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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

A paean to naturopathy on—where else?—The Huffington Post

If you’re a skeptic and supporter of science-based medicine (SBM), as I am, no doubt there are times when you ask yourself in exasperation, frustration, or curiosity just what the appeal of quackery is to so many people. Why do people fall for this stuff? you no doubt ask yourself at times. Certainly I do […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Stanislaw Burzynski and “clarity” from the FDA

I’ve been writing about Stanislaw Burzynski again, just yesterday having mentioned a warning letter that the Burzynski Clinic received from the FDA last month. Given Dr. Burzynski’s history of promoting a highly dubious cancer therapy that he calls antineoplastons and administering them to patients under the guise of clinical trials for which he charges patients […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Stanislaw Burzynski: Slapped down by the FDA once again

I sometimes think that Stanislaw Burzynski is a lot like the Bloody Mary of folklore, or perhaps Candyman of the famous horror movie—or perhaps like a number of other legends and horror stories—in that all it seems to take for him to show up in the blogosphere again is for me to recite his hame […]

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Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A little schadenfreude over animal rights activist Steven Best’s latest little problem

It’s no secret that I have little but contempt for radical animal rights activists. I make no apologies for this and, quite frankly, consider my contempt for them well-justified based on their behavior and words. Be it their fetishization of violence against researchers who use animals, their threatening of students in order to frighten them […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The results of the unethical and misbegotten Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) are finally revealed

Chelation therapy, in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most common quackeries out there, used by a wide variety of practitioners for a wide variety of ailments blamed on “heavy metal toxicity.” Chelation therapy involves using chemicals that can bind to the metal ions and allow them to […]