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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Uncategorized

Thanks again, antivaccine loons

I’m a bit torn today. On the one hand, it makes me cringe when pundits write inflammatory articles blaming Jenny McCarthy for measles outbreaks. Yes, I know that I once did the same thing myself, but, as much as antivaccinationists dislike me, I’ve actually toned it down a bit when it comes to that particular […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Uncategorized

We’ve heard this story before: Raising loads of cash for unproven treatments

Being a cancer surgeon, I realize that my tendency is to view my blogging material through the prism of cancer, particularly breast cancer, my specialty. it’s easy to forget that there are diseases every bit as horrible, some arguably even more so than the worst cancer. When I think of such diseases, it’s not surprising […]

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Clinical trials Surgery

Placebo effects in surgery

Although I’m a translational researcher, I’m also a surgeon. That was my first and primary training and only later did I decide to get my PhD during my residency, when the opportunity to do so with a decent stipend presented itself. From my perspective, clinical research in surgery is difficult, arguably more difficult than it […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Antivaccine journalist Sharyl Attkisson tries once again to convince us that vaccines cause autism

Sheryl Attkisson’s at it again promoting the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism. Same as it ever was.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

A few holiday medical links while Orac (sort of) relaxes

Regular readers might be wondering why my output was—shall we say?—less extensive last week than it usually is. I even skipped a weekday and then followed it up with a recycled post from my not-so-super-secret other blog, altered to be a bit more, yes, Insolent. The answer is a single word: Grants. I had a […]