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

The Texas Medical Board vs. Stanislaw Burzynski, round ∞: Will Burzynski slither away yet again?

It’s been a while since I wrote about Stanislaw Burzynski, the Polish ex-pat physician who is not an oncologist but treats cancer patients in his Houston clinic with a mixture of a compound he calls “antineoplastons” (ANPs) and “gene-targeted” therapy. The former are really a mixture of various chemicals he isolated from the blood and […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The revenge of the son of the myth of "placebos without deception"

Back when advocates of “alternative” medicine were busily trying to legitimize their quackery by first renaming it “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), long before CAM “evolved” into “integrative medicine,” they really believed that if their favorite woo were to be studied scientifically it would be shown to be efficacious. Thus was born the Office of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

#CDCTruth protest 2016: Harassing CDC employees in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience

I noticed the other day that I haven’t been visiting the merry band of antivaccine activists and bloggers over at their very own wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism, nearly as much as I used to. I have mentioned them in passing a couple of times recently, but nothing caught my attention […]

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Medicine Quackery

Medscape enables functional medicine quackery

It’s no secret that I’m not exactly a fan of Dr. Mark Hyman he of the “Ultrawellness” medical empire and arguably the foremost promoter of the “subspecialty” (if you will) of “integrative medicine” known as functional medicine. Integrative medicine, as I’ve told you time and time again, is a specialty dedicated to “integrating” alternative medicine […]

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Biology Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A study of overdiagnosis due to mammography reported during Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I knew it. I just knew it. I knew I couldn’t get through October, a.k.a. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, without a controversial mammography study to sink my teeth into. And I didn’t. I suppose I should just be used to this now. I’m referring to the latest opus from H. Gilbert Welch and colleagues that […]