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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Acupuncture and breast cancer-related lymphedema: Quackademia strikes again

Lymphedema is a complication of breast cancer surgery that all surgeons who do breast surgery detest. Patients, of course, detest it even more. The limb swelling that is the primary symptom of lymphedema comes about because surgery on the axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under the arm) that is part and parcel of surgery […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Get out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is getting interesting (part 5)

There’s a general rule that whenever you see two enemies fighting with each other that you should generally just let them. Of course, some might argue, as Gandalf did about Saruman and Sauron, that the winner of the fight would emerge stronger and free of doubt, making him harder to conquer. Fortunately, I don’t think […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy

“Believe in facts”? You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Vaccine scientist and advocate Dr. Paul Offit recently published a book on the pseudoscience of alternative medicine. Not surprisingly, the antivaccine cranks at Age of Autism, led by Anne Rachel, don’t like that.

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Responsibility versus antivaccine activists

Antivaccinationists endanger public health. They deny to high heaven that that is what they do, but they are deluding themselves. Their fear mongering about vaccines, in which vaccines in general or specific ingredients are portrayed as causing autism and a wide variety of chronic diseases, despite study after study failing to find even a whiff […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Sweet and alkaline won’t win the war against cancer

I write about cancer quackery a lot, and I’ve been at it for over a decade. I first cut my teeth on Usenet, delving into that cesspit of unreason known as misc.health. alternative, where my eyes were opened to just the sorts of pseudoscientific and unscientific cancer treatments patients are enticed into trying, sometimes in […]