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

A bait-and-switch study of acupuncture in stable chronic angina

This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published a clinical trial purporting to find that acupuncture helps stable angina. Here’s a hint: It doesn’t. It’s a bait-and-switch study that used “electroacupuncture” instead of acupuncture with poor blinding and lack of consideration of prior plausibility.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

Antivaxxers invade San Diego Comic-Con

This weekend, antivaxers descended upon San Diego Comic-Con wearing Guy Fawkes masks and holding signs with antivaccine talking points. Less than two months earlier, they had descended upon Disneyland dressed as Star Wars characters. What’s up with antivaxers trying to influence geek culture?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Vaccine holocaust: The wildest antivaccine conspiracy theory ever. It even has aliens!

Mike Adams made a video about the “vaccine holocaust.” It’s the wildest antivaccine conspiracy theory ever. It even has aliens, and there are people dropping dead in the streets like in “The Omega Man.” All it needs are mutants. Where’s Charlton Heston when you need him?

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

Accelerated approval for cancer drugs: The FDA failing to protect patients

There is a tension inherent in the drug approval process between the desire to approve new drugs rapidly in order to treat suffering people and the need to be cautious, to make sure that new drugs are safe and effective before they are approved for sale. This weighing of the risks of too-rapid approval of […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Katie Britton-Jordan: Sadly, vegan diets don’t cure cancer

Katie Britton-Jordan was a young woman with a treatable breast cancer. Instead of science-based medical care, she embarked on a vegan diet and a cornucopia of quackery. Now she is dead, because these treatments don’t work.