Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust denial Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

How “they” view “us” (2014 edition)

A week ago or so, I was perusing my Google Alerts, along with various blogs and news websites, looking for something to blog about, when I noticed a disturbance in the pseudoscience Force. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed many times before from a wide variety of cranks and quacks, but it all boils down to […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

The "Compassionate Freedom of Choice Act of 2014": Pernicious "health freedom" nonsense that degrades human research subject protections

I was torn about what to blog about today. There were lots of things floating around that caught my eye and appear worthy of of a little taste of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, so much so that I couldn’t decide. None of them really stuck out. Then I saw this news story pop up […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Stanislaw Burzynski publishes 42.5% of one clinical trial

Damn it. After hearing the horrible news that Laura Hymas had died on the same day that I found out that the pro-quackery “health freedom” Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) was supporting a federal “right to try” bill, I thought it would just be a one-off post about Burzynski, his allies, and the human toll […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine

Sad news: A Burzynski success story is gone

I’m depressed as I write this, because I have some very sad news to relate to you. It appears that Laura Hymas died on Sunday morning. I learned this on Twitter yesterday from a source I trust, not to mention from mentions on Ben Hymas’s Facebook page, in which friends are commenting on how they […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Patients, doctors embracing alternative medicine in battle against cancer? Not so much.

In the well over nine years that I’ve been blogging, there’s one tried and true, completely reliable topic to blog about, one that I can almost always find. I’m referring, of course, to the credulous news story about pseudoscience. The pseudoscience can be quackery, creationism, anthropogenic global warming denialist arguments, or whatever; inevitably, there will […]