Category: Clinical trials

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Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine Politics

As I predicted, the exploitation of desperate patients using right-to-try begins

Right-to-try

I warned you. I’ve been warning you for four years. Now that a federal right-to-try law has passed, the profiteering has begun. Let patients beware!

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Take that, Mike Adams! The TAILORx study vs. the alt-med stereotype of oncologists anxious to administer toxic chemotherapy

Mammogram

Alternative medicine mavens like to promote a stereotype of cancer doctors as practically slavering to poison patients with chemotherapy. The TAILORx trial and its results would beg to differ.

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Surprise! Surprise! (Well, actually, no.) Acupuncture does not work for in vitro fertilization

in vitro fertilization
in vitro fertilization

Australian researchers have carried out another randomized clinical trial on acupuncture for in vitro fertilization. Unsurprisingly, it’s completely negative. Also unsurprisingly, acupuncturists are not happy and are furiously making excuses.

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Bad science Clinical trials Integrative medicine Medicine Quackery

PLOS ONE publishes a howler of a bad acupuncture network meta-analysis

Acupuncture
Because sticking acupuncture needles in imaginary channels can cure everything through theatrical placebo effects.

Meta-analyses can sometimes suffer from the “GIGO problem” (garbage in, garbage out). The publication of a “crappy” acupuncture “network meta-analysis” for acupuncture and chronic constipation illustrates the GIGO problem on steroids a.nd reveals a problem with peer review at PLOS ONE, where it was published

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Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science

The FDA brings the hammer down on two quack stem cell clinics

Stem cells, they're coming to get you.

Last year, the FDA announced a regulatory framework for stem cell clinics, and hopes were raised that it would finally crack down on the hundreds of quack stem cell clinics in the US. Yesterday, the FDA dropped the hammer on two clinics, seeking injunctions in federal court to stop them. Is this the beginning of a real (and long overdue) crackdown on these clinics?