77 votes

Do ibuprofen or paracetamol cause hearing loss?

Yes. That is: They can cause hearing loss. They are properly classified as ototoxic agents. Paracetamol/Acetaminophen is certainly not entirely harmless. In fact it is properly classified as an ...
LangLаngС's user avatar
73 votes

Do the majority of doctors in the USA support hydroxychloroquine use for covid-19?

The only way to settle this is to find and cite a study or survey that supports or refutes the claim that "the majority of doctors in the USA support the use of hydroxychloroquine against COVID ...
JRE's user avatar
  • 5,568
67 votes

Are 99% of US beef cattle given steroids to promote faster growth?

TLDR: roughly true, although the overall percentage of US feedlot cattle given such implants is around 90%, not 99%, according to 2013 USDA data, although it's higher in some US regions, for some ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 59.6k
58 votes

Are EpiPens still effective past expiration date?

Yes, there was such a study, if by "medically effective", you mean something like "better than not using any epinephrine treatment". From the NIH, a study first published in the Journal of Allergy ...
ReasonablySkeptical's user avatar
41 votes

In the past did Martin Shkreli offer free medication for those who could not afford it?

Yes, with a number of caveats. Shkreli's company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, promised to give free access to Daraprim to some patients in need after the initial price-hike controversy arose. Here is a ...
Oddthinking's user avatar
  • 141k
37 votes

Is hydroxychloroquine + zinc + antibiotics an effective treatment for COVID-19?

There is no perfect study yet, but the best evidence we have says HCQ doesn't work There are well-known rules for judging the quality of evidence in clinical studies. Since discussion this highly ...
matt_black's user avatar
  • 56.1k
35 votes
Accepted

Has LSD 'been widely used in hospitals for the treatment of mental disorders'?

Yes, LSD has a history of psychiatric use In terms of the number of doses administered in an official clinical setting, it might not fit the definition of widely, but it has been tried out for wide ...
LangLаngС's user avatar
31 votes
Accepted

Was very little or no new medication developed in the USSR?

Concerning the claim in the question headline: it might be difficult to properly define "very little", compare that to Western medicine. Then start an argument about what counts statistically as… ...
LangLаngС's user avatar
23 votes
Accepted

Multiwave Locked System (MLS) laser therapy - is it any better than just infrared light?

Partial answer: Dr Harriet Hall has covered LLLT in an article on Skeptic magazine. To summarize, she writes that there is not enough evidence to support the claims. In her article, she quoted this ...
Jerome Viveiros's user avatar
21 votes

Do ibuprofen or paracetamol cause hearing loss?

The referenced study is likely "Analgesic Use and the Risk of Hearing Loss in Women" in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The conclusion states In conclusion, this prospective study ...
Mad Scientist's user avatar
  • 43.6k
20 votes

In the past did Martin Shkreli offer free medication for those who could not afford it?

The closest I could find was this (see also here): He also promised: "If you cannot afford the drug we will give it away for free." This was after the backlash because of the severe price ...
tim's user avatar
  • 51.9k
18 votes
Accepted

Can honey help heal wounds?

In short, yes. Picking one of the first recent publications to come up in my search for "honey wound healing", I give you Honey and Wound Healing: An Update (DOI 10.1007/s40257-016-0247-8), which "...
Dave Sherohman's user avatar
17 votes

Is hydroxychloroquine + zinc + antibiotics an effective treatment for COVID-19?

A double-blind, randomized, controlled trial was just published today in NEJM: A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19. This is a trial where ...
Mad Scientist's user avatar
  • 43.6k
16 votes
Accepted

Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy lead to children developing autism?

Unless otherwise noted, quotes are taken from the associated review article. Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy lead to children developing autism? NO. [acetaminophen] is one of the most ...
CJR's user avatar
  • 5,487
15 votes
Accepted

Does drinking distilled kerosene cure cancer?

tl;dr- No, drinking distilled kerosene doesn't cure cancer as far as any modern research can tell. Some studies have suggested that it might cause cancer in some cases, though the general scientific ...
Nat's user avatar
  • 4,111
13 votes

Does the US no longer make antibiotics?

