Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Adverse effects of chemotherapy in breast cancer: Balancing risks and benefits

I was perusing some articles that had accumulated while I was away, looking for ones that I wouldn’t want to have missed and also looking for blog fodder (sometimes my day job and my blogging job actually mesh quite well, at least when it comes to discussing biomedical studies), and then I found an article […]

Categories
Autism Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One year later: Selective outrage over treatment-related deaths

Note: One year ago today, an autistic boy, Abubakar Tariq Nadama, died of a cardiac arrest while undergoing chelation therapy to try to “cure” his autism. Today, as I am on vacation, I have scheduled several of my old posts on the topic to appear.The investigation into his death is ongoing regarding whether to file […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Damn those microfascists demanding evidence-based medicine!

Damn you PZ! (Heh, I haven’t gotten to say that since he shamed my profession by showing us an example of a certifiably loony young earth creationist physician running for Lt. Governor of South Carolina.) This time around, I’m annoyed at PZ for pointing me in the direction of an article so absurd, so ridiculous, […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

How long before I run out of variations on the same lame joke about answering my Seed overlords?

It seems a reasonable question to ask, given my propensity for it. Unfortunately that’s not what our Seed overlords asked this week. This week, they ask: If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be? Predictably, some ScienceBloggers answered: evolution and what it really means, not the […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

By Seed prodded, or there’s less to these studies than meets the eye

OK, I’ve been prodded enough! Yes, I’ve been aware of the study purporting to present good anecdotal case reports showing that there might be something to the hypothesis that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer where other therapies fail. I’ve also been aware of an in vitro study that suggested selective toxicity of vitamin […]