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Medicine Politics Popular culture Science

Is "value-based' health insurance really "value-based" or is it just an excuse to make patients pay more?

And now for something completely different… Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to find new woo-filled claims or dangerous, evidence-lacking trends to write about. Heck, I did it just last week. Examining certain other health-related issues from a science-based perspective is more difficult, but I feel obligated to do it from time to time, not just […]

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Biology Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture

Supplements: Flushing your money down the toilet in expensive urine

I remember during medical school that more than one of my faculty used to have a regularly repeated crack that the only thing that taking vitamin supplements could do for you was to produce expensive pee. My first year in medical school was nearly thirty years ago now; so it’s been a long time. During […]

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Cancer Medicine Popular culture

Fear mongering over cell phones and cancer by Dr. Oz

These days, Dr. Oz seems to stand for everything I oppose in medicine: Fear mongering, quackery, making claims that he can’t back up with science, and, of course, filthy lucre. On second thought, I’m not against filthy lucre per se. In fact, I wouldn’t mind having some of it myself. However, I also want to […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

So chemotherapy does work, after all (revisited)

If there’s one medical treatment that proponents of “alternative medicine” love to hate, it’s chemotherapy. Rants against “poisoning” are a regular staple on “alternative health” websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer chemotherapy is because of the “cancer industrial complex” in which big pharma profits massively from selling […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Popular culture Quackery

Chairman Mao: The real inventor of “traditional Chinese medicine”

Most, if not virtually all, of what is now referred to as “traditional Chinese medicine” is quackery. I realize that it’s considered “intolerant” and not politically correct to say that in these days of “integrative medicine” departments infiltrating academic medical centers like so much kudzu enveloping a telephone pole, but I don’t care. I’m supposed […]