Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Cancer charlatan Belle Gibson: Con artist or delusional?

Cancer huckster Belle Gibson was recently fined for deceiving the public by claiming that she had brain cancer, a story that she used to sell all manner of dubious treatments. Was she delusional or a run-of-the-mill con artist? Does it matter?

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

If Rigvir is effective “virotherapy” for cancer, why are quack clinics selling it and quackery promoters like Ty Bollinger promoting it?

Last week, I wrote about Rigvir, a “virotherapy” promoted by the International Virotherapy Center (IVC) in Latvia, which did not like what I had to say. When a representative called me to task for referring to the marketing of Rigvir using patient testimonials as irresponsbile, it prompted me to look at how Ty Bollinger’s The Truth About Cancer series promoted Rigvir through patient testimonials and how the IVC itself uses such testimonials. The word “irresponsible” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Movies Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Religion

The Pathological Optimist: When “not taking sides” over Andrew Wakefield means taking a side

The Pathological Optimist is a recently released documentary by Miranda Bailey about Andrew Wakefield that I got a chance to see. In interviews and in the film’s promotional materials, Bailey takes great pains to emphasize that she “doesn’t take a side” about Wakefield. Unfortunately, her film demonstrates that, when it comes to pseudoscience, “not taking a side” is taking a side, and that a film’s bias is often more evident in what is not shown and told than in what is.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 23: “Vaccine injury” and waterboarding

Whenever I hear an antivaxer claim that she’s “not antivaccine,” I listen to what she’s actually saying. For instance, when she compares “vaccine injury” and the medical system to being tortured (specifically waterboarding), I tend not to believe their denial.

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A misguided paean to a “brave maverick” chelation researcher on STAT News.

Quackademic medicine. I didn’t invent the term. (Dr. R. W. Donnell did—nearly nine years ago.) However, I sure use it a lot, because it perfectly describes a phenomenon that has proliferated and metastasized throughout the body of academic medicine like the cancer it is. I like to think that, in my own way, I’ve popularized […]