Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

No justice for Abubakar Tariq Nadama after all?

Longtime readers of this blog probably remember the tragic case of Abubakar Tariq Nadama, the five-year-old autistic boy who died as a result of being treated with chelation therapy three years ago by Dr. Roy Kerry, an otolaryngologist who had apparently had given up doing head and neck surgery in favor of the more lucrative […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The “mind-body” connection series on NBC News

Since I’m almost never home in time to see the 6:30 PM news, it’s unlikely I’ll be seeing this series on NBC news about the “mind-body” connection when it airs, although I’ll search for video later when I get a chance. Apparently I missed this last night: When we were planning this week’s series “the […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Why aren’t there more clinical trials studying the effect of CAM on cancer?” cries the CAM advocate

I’ve lamented time and time again just how much money the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) wastes on basic research and clinical trials of modalities that are, from a scientific viewpoint, so highly implausible that the chances of finding a clinically useful or relevant–or even a consistent statistically significant–effect (for example, homeopathy […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Medicine

Blogging on vacation?

OK, I know it’s like the post calling the kettle black, but what the heck is PalMD doing blogging on vacation? And are his two most recent posts so good? This is what I mean: Why hospice matters Never say “hopeless” I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to visit a relative in hospice. I was […]

Categories
Medicine Politics Religion Science

Science leads you to killing people? Not that nonsense again!

That’s the message that Ben Stein has been pushing lately, namely not just the hated “Darwinism” but science itself inevitably leads to political philosophies such as Nazi-ism and Stalinism (but especially Nazi-ism, given its emphasis on racial hygiene and eugenics), including the mass murder that resulted from them. As a result, Stein has been correctly […]