Yes and No... mostly yes, most manufacturing sites are outside the US. Pharmaceutical drugs in general Looking first at pharmaceutical drugs in general there is the FDA Safeguarding Pharmaceutical ...
Charlie Crown's user avatar
12 votes
Accepted

How are vaccines tested for very young children or infants?

It seems a bit weird for any parent to want to sign their newborn up for drug trials. Weird or not, that's how it's done. If your kids are at risk of a dangerous disease, free vaccination and ...
GB supports the mod strike's user avatar
12 votes

Do African countries using Ivermectin have a better Covid-19 situation?

The first really important question is what exactly it means that those countries use ivermectin or are part of APOC. Both papers seem to assume that this status is binary, a country is either in the ...
Mad Scientist's user avatar
  • 43.6k
9 votes

Does storing medicine at recommended temperatures prolong its life?

Let's start with a simpler question, and build up. Do drugs last longer than the expiration date? Yes, for most but not all drugs. The American Medical Association were concerned about the wastage of ...
Oddthinking's user avatar
  • 141k
8 votes
Accepted

Do the recent changes in US drug policy correlate with an increase in people moving from prescribed opioids to heroin?

There's a lot of literature on this apparently, and I've only looked at one (55-page) 2018 NBER paper. There is some (correlational) evidence that the "pill mill" crackdown contributed to the switch ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 59.6k
8 votes
Accepted

Does Paracetamol reduce fever?

The paper "Aspirin compared with acetaminophen in the treatment of fever and other symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection in adults", published by the NIH, tested the efficacy of Aspirin, ...
Johnny's user avatar
  • 2,989
8 votes

Have COVID-19 vaccination trials started in Seattle?

I decided to go and look on the website for the research institute in Seattle and they confirm that testing is indeed underway. On March 16, 2020, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research ...
Chris Rogers's user avatar
  • 2,638
8 votes

Did the drugs against COVID-19 whose EUA was revoked lead to a huge decline in hospitalization rates in Florida?

Did the drugs against COVID-19 whose EUA was revoked lead to a huge decline in hospitalization rates in Florida? The FDA found that the treatment was effective enough to allow emergency use for ...
Schwern's user avatar
  • 17.7k
7 votes
Accepted

Is the same hep C medicine available for 900$ in India and 84000$ in the United States?

The image is incorrect in its description, but on target for costs being different in the USA and India, but jumps to hyperbole for its reasoning. The pill in question is Sovaldi, manufactured by ...
Jimmy M.'s user avatar
  • 1,253
7 votes

Do antibiotics weaken your immune system?

How much antibiotics affect gut flora is open subject, there are studies showing there is long lasting negative effect. Eg. "Gut microbiota disturbance during antibiotic therapy: a multi-omic approach"...
vartec's user avatar
  • 26.6k
7 votes
Accepted

Does abuse of 'study drugs' increase school performance or learning?

TLDR version: the jury's still out. There's limited evidence of improvement in narrow tasks, mainly in memory (particularly on stimulants) and in some sub-groups of individuals. There's also a ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 59.6k
7 votes

Does weight loss from Ozempic come mainly from muscle and connectivity tissue loss?

The study linked in the question does not back up Rogan's claims from the quote. Two cohorts were mentioned, and both showed ~40% of weight loss was lean mass. This is higher than the ideal 25%, but ...
antlersoft's user avatar
  • 2,217
6 votes

Has shea butter been clinically proven to help?

Just to focus on one of the specific claims, a journal article from 2009 describes what the authors believed to be the first clinical application of shea butter to treat eczema (aka atopic dermatitis)....
Brian Z's user avatar
  • 7,352
5 votes
Accepted

Do statins contribute to dementia?

Statins for or against dementia? Irrelevant. So: no in both ways. Statins seem to have both benefits and detriments. There are a few side effects of notable gravity. While most conventional ...
LangLаngС's user avatar
5 votes

Does alcohol-free "essential oil" mouthwash kill bacteria in your mouth?

Essential oils can definitely kill bacteria; however, the other complicating factor related to alcohol is the biofilm. Penetrating the plaque biofilm: impact of essential oil mouthwash. This suggests ...
dancampers's user avatar

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible