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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture

We’ll take the money you can bring us, even if you’re antivaccine

I’m sure this is a case where someone thought it was a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s an astoundingly bad idea: The Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation is bringing McCarthy to town March 2 to headline its annual Bust a Move fundraiser as a guest fitness instructor. But the actress, author and […]

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Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Television

Dr. Oz’s journey to the Dark Side is now more than complete: It’s Oz and homeopathy versus science-based medicine

On Monday of this week, Michael Specter published an article in The New Yorker entitled THE OPERATOR: Is the most trusted doctor in America doing more harm than good? In the article, Specter expended considerable verbiage that, as I explained yesterday, was beautiful in how it let Oz reveal through his own words that (1) […]

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Medicine Popular culture Television

The Great and Powerful (Dr.) Oz, dissected in The New Yorker

In the beginning, medicine was religion. Indeed, if you look at the history of medicine, you’ll see that the very first physicians were virtually always religious figures in addition to their roles as healers. Indeed, in ancient Egypt, for example, the professions of priest and healer were one, and most medicine involved incantations, invocations of […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

An excellent explanation of how dubious Stanislaw Burzynski’s activities are

The weekend was busy, and I was working on grants, which meant that I could only come up with one post of Orac-style length and depth. Sadly, it wasn’t for this blog. Fortunately, C0nc0rdance came to the rescue with a must-watch video about our old friend Stanislaw Burzynski. He’s the guy who claims to treat […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The Cochrane Collaborative’s Tom Jefferson makes the huge mistake of appearing on Gary Null’s show

Three years ago, the influenza season was a really big deal. The reason, of course, is that the 2009-2010 flu season was dominated by fears of the H1N1 strain, so much so that it was a rare flu season that there were two recommended vaccines, one for the originally expected strains of flu and one […]