter us. Block pramukhs and government officials also pleaded for certain quacks," said a deputy chief medical officer who preferred to remain anonymous. The tsunami that engulfed northeastern Japan two years ago has left some survivors believing they are seeing ghosts. But in a society like Japan’s, where people are wary of admitting to mental problems, many are turning to exorcists for help. Tales of spectral figures lined up at shops where now there is only rubble are what psychiatrists say is a reaction to fear after the March 11, 2011, disaster in which nearly 19,000 people were killed. "The places where people say they see ghosts are largely those areas completely swept away by the tsunami," said Keizo Hara, a psychiatrist in the city of Ishinomaki, one of the areas worst-hit by the waves. In some places destroyed by the tsunami, people have reported seeing ghostly apparitions queuing outside supermarkets which are now only rubble. Taxi drivers said they avoided the worst-hit districts for fear of picking up phantom passengers. An analysis of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America has revealed how the centers manage to promise survival rates better than national averages after turning away patients. CTCA is not unique in turning away patients. A lot of doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers in the United States decline to treat people who can't pay, or have inadequate insurance, among other reasons. What sets CTCA apart is that rejecting certain patients and, even more, culling some of its patients from its survival data lets the company tout in ads and post on its website patient outcomes that look dramatically better than they would if the company treated all comers. CTCA reports on its website that the percentage of its patients who are alive after six months, a year, 18 months and longer regularly tops national figures. For instance, 60 percent of its non-small-cell lung cancer patients are alive at six months, CTCA says, compared to 38 percent nationally. And 64 percent of its prostate cancer patients are alive at three years, versus 38 percent nationally. Such claims are misleading, according to nine experts in cancer and medical statistics who were asked to review CTCA's survival numbers and its statistical methodology. The experts were unanimous that CTCA's patients are different from other patients, in a way that skews their survival data. It has relatively few elderly patients, even though cancer is a disease of the aged. It has almost none who are uninsured or covered by Medicaid - patients who tend to die sooner if they develop cancer and who are comparatively numerous in national statistics. Accepting only selected patients and calculating survival outcomes from only some of them "is a huge bias and gives an enormous advantage to...