Medical research in the news

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These skeptics are using science to fight a wave of bad nutrition advice on the Internet

Scientists and researchers are working to debunk the most egregious health myths and educate Americans with evidence-based, factual information. Let’s call them skeptics, myth-busters or debunkers. In any case, this group is collectively using science to fight back against the pseudoscience (like fad diets and quack cancer cures). David Gorski, professor of surgery at Wayne State University and managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, says that being a skeptic is about more than debunking. It’s about promoting science and reason. 
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When Detroit Muscle Powered a Breakthrough in Heart Surgery Wheels

General Motors cars cruised the streets in the shadow of Detroit’s Harper Hospital in 1952. Above them was the room of Henry Opitek, a cardiac patient who would come to owe his life to the engineers who built those cars — and who helped foster a partnership between the automotive and medical industries that continues today. The combined efforts of Harper doctors and G.M. engineers would produce a miraculous machine — a mechanical device that would temporarily replace Opitek’s heart. The operation was performed by a team led by Dr. Forest D. Dodrill, who had approached G.M. about a partnership after reasoning that pumping blood would be much like pumping fuel. “Dodrill took a big step that at least demonstrated open-heart surgery could be done while circulating blood with a pump,” said Dr. Larry W. Stephenson, a professor of surgery at Wayne State University who documented the operation at length in a 2002 article for the Journal of Cardiac Surgery. “His achievements were one of the big steppingstones going forward.